ICCOnline - 2010
ICCOnline - January 2010
The most important point first: immediately following are the words of Alfred Russel Wallace, written in 1864, very clearly explaining the power of, the escape from and the overturning of "natural selection" by the development of humanity:
"But in man, as we now behold him, this is different. He is social and sympathetic. In the rudest tribes the sick are assisted at least with food; less robust health and vigour than the average does not entail death. Neither does the want of perfect limbs or other organs produce the same effects as among animals. Some division of labour takes place; the swiftest hunt, the less active fish, or gather fruits; food is to some extent exchanged or divided. The action of natural selection is therefore checked; the weaker, the dwarfish, those of less active limbs, or less piercing eyesight, do not suffer the extreme penalty which falls upon animals so defective....
In proportion as these physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral qualities will have increasing influence on the well-being of the race. Capacity for acting in concert, for protection and for the acquisition of food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other; the sense of right, which checks depredations upon our fellows; the decrease of the combative and destructive propensities; self-restraint in present appetites; and that intelligent foresight which prepares for the future, are all qualities that from their earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would, therefore, have become the subjects of ‘natural selection'. For it is evident that such qualities would be for the well-being of man; would guard him against external enemies, against internal dissensions, and against the effects of inclement seasons and impending famine, more surely than could any merely physical modification. Tribes in which such mental and moral qualities were predominant, would therefore have an advantage in the struggle for existence over other tribes in which they were less developed, would live and maintain their numbers, while the others would decrease and finally succumb...
But while these changes had been going on, his mental development had correspondingly advanced, and had now reached that condition in which it began powerfully to influence his whole existence, and would therefore, become subject to the irresistible action of ‘natural selection'. This action would rapidly give the ascendancy to mind: speech would probably now be first developed, leading to a still further advance of the mental faculties, and from that moment man as regards his physical form would remain almost stationary. The art of making weapons, division of labour, anticipation of the future, restraint of the appetites, moral, social and sympathetic feelings, would now have a preponderating influence on his well being, and would therefore be that part of his nature on which ‘natural selection' would most powerfully act; and we should thus have explained that wonderful persistence of mere physical characteristics, which is the stumbling-block of those who advocate the unity of mankind...
We are now, therefore, enabled to harmonise the conflicting views of anthropologists on this subject. Man may have been, indeed I believe must have been, once a homogeneous race; but it was at a period of which we have as yet discovered no remains, at a period so remote in his history, that he had not yet acquired that wonderfully developed brain, the organ of the mind, which now, even in his lowest examples, raises him far above the highest brutes;--at a period when he had the form but hardly the nature of man, when he neither possessed human speech, nor those sympathetic and moral feelings which in a greater or less degree everywhere now distinguish the race. Just in proportion as these truly human faculties became developed in him would his physical features become fixed and permanent, because the latter would be of less importance to his well being; he would be kept in harmony with the slowly changing universe around him, by an advance in mind, rather than by a change in body. If, therefore, we are of opinion that he was not really man till these higher faculties were developed, we may fairly assert that there were many originally distinct races of men; while, if we think that a being like us in form and structure, but with mental faculties scarcely raised above the brute, must still be considered to have been human, we are fully entitled to maintain the common origin of all mankind...
Here, then, we see the true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attributes, we may admit that even those who claim for him a position as an order, a class, or a sub-kingdom by himself, have some reason on their side. He is, indeed, a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. Nay more; this victory which he has gained for himself gives him a directing influence over other existences. Man has not only escaped ‘natural selection' himself, but he actually is able to take away some of that power from nature which, before his appearance, she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted ‘natural selection'; and when the ocean will be the only domain in which that power can be exerted, which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over all the earth...
Briefly to recapitulate the argument;--in two distinct ways has man escaped the influence of those laws which have produced unceasing change in the animal world. By his superior intellect he is enabled to provide himself with clothing and weapons, and by cultivating the soil to obtain a constant supply of congenial food. This renders it unnecessary for his body, like those of the lower animals, to be modified in accordance with changing conditions--to gain a warmer natural covering, to acquire more powerful teeth or claws, or to become adapted to obtain and digest new kinds of food, as circumstances may require. By his superior sympathetic and moral feelings, he becomes fitted for the social state; he ceases to plunder the weak and helpless of his tribe; he shares the game which he has caught with less active or less fortunate hunters, or exchanges it for weapons which even the sick or the deformed can fashion; he saves the sick and wounded from death; and thus the power which leads to the rigid destruction of all animals who cannot in every respect help themselves, is prevented from acting on him...
In concluding this brief sketch of a great subject, I would point out its bearing upon the future of the human race. If my conclusions are just, it must inevitably follow that the higher--the more intellectual and moral--must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the power of ‘natural selection', still acting on his mental organisation, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to the conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies of the social state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that perfect beauty which results from a healthy and well organised body, refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution may continue to advance and improve till the world is again inhabited by a single homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity. Each one will then work out his own happiness in relation to that of his fellows; perfect freedom of action will be maintained, since the well balanced moral faculties will never permit any one to transgress on the equal freedom of others; restrictive laws will not be wanted, for each man will be guided by the best of laws; a thorough appreciation of the rights, and a perfect sympathy with the feelings, of all about him; compulsory government will have died away as unnecessary (for every man will know how to govern himself), and will be replaced by voluntary associations for all beneficial public purposes; the passions and animal propensities will be restrained within those limits which most conduce to happiness; and mankind will have at length discovered that it was only required of them to develop the capacities of their higher nature, in order to convert this earth, which had so long been the theatre of their unbridled passions, and the scene of unimaginable misery, into as bright a paradise as ever haunted the dreams of seer or poet."
If one can possibly sum this up, particularly the sense of the last extract, it's in the words "Man has not only escaped ‘natural selection' himself, but he actually is able to take away some of that power from nature which, before his appearance, she universally exercised" -and this is the contribution of Wallace to scientific materialism.
It would be wrong to see Alfred Russel Wallace as the "forgotten man" in the shadow of Charles Darwin. He was anything but. Neither is this piece a song for an unsung hero; Wallace, unlike many scientists, was rightly feted in his own time and recognised as the brilliant scientist that he was. He was naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He lived and worked to a ripe old age and was still buzzing when he was 90 years old. The popular scientist, David Attenborough, to his credit, has just finished a speaking tour on the works of Alfred Russel Wallace. I think the reason that so little is made of him in this year of the commemoration of Darwin's work, is how much his work was a profound development on the motor force of history and thus a direct attack on bourgeois order, and how much he pushed Darwin in this direction despite the latter's sometimes reluctance. The above quotes are extracts from his paper presented in March 1864 to the Anthropological Society of London (which went completely over their heads - see their subsequent discussion) entitled ‘The Origins of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of "Natural Selection"'. This text, which forced Darwin "out of the closet" in relation to the development of man, and provoked his work The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, very clearly expounds the analysis developed by Patrick Tort on the "reverse effect of evolution" on natural selection one hundred and nineteen years later (see the ICC's website ‘On Patrick Tort's The Darwin Effect').
According to Wikipedia, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was born the eighth of nine children in Wales to a middle class family whose fortunes were about to take a dive. They moved to north London where Alfred was withdrawn from grammar school aged 13 because of the family's financial difficulties. He became an apprentice surveyor, associated with many workers and travelled around England and Wales for work. He was unemployed for a while and worked as a civil engineer, teacher and lecturer. During this period he read Richard Owen and Thomas Paine as well as Malthus. His friendship with the 19 year old entomologist, Henry Bates, came at a decisive moment in his life. Wallace spent much of his working life outdoors and he loved to collect insects (hence the subtitle of a book on him: "The other insect-collector"). During this period, exchanging letters with Bates, he read the anonymous evolutionary work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1847, Darwin's Journal and Lyell's Principles of Geology. Inspired by the chronicles of travel written by Darwin, von Humboldt and William Henry Edwards, Wallace and Bates decided to travel to the Amazon to collect insects and other species. They were also to investigate the transmutation of species. Returning to England in 1852, the ship caught fire and Wallace and the others spent 10 days in an open boat before they were rescued. All Wallace's collection was destroyed in the fire but they were insured, which enabled him to survive back in England. Aged between 31 and 38, Wallace travelled around what is now Malaysia and Indonesia. During these times, he became convinced of the reality of evolution, and, according to his autobiography (My Life), posed the question:
"The problem then was not only how and why do species change, but how and why do they change into new and well defined species, distinguished from each other in so many ways; why and how they become so exactly adapted to distinct modes of life; and why do all the intermediate grades die out (as geology shows they have died out) and leave only clearly defined and well marked species, genera, and higher groups of animals?"
Coming out of a fever somewhere on the Malay Archipelago in Ternate (or possibly the island of Gilolo), and, strangely enough, thinking about Malthus, he came up with the answer:
"It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more quickly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since evidently they do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly, on the whole the best fitted live ... and considering the amount of individual variation that my experience as a collector had shown me to exist, then it followed that all the changes necessary for the adaptation of the species to the changing conditions would be brought about ... In this way every part of an animal's organization could be modified exactly as required, and in the very process of this modification the unmodified would die out, and thus the definite characters and the clear isolation of each new species would be explained." Years earlier, Wallace had already become somewhat dissatisfied with simply collecting, describing and recording species; he writes to Bates: "My early letters (1847)... suffice to show that the great problem of the origins of the species was already distinctly formulated in my mind". By 1853, Wallace nearly had it cracked in an essay entitled ‘The Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of the Species' and shortly after, he wrote: "Of late years, however, a great light has been thrown upon the subject by geological investigations, which have shown that the present state of the earth, and the organisms now inhabiting it, are but the last stage of a long and uninterrupted series of changes"; and to try to explain anything current without reference to those changes could only lead to "wrongful conclusions".
That the idea of natural selection came to Wallace in a fever is not so different to how Charles Darwin developed the concept, if you describe fever as a ferment of the mind; Wallace from a malarial fever and Darwin's from a slow-burning psychological fever brought about by the contradictions of bourgeois society and the analyses that he had to confront it with. Wallace wrote: "Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing, closely allied species" (all underlinings by Wallace and all his emphases I've underlined). Using the branch, the limb, boughs, twigs and "scattered leaves" as an example, the law "not merely explains but necessitates what is". Wallace wrote to his brother-in-law: "It seems to me, however, as clear as daylight that the principle of Natural Selection must act in nature. It is almost as necessary a truth as any mathematics. Next, the effects produced by this action cannot be limited. It cannot be shown that there is any limit to them in nature" (Letters and Reminiscences, James Marchant). From the Malay Archipelago, after coming out of the fever and working on it over two evenings, Wallace sent Darwin his text: ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart from the Original Type'. Darwin was amazed to see that it was almost identical to his 1842 analysis that hardly anyone knew anything of. Darwin was advised by his friends to present both papers, which he did to the Linnaean Society in London, 1858, and Darwin's extended views became The Origin of Species. Neither Wallace nor Darwin attended the meeting as Darwin's son was being buried on the day it took place.
Some naturalists, hearing of Wallace's discovery in the Malay Archipelago, wrote to him immediately, criticising his "theorising" when what was necessary was the collection of more facts, they said. This was the only conclusion to his text that reached him as he continued working in solitude in a remote area of Sarawak, apart from one other; Charles Darwin wrote to Wallace on May 1st 1857: "... I can plainly see that we have thought much alike... and come to similar conclusions... I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper". After Wallace's text appeared in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Darwin agonised somewhat over publishing his views in what was to become his Origins of Species. But Wallace's work had already publicly crossed a Rubicon and it spurred Darwin on and more or less forced him to publish his own great work. Both men had hit on the same discovery almost simultaneously, though obviously not without a great deal of previous work from both themselves and many others. On his "moment of truth", ie, when the reality of "natural selection" hit him, Darwin wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker in 1885: "... and I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me", it is that, "the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and diversified places in the economy of nature" (Life of Charles Darwin, one-volume edition). Wallace hadn't any idea of the development of Darwin's work and both came up with the idea of the "survival of the fittest", the "survival of the most-suited", in relation to organic development almost as one, in a "sudden flash of insight", as Wallace put it. Simultaneous scientific discoveries are not at all unusual, dating back through written history. Indeed multiple scientific discoveries occur, particularly in epochs of social upheaval. It's not surprising given that in pre-history we see the independent discoveries giving rise to developments of pottery, agriculture, metallurgy, etc. But this particular discovery cemented these two very different but very similar men together for life and despite many, many scientific disagreements and personal agonies, they sparked off one another and it's very hard to imagine the advances of one without the other. If the Origins of Species (which Wallace said he had to read five times to understand properly) had been the only result of the two men's work, then that would have been well enough, but as the first part of this text shows, there was a lot more to come. It wasn't enough for Wallace to push Darwin forward once; he did it twice and the second time was even more profound.
Wallace and Darwin were different men with different personalities, living in different circumstances, but both were humanitarians, both warriors for scientific discovery and truth and both comrades-in-arms in order to achieve that objective, and both suffered their own personal agonies. They were also friends for life. There have been more or less co-ordinated attempts to pervert the analysis of both men in the interests of capitalist exploitation; "social Darwinism" for example, or the way that Wallace's interest in spiritualism is used to try to debase or nullify his great scientific work.
In their travels and general levels of comfort during their early researches, Darwin didn't suffer from the financial constraints that Wallace experienced. Both loved and were equally astounded by the wonders of nature that they came across, but while Darwin's living conditions were that of an upper-class Englishman, Wallace was more down to earth. Not only was he bowled over by nature, but also by man, saying that his "most unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first meeting and living with man in a state of nature - with absolutely uncontaminated savages!... and the biggest surprise of all was that I did not expect to be surprised". Wallace goes on to talk about their dignity, their "free step and self-sustaining originality". This was far different from Darwin's attitude to "savages" which bordered on, and sometimes spilled-over, into contempt. Darwin limited (if one can use the word limit) himself to being astounded by nature, but "unaffected by the hand of man". Wallace, like Lewis Henry Morgan, lived with "savages", which though in many ways necessitated by financial constraints was also for Wallace all part of the fun and adventure. For Darwin, these savages were "men who do not possess the instincts of (domesticated) animals".
Wallace spent years building up his great collection (and sometimes losing it) in sometimes difficult and dangerous circumstances. His work was laborious and physical throughout his years in Java, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, Timor, etc. About the same time, Darwin was carrying out his great work around South America, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, etc., in more comfortable circumstances - not that one should hold that against him.
Their attitude on the missionaries they met is also interesting. For Wallace, he thought that the Catholic priests "lived for the good of the people they live among". For Darwin, the Protestants had a more civilising effect on the people! A few words on religion from Wallace because it's noteworthy that this never changed despite his later interest in spiritualism: "I think Protestants and Catholics equally wrong" and "I have since wandered among men of many races and many religions. I have studied man and nature in all its aspects, and I have sought after truth. In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. I think that I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides and I remain an utter disbeliever". Wallace also pronounced himself thankful for seeing much to admire in many religions and the necessity of many religions. For his part, Darwin underlined the importance of religion and of the old religions. Wallace tried to interest Darwin in radical politics, but Darwin most certainly didn't want to know. I think his reaction is quite funny: on July 12th 1881, Wallace sent Darwin a book entitled An Enquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depression and of Increase in Want with Increase in Wealth, which he called "startling and original". In part, Darwin replied three days later: "I will read the order ‘Progress and Poverty' (a text Wallace had already sent him). But I read many years ago some books on the political economy (I think that this includes the copy of Capital that Marx sent him, of which he read only three pages), and they produced a disastrous effect on my mind, viz, utterly to distrust my own judgement on the subject and to doubt everyone else's judgement". I like the way that Wallace persisted in egging on his mate and I like the way that Darwin reacted - a moderately horror-struck and addled-minded friend.
Prior to Origins coming out, Wallace wrote to Darwin asking if his book would mention man. Darwin replied "No. I think I shall avoid the whole subject." But though he had a long way to go, the general impetus from both men's work was pointing very much in that direction, driving them on into even more startling conclusions. Darwin had raised the question of man with, and galvanised a significant number of, bourgeois scientists and academics, many of whom, more or less openly, shared Darwin's trepidation for bourgeois order from such an analysis.
Their correspondence was ever fruitful and Wallace once again pushed Darwin forward with his ‘The Origins of Human Races....' mentioned above. While working on The Descent of Man (what Darwin called "a little essay on the origins of mankind") Wallace challenges and modifies Darwin's views. One clear example: Darwin was of the opinion that the constant battles between savages led to the selection of those with physical superiority. Wallace wrote back on May 29, 1864: "I think that (this) would be very imperfect, and subject to so many exceptions and irregularities that it could prove no definite result. For instance, the strongest and bravest men would lead and expose themselves most, and would be subject to wounds and death. And the physical energy which led to any one tribe delighting in war might lead to its extermination by inducing quarrels with all surrounding tribes and leading them to combine against it." Darwin dumped his ill-thought position on this and adopted Wallace's critique wholesale - and that is how it appears in Descent. Darwin also incorporated into Descent, Wallace's idea of harmony within the group in order to explain the emergence of morality and compassion, for him "the highest human attributes" and "a social value to sympathy and selflessness".
In the Penguin paperback edition of Descent, James Moore and Adrian Desmond write in the introduction: "Wallace, having pipped Darwin once, now did it again. In 1864 the tyro, home from the Far East with nothing to lose, confronted the white-supremacist Anthropological Society in person. He said the races had diverged from a common stock by natural selection. ‘Moreover, with the dawn of the human mind, bodily evolution ceased... By building shelters, making weapons, raising crops and co-operating humans had neutralised environmental pressures. The survivors were no long physically the fittest but mentally the brightest and most moral collaborators'".
Both men had studied Malthus earlier in their lives and had used his analyses of competitive individual struggle for the development of their ideas for natural selection at an organic level, i.e., "survival of the fittest", "survival of the most adapted", etc. Indeed, Wallace used the term "survival of the fittest" often, but always in relation to organic development. And Moore and Desmond above note that Malthus himself had wondered how altruism had survived, how it could survive to leave more offspring (the test of "fitness") when the weakest were by definition more vulnerable. Both Wallace and Darwin solved the contradictions that troubled Malthus by turning his concepts upside-down and inside-out.
On Wallace's 1864 paper in May of that year, Darwin wrote: "It is really admirable, but you ought not... to speak of the theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine". The strength of the men's feelings for each other is shown in further correspondence. Darwin wrote to Wallace: "I hope it is a satisfaction to reflect - and very few things in my life have been more satisfactory to me - that we have never felt any jealousy towards each other, though in some sense rivals. I believe I can say this of myself with truth, and I am absolutely sure that it is true of you". To Darwin from Wallace: "To have thus inspired and retained this friendly feeling, notwithstanding many differences of opinion, I feel to be one of the greatest honours of my life". I can't here go into their scientific differences, particularly on sexual selection which would take a book in itself. But Wallace attached considerable importance to it in both animals and humans and popularised Darwin's views, eventually coming to disagree with at least some elements of it (and making valid criticisms here and there, particularly of species coloration and the role of women) , but their correspondence continues apace with respect and sincerity. On a personal level, both corresponded to each with compassion, not least on the death aged 7 of Wallace's eldest son Herbert. Darwin had suffered from the terrible blows of the loss of his children; his eldest daughter Anne aged 10 of TB (which further shook Darwin's belief in Christianity), son Charles aged 1 in 1848 and daughter Mary just a few weeks old.
About a year after coming up with one of the most profound materialist analyses of the epoch outside of The Communist Manifesto, Alfred Russel Wallace fell into spiritualism in a big way. How could this happen? How could a few months after publishing a text rooted in science and materialism on the whole history of mankind, could someone believe in séances? Could it be that the monumental enormity of Wallace's work provoked some sort of irrational contradiction in his mind? I don't think so, because Wallace went on to defend his and Darwin's analysis very clearly, deepening it even, as well as developing other great materialist works. Could it be personal or family tragedies? Again, that doesn't fit the man or into the timescale. Both men were individuals and like any individual, yesterday or today, would be subject to various thoughts, pressures and ideology. It would be speculative to say why Wallace developed this way of thinking. He wrote: "...I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death..." - and he seemed to enjoy his foray into the world of the supernatural and, from what I can see, it didn't affect his work in any detrimental way. If Wallace's bent was towards spiritualism, then Darwin's Achilles Heel was bourgeois ideology (see below). On natural selection on the body then the mind, adaptability to the environment, capacity for improvement and the elastic capacity for co-ordination, Wallace wrote: "... a superior intelligence had guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms". In his The World of Life, written by Wallace in 1910, this developed into the idea of an omnipotent God, the spiritual nature of man and the other world of spiritual beings, but what he originally meant by this isn't at all clear. Thomas Huxley, who remained his friend, called spiritualism "disembodied gossip" - but Huxley went on to become a proponent of "social Darwinism", something that Wallace, spiritualism or no spiritualism, always implacably opposed. He had developed these supernatural "theories" before the end of the 70s and by 1913, just before his death, wrote to James Marchant, saying: "Whether the Unknown Creator is a single Being and acts everywhere in the universe as a direct creator, organiser and director of every minutest motion... or through infinite grades of beings, as I suggest, comes to much the same thing." Faced with Wallace's clarity in his scientific analysis, this is not at all clear and must remain, for the purpose of this defence of his scientific materialism, an unanswered question for the moment.
In a paper called ‘The Quarterly', dated 1869, Wallace revived Lyell's Principles of Geology and showed for the first time publicly, much to the shock of Darwin, his turn to the other world of spirituality. Wallace tries to show in this review how a higher form than evolution and natural selection was responsible for the mind. Darwin's copy of this paper is strewn with notes, underlinings, exclamations and the word "NO". He famously wrote to Wallace in March 1969: "I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child". But their correspondence and work continued in a constructive and fraternal manner, with Darwin writing: "As you expected, I differ grievously from you, and I am very sorry for it". Wallace wrote back saying that he had tested out a series of remarkable physical and mental phenomena and felt that forces beyond science were at work. He also thanked his friend for not being unkind to him about his "heresies" and "excesses" in these fields. And Wallace also thanked Darwin for his "great tenderness" in this respect.
Wallace also got involved in the dubious "science" of phrenology and took a position against compulsory vaccinations, though to some extent this was based on his awareness of the unsanitary conditions they were carried out in and some of the dubious practices used[1]. But all this is completely insignificant compared with his work. And if we looking at this in terms of "lapses", then Darwin's were very much into the realms of bourgeois ideology. You would need to read Descent with blinkers on not to see the repetitions of some of the worse bourgeois filth and his expressed contempt for savages and barbarians and his dismissal of the working class. Similarly, Darwin supported the bloody colonial expansion of the British bourgeoisie and expressed no mercy to its victims. And Darwin could still write in Descent: "The careless, squalid, uninspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits", along with other Malthusian garbage. Again, you would have to read Descent with your eyes closed not to see Darwin's concessions to eugenics, later praising his cousin's Francis Galton's work on the subject as an "admirable labour". As Moore and Desmond note, later editions of Descent gave more credibility to eugenics as Darwin seemed to come under Galton's influence further, even drawing back on his previous clarity regarding the negative effects of in-breeding. Wallace on the other hand was clear that "contemporary society was too rotten to decide who was fit and unfit". One of their points of difference on sexual selection was Darwin's insistence on the evolutionary pinnacle of the British aristocracy. Writing in chapter 20 of Descent on different standards of beauty he said: "Many persons are convinced, as it appears to me with justice, that our aristocracy, including under this term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long prevailed, from having chosen during many generations from all classes the more beautiful women as their wives, have become handsomer, according to European standards". However, these faltering steps in no way call into question his great strides. And the same is true for Alfred Russel Wallace. These were men of their time, individuals outside of a revolutionary framework (and even inside that, both Marx and Engels showed their individual prejudices), of flesh and blood and with many human frailties putting their positions forward against the tide in an epoch of social ferment.
As James Marchant writes in Reminiscences and Letters, while Wallace had his "head in the clouds" in his spiritualism, his feet stayed very firmly on the ground. "Wallace lived to see the theory of evolution applied to the life-history and the starry firmament (...) to the progress of the mind, morals and religion, even to the origins of life - a conception which had completely changed man's attitude towards himself and the world and God. Evolution became intelligible in the light of that idea that came to him in that hut in Ternate and changed the face of the universe". Wallace lived to see his and Darwin's ideas tested by time and continued to defend these ideas and produce great materialist works. On a lecturing tour in Boston, USA, 1886, a newspaper wrote of his talk: "The first Darwinian, Wallace, did not leave a leg for anti-Darwinism to stand on" (his first Lowell lecture) "It was a masterpiece of condensed statement - as clear and simple, and compact - a most beautiful specimen of scientific work" (quoted by Marchant). Wallace proudly proclaimed that some of his critics had said that he was more "Darwinian than Darwin" and admitted "they are not wrong". Wallace continued to develop and deepen the theory of natural selection: "None of my differences with Darwin imply any real divergence as to the overwhelming importance of the great principle of natural selection, while in several directions I believe I have extended and strengthened it".
Inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen at 14 years old, Wallace discussed at work and in village inns with labourers and farmers the existence of "the law-created pauper" resulting from the General Enclosure Act. He wrote: "But all the robbery, all the spoliation, all the legal and illegal fiddling had been on their side... They made the laws to legalise their actions, and, some day, we, the people, will make laws which will not only legalise but justify our process of restitution" (which will be) "justified alike by equity, by ethics, and by religion"
In his "Social Environment and Moral Progress", his conclusion is startling: "It's not too much to say that our whole system of Society is rotten from top to bottom, and that the social environment as a whole in relation to our possibilities and our claims is the worst the world has ever seen" (this was doubly underlined). He goes on to say that these evils are due, "broadly and generally, to our living under a system of universal competition for the means of existence, the remedy for which is equally universal co-operation", which demands, "a system of economic brotherhood, as of a great family, or of friends". For him Capital, the result of stored-up labour, was in the hands of the few. He denounced the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, while many went without. "We have ourselves created an immoral and amoral social environment", the course of which had to be overturned by initiating a new era of "moral progress".
Wallace certainly had illusions in parliament, reforms, nationalisation, even supporting the Lloyd George government at one stage. But in his ‘Revolt of Democracy', addressed to the Labour Party, he denounced the clergy and science for upholding "the competitive and capitalistic system of society as the only possible and rational one". He was affected by the great strikes of 1908, which showed how the whole of capitalism was dependent on the "working classes". He advocated equal opportunities, the overcoming of restrictions to one kind of labour for "the greatest possible diversity of character", the economic independence of women, sex-love (against the in-bred marriages of the bourgeoisie) and the special role of women in natural selection. He wrote about: "... the suffering of so many infants needlessly sacrificed through the terrible defects of our vicious social system". He supported a higher form of sexual selection underlying the role of women and seeing woman's future role as "far higher and more important than any which has been claimed in the past". He clearly and constantly denounced eugenics as it was developing from a scientific and political standpoint, seeing it as the "meddlesome interference of an arrogant scientific priestcraft".
An acquaintance, a Mr. D.A. Wilson who visited Wallace in 1912 when he was ninety, wrote: "He surprised me by saying he was a Socialist. It appeared to be an unconscious modesty, like a schoolboy's... There was no sign of age but physical weakness and you had to make an effort to remember even that. His eyes kindled when he spoke, and more than once he walked about and chuckled... he reprobated the selfish wild-cut competition which made life harder and more horrible for a well-doing poor man in England than among the Malay or Burmese before they had any modern inventions. Co-operation was the upward road for humanity". Man had grown out of beasthood by co-operation, and by it civilisation began. Wallace was reading Confucius and Kropotkin and supported strikes by railworkers, the 8-hour day and double time for all overtime, seeing these as international concerns. James Marchant reports that apart from eminent scientists across the world, many workers wrote directly to Wallace and, according to him, he answered every letter.
So, in this year of the anniversary and celebration of Darwin's work and life, a failure to mention the contribution of Alfred Russel Wallace would be severely remiss. These two great scientists and thinkers sparked off of one another, and both "changed the face of the universe" - there's not one without the other. And in the scheme of things (and "schemes of things" don't come much greater than Wallace and Darwin's scheme of things) any faltering steps or possibly strange diversions are absolutely insignificant and entirely understandable. In fact, if these faltering steps, the foibles weaknesses of both men, were a necessity for their enormous strides, then so much the better for them.
Wallace's work reinforced the materialist conception of history and in so doing reinforced the perspective for any future society. The existing society for Wallace, a society where competition is king, where the weak go to the wall, and one which is basically immoral, is one that can be scientifically determined to go the way of the dodo given the right conditions.
Baboon, 24/1/10
see also these articles
The persistence of religious obscurantism [3]
On Patrick Tort's The Darwin Effect [4]
Darwin and the workers movement [5]
TV review: Charles Darwin and the tree of life [6]
Social Darwinism: a reactionary ideology of capitalism [7]
Review of Chris Knight's "Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture [8]
[9][1] The conditions and practices sometimes used by the bourgeoisie surrounding vaccinations are shown in the Milwaukee smallpox outbreak of 1894. The attitude of the authorities was clearly class-based, with the wealthy allowed to quarantine themselves and the poor and immigrants forcibly removed to isolation hospitals and forcibly vaccinated. The latter responded by not reporting incidents of smallpox, hiding its victims and eventually rioting against forced removals and vaccinations. The authorities had once against shown what some disaster specialists call "elite panic". It's the ruling class's expression of "social Darwinism" in opposition to the altruism, solidarity and mutual aid shown by the "lower orders" in times of disaster. The positive self-organisation of the latter is shown in such fairly recent disasters as Mumbai, Hillsborough and New Orleans, as is the social Darwinist response of the bourgeoisie that people in trouble will turn into animals so we must repress them from the beginning. This whole question is fully explored by Rebecca Solnit in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell.
In the weeks beforehand the media and politicians were full of grand phrases that the summit held the fate of humanity and the planet in its hands. On the first day of the summit 56 newspapers around the world, in countries such as France, Russia, China, India and Britain, carried a common editorial under the heading "Fourteen days to seal history's judgement on this generation". "We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west." These pious wishes came to nothing but the editorial contained some truth: "The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C - the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction - would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea."[4]
In fact, the situation is even more serious than this. 26 million people may already have been displaced as a result of climate change,[5] while a rise of 1°C, which would require CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere and is considered impossible to achieve, will lead to the melting of glaciers that provide the water for crops for 50 million people, to 300,000 people being affected each year by diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea and the death of most of the world's corals. The existence of some low-lying islands and countries will also be threatened. A rise of 2°C, which has become the accepted target, will spell disaster for millions of the planet's inhabitants: "The Amazon turns into desert and grasslands, while increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere make the world's oceans too acidic for remaining coral reefs and thousands of other marine life forms. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the Greenland ice sheet melts and the world's sea level begins to rise by seven metres over the next few hundred years. A third of the world's species will become extinct".[6] During the summit the findings of research into the acidification of the oceans were released that showed that ocean acidity, which occurs when the level of CO2 absorbed by the oceans increases, has increased by 30% since the industrial revolution. This aspect of climate change, so far relatively little studied, could have profound consequences: "Ocean acidification could trigger a chain reaction of impacts through the marine food web, beginning with larval fish and shellfish, which are particularly vulnerable. This will affect the multibillion-dollar fishing industry and threaten the food security of many of the world's poorest. Most regions of the ocean will become inhospitable to coral reefs thus affecting food security, tourism, shoreline protection and biodiversity".[7] Furthermore, there is no known way to reduce ocean acidity levels other than allowing natural processes to take effect, which could take tens of thousands of years.
Human activity has always had an impact on the environment but from its early days capitalism showed a contempt for the natural world to match its contempt for the humans who laboured in its factories, mines and fields. In the 19th Century the industrial cities and towns in Britain poured filth and pollution into the environment undermining the health of the population as a whole and of the working class in particular. In the recent past Stalinism turned large parts of Russia into a wasteland while today in China the contamination of waterways and land is being repeated once again, but this time the contaminants are possibly even more poisonous than in the past.
This situation does not arise simply from the ill-will and ignorance of this or that member of the ruling class but from the fundamental laws of capitalism, which we summarised in a recent issue of our International Review:
- "the division of labour and, even more, the reign of money and capital over production, which divides humanity into an infinity of competing units;
- the fact that the goal of production is not use value, but exchange value, commodities which must at all cost be sold, whatever the consequences for humanity and the planet in order to realise a profit."[8]
Profit and competition are what drive capitalism and the consequences now threaten the world. The ruling class, in contrast, present capitalism as based on meeting human needs, arguing that it responds to ‘consumer demand' for the necessaries and luxuries of life and pointing to the improvements in income and quality of life that have been achieved for millions of people. There is some truth in this, in that capitalism has developed the means of production beyond anything that could be imagined in the past and there have been real improvements for many, especially those in the most developed countries. But this has only been done when it coincides with the real purpose of capitalism: making profits. Capitalism is an economic system that must continually expand or it will collapse: businesses must grow or they will fail and their carcass will be picked over by their competitors; nation states must defend their interests or they will be made subservient to their rivals. As this is inconceivable to the ruling class it is necessary to make any sacrifice to keep their economy, their society and their positions intact. This is why in a world of abundance millions starve; why, despite disarmament agreements and declarations of human rights, wars rage without end; why billions have recently been poured into propping up the economy while millions of human beings go without adequate healthcare and education. It is also why, despite the overwhelming evidence of climate change, the bourgeoisie is incapable of saving the planet.
The laws that drive capitalism affect every aspect of the society it has created, including international summits. Such meetings, whatever their declared purpose and even when apparently common interests are at stake, are always nothing but struggles for advantage between competing nations. The ceremonies, grand speeches and ringing declarations about human rights, ending poverty and saving the planet are just a mask to deceive us. The Copenhagen summit, like Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto before it, demonstrated this amply.
At Copenhagen both economic and imperialist interests clashed and since, while they overlap, they are not necessarily identical, this made the situation all the more complex with shifting alliances and changes of position.
Much was made during and after the summit of the supposed clash between developed and developing nations. There are clearly some common interests between developed economies just as there are between those reliant on supplying basic commodities, such as coffee or metal ores, but there can be no lasting unity. The EU came to the summit with a common agreement to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020 and the suggestion that this might increase to 30% if the talks went well. Within this group are economies with a greater or lesser industrial sector. Britain, with a much-reduced industrial sector, has been at the forefront of pushing for more ambitious targets, in contrast to Germany with its still relatively large industrial sector, while former eastern bloc countries like Poland oppose cuts beyond 20%. According to official figures, Britain is on target not just to meet but to significantly exceed its Kyoto target of a 12.5% reduction on greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990. At the summit Gordon Brown rushed around taking the moral high-ground and trying once again to play the world leader. In fact Britain's performance is a consequence of the changes in its economy and reflects the fact that emissions are calculated on the basis of production rather than consumption: "The structural changes which have taken place in the UK economy over the last 30 years have resulted in significant deindustrialisation. As a result, the carbon intensity of the UK economy has fallen and the UK now imports large quantities of products which are relatively carbon-intensive to manufacture. UK consumption is therefore indirectly responsible for the emissions associated with these imports. Were the balance of imports and exports to be taken into account, UK reported emissions would be significantly different".[9] In fact, they would show an increase by as much as 19% since 1990.[10] In short, British capitalism has outsourced its pollution just as it has outsourced production. At the imperialist level, Brown's desperate activity at this summit, as during the ‘credit crunch', is partly an attempt to compensate for the continued decline of Britain as an imperialist power.
The US is also involved in deindustrialisation and the relocation of production to countries where the costs are cheaper but it still retains a substantial industrial sector. The intensity of competition felt by this sector has resulted in its being particularly active in opposing anything that it perceives as putting it at a disadvantage with its competitors. This is one of the reasons why the US is continually embroiled in trade disputes, why efforts to reach a new world trade agreement have so often failed and why it refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. In the final years of his administration Bush was forced to concede that climate change was real but the US has proposed its own targets and pushed for countries like China to also make cuts. Nothing has changed under Obama other than the rhetoric. The US remains opposed to significant cuts and any binding agreement and particularly loath to do anything that could benefit China for both economic and imperialist reasons.
One hundred and thirty-two countries defined as ‘developing' grouped together in the G77 at the summit. With relatively small economies and little industry their common aim was to push for the maximum financial assistance possible. They came to the summit with a demand for financial assistance of $400bn a year while a number also demanded that the maximum temperature increase accepted should not be more than 1.5°C. They also sought to keep the Kyoto treaty that requires signatories from developed countries to make cuts in emissions and which many of latter hoped would disappear into a single new Copenhagen agreement.
China has been the target of much ‘concern' about its emissions now that it has become the single biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. The rapid development of its economy has drawn vast sums of money towards it and enabled it to assume a much greater and more active role internationally. It has developed important economic links with many developing countries, often providing them with assistance to develop their production of primary commodities, which are then supplied to China to feed its industry. This growing economic strength has underpinned a low-key but determined effort to extend its imperialist influence around the world. To accept any meaningful limits on its emissions would mean limiting its economic growth and political power thus, while, it has proposed to reduce the carbon intensity of its industry (the amount of carbon per unit of production) it has strongly opposed any cuts and the demands by the US for independent verification. At the summit it associated itself with the G77 while also being part of a separate grouping with Brazil, South Africa and India known as BASIC that opposed the positions of the richer nations. Within this group, Brazil has defended its position as a major producer of biofuels despite the fact that it is taking production away from vital food production.
The summit was marked by the manoeuvrings of the participants, which included deliberate provocations and confrontations. One of the methods used was the widespread and not particularly hidden leaking of documents, as one journalist commented: "...the leaks became more regular until by the end there was a flood [...] Secret documents were deliberately left on photocopiers, others were thrust into journalists' hands or put on the web. People were photographing them and handing them around all of the time."[11]
On the third day of the conference the first crisis was provoked when the so-called ‘Danish text' emerged. This had been produced prior to the summit by a secret informal group known as "the circle of commitment" that included the US, and the host of the summit Denmark. The text, which had no formal status since it was drafted outside the UN framework, would have ended the Kyoto treaty with its legal requirement for emission cuts by signatories, imposed a 2°C increase as the accepted target and made changes to the funding arrangements. It was suggested that the intention was to impose it on the summit late in the day when the foreseen stalemate had arisen. This led to an outcry from G77 countries who accused the developed countries of trying to hijack the summit and impose their own agreement.
This was followed by a proposal from a number of developing countries for the increase in global temperatures to be kept below 1.5°C since any increase above that could spell disaster for small island states like Tuvalu. The proposal called for legally binding cuts to be agreed. It was immediately opposed by other countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and India, and divided the G77 group. The dispute that followed led to the suspension of part of the talks for several hours.
In the following days a revised UN text was introduced and disputes continued firstly over whether the Kyoto agreement should continue as a separate track or be incorporated into a new agreement and secondly over the funding to assist developing countries. Various proposals for fast track funding and long term funding surfaced and a number of countries, including Britain, repeated their call for the introduction of a tax on financial transactions (the Tobin tax) to fund climate change measures. The UN text seemed to be an attempt to reach a compromise with developed countries cutting emissions by 25-45% to keep the increase in temperature below 2°C. Developing countries would also be required to cut their emissions by 15-30% while the Kyoto agreement would remain in force. In reality the cuts proposed by the developed countries did not even reach the lower percentage proposed, while loopholes in the agreement would allow emissions to increase by 10%.
As the talks entered their second week, with heads of government due to arrive to sign the non-existent agreement, the confrontations sharpened, with the heads of some African countries threatening not to attend unless the agreement was changed. The dispute over the future of the Kyoto treaty led to a further suspension of part of the talks until it was finally agreed that it would continue. The dispute over monitoring also increased with India and China opposing US led demands for external verification. By the middle of the week the chaos could not be hidden: the chair of the summit resigned to be replaced by the Danish Prime Minister, proposals and counter proposals about emissions cuts, funding and verification flowed back and forth with more and more amendments being proposed to the UN draft agreement effectively creating a stalemate. It was rumoured that a revised version of the ‘Danish text' was about to be released while the G77 prepared a counter text. Further splits in the G77 emerged when Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and head of the African group of countries at the summit, proposed that they accept a deal under which $100bn would be given in financial assistance to poorer countries by 2020, rather than the $400bn they originally demanded. He was attacked by others for selling out the lives and hopes of Africans. This ‘compromise' came after intense negotiations involving Zenawi and a number of the more developed countries and led to accusations that he had succumbed to pressure and that countries reliant on ‘aid' for much of their economies are in no position to argue with the purse holders. Finally, a leaked UN document showed that the emissions cuts proposed at the talks would result in an increase of 3°C.
Much was made on the penultimate day of America's acceptance of the target of $100bn financial assistance as a breakthrough paving the way for Obama to come and save the day. In fact the agreement was conditional on China accepting the verification it had already rejected while the money would have to come from non-government sources. On his arrival Obama repeated the demand for China to accept US verification demands leading to an angry response from China and the refusal of President Hu Jintao to attend a meeting of heads of state with Obama. The summit ended with a desperate attempt to cobble an agreement together with numerous texts circulating, private meetings between Obama and the Chinese Prime Minister and negotiators working into the early hours and again on the final day. In the last hours a group led by the US, Britain and Australia forced the Danish President out of the chair and pushed through a compromise amongst a small group of the most powerful nations. The final text appeared just before midnight and was immediately attacked by those excluded as a deal done in the dark and a coup against the UN.
The summit began with a two hundred-page draft agreement covering a wide range of areas. It ended with a few pages of vague statements and promises for tomorrow cobbled together on the final night by a few of the main players outside the international framework of the UN they all claim to uphold. The final act of the summit was merely to note the existence of the agreement.
In the end the Copenhagen summit achieved one thing: it showed that the bourgeoisie is not fit to hold the fate of the world in its hands and that until this class and the economic system that supports it is swept away neither humanity nor the Earth itself has a future.
North 03/01/10.
[1]. Financial Times 22/12/09.
[2]. Guardian 19/12/09
[3]. Independent 19/12/09
[4]. Guardian 07/12/09
[5]. Suffering the Science, Oxfam Briefing Paper, July 2009.
[6]. Guardian 19/12/09
[7]. Ocean Acidification: The Facts. European Association on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA) https://www.epoca-project.eu/index.php/ [13] Outreach/RUG/
[8]. International Review 139. "The world on the eve of an environmental catastrophe II: Who is responsible?"
[9]. UK greenhouse gas emissions: measurement and reporting. National Audit Office, March 2008.
[10]. Too good to be true? The UK's climate change record. Helm, Smale, Phillips. December 2007.
[11]. Guardian On-line 20/12/09
<!-- bmi_SafeAddOnload(bmi_load,"bmi_orig_img",0);//-->One year ago, there were three weeks of massive struggles in the streets of Greece over the police murder of a young anarchist, Alexandros Grigoropoulos. But the movement on the street and in the schools and universities had great difficulty linking up with the struggles in the workplace. There was only one strike, that of primary school teachers for one morning, in support of the movement, even though this was a time of massive labour unrest, including a general strike, and the links still couldn't be made.
However, in Greece the workers' actions have continued beyond the end of the protest movement up until today. Indeed Labour Minister, Andreas Lomberdos, has been warning that the measures needed in the next three months to lift the national debt crisis that is threatening to kick Greece out of the euro-zone might result in bloodshed. "There is little we can do to prevent that" he added. Earlier last month the Greek Prime Minister in an address to the Parliament had said that the national debt crisis is "the first national sovereignty crisis since 1974", and the new socialist government are talking of uniting all of the bourgeois parties and is seeking to forge an emergency national unity government that will be able to suspend articles of the constitution protecting the right to public assembly, demonstration and strike.
Even before the government has tried to implement its ‘reforms' (read attacks on the working class) to solve the debt crisis, there has been a large wave of workers' struggles. The past couple of months have seen strikes of dockworkers, Telecom workers, dustbin men, doctors, nurses, kindergarten and primary school teachers, taxi drivers, steel workers, and municipal workers, all for what seems like separate reasons but actually all in response to attacks that the state and capital has already been forced to make to try to make workers pay for the crisis.
The fact that the state is now being forced to implement even more severe attacks against an already combative working class show the depths to which the crisis has effected Greece. Minister Lomberdos spelled it out very clearly when he said that these measures "can only be implemented in a violent way". However, attacks made against all sectors of workers at the same time open up the real possibility for workers making a common struggle over joint demands.
Place this against a background of increased student protests, protesting farmers blocking roads all over the country, and the trial of the policemen who murdered Alexandros beginning on the 22nd of January after already having been postponed and moved out of Athens to prevent unrest, as well as other policemen being arrested for torture, and a renewed campaign by numerous armed leftist groups including a bombing of the parliament, and the country certainly seems to be sliding out of control.
Still what is important at the moment is that the working class is prepared to fight in its own interests for its own methods, and to be particularly carefully of ‘false friends'. The KKE (Greek Communist Party), which only a year ago was calling protestors secret agents of "foreign dark forces", and "provocateurs" is now saying that "workers and farmers have the right to resort to any means of struggle to defend their rights". It won't be long, however, before they return to their old tune. Furthermore, many of the workers' struggles have been controlled by the trade unions and have been one day or two day limited affairs.
Finally, the armed groups have no way forward to offer the working class. Workers build class solidarity, consciousness, and confidence through taking part in their own struggles, and developing their own forms of organisation, not through sitting at home and watching bombs set by leftist radicals on TV. The sound of a workers' mass meeting discussing how to organise their own struggle scares the ruling class more than a thousands bombs.
DD 24/1/10
With Robert's death, the ICC has also lost a friend from a long way back. Thanks to his openness, his desire for political clarification and his great patience, he played an important role in the appearance of a pole of comrades who, at the end of the 80s in the German-speaking region, moved towards the positions of the communist left. Particularly in Switzerland, where a section of the ICC eventually emerged out of this process.
Robert didn't go in the same direction. However, Robert, and the other comrades of the GPR, remained close comrades and political friends of the ICC in whom we had the greatest confidence.
One of Robert's best qualities was his capacity for solidarity and his consistent opposition to any spirit of competition between the different organisations of the communist left.
The ICC mourns the loss of Robert.
ICC, January 2010.
Our comrade Ro tragically departed from life on the night of 6/7 December. He was one of the founding members of the group which in 1983 was called the Gruppe Internationalistische Kommunisten (GIK), and which carried on the political and theoretical tradition of the Autonome Gruppe Kommunistische Politik (AGKP) which had dissolved itself. Its founder members had come together around an agreement that the political and theoretical acquisition of the AGKP had been to remove itself from the chaos of the capitalist extreme left that had come from the movement of 1968, and end up adopting left communist political positions. The theoretical-political material of the communist left seemed to the founding members to be the only possible political orientation for anyone who wanted to situate themselves on the proletarian political class terrain, to fight for the organisational and political autonomy of the proletariat as a precondition for its future victory. Only the left communist current had succeeded in politically resisting the horrible counter-revolution which had taken the form of an almost complete control by social democracy, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism, and in transmitting to us the political lessons drawn from this gigantic counter-revolution. Ro and his comrades in struggle felt they had the responsibility to put forward, within the working class in Austria, the revolutionary theory that had initially been defended by the left communists in the face of the Stalinist counter-revolution, and, to the best of their capacities, to offer workers the possibility of renewing the link with their revolutionary traditions.
Since we all come from the circle of sympathisers of the AGKP, it is incumbant on us to critically appropriate, on the basis of a profound examination, all the theoretical material of the AGKP and, to the extent that it appears to us to be insufficent, to go forward on the basis of the lessons drawn by the communist left, in order to set the group on the most solid political basis possible.
Since, during the 1980s, there were massive attacks on the working class, with the restructuring of industry (under the VÖST slogan), the group had to take up the task of carrying out a political intervention through leaflets etc within the struggles of the workers that were breaking out here and there. The difficult theoretical work, the discussions with the revolutionary milieu, the political positions gradually matured and were formulated in a platform, and in this process comrade Ro played a leading role. The GIK, which following a change of name is now called the GPR, owes a great deal to Ro's meticulous approach, to his capacity to ask questions, find out information, analyse and search rigorously for clarity, for the fact that it possesses a coherent platform (which we call lines of direction) that clearly rests on the acquisitions of marxism and the historical experiences of the class struggle. Ro leaves behind him a theoretically solid GPR which he stamped with his tireless commitment and whose political weapons he helped to forge.
The loss represented by Ro's death is immense. The group has lost one of its most passionate comrades who, through his proven political judgement, his political experience, his indefatigable capacity for analysing political events, enriched the group and its political work.
We had all been looking forward to the return of his intellectual presence once his illness had been overcome. We mourn the loss of comrade Ro, which is heavy with consequences for our political practice.
We thank the groups of the revolutionary milieu of the working class for sharing with us the burden of the comrade's departure, for expressing their solidarity towards our political work , which is aimed at the emancipation, no doubt still far ahead of us, of the working class from economic exploitation and the political yoke of the bourgeoisie.
GPR, December 2009
December saw a return to massive protests in Iran. The funeral of ‘dissident' cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in Qom drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and by the time of Ashura widespread confrontations between protesters and the security forces were occurring across the country, resulting in 15 deaths on that day, according to Iranian state TV, and thousands of arrests in total. Reports coming out of Iran suggest that the death toll is much higher than claimed, and there have been some stories of police refusing to fire on protestors and joining protesters, as well of protestors attacking and taking over a police station.
Despite the fact that it is difficult to know exactly what is going on there at the moment, it is important for communists to try to analyse and understand what is happening. Perhaps the best way for us to start is by outlining the approaches that we reject, and what we see as the problems with them.
The first thing to say is that we see the approach taken by some so called ‘anti-imperialists', particularly in the Western countries as being completely reactionary. At its worst this comes across as support for the Iranian state in putting down a ‘petit-bourgeois CIA backed movement'. To us it is obvious that although the CIA are of course trying to influence this movement, the sheer amount of people involved in it suggests that this is not something cooked up in Washington, but is a movement with genuine widespread support within Iran.
On the other extreme we don't fall into the same trap as those leftists who are now cheering ‘people power'. There is an immense difference between a working class revolution to bring about socialism and the series of ‘colour' revolutions, with the events in Iran already being crayoned in as the ‘green revolution', that we have seen across Europe in the last twenty years or so.
Supporting different factions of the ruling class as they squabble over who should control this or that state offers absolutely nothing to working class people. Mousavi and the opposition can certainly be characterised in this way. Mousavi was prime minister of Iran for eight years in a government, which was well known for its refusal to tolerate dissent, in the early years of the Islamic republic and is even related by blood to the ‘Supreme leader', Ali Hoseyni Khamenei (Mousavi's grandmother is Khamenei's paternal aunt). Although he talks about ‘reforming the system', he is very much a part of it himself.
And yet his campaign has attracted widespread support and brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, risking life and limb in the protests. Of course not all of this can be put down to support for Mousavi. Many people are simply dissatisfied with the regime, and have used the anger resulting from the state's obvious rigging of the election results to express that dissatisfaction. Of course there is also support for his programme, particularly amongst women. With women making up 60% of the student body in Iran, and Mousavi promising to disband the so-called morality police force and ensure that Iranian women are treated equally, this goes at least part of the way to accounting for the huge participation of students in the protests.
The question of whether victory for Mousavi's movement could make any real changes in workers' lives is also one that we have to ask ourselves. Certainly on the economic front it can create little difference. Political parties of all colours can do little apart from attempt to manage the crisis, and the only way to do this is by attacking workers' living standards. Whatever promises are made on this front cannot be anything except empty. Even if one sector of the working class is spared from a particularly brutal attack, it only means that other sectors must be attacked more harshly. On the social from it seems likely, given his past record, that for all the talk about women's rights even if he did come to power Mousavi would be forced to make compromises with the state, and little would actually change. The religious conservatives in the regime wouldn't just go away with a change of President, just as Tayip has found in Turkey that becoming Prime Minister didn't get rid of the Kemalists from the state apparatus. Besides, there seems to be a general, if extremely slow, move towards liberalisation within the state itself. Certainly walking around Tehran these days and seeing how people dress compared to a couple of decades ago gives that impression.
So where do the communists stand on events in Iran today? That the Green movement is a completely bourgeois movement with nothing to offer workers seems to us very clear. Also it seems that it is also losing momentum. While the initial protests brought hundreds of thousands out into the streets, the numbers today seem to be getting smaller and smaller. It seemed possible in the early days of the struggle that the working class might make impose itself on the situation. After the repression used by the police against demonstrators in Tehran, workers at the massive Khodro car factory walked out on a twenty four hour strike, not in support of either candidate in the election, but against the violence used by the state. But apart from a few statements from the bus drivers' union, this was the limit of workers' participation in the movement as workers. Yes, of course there were many workers involved in the protests, but they were there as isolated individuals, not as a collective force. In these situations, in a cross-class movement, which all of the various reports coming out of Iran from different leftist groups seem to agree that it was, without acting as a collective force, workers can only be submerged in the great mass of ‘the people', a mass that is being used by other class forces to further their own interests.
What the ICC wrote in 1979 commenting on the Iranian revolution still rings true today. In fact the absence of the working class from the struggles of the last year confirms it: "For all the talk of people in the streets overthrowing the regime, what was clear in 1979 was that the strikes of the Iranian workers were the major, political element leading to the overthrow of the Shah's regime. Despite the mass mobilisations, when the ‘popular' movement - regrouping almost all the oppressed strata in Iran - began to exhaust itself, the entry into the struggle of the Iranian proletariat at the beginning of October 1978, most notably in the oil sector, not only refuelled the agitation, but posed a virtually insolvable problem for the national capital, in the absence of a replacement being found for the old governmental team. Repression was enough to cause the retreat of the small merchants, the students and those without work, but it proved a powerless weapon of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the economic paralysis provoked by the strikes of the workers."
It is likely that the Mousavi movement will slowly fade away, possibly with some of their demands being incorporated into state policy. Iran is not on the verge of any revolution. The coming months will see the death of the ‘Green Movement', not that of the regime. This could be a very bloody process, but unless workers can enter the struggle in their own interests, not those of bickering politicians, it is what inevitably must happen.
DD 24/1/10
In the last issue of the paper we published the first in this series of articles and in response we have received several letters from sympathisers of Lotta Comunista (LC). These comrades expressed their disagreement with the critique that we made concerning the lack of an international vision in Cervetto's view of the construction of the party. We are very pleased to have received these letters because our interest is not to make a critique for its own sake of Cervetto or of Lotta Comunista, we want rather to stimulate reflection and debate on a very important question; how to work towards the construction of the future world party. For this reason we will reply to the questions raised by these readers before going into the question of consciousness, the relationship party/class and the unions. These latter questions will be dealt with in a future article.
The points raised by the comrades are as follows:
Let's say right away that we know quite well that LC has published books in other languages and that we have also come across its militants or sympathisers in other European countries, such as France, Germany, Great Britain and even at the conferences organised in Russia that was dedicated to Trotsky. However, is this enough to give the stamp of internationalism to LC? Any political organization tends to have an echo and partners internationally; there is even still in existence a Socialist International composed of various Social Democratic Parties in the world. Do we want to say that these are internationalist parties? Being present at an international level does not give a political group an internationalist character. Regarding the idea that "Cervetto talks about Italy ...because it is the country in which he lives", this is more or less the uncritical heritage of the Second International, according to which in every country it is necessary to build a party that corresponds to the specific needs of that country. As we pointed out in the previous article, this was valid in the ascendant period of capitalism; although even at the time it was backed up by an international vision and framework (see the 2nd International). On the reference to the Bolshevik party, we should bear in mind that the latter was created and developed in the historic period at the cusp between the ascendant and the decadent period of capitalism. A great tribute is due to this party and to Lenin himself for having seen the change in the historic period that was taking place, for having understood the need to change the conception held of the party: no longer a mass party but a world party of a revolutionary minority (3rd International)[1].
Having said this, we recognise that the weakness that we have indicated and which comes from the framework of the 2nd International, is important but is not in itself decisive in deciding whether an organisation is proletarian. We can cite the example of the IBRP, whose organisation is essentially federalist as regards its presence in various countries and, in complete contradiction with historical experience, it explicitly defends the idea that the individual national organisations must have time to develop on the basis of local problems before being able to merge into an international party [2].
In our previous article we concluded by saying that Cervetto's vision of the party is not a proletarian one but not because LC does not have militants in other countries or has only a few, nor is it because it began its activity in Italy. It is rather because, apart from a formal adherence to internationalism, the method and direction taken by Cervetto corresponds to a logic that is not consistent with the necessities a proletarian party both theoretically and also in terms of practical activity in as far as organisation and intervention within the class is concerned.
In his writings, Cervetto has often said that for the construction of the party it is necessary to operate on two levels: theoretical elaboration and intervention into the class struggle. We are in complete agreement but what does this actually mean? As far as theoretical elaboration is concerned: the entire history of the workers' movement shows how the various vanguards have always tried to measure themselves against the political expressions of the past and with those newly emerging in other countries on the key issues facing the class struggle. They did so in the knowledge that they were not alone in the world and that these minorities were the expression of the heterogeneity in the development of consciousness in the international proletariat. From Marx to Lenin, from Luxemburg to Bordiga and, even in the terrible period of the counter-revolution, from Bilan to Internationalisme [3], the method adopted has always been to verify one's own convictions in relation to the facts and through critical discussion with formations within the international workers' movement, taking account of their various experiences and making a self-criticism where necessary. This is the only possible method that enables an activity directed towards the regroupment of revolutionary forces for the construction of the world party.
The vision of Cervetto - and therefore of LC - completely lacks any understanding of this process. The viewpoint of Cervetto (and of LC), clearly expressed in "Class struggle and the revolutionary party" and in subsequent texts, is not only a localist one that is closed within the national framework, it is also one that makes no reference to the real world or to the lessons of the historic defeat of the revolutionary movement and so ends up as the creation of a mind that may well be ingenious but is nevertheless totally subjective. The result is that they start off from the assumption that they are the only heirs of Marx and Lenin in the whole world and then go on to completely overturn the precious political work carried out by the latter and to deform its content. On the other hand, precisely because they have no knowledge of the history of the workers' movement except for a very little bit of Lenin and because they do not even know of the existence of the groups within the proletarian camp, many sympathisers of LC tend to give credit to Cervetto for positions that he has taken from others and expressed badly at that. One example is that LC has always maintained that one of the great merits of Cervetto is that, at the end of the 1950s, he elaborated the theory of "unitary imperialism" (that is the imperialist nature of Russia) and identified the tendency towards state capitalism. Apart from the fact that the PCInt [4] already defended this position, if we go back in time we can see that Bilan in the 1930s and Internationalisme in the 1940s had elaborated a very clear position on this question, to the point that in 1936 Bilan was able to correctly denounce the war in Spain as imperialist slaughter whereas Cervetto in the period following the Second World War was an anti-fascist partisan.
With this framework as a starting point it is not difficult to understand how Cervetto reached his theorisation of the party. With the truth - or rather the science - in his pocket and with the idea that all it is necessary to do is to transmit this science to the workers, the party instrument invented by Cervetto is an organisation that takes root in Italy by all means at its disposal, even by force if necessary. It aims to have as many militants as possible and to gain a position of power in the nerve centres of the system. It then tries to extend its presence to other countries in order to go forth and elucidate its science to the workers of the whole world. To do this all ‘tactical' methods are valid, what is important is to choose the right time and the right place.
Are we banalising Cervetto's position? We do not think so.
What is LC's practical activity? Let's see.
The main activity of LC is work within the unions and more than once Cervetto's texts give the absolute priority as propaganda aimed specifically at the rank and file of the PCI [5]. The idea is to recruit new militants from within a base considered more receptive (workers are to be found within the unions, within the PCI there is to be found left politicised elements). In order to put this into practice, at the end of the 1960s LC sent its new militants recruited from the student movement to work in the factories, to become workers. The idea was that if you are a ‘worker' communist not only will proletarians listen to you more readily but you can also get yourself elected as a union representative, enter the various union organs and so acquire a broader base that listens to you. This policy of taking root by force has at times pushed LC into concentrating its field of action where it felt that conditions were most favourable for recruitment, for example Genoa in 1966 which became, in the words of G. Poggi (who founded LC together with Cervetto) in an article , the "spearhead of the resurgence of Leninism in Italy". When the situation was no longer favourable in Genoa, the centre of action became the student movement because: "The revolutionary party must develop,..., at an organisational level by using the possibilities at its disposal", so that "The crisis in the schools must be used in a Leninist way and must be used for the ends of the working class and its struggle against the international capitalist and imperialist system" and so "the student masses" become "by their very nature a sector that incubates new political cadres, more sensitive than other strata to this transitional crisis (restructuring of the scholastic sector, our note) and susceptible to the formation of groups and a base for new political movements that express the new conditions." Obviously, "The cadres coming out of student agitation and the cadres coming out of agitation in the factories will join together in the struggle and in the Leninist party. If on the other hand, the student agitation ends up supplying new groups for imperialist struggles, for reformist opportunism or for new capitalist structures, the fight for the construction of the Leninist party will have found additional obstacles to overcome, as it has so many times in its history. This is the basic problem for the development of the Leninist party." (the quotations are taken from "Theses on the Leninist tactic for the crisis in the schools," Cervetto, May 1968, our emphasis). Therefore the students are seen as the nerve centre of the workers' struggle whereas, at the same time, school teachers and civil service workers and those in the service sector generally are considered to be parasites living off the surplus value extorted from the industrial working class.
What is LC's working method? It is not worth going into the now famous practice of door-to-door sales. What is however indicative of the non-proletarian conception of the group is the intimidatory and gangsterish behaviour that LC has always adopted towards those that it considers to be its rivals in the field. Those who lived through 1968 cannot have forgotten the violent confrontations between the militants of LC and those of Avanguardia Operaia or of the Movimento Studentesco di Capanna [6] for territorial control, particularly of the student quarters in Milan. This attitude has not changed over time. We can mention an incident on 25th January 2004 in Genoa at a meeting called by the publishing house, Graphos, and the Circolo di Studi Politici Labriola on the Iraq war. On that occasion a dozen LC militants prevented the meeting from taking place by means of threats, insults and aggression against those present, stating explicitly that they were from the security arm of LC, "workers from Ilva", sent by the leadership with orders to stop the meeting because among the participants there were ex-militants of LC who had left with disagreements [7]. Insults such as "dirty fascist" and "neo-nazi"referred to the fact that Graphos had published books by negationist authors [8].
Such practices - elaborating great principles and then trampling these same principles underfoot when you need more leg-room - do not belong to the traditions of the working class. And LC does it in the name of "tactics".
What Marxist coherence! What Leninist rigour!
As we have seen, the entire political activity of LC is inspired by a logic that revolves around acquiring territorial control with complete disregard for the process of maturation within the working class. In fact it is the exact opposite of the process of clarification. In the next article we will see how this is connected to the deformed way in which Cervetto (and LC) have interpreted Lenin's 'What is to be Done?'.
Eva
see also
The conception of the party held by Cervetto and Lotta Comunista (part one) [23]
The conception of the Party held by Cervetto and Lotta Comunista (part three) [24]
[1] To deepen the question of the historic phases of capitalism and its relation to the formation of the party, see our pamphlet The decadence of capitalism and the article "On the party and its relationship to the class [25]" (International Review no.35, 3rd quarter 1983).
[2] For more on this question, see the article "The constitution of the IBRP: an opportunist bluff (part one) [26] & (part two) [26]" in the International Review no.40 and 41 (published in English, French and Spanish).
[3] Bilan, Left Fraction of the PCI that had emigrated to France in the 1930s and Internationalisme, French Communist Left that, in the 1940s, continued the work begun by Bilan of appropriating the lessons of the past.
[4] Partito Comunista Internazionalista.
[5] PCI: the old Italian Stalinist party.
[6] The reference is to two extra-parliamentary political movements that came out of the student movement in Milan.
[7] From a communiqué from Graphos ([email protected] [27]) dated 27/01/2004, to which there has never been a reply from LC, as far as we know.
[8] Negationism or historic revisionism is the name given to the school of thought, generally composed of right wing historians, who tend to deny the existence of the Jewish holocaust.
[9] One example is the physical elimination of the internationalists Atti and Acquaviva.
[10] We should bear in mind that Seniga was the trusted man of the hard-line Stalinist, Secchia, who by grace of this trust, ran off with the funds of the Italian Communist Party and disappeared... He then took up his political activity again with Cervetto and company. For an account of this, see M.Mafai, The Man who Dreamed of the Armed Struggle.
From Rivoluzione Internazionale no. 146, June-September 2006.
In the last two articles, part one [23]& part two [31], we saw how, apart from a formal mention of Lenin on the question of the party, the theoretical framework and the political practice of Cervetto and of Lotta Comunista (LC) do not correspond to a conception and methods of the working class. In this article we will see how this bourgeois vision is not a result of an inadequate understanding of Lenin's teaching, but rather of a real distortion of the latter, particularly of What is to be Done? This is to such an extent that it leads to positions and, above all, to a political practice, that were by no means those either of Lenin or of the various expressions of the Communist Left that LC pretends to incarnate.
Cervetto claims to have based the whole of his doctrine of the party on an idea expressed by Lenin in What is to be Done? According to this, "Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. (...)The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia... Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without and not something that arose within it spontaneously. ... the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task" (from What is to be Done?; II "The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social Democrats"; B. "Bowing to Spontaneity"). We have often voiced our critique of the idea that consciousness comes from outside the class. At the same time we agree with the valid criticism that Lenin develops in this text against the Economists of the period, for whom the revolutionary vanguard of the class served merely to support the proletariat's struggles for its immediate demands[1]. We will not develop this aspect here because the non-proletarian nature of LC is not a consequence of its adhering to the erroneous position of Lenin. The Bordigist current - to which groups like Programme Comunista, Le Proletaire, Il Partito in Florence, etc belong - bases its conception of the party on this same vision. However our critique of the Bordigist conception of the revolutionary party and of the Bordigist current generally, albeit profound and determined, has never cast doubt on its belonging to the revolutionary camp. The point is that Cervetto in his basic text "Class struggle and the Revolutionary Party" completely distorts the idea expressed by Lenin in his polemic against the Economists. Moreover Lenin himself modified it after 1905: "From a strike and demonstrations to isolated barricades. From isolated barricades to the mass erection of barricades and street fighting against the troops. Over the heads of the organisations, the mass proletarian struggle developed from a strike to an uprising. (...) The movement was raised from a general political strike to a higher stage. (...). The proletariat sensed sooner than its leaders the change in the objective conditions of the struggle and the need for a transition from the strike to an uprising. As is always the case, practice marched ahead of theory."[2] These are the words of the same Lenin who wrote What is to be Done? They are the words of a Marxist who, on the basis of the experience of his class, is able to understand that the soviets coming out of the 1905 revolution in Russia were not just any old means for proletarians to organise in order to pursue their demands. He recognised that they were rather the organisational form that corresponds "to a higher level" of political maturity reached by the class, to the realisation that only by unifying their forces and deciding themselves how to struggle, with what aims and with what instruments, proletarians can put an end to the unbearable conditions in which they live.
The vision of the working class that emerges from the whole of Cervetto's text is, on the contrary, that of a class that is ‘genetically' incapable of going beyond the struggle for immediate demands, for the defence of its conditions as wage earner, unless it is led by the party. Even when Lenin says "The best elements of the working class marched at the head, dragging in their wake the hesitant ones, awaking those who were sleeping, encouraging the weak", talking about the link between the economic strike and the political strike as revealed by the experience of 1905, Cervetto gives us to understand that this link "was the result of the struggle of the proletarian vanguard (elsewhere identified with the party, our note), which dragged the class and the exploited masses into generalised struggle." (Class Struggle and Revolutionary Party, pg 62).
However, this is more than just a distortion. Especially in the chapter "The Natural Superiority of the Proletariat", the proletariat is in fact presented as a manoeuvrable mass that the party must first snatch from the hands of the bourgeoisie. Then, once compacted, it is to be used to take advantage of the conflicts between bourgeois factions (both petty and big bourgeoisie) that have divergent interests in order to break up the bourgeois front and make the revolution: "Only when it has weakened the bourgeois forces of the contribution of the proletarian forces that they use, can the revolutionary party count on its natural superiority (which, as previously explained, is given by the numerical superiority of its ‘compactness', that is, by the concentration of the proletariat in the large factories, our note) against the bourgeois forces that, once deprived of the proletarian contingents, inevitably come into conflict and open up the way to the crisis of disintegration in which the proletariat will remain the only compact force" (idem, pg 60). This conception of Lotta Comunista is very similar to that of degenerating Trotskyism, for whom "the emancipation of the proletariat is the not the result of a struggle which places the proletariat as a class against the whole of capitalism, but is the result of a series of political struggles in the narrow sense of the term, and in which the working class, allied in succession to diverse political factions of the bourgeoisie, will eliminate certain other factions and by stages and degrees will succeed in gradually weakening the bourgeoisie, in triumphing over it by dividing it and beating it in separate bits" (The function of Trotskyism, Internationalisme, publication of the Gauche Communiste de France - n° 26, September 1947) In all this there is nothing left of revolutionary marxism.
The vision coming out of this is no more or less than that of a military strategy that studies how best to position its army (its amorphous cannon fodder) in order to best exploit the weaknesses in the enemy's defences and defeat it. This vision has nothing to do with the understanding that has always been defended by the revolutionary vanguard; that is, the awareness of the revolutionary nature of the working class and of the dynamic of developing consciousness that leads to revolution.
In fact, the so-called Leninist orthodoxy that LC has banded about in every issue and every article of its paper from the beginning, has only served to legitimise as revolutionary a political practice that is not at all revolutionary. Every theoretical elaboration must be verified by the facts. As we have seen in the previous articles, the history of the founders of LC and of LC itself is a whole series of great theoretical affirmations that are trampled under foot by concrete action. Let's go back briefly to a central question; work in the unions, in order to see how the politics of this group are based on a vision of the working class as a mass to be manoeuvred by the party.
On the question of the unions, Cervetto in the first instance, followed by LC up to the present day, pretend to base themselves on the position of Lenin and the Bolshevik party, according to which the revolutionary vanguard should work within union organisations because the latter still have a positive role to play in the development of the class struggle. This is in spite of the fact that the 1905 experience showed that the soviets are the form taken by the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is well known that the union question stimulated a big debate at the 1st Congress of the 3rd International in 1919 between the Bolsheviks and the other revolutionary organisations, particularly those from Germany, Switzerland and England. The former supported the thesis because they came from a country ruled by a backward regime of Czarist absolutism in which the unions had emerged fairly recently (in 1905 in fact, when the revolutionary upheaval dragged them into the movement, often under the leadership of the soviets). The other organisations on the contrary came from countries that were more mature at the level of capitalist development and had more experience of unionism, so even at this early stage they were able to denounce the union as an organism no longer feasible for the development of the class movement[3]. The differences on the union question have continued to exist within the communist left, where the position of the Bolshevik party on the unions has been taken up by other political formations, in particular by the Bordigist current. But the position and the resulting practice of LC have nothing to do with this. Cervetto, in his so-called scientific elaboration of the question, does not even bother to examine - not even to criticise them - the positions expressed by other revolutionary forces of the period or subsequently. Nor does he make an historic evaluation of these positions. Apart from this, what is the political practice that comes out of this supposed faithfulness to Lenin? In his 1957 Theses, in the point on the Union Question, we read "On the principle that our action must go towards 'revolutionary activity in the unions' and not within unionism, the Communist Left (that is LC according to the author, our note) must organise its own union current within the CGIL and use every initiative and instrument at its disposal to advance this organisation (union ballots and meetings, elect leaders for union work, union bulletin, etc). Given the nature of the only union current existing within the CGIL that is revolutionary -the committees for union defence - the Communist Left must make an agreement with the anarchist comrades within it, with the aim of an eventual alliance to build a single union current composed of the revolutionary minority within the CGIL."
So whereas for Lenin work in the unions in Russia at the beginning of the 1900s meant encouraging proletarian regroupment, unity in the common struggle, furthering developing consciousness of its own strength as a class, for LC it is no more than a policy of entryism. A policy that is undertaken in order to create a following and so acquire a position of strength within the union structure by making alliances with anybody whatsoever as long as it helps it to become part of the leadership. It is no accident that it chooses the CGIL as a forum for its activity because, being ‘left-wing', it has members who have already chosen a political direction and are therefore easier to recruit by those who present themselves as revolutionary. In coherence with this vision, LC's role has always been to support the unions and their specific function within the capitalist camp against the working class. This is to contain the workers' reaction to their own exploitation within the framework of the ‘democratic contracting' permitted by the rules of the system, blocking any attempt of the class (in the words so dear to Cervetto) to go from the ‘economic struggle' to the ‘political struggle', from the defensive struggle for its own living conditions within capitalist society to the offensive struggle to destroy this system of exploitation.
During the struggles of the hot autumn in Italy in 1969, the workers began to identify the unions as their enemy and the latter, realising that the internal commissions were no longer adequate to control the working class, began to depend on more efficient instruments such as the ‘factory councils'. In this situation LC, apart from raving about these being comparable to the soviets, did all they could to give class credibility to a whole series of organs of union management which had defended the formation of the factory councils. "Within the unions themselves there are men holding 'syndicalist' positions, 'trade unionist' positions,... who are trying to bring into being the big union with positions linked to the big factories. ... These positions ... are to be found expressly in the documents developed in conferences and meetings of the leadership, etc..." (from LC's text "Factory Councils, internal commissions: an analysis of a political conflict"). The documents that LC mentioned were from the Central Committee of the FIOM, from the National Secretariat of the FIOM, from the provincial leadership of the FIM, FIOM, UILM of Genoa and so on.
When in 1987 the school workers organised outside the unions to carry out the struggle on the basis of sovereign general assemblies in which the workers decided how to struggle, LC tried to bring the workers back into the fold by defending the idea that they should not abandon the CGIL. When they saw that they had no success, they scorned the struggle, calling it "southern" (because it developed mainly in the south of Italy) while inciting the CGIL to get a move on and call an extraordinary congress to try and regain credibility within the movement.
In 2002 there was a whole mystificatory campaign on the part of the CGIL with the referendum around article 18 of the labour laws. This campaign aimed to drag young workers in particular onto the terrain of ‘democratic consultation' as a form of ‘struggle' against precarious and flexible work (already generally introduced in Italy thanks to the unions). Did LC denounce this? Not at all, except for the usual criticism of ‘opportunist leaders', of Pezzotta and Cofferati et al. What orientation did LC give to the proletariat? "... only a vision going against the stream based on a clear Marxist strategy can give a lasting meaning to union defence, an intelligence to class pride, a future to the communist struggle against opportunism" (LC, March 2008, pg. 16). What does this mean? Who knows! Maybe we can make sense of it by looking at the assessment that LC made of it four years later when it compares the movement last spring of the young French workers against precarious work[4] with the demonstration organised by the unions in Rome 2001 around article 18. It says "We wrote that the CGIL of Sergio Cofferati, with the support of the opposition parties, rejected flexibility measures that would have risked leading the union to unconditional surrender. This hard struggle forced the government to withdraw the measures and threw the group of managers of Confindustria into crisis." Unfortunately "the illusory aim of the referendum" to extend article 18 to businesses with less than 15 workers, "that was never attempted by the unions, an indication of how weak the union confederation has always been", led to the "inevitable disaster" that "put an end to the period of struggles around article 18; the flexibility measures were put into practice..." (LC March 2006, pg 16). In other words, full support for union policy both economically and in terms of sabotaging the class. It is just that everything was badly managed. This demonstrates the need to get elected as delegates, to take on positions in the leadership, in other words to win positions of strength within the union structure. The proletariat remains imprisoned within the bourgeois framework? They are prevented from understanding what weapons the bourgeoisie uses against them, from becoming conscious of their revolutionary class nature and their strength, from understanding who to fight and how? What's the problem? The party science will take care of that at the opportune moment. For now it is important that this party-science makes a place for itself strategically within the structure.
This is the ‘consciousness' that Lotta Comunista wants to import from the outside into the working class.
This kind of ‘consciousness'; this method has always been denounced by Marxists, Lenin above all, as not belonging to the working class.
To conclude this short series of articles, we want to draw attention to the following point: nearly everyone considers LC to be a revolutionary group and it boasts itself that it is a group of the Communist Left. This is possible because LC hides behind the errors of the historic groups of the Communist Left. With the IBRP it shares the idea of building the party at a national level before moving on to the international party. With the Bordigists it shares the idea that consciousness comes from outside the class and that it is necessary to work in the unions. In addition, let's not forget that Cervetto frequented Battaglia Comunista for a time and even wrote some articles for Prometeo. This is why we have insisted, and go on insisting, that in the case of LC it is not a matter of a mere accumulation of errors, of wrong positions. What basically characterises LC are power politics that aim at winning a position of strength within the union by using the working class as a mass to be manoeuvred. The relations of force used against their own militants who are no longer willing to follow "the directives coming from the centre" and their absolute refusal to question the political practice of conquering strategic positions, makes LC a group which has no place among proletarian organizations.
Eva, 2 June 2006
see also
The conception of the party held by Cervetto and Lotta Comunista (part one) [23]
The conception of the Party held by Cervetto and Lotta Comunista (part two) [31]
[1] On the question of consciousness see our pamphlet in French and English "Class Consciousness and the Role of Revolutionaries" and in Italian the articles "Class Consciousness and the Role of Revolutionaries" in Revista Internazionale no.3 and "On the Role of Revolutionaries in the Proletarian Struggle: a reply to the Petrified Marxism of Programma Comunista" in Rivoluzione Internazionale no.12, April 1978).
[2] Lenin, Rapporto sulla rivoluzione del 1905 in Selected Works, Riunite Edition (our emphasis), published in English as Lessons of the Moscow Uprising. For the evaluation of the 1905 revolution made by the revolutionary forces of the period, see our article "The 1905 Revolution; the Proletariat affirms its Revolutionary Nature" in nos.140 and 141 of Rivoluzione Internazionale.
[3] See the article "The Political Positions adopted by the 3rd International" (in the series "The Decadence Theory at the heart of Historic Materialism") in the International Review no.123, 4th quarter 2005. For the ICC's analysis of the union question see the brochure "The Unions against the Working Class".
[4] For the significance and importance of the movement in France, see the articles in this issue of the paper and the previous one and the Theses on the Movement of the French Students on our internet site www.it.internationalist.org [32].
A little while ago, the fellow-candidate of John McCain, potential president of the United States, Sarah Palin, unhesitatingly supported the thesis that man and the dinosaurs co-habited the Earth 6000 years ago; whereas science demonstrated that the last dinosaurs disappeared from the surface of the planet more than 65,000,000 years ago, well over 64 million years before the appearance of the first homo sapiens. This ignorance of the historic evolution of the species comes directly from the religious creationist doctrine still widely broadcast today. The vogue of this dogma is shown in the reinvention of the universe through a flourishing of creationist Christian museums in the United States since 2005 (notably in Kentucky, Cincinnati, in Ohio, and in a theme park in Lancashire, England, on the initiative of a group of American businessmen "explaining" the birth of the Universe in 7 days in accordance with a literal reading of the Bible). It's difficult to take these Disneylands or comic opera Jurassic Parks seriously, with their Hollywood approach and their exploitation of ignorance and credulity. However, the success of this obscurantist ideology is worrying: more than 20% of the Flemish population and almost one out of every two Americans for example, according to opinion polls, lean towards a creationist vision of the world and are hostile to the theory of evolution demonstrated by Charles Darwin.
A hundred and fifty years ago, in November 1859, Darwin published The Origins of Species. This work, which was based on the accumulation of observations of nature, and of experimentation, overturned the whole vision of the origins of man and his place in the universe. It demonstrated for the first time that a common base existed for the development of species and of living beings, founding itself on and going beyond the previous work of naturalists such as Buffon, Linnaeus and Lamarck[1]. The theory of Darwin aimed to demonstrate, in a rigorous and scientific dialectical fashion, the faculty of adaption of living beings within their environment and to integrate this theory into a new conception of the evolution of species. It provided evidence for the existence of a common genealogy to living beings, so placing them in a direct line within which the human being was no longer a superior type chosen and created by God, but the chance product of a differentiation between species. It was a radical questioning of the teachings of the Bible and of its Genesis, which refuted the idea of a divine creation and showed up the weakness of all the monotheist religious traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). This materialist and scientific work of Darwin was straightaway violently attacked, notably from the same religious dogmas that had pilloried Galileo and then Copernicus (theoreticians who were first by their scientific discoveries to have rejected the religious geocentricism which pretended that the Earth was the centre of the Universe and, above all, the centre of divine creation).
The scandal created by this discovery of Darwin lay not so much in showing the evolution of species but in the fact that the interactions at work in this evolution did not submit to any finality in nature[2]. "The tree of life" did not resemble a great hierarchical genealogical tree with a base and a summit whose outcome was man, homo sapiens, but a bushy tree whose base founded all the most ancient forms of life of which man was only one particular species among the millions of innumerable ramifications still present on Earth. This vision induced a relationship and common descent between man and the most elementary forms of life such as the amoeba. This seemed insupportable to those who were, often unconsciously, still affected by religious backwardness. Still today, Darwin's approach and method are called into question with virulence, whereas all the scientific contributions in palaeontology, biology, genetics and in many other domains of knowledge, have only confirmed the validity of Darwin's theory[3]. The religions have however, been constrained to mask the pursuit of their anti-Darwin crusade by propagating an ideology aiming to maintain religious thought behind an alternative pseudo-"scientific construction": "intelligent design". In effect, creationism is no longer defended by the church as at the time of Darwin. One remembers the debate which opposed the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, to Thomas Huxley, an ardent defender of evolutionism in 1860. Wilberforce mocked the latter, asking him if it was "from your grandfather's or grandmother's side that he was descended from a monkey". Huxley replied that he "would have no shame in having a monkey for a grandmother, but would have if I was related to a man who used his talent to obscure the truth!" The Catholic Church never dared to put The Origin of Species on the list of banned books but it officially condemned it and for a long time refused to talk of evolution in the scholarly programmes that it lavishly produced. Religion has adapted today by putting forward a craftier and more pernicious doctrine: "intelligent design". According to this "theory", there has been evolution but it has been desired and "guided" by a divine power. Thus man is not a product of nature but rather the fruit of the will of an all-powerful creator who "programmed" it.
This variant of creationism profits from the present revival of the popularity of spiritualist, obscurantist and sect-like ideologies. These reactionary ideologies are often spread by certain factions of the bourgeoisie who find among them material to manipulate populations disorientated and despairing as a result of the misery and barbarity of the capitalist world and its lack of any perspective. This pushes them to avoid objective reality, by taking refuge in faith, blind belief in a beyond, in a "superior order", invisible and all-powerful, which escapes all rational thought. The belief in an omnipotent creator God, as in the resurgence of all sorts of sects (which, moreover, profit from their clientele like all good capitalists), is used by the ideologies of the New Age to crystallise all the fears and concerns produced by the impasse of capitalist society. This demonstrates the pertinence of the analysis given by Marx in 1843 in his Critique of the political philosophy of Hegel: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".
Religion is always the first bulwark of conservative and reactionary forces to dull consciousness against scientific advances. It tries to adapt itself in order to preserve the status quo by pretending to be a refuge from the misfortunes of society.
"Intelligent design" tries to insert itself into the ranks of scientific theory, under cover of trying to conciliate evolution and creationism. It presents the one and the other as competitive "philosophical" choices by fraudulently trying to give the latter a scientific base. The precursor of "intelligent design", the Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), tried in the 1920s for example, to show that there existed a teleology, a finality of evolution called "the Omega point", defined as the divine pole of convergence and harmonisation culminating in the "no-osphere", a sort of celestial beatitude animated by the divine spirit... Much more than Catholicism, it's in Protestantism and its diverse varieties of "Evangelical Churches", basing themselves on a literal reading of the Bible, that the most relentless adversaries of Darwin are found (it is moreover the reason for the success of Intelligent Design in the United States throughout the "Bush years" where the government more or less openly supported it). The objectives of the present propagandists of the "intelligent plan" have been clearly defined by the Think Tank at the origins of the movement, the Discovery Institute, in a document for internal use called The Wedge. Leaks from this document were made known in 1999. In this document, the principal objectives of the Discovery Institute are defined without the least ambiguity[4]: in the first place the question posed for it is "to vanquish scientific materialism and its moral, cultural and scientific heritages through the understanding that nature and human beings have been created by God". It plans for the short and medium term "to see the theory of intelligent design become an accepted alternative in the sciences, and in scientific research undertaken since the perspective of the theory of design; to help to begin the influence of the theory of design in spheres other than natural science; even new major debates in education, the relative subjects of life, penal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda". It is in fact in the key areas of education and the law that the offensive of this dogma is pushed, while it tries to sow confusion in scientific circles. It is disseminated in all spheres of society, through numerous forms of publicity and opinion-making. The Internet has opened up an immense reservoir for spreading its propaganda, just like the missionaries and their "conversions" at the time of the colonisation of new territories. The main aim is to pass "intelligent design" off as a "scientific" hypothesis in competition with Darwinism. It also demonstrates its ambition of "seeing the theory of intelligent design as the dominant perspective in science; of seeing applications of the theory of design in specific fields including molecular biology, biochemistry, palaeontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences; psychology, ethics, politics, theology, philosophy, literary matters and even into the arts". But this public exposure of the fundamentalist aims of "intelligent design" has its reverse side: it has dealt a major blow to its promoters who, unable to deny the existence of the document, today peddle a more mitigated version of it.
However, this undertaking has already been spread around and this is particularly so in the Muslim world. In Turkey, Harun Yahia, real name, Adnan Oktar, at the head of mafia-like lobby, has offered to distribute this propaganda for free and widely among teachers and the bosses of colleges and schools. He has flooded schools throughout the world with his Atlas of Creation and also via the Internet. He has also produced more than 200 documentary films and 300 works already translated into sixty languages. The attempts to render unrecognisable the real history of life on this planet, like all the lies invented by ruling classes throughout the history of humanity, are part of the same effort to block the development of the consciousness of the greatest number (and of the proletariat in particular), to stupefy them and prevent them from freeing themselves from their chains. Obscurantism serves to mask the real reasons for the putrefaction of capitalist society.
Religious belief is opposed to science and the scientific approach. For religion and the theological tradition, knowing something, the knowledge of what could be, is, in the final account, a divine essence and remains inaccessible to the majority of mortals. The materialist approach of science (facts and the study of reactions, differences or similarities, and the conditions that underlie them, are the basis of scientific experiment) is neither a "philosophy" nor an "ideology" but the necessary condition for a conscious and historical approach towards understanding the relations between man and his natural conditions, including his own behaviour as an object of study; it is an approach towards the limits of knowledge that does not fix any limits in advance. The development of science is totally associated with the development of consciousness in humanity. Science has a history but it is not linear, nor mechanically linked to technical progress or to advanced technologies (which excludes all "positivism" and any idea of "progressivism"). It closely fits in with the social relations of production by which it is conditioned. Belief bases itself on the fears of the unknown. Opposite to religious prejudice (which is above all an ideology at the service of the existing order), the development of consciousness is the motor element which accompanies the development of science. Thus the scientific method does not fear its hypotheses being called into question or its acquisitions being overturned because this is the way that it evolves, this is what makes it dynamic. As Patrick Tort said (l'effet Darwin, page 170): "Science invents and transforms itself. Ideology recuperates, adjusts and re-shapes itself".
And, as he said in an article in Monde de l'Education dated June 2005: "the ‘dialogue' between science and religion is a fiction invented by politics. Nothing in fact can negotiate nor be exchanged between the immanent search for objective knowledge and the appeal to the supernatural that characterises the posture of belief. If one admits just once that an element of the supernatural can contribute to constructing the scientific explanation of a phenomenon, one would straightaway renounce the methodology of all science. The scientific method does not negotiate. It's necessary that all the trickery of individualist liberalism is used (...) in order to convince us that there's a choice between scientific explanation and theological interpretation, or that they could be combined, as if the law of a falling body was the business of personal conviction, of elective democracy or of ‘liberty'."
In fact, "politics" has no sense in this quote except as the politics of the dominant class. Here's why the scientific approach of a Copernicus, a Marx, an Engels or a Darwin has been and still is for the most part fought against and deformed with such desperation by the supporters of an unchanging social order.
Buffon, Linnaeus and Lamark were, after the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, largely decried and even partly thrown into the dustbin of history. All the excessive parts of their theses were designated as gross and shameful errors. However, in reality, each one of them contributed to the advancement of knowledge, the work of one and its limits being overcome by the others. This is why we can say that these three precursors of Darwin were authorities for his work.
Thus, it's not by chance, that they point to resemblances between man and ape and the possibility of a common genealogy.
The attention that Buffon (1707-1788) gives to the internal anatomy places it among the precursors of comparative anatomy. "The insides of living beings are basically the design of nature", he wrote in les Quadrupedes. Buffon went against religion: he deliberately placed man at the heart of the animal kingdom. Even if he didn't stop at the exterior aspect, man having a "soul" endowed with reason which placed him at the summit of creation, he affirmed that man is similar to the animals by his physiology. He showed that there existed many varieties of man, black as well as white; after several generations, a group of white men in a particular environment would become black; there only existed a single human species and not several. He concluded that the human varieties came from an initial stock which adapted according to the conditions that it lived in.
Linnaeus (1707-1788) was a "determinist" naturalist. For him, living species had been created by God at the time of Genesis and had not varied since. The first aim of his system is to demonstrate the grandeur of the divine creation. However, from the fact of the importance that he accords to the reproductive organs of plants, it's important to note that the pertinence of his system of classification inevitably invokes an evolutionary hypothesis. Thus, if such a species surprisingly resembles such a neighbouring species, why not presume that one preceded the other in time? The choice of organs of reproduction as criteria also went in the sense of a dynamic and evolutionary interpretation of history.
Lamark (1744-1829) is a naturalist known for having proposed the first materialist and mechanist theory of life and the evolution of living beings. He is equally one of the rare evolutionists to have understood the theoretical necessity of the evolution of living beings. His transformist theory is based on two principles: his thesis on evolution stipulates that individuals adapt during their lifetimes notably by more or less using certain organic functions which develop or weaken in relation with the usage or non-usage of the organs. Here's an example that Lamark wrote about the giraffe: "Relative to its practice, it is curious to observe the product of it in the particular form and size of the giraffe (camelo-pardalis): we know that this animal, the largest of the mammals, lives in the African interior, and it nearly always lives in places that are arid and without pasture, obliging it to graze the foliage of trees and continually forcing itself to reach it. The result of this long-time constant habit, in all individuals of this race, is that its front legs become longer than those at the back, and that its neck is so stretched that the giraffe, without standing up on its back legs, raises its head and reaches up to six metres in height (nearly 20 feet)" (Lamark, Philosophie zoologique, p. 256).
W, 24/11/9
[1] See the box for a brief resume of the work of these three scientists.
[2] On could add to these "scandals" caused by science the resistance to advances made by palaeontology (confirmed moreover by Darwin's deductions) which pointed to the high plateaux of Africa as the birthplace of humanity, which also dealt a fatal blow to the so-called "superiority of the white race as the bearer of civilisation" (see The Origins of Man by Richard Leaky).
[3] We have seen in previous articles that the Darwinian vision has equally been greatly perverted and deformed, with reactionary interpretations going from the "social Darwinism" of Spencer to the eugenics of Galton. These ideas were however explicitly rejected by Darwin himself (see ‘Social Darwinism: a reactionary ideology of capitalism' on the ICC's website).
[4] See the articles "Creationism" and "Intelligent Design" on the Wikipedia website.
We reproduce below the account of the Tekel tobacco-workers' strike, published by the ICC's section in Turkey.
On December 14th 2009, thousands of workers of Tekel[1] enterprises from dozens of cities in Turkey left their homes and families in order to travel to Ankara. The workers of Tekel took this journey with the aim of struggling against the horrible conditions forced upon them by the capitalist order. This honorable struggle of the Tekel workers which has been going on for more than a month now, carried the idea of a strike in which all workers would participate. By doing so, the workers of Tekel started leading and carrying forward the working class movement in the whole country. What we will try to give the account of here is the story of what happened so far in the Tekel struggle. It should not be forgotten that what this account concerns not just the Tekel workers, but the workers of the whole world. We owe our warm thanks to the Tekel workers for making the writing of this article possible by pushing the struggles of our class forward, by their determined struggle and by explaining to us what they went through, their experiences and thoughts.
We think that firstly it would be in order to explain what caused the workers of Tekel to launch this struggle. The Tekel workers are struggling against the 4-C policy of the Turkish state. The state has been employing tens of thousands of workers other than the Tekel workers under the 4-C conditions. These conditions are what is coming to tens of thousands of workers soon, the sugar factory workers being among the first future victims. Besides, lots of sectors of the workin class have been experiencing similar attacks under different names, and such attacks are waiting for those who haven't been hit by them yet. What is this 4-C then? This practice was actually a ‘blessing' put forward by the Turkish state when the number of workers who were to lose their jobs due to privitations increased. It includes, aside from a serious pay-cut, public workers being shifted to different sectors within the state under horrible conditions. The worst of the conditions introduced by the 4-C policy is that it gives the bosses of the state an absolute power over the workers. Thus, the wage, which is determined by the state and is already a massive pay-cut for the workers, is merely a maximum price. It can be reduced by the state enterprise managers arbitrarily. Also, working hours are completely abolished for those who are to work under the 4-C conditions and the bosses of the state enterprises gain the right to arbitrarily make the workers stay at work for as long as they want, until the workers "finish the task assigned to them". The workers get no money whatsoever in return for this "extra" work after regular public employees' working hours or during holidays. Under this policy, the bosses have the power to fire the workers arbitrarily, without being obliged to pay them any compensation. Besides, the period workers can work in a year is between three months and ten months, nothing being paid to the workers in the months they aren't asked to work and the duration of their work again being arbitrarily determined by the bosses. Despite this, the workers are forbidden to find a second job even if they are not working at a certain period. The social security payments of the workers are not made anymore under the 4-C policy, and all health benefits are taken away. The privatisations, just like the 4-C policy started long before. In the Tekel enterprises, initially the cigarette and alchohol departments were privatised, and then the process led to the leaf tobacco factories being closed. We are of the opinion that today, it is clear that the problem here is not just the privatisations. We think it is obvious that the private capital which is taking the workers' jobs, and the state, that is the state capital, wanting to exploit the workers by condemning them to the most unimaginable conditions are jointly making the attack. In this sense we can say the fight of the Tekel workers is born out of the class interests of all workers and represents a struggle against the capitalist order as a whole.
We think it would also be in order to explain the situation of the working class movement in Turkey around the period the Tekel workers launched their struggle. On 25th November 2009, a one day strike organized by KESK, DISK and Kamu-Sen[2] had taken place. As we said, the Tekel workers took the journey to Ankara on 14th December, several weeks after this one day strike. The same week that the Tekel workers came to Ankara, two other workers' struggles took place. The first one was the demonstrations by firemen who were to lose their jobs at the beginning of 2010, and the second was the one day strike by railway workers in protest at the firing of some of their workmates for their participation in the strike on the 25th November. The riot police, seeing that class struggles were on the rise, brutally attacked the firemen and the railway workers. The Tekel workers were not treated any differently either. Besides, the number of railway workers who lost their jobs for participating in the strikes rose to nearly fifty. Lots of workers were taken into custody. It was to take some time for the firemen to recover from these attacks. As for the railway workers, unfortunately they haven't managed to make a come back to the terrain of class struggle so far. What put the workers of Tekel in the vanguard by the end of the week which started with December 14th was the fact that they managed to stand up against the repressive measures of the state, and that they kept their struggle going and alive.
So how did the Tekel struggle begin? There already was a considerable minority who wanted to struggle, yet what was to trigger the struggle took place on 5th December, in an opening ceremony attended by prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan[3]. The Tekel workers, with their families, went up unexpectedly against Erdoğan in this ceremony in order to ask what was going to happen to them. They interrupted Erdoğan's speach saying "The workers of Tekel are waiting for you to give the good news". In reply Erdoğan said: "Unfortunately elements such as these have been appearing in Turkey so far. Such elements want to make money without doing any work, by laying down. We closed the era of making money by laying down (...) They have said the property of the state is a sea and who doesn't eat it are pigs. This was how they looked at this issue. This is not how we look at it. Here is your seniority compensation. If you want we can use you under 4-C, if not go and set up your own business if you are going to. We said this too. We had an agreement with their trade-union. I talked to them, I told them ‘You have this much time. Do what is necessary'. Although we had an agreement, well there the process came to the end and one or two years passed. These are still here saying things like we want to keep our jobs and continue the same way, we want to retain the same rights in other places. No, we talked about these things. Ten thousand Tekel workers cost us forty trillion a month."[4] Erdoğan had no idea what kind of trouble he had just gotten himself into. The workers, most of whom had supported the government previously, were now angry. How to launch a struggle was discussed by the workers in the workplaces. A workers from Adıyaman[5] explains the process like this in an article he wrote, published in a leftist daily: "That process stimulated the workers fellows who haven't been participating in the struggle which was tried to be waged, as small as it was. They started seeing the real face of the Justice and Development Party because of these words the prime minister spoke. The first thing they did was resign their party membership. In the discussions that started in our workplaces, we decided to protect our labor all together" [6]. The trade-union[7] which Erdoğan had said that he agreed with, and which had not taken any serious actions in the process called for a gathering in Ankara. As a result the workers took the roads, travelling to the capital.
The forces of the state staged a sneaky attack against the workers from the start. The riot police stopped the buses carrying workers, and declared that they weren't going to let the workers from the Kurdish cities where Tekel factories are concentrated, but that the workers from the Western, Mediterranean, Central Anatolian and Black Sea regions could pass. This aimed at pitting the Kurdish workers and the other workers against each other, and thus dividing the class movement on ethnic lines. This sneaky attack in reality tore down two masks of the state: that of unity and harmony and that of the Kurdish reform. Yet the workers of Tekel did not fall into this police trap. With the workers from Tokat leading them, the workers from outside the Kurdish cities protested against this position of the police, and insisted with determination on all workers entering the city together and no one being left behind. The riot police, unable to calculate the stance the government was to take, ended up having to allow the workers to enter the city all together. This incident made workers coming from different cities, regions and ethnic backgrounds form deep bonds on class terrain. Following this incident the workers from the Western, Mediterranean, Central Anatolian and Black Sea regions were to express that the strength and inspiration they took from the resistance, determination and consciousness of the Kurdish workers was to contribute greatly to their participation in the struggle and that they learnt much from those workers. The workers of Tekel had won their first victory upon entering the city.
On December 15th, the Tekel workers started their protest demonstration in front of the national headquarters of the Justice and Development Party in Ankara. A Tekel worker who came to Ankara that day explains what happened like this: "We marched to the national headquarters of the Justice and Development Party. We lit a fire at night and waited in front of the building until 10 PM. When it got too cold, we went to the Atatürk Gym. There were five thousand of us. We took out our carpets and cardboards and spent the night there. In the morning, the police pushed us to Abdi İpekçi Park and encircled us. Some of our mates marched to the Justice and Development Party headquarters again. When we were waiting in the park, we wanted to go and meet up with our mates, and those waiting in front of the Justice and Development Party headquarters wanted to come to us: the police attacked with tear gas. Then at 7 PM we managed to meet up with out mates in the park. We had walked for four hours. We spent the night in the park, in the rain."[8] On the other hand, the most brutal attack by the police took place on December 17th. The riot police, obviously acting on orders and perhaps in order to make up for not being able to prevent the Kurdish workers from entering the city when they first arrived, attacked the workers in the park with great violence and hatred. The aim was to disperse the workers. Yet this time also there was something which the forces of the state had failed to calculate: the workers capacity for self-organization. The workers, dispersed by the police, managed to organize themselves without the help of any bureaucrat and met up in a massive demonstration in front of the Türk-İş[9] headquarters in the afternoon. On the same day, the workers, having nowhere to stay, occupied two floors of the Türk-İş building. On the days following December 17th, the demonstrations of the Tekel workers were to take place on the small street in front of the Türk-İş headquarters, at the center of Ankara.
The struggle between the workers of Tekel and the Türk-İş administration marked the days following this date until the New Year. Actually, even at the beginning of the struggle, the workers did not trust the trade-union bureaucrats. They had been sending two workers from all cities with the trade-unionists to all the negotiations. The purpose of this was for all the workers to be informed of what really was happening. Both Tek Gıda-İş and Türk-İş, and the government expected Tekel workers to give up in a few days in the face of the freezing cold Ankara winter, police repression and material difficulties. The doors of the Türk-İş building were, unsurprisingly, locked up in a very short time to prevent the workers from entering the building. Against this, the workers started a struggle in order to be allowed to use the toilets in the building and for the woman workers to be able to rest in the building and this struggle resulted in a victory for the workers. The workers had no intention of going back. A serious support by the Ankara working class and above all students from proletarian backgrounds was given to Tekel workers with regards to the material difficulities of finding places to stay: perhaps a small but nevertheless important part of the Ankara working class mobilized to host Tekel workers in their homes. Rather than giving up and going back, the Tekel workers gathered every day on the small street in front of the Türk-İş building, and started discussing how to make their struggle go forward. It did not take long for the workers to realize that the only solution to get over their isolation was for their struggle to extend to the rest of the working class.
In this context, militant workers from all cities who saw that Tek Gıda-İş and Türk-İş weren't going to do anything for them tried to establish a strike committee, with the foremost purpose of transmitting their demands to the trade-union. Among these demands were the setting up of a strike tent and the New Year being celebrated by workers collectively, with a demonstration in front of the Türk-İş building. The trade-union executives opposed this initiative taken by the workers. After all, what need was there for the trade-union if the workers were going to go ahead and take the control of their struggle into their own hands! This attitude had a veiled threat behind it: the workers who were already isolated feared the possibility of being left all alone if the trade-union withdrew its support. Thus the strike committee was abolished. Yet the will of the workers to take the control of their struggle into their own hands was to retain its existence. Quickly, the workers launched efforts to form bonds with the sugar factory workers who are to face the same 4-C conditions soon, and they went to the workers neighbourhoods and universities they were invited to and explained their struggle. In the meanwhile, the workers were continuing their struggle with the Türk-İş administration which was not behind the workers in any way. The day the Türk-İş board of executives met, the workers forced the doors of the trade-union headquarters. The riot police mobilized to protect Mustafa Kumlu, the chairman of Türk-İş from the workers. Workers started shouting slogans like "We will sell out who sells us out", "Türk-İş to duty, to the general strike", "Kumlu, resign". Kumlu dared not face the workers until he had announced a series of actions, including strikes which were to happen every week, starting from a one hour strike and doubling in period every week and a demonstration in front of the Türk-İş building to take place every week. He was afraid for his life. Even after Kumlu's declaration of a series of actions though, workers still did not trust Türk-İş. When a Tekel worker from Diyarbakır[10] declared in an interview he gave that "We won't follow any decision taken by the trade-union administration to end the struggle and go back. And if a decision to end the struggle without there being a gain made as they did last year, we are thinking of emptying the Türk-İş building and then burning it down"[11], he expressed the feelings of lots of other Tekel workers.
Türk-İş backed down from its action plan when the first one hour strike had a participation rate of 30% of all trade-unions. Türk-İş executives were as terrified of the generalization of the struggle of the Tekel workers as the government was. Following the cheerful New Year's demonstration in front of the Türk-İş headquarters, a closed vote was taken among the workers in order to decide whether to go on or return home. 99% of the workers voted to continue with the struggle. Meanwhile, a new action plan, suggested by the trade-union, started being discussed: following January 15th, there was to be a three day sit-in, followed by a three-day hunger strike and then a three day death fast. A demonstration with massive participation was also to take place, as the Türk-İş administration promised. The workers initially thought that a hunger strike would be a good idea. Already being isolated, they did not want to be forgotten and ignored and they thought a hunger strike could avoid this. Also, they were feeling that they were stuck in front of Türk-İş and felt the need to go on action somehow. A hunger-strike could have acted as an intimidation for Türk-İş also.
One of the most significant texts written by the Tekel workers appeared in those days: a letter written by a Tekel worker to the sugar factory workers. The Tekel worker from the city of Batman[12] wrote the following: "Our hardworking and honorable sugar factory worker brothers and sisters, Today, the honorable struggle that Tekel workers have undertaken is a historical chance for those whose rights are being taken away. In order not to miss this chance, your participation in our honorable struggle would make us happier and stronger. My friends, I would like especially to indicate that for the time being trade-unionists would promise hope you that ‘we will take care of this affair'. However, as we have passed through the same process, we know well that they are well-to-do people and have no life-death concern. On the contrary, you are the ones whose rights would be grabbed and whose right to work would be taken from you. If you are not to take part in the struggle today, tomorrow would be too late for you. All in all, this struggle will be victorious whether or not you are in it and we have no doubt or mistrust in ourselves to take care of this. Because we are sure that if the workers become united and act as a body, there remains nothing that they cannot succeed in. With these feelings, I salute you with my deepest intimacy and respect in the name of all workers of Tekel."[13] This letter not only called on the sugar workers themselves to join the struggle by themselves; it also expressed what had happened in Tekel with all its clarity. At the same time, it expressed the consciousness shared by many Tekel workers that they were struggling not just for themselves but for the entire working class.
On January 15th, the Tekel workers came to Ankara to participate in the sit-in we previously mentioned. Now there were nearly ten thousand Tekel workers in the Sakarya Square. Some of their families had came with them. The workers had take sick-days and holidays to come to Ankara and most of them had to go back several times to renew their holiday permits. Now, nearly all Tekel workers were together. A demonstration with a wide participation was planned for January 16th, Saturday. The forces of order feared this demonstration since it could provide ground for the generalization and massive expansion of the struggle. The possibility of workers who arrived on Saturday for the demonstration spending the night and all day Sunday with the Tekel workers could result in strong and massive bonds being formed between the arriving workers and the Tekel workers. Thus the forces of order insisted on moving the demonstration to Sunday, and Türk-İş, with a typical manoeuvre, further weakened the demonstration by preventing the workers from Kurdish cities coming. It was also calculated that spending two nights in the icy Ankara winter, staging a sit-in in the streets would break the resistance and strength of the Tekel workers. It would turn out on the demonstration which took place on January 17th that this calculation was a serious mistake.
The demonstration on January 17th started calmly. The workers who gathered in Ankara and several political groups started marching from the Ankara Train Station at 10am into Sıhhiye Square. In the demonstration, attended by tens of thousands of workers, first a worker from Tekel, then a firemen and a sugar factory worker spoke from the platform. The explosion took place afterwards. After the workers, Mustafa Kumlu, the chairman of Türk-İş took the stage. Kumlu, who neither cared about the struggle nor about the living conditions of the Tekel workers to spread nor about its spread made a completely moderate, conciliatory and empty speech. Türk-İş had made a particular effort to keep the workers away from the platform and had placed the metal workers who were completely unaware of what was going on in front of it. Nevertheless, the Tekel workers, asking the metal workers to let them pass, managed to come right in front of the platform. During Kumlu's speech, the Tekel workers did their best to interrupt him with their slogans. The last offence that did the trick for the workers was the announcement that following Kumlu's speech, Alişan, a pop singer who has no relation whatsoever to the working class movement, was going to give a concert in the demonstration area. The workers occupied the platform, started shouting their own slogans and despite the fact that the trade-union executives turned the sound system down, they workers who came to the demonstration managed to join these slogans. For a while, the trade-union completely lost control. Only the workers had it. Trade-union executives, rushing to the stage, started giving radical speeches on the one hand and trying to get the workers to leave the platform. When this didn't work, they tried to provoke the workers against each other and against the students and workers who came to support them. The trade-unionists tried to pit the workers who have been present in Ankara from the beginning of the struggle against those who arrived recently, and they tried to target those who came to offer their support. In the end the trade-union executives managed to make the workers who occupied the stage go down, and convinced the workers to rapidly return to the street in front of the Türk-İş building. The fact that speeches regarding hunger strikes and death fasts being put forward in order to play down the slogans about the general strike was, in our opinion, interesting. In any case, returning to the Türk-İş building was not enough to extinguish the workers' anger. Slogans such as "General strike, general resistance", "Türk-İş don't test our patience" and "We will sell out who sells us out" were being shouted in front of the union building now. A few hours later, a group of workers numbering around 150 managed to break the bureaucratic barricade in front of the Türk-İş doors and occupied the building. Tekel workers who were searching for Mustafa Kumlu in the building started shouting "Enemy of workers, servant of the AKP" when they reached the door of Kumlu's room. Following the demonstration on January 17th, efforts to launch another strike committee began among the workers. This committee was to be made up of workers who didn't think a hunger strike was a suitable way to go forward for the struggle and that the only way forward was to extent the struggle. The effort to form it was known by all workers and supported by an overwhelming majority. As for those who didn't support it, they weren't speaking against it either. Among the things seen as the tasks of the committee, other than transmitting their demands to the trade-union, was realizing communication and self-organization among the workers. Like the previous strike-committee, this committee also was made up entirely of the workers and was completely independent from the trade-union. The same determination of self-organization made it possible for hundreds of Tekel workers to join the demonstration of the health sector employees who went on a one day strike on January 19th. On the same day, while only a hundred workers were allowed to participate in the three-day hunger strike, three thousand workers joined them, despite the fact that the general feeling among the workers now is that it is not the appropriate way for the struggle to go forward. The reason behind this was that these workers did not want to leave their mates going on the hunger strike alone, that they wanted to engage in solidarity with them, that they wanted to share what their friends were to go through.
Although the Tekel workers have been having regular meetings among themselves according to the cities they came from, so far a mass meeting with all the workers participating hasn't been possible. This being said, since December 17th, the street in front of the Türk-İş building had the character of an informal but regular mass assembly. Sakarya Square these days is full of hundreds of workers from different cities, discussing how to push the struggle forward, how to expand it, what to do. Another important characteristic of the struggle was how the workers from different ethnic backgrounds managed to unite against the capitalist order despite all the provocations of the regime. The slogan "Kurdish and Turkish workers together", shouted since the first days of the struggle, expresses this very clearly. In the Tekel struggle, lots of workers from the Black Sea region danced to Şemame, and lots of Kurdish workers made the Horon dance for the first time in their lives[14]. Another point where the approach of the Tekel workers has been very significant is the importance they have been giving to extending the struggle and workers' solidarity, and this is not based on a narrow national perspective but on one which includes the mutual support and solidarity of the workers of the whole world. Also the Tekel workers managed to prevent the parts of the ruling class in opposition to use the struggle for their own purposes and do not trust opposition parties either. They are aware of how the Republican People's Party[15] attacked the workers who were fired from Kent AŞ[16], how the Nationalist Movement Party[17] has its share in shaping state policies and how it is anti-working class. A worker expresses this consciousness very clearly in an interview he gave: "We understood what all of them are. Men who voted for the privatisation law are today telling us about how they understand our situation. Until now, I always voted for the Nationalist Movement Party. I met revolutionaries only with this struggle. I am in this struggle because I am a worker. Revolutionaries are always with us. The Nationalist Movement Party and the Republican People's Party make five minute speeches here and then they leave. There were those among us who cheered for them when we first came here. Now, there is no such situation."[18] The most striking example of this consciousness was how the workers of Tekel prevented the speakers from the fascist Alperen Organization[19], the same one which attacked Kent AŞ workers who were demonstrating in the Abdi İpekçi Park because they were Kurds. The Tekel struggle also made a great contribution to the firemen who were brutally attacked after their first demonstration by giving them morale which enabled them to return to the struggle. Generally, Tekel workers have given hope not only to the firemen but to all sectors of the working class in Turkey who want to struggle.
The Tekel workers have managed to put a strike in which all workers will participate on the agenda. This is why today the Tekel workers are proudly standing at the vanguard of the working class in Turkey, and are carrying our class which has been in slumber for years into joining with the struggles of the workers of the whole world. This is why they are holding the seeds of the mass strike which, from Egypt to Greece, from Bangladesh to Spain, from England to China has been shaking the world for the last few years. This honorable struggle is still ongoing, and we think that it is not yet the time to draw its lessons. With the idea of a hunger strike and a death strike being pushed forward on the one hand and the idea of a strike committee made up of workers who don't find the idea of a hunger strike fit for the struggle and want to extent the struggle; with Türk-İş bureaucrats who are nothing but a part of the state on one hand and workers who want a general strike on the other, it is hard to predict what lays ahead for the struggle, where it will go, what its results will be. This being said, we have to stress that no matter what the outcome of the struggle is, the honorable stance of the Tekel workers will bear very important results and leave priceless lessons for the whole working class.
Gerdûn, 20.01.10
[1] Tekel used to be the state monopoly company consisting of all tobacco and alcohol producing enterprises.
[2] Leftist Public Workers Unions Confederation, Revolutionary Workers Unions Confederation and the major Public Employees Unions Confederation, known for its fascist symphaties.
[3] Also the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP
[4] https://www.cnnturk.com/2009/turkiye/12/05/erdogana.tekel.iscilerinden.p... [36]
[5] A city in Turkish Kurdistan.
[6] https://www.evrensel.net/haber.php?haber_id=63999 [37]
[7] Tek Gıda-İş, Food, Alchohol, Tobacco Workers Union, member union of Türk-İş
[8] https://www.evrensel.net/haber.php?haber_id=63999 [37]
[9] Confederation of Turkish Trade-Unions, the oldest and largest trade-union confederation in Turkey which has quite an infamous history, having been formed under the influence of the US in the 50ies, modelled after the AFL-CIO and has been sabotaging workers' struggles since.
[10] Known as the unofficial capital of Kurdistan, Diyarbakır is a metropole in Turkish Kurdistan
[11] https://www.kizilbayrak.net/sinif-hareketi/haber/arsiv/2009/12/30/select... [38]
[12] A city in Turkish Kurdistan.
[13] https://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2009/tekel-isc... [39]
[14] Şemamme is a very famous Kurdish dance, and Horon is a very famous dance from the Black Sea region of Turkey.
[15] The Kemalist, secularist, left-nationalist party, member of the Socialist International, extremely chauvinistic.
[16] Municipality workers from İzmir, a metropole at the coast of the Aegean sea. These workers were fired by the Republican People's Party who controlled the municipality they worked for and then brutally attacked by the police while protesting the Party's leader.
[17] The mainstream fascist party.
[18] https://www.kizilbayrak.net/sinif-hareketi/haber/arsiv/2009/12/30/select... [38]
[19] Murderous gang connected to the Grand Union Party, a radical fascist split from the Nationalist Movement Party
This article was published on our website just three days after Haiti's capital and other minor towns were leveled by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Almost two weeks after this catastrophe the main points made in the article remain completely valid. However several aspects require updating. First of all, the extent of the disaster is now much clearer. The number of confirmed deaths is now 150 000, but it is estimated that 200 000, maybe more, died, while the injured are 194 000. For the survivors the odds are not good. A health crisis is brewing, illnesses are running rampant, and shortage of clean water and a sanitation system in ruins will only make things worse in the immediate future. People are going hungry, 2 million people are in need of food assistance and over one million are homeless, many living under horrible conditions and obliged to scavenge for survival. What about the assistance of the so-called "international community"? One thing is obvious. Despite the enormous media circus trumpeting the "human side" of capitalist governments all over the world, the aid for the earthquake victims has been largely inefficient. The 20 000 American troops and 18 warships, the UN's 12 500 peacekeepers and police, and the dozens of charitable organizations have hardly made a difference addressing the population's needs, whose despair and anger are growing daily. The tragedy in Haiti is living proof of the urgent necessity to do away with capitalism, this system that has outlived its historic mission and which today can only deliver misery, pain, and death.
Murderers. Capitalism, its states, its bourgeoisie, are nothing but murderers. Tens of thousands of people have just died because of this inhuman system.
Tuesday, at 16.53 local time, an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale ravaged Haiti. The capital Port-au-Prince, an octopus like slum housing nearly two million people, was purely and simply razed to the ground. The toll is terrible. And it's getting worse by the hour. Four days after the catastrophe, on Friday 15 January, the French Red Cross has already estimated 40-50,000 dead and "a huge number of grave injuries". According to this charity, at least three million people have been directly affected by the earthquake[1]. In a few seconds, 200,000 families lost their ‘houses', often made out of rough bits and pieces. Large buildings also fell like a house of cards. Roads, already decrepit, the airport, the ancient railway tracks: nothing stood up to it.
The reason for this carnage is revolting. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. 75% of its inhabitants survive on less than two dollars a day and of them 56% on less than one dollar a day! On this side of a poverty-stricken island nothing at all has been done to face up to earthquakes. And yet, Haiti is a well-known earthquake zone. All those who claim today that this quake was of an exceptional and unforeseeable violence are lying. Professor Eric Calais, in a geology course delivered in Haiti in 2002, pointed out that the island was traversed by "fault-lines capable of producing quakes of a magnitude of between 7.5 and 8"[2]. The political authorities in Haiti had been officially informed of this risk, as proved by this extract taken from the website of the Bureau of Mines and Energy (which is linked to the ministry of public works): "all of the last few centuries have been marked by at least one major earthquake in Hispaniola (the Spanish name for the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic - ed): the destruction of Porte au-Prince in 1751 and 1771; the destruction of Cap Haitien in 1842, the earthquakes of 1887 and 1904 in the north of the country with major damage to Porte-au-Prince and Cap Haitien, the earthquake of 1946 in the north east of the Dominican Republic accompanied by a tsunami in the region of Nagua. There have been major earthquakes in Haiti, there will therefore be major earthquakes in the future every few dozen or hundred years: this is scientifically evident"[3](our emphasis). And so, faced with something so scientifically evident, what measures have been taken? None! In March 2008 a group of geologists drew attention to the considerable risk of a major earthquake in two years time; and in May of the same year certain scientists even held a series of meetings on this question with the Haitian government[4]. Neither the Haitian state, nor all the states which are now crying crocodile tears and calling for "international solidarity", the US and France above all, have taken the slightest preventative measure to avoid this predictable drama. The buildings erected in this country are so fragile that they don't even need an earthquake to collapse: "in 2008, a school in Pétonville collapsed for no geological reason, killing nearly 90 children"[5].
Now that it's too late, Obama and Sarkozy can announce a "great international conference" for "reconstruction and development"; the Chinese, British, German or Spanish states can send all their food parcels and their NGOs. They are still criminals with blood on their hands.
If Haiti is so poor today, if its population is deprived of everything, if the infrastructure is non-existent, it's because for more than 200 years the local bourgeoisie and the bigger Spanish, French and American bourgeoisies have confronted each other over the resources of this small island, over who controls it. Through its daily paper The Guardian the British bourgeoisie is even quite capable of pointing out the responsibility of its imperialist rivals: "The noble ‘international community' which is currently scrambling to send its ‘humanitarian aid' to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.
Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country.....The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this ‘investment' towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the distribution of international ‘aid'"[6]
And that's only part of the story. The USA and France have been fighting for control of this island through coups, violence and armed militia that terrorise men women and children on a daily basis.
The media circus around ‘international solidarity' is therefore unbearably repulsive. The different states are making all the publicity they can about ‘their' NGOs. ‘their' food parcels, showing the best pictures of the people ‘their' aid workers have saved from the ruins. Even worse, while bodies pile up, France and America are involved in a ruthless war for influence. In the name of humanitarianism, they have sent in their military fleet to take control of operations under the pretext of the need for coordinating the operations.
As with every catastrophe, all the declarations about long term aid, all the promises about reconstruction and development, will amount to nothing. Over the past ten years, in the wake of earthquakes, there have been:
- 15,000 dead in Turkey, in 1999
- 14,000 dead in India, in 2001
- 26,200 dead in Iran in 2003
- 210,000 in Indonesia in 2004 (the under-water earthquake having given rise to a gigantic tsunami which claimed victims as far away as Africa)
- 88, 000 deaths in Pakistan, in 2005
- 70,000 dead in China, in 2008
Each time, the ‘international community' has been suitably moved and sent in miserable amounts of aid, but never real investments aimed at bringing lasting improvements to the situation, by erecting anti-earthquake buildings for example. Humanitarian aid, real support for the victims, prevention, are not profitable activities for capitalism. When it exists, humanitarian aid is used as an ideological smokescreen to make people think that this system of exploitation can be human after all, if it's not directly an alibi for justifying the dispatch of military forces and gaining influence in this or that region of the world.
A single fact reveals the bourgeois hypocrisy of the humanitarianism and international solidarity of the states: the French minister of immigration, Eric Besson, has just decreed the "temporary" suspension of deportations of illegal immigrants back to Haiti. That says it all.
The horror striking the population of Haiti can only engender tremendous feelings of sadness. The working class will, as after each hecatomb, react by responding to the various calls for financial aid. It will show once again that its heart beats for humanity, that solidarity has no frontiers.
But, above all, such a horror must feed its anger and its will to fight. The real responsibility for the 50,000 or more deaths in Haiti lies not with nature or fate but with capitalism and its states.
Pawel, 15 January 2010
[1] Libération , https://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101613901-pres-de-50-000-morts-en-haiti... [45]
[2] Libération (https://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2010/01/s%C3%A9isme-en-ha%C3%A... [46]).
[3] https://www.bme.gouv.ht/alea%20sismique/Al%E9a%20et%20risque%20sismique%... [47]
[4] Científicos alertaron en 2008 sobre peligro de terremoto en Haití sur le site Yahoomexico (Assiociated Press du 15/01/2010)
[5] PressEurop (https://www.presseurop.eu/fr/content/article/169931-bien-plus-quune-cata... [48]).
[6] https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-... [49]
James Cameron's Avatar is turning into something of a sensation. Everything about it is extravagant: filmed in 3D, computer generated images of unprecedented sophistication (the production platform data storage apparently reached one petabyte[1]) - everything about this film is extravagant, including the cost. And like any work of art, Avatar offers us a certain image of the society in which we live.
The film's story is blindingly simple. On the planet Pandora, a powerful Earth corporation has discovered deposits of a rare and precious mineral; it despatches on site machines and workers (who remain invisible throughout) to open a mine. The only problem, is that the planet, covered by a magnificent virgin forest, is already inhabited by a humanoid people, blue-skinned and three metres high, who have no intention of being kicked out without fighting back. The mining company is thus accompanied by an armed force which looks remarkably like the American army, along with bombers and helicopters and "mekkas" straight out of a Japanese manga. Any resemblance to the conquest of America, the rape of Vietnam, or the pillage of the environment being carried out today in the Amazon is of course anything but accidental. In the hope of convincing the natives - the "Na'avi" - to let themselves be moved on without bloodshed, and above all without bad publicity, the company has also sent a research team equipped with technology allowing them to create Na'avi bodies - "avatars" - which are "inhabited" by the minds of human "pilots" who remain in the shelter of their base camp. The avatars can thus move freely on the planet's surface (the atmosphere is poisonous for humans) in order to "win the confidence" of the natives. One of these "pilots", the ex-marine Jake Scully whose human body is stuck in a wheelchair, falls in love with a beauty from the local tribe (a sort of blue Pocahontas) and joins her people to lead the struggle against the invaders.
So much for the story - what about the film as a whole? Visually, you can't complain. Not only is the CGI perfectly convincing (the Na'avi look as "real" as the humans), the designers have really let their imaginations go to create a whole Pandorian exo-biology, with a vast fresco of plants, animals, and even insects, all with a coherence and an attention to detail which recalls some of Miyazaki's best anime films. It's impossible not to be captivated when the Na'avi take off on their great flying reptiles and when we - thanks to the depth of 3D projection - can realise one of humanity's oldest dreams and fly alongside them.
It's just as well that the film is visually impressive, because the plot is a wretched mish-mash of rip-offs from other films. The "noble savages" living in harmony with nature (Green), the decent whites who try to stop the massacre (a frequent theme in the Western genre), the stranger who falls in love and seeks the acceptance of the tribe (Dances with Wolves), the insensitive and brutal military commander (Apocalypse Now, but without the madness and the culture), the female scientist in a macho world (Sigourney Weaver reprises her role in Alien) - nothing's been left out. Even the ending, where the whole ecosystem is set in motion to repel the invader, is filched from Harry Harrison's Deathworld novels. What interest can there possibly be in such a film?
In fact, this film is interesting not for the story - banal - nor for the characters - cardboard cut-outs - but for its themes. Who are they aimed at? What ideology are they plugging?
Before being a work of art, Avatar is above all an enormous financial investment (between $250 and $300 million) which has to make a profit. This, moreover, is impossible merely by relying on the US market: according to an article in The Economist of 28th November, two thirds of the profits from a blockbuster come from outside the United States. To succeed, the film must therefore appeal to emotions which are widespread in the world population, or at least among the youth of the industrialised world. In this sense, the Situationists of the 1960s were right to say that the "society of the spectacle" (ie capitalism) stages our own dreams in order to sell them back to us.
In terms of sales, Avatar has undeniably been a success, having already earned more than $1 billion in ticket sales. It is striking that it has been a huge hit in France and Germany, the two European countries where opposition to the war in Iraq was especially strong. One reason is undoubtedly the unflattering image (to say the least!) that the film offers of the US Marines, and even more the fact that they take a pasting and are forced to leave with their tails between their legs.
That said, James Cameron manages to make it up to his American audience. At the beginning of the film we learn that the soldiers in question "used to be marines, fighters for freedom", but that they have become mercenaries since; the hero is himself an ex-Marine. One can therefore blame their brutal militarism, not on the state and its loyal servants, but on the private armies like those currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan by the "security firms" which provide logistics and "protection" to big companies like Halliburton, but also, and increasingly, directly to the US army.
As far as the "good guys" are concerned, the Na'avi obviously represent humanity's old dream of a life once more in accord with nature. They hunt, but they kill their prey with respect, they manage to live peacefully in the forest despite its dangers. Cameron doesn't bother with metaphysics - the ties between the Na'avi and the natural world depend on the fact that the planet is itself a living creature (an idea pinched from Stanislas Lem's novel Solaris, recently made into a film by George Clooney) and all the planet's inhabitants are equipped with a sort of bionic USB key that allows them to "plug in" to other animals and plants. The film is a long string of improbabilities. The male Na'avis are blue Apaches and "great warriors", though it's hard to see how since they had nobody to fight before the humans came. The females are the males' equals - they even go hunting - which doesn't stop them being stuck in "feminine" roles (there are no female warriors for example). And so on and so on.
But it works! The film ends with a burst of adrenalin and the audience is delighted to see the natives kick the mining company off the planet (probably the most unlikely part of the whole story!).
It's sheer fantasy of course. Nonetheless it is interesting to compare this fantasy, which has hit the screens in the midst of an economic catastrophe, with those created during the last crash. In the 1930s, a large part of Hollywood's output was devoted to films full of playboys, millionaires, and adventurers - the world of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. That dream no longer works. In Avatar, big business is definitely the bad guy. Today, the dream that pulls in the biggest profits for the capitalist fantasy machine, is the dream of a world from which capitalism has been definitively banished.
Jens, 21/01/2010
[1] 1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes, 1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes
It is with the greatest sorrow that we have to inform our readers of the death of comrade Jerry Grevin (who also published under the initials JG) in the United States. He suffered from a sudden heart attack on the afternoon of Thursday February 11th and died immediately. For all the comrades, this comes as a terrible shock and especially for our American comrades who worked with him on a daily basis.
Many comrades have known comrade Jerry for more than 30 years and know his profound commitment and dedication to the cause of communism which began in his youth through his very active participation in the anti-Vietnam war movement, before he joined the ICC in the 1970s. In the ICC, the comrade has been at the heart of the life of the American section, including during the difficult period the ICC went through during the 1990's, and he has been a driving and enthusiastic force in the recent development of our contacts in the United States. All the comrades who knew Jerry also remember his zest for life and his sense of humour in the face of all the difficulties that life inevitably brings. The loss of comrade Jerry is not only a loss for the American section, it is a terrible loss for the whole ICC and for our class.
We will be publishing a longer tribute to the comrade in our press shortly. In the meantime we want to communicate our solidarity to all Jerry’s comrades, family and friends and our determination to carry on with the revolutionary work he believed in so passionately.
A soldiers tale
All the endless anticipation could not prepare you
All the training casually comes and goes
If you have been pulled and stretched in every way
Have been sent to the edge of the crevice
and been tempted to look down,
All the while feeling yourself on the crest of
grim madness and bloodthirsty insanity
If you've had to kill or be killed and so killed
in anger and hate and blind panic,
When friend and foe alike blur
with barely time to register or regret,
To try and duck something that could kill you
before you'd thought to duck
If you've had to carry someone in your hands
as their life dribbled away with every jerk and heave
Heard the last exhalations of two hundred
cursing and shouting the name of their most beloved
Maria or Mark or God
Have fought the protestations of your innards
ejecting themselves at the visceral scenes
(now safely locked away)
After all of this, and all of that -
what does a return to normality mean?
Graham
At the beginning of January, in Rosarno, a town of 15,000 people in Calabria in the south of Italy, there were violent confrontations between local and immigrant workers. On 7 January, air gun pellets were shot at African immigrants in broad daylight. Two of them were seriously wounded. The pellets were fired by some ‘youths' but behind them was the hand of the ‘ndragheta', the Calabrian mafia. They are the region's bosses and pay the wages of local agricultural workers. For years, they have been making use of cheap African labour, which is in plentiful supply. These immigrant workers work for long hours and miserable wages[1], and at night are parked in an insalubrious former cheese factory. This year, however, this cheap labour force has become an encumbrance.
Firstly, the economic crisis is hitting Rosarno as it has hit the rest of the world. The oranges and mandarins are not selling; right now it's more profitable to leave them to rot on the trees than to harvest them. The majority of the African workers are therefore no longer useful and have lost their jobs. At the same time, new anti-immigrant legislation has been adopted in Italy: it reinforces the witch-hunt for illegal immigrants and penalises bosses for employing them. For the little work that's left, the mafia has therefore turned to ‘legal' immigrants from Eastern Europe (in particular from Ukraine and Romania). 1500 Africans and their families, who have come to Italy just to survive, are therefore caught between super-exploitation and unemployment. Anger and tension have risen bit by bit in their ranks: these semi-slaves, hitherto fairly docile, have begun to hold demonstrations. The ndragheta then decided to scare them into flight by firing on them. From beasts of burden, the immigrants are now prey.
However, instead of just lying down and taking all this, these workers went en masse onto the streets, burning bins and cars, smashing windows and wrecking buildings. In reaction, hundreds of local inhabitants, armed with iron bars and sticks, began a hunt for black skins, shouting "get back to Africa" and "we want to kill them". These confrontations left 67 wounded (31 immigrants, 19 policemen and 17 local inhabitants). It would seem that here again the mafia played a central role in stirring up the local population and putting themselves at the head of these improvised militias[2]. It was not difficult to instil such hatred in a population hit by poverty and unemployment, which officially affects 18% of the working class in this region.
But poverty alone is not enough to explain why a part of the population allowed itself to be pulled into a nauseating racist vendetta, or why the immigrants responded by smashing up stuff belonging to local people. In reality, the primary cause of these clashes "between poor people", as the international press put it - in other words, between workers - is despair, the total lack of any perspective: "It was a hell, we couldn't understand anything; it's true that we smashed everything we could, but it was because we are so angry. We are desperate, and if you add despair to anger, it's easy to go off the rails. When we got back to the cheese factory, we looked ourselves in the eyes and we were ashamed of what we had done. I cried the whole night thinking about the terrified people" (Godwin, a Ghanaian day-worker, 28 years old, quoted in La Repubblica, 9/1/10).
Only workers' struggles can restore confidence in the future, can allow people to see that a different world is possible, a world not of hatred but of solidarity. If we contrast these events with what happened recently in Britain, in the strikes in the oil construction industry, we can see how the struggle of the workers can begin to question nationalist divisions. In the unofficial strikes that broke out at Lindsey and elsewhere last year, despite all the slogans about "British jobs for British workers", which were promoted by the unions but which many workers took up themselves, we also saw the beginnings of a challenge to nationalist ideology, for example in the banners calling for Italian and Portuguese workers to join the strikes. Such developments in consciousness, even if they were only clearly expressed by a minority, were possible because the workers were fighting on their own class ground. The pogroms in Rosarno, the clashes between Italian and immigrant workers, were a pure expression of a society in decomposition; but when workers fight for their own demands, the way is open to overcoming all such divisions and offering real hope for the future.
Pawel/Amos 7/2/10
[1] The pay is one euro for a basket of mandarins and 6 cents for a kilo of oranges with a maximum wage of around 15 euro a day for 12 to 14 hours work
[2] Apart from the actual mafia, the cruelty and cynicism of the whole Italian bourgeoisie in these events should also be emphasised. The Berlusconi government has been profiting from them by launching a xenophobic campaign and justifying a whole series of anti-immigrant measures. The minister of the interior, Maroni, thus asserted "The situation in Rosarno is difficult, the result of a clandestine immigration that has been tolerated for all these years without anything effective being done ". In fact, the state, on the one hand, hunts down illegal immigrants and expels them in order to limit numbers, and, on the other hand, allows the bosses to exploit massively and shamefully (when it doesn't do it itself directly) a cheap labour force, thus improving ‘national competitiveness'. There are over 50,000 immigrant workers living in Italy in insalubrious housing similar to that in Rosarno. Getting back to the recent events and the ‘protection' offered by the state to immigrants who have been the victims of pogroms: when they intervened, the police injured a lot of the immigrants and afterwards, in order to ‘protect' them, found nothing better to do than push them into ‘retention centres' in order to ‘control their situation' and deport all those whose papers were not in order! This is the inhumanity that the bourgeoisie is capable of, whether it presents itself in the guise of the mafia or of very respectable high officials of the state!
We have recently heard of the death of José Ferran, an anarchist militant, a Spanish political refugee in the wake of the war in Spain between 1936 and 1939. We want to pay homage to this fighter of the working class, because, although he had deep disagreements with some of our political positions, he still maintained contact with the ICC for 30 years, taking part in our public forums and discussing with us at the Wazemmes market in Lille[1]. It's there that we saw him in public for the last time: at the age of 95, he came to buy our paper Révolution Internationale, which he did nearly every month, taking the opportunity to hold long discussion with us, especially about those of our positions that annoyed him the most, in particular the question of the state. The ICC militants who knew him will not forget these intense verbal jousts, these animated but always fraternal discussions with a sincere comrade who was so profoundly attached to his class.
[1] Later José had to go into a retirement home, and when we visited him there, he complained a lot about the residents' lack of political discussion and concerns!
.
The recent struggles of the Tekel workers in Turkey (Turkey: Solidarity with Tekel workers' resistance against government and unions! [62]) has shown that workers are not willing to lie down and accept the worsening conditions imposed upon them by the economic crisis. We have recently published a statement of solidarity from the Nucleo Proletario in Peru (Solidarity from Peru for the Tekel workers [63]) . Below we publish two more statements of solidarity which show that the struggles of the workers in Turkey are not just a local affair but are the concern and inspiration for workers of all countries. The first is a joint statement from two groups in Peru the Grupo de Lucha Proletaria and the Organización Anarco Punk, the second from the Internationalist Discussion Circle of Ecuador-South America. As with the statement by the NPP, the one by the GLP and Organización Anarco Punk contains a certain overestimation of the degree to which the Tekel workers succeeded in creating their own independent organs of struggle, but this does not diminish the importance of these documents as expressions of a growing awareness that the class struggle has the same fundamental needs all over the planet.
The Tekel workers have given to the workers of the world an example of unequalled struggle, at a time when the crisis of capitalism is worsening the living and working conditions of millions of workers throughout the world. At a time when the decomposition of decadent capitalism is making the development of workers' consciousness difficult, we have seen that against all predictions the proletariat of Turkey has developed its consciousness and strength, showing that they have the weapons with which to struggle against the state, its parties, the unions and capitalism. They have made their solidarity, their confidence, their lessons and reflections constant tools in their struggles.
This letter is a salute to the titanic effort that the proletariat of Tekel/Turkey has shown in its present struggles. What we have to highlight here is the workers' capacity to self-organise their struggle with full class autonomy and showing an unrivalled development of consciousness. This is an example that the workers of the world have to take up. The Tekel workers' have shown:
The struggle of the Tekel workers is an example of the struggle for life, for dignity.
From our Turkish brothers we can take the example of their forms of self-organisation of the struggle, of class autonomy. Capitalism trembles when it sees its proletarian enemy awaken and fiercely shake itself in order to break its chains of servitude and exploitation. The working conditions (reduction of wages, precarious work, increase in working hours, massive unemployment) that face the workers in Turkey are the same as those throughout the planet and are without a doubt brought about by the prevailing mode of production: the capitalist system of exploitation. This living experience of struggle continues.
Solidarity with the struggle of the proletariat of Turkey; proletarians of the rest of the world, follow their example! Workers of the world unite!
Grupo de Lucha Proletaria / Organización Anarco Punk, Peru 23/02/2010
Dear comrades:
Please accept the fraternal greetings of the Internationalist Discussion Circle of Ecuador-South America.
Through unofficial means of communication, in this part of the world, on the other side of the Atlantic, we have learnt about the struggle that you have been waging for more than a month. As proletarians from this part of the planet we recognise in your struggle against the capitalists of the TEKEL factory, demands that are absolutely just, honest and necessary.
The working class is the same in all countries and the bourgeois exploiters are the same in Ecuador as they are in Turkey; with our hands the workers create the wealth on every continent and unfortunately for us have to exist miserably on slave wages which we do not allow us to live with dignity as human beings. The bourgeoisie is not content with exploiting us; they also want us to believe that workers are different by race, religion and nationality. But unlike the bourgeoisie we are not Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Germans, Turks, Kurds, Chinese, French, we are workers. The earth is worked by labour, therefore proletarians have no homeland because our destiny is the same: to struggle everywhere for a better future for humanity, of which our and your children are part.
We know that the bourgeoisie will use and is using every means at its disposal: repression, the unions, parliamentary negotiations, etc in order to demoralize you with the clear intention of weakening your struggles and your fighting spirit. However, the fact you have resisted for more than a month is the clear proof that your unity is not only worthy of applause but will serve as an example to other proletarian comrades in Turkey and in other countries such as this one.
Dear comrades, the capitalist mode of production which organises the world in all our countries, and whose disastrous effects are not different in the Americas, whose mechanisms of exploitation we already cannot bear, will in the not too distant future probably lead to the most spectacular proletarian uprisings that modern humanity has seen. Capitalist decay permeates every country, and its effects are impossible to hide through deception and intimidation. That is why your struggle is evidence of what is awaiting the world bourgeoisie
It is time to take back from the bourgeoisie what they have robbed from us: our freedom as human beings.
The proletariat of Turkey is not alone. There are thousands of workers who identify with your situation and who salute your actions as living proof that the working class is still standing and will not stop until it gets what by right belongs to it.
Long live the workers of TEKEL
Long live the unity of the workers of the world
Down with the bourgeoisie and its nations
Discussion Circle of Ecuador-South America 2/10.
[1] "Solidarity is a practical activity of mutual support between human beings in the struggle for existence. It is a concrete expression of the social nature of humanity. As opposed to impulses such as charity or self-sacrifice, which presuppose the existence of a conflict of interests, the material basis of solidarity is a community of interests. This is why solidarity is not a utopian ideal, but a material force, as old as humanity itself." (International Review No 111 Orientation text 2001: Confidence and Solidarity in the proletarian struggle, part one [64].)
We are publishing here two short reports on recent meetings in London and Manchester which showed some small steps forward in developing collective discussion and activity among genuinely internationalist groups and tendencies.
WR's last two London forums have focussed on the question of revolutionaries and war. Why? Why not the crisis, surely that is currently the focus of workers' thoughts, especially with the threat of unemployment hanging over so many. Perhaps true, but despite the attempts of the bourgeoisie to anaesthetise the working class to the barbarism of war through the use of professional armies and their claims of ‘defending democracy' from fundamentalism or totalitarianism, war remains a constant presence in decadent capitalism. In Britain the ruling class may be able to use the patriotism displayed at Wooton Bassett to ideologically bolster their claims that the conflict in Afghanistan is ‘humanitarian' and ‘against terror', but they can't hide the fact that scores of young people, who more often than not are effectively economic conscripts, are returning home in body bags while chaos continues to reign throughout the region.
There is another factor: the undefeated nature of the working class. Since the end of the period of counter-revolution in the late 1960s the working class internationally has continued, through many ups and downs to develop its combativity. We only have to look at the recent strikes in Turkey, Greece and Britain to see evidence for this. The bourgeoisie is only too aware of this, and it is these struggles, or the threat of what they may lead to, that are important factors in holding back a slide towards more generalised war. The failure of the bourgeoisie to fully dominate the social scene, prevents it, however sophisticated its ideology, from marching us to world war as it did in 1914 and 1945.
By its very nature the working class is an international class, it has no country to defend, no side to support in wars between capitalist states. Workers in all countries must, as Lenin wrote in 1914, turn imperialist wars into civil wars, and fight the only war that can end all wars: the class war. The ideological fog of patriotism that descended in 1914 and 1939, which obscured this necessity, has to some extent been blown away by the class struggle but revolutionaries must work for its complete dispersal in order for the working class to see the capitalist state for what it really is: a militaristic monster drunk on blood.
It was these ideas that dominated the discussion at both of our meetings. At the first meeting in November, on internationalism and WWII (presentation available online), the focus was on the how the bourgeoisie uses ideology to defend imperialist war and what the proletarian alternative to war is. But it was the discussion at the second meeting in February, on how internationalists respond to war, that was the most interesting. Over the last few years the ICC has seen the world-wide development of a new internationalist milieu. Some of these new groups identify with the communist left tradition while others identify with anarchism and syndicalism. But whatever their origins they have internationalism at the heart of their politics. These developments have forced us to rethink our attitude towards anarchism. It is a broad movement with a range of positions and left communists, rather than relying on old schemas, must find a way of working alongside the internationalist elements in this milieu whenever possible. With this in mind WR explicitly invited comrades of the Anarchist Federation, Solidarity Federation and the Communist Workers Organisation to the meeting with the idea of clarifying where we agree and where we disagree and how internationalists can intervene together in the future.
What was made clear in the meeting was that all present (comrades from the CWO and AF along with some unaligned anarchists) agreed on the centrality of internationalism in response to imperialist war. The presence of a member of the Trotskyist International Bolshevik Tendency made this explicit when all present denounced their version of anti-imperialism, essentially a crude anti-Americanism, based on calling on the exploited and dispossessed to support their own bourgeoisie, the ‘lesser evil' against the bigger imperialism. There was also some agreement, based on the shared experience of the No War But the Class War groups in London and Sheffield, on how left communists and other internationalists can discuss and work together. The stunts and frenetic activism of the past were rejected in favour of further discussion and principled united interventions at any forthcoming war campaigns and pacifist demonstrations.
This meeting represents a small step forward in relations between internationalists in Britain and as such must be welcomed but there is much more work to be done. This preliminary discussion needs to be developed and we call on all internationalists, whatever current they identify with, to contact us, organise joint meetings and take the discussion forward.
Kino 8/3/10
At a time when Britain is facing a general election that has become all the more newsworthy because of the general concern for a ‘cleaner' politics following the MPs' expenses scandal, it is important that a forum has been created in Manchester where individuals can participate in discussion that attempts to articulate a proletarian perspective. And the Manchester Class Struggle Forum which is organised by the Manchester branch of the Anarchist Federation and supported by The Commune, took up the question of elections in its first meeting.
Most of the people in the meeting shared the view that voting has no value for the working class today and that despite many workers still having illusions in the Labour Party here (someone in the meeting referred to it as the ‘lesser evil'), the LP has, almost since its formation in the early 1900s, demonstrated its complete loyalty to the ruling class rather than the working class. And it's not just in Britain: left-wing governments everywhere have a record of imposing austerity (another person mentioned PASOK in the current situation in Greece as an example) and supporting war (the trade unions and the Labour Party have a strong pedigree here both last century and this and the recently deceased left firebrand, Michael Foot, was referred to as an enthusiast for the Falklands war).
Although the reading list circulated before the meeting (Gorter's Open Letter to Lenin and Lenin's Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder) and the presentation directed attention to the debates in the Third International in which anti-parliamentarism became a key position of the Left Communists, there wasn't scope in the time allowed to develop a real discussion of this, but different views of Lenin and the Bolshevik's intentions/concerns at this stage (1920) of the Russian Revolution were aired.
The other political groups present were the ICC and Solidarity Federation and there were a number of people who were not in any groups. The meeting was conducted in a fraternal atmosphere and the forum will meet again on Thursday, April 1st.
Duffy 8/3/10
During the last few days, our readers will have noticed that our web site has been subject to unavailability and unexpected extended down time. This is due to an increase of traffic over the last few months, which ended up by exceeding the capacity of out server.
We are in the process of migrating all our sites over to a new, more powerful server. The work of rebuilding our sites is still ongoing and will oblige us from time to time to shut down for maintenance. We apologise in advance, and thank comrades for their patience!
These last few months, the French media have reported copiously on the suicides of France Telecom employees (33 in 18 months, almost two per month). It's not the first time that the news has headlined cases of suicide at work or because of work. The same thing happened two years ago at Peugeot and Renault.
It is also important for revolutionaries to examine the question of suffering and suicide at work. In the first place, this is because everything concerning the conditions of life of the exploited class is one of their permanent preoccupations. But also, and above all, because the emergence and development of this phenomenon is a very expressive symptom of the state in which the capitalist system finds itself today - a state which with unprecedented urgency underlines the necessity to overthrow this system and replace it with a society capable of satisfying human needs.
Suicide at work is not an entirely new phenomenon because it's been known for a long time among farmers. A fundamental cause exists for that: in this profession the space between private and professional life is generally mixed up. The house of the farmer and the farm which is being worked on, are, the majority of the time, in the same immediate area.
What is new since the beginning of the 1990s is the appearance and increase of suicides at work in other sectors, in industry and above all the service sector. When someone kills themselves at home or outside of their work, it's not easy to prove that the principal cause of this gesture lies in suffering linked to work. This is what the bosses play on in order to avoid responsibility when the family of the victim tries to get their gesture recognised as work-related. On the other hand, when the suicide takes place at the place of work itself, avoidance of the issue by the bosses is more difficult. We should thus interpret suicide at work as the expression of a very clear message: "It's not because of sentimental break-up, a divorce or my ‘depressive nature' that I die, it's the bosses or the system that they represent which is responsible for my death".
The increase in the number of suicides at work or because of work thus shows the development of a much more massive phenomenon of which we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg: the increase of suffering at work.
Suffering at work is evidently not new: work-related sicknesses have existed for a long time, in fact since the industrial revolution which transformed human labour into a real hell for the majority of wage earners. From the beginning of the 19th century, socialist writers have denounced the conditions of work to which capital submits the human beings it exploits. That said, since this time and up to the end of the 20th century, suicide wasn't part of the response made by the exploited to suffering at work.
In fact, suicide is much more the result of mental, rather than physical suffering. But mental suffering isn't new either: bullying and humiliations on the part of all levels of bosses have also existed for a long time. But in the past, this suffering of the exploited wouldn't end up in suicide except in exceptional circumstances.
Suicide has been studied for a long time, notably by the sociologist Durkheim at the end of the 19th century. Already, Durkheim had identified the social and not simply the individual roots of suicide: "If the individual gives in to the least shock of circumstances, it's because the state society finds itself in makes a victim quite ready for suicide."
Similarly, the studies of suffering at work, including its mental aspects, go back as far. That said, studies of suicides as a consequence of suffering at work are much more recent given the more recent development of this phenomenon. Several hypotheses have been advanced, and a certain number of facts have been established in order to explain the emergence of this phenomenon. We can particularly look at the reflections of Christophe Dejours, who is a psychiatrist, an ex-work doctor, lecturer and author of several celebrated books on the question (such as Souffrance en France: la banalisation de injustice sociale or Travail, usure mentale - Work, mental attrition).
1) The "centrality of work": work (understood not only as a means to earn a living but as a productive and creative activity beneficial to others) plays a central role in the mental health of each individual. From this, suffering in this sphere of life has consequences that are ultimately more dramatic than suffering coming out of the private or family sphere. Concretely, if someone is suffering in their family life then that has fewer repercussions in their life at work than the contrary.
2) The recognition of work and its quality from others: in a hierarchical society such as ours, this recognition evidently manifests itself in the consideration that one gets from the bosses and in the wages that one receives for the job (this can be called "vertical recognition"). But there exists another form of recognition that is ultimately more important for the workers in their daily lives: it's the recognition of their work by colleagues (called "horizontal recognition"). It is the sign that the worker is integrated into the community of "people at work" with whom one shares experiences and know-how, as well as the taste for "doing a job well-done". Even if workers are not liked by superiors or the boss because they won't conform to their demands, they can nevertheless maintain their equilibrium as long as comrades at work don't play the bosses' games and keep their confidence in others. On the other hand, everything is overturned if the confidence of other workers is lost.
1) The growth of extra work: it's something which seems paradoxical because, with the development of new technologies allowing the automation of many tasks, some have announced "the end of work" or at least the possibility of significantly reducing the workload. For the last two decades, the contrary has been the case. The workload hasn't stopped increasing to such a point that, in a country like Japan, they've invented a new word for it, Karoshi, which specifies a sudden death (by cardiac crisis or cerebral vascular accidents) of subjects having no particular pathology but who are "killed at work" in the proper sense. It's a phenomenon that not only affects Japan even if it is more pronounced there. It has equally been observed in the United States and Western Europe.
The other manifestation of this weight of work which has necessitated the creation of a new word is "burn-out", which is a particular form of depression linked to exhaustion. It's an expressive term: the worker is reduced to a pile of cinders having had their energy burnt up.
2) The development of pathologies resulting from bullying and harassment. These pathologies have been well studied today: depressive syndromes, memory trouble, spatial and temporal disorientation, sleep loss, persecution feelings, psychosomatic troubles (notably affecting the womb, glands, etc.).
Christophe Dejours analyses this phenomenon thus:
"Harassment at work is not new. It's as old as work itself. What is new are the pathologies. It's new because there is so much many more of them now and there were much fewer beforehand. Between harassment on one side, and the pathologies on the other, we must see how people at work have been made fragile by these manoeuvres of intimidation. This process of becoming more fragile can be analysed and the results are quite precise. It is linked to the destructuring of what are called the defensive resources, in particular collective defence and solidarity. It is the determinant element in the increase of pathologies. In other words, pathologies from harassment are, above all, pathologies of solitude." (Christophe Dejours, ‘Alienation et clinque du travail', Actuel Marx, no. 39).
"Twenty or thirty years ago, harassment and injustices existed, but there weren't suicides at work. Their appearance is linked to the destruction of solidarity between wage earners." (Interview with Christophe Dejours published in Le Monde, 14.08.09)
Here he touches on a very important element of mental suffering linked to work and which in great part explains the increase of suicides: the isolation of the worker.
How do the specialists understand this phenomenon of the isolation of workers?
To explain it Dejours accords a particular importance to the establishment these last two decades of individual performance-related evaluations.
"Individualised appraisals, when they are linked to contracts of objectives or a management of objectives, when centred on results or on profits, lead to the setting up of generalised competition between workers, even between services in the same firm, between sub-companies, branches, workshops, etc.
This competition, when it's associated with the threat of redundancy, leads to a profound transformation of relations at work. Relations at work are already degraded when they are more or less associated with bonuses. But when the appraisal is not coupled with benefits but with sanctions or threats of redundancy, its noxious effects become patent. Individualisation pushes towards everyman for himself, competition leading to disloyalty between colleagues; distrust is insinuated between the workers.
"The final result of the appraisal is the profound destruction of confidence, collectivity and solidarity. And, added to that, it wears down defensive resources against the pathological effects of suffering and of the constraints of work" (‘Alienation et clinique du travail').
He also underlines that one of the successes of these new measures of subordination lies in their passive acceptance by the majority of workers, notably in a growing climate of fear of losing one's job faced with increasing unemployment.
He considers that the establishment of these new methods corresponds to the triumph of liberal ideology during the last 20 years.
Dejours is also concerned with what he calls "ethical suffering": the fact that the workers, gripped in the vice of increasingly insupportable workloads and the necessity to show the realisation of untenable objectives fixed in advance for them, are led to do a bad job, and very often disapprove of the work they do, telemarketing for example. This is an ethical suffering which equally affects the teams who have to set up these new methods and who are being asked to turn themselves into torturers.
Finally, he notes that the question of the increase of suffering at work has been ignored in the claims put forward by the trade unions.
What link can there be between these analyses of specialists (in this case, Christophe Dejours) and the vision of our organisation?
In fact the ICC can instantly recognise itself in these analyses even if, evidently, the point of departure is not identical. Christophe Dejours is first of all a doctor whose vocation is to care for sick people, in this case people who are sick through their work. But his intellectual rigour obliges him to go to the root of the pathologies he proposes to treat. For its part, the ICC is a revolutionary organisation which fights capitalism with the perspective of its overthrow by the class of wage workers.
But if one takes up each of the points he presents, one can see that they can be very well integrated into our own vision.
It is one of the bases of the marxist analysis of society:
- the role of labour, that's to say the transformation of nature in the rise of the human species has been advanced by Engels, notably in his work ‘The role of labour in the transition of ape to man';
- relations of production, that's to say all of the links between human beings in the social production of their existence, constitute for marxism, the infrastructure of society; other spheres of the latter, juridical relations, modes of thought, etc., depend, in the last instance, of these relations of production;
- Marx considered that in communist society, when labour is emancipated from the constraints of capitalist society which very often transforms it into a real calamity, it will become the primary need of humanity.
It is one the essential bases of solidarity and associated labour.
Solidarity is one of the fundamentals of human society, a characteristic which with the struggle of the proletariat assumes its most complete form, internationalism: solidarity is no longer manifested towards the family, members of the tribe or the nation, but towards the whole human species.
Associated labour supposes that one can count on one and all in the productive process, that one is mutually recognised. This has existed since the beginning of humanity, but in capitalism it takes on its greatest extension. It is really this socialisation of labour which makes communism necessary and possible.
The ICC, with the whole of the marxist vision, has always considered that the progress of technology in no way allows, by itself, a reduction of the workload in the capitalist system. The "natural" tendency of this system is to take still more surplus value from wage labour. And even when there is a reduction in the working week (as was the case in France with the 35-hour's) there was an intensification of rotas, shifts and cuts in breaks, etc. It's a reality which is taking on even more violent forms with the aggravation of the crisis of capitalism which exacerbates the competition between capitalist enterprises and between states.
This is a phenomenon that the ICC has analysed during the last two decades under two angles:
- the retreat in consciousness and combativity within the working class resulting from the collapse of the so-called "socialist" regimes in 1989 and the campaigns around the alleged "definitive victory of liberal capitalism" and the "end of the class struggle";
- the deleterious effects of the decomposition that capitalism engenders, notably "everyman for himself", "atomisation", the "destruction of relations on which all life in society is based" (‘Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism', International Review no. 62, 2nd quarter 1990).
These two factors greatly explain the fact that in the past twenty years capitalism has been able to introduce new methods of servitude without provoking a response from the working class.
Those who kill themselves because of their work are, in general, those who try to resist this growth of barbarity at the workplace. Contrary to many of their colleagues, they are not resigned to submitting to this increase in the workload, the bullying and contempt which is applied to their efforts to "do a good job". But as there is not yet any collective resistance, or sufficient solidarity between the workers, the resistance and revolt against injustice remains individual and isolated. The one and the other are both condemned to failure. And the ultimate consequence of this failure is suicide which is not only an act of despair but also a last cry of revolt against a system that has wiped the individual out. The fact that this revolt takes the form of self-destruction is, in the final count, only another expression of the nihilism invading the whole of capitalist society, itself on the road to self-destruction.
When the proletariat once again takes up its road of massive struggles, when solidarity returns to the proletariat's ranks, there will no longer be suicides at work.
Fabienne and Mg 1/3/10
Our comrade Jerry Grevin, a long-time militant of the ICC's US section, died suddenly of a heart attack on 11th February 2010. His early death is a tragic loss to our organization and to all those who knew him: his family has lost a loving and affectionate husband, father, and grandfather; his colleagues at the college where he taught have lost an esteemed co-worker; his fellow ICC militants, in his section and all over the world, have lost a much-liked and dedicated comrade.
Jerry Grevin was born in 1946, in Brooklyn, into a working-class family of second-generation Jewish immigrants. His parents were imbued with a critical spirit which led them first into, then out of the CPUSA. Jerry's father was deeply shocked by the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which he witnessed as a member of the US occupying forces at the end of World War II; although he never spoke of this experience, and his son only learnt of it much later, Jerry was convinced that this had deepened the anti-patriotic, anti-war spirit he inherited from his parents.
One of Jerry's finest qualities, which never left him, was his burning, unwavering indignation at all forms of injustice, oppression, and exploitation. From his earliest adulthood he took an energetic part in the great social causes of his time. He joined in organizing the mass demonstrations against segregation and racial inequality by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the American South. This demanded no small measure of courage, since activists and demonstrators were routinely subjected to abuse, beatings, and even murder, and Jerry, as a Jew, was not only a fighter against racial prejudice but also an object of racial prejudice himself.1
For his generation, especially in the United States, the other vital issue of the day was opposition to the Vietnam War. Exiled to Montreal in Canada, Jerry was a moving spirit in one of the various committees set up as part of the "Second Underground Railroad"2 created to help deserters from the US Army escape from America and build new lives abroad. He undertook this activity, not as a pacifist, but with the conviction that resistance to the military order could and should be part of a wider class struggle against capitalism, taking part in a short-lived militant publication Worker and Soldier. Many years later, Jerry was able to gain access to a heavily censored copy of his FBI file: its thickness and detail - the file was regularly updated while he was a militant in the ICC - gave him no small satisfaction, and led to some caustic comments at the expense of those who think that police and intelligence services "don't bother" with today's small and "insignificant" groups of militants.
On his return to the United States in the 1970s, Jerry found work as a telephone engineer with one of the major phone companies. It was a turbulent time of class struggle, as the economic crisis began to bite, and Jerry was involved in workplace struggles both large and small, at the same time as he participated in a publication called Wildcat, urging direct action and put out by a small group of the same name. Although he was to become disenchanted with Wildcat's immediatism and lack of any broader, long-term political perspective - it was the search for just such a perspective that led him to join the ICC - his direct, shop-floor experience, coupled with his lively powers of observation and a comprehensive attitude towards the foibles and prejudices of his fellow workers, gave him a profound insight into the way that consciousness develops concretely within the working class. As a militant of ICC, his political arguments would often be illustrated by vivid images, drawn from his own experience.
One such described an incident in the American South, where his gang of New York telephone workers had been sent on a job. A black worker in the group was victimized by management for some alleged misdemeanor; the New Yorkers sprang to his defense, to the surprise of their Southern co-workers: "Why bother?" they asked, "he's only a nigger". To which one of the New Yorkers vigorously replied that color didn't matter, that workers were all workers together, and that they had to defend each other against the bosses. "Now the remarkable thing", Jerry would conclude, "is that this guy who was strongest in defense of the black worker, was known in the group as a racist who himself had moved to Long Island to avoid living in a black neighborhood. And that shows how class struggle and solidarity is the only real antidote to racism".
Another story he liked to tell concerned his first encounter with the ICC. To quote the words of one comrade's personal tribute "As I heard him say a million times, it was when he first met a militant of the ICC when he was, as he described himself, 'an immediatist and individualist youth' writing articles solo and distributing them, that it dawned on him that revolutionary passion without organization can be only a youthful, passing flame. That was when the ICC militant put the question to him, 'OK, you write and you are a marxist. but what do you do for the revolution?'. Jerry told this story often and said that the following night he could not sleep. But it was a sleepless night that brought tremendous fruit". Many would have been put off by the blunt comment he got from the ICC, but not Jerry. On the contrary, this story (which he told with amusement at his own state of mind at the time) reveals another facet of Jerry's character: his ability to accept the force of argument and to change his mind when he was convinced by different ideas - an invaluable quality in the political debate which is the lifeblood of a true proletarian political organization.
Jerry's contribution to the ICC has been inestimable. His knowledge of the workers' movement in America was encyclopedic; his ready pen and his lively vernacular brought this history alive for our readers in his many articles written for our press in the United States (Internationalism) and for the International Review. He also had a remarkable grasp of political life and the class struggle in the USA today, and his articles on current affairs, both for our press and in our internal bulletins have provided a much valued input to our understanding of the politics of the world's greatest imperialist power.
His contribution to the ICC's internal life and organizational integrity was equally important. For many years, he has been a pillar of our American section, a comrade who could always be relied upon to step into the breech when things got difficult. During the discouraging years of the 1990s when the whole world - but perhaps especially the United States - was awash in propaganda over the "victory of capitalism", Jerry never lost his conviction in the necessity and possibility of a communist revolution, he never stopped reaching out to those around him, to the section's rare new contacts. His loyalty to the organization and to his comrades was unshakable, all the more so because, as he put it himself, it was his participation in the ICC's international life that gave him courage and allowed him to "recharge his batteries".
On a more intimate note, Jerry was also an extraordinarily funny man, and a gifted storyteller. He could - he often did - keep an audience of friends or comrades laughing for hours at a time at tales most often drawn from his own observation of life. While his stories sometimes deployed a barbed wit at the expense of the bosses or the ruling class, it was striking that they were never cruel or unkind. On the contrary, they revealed his affection and sympathy for his fellow man, as well as an all too rare ability to laugh at his own weaknesses. This openness to others was doubtless one of the qualities that made Jerry such an effective (and appreciated) teacher - a profession that he came to late in life while already in his forties.
Our tribute to Jerry would be incomplete if we left unmentioned his passion for Zydeco music (a musical form that originated and is still played among the Louisiana creoles). The demon dancer from Brooklyn was known in Zydeco festivals all across the Louisiana back country, and Jerry took pride in the help he was able to offer some young and unknown bands to find venues and an audience in New York. That was Jerry through and through: enthusiastic and energetic in all he undertook, open and warmhearted towards others.
We feel Jerry's loss all the more keenly in that his last years were among his happiest. He was delighted to become the grandfather of an adored grandson. Politically, he saw the development of a new generation of contacts around the ICC's US section and threw himself into the work of correspondence and discussion with all his customary energy. His dedication bore fruit in the Days of Discussion held in New York only a few weeks before his death, which brought together young comrades from all across the USA, many of them meeting each other for the first time. Jerry was delighted at the outcome, and considered this meeting, with all the hopes for the future that it embodied, to be one of the crowning achievements of his militant activity. It is fitting then that we leave the final word to two young comrades, both of whom took part in the Days of Discussion: for JK "Jerry was a trusted comrade, and a warm friend... Jerry's knowledge of the history of the workers' movement in the US; the depth of his personal experience in the struggles of the 70s and 80s and his commitment to keeping the flame of left communism alive in the U.S. through the difficult time following the so-called 'death of communism' were unmatched". For J, "Jerry was something of a political mentor to me over the last year and a half. He was also a very dear friend. (...) He was always willing to talk and help younger comrades learn how to intervene and understand the historical lessons of the workers' movement. His memory will live on in all of us, in the ICC, and throughout the rest of the class struggle".
ICC
1In an infamous case in 1964, three young civil rights activists (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) were murdered by police officers and Ku Klux Klan members. Two of the activists were New York Jews.
2The name "Underground Railroad" was a reference to the 19th century network of safe houses and anti-slavery activists set up prior to the American Civil War to help run-away slaves escape to the American North and Canada.
We have recently, despite the cordon sanitaire imposed by the bourgeoisie and its supposed "means of information", learnt about your struggle to improve working conditions and wages, a struggle in which the crisis of capitalism can clearly be seen. The bourgeoisie throws us into poverty while they live off the blood and sweat we leave on their machines (which we also build, from raw materials which is also extracted at the cost of our lives). The bourgeoisie and its media have done all they can to stop us finding out about the struggle of our class at the international level. Here in Peru there has not even been the smallest report of the struggle you have been waging for a month; faced with this the class has to keep its eyes open, doing all we can to spread information about all our struggles, all our victories and also denouncing the opportunist union organisations and their bureaucratic bosses who play with our lives. We have to support each other across the world, since as the old saying goes "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves". We value and welcome your struggle, because it has animated you through your assemblies and the autonomous organisation that you have used in your struggle.
Here in Peru we are also part of the immense world-wide class and are suffering as you suffer in Turkey. Maybe we are exploited more or less than you, more openly or in a more hidden way, from one region to the other, but we can be sure we are all equally exploited, that we live in poverty at the cost of our labour. We are an international class, the class that creates the world's wealth. We therefore have no nationality but are united by our class interests. At the moment we do not have an international class party to represent us, therefore we in Peru can only send you, with these words couched in proletarian emotion, our solidarity, our sense of being united with you from here.
We want to reinforce our links: against the increased repression of the bourgeoisie we oppose our solidarity and self-confidence, and now more than ever this strike in Turkey has made us aware of our responsibility to group together on a class basis. We are not looking for alliances with the bourgeoisie. We are not going to fall for the lies that the unions in Turkey and throughout the world try to sell us, because they are enemies of the working class, an arm of the capitalist system to keep us from entering into direct struggles, to abort strikes and sit down at the bosses' table asking for charity, for the crumbs that belongs us, for bread that the proletariat made in the first place. We are not taken in by our supposed leaders and callers of strikes, stoppages and struggles. Despite our youth we can see that they are nothing but wolves in sheep's clothing who don't represent the working class but the ruling class. Therefore we trust in you, we trust in the struggle that you are carrying out against exploitation, for a better future, showing what we can achieve when united, stopping production and causing the representatives of the bourgeois state to tremble in their shoes.
Today we all have to be aware that it is not important whether firms are in the hands of private or state ownership; they represent the interests of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Despite the fact that Tekel is in the hands of the state the Tekel workers have always been exploited. We know and re-affirm that the bourgeois state will never solve the problems of capitalism. The bourgeoisie is always telling us that the state is neutral, impartial; that it defends us; they say it is independent of social class, when it is nothing else than a bourgeois tool for ensuring the continuation of capitalist exploitation. The bourgeoisie talks through the mouth of the state. Therefore we salute you and are very enthusiastic to see that your struggle has destroyed this bourgeois illusion; your autonomous struggle shows what we must do at a world-wide level, to regain confidence in our own struggle as the working class and to win society's riches for ourselves. We know about shortages, the fight against the cold, tear gas, police repression, lack of job security and the other expressions of this bourgeois system. Your struggle is a burning light of hope for us, and we fully identify with you. So don't give up comrades! Your struggle has to overcome bourgeois confines, the road will be difficult, but our aims are justified: the state has to be pushed back by the strength that you have demonstrated. Your struggle is an example for the international proletariat.
These bourgeois parasites: how much do they think they will be able to exploit us? How much more of our blood do they think they can drain? How much longer do they think they can live off of us? Our struggle is historical, the class has thousands of experiences. Proletarian brothers: we must not miss this opportunity to draw lessons and apply them to our struggles. We must learn from history and understand that the world is made by us, and therefore belongs to us. The bourgeoisie want to repress you, to stop your struggle, and divide us through fear. They do the same here. How many are they? We are millions, our strength is the confidence that we have in each other. Our united fists raised against one point will make the earth shake and transform it.
We are happy to know that internationally our class has taken up again method of struggle inherent in it. We know comrades that you have joined together in assemblies where you debate and take decisions (there is no better way of discussing the action to take). We also know that our best friend "the strike" is present in your struggle. This is the historical weapon of the class and we have to try to spread it, calling on other sections of the exploited, as we know is happening on the railways and public sector. We are millions, the bourgeois are few. Nobody can stop us!
Your demands are completely just, we hope that they are won, that the struggle goes further, we insist that our class is the only one that can free humanity from the capitalist yoke and get rid of the burden of class society.
This first step is not only yours but part of an immense human tide with the same interests. Your struggle is our struggle; its victory, which we are confident in, will also be our triumph. The international proletariat (of which we are an expression) has its eyes on you, the unfolding of your struggles provides us with lessons, thus we hope that the proletariat's solidarity, organisation and autonomous struggle will take root.
Comrades we are all one, we all have to push forwards the struggle against capitalism. Our lives have already been turned in to commodities. What more can we lose? Only our chains! On the other hand we have everything to win. We are condemned to victory.
Down with the unions that negotiate away workers lives!
Long live the struggle of the international proletariat!
Forward with the struggle comrades!
Nucleo Proletario in Peru, 15/2/10
[email protected] [77]
Thanks to a contribution by a comrade on the 3rd Febrary on the comments section of our Spanish language site, we have learnt about the joint struggle of unemployed and shipyard workers in Vigo in Spain.
We want to thank the comrade for his contribution and to express our agreement with the conclusion that he draws "Only the united struggle of all the unemployed and workers, through joint assembles and demonstrations can we win victory. Greetings to the workers and unemployed of the navel dockyards in Vigo. And workers and unemployed of the world, take up the example of the Vigo shipyards: unity, solidarity, all together we can overcome the capitalist world". In the same way, another contribution to our comments section underlined that "the article on the struggle of the unemployed and workers of the Vigo naval shipyards are lessons we have to take up...workers and unemployed have united together in demonstrations that have stopped the whole shipyard. Take 5 minutes to read it and learn a lot more, greetings".
We have consulted the Europa Press news agency, El Faro de Vigo and La Voz de Galicia to find out more[1], and despite the limitations due to the lack of information about the workers' actions, we can conclude that our contributors are correct to call our attention to the struggles that are taking place in Vigo.
In Vigo there are 60,000 unemployed and in 2009 8000 jobs were lost in the engineering sector alone. Workers' indignation and concern faced with an increasingly difficult future is widespread. In the naval dockyards there have been lay-offs resulting from an agreement between the unions and bosses at Bolsa, which talks about the possibility of some posts in the future.
Those laid off at la Bolsa - some 700- have reacted angrily to the fact that they are to be replaced by foreign workers on temporary contacts with lower pay and terrible conditions. Thus, for example, according to a spokesman for the unemployed "there are workers sleeping in car parks in cars and they can only eat one sandwich a day".
This was the spark that lit the fuse of the struggle. The comrades have made it clear that these struggles are not against the contracted foreign workers. Thus, a spokesman insisted that "we don't have any problems with foreign workers being contracted as long as the Pontevedra agreement is kept to".
Despite this, the media immediately played the card that the workers are xenophobic. For example, El Faro de Vigo titled the article dealing with the struggle "Unemployed metal workers oppose the employment of foreigners" which is a scandalous lie since it is the same unemployed workers who have denounced the bosses' manoeuvre that "took on cheap labour in working conditions close to slavery".
The bourgeoisie is a Machiavellian and cynical class. It employs foreign workers at worse conditions than those born in the country. If the latter struggle against this practice, they are immediately accused of racism, xenophobia, "supporting the extreme right", nationalism etc. When in reality, the response of the workers is not against their class brothers but against them being shipped in under inferior working conditions which drive down everyone's working conditions. This was what we saw in Great Britain in the struggles of the construction workers on the oil refineries and power centres; the struggle concerned all workers, and the movement in the refineries and power stations began to confront nationalism. Likewise the struggle of the workers of the Sestao naval shipyards.
On the 3rd February, the unemployed went to the gate of the Barreras shipyard - the most important in the sector- with the intention of holding an assembly with the workers there. However, the gates were closed so they had to shout slogans, having brought a megaphone in order to explain their demands. In the end a majority of the workers left the yard and joined with the unemployed. According to the Europa Press "Five riot vans were deployed, armed with plastic bullets and riot shields; however eventually they had to retire to the Beiramar roundabout". The Europa Press piece continued "Finally the group formed by the unemployed and workers went off towards Bouza;, along the way they were joined by workers from others shipyards in the area -such as Cardama, Armon or Feire-As; work was stopped throughout the naval dockyards".
In this experience we have seen the expression of solidarity and unity between unemployed and employed comrades; common assemblies, street demonstrations used to make the struggle known to other workers; direct communication and contact with workers from other firms in order to win them over to the common struggle. As in Vigo in 2006, the workers took up the proletarian methods of struggle that have nothing to do with the corporatism and passivity of the unions.
On the 4th the struggle continued. At 10 in the morning, the unemployed assembled again outside the gate of Barreras. Again they united with their comrades inside the gates. Despite the presence of the riot police, they set off again in a demonstration. According to El Faro de Vigo, "yesterday's protest was watched by a strong police presence and there were tense moments, although finally there were no confrontations. The unemployed demonstrated in the area of the ship yards of Beiramar and Bouzas of Vigo, accompanied by workers from this sector, and promised to continue their mobilisation as long as the bosses do not join with them in solving the problems around the hiring of personnel".
We do not have any more news. However, we believe that these facts are significant of the militancy and consciousness of the workers, of the search for unity and solidarity faced with the blows dished out by Capital.
We want to draw the lessons from this movement and to express our active solidarity with those involved. The motivation for launching further struggles are not lacking: we have crossed the 4 million unemployed barrier; the government has announced the extension of the retirement age to 67, an increase in the time of paying contributions etc.
ICC 5/2/2010
[1] (see https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/vigo/2010/02/02/0003_8267541.htm# [79] y https://www.europapress.es/galicia/noticia-parados-naval-manifiestan-vigo-continuaran-movilizandose-arregle-problema-contratacion-20100203140943.html [80])
We have just received the "Appeal" published below from a group of comrades in Australia. The ICC supports this appeal wholeheartedly, and we urge our readers in Australasia or the region to contact the comrades at their mail address (given at the end of the Appeal).
Comrades!
Today humanity faces the same ultimatum posed to it since the eve of the First World War, in the words of Rosa Luxemburg and Friedrich Engels before her - Socialism or Barbarism.
The world capitalist system has seen its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the working class taking the brunt of the blow, everywhere facing wage-freezes, job-cuts and worsening working conditions. The threat of global environmental catastrophe looks more possible than ever before. Bloody and brutal conflicts rage on around the globe - from Iraq to Afghanistan, Somalia to Sudan, Colombia to Mexico.
In contrast to these emanations of a moribund society we also see the germs of a new world - without exploitation or oppression, without poverty or scarcity, without wars or national borders - in the class struggle of the international working class.
The Communist Left has its origins in the Left currents of the Communist International which came into being as a proletarian response to its opportunist slidings when faced with the retreat of the international revolutionary wave in the 1920s. Whilst the Communist Left had expressions in many countries its most prominent representatives were to be found in Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Russia. In the period of counter-revolution which opened at the end of the 1920s, it was the Communist Left which proved to be the most intransigent defenders of proletarian internationalism and the most rigorous in drawing up the balance sheet of the revolutionary wave.
Whilst sympathisers of the Communist Left do exist in Australia, at this point they do so only as individuals suffering largely from political isolation. In order to effectively intervene in the class struggle, it is necessary that revolutionaries organise themselves into a political organisation, founded on the basis of shared positions and principles.
However, at the present hour the immediate formation of such a group is not on the agenda in Australia. What is needed at present is the coming together of internationalists for discussion conducted with the goal of initiating and maintaining contact between comrades (particularly those who are geographically isolated) and collective political clarification of the positions which define the communist programme today.
Thus, we appeal for the initiation of organised discussions between all sympathisers of the Communist Left in Australia. It is proposed that the discussions are conducted under the name: ‘Internationalist Communist Affiliate Network'.
We propose the criteria for participation is agreement with the most elementary positions of left communism today:
All who may be interested in taking part are encouraged to write to [email protected] [84]. We also welcome any comments, questions and criticisms.
With fraternal communist greetings, Fabius, Jack, Max, Niccolo, Thomas
A huge hole in the parched red earth; dozens of bodies of men, women and children; a crowd weeping in grief. Horror has struck again in Nigeria. On the night of 6-7 March, several hundred people, all Christians, were massacred. These new atrocities took place in three villages in Plateau state, in the centre of Nigeria which stands between the south with its Christian majority and the north which has a majority of Muslims. While the corpses were still warm, different factions of the bourgeoisie were squabbling over how many people had died.
This new slaughter carried out by an extremist Muslim group called Boro Haram is just another in a series of killings over a number of years. Last January, over 300 people, mainly Muslims, were killed by Christians in Jos and its environs. Over the last 10 years, according to official figures, 10,000 people have been murdered in this way. And if you go back to Nigerian independence in 1960 you would have to count in millions. There is no doubt that there has been a real development of hatred within the Christian and Muslim populations, but a stark question is posed: who is really responsible for all these massacres? Who is permanently fanning the flames between the different communities? Who is arming and protecting the killers in both camps?
Nigeria is by far the most heavily populated country in Africa. 130 million people live there and have been forced to try to survive in a situation of constant warfare. Between 1967 and 1970, there was a war which left two million dead. At the time, as today, this war was presented as a simple ethnic and religious conflict between the Muslim Hausas in the North and Christian Ibos in the South East. The latter tried to set up an independent state in the south by trying to separate the region of Biafra from the rest of Nigeria. At this time it was British imperialism which still had a major influence in the country despite its formal independence. By encouraging the Biafran secessionist movement, France was trying to weaken British influence in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Ivory Coast, under French control, served as a staging post for the arms being supplied to the Biafran rebels, while Gabon and its capital Libreville were used quite simply as a base for French military and political operations. These murderous policies have not stopped. French imperialism still hasn't succeeded in controlling Nigeria, which has become a focus for countering French influence in the whole of West Africa. France's policies go under the name of ‘Francafrique'. They involve countries like the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger. They are based on intrigue, manipulation and murder. In the period 1993 to 1998, under the rule of Sani Abacha, France made spectacular inroads in Nigeria, pushing back the influence of Britain and the USA. But these powers did not remain inactive. The return to power of Oluseguen Obansanjo in 1999 enabled American imperialism to get its foot back in the door.
The new president of Nigeria presents himself as the number one mouthpiece of the US in West Africa. This allegiance won't last, because he will offer himself to the highest bidder, which will once again prove to be France. During his visit to Paris in 2005, where he met Jacques Chirac and came to get French help in annulling Nigeria's debt, this is what he said: "France can show leadership and courage in this matter by compensating a government which makes reforms, a government which to a large extent looks after the security of West Africa, a government which has shown courage in its struggle against corruption". An appeal which was readily listened to: the Club de Paris, under pressure from the French government, decided to cancel the debt.
Nigeria would not prove ungrateful and is now supporting France in its current involvement in the massacres in Togo, facilitated by Gnassingbe's coup d'Etat. In Nigeria, as in any other African country, not one of the big imperialist gangsters wants to give up its place to its direct competitors. After the massacres on 6-7 March, each of the imperialist predators present in Nigeria vied with each other to be the most hypocritical. The chief of French military diplomacy Bernard Kouchner, was not lagging behind: "France firmly condemns the serious violence against the village communities to the south of the town of Jos in Plateau state. I send my sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims. I express France's support for the Nigerian authorities in their efforts to restore calm and bring the authors of this violence to justice". His US counterpart Hilary Clinton echoed him: "I appeal to Nigerians to come to the conference table and call on the authorities to bring the guilty to justice". Behind these honeyed words hides bitter competition between France and the USA. The northern region, under the weight of decomposition and poverty, is fertile soil for a Taliban type radicalisation, ie inhuman religious fanaticism; as for the south, the zone which possesses considerable oil resources (estimated to make up about 3% of the global total) will continue to be the theatre of ferocious economic and imperialist rivalries. The Nigerian population, like that of the rest Africa and much of the ‘third world', is the prey of capitalist barbarism.
P & T 22/3/10
.
ICC
On
March 2nd, despite all our objections, the tents were taken down by
the union bosses and the street in front of the Turk-Is HQ was
cleared with us being told we had to return home. 70 to 80 of us
stayed in Ankara in order to discuss what we could do for the next
three days. After these three days, 60 of us returned to our
hometowns, and 20 of us including myself stayed for two more days, so
although the Ankara struggle lasted for 78 days, we stayed for 83. We
agreed that we had to work very hard in order to advance the
struggle, and I too eventually returned to Adiyaman. As soon as I got
back from Ankara, 40 of us went to visit our class brothers and
sisters involved in the Cemen Tekstil strike in Gaziantep. The Tekel
struggle was an example to the class. I was, as a Tekel worker, both
proud and also thought that I thought we could do more for our class
and that I had to contribute to our class. Although my economic
situation did not allow it and despite the exhaustion of 83 days of
struggle and other problems, I had to do more than I could to move
the process further. What we had to do was to form a formal committee
and take the process into our own hands. Even if we couldn't
formalize it, we at least had to form it by keeping in contact with
workers from all cities, since we were to return to Ankara on April
1st.
We have to go to everywhere we can and tell people about
the Tekel struggle to its last detail. For this we have to form a
committee and unite with the class. Our job is harder than it seems!
We have deal with capital on the one hand, the government on the
other and the trade-union bosses on the other hand. We all have to
struggle in the best way. Even if our economical situation isn't
good, even if we are physically tired, if we want victory, we have
struggle, struggle, struggle!!!
Although I was away from my
family for 83 days, I stayed at home only for a week. I went to
Istanbul to tell people about the Tekel resistance without even
having a chance to catch up with my wife and children. We had many
meetings of the informal Tekel workers committee especially in
Diyarbakir, Izmir, Hatay, and I participated in many meetings with
fellow workers from the informal committee in Istanbul. We had
meetings in the Mimar Sinan University, one in Sirinevler Teachers'
Hostel, one in the Engineers' Union's building, we had
discussions with pilots and other aircraft workers from the dissident
Rainbow movement in Hava-Is [a trade union], and we met with law
employees. We also met with the Istanbul chairman of the Peace and
Democracy Party and asked for Tekel workers to be given the chance to
speak on the Newroz holiday. The meetings were all very warm. Our
request from the PDP was accepted and they asked me to participate in
the Newroz demonstrations as a speaker. Because I had to return to
Adiyaman, I suggested a fellow worker from Istanbul as a speaker.
While I was in Istanbul, I visited the struggling firemen, Sinter
metal workers, Esenyurt municipality workers, Sabah newspaper and ATV
television strikers on the last day the struggling workers from the
Istanbul Water and Sewers Department (ISKI). For half a day, we
talked with these workers how we can make the struggle grow bigger
and also we told them about the Tekel struggle and discussed. What
the ISKI workers told me first was that they started their struggle
with the courage they got from the Tekel workers. Every demonstration
I went to, every struggle I visited, this I heard, ‘We got courage
from Tekel', in the week I spent in Istanbul, this made me feel the
happiest. The time I spent in Istanbul was very fulfilling for me
also. There were also bad things, of course, unfortunately a close
relative of mine passed away but I still decided not to leave and
stay the whole week as planned.
Speaking of bad things, in
this period, 24 student class brothers and sisters were kicked out of
their school (Mehmetcik High School) for supporting the Tekel
struggle. Also, in Ankara, a class sister of ours from the Scientific
and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), Aynur
Camalan, was fired. When capital is attacking us workers like this,
so ruthlessly, we have to unite against it. Thus we made two press
announcements in Adiyaman and showed that our friends were not alone.
We also had been preparing for the demonstration on April 1st. What
the trade-union bosses wanted was to go to Ankara with 50 people from
every city, with a total of one thousand. As the informal committee,
we increased this number from 50 to 180 in Adiyaman alone, and I
myself came to Ankara with ten other workers on March 31st. Despite
all the announcements of the union to make the number limited to 50,
we managed to help 180 workers come (with us covering the costs, not
the union), because we were aware of how the trade-union wanted to
manipulate like they did before. We had meetings with lots of mass
organizations, associations and unions. We visited Aynur Camalan, the
TUBITAK worker sister, who had lost her job.
On April 1st, we
gathered in Kizilay [the centre of Ankara, the capital of Turkey] but
we had to make a lot of effort to get to the street in front of
Turk-Is, because 15 thousand policemen guarded the building. What
were all these policemen doing in front of us and the trade-union?
Now, we have to ask those who stand against us even when we talk
about the union bosses, even when we say the unions should be
questioned: if there is a 15 thousand-strong police barricade in
front of us and the trade-union, why do the trade-unions exist? If
you ask me, it is quite natural for the police to protect the union
and the union bosses, because don't the union and the
trade-unionists protect the government and capital? Don't the
trade-unions exist only in order to keep the workers under control on
behalf of capital?
On April 1st, despite everything, 35-40 of us
managed to cross the barricade one by one and went to the street in
front of Turk-Is. Our purpose was to have a certain majority and to
manage for other friends of ours to get there, but we failed,
unfortunately our majority couldn't deal with 15,000 policemen. The
trade-union had declared previous that only 1000 of us would come to
Ankara. As the informal committee, we managed to increase this number
to 2300. 15,000 policemen were blocking the way of 2300 people. We
gathered on Sakarya street. We were to at least spend the night
there, with all those who came to support us. Within the day, we had
been attacked twice by the police with pepper gas and police batons.
Our purpose was of course to spend the night on the street in front
of the Turk-Is HQ but when we came up against the police, we stayed
in the Sakarya street, but during the night the trade-unionists
silently and cunningly called for fellow workers to leave the area.
We remained only as a certain minority. The trade-unionists called
myself too several times and told me to leave the area but we did not
heed to the call of the union bosses and stayed as a certain
minority. When the supporters also left around 23:00, we had to leave
as well.
There was to be a press announcement on April 2nd.
When we were about to enter Sakarya street at about 9:00 in the
morning, we were attacked by the police, who again used pepper gas
and batons. An hour or so later, about a hundred of us managed to
cross the barricade and had a sit-in. The police kept threatening us.
We kept resisting. The police finally had to open the barricade and
we managed to unite with the other group who had remained outside. We
started marching towards Turk-Is but the union bosses did what they
had to again, and made their press announcement 100 meter away from
the Turk-Is HQ. No matter how we insisted, the union bosses resisted
to going to the street in front of Turk-Is. The union and the police
joining their hands, and some among us actually falling for what they
stood for, we ended up not managing to go to where we wanted to go.
There was an interesting point among the things the trade-unionists
had said. They said we will come back on June 3rd and stay in front
of Turk-Is for three nights. It is curious how we will manage to stay
there for 3 nights, as we didn't even stay for a single night this
time. Afterwards, the police had to first protect the trade-unionists
from us and aid their escape, then we were left alone with the
police. Regardless of the threats and the pressures of the police, we
did not disperse and then we were once again attacked with pepper
spray and batons and had to disperse. In the afternoon, we had a
black wreath made by some flourists in order to condemn Turk-Is and
the government, which we left in front of the Turk-Is building.
My
dear class brothers and sisters, what we have to question is, if
there are 15 thousand policemen barricaded in front of the
trade-union and the worekrs, why do the trade-unions exist. I am
calling on all my class brothers and sisters, that if we want victory
we have to struggle together. We the Tekel workers have lit a spark,
and we shall turn it into a massive fireball all together. In this
sense, when I express my respect for all of you, I want to conclude
my text with a poem:
The steam of the tea flies away while our
lives are still fresh
Cloths get as long as roads, and only sorrow
returns
A bown of rice, they say our food has landed on our
homes
Yearnings become roads, roads, where does labour go
Hunger
is for us, cold is for us, poverty is for us
They have called in
fate, living with it is for us
Us who feed, us who hunger, us who
are naked again
We have not written this fate, it is us who will
break it yet again
We the Tekel workers say that even if our head
hits the ground, still we shall leave an honorable future for our
children.
A Tekel Worker from Adiyaman
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
against-austerity-class-struggle-britian.pdf [90] | 108.07 KB |
against-austerity-class-struggle-international.pdf [91] | 98.53 KB |
This article is available as a leaflet to download and distribute in two versions: one for Britain [90] and one for the rest of the world [91]
In Greece, there is immense anger and the social situation is explosive. Right now the Greek state is raining blows on the working class. All generations, all sectors of the class are being hit hard. Workers in the private sector, in the public sector, the unemployed, pensioners, students working on temporary contracts... No one is being spared. The working class as a whole is threatened with dire poverty.
In the face of these attacks, the working class is beginning to react. In Greece, as elsewhere, it is coming out onto the streets, going on strike, showing that it is not prepared to put up with the sacrifices demanded by capitalism.
But for the moment, the struggle has not yet become really massive. The workers of Greece are going through a difficult period. What to do when all the media and all the politicians insist that there is no alternative but to pull in your belt and save the country from bankruptcy? How to stand up to the monster of the state? What methods of struggle are needed to establish a balance of force in favour of the exploited?
All these questions are faced not just by the workers of Greece, but by workers all over the world. There can be no illusion: the "Greek tragedy" is just a foretaste of what's waiting for the working class all over the planet. Thus "Greek style austerity packages" have already been officially announced in Portugal, Rumania, Japan and Spain (where the government has just cut public sector workers' pay by 5%!) In Britain, the new coalition government has only just started to reveal the extent of the cuts it's aiming to make. All these attacks, carried out simultaneously, show once again that the workers, whatever their nationality, are part of one and the same class which everywhere has the same interests and the same enemies. Capitalism forces the proletariat to endure the heavy chains of wage labour, but these same chains also link together the workers of all countries, across all frontiers.
In Greece, it's our class brothers and sisters who are under attack and who have begun to fight back. Their struggle is our struggle.
We have to reject all the divisions the bourgeoisie tries to impose on us. Against the old principle of all ruling classes - "divide and rule" - we have to raise the rallying cry of the exploited: "workers of all countries, unite!"
In Europe, the different national bourgeoisies are trying to make us believe that it's all down to Greece that we are going to have to pull in our belts. The dishonesty of the people in charge of Greece, who have allowed the country to live on credit for decades and have fiddled the public accounts, they are the main cause of the "international crisis of confidence" in the euro. One after the other, governments are using this false pretext to explain the need to reduce deficits and bring in draconian austerity measures.
In Greece, all the official parties, with the Communist Party at the forefront, are whipping up nationalist feelings, blaming "foreign powers" for the attacks. "Down with the IMF and the European Union!" "Down with Germany!" - these are the slogans raised in the demonstrations by the left and the extreme left, doing their best to defend Greek national capitalism.
In the USA, if the stock markets are taking a dive, it's all down to the instability in the EU; if companies are closing down, it's a result of the weakness of the euro, which is a handicap for the dollar and US exports...
In short: each national bourgeoisie is accusing its neighbour and blackmailing the workers it exploits: "accept sacrifices, otherwise the country will be weakened, and our competitors will take advantage of us". In this way the ruling class is trying to inject us with nationalism, which is a dangerous poison for the class struggle.
This world of division into competing nations is not ours. The working class has nothing to gain from being chained up to the capital of the country it lives in. To accept sacrifices today in the name of "defending the national economy" is just a way of preparing the ground for further and harder sacrifices tomorrow.
If Greece is on the edge of the abyss; if Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal are close behind; if Britain, France, Germany, the US are also in deep trouble, it's because capitalism is a dying system. All countries are doomed to sink deeper and deeper into this mess. For the last 40 years the world economy has been in crisis. Recessions have succeeded each other one after the other. Only a desperate flight into debt has up till now enabled capitalism to achieve any degree of growth. But the result of this today is that households, companies, banks and states are now weighed down with debt. The bankruptcy of Greece is just a caricature of the general and historical bankruptcy of this system of exploitation.
The austerity plans now being announced are a frontal, generalised attack on our living conditions. The only possible response is therefore a massive movement from the workers. It's impossible to respond to these attacks by fighting in your own corner, in your own factory, school or office, isolated and alone. Fighting back on a massive scale is a necessity. It's the only alternative to being crushed separately and reduced to poverty.
But what is being done by the trade unions, those official ‘specialists' of the struggle? They organise strikes in numerous workplaces... without ever trying to unite them. They actively encourage sectional divisions, especially between private and public sector workers. They march the workers out on sterile ‘days of action'. They are in fact specialists in dividing the working class. The unions are equally adept at instilling nationalism. One example: the most common slogan of the Greek trade unions since the middle of March has been "buy Greek!"
Following the trade unions always means following the road to division and defeat. Workers need to take the struggle into their own hands, by organising in general assemblies and deciding on the demands and slogans to raise, by electing delegates who can be recalled at any moment and by sending massive delegations to discuss with other groups of workers, in the nearest factories, offices, schools and hospitals, with the aim of encouraging them to join the movement.
Going outside the trade unions, daring to take control of the struggle, taking the step of going to see other sectors of workers... all that seems very difficult. This is one of the obstacles to the development of the struggle today: the working class lacks confidence in itself. It is not yet aware of the enormous power it holds in its hands. For the moment, the violence of the attacks being mounted by capitalism, the brutality of the economic crisis, the proletariat's lack of self-confidence - all this tends to have a paralysing effect. The workers' response, even in Greece, is still well below what the gravity of the situation demands. And still the future belongs to the class struggle. Against the attacks, the only way forward is the development of increasingly massive movements.
Some people ask: "why wage such struggles? Where can they lead? Since capitalism is bankrupt, and no reform is really possible, doesn't that mean that there's no way out?" And indeed, inside this system of exploitation, there is no way out. But refusing to be treated like dogs and fighting back collectively means standing up for our dignity. It means realising that solidarity does exist in this world of competition and exploitation and that the working class is really capable of bringing this priceless human feeling to life. And then the possibility of another world can start to appear, a world without exploitation, nations or frontiers, a world made for human beings and not for profit. The working class can and must have confidence in itself. It alone is capable of building this new society and reconciling humanity with itself by taking what Marx called "the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom".
Capitalism is bankrupt, but another world is possible: communism!
International Communist Current, 24 May 2010Attachment | Size |
---|---|
BA leaflet.pdf [93] | 213.77 KB |
This article is available as an article here [93] to download and distribute.
So, finally, the BA strike is on.
To judge from the media, you'd think the whole issue was something that goes on in the courts and in the top level negotiations between BA and union bosses.
First the courts issued an injunction against the strike- the latest in a series which have blocked even the most carefully organised official strikes, the most recent being the RMT strike a few weeks ago. Then the Court of Appeal overturned the injunction.
Is this because the courts can really be on the side of the workers? No. Most likely it's because parts of the ruling class have realised that if you legally abolish even the appearance of a ‘right to strike', workers will have no alternative but to take matters into their own hands. The example of the unofficial oil refinery strikes, which spread so rapidly across the country, is very fresh in their memory.
The truth is, however, that the ruling class have already made all effective strike action illegal. The law on ballots - aimed at preventing workers from taking decisions in mass meetings where they feel strongest and can launch struggles on the spot. The law on secondary action - aimed at preventing workers from going directly to workers from other categories and companies and asking them to join their fight.
These laws are often described as ‘Thatcher's anti-union laws'. In reality, Thatcher only carried on where the previous Labour government had left off; and the laws are really designed to increase the unions' grip over the workers, by outlawing all spontaneous, wildcat actions.
So now the BA workers are on strike. And there's no doubt that there is a strong will and determination on their part. Coming out on strike and losing pay at a time when many are struggling with rising living costs is not an easy decision to make. And the media, with their incessant campaigns about all the ‘inconvenience' caused by the strikes, are doing their best to make workers feel guilty and isolated.
The problem is that the strike is taking place inside the cramped confines of the law and the union rule book, which are tailor-made to isolate workers even more.
The BA workers are not alone
Over the last decade and, especially since the September 11th attacks in New York, there has been a crisis in the airline industry. This has lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, for example a report in the eTurbo News website (posted 24th February) states "As the U.S. airline industry lost tens of billions of dollars over the past 10 years, it also lost a tremendous number of employees. Nearly one in every four U.S. airline jobs disappeared in the 10 years that ended Dec. 31, and the largest airlines were among the hardest hit, according to new data." As it says, the largest airlines have been the hardest hit leading to huge job losses, 'voluntary' redundancies, agreements for the suspension of pay, changing shift patterns and attacks on travel 'perks' for airline employees. And this was before the current debt crisis hit the world. We are now seeing the bankruptcy not just of the big financial institutions but of entire nation states: Greece is in the front line but the whole Eurozone is under threat, as is Britain itself.
None of the election parties made any secret of the fact that they were preparing to make huge cuts to deal with Britain's debt. The new government has already set the ball rolling. The public sector will be hardest hit, but no workers' job is safe today.
So BA cabin crew are in the same situation as the entire working class. But the present strike is being limited even within BA - to the cabin crew, as if the thousands of other BA employees from pilots to baggage handlers and catering and cleaning staff - haven't also got their grievances against the company. And as if hundreds of thousands of other workers employed by other airlines aren't facing the same attacks on their conditions.
There's a crying need for solidarity, for workers raising common demands and fighting together. But experience has shown that they can only get this solidarity if they act on their own behalf. The best example in the airline industry was supplied by the baggage handlers in 2005, when they walked out in solidarity with Gate Gourmet workers who were being trampled on by management. No ballots, no separation between workers with different jobs or bosses.
This kind of solidarity is what workers need now, and it will mean ‘illegally' making decisions in mass meetings, ‘illegally' sending pickets and delegations to workers in other categories and asking them to join the struggle. The law is there to protect the bosses and their state. Workers' solidarity can only develop if we develop our own power against them.
WR, 25/5/10.
"Guayana is a powder-keg". This phrase is often repeated by the representatives of the bourgeoisie, the leaders of political parties and unions, whether they are members of the opposition or favourable to the Chavez government; this is how all of them talk about the struggles and mobilisations being carried out by the working class in Cuidad Guayana (also known as the ‘Iron Zone', a huge working class concentration in the state of Bolivar, Venezuela) - movements that express the profound discontent of the Venezuelan working class as a result of the repeated attacks on its living conditions."
The region of Ciudad Guayana is one of the biggest working-class concentrations in the country, with more than 100,000 workers who work in the so-called "Basic Companies" that produce and process iron, steel and aluminium; including an important number of workers in small and medium size companies that supply the big companies.
The whole of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie knows that Guayana is an area to be reckoned with. Since the 1960's the Guayana proletariat has shown its will to fight; one of the more remarkable struggles took place at the end of the decade, when the workers of the SIDOR steel company (one of the biggest in Latin America) confronted the state forces and the main union at the time, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV). At that time, angry steel workers travelled the 380 miles from Guayana to Caracas to protest opposite the CTV headquarters, which were burnt by the strikers.
Chavez's government had a direct experience of the worker's courage in May 2001, when the SIDOR workers struck for 21 days due to the management's refusal to discuss the recently expired collective agreement[1].This forced the CTV and the steel union SUTISS[2] to join forces in order to prevent the strike spreading to other businesses in the region. So serious was the conflict that Chavez himself had to praise the strike's success to save face for the "workers' government".
From 2002 on, in Guayana as in the rest of the country, the proletariat was more and more led into political traps by the CTV-controlled unions, who opposed Chavez, as well as by the pro-Chavez unions (with Trostkyist currents acting inside them), who were starting to grow stronger. In this way the bourgeoisie got some peace on the labour front, leading the proletariat onto a ground where its interests didn't lie, creating division among the workers and weakening their class solidarity.
But in 2007, at the same time as the oil workers were coming into struggle, the Guayana proletariat took up the fight again: the Venezuelan proletariat was searching for its class identity, confronting its enemies with its own demands. In view of this increase in labour conflicts Chavez's government, with the union's support, ordered SIDOR's nationalisation in March 2008; this was greeted with great fanfare. Nevertheless the nationalisation trick failed to stifle the workers' discontent even if it slowed down the demonstrations for some months. The workers kept putting on pressure for the discussion of the collective agreement; the precarious workers of the small businesses linked to the steel company mobilised to demand being hired directly by the steel company. As the permanent workers started showing their solidarity towards the precarious ones, the government and the unions began to attack and weaken this movement. Even so retired SIDOR workers as well as workers in the aluminium, iron and electrical industries held several demonstrations in 2008, demanding outstanding wages among other things (see the article ‘The bourgeois state of Chavez attacks the steel workers', https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/apr/steel-struggles [95] )
But it was during 2009 that the struggle intensified:
- in July the aluminium workers started demonstrations that went on for a week:
they demanded the payment of social benefits the workers are normally given in
the middle of the year. The government suggested paying this in several parts;
this enraged the workers who protested opposite the offices of the CVG (Corporación Venezolana de Guayana), which
forced the government to divide the payment into two parts only;
- a few days later a SIDOR worker was killed in an industrial accident. That
provoked a 24 hour strike in the steel plant: the workers demanded more
investments for repairs because the accident happened as a result of a lack of
maintenance in the system;
- that very month SIDOR workers started demonstrations in Guayana to demand
payment from a profit-sharing scheme, a bonus the workers get in the middle of
the year but which the company had failed to pay;
- in August in Ferrominera Orinoco (an iron extracting company), there was a
strike that went on for 16 days in Ciudad Piar. The struggle was particularly
strong in the San Isidro mine, where the workers remained firm on their demands
for back payments and safety measures, all of them recent benefits achieved in
the collective agreement. For 16 days the government and the management kept
the strike "blacked out" A month later the general secretary of the Ferrominera
union along with 10 workers was put under arrest;
- in October several workers and the CVG
union leader were put under arrest too, while protesting opposite the Basic
Companies Minister, Rodolfo Sanz, demanding the supply of work uniforms and
other contractual claims;
- in December SIDOR workers went on an 8 hour strike because of the delay in the
payment of the end-of-the-year bonuses; also the workers of the Basic Companies
Carbonorca, Bauxilum and Alcasa protested because of the delay in payment of
wages and bonuses;
- in 2009 the Ferrominara, Orinoco and Bauxilum co-op workers protested
and so did the precarious employees of a company nationalised in 2009, Matesi.
Given that these mobilisations couldn't be stopped, either by the bureaucrats in government or by the unions, Chavez himself had to handle the issue: in March 2009 in Ciudad Piar he gave the Basic Company workers the stick, accusing them of pursuing "wealth" and "privileges", trying to sow discord between them and other workers and the population of the area in order to demoralise them, the same way he did with the oil workers in 2002[3]. Playing the fear card didn't work however, and the protests carried on, so he had to come back to Guayana two months later, this time "praising" the workers as a way of winning their support for the Socialist Guayana Plan which was supposed to take the local companies out of the crisis.
According to Chavez Venezuela is armoured against the crisis of capitalism. In fact the Venezuelan state is in a dangerous position because the fall in raw material prices after 2008 has limited national revenue and shown up a long-hidden reality: the Basic Companies are practically bankrupt and are a heavy burden on the state because of their low productivity, resulting from their obsolescence and lack of maintenance. The workers are made to pay the consequences of this of course: the state has refused to discuss the collective agreements on wages and bonuses, wage payments are delayed and the workers are even threatened with redundancies. As the bourgeoisie does at a global level, the crisis is used as a tool to attack workers' living standards and make their employment less secure. And since the end of 2009 rationing in electricity supply has been used to limit the production of iron and aluminium, putting pressure on part of the staff to take forced holidays and developing a situation of distress and insecurity among workers. Pushed by the workers' mobilisations the state has been forced to sign a number of collective agreements but delays in the paying of wages are common and are a frequent source of distress among workers.
It can be seen that capitalism's world crisis and its effects on Venezuela has become a factor that increases the workers' willingness to fight, since it cuts the state's income and therefore the national bourgeoisie's leeway, and they inevitably try to unload the crisis onto the workers' backs. The Guayana companies' unions, mostly pro-Chavez, are quickly losing credibility among the workers; the attempts to turn the local masses against the workers - using the Consejos Comunales (communal councils)- have failed, since the population is mainly made up of proletarian families whose survival depends on the workers, most of whom work precisely in the Basic Companies. Owing to the high working class concentration and the resistance shown by the workers, the bourgeoisie is not easily able to use the weapon of mass unemployment since it could be the fuel for upheavals and revolt among the population.
This situation has led to an impasse in the region: the bourgeoisie can't apply its plans in its own way and the proletariat, for the time being, hasn't got the force to impose itself against the state. This means that Guayana is a pressure cooker that could explode at any time.
For Chavism and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, Guayana has been a laboratory in its efforts to his wish to make employment more precarious. After having progressively weakened the working conditions of the oil workers, the bourgeoisie wants to do the same to the workers in the Iron Zone - workers which it sees as part of the "labour aristocracy" produced by the Social Democratic and Social Christian governments before Chavez.
In the middle of the last decade it was intended to make ALCASA (an aluminum producing plant and the first co-managed company) a model for the rest of the companies in the country. Actually the example it set was in the way it attacked the conditions of the aluminium workers, through the promotion of "socialist values", that is, work more and earn less; something like Stakhanovism, the "socialist emulation" promoted by the Stalinist bourgeoisie, whose main mouthpiece in Cuba was Che Guevara[4]. But workers in ALCASA didn't buy that, didn't accept worsening working conditions and reduced benefits, and co-management in the aluminium sector was a complete failure.
The government tried to do something similar with the "Socialist Gurayana Plan", based on "workers' control over production" through the "Consejos de Trabajadores" or "Workers' Councils", state institutions allegedly inspired by the Russian soviets of 1917.... Faced with the crisis in the basic industries, Chavism has taken on the Trotskyist slogan of "workers' control", which is very convenient for the bourgeoisie since it would lead the workers to accept the dterioration of their conditions with the excuse of "saving" the companies; thus, for example, the plan suggests the abolition of the "maximisation of profits at an individual level". Leading this project are the PSUV (Socialist Unified Party of Venezuela) and the companies' unions, all of them supporters of the Chavez project.
The Trotskyist unions, nowadays dissident Chavists, denounce this plan since it's not "genuine" workers' control and the state is still the boss. In this sense they serve to trick the workers into accepting the logic of defending the interests of the national capital, proposing that they should save the companies through a true workers' control. In short, encouraging the workers to accept a form of self-exploitation where the bureaucrats are replaced by workers (preferably Trotskyist ones of course).
But the workers don't easily buy such fairy tales: after the Plan was approved last June they carried on the struggle for wage increases. This pushed the state to sign some collective agreements, while the pro-government unions tried to divert workers' anger into a battle against the bureaucracy who, according to them, are the ones preventing "workers' participation"; they have even gone as far as supporting actions promoted by dissident unions to save their face in front of the workers. This context has been favourable to anti-Chavist union tendencies like the Trostkyist CCURA[5], who introduce themselves as equally critical of Chavism and the opposition.
In view of the persistance of the workers in fighting for their demands, the government has attempted to criminalise the struggle: temporary arrests of workers, redundancy threats, even overt repression. These state actions, accompanied by union sabotage, led the protests to fall back at the beginning of 2010. Nevertheless in Guayana the atmosphere is of unresolved tension, an imposed calm that can explode any time.
The attacks of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie are leading the Guayana proletariat to take a stand on a class terrain, showing that it is not willing to sacrifice itself passively for the bourgeois project of "21st century socialism". It seems that with the acceleration of capitalism's crisis the proletariat is recovering its combativity.
The Guayana proletariat, like the whole of the working class, hasn't got any other option: either it carries on the fight against the attacks of capital (state or private) or capital will further impoverish workers and their families. The actions of the unions (those false friends of the workers but genuine defenders of national capital), corporatism, co-operativism, workers' control, co-management, all the schemes aimed at locking up the workers in "their " companies, all of them are factors that hinder the class struggle. The answer to these and other obstacles has been provided by the working class itself: the assemblies where grass-roots workers can express themselves; the spreading of struggles and the seach for class solidarity, not only in Guayana's companies but on a national, even international, level.
In Guayana the conditions are coming together for developing and strengthening solidarity between the workers and the population, since most of the inhabitants of the region have a relative in the local companies. If Guayana's proletariat is able to keep the fight going in spite of the abuse from government, parties and unions, it will set an example to the rest of the workers in the country, and create a link between its struggle and the movements of the global proletariat in Greece, Spain, France, Peru and other countries.
The task of the most politicised minorities in the class is to take part with all their strength in the process of resistance by the proletariat in Guyana and all around the country; their task is to denounce all the traps and obstacles on the path towards class consciousness. The proletariat of Guayana and Venezuela is not alone in its task, since its fight is part of a movement that is slowly emerging at a global level.
Internacionalismo, 06/03/2010
[1] At this time state capital had a minority paricipation in steel, the majority being in the hands of the private capital of the Tchint corporation
[2] Unified union of the steel industry, then controlled by a centre left party
[3] Chavez could not hide his anger at the workers at this point: "We are going to profit from this to clean up the enterprises of the CVG. If they threaten to stop work or they do stop work, I will deal with this myself! I have already been through the strike at Pàvsa....people who go on strike in a state enterprise are bothering the president of the republic" (Correo del Caroni, 7.3.2009).
[4] It's no accident that one of the government Missions is called ‘Che Guevara'. As it preaches on its website, it offers "an integral programme of training and qualification in the productive occupations, aimed at transforming the capitalist economic model into a socialist model"
[5] See the article in Internacialismo 58, ‘Correo del Lector: Los trabajadores inician la lucha, los sindicatos la sabotean' (‘Reader's letter: the workers enter into struggle, and the unions sabotage it')
https://es.internationalism.org/ismo/2000s/2010s/2010/58_E [96]
Recently the media has been talking about revolution and we have seen scenes of mass street protests and violence on our TV screens. In Kyrgyzstan, armed workers in the street kicked out the government. In Thailand, massive political protests by ‘Red Shirts' have been continuing for more than a month now. For communists it is important to ask what the nature of these movements is.
Firstly the movement in Kyrgyzstan, in April, certainly included large numbers of workers on the streets. In the months preceding the events there had been massive prices increases; gas for heating had risen 400% and electricity by 170%. All this in a country where the average monthly wage is only around $30-50. Events came to a head on April 6th with a massive protest in Tals, caused by another round of price increases in fuel and transport costs. These rises were directly caused by Russia's decision to impose new duties on energy exports to Kyrgyzstan on April 1st. Demonstrators stormed the government buildings, but they were later retaken by riot police.
The following day protests in the capital, Bishek, were attacked by police who disarmed them taking control of police vehicles and automatic weapons. The demonstrations grew, and the police responded with more violence. Protestors then drove two trucks at the gates of the Presidential White House, and the police responded by firing live ammunition, killing at least 41 protestors. Later in the day protestors stormed the palace, and the government was forced to flee.
A paper of the English ruling class, The Financial Times, quoted exiled opposition leader, Edil Baisalov as saying "What we are seeing is a classic popular uprising. This is a revolution, and it is bloody. ...This is what happens when you hold the lid on the cooking pot too tightly - it explodes".
It is clear that the government was overthrown. The question that communists have to answer is whether this was a revolution, or whether it was a struggle in which workers were used between different ruling class groups struggling to control the state.
For us, it is very clear that what has happened here is merely a change of bosses. Interestingly enough the recently ousted President Bakayev came to power just 5 years ago in the so-called "Tulip revolution", another ‘popular' movement. Although workers were the ones who actually overthrew the government, they weren't fighting for their own interests. There were no workers' councils, no workers organs' prepared to seize power. The workers were being used as foot soldiers by different factions of the bosses. Roza Otunbayeva, the acting head of the provisional government, was previously foreign minister of the government after the "Tulip revolution" It would be fair to say that nothing has changed but the faces of the leaders, and not even all of them.
Added to this is the international dimension. Russia and the US, who have been in dispute for some time about US bases in Kyrgyzstan and the region as a whole, were quick to deny Russian involvement. Michael McFaul, a senior United States White House adviser on Russian affairs, was quick to state that the seizure of power by the Kyrgyz opposition was not anti-American in nature, and was not a Russian backed coup. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself denied any Russian involvement and said that the incident had personally caught him "off guard" and that "Neither Russia nor your humble servant nor Russian officials have anything to do with these events". Unfortunately for them, the new rulers of Kyrgyzstan don't have the same experience of playing political games. Omurbek Tekebayev, a leading figure in the new government gave the game away: "Russia played its role in ousting Bakiyev. You've seen the level of Russia's joy when they saw Bakiyev gone". Russia immediately recognized the new government, and Putin quickly rang Otunbayeva to ‘congratulate' her. On the 9th April, Almazbek Atambayev, deputy head of the new government, was in Moscow for ‘consultation' with unspecified Russian government officials, according to the official Russian state news agency.
The events in Thailand also seem to be a struggle between different factions of the ruling class. The ‘Red Shirts', the nickname of the ‘National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship', is mostly a movement in support of the multi-billionaire, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former Prime Minister of Thailand in exile from Thailand due to corruption charges. The ‘Red Shirt' movement is basically one of the urban and rural poor, mobilised behind the new bourgeoisie, who are opposed to the ‘old' military and monarchist factions. It is not a movement of, or controlled by, the working class. The only workers' action during this period, a strike of 8,000 workers at the Camera maker Nikon, emerged completely independently of the ‘Red Shirt' movement.
And here lies the central point of our argument. These so-called ‘revolutions', like the ‘Green movement' in Iran recently, are not movements of the working class. Yes, there are many workers involved in them, and probably in the case of Kyrgyzstan a majority of the participants were workers, but they take part in these actions as individuals not as workers. The movement of the working class is one that can only be based upon class struggle of workers for their own interests, not cross-class alliances and populist movements. It is only within a massive movement of strikes that the working class can develop its own organs, mass meetings, strike committees and ultimately workers' councils, that can assert working class control over the movement, and develop a struggle for working class interests. Outside of this perspective is only the possibility of workers being used as cannon-fodder for different political factions. In Greece, perhaps, we can see the very start of the long slow development towards this process. In Kyrgyzstan, and Thailand, we only see workers getting shot down in the streets on behalf of those who want to be the new bosses.
Sabri, 1/5/10.
ANew Acceleration of Global Crises of Capitalism and Perspectivesfor the Development Class Struggle
ICC held a public meeting in New Delhi on 2 May 2010on the above subject. The meeting went on from 12.30 Hours to 17.30 Hrs and discussionsduring the meeting turned out quite lively.
Discussion was divided in two parts:
1. New acceleration of crises exemplified byeconomic collapse of Greece.
2. The development of class struggle in theface of generalized attacks
A New Acceleration of Crises
ICC opened the meeting with a presentation focusedon the first part of the discussion. Presentation spoke of the open expressionsof this crisis: spiraling of budget deficit of Greece to 13.6%, its Debt to GDPratio to 115%, downgrading of Greece Government loans to the level of junk andrefusal by banks to give any loans to Greek state thus threatening its bankruptcy.Although events in Greecewere expression of a serious crisis, the reason they sent shock waves throughthe world bourgeoisie was not due to any concern for Greece. The reason for the fear ofthe world bourgeoisie lies in their knowledge that Greece is not exception. Othercountries in Europe are in the same or worsesituation. At 12%, Budget deficit of Britainis second highest in Europe, followed by Spainat 11.2% and Portugalat 9.3%. Thus, far from being anexception, the bankruptcy that is staring Greece today is a curtain raiser forthe fate of many countries in the world.
These events denote a new, catastrophic accelerationof global capitalist crises that began in 2008. The discussions saw the present acceleration asa continuation of the crises of 2008. In 2008 bourgeoisie was able to avoid collapseof global financial system by gigantic injection of the same medicine,mountains of new debts, which had caused these catastrophic explosions in thefirst place. That exercise did stave off a complete collapse of the financialsystem at the moment. But this effort of saving the system by more of the samedid not resolve the problems afflicting the global capitalist system.
While immediate background of threat ofbankruptcy of capitalist states is the shattering of the global financialsystem in 2008, its roots go back to the end of 1960's. 1968 is the year when the period ofreconstruction ushered by world war two came to an end and when a cycle ofinexorable permanent decline and collapse of capitalism began. Since then thebourgeoisie has met every cycle of crises of over production by creating moredebts to artificially stimulate the markets, try to overcome its immediateproblems and postpone the hour of reckoning. Over the last some decades, giventhe fact that real economy has continued to shrink, especially in advancedcapitalist countries, these debts have only been offset by newer and moregigantic debts, both private and state. Also, as the real economy declined andavenues for capital to earn profits by productive means disappeared,bourgeoisie has more and more turned to exotic, speculative methods to earnprofits, method that even the bourgeoisie now call gambling and casino economy.Although the states now blame banks, it is not only the banks that haveresorted to this gambling with trillions of dollars. Even manufacturingcompanies, unable to earn profits in their own businesses, resort to thesespeculations and bets.
The collapse of the financial sector thatoccurred in 2008 was result of the explosions of contradictions that had beengathering within capitalism since previous decades. This collapse came as thecrises of gigantic debt that could no longer be paid and that pulled down anddestroyed some of the greatest banks in the world. The world bourgeoisie wasable to avert complete collapse of its system by pumping trillions of dollarsinto banks and into the economy in general. This did not resolve anything forthe bourgeoisies. It only meant that the hour has been postponed and the logicthat had pulled down the banks in 2008 will soon apply to the states that havebeen building debts.
This is what is happening today. Manystates, even USA whosebudget deficit is 12.3%, are in same condition as Greece. Many have debts that arebigger than their GDP. These have to be paid. The capitalist ‘markets' believethat many of these debtor states can not really repay and they stopped lendingmore money to these states. This is what triggered the bankruptcy of Greece. Many Europeancountries are in the same boat. Their incomes are not enough even to sustaintheir current expenses what to talk of sparing money for repayment of debts.These states are therefore starting a new, brutal offensive against the workingclass. Greecehas declared reduction of wages and pensions of public sector workers by 25%and similar cuts in social wages. Other countries like Spain, Portugaland Britainare preparing the same.
A possibility was posed - the bourgeoisiewill possibly resort to nationalizations to overcome its crises. After all thishas served the bourgeoisie well in the past. Why not now?
Ensuing discussion tried to clarify why thisis not an option for bourgeoisie today. It cannot really help the bourgeoisieto improve the situation. In this context the discussion recalled the wholehistory of nationalizations and the conditions in which it served thebourgeoisie well. Discussion further recalled how and why, in the face ofworsening crises, the process of denationalization, began in 1980's. Today theconditions are such that nationalizations will not solve any problems for thebourgeoisies.
Another question was posed. Why shouldworking class in Indiabother about Greece?After all Indian economy seems to be doing well. In response discussionrecalled the experience of 2008. When the global financial system collapsed,the bourgeoisie in Indiainitially showed nonchalance. The crises will not touch us, they said. Butsituation quickly changed, exports fell dramatically and whole sectors of theeconomy - auto, construction, cement, textiles, diamond exports, IT etc - justground to halt with millions of workers loosing their jobs. This was inaddition to the immense poverty and misery that is the lot of the working classin India.What 2008 proved was that Indian economy is tightly linked to global economy.Any storms in the world capitalist system can not but shake up the Indianeconomy. In 2008, Indian bourgeoisie also used the same medicine to get out ofthe crisis as the rest of global bourgeoisie - more debts, easing of moneysupply. As the present storms in the world capitalist system gather strength,it can not but shake up Indian economy and further accelerate attacks on theworking class in India.
In the context of worsening economicconditions of the working class in India, an intervention raised the questionof very high levels of unemployment in India that is destroying the future ofwhole generations of people.
Development of Class Struggle
The briefpresentation initiating this discussion explained that today the working classis not defeated. It has already been developing its struggles everywhere in theworld. Also, there is a tendency for these struggles to be more and moresimultaneous. Different parts of the class in same geographic areas arestruggling at more or less the same time thus opening up the possibility ofextension and development of solidarity. This can also be seen in struggles inGurgaon last year.
At thesame time, bourgeoisie has now started open, brutal and generalised attacksagainst the working class in many countries in the world. This is alreadyforcing the working class to respond in a massive manner and will do the samein the coming period. These have the potential of developing into massstruggles. The development of these struggles and their politicization providesworking class with an opportunity to develop its challenge to the capitalistsystem.
A long anddeep discussion developed on this. Several questions were posed and clarified:
1. Is it given that this newacceleration of crises will give rise to massive struggles of the class?
2. What has been stoppingthe class from developing a massive response so far?
3. What is the role of therevolutionaries in all this?
4. What should we do?
Thediscussion concluded that the present acceleration of crises opens a period ofimpoverishment and suffering for the working class. But it also provides anopportunity for the class to develop its class identity, its class unity, itsstruggles and its consciousness. It provides an opportunity for the class todevelop mass struggles that can open a challenge to the bourgeoisie. There isnothing predetermined about it but indications seems to point to a directionwhere all this may yet be realized.
Thediscussion tried to answer ‘what has stopped the class so far'. One point made duringthis discussion was on loss of historical continuity, loss of the profound learningand deepening of consciousness that the working class had gone throughprogressively from early 19th century up to the Russian revolution. Thiswas a great strength of the class in that period and allowed it to quicklyovercome major setbacks. This strength was lost when revolution in Russiadegenerated and was defeated in other countries. Stalinist counter-revolution thattriumphed in Russiawas able to burry these historical acquisitions and strengths of the class. Ofthe many other barriers today are: weight of trade unionism, myth of democracy,nationalism, ethnicism, weight of decomposition and every man for himself andnear totalitarian control of the bourgeois propaganda.
Adiscussion on the role of revolutionaries started by underlining two things:
- Their indispensable role in the struggle of the workingclass for its self emancipation;
- Ability of the class to develop its struggles in the faceof attacks of the bourgeoisies.
Whetherthe workers in Greece, in Portugal, in Spainor Britainwill be able to respond to the massive attacks of the bourgeoisie is notdetermined by the presence or absence of revolutionaries. If it were so, thenthe cause of the working class will be a lost one. It is the very nature of theworking class, its place in capitalist society that leads it to develop itsidentity, its unity and it's combat against the bourgeoisie. It is in theprocess of politcisation of its struggles, in their posing the question of thedestruction of capitalist society and construction of communist society thatthe role of revolutionaries becomes indispensable.
Answering thelast question - ‘what should we do', ICC explained that the best way tostrengthen the struggle of the working class today is by helping build andstrengthen revolutionary organizations. Comrades present could accelerate theireffort to clarify the communist positions, build solidarity with us, join theICC and help develop communist intervention in the working class so that questionof politicizations of the struggles of the working class and destruction ofcapitalism can be practically posed.
Jvn, 9th May 2010
As it became clear that David Cameron was going to become Prime Minister, Socialist Worker (11/5/10) published an online article that started "The open class enemy is poised to enter 10 Downing Street."
In continuity with its entire history the SWP again wheeled out the idea that a vote for Labour showed a basic class instinct.
It's true that when workers go to polling stations they often vote Labour. Take a look at the maps published at every election. The bits coloured red, showing where the Labour vote is (in Central Scotland, the North East, North West, Midlands, South Wales and London) are particular concentrations of the working class. Of all the papers only the Mirror and Daily Record consistently support Labour, yet nearly nine million people vote for the party.
What this shows is the strength of the illusions in the Labour Party, in the idea that it is somehow different from the other parties. The SWP say that "After the general election no party has a mandate to impose cuts." This is the opposite of the truth. All the main parties were committed to dealing with the deficit, and that means cuts, as much by Labour as the others. Blair, Brown and Darling paved the way for Cameron and Clegg every bit as much as Labour's Wilson, Callaghan and Healey in the 1970s started the attacks on the social wage and workers' living standards that were taken up by the Thatcher government in the 1980s.
Among the biggest difficulties for the working class in Britain is breaking from all the illusions in Labour. Yes, millions of workers vote Labour, but that's part of the problem, part of putting your confidence in others (who have a commitment to capitalism) rather than in the potential of the struggle of the working class.
The SWP says that "Labour held onto its core vote because its core vote hates the Tories." The problem here is that the whole idea of ‘Tories are toffs but Labour is different' is cultivated and nourished by the leftists. This election showed again that there is still a powerful idea that Labour has something to do with the working class. The truth is that Labour is the ‘disguised' enemy of the working class where the Tories are more transparent.
In Socialist Worker you can read "The truth is that the election showed the enduring strength of Labourism. In the end a substantial number of working people decided they could not stomach the threat of a Tory government. Many workers are only too well aware of Labour's failure. But they feared the Tories more and stuck to Labour rather than the party of the open class enemy." In reality all the capitalist parties have their role to play, but while Labour or LibDem can use a more radical language, and no doubt there are more Old Etonians in the Tory ranks, they are all capable of making the cuts that hit the working class. To think otherwise is to fall for the lies of the bourgeoisie.
Socialist Worker (10/4/10) declared that "Working class confidence and struggle matters more than elections, but who wins them, does matter. Governments can raise taxes on the rich or lower them. They can invest more money in hospitals or cut funding." It's quite right to point to the importance of struggles and developing confidence in the working class. But what can seriously undermine workers' struggles and consciousness are illusions in the capitalist economy and its state. Whether under a Tory/LibDem coalition, or under Labour, New or Old, capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class and the capitalist state can only defend the interests of the ruling bourgeois class. Capitalism is based on the pursuit of profit, not the needs of the exploited.
For more than ninety years Labour hasn't been a party of ‘failure' but an integral part of the political apparatus of capitalism in Britain. Spreading illusions in the Labour Party only backs up the dominant ideas of the ruling class. For the working class what's most important is developing an understanding of what workers' self-organisation is capable of, and seeing the full extent of its enemies. Car 12/5/10
They are appealing for money to help in this struggle. We want to stress that they are not asking for money to feed themselves during a strike. Although this type of solidarity can be important, very often it never gets to the actual strikers involved, and even if it does, it can do little to alleviate suffering amongst the tens of thousands of families affected by a big strike. What they are asking for is money to enable them to organize activities necessary for the struggle. Turkey is a very big country (traveling across it is like traveling from London to Warsaw), and TEKEL, for example, is a company with workers all across the country. Traveling to meetings costs money as does organizing things such as leafleting, fly-postering, and public meetings, and money is something which workers after a long struggle in one of the poorest countries in Europe lack.
Don't be put off if you can't afford much. Remember that Turkey is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and that even a little money can go a long way, for example the price of a packet of cigarettes and a beer in Europe can be enough to send a worker to a meeting in another city.
You can use the Paypal button at the side of the web site to send money directly to the Platform of Struggling Workers.
To learn more about the Tekel workers' struggle, read our news and articles covering the strike [44] .
.
In the first article we published on the Tekel struggle [62] , we gave an account of the developments until January 20th. In this article, we will continue from where we left off, and try to give an account of what went on from the erection of the Tekel workers' camp in the centre of Ankara to March 2nd, when the workers left Ankara. What will be told is the story of the entire working class. We owe our warm thanks to the Tekel workers for making the writing of this article possible by explaining to us what they went through, their experiences and thoughts and for making it possible for these experiences to lighten the way both for the future developments in the Tekel struggle and for the future struggles of our class.
We concluded our first article by highlighting the efforts of the workers to form a committee. Since the beginning of the struggle to January 20th, there had been four or five attempts to form a committee, and there were as many attempts in the process that followed. On the other hand, it wasn't possible for these committees to start functioning. At the moment, there exists a group of militant workers from every city, regularly in touch and constantly discussing how to move the struggle forward. However this group has not yet managed to become a formal committee recognized by the workers.
One of the first problems we can highlight while attempting to explain the reasons for this situation is the lack of communication among the workers. The workers are actually together always, and discussing constantly. On the other hand, they have not been able to establish an organ, like a mass assembly, that would allow them to come together and discuss all together in an organized manner. As we will try to explain later in the article, the fact that workers from each city setup their own tents and spent most of their time in these tents also contributed to this problem. It could be said that this separation blocked communication. A more important general problem was that a majority of the workers for the most part did not want to establish an alternative to the trade-union, or hesitated to do so. Lots of trade-unionists were respected for the sole reason that they were trade-unionists. Their words were preferred to those of determined, militant, leading workers. This led to a very serious problem of workers failing to stand behind their own decisions. The psychological dependence of the workers on the trade-union officials prevented the emergence of workers' committees outside the trade-unions.
What a worker comrade from Adıyaman told us confirms this observation: "Had the issues been discussed in the tents, and had each tent sent a few people, the committee would have been formed by itself. In such a situation, no one could have opposed it. It would have been impossible. We tried to put this question forward, but did it a bit from above, like people who believed this was necessary coming together. The lack of communication was a big problem, for example there should have been a communications tent when the tents were setup. Had we done that, the committee too would have been built around it."
The workers in general are openly expressing their lack of trust towards the trade-union, but their hesitations are preventing an alternative to the trade-union from arising. While this seems to be a contradictory situation, it does actually show that the trade-union still has a serious influence over the workers. The workers, even though they don't trust the union, still keep clinging to it and keep thinking they can make their voice heard using it.
As for the trade-union officials, they are, unsurprisingly, very disturbed even by the mention of the word committee. They are well aware of the fact that if a committee comes into being, they would lose control, and the mass of workers would not be in their hands anymore. Yet this is not a settled issue for the workers. The attempts to form the committee continue, despite the problems the workers have been having, and despite how troubling this is for the union officials.
If we get back to how the events developed, on January 14th, nearly all Tekel workers and their families from nearly every city with a Tekel factory had gathered in Ankara for a three-day continuous sit in. The workers made fires to keep warm during the nights. On the third day, there was heavy rain. The workers had to put up nylon covers over the streets they were sleeping in. This was how the establishment of the workers' tent city in the middle of Ankara came into being. The setting up of the tents was a very spontaneous development, as in many other aspects of the struggle. Actually, the workers had requested a struggle tent to be set up in front of the Turk-Is headquarters; this was one of the demands which developed with the initial efforts to form a committee, but the union had prevented this from happening then. The tents were set up eventually, but because the weather conditions made them necessary. The nylon pulled to cover the street quickly started looking like tents, and soon workers from all the different cities were setting up their tents. After the tents were built, the trade-union gave its support. The reason for the tents to be separated according the cities the workers came from was because the workers wanted to prevent undercover policemen or provocateurs from infiltrating the tents and preventing a possible dispersal by making everyone control the other from the city they came from. Due to the cold, more nylon sheets were brought. Because the fires they had made outside produced a lot of soot and smoke, workers had to bring in stoves. Eventually, there was a living, breathing tent city in the middle of Ankara.
There had been a mass demonstration of the Tekel workers and lots of supporters from different cities on January 17th, following the sit-in. Tekel workers, aware that they could only win by spreading the struggle, had been pushing the union confederation Turk-Is to declare a general strike. The workers, following Turk-Is chairman Mustafa Kumlu's speech which did not even mention a general strike, had first occupied the platform where the trade-unionists were addressing the over hundred thousand demonstrators, and then had occupied the Turk-Is headquarters. This lead to Mustafa Türkel, the chairman of Tek-Gida Is, the union Tekel workers are in, distancing himself from Kumlu and complaining about how isolated he is within Turk-Is, and how the other trade-unions within the confederation as well the other confederations did not give any support.
A three-day hunger strike was to follow this demonstration according to the schedule. Following the three-day hunger strike, an all out one was to begin. Despite the fact that they thought a hunger strike was the last road to take, they were saying that in this situation, their dead bodies would be worth more than their lives, that the pay their families would receive if they died would be higher than the wages they are condemned to. This was not an extreme idea developed by one person. This was the possible response anyone who was worried about the workers going on hunger strike would get from the workers. On the other hand, while what the workers said on this was a solid fact, this argument did not manage to negate the idea that a hunger strike wasn't the right way to go. On January 19th a hunger strike with a number limited number of participants, 140, began.
In the following days, Turk-Is and the leftist trade-union confederations, KESK and DISK, announced their joint plan of action. A decision to start work an hour late on the 22nd was taken, and a plan to organize daily support visit and protests was put forward. On the 21st, Turk-Is, KESK, DISK as well as the more right wing Kamu-Sen, Memur-Sen and Hak-Is confederations came together and announced that if the government did not solve the issue by the 26th, they would use ‘the power coming from production', and announce the date of the solidarity strike they would organize. Prime Minister Erdogan invited Turk-Is chairman Kumlu to have a meeting the same day. After the meeting, the government commissioned Mehmet Simsek, the Minister of Finance to come up with a new solution. Simsek was none other than the man who had said "If our government has made a mistake, it was being too compassionate towards our workers who will lose their jobs due to privatization". He now said that after coming up with the new solution, he wanted to meet the Turk-Is delegation again. This process was to take five days. In the face of this uncertain situation, and taking into consideration the suggestions of the doctors, the workers halted the hunger strike which had been going on for three days. On the 26th, the negative response from the government came. The series of negotiations was to continue until the 1st of February. This was, in many ways a policy of stalling. In the end the government did not replace 4-C[1], but did make certain improvements to it. The maximum working time, which had been increased to 11 months previously, now better paid, seniority compensation was given and so was 22 days of holiday rights. The workers responded saying "We do not want 4-C wearing make-up".
As the negotiations did not produce a result, the hunger strikes started again on February 2nd. The six trade-union confederations, Türk-Is, Hak-Is, DISK, Memur-Sen, Kamu-Sen and KESK, came together again, and declared "a general strike in which they would use their power coming from production". This decision, of course, was not taken due to the initiatives of the trade-unions themselves, but as a result of the pressure coming from the workers. The workers had demonstrated how determined they were about pushing for a general strike on the January 17th demonstration, occupying both the platform and the Turk-Is headquarters. There also had been efforts to tear down the doors of the building. The workers had called for Kumlu's resignation for three hours, and Mustafa Turkel had been forced to make a speech very critical of Turk-Is, calling on the other trade-unions to take a decision in favour of a general strike. The decision of the trade-unions was thus very clearly a result of the pressure coming from the base. The trade-unions had done their best to stall the workers with the negotiations. Now, finally they the confederations had to declare the general strike.
Following this decision, Erdogan, after saying that the workers' demonstrations had "exceeded their purpose", said: "Well, excuse us. We did the maximum of what had to be done. This has turned into an open campaign against the government, rather than asking for more rights. We are consignees. We are consignees of the money of the new-born orphans" and added that the salaries of the Tekel workers had been paid, and the seniority compensation was now in their bank accounts, and that if they applied in a month's time they could start working accordingly to the "temporary personnel" laws, in other words under 4-C. The time to apply to start working under 4-C conditions was thus shortened. This was a veiled threat of unemployment against the workers. Not that Erdogan hesitated to make open threats either. After declaring the workers demonstration in front of Turk-Is to be illegal and after defining it as an occupation, he said "We are going to test our patience till the end of the month. Afterwards, we will take whatever the legal steps are (...) Because this event has turned into an open abuse by ideological groups and extremists. Look at their banners. Look at their slogans. They are using a shameless and impudent tone targeting myself and my party. The workers are being used." The governor of Ankara, Kemal Onal decided to jump on the bandwagon as a result of these statements. He himself made a threat: right before the general solidarity action organized on behalf of the TEKEL workers, he declared it to be illegal for workers and public servants working under enterprises. Charges were to be pressed against all who were to participate.
On the other hand, the fact that the trade-unions had declared a general strike did not mean they were not to take the meaning out of the general strike and build a barrier against it. Lots of pro-government trade-unions within the Turk-Is confederation opposed the decision of the general strike. Pro-government confederations Memur-Sen and Hak-Is decided not to participate at the last minute. As for Turk-Is in general, they decided only to participate in the demonstrations in Ankara on the level of trade-union officials and representatives. Hence the bases will to participate was blocked, and workers from different sectors and cities were prevented from coming together. There were perhaps 30,000-40,000 in the demonstration that day, but this number could have been well over 100,000. The trade-unions tried to limit the number. Participation in the strike from the other trade-unions wasn't near the desired levels either. Although not generalized in regards to the whole class, the Tekel workers participation was about 90% so near 9,000 of the 10,857 employees. There were demonstrations in support of the TEKEL workers on the same day in other cities.
This was no real general strike. It was too limited, too insufficient. The power of the general strike comes from the threat of halting life itself using the power of production the workers have. Yet on the 4th of February, it was not really even possible for someone who wasn't notified of the strike by the trade-unions to realize that there actually was a strike going on. This was at least partially admitted even by some confederation chairmen. Sami Evren, the chairman of KESK, said "The movement started by the Tekel workers turned into a great solidarity all around Turkey. It was socialized. This is the success of the movement, but there were successes and failures to use the power coming from production in some places. There were insufficiencies here, this has to be acknowledged." The chairman of DISK, Suleyman Celebi, said "There have been ‘not going to work' actions in 81 cities. It is true that these actions in Istanbul and Ankara were below the expected, but it can't be said that this affects the general success of the solidarity action".
On same day, the government took some counter-steps. The new law on the employment of "temporary personnel", 4-C, was published in the Official Newspaper. The number of 4-C employees to be taken was announced as 36,215 for the year 2010. Tekel was included in the law. This law not only abolished the workers' right to get paid from unemployment insurance for eight months, but also aimed at making the workers work for very low pay under the threat of unemployment. On February 16th, Tek Gida-Is pressed charges against the one month time limit of applying for 4-C. If the law was cancelled, the Tekel workers would be able to get their unemployment compensation for eight months, which is double the minimum wage, and could apply for 4-C at the end of this period. The main direction, which until February 4th was pushing for the general strike, now was waiting for the decision of the courts.
What kept the workers going until February 4th was the effort to push the confederations into declaring the general strike, thus expanding the struggle. The fact that these expectations weren't realized, that there wasn't a real general strike, changed the course of the struggle. Now the focus was the one month period imposed on applications for 4-C. The legal process taking prominence is, in general, something that takes place as the struggle weakens. The example in Tekel was no exception. The role of the trade-union, both in weakening the struggle and in making the legal process the point of focus, cannot be underestimated. To express it bluntly, the workers had become a problem for them. The best way, they thought, was to send them home, take the process down the legal road and be done with it, and that was what they worked towards. This process of waiting, for the workers anyway, also meant taking a risk. They were, after all, threatened with unemployment and pushed to 4-C, but there also was a period for all this. They would lose the option to apply for 4-C in a month. As for the trade-unionists, while they mostly couldn't defend the 4-C openly, they were saying things like "We can neither tell you to apply nor not to apply". It was rumoured that some trade-unionists were even saying "Applying for the 4-C is the most logical thing to do". Of course they couldn't dare to say these things while the militant workers were nearby, as they knew this would result in the militant workers arguing vigilantly against them, and them ending up having to run away.
The issue that dominated the following days was the seniority compensation of workers being deposited into their bank accounts, and the question of whether the workers used them or not. Erdogan said: "The workers got their compensation, those who remained there are not workers". However, the struggling workers had decided not to withdraw their compensation since doing that would in a way mean accepting 4-C. However, because some had debts, there were automatic deductions from their bank accounts. This made it appear as if the workers were using their compensations but the important thing was the trick the government was pulling on the workers. What happened was the following: the government, through the Ministry of Finance, gave an order to the Vakif Bank General Administration to open a new account on behalf of the workers. The bank, without informing the workers, cut 25 TL from each worker, and transferred the compensation to that account, so it would appear the workers used their compensations. After this came out, the trade-union filed yet another law suit regarding this issue.
The workers started a three day hunger strike on February 2nd. The hunger strike was over on February 5th. However the day the hunger strike was over, 100 Tekel workers launched an all-out hunger strike. The chairman of Tek Gida-Is, Mustafa Turkel, announced that the all-out hunger strike was over on February 11th. He also called on 16 workers who continued the hunger strike despite the trade unions decision to stop it. Afterwards, he directly repeated his call to the hunger striking workers, but got the response from a determined hunger striker that they were going to continue their hunger strike by their own will. The same militant worker was called outside by another worker who claimed that he wanted to talk to him. There, the militant hunger striker was told to stop the hunger strike, and attacked. The worker who attacked him was someone known to have defended the union against other fellow workers before and was said to be an unbalanced element. Since we do not have any detailed information about this event, we are not making any claims here about the possible connections of the attacker. It might or might not be the trade-union management who made this worker attack the hunger striking comrade. However, regardless of whether he was recruited by the trade-union management to silence this dissident hunger striker, or did it to suck up to the trade-unionists, either directly or indirectly the trade-union is responsible for this. Because if any worker can attack a fellow worker who is on a hunger strike in order to suck up to the union, the reason for this is that the trade-union bureaucracy has interests separate from and opposed to those of the workers, and this would mean that he attempted to suck up to the trade-unionists by serving their interests. This example openly shows that while the main issue for the struggling workers is the question of how we can win the struggle, the trade unions are chasing completely alien bureaucratic interests and political agendas. This situation, far from being surprising, is important in being a striking example of the counter-revolutionary nature of contemporary trade-unions.
In any case, following this event, the negotiations with Erdogan continued. Following a compromise not being reached as a result of these negotiations, Hak-Is withdrew from acting jointly with the other confederations. On February 12nd, Turk-Is, Kamu-Sen, KESK and DISK came together again. In this meeting, it was decided to continue the negotiations with the government, to file a lawsuit to get 4-C cancelled and for the local organizations of the confederations to come to Ankara and stay with the Tekel workers in front of Turk-Is over night on February 20th. On the 16th, the confederations announced their joint action plan: on February 18th, banners saying "The struggle of the Tekel workers is our struggle" and "No to unregulated and unsafe work" were to be put up in all union offices of the four confederations; on February 19th, there were to be sit-ins and press announcements in all cities and on the 20th there would be a solidarity demonstration in Ankara. Those coming from out of town would gather in Kolej square, march to Sakarya square and stay with the Tekel workers all night.
Tekel workers from Adana made the following call for the demonstration on February 20th, emphasizing the importance of the expansion of the struggle: "We want everyone who is against this bad order in Turkey to support our movement. This is no longer just about us. This is about the majority, the oppressed. Hopefully we will win. We have lit a fire, and the public has to continue from here. This is our future, the future of our children we are dealing with, the future of the working class in Turkey. We have led, it is up to them to finish. We shall not leave here without getting what we deserve, but the public has to wake up and support us, with their families, kids and all, with everyone".
On February 11th, Tek Gida-Is declared an end to the hunger strike, but 16 workers continued. On February 12th, a worker was hospitalized, and five more workers joined the hunger strike as a result. These workers ended their hunger strike, declaring that they had ‘finished the hunger strike based on their own will, and would not hesitate to start again if they deem it necessary'.
The solidarity demonstration did take place on February 20th, with the participation of the trade-unions, political parties and mass organizations. Workers from the Balnak logistics company who had lost their job around the same time the Tekel struggle started were also present. As planned, all gathered in Kolej square in the morning and marched to Sakarya square. Sakarya square was full of demonstrators. It had turned into a carnival, and the demonstrators had changed the look of the place completely. On the other hand, generally the workers were still in their tents, while the demonstrators were in the square. There was always a circulation in between these two very close locations, but the separation remained. Later in the night, people were tired, and the streets were full of demonstrators sleeping on pieces of cardboard. The next day, people gathered and the demonstration was finished with a press announcement. Afterwards, those from out of town started returning. This demonstration was important in that gave a morale boost to the Tekel workers, and in that it expressed class solidarity. However, due to the decision of the trade-unions to only send representatives and officials the number of workers coming from other sectors was low, however most Tekel workers who weren't in Ankara at the time gathered in the city. Despite all these negative aspects, having support meant a lot to the workers. Workers in the tents we visited through the night in general felt positively about the demonstration and said that it gave them morale.
On February 23rd, the four confederations gathered again. They took a decision to organize another general strike on May 26th in case the government did not take a step back. Scheduling a general strike three months later was nothing less than openly mocking the workers. The decision was on the internet before it was announced. Those who read it informed each other, those who couldn't believe what they heard went to check it themselves. No one wanted to believe the news. The branch representatives hadn't been informed of the decision, and were saying that the news was false, and were reacting strongly to those who asked about it. Following the announcement, workers gathered started shouting slogans against Turk-Is and Kumlu. At this critical moment, Turkel showed his true nature openly. To the workers he shouted "If you keep shouting Kumlu resign, then I will resign". The workers did not really have much of a problem with that!
Mustafa Turkel, the chairman of Tek Gida-Is, resigned from the position of General Secretary he held within the Turk-Is confederacy on February 24th. He announced that he was to make the necessary explanation about his reasons for resignation on March 2nd. This was also the last possible date for the workers to apply for 4-C according to the government, and also the date the government had threatened to attack the workers in order to destroy the tent city. Turkel did not see the need to explain why he resigned to the workers. By not making an explanation, he was openly undermining the Tekel workers struggle which had been going on for more than two months. Why would someone who resigned refuse to explain why he resigned? What did it mean, disappearing in an atmosphere in which the government was threatening the workers both with unemployment and with an attack? Would it be an exaggeration to say that he was waiting for March 2nd to be over, for the waters to be clear again?
These uncertain situations, naturally lead to confusions about Turkel's resignation. He could have resigned because the workers had called for Kumlu's resignation, but also he could have resigned because he had no support within Turk-Is. The workers were considering both possibilities. A Tekel worker from Adıyaman was evaluating the situation like this: "This can be interpreted in two ways. If it happened the way the press presented it, if the chairman of Tek Gida-Is resigned as a reaction against the workers, I think this is wrong. He can't have such a luxury. No one has the right to sabotage this process. We have been struggling for 71 days. There surely will be those among 12 thousand workers who can't control their nerves, and who react. On the other hand, Turkel resigned from his position as the General Secretary of Turk-Is, not from his position as the chairman of Tek Gida-Is. I think this resignation can also be a reaction against the decisions taken by the confederations yesterday. If that is the case, if it is a reaction against Turk-Is or the other confederations saying ‘you are leaving us alone', then we would embrace our chairman with all our hearts. I don't want to think he resigned as a reaction against the workers, as it was presented by the press. I want to think it as a reaction against the Turk-Is administration. I don't think the reactions shown against him by a few fellows represent the general feeling. He wouldn't resign because of the "Turkel resign" slogans shouted by a few. There could be other reasons. From the beginning, our reaction was directed towards Kumlu, for his close relationship with the government and his lack of sincerity. But we believed in Turkel from the start. We should wait for the chairman's explanation." A Tekel worker from Istanbul evaluated the situation like this: "We are a family. There may be discussions among us. If he resigned because of the workers reactions, he didn't do the right thing. If he did it as a reaction to the Turk-Is administration, he was right. If it was done because of the workers' reaction, it was nothing but an excuse for running away. It is not right for him to leave the workers and run away. But the struggle will continue regardless of whether he is in or out. Actually, he has been threatening us for 71 days every day, like a husband threatens a wife. But we remained patient, undivided. Now, such a reaction against the workers is, to me, an excuse for running away, if of course he resigned because of it. It is not right to say "I won't play anymore" like a kid. As workers all we want is for them to do their trade-union duties and not to scold us. It was very natural for us to react against the decisions of the confederations, and I do think it included all the workers, that it was the common reaction of all the workers. Workers' meetings were to be held in the morning. Yet it was said that Turkel had an urgent meeting, and that the workers' meetings were to be postponed until the afternoon. Sometime later his resignation was announced. Where did Turkel go, who did he talk to, what happened in this meeting, we do not know." Turkel had previously said that he was against the reaction the workers gave against Kumlu, and that he would resign in case such incident happened again. Trade-unionists thought that Türkel's resignation was because of the workers reaction. As a result of this, Mustafa Akyurek, the General Secretary for Education of Tek Gida-ıs declared that the claims of Turkel's decisions being due to his disagreements with the Turk-Is administration were false, and the decision to resign was taken because of the reactions Turkel got from the workers.
On the 23rd of February, thirteen workers in a mine in Balikesir died because of a firedamp explosion. This was the third workplace murder which had happened due to insecure working conditions since 2006. Before the thirteen workers who died on the 23rd, seventeen had been killed in the previous explosion, and three had been killed in the explosion before than. The Tekel workers who heard about this felt a great pain. Their deceased class brothers had already been subjected to insecure working conditions. Now they were the ones who the government tried to subject to the same conditions. It was impossible not to feel this class anger and pain. A worker from Adiyaman explains what happened like this: "To feel that the deceased were of us, to show solidarity. There was 100% participation. Everyone felt it, that pain. We prepared banners, black ribbons, we made a press announcement. It was very important for class solidarity". The miners were commemorated during the now regular and daily night-time demonstration with torches, and there was a minute of silence in the honour of the deceased miners. The slogan "long live class solidarity" became the voice of the day.
The next morning, on the 25th, the workers woke up to yet another bad news. A fellow Tekel worker, Hamdullah Uysal, had been killed in Ankara in a traffic accident.
Hamdullah Uysal, born in Amasya, had been working as a Tekel worker in Samsun. He was 39 years old, and had two kids, one of them disabled. He had participated in the hunger strikes. Tekel workers had experienced other losses during the struggle, some had mothers or fathers, and some had children who passed away, but this was the first time a Tekel worker had passed away during the struggle. Hamdullah Uysal was a militant worker who had been involved with the struggle from the beginning. He had been in Ankara from the start of the struggle, and had returned to his hometown only twice. Workers regarded him as a class war martyr. The way the accident had happened also resulted in class anger among the workers. Uysal had been hit by a jeep driven by a drunk driver at 5:30 in the morning, while going to morning prayer. There was anger towards that person and the class he represented. The workers were referring to the murderer as a "some rich guy with a jeep".
Because the workers saw Uysal as a martyr of the struggle, and because they felt that the tent city in front of Turk-Is was like a home to all of them, they wanted to bring his funeral to the tent city, have a ceremony there and then send Uysal home. They talked to Uysal's wife, who said: "The street in front of the Turk-Is building was like a home to him, the tent in front of Turk-Is is his home, he would have wanted this. Have the ceremony in front of Turk-Is and then send him home".
Thus, 400-500 workers went to the Forensic Office in Kecioren, where Uysal's body had been taken to. Actually everyone wanted to go there, but the workers decided to limit the number in order to not to leave the tents alone, since the government kept spitting out threats about destroying the tents. The workers feared the government could attack and tear down the tents as soon as they left Sakarya square. Thus some had to remain, and wait in front of Turk-Is for the body to be brought there.
The Tekel workers who went to the Forensics Office attempted take the body. They had to wait for hours, and were told that Uysal's brother and uncle would come to pick up his body. In the end, a relative of Uysal who himself was a Tekel worker came, but the body wasn't given to him either. Eventually an "uncle" emerged, who claimed to be Uysal's aunts husband. The Forensics Office declared that the body was to be given to him. Workers who knew that bodies are only given to first degree relatives did not buy this "uncle" story. In fact, they suspected that the "uncle" could be an undercover cop, and voiced them. Their suspicions were confirmed when this "uncle" eventually had to admit that he indeed was an undercover cop. Thus, the workers started pushing to get the body again. The police did not allow it again. They waited for hours and also tried their best to call the Uysal family, but to no avail. Finally Hamdullah Uysal's family arrived, and the Ankara Police and the Governorship immediately put them under pressure. The Ankara Police who stopped them on the road were trying to force the family to sign a document accepting that the body would be taken to Uysal's home without a ceremony in Ankara. The pressures continued in the Forensics Office as well. Finally the family had to give in and agree to taking the body home without having a ceremony in Ankara.
In the meanwhile, the workers waiting in front of the Forensics Office were told that they would be given the body. Thus the workers got into the ambulance carrying Uysal's body. However a group who realized that the ambulances were going a different way than they should immediately got out and blocked the road. Other workers followed. Workers stopped the ambulance from moving en masse. As a result the police came and went in-between the workers who remained in the back and those in front of the ambulance in order to stop it. The workers who remained in the back tried to help the ones in front of the ambulance, but the police attacked them with tear-gas and dispersed them, and then formed a second barricade. Then the police attacked the smaller group blocking the path of the ambulance and took all of them out. They did not want to let go of these workers. The larger group of workers however managed to gather again and started trying to unite with their fellow workers. This didn't happen in the end though, and the police ended up managing to take the ambulance away by attacking the workers ferociously.
In the meanwhile, the workers who had been waiting in front of Turk-Is tried to go to Mithat Pasha Street and leave flowers where he died; but the police prevented them. They also dispersed the workers who gathered in Sakarya Square in order to help their fellow workers in the Forensic Office. In the face of the police barricade on the Mithat Pasha Street, the workers were shouting "You are afraid of our dead". Slogans such as "Tayyip the murderer" and "Murderous AKP shall answer to the workers" were also shouted. Despite all the efforts of the police, a group of workers did manage to leave flowers on the place Hamdullah Uysal was killed.
The workers returning from the Forensics Office went directly to Mithat Pasha Street. The Police formed yet another barricade in order to prevent the workers from crossing the street en masse. The workers managed to break through the barricade however, and started a sit in on the street. Workers in front of Turk-Is also started coming. Together, they had a 20-25 minutes long sit-in, shouting slogans in memory of Hamdullah Uysal. Police surrounded the workers during this demonstration. Eventually the workers ended the sit-in and went back to the tent city.
The union did not take a stance on the side of the workers during all this. It was absent when the police attacked the workers in front of the Forensics Office. When the workers in front of Turk-Is wanted to go to help their fellow workers, the trade-unionists only tried to calm them down and make them return to their tents.
Hamdullah Uysal's death showed once more how scared the forces of the order were of the workers. The Police and the Governorship had tried their best to prevent the workers from bidding their farewell to their deceased fellow worker, but in the end it was a vain effort. The workers managing to break through the police barricade and having a sit-in on the street where Uysal died, blocking all the traffic on the street, even if for only 20-25 minutes, was perhaps the best farewell the Tekel workers could bid to their deceased fellow worker.
Uysal's death had upset the Tekel workers greatly, but it also helped the Tekel workers who were still in their hometowns understand how serious the whole thing was. One of the things Hamdullah Uysal left us, was his call for the expansion of the struggle to the rest of the class: "Here, everything gained by the working class will become a compass for the working class movements of tomorrow and after tomorrow. Join our struggle, save your future."
The following day, 25 Tekel workers went to the AKP Ankara headquarters. The Tekel workers who entered the building wanted to put up a banner with a picture of Hamdullah Uysal on it. After this, private security forces as well as the police attacked the workers in the building. This however triggered the group of workers gathered outside, who wanted to go inside also. They, however, were attacked outside also, and lots of workers were wounded in this attack. 19 workers were taken into custody. Slogans "Murderous AKP, Tayyip the murderer" were shouted and the workers explained how the government was responsible for Hamdullah Uysal's death. Those who were left behind blocked the police vehicles taking the workers taken into custody, shouting "Everywhere is Tekel, struggle everywhere", "Suppression can't daunt us". Nevertheless unfortunately they didn't manage to prevent their fellow workers from being taken away.
After the news about some workers being taken into custody came out, a group of woman workers from the Izmir tent went to the police headquarters. Those taken into custody were not recorded, with the excuse of there being repairs in the building. A group of workers who were in front of Turk-Is put pressure for the union to send its lawyers. The event had taken place outside trade-union initiative and the union wanted to part in this, but as a result of workers pressures, they ended up having to go to the police headquarters with their lawyers. The following day, workers waited in front of the courthouse from 10:00 to 21:00 when their fellow workers were released. The workers remained in custody for approximately 40 hours. 15 workers were released that afternoon. Four, who were charged with "damaging public property and disobeying a police officer", had a trial and were released the same night. They returned to the tent city with their fellow workers and supporters who had been waiting for them.
On March 1st, the court decided in favour of the lawsuit brought against the one month period for application to 4-C for the Tekel workers. The workers celebrated the decision. While the militant workers had been trying to warn the others about how this would not be a victory 3-4 days in advance, their warnings were not effective. This false feeling of victory was to sabotage the workers' united stance the next day.
On March 2nd, Mustafa Turkel announced that the Ankara demonstrations were over and called for the tents to be taken down, with a return scheduled for April 1st. This divided the workers into those who opposed the union's decision to end the struggle and those who didn't. Those who opposed shouted slogans like "The tents are our honour. We won't let you touch our honour". The other responded with shouting "Turkel is our honour". Those who opposed the union's decision and supported it were now pitted against each other, with those who opposed the union in the minority. Some tents were taken down even before Turkel's speech was over. No time was left for the workers to have a general discussion. Thus the workers who opposed the union's decision talked and discussed among each other and decided to act around a strategy. The union was trying to pit the workers who opposed the decision and those in favour against each other, and isolate the workers who opposed it, trying to push them out of the process. The union had the intention of pushing the trouble-making workers out of April 1st, isolating them from the other workers, and take the rest of the workers completely under their control. The militant workers however did not fall into the union's trap, and in order to prevent being pitted against their fellow workers, they stopped resisting the union decision. Those who opposed the decision to take the tents down had a majority in the Adiyaman, Izmir, Istanbul and Diyarbakir tents. They went along with the decision after discussing among each other.
Actually the union had started working towards taking the tents down well in advance; they had been making propaganda in this direction for about 20 days. The trade-union representatives had been making speeches in the tents, trying to convince people to take them down. The day the workers were waiting in front of the courthouse for their fellow workers in custody, the union had made branch meetings, and had put forward the idea of taking down the tents. All this work had paid off for the union when the decision was finally announced; it was supported by the majority. One of the worker comrades we talked to before the tents were taken down, when we asked whether he expected a police attack, had responded to us pointing out that there won't be any need for an attack, since the union is taking care of that anyway. This by itself showed how openly the union and the government cooperated, but the union unfortunately seemed as if on the side of the workers to lots of people, it was backstabbing so to speak. Among happy and sad workers following the abolishment of the tent city were angry ones. One worker we spoke to had summarized the situation by saying everything starts with the trade-union messing things up and ends with it also.
The Tekel struggle was like a scream ending the silence of the working class in Turkey since the early to mid 90s. The struggle had also put forward a completely new method. The formation of a tent city, with struggling workers living there 24 hours was something completely new. As we pointed out at the beginning of the article, this had positive aspects. It enabled workers to develop self-control among each other. On the other hand, it also had negative effects. After a while, the tents led to some languor. This languor imprisoned most of the workers inside the tents. The problem of the lack of communication emerged. Still with both its positive and negative aspects, the tents were an expression of the struggle, and had turned into a symbol of it also.
The end of the tent city did not mean a month's break to the struggle for the militant workers. A group of workers, made up of a few from every city, decided to stay in contact and coordinate the continuation of the struggle in the cities within the month. Organizing the return to Ankara on April 1st, keeping the issue warm and visiting workers from other struggles made up the strategy the militant workers agreed on following the end of the tent city. While the taking down of the tents seemed like the defeat of the struggle, the fact that the militant Tekel workers have started to work towards uniting existing struggles and spreading the struggle to the rest of the class may result in very important developments not only for the Tekel workers but for all class struggles in Turkey in general.
Sude, May 31st, 2010.
[1] "What is this 4-C then? This practice was actually a ‘blessing' put forward by the Turkish state when the number of workers who were to lose their jobs due to privatisations increased. It includes, aside from a serious pay-cut, public workers being shifted to different sectors within the state under horrible conditions. The worst of the conditions introduced by the 4-C policy is that it gives the bosses of the state an absolute power over the workers. Thus, the wage, which is determined by the state and is already a massive pay-cut for the workers, is merely a maximum price. It can be reduced by the state enterprise managers arbitrarily. Also, working hours are completely abolished for those who are to work under the 4-C conditions and the bosses of the state enterprises gain the right to arbitrarily make the workers stay at work for as long as they want, until the workers "finish the task assigned to them". The workers get no money whatsoever in return for this "extra" work after regular public employees' working hours or during holidays. Under this policy, the bosses have the power to fire the workers arbitrarily, without being obliged to pay them any compensation. Besides, the period workers can work in a year is between three months and ten months, nothing being paid to the workers in the months they aren't asked to work and the duration of their work again being arbitrarily determined by the bosses. Despite this, the workers are forbidden to find a second job even if they are not working at a certain period. The social security payments of the workers are not made anymore under the 4-C policy, and all health benefits are taken away." https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/01/tekel-turkey [62]
The jailing of two gay men in Malawi for the crime of marrying each other (though the two were subsequently released) has brought the plight of gay men and women in Africa to the surface. Gay sex is illegal in 36 African countries and can carry heavy penalties; in Uganda a Christian fundamentalist MP is attempting to introduce a law prescribing the death penalty for ‘repeat offenses'. In areas under Sharia law, as in parts of Nigeria, the penalty is already death by stoning. In Zimbabwe two gay rights activists were arrested and tortured with Robert Mugabe, as usual, accusing the ‘west' of introducing this "sub-animal" practice, into the African continent, with the firm recommendation that Africans should "leave this sort of thing to the whites". In South Africa, although the state does not outlaw gay sex, social attitudes often seem to be just as inflexible, and many lesbians have suffered assault and ‘corrective rape': "Eudy Simelane, who played for the South African women's football team and lived openly as a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed 25 times; at least 20 other lesbians have been killed over the past five years" [1]
While Mugabe and many other African politicians and religious leaders claim that homosexuality is an alien import, it is equally facile to see this extreme homophobia as an expression of African backwardness. Let us recall that ‘sodomy' was illegal in Britain until the 1960s and is still illegal in some American states; that gay people have been viciously persecuted in Stalinist regimes, including Cuba, and that perhaps 15,000 gay people were murdered in concentration camps by the Nazis. Homosexual acts are illegal in over 70 countries worldwide and gay people have been systematically targeted by Islamic murder gangs in countries like Iraq.
So homophobia is a rather more universal problem. In fact, there is evidence that the brutal homophobia being expressed in Africa today is the real alien import.
"The researcher EE Evans-Pritchard described how until the early 20th-century, male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely married male youths who functioned as temporary wives...Similar customs were reported among the Tsonga people of South Africa. Among the Maale people of southern Ethiopia, some males dressed as women and performed what were considered female tasks - including having sexual relations with men. Among the Fon in Benin and the Naman in south-eastern Africa, homosexual relations were accepted among adolescents and not infrequently lasted throughout the life of the pair. The Nyakyusa in Tanzania, similarly, tolerated young men having sex with young men.
It was when the colonists arrived, as the Belgian writer Rudi Bleys has noted, that African tolerance of same-sex activity became used to justify the "barbarity" of a culture and the necessity of the European's "civilising" mission. "Homophobia was put into law under colonialisation," Tendi says. "In fact, homophobia is more colonial than the practice of homosexuality in Africa. The laws being used to prosecute homosexuals today are old colonial laws. They have simply never been repealed." (here the Guardian article mentioned above is quoting from research by Blessing-Miles Tendi, a Zimbabwean-born researcher in African politics at the University of Oxford).
The same could be said about tribal societies outside Africa - for example the phenomenon of the ‘berdache' or ‘two spirited' in North America, men and women who took on characteristics of the opposite sex and often engaged in same-sex marriage. These figures were not only accepted but were often seen as vehicles of spiritual power. Other researchers have argued that while homosexual activity is often found in tribal societies, people with an exclusively homosexual identity are less common. In any case, without making any premature generalisations, it is likely that the rise of private property and the elimination of the vestiges of primitive communism saw not only the growing oppression of women, as Engels argued in his Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, but also an increasing taboo on homosexual relationships.
If there is nothing particularly African about homophobia, it is true to say that the general effects of the decomposition of capitalist society - increasingly senseless wars, the descent of social life into an unending battle between murderous gangs - have hit the continent with particular severity. This is because it has for so long been prey to the plunder of the global imperialist powers, and its weakly developed economic structures have been so vulnerable to the storms of the world crisis of capitalism. ‘Failed states' like Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe offer a terrifying foretaste of what lies in store for humanity if capitalism's decay is allowed to continue unchecked. Given the catastrophic state of numerous African countries, it is inevitable that there should be such a persistence and even renaissance of religious ideologies which appear to offer some explanation and alternative to the apocalyptic conditions facing millions of people. Fundamentalist Islam and Christianity, both of which institutionalise homophobia, exert a growing influence all over the continent.
But this is not a purely automatic process. Particular factions of the ruling class encourage these ideologies as a way of cementing their own power, or creating false divisions which prevent those they exploit from seeing their real enemy. In Nigeria, for example, there have been many bloody pogroms between Christians and Muslims, fratricidal massacres in which the poor and the exploited are encouraged to blame their own class brothers and sisters for the real, material misery they face in their daily lives. Whipping up suspicion and hatred against gay people offers the ruling class a very convenient scapegoat that can easily be used to strengthen the hand of state repression. The new legislation being considered in Uganda advocates draconian penalties not only for homosexual activities but also for people who fail to report the homosexual activities of others to the state!
Christianity and Islam were of course ‘alien imports' in Africa in the first place, ideologies that justified the colonial empires that established their rule in different parts of the continent. This form of colonisation continues today: the current wave of homophobia in Christian countries is actively encouraged by certain US missionary groups who, as elsewhere, serve as an unofficial arm of American imperialism.
Some of the gay activists being persecuted in Africa have argued that the new crackdown on gay people is the state's response to the fact that they are becoming more visible, less willing to hide their sexuality; a response also to the increasingly open activity of gay rights' groups. This may well be the case; but the question is, how will the frightening situation confronting gay people in Africa be improved? It is obviously necessary to denounce the repressive laws and physical attacks against gay people. Nevertheless, the limitations of organising to achieve ‘rights' for gay people, guaranteed by legislation, are shown by the situation in South Africa. On paper gay people there have rights, in reality they are subject to assault and persecution. As with religious and ethnic pogroms, pogroms against gay people are the product of a social situation where society is shaken by crisis, but where the working class is not yet strong enough to develop its own alternative - a massive movement which integrates the struggles against all forms of oppression into the fight against the key problem of capitalist exploitation. Such a movement could only be directly counter-posed to capitalist ‘democracy' as much as to capitalist ‘dictatorship', which are just two sides of the same coin. We are still far removed from a movement of this kind, but its seeds are certainly germinating in Africa as elsewhere in the current resistance struggles of workers, of the unemployed, of township residents; and those who already see the need for these struggles to take on revolutionary, political goals have the task of arguing that they can only advance in this direction by challenging and overcoming all forms of division in their ranks, whether ethnic, religious or sexual.
Amos 1/6/10
Homophobia has deep roots, and the workers' movement, including its most advanced elements, has not been free from it. In Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, a magnificent broadside against the historical oppression of women, Engels himself presents homosexual activity in the ancient world as a pure product of decadence: "but this degradation of the women [Engels is referring to prostitution in ancient Greece] was avenged on the men and degraded them also till they fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods with the myth of Ganymede." Some of Engels' private views, expressed in correspondence with Marx, are even more obviously influenced by the dominant ideology[2].
Nevertheless, the workers' movement has consistently stood against laws repressing homosexuality. In the late 19th century, while countries like France had already, in the wake of their bourgeois revolutions, abolished such laws, Germany and Britain still retained them. Representatives of German social democracy such as Lassalle, Bebel and Bernstein all spoke in favour of abolishing these laws and any interference by the state in the private lives of its citizens. Bernstein, responding to the furor created by the trial of Oscar Wilde in Britain, wrote a series of articles on the question in Neue Zeit in 1895, using the historical method to show the relative character of sexual mores and challenging the notion that homosexuality was ‘unnatural'. However, he still tended to present homosexuality as an ‘illness' or a ‘pathology' that could perhaps be cured by the appropriate therapy.
The Bolsheviks in Russia continued the tradition of opposition to laws that repress different expressions of sexuality. All such laws were abolished in the immediate aftermath of the October revolution. However, with the Stalinist counter-revolution, with its cult of motherhood for the socialist fatherland, there was a flagrant regression and homosexuality was again subject to brutal punishment.
Since the onset of the counter-revolution in the 1920s, there appears to have been very little elaboration of marxist theory on the question of homosexuality, aside from the ‘negative' critique of the separatist and legalist campaigns and the ‘identity politics' that appeared from the end of the 60s onwards.
However, the development of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20th century provides a theoretical basis for questioning the idea of homosexuality as a kind of illness. In a 1935 letter to a woman who asked Freud if he could cure her son of homosexuality, he wrote:
"I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato [103], Michelangelo [104], Leonardo da Vinci [105], etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime -and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis [106].
By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.
What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains homosexual or gets changed".
In fact, Freud's theoretical premises go further than the conclusion enunciated in this letter, where he defines homosexuality as a product of a "a certain arrest of sexual development". Throughout his work, Freud consistently posits an original bisexuality (sometimes referred to as the "polymorphous perversity" of the infant human being) which is then channeled in a particular direction through the process of repression - the origins of which lie in social relations conditioned by the struggle against scarcity. That would imply that heterosexuality as generally expressed in the context of present-day society is, no less than homosexuality, a product of arrested development. In any case, the debate about what a truly liberated human sexuality would be like in a society no longer dominated by exploitation and the day to day struggle for survival remains to be pursued by the revolutionary movement.
[1] www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/22/malawian-gay-couple-jailed-14-years [107]
[2] See in particular Engels to Marx, June 22, 1869 where he comments on a book by a ‘gay rights' activist of the time, Karl Heinz Ulrichs
The Chinese proletariat is showing signs of militancy and combativity on its own class terrain, against the Communist Party of China and the state unions. Unfortunately, the Western trade unionists and leftist activists are taking notice. Similar to the Polish workers struggles' of 1980-1981, the Chinese workers erupted into self-organized strikes and protests against the company, outside of and against the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Starting in May 2010, workers at parts plants for Honda went on a 2 week strike in Guangdong province. Workers elected their own representatives from among themselves at general assemblies (one of their demands was that all workers be given time off to attend these assemblies during every shift).
Labor Notes, the central magazine for the business union reformers, rank-and-file unionists and their leftist activist allies, wrote a front page piece concerning the Honda workers. The title of the article, ‘Do Spreading Auto Strikes Mean Hope for a Workers' Movement in China? [109]' shows the excitement at the prospect of a spreading 'independent' unionism. The article early on makes a startling confession: "...the ACFTU in practice has worked in line with the government and employers to enforce labor discipline and mediate labor-management conflicts to keep production running smoothly." However, if we believe Labor Notes' supporters, this characterization only applies to business unions in the West and state unions in the so-called 'socialist' countries and other authoritarian regimes -- not the rank-and-file, 'independent' unions. Labor Notes goes on to say, "The peaceful resolution of the Honda strikes may invite the opportunity to establish a real collective bargaining system in China." To union reformers and 'independent' unionists, the goal of working class militancy and self-organized organs (general assemblies, worker-delegates, strike committees) is the establishment of an 'independent' union to represent them, the purpose of class struggle is to get better economic conditions within the 'independent' union system.
The last sentence of the article speaks to the future hopes of the rank-and-filers: "International labor allies should take cheer." The history of the Polish proletariat is one of nostalgia for all manner of union leftists, anarcho-syndicalists and revolutionary syndicalists. For the working class it is full of lessons [110]. The Polish Solidarnosc union was founded after the workers established class organs: strike committees, general assemblies, worker-delegates. The environment of statified unions led the workers to reject the official unions, but the mystification of 'independent' and 'free' unions was very strong, leading to the founding of Solidarnosc. With the rise of Solidarnosc, the 'independent' and 'free' union, the workers militancy was funneled into the union struggle. The influence of the class organs declined. Given the similar statified unions that exist in China as in Poland, it isn't beyond imagining that pressure from Western unionists, leftist activists and Chinese democratization advocates could grow the strength of the 'independent' and 'free' union mystification among the Chinese proletariat. Despite this, the self-organization and the struggle on their own class terrain by the Chinese workers should be recognized as a very positive development.
Hough, 7/17/10.
"The English Defence League's summer of protests to target Muslim communities is to continue with a demonstration against a ‘super mosque', even though the development is no longer going ahead. The far-right group will return to Dudley next Saturday to demonstrate against the abandoned mosque and community centre project." (Guardian 9/7/10). This is the latest in a line of planned and actual protests by the EDL which has resulted in a degree of publicity in the national media.
The Guardian newspaper has also recently undertaken some investigations into the rise of the English Defence League (EDL). The organisation was formed in June 2009 in Luton and has organised demonstrations and protests in various large cities, several of which have ended in violent clashes with anti-fascist counter demonstrators and / or groups of Muslim youths. In the wake of the crushing general election defeat of the British National Party which, again, is going through an internal faction fight, the EDL has served to recruit people who are discontented with the main parties' stance on issues such as immigration and the preservation of an 'English identity'.
In the report it states that "Undercover footage shot by the Guardian reveals the English Defence League, which has staged a number of violent protests in towns and cities across the country this year, is planning to ‘hit' Bradford and the London borough of Tower Hamlets as it intensifies its street protests. Senior figures in the coalition government were briefed on the threat posed by EDL marches this week. Tomorrow up to 2,000 EDL supporters are expected to descend on Newcastle for its latest protest. MPs said the group's decision to target some of the UK's most prominent Muslim communities was a blatant attempt to provoke mayhem and disorder ‘ (Guardian, 28/5/10)
There are several points of interest here. First of all, the EDL seems to represent a return 'to the streets' by the far right. This was a common sight in the 1970s and 80s by groups such as the National Front (NF). This tends to help create a 'pogrom' kind of atmosphere, which emboldens individuals and groups to further action, such as the recent attacks in Belfast, especially against people of Romanian origin and attacks against Gypsies in Italy. The response to this tends to be a counter resurgence in anti-fascist groupings intent on 'fighting fascism' and supporting the victims.
There is a need for the working class to defend itself against racist attacks, as one component of all the attacks reigning down on it. Following the attacks on Romanians in Belfast, there were practical efforts made to guard potential victims' homes by local residents acting together with some politicised elements, students and so on. In a higher stage of the class struggle it would be possible to develop a more organised and massive defence of working class or immigrant neighbourhoods from pogromist attacks, as we saw for example in the great strikes of 1905 in Russia, or in the opposition of the London dockers to Moseley's planned march through the Jewish East End in 1936. But anti-fascist fronts drown out class solidarity in what is, fundamentally, a defence of the democratic system. There are two elements to this. The first is the desire to 'confront' right wing elements be it at demonstrations or particular events. Such 'exemplary' actions by individuals and small groups tends to act as a substitute for real class solidarity, which is based on widening the collective struggle.
Secondly, there are strong connections between the radical left of the state - organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and some trade unions - and the anti-fascist fronts. Again, these tend to act either as fronts for recruiting (mainly) younger workers worried by the fascists or enrolling workers into broader coalitions which aim to provide 'radical opposition' within the framework of capitalism.
The leftists' anti-fascist fronts are based on the idea that fascism is the number one danger to the working class. But it wasn't the BNP or EDL that have been breaking down people's doors at 3am, or locking up women and children in detention centres where they suffer traumas and abuse, but the democratically elected Labour Party, which used the issue of immigration as and how it suited its needs. Phil Woolas, the last Labour immigration minister said: "This is a deliberate attempt by the EDL at division and provocation, to try and push young Muslims into the hands of extremists, in order to perpetuate the divide. It is dangerous." But the Labour Party has certainly driven many more young Muslims into the hands of the jihadists with its war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and its increasingly repressive arsenal of laws aimed at ‘fighting terrorism' at home. The fundamental problem with anti-fascism is that it aims to convince us that we should ally with ‘democratic' bourgeois parties who are no less our enemy than the fascists.
Graham 29/6/10
Since the summer of 2007, the United States federal government has extended benefits under the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program to unprecedented levels amidst the most serious unemployment crisis the nation has experienced since the great depression of the 1930s. As a result of the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and subsequent Wall Street meltdown the following year, official unemployment in the United States has stubbornly hovered around 10 percent.[1]
Under current provisions of the emergency extension, unemployed workers in states with the highest unemployment levels are eligible for up to 99 weeks of benefits, including their regular state benefits, EUC and separate Extended Benefits program. During both the late Bush administration and the new Obama presidency, ensuring federal funding for extended unemployment benefits was considered the cornerstone of economic recovery and stimulus in a broad Keynesian policy of attempting to prop up consumer demand through government spending. As any good Keynesian would tell you, unemployment benefits are among the best stimulus tools available, as unemployed workers generally spend their benefits right away in the local economy rather than stashing them away as savings. From the middle of 2007 to about midway through 2009, the American bourgeoisie was more or less united, across partisan lines, on extending unemployment benefits as an appropriate measure to respond to an economy all regarded as in deep recession. The goal of this policy was to prop up consumer demand and convince an increasingly frightened and cynical public that the state cares about workers who were unfortunate enough to lose their jobs due to the malfeasance of the banks and “irresponsible homeowners.”
Fast forward to the summer of 2010: Official unemployment has barely dropped at 9.5 percent[2], the average length of unemployment is now a stunning 34 weeks (more than the 26 weeks of unemployment benefits available under regular state programs) and hundreds of thousands of workers have already exhausted all the benefits for which they are eligible under the federal extensions, leading to the coining of a new term on the unemployment internet message boards—the “99 weeker.”[3] However, now—unlike the previous two years—the political consensus for further unemployment extensions in Washington has evaporated. For the last six months, Democrats and Republicans have been going at one another over the twin threats of the national debt and a possible double dip recession, using the plight of the unemployed and the further extension of unemployment benefits as ideological clubs.
According to the Republican line, the unprecedented extension of unemployment benefits has only served to subsidize unemployment by giving the long term unemployed an incentive to veg out and skip looking for work, at the same time that it has contributed to a swelling national debt that threatens the long term health of the national economy. Meanwhile, Democrats berate the cruelty of their Republican foes who want to turn their back on the nation’s unemployed by cutting off their benefit checks, simultaneously threatening economic recovery by stifling consumer spending, ultimately risking a new round of home foreclosures—leading to a double dip recession.
This debate has played itself out in high drama several times over the past sixth months in the U.S. Senate, with that body only agreeing to a series of last minute compromise emergency benefit extensions just as previous extensions were set to expire threatening to cut off the flow of unemployment benefit checks. However, this pattern has now come to a screeching halt with Republicans putting up a supposedly principled fight to filibuster any further benefit extensions citing their concerns about the spiraling national deficit. Since June 2nd, workers have been unable to advance to any new tiers of unemployed benefits as Republican Senators have stubbornly refused to approve any new extensions that aren’t “paid for.” As this article goes to press, the Senate has just rejected a series of bills that would have extended unemployment benefits until November and has now gone home for the July 4th recess without approving any extensions.[4] As a result of the Senate’s inaction, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) now estimates that 3.2 million unemployed workers will see their benefits cut off over the next month. [5]
So what is behind this abrupt change in policy for the American bourgeoisie? How should unemployed workers—and indeed the entire working class given that in the midst of this crisis even those of us with a job could be without it at a moment’s notice—interpret the debate over the unemployment benefits extension that has seemingly pitted Democrats against Republicans over the last several months? Are Democrats really looking out for us against the cruel heartless Republicans? Is the rhetoric about the national debt just political posturing and an ideological ploy to convince workers to accept “inevitable austerity”?
The Republican Party’s actions—and certainly its rhetoric—in blocking the further extension of unemployment benefits do reveal that in fact the Grand Old Party now regroups some of the most ideologically driven right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie. Under the influence of the Tea Party, the Republican party has become home to all types of right-wing ideologues who really seem to believe their own rhetoric about the unemployed being lazy free loaders, and who would—if they had their way—abolish whatever remains of American state capitalism’s social “safety net” immediately, regardless of the effects on the wider economy and society. For these Republicans—and their Tea Party allies—unemployment insurance is nothing more than an unfair subsidy to the lazy and inept paid for out of the tax proceeds extracted from hard working Americans, most notably the small businessmen that supposedly form the backbone of American society in their idyllic vision of the shopkeeper’s utopia.[6]
The fact that American politics is capable of producing a bourgeois faction with considerable sway within one of the two major political parties, operating with such an ideological view of the world, is clear evidence of the accelerating decomposition of the American state, in which important factions of the bourgeoisie have simply lost the capacity to strategize in the interests of the national capital itself, but instead take their orders from naked ideologues and demagogues concerned only with short-term partisan interest. In the short to medium term, the Republican Party’s action in blocking the further extension of unemployment benefits compromises the position of the national state to address the immediate needs of the total national capital to prop up demand, shore up local economies and ward off the danger of a double dip recession.[7] Moreover, in acting to cut off the benefits of so many unemployed workers in one fell swoop at the national level, the Republicans’ actions threaten to alienate an entire swathe of workers who have now been introduced to the brutality of the American state in the most direct way possible: the immediate cutting off of the measly unemployment benefit checks that have so far just barely kept them and their families from foreclosure, eviction, bankruptcy and even homelessness. [8]
Nevertheless, despite the apparent short-term inanity of the Republican position on unemployment benefit extensions—and while we can debate whether their concern over the growing national deficit is genuine or merely staged for short term partisan goals—the underlying debt problem is in fact very real for the American bourgeoisie. A growing consensus is in fact emerging among the entire bourgeoisie that the national debt cannot be allowed to continue to grow out of control and that national austerity is in the offing. It is in this context that even some Democrats have started to come around to the Republican position on unemployment extensions: they are just too costly.[9] Let us workers not forget that it was actually a Democrat—Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska—who cast the deciding ‘No’ vote on the latest extension bill, ensuring that over 3 million of our unemployed brethren will lose benefits in the weeks ahead, baring a dramatic change of course following the July 4th recess.[10] Moreover, on the eve of the latest vote on the extension, the Majority leader in the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, gave a foreboding address to the Third Way—a supposedly centrist Washington think-tank—laying out the growing consensus of concern about the spiraling national debt, which he said would make further extensions of unemployment benefits difficult, if not impossible.
At the end of the day, workers must recognize the simple fact that, regardless of ideological and partisan commitments, the bourgeoisie is in the last instance always driven by the cold hard logic of the state and capital. With the failure of the ‘expansionist’ policies to jolt-start a sustained recovery, and with the debt-crisis in Europe threatening to destabilize the whole capitalist system, this logic at the present juncture more and more dictates austerity over Keynesianism[11]. Simply put, whether it is run by Democrats or Republicans, the state cannot continue to extend unemployment benefits forever. Whether they cut us off after Tier 4, Tier 5 or Tier 8,[12] the state will eventually have to respond to the dictates of capital and phase out further benefit extensions for long-term unemployed workers. Whether gradually, or in one fell swoop—if the most retrograde factions of the Republican Party have their way—millions of our working class brothers and sisters will face the reality of being permanently sidelined from the official labor market and forced to make a living through other means.
Whatever the motivations of the Republican Party, its rhetoric over the last several months—egged on by conservative talk radio, Fox News and Tea Party activists—has clearly been designed to drive a wedge between workers who still have jobs and the unemployed. They want to paint the unemployed as lazy freeloaders who do not really want to work and who just want to live on the government dole—in other words, off of the labor of other workers extracted as taxes. As frightening, and as completely wrong, as this ideology is, workers must not fall for the opposite side of the coin as Democrats execute the classic ideological division of labor by painting the state as the generous provider of benefits that helps the unfortunate through tough economic times. This side of the ideological coin is clearly designed to trap workers behind a defense of the state as the protector of the values of social solidarity, epitomized by unemployment insurance.
Workers must be clear about this unemployment insurance system that the bourgeois left want us to defend. Unemployment insurance in the United States was never meant to be permanent. In “non-emergency” conditions regular state benefits only last for 26 weeks. Moreover, only a fraction of unemployed workers actually meet the very strict eligibility requirements to qualify for unemployment benefits, which generally hinges on complex monetary formulae designed to establish a workers’ “long-term connection” to the labor market. Most unemployed workers receive no benefits whatsoever. In addition, even unemployed workers who may be technically eligible for benefits are often denied on dubious grounds and lose subsequent appeal hearings, which they do not understand and in which the rules of a court of law apply. And for those who do qualify for benefits? They generally receive only fraction of their pay while they were working—amounts that often do not even allow recipients to keep their heads above water anyway. Is this the epitome of social solidarity? Hardly! Is this system an overly generous subsidy that gives workers an incentive to milk the dole? Not even close! In the minutiae of its eligibility and procedural rules and the paltry benefits it provides, the capitalist state’s unemployment insurance system is revealed for what it really is: an arbitrary, bureaucratic monstrosity designed to pacify the working class at the least cost possible for the state and employers.
Workers must not fall for either side of the bourgeois ideological coin when it comes to the debate regarding the extension of unemployment benefits. Those of us who are lucky enough to remain employed in the midst of this unprecedented crisis must not be baited into attacking our class brothers and sisters who have been forced to utilize the unemployment insurance system to eek out a subsistence living. On the other side, unemployed workers must not fall for the trap of looking to the state for our salvation. We waste our time when we stay up late at night watching C-SPAN[13], following the progress of each unemployment insurance extension bill as it winds its way through the tortured halls of Congress. We dilute our real class anger when we allow ourselves to be mobilized behind email and telephone campaigns to Congressional offices, imploring members of Congress to extend benefits just one more time. All this will do is increase our anxiety and demoralize us even more when the eventual final cut-off comes. We must recognize that our struggle, if it is to be successful, must confront the state, rather than beg for the pittances bourgeois legalism might or might not grant. How much longer will we accept seeing our lives, our very well-being reduced to a pawn in a cruel, calculated, heartless political game between bourgeois factions, all with the same ultimate prerogative to enact austerity?
Only the path of class struggle on our own class terrain, through our autonomous class organs can unite the employed and unemployed and challenge the very society which produces the want, poverty, anxiety and desperation which currently grips our class. While the bourgeoisie will seek to divide the working class amongst itself, the increasingly harsh and full-frontal attacks on living and working conditions by the state will provide the fertile ground for struggles to develop where workers will be able to express their solidarity with the unemployed and rediscover their historic class identity. Only the road of struggle can provide the antidote to despair.
--Henk
07/02/2010
[1] The ICC has in numerous previous articles explained that the bourgeoisie’s official unemployment numbers grossly underestimates the real extent and social impact of joblessness.
[2] According the official job numbers released on Friday July 2nd, the unemployment rate has fallen to 9.5 percent from a previous 9.7 percent. However, even bourgeois economists were forced to admit that this drop was due largely to discouraged long-term unemployed workers simply giving up looking for a job. See “Economy lags as job growth remains weak [116] ” in the Washington Post, Saturday, July 3rd, 2010.
[3] See unemployed-friends.forumotion.com, an internet message board for unemployed workers, where the discussions have been dominated for months by the anxious hoping for additional tiers of benefits.
[4] To be accurate, the proposed extension of benefits would not have made any workers who had already exhausted their 99 weeks (or all the tiers they were eligible for) eligible for any additional benefits. It would only have allowed workers to continue to advance to the next tier of emergency benefits until November.
[5] To put it another way, the number of unemployed workers in the United States who could potentially lose their benefits over the next month is about equivalent to the population of Uruguay.
[6] This is of course beside the fact that the Republican Party is largely bankrolled by corporate America and the Tea Party is in many ways the brainchild of millionaire anti-tax activists.
[7] Another ominous motive for the Republican’s stand against unemployment benefit extensions was given by the Nobel prize winning left-of-center economist Paul Krugman on the “Charlie Rose Show” of 7/02/2010. He referred to the ‘Theory of pain’ which goes that forcing pain on people now, even though it is not immediately necessary in the short term, not only reassures the bond markets that governments are serious about addressing the deficits, but also conditions the populace for more substantial pain in the future when the growing deficit makes even deeper universal cuts inescapable. See charlierose.com.
[8] If Congress does not enact an extension package when it returns from the July 4th recess, it will mark the first time in history federal EUC programs have been allowed to expire with the official unemployment rate still above 8 percent.
[9] It was with some considerable awkwardness that President Obama attempted to mount a meek defense of continued Keynesian stimulus at the G20 in Toronto in the midst of a growing international consensus for austerity made necessary by the so-called sovereign debt crisis in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. At the very least, Obama must not have come off as very convincing to his fellow world leaders as he called for continued stimulus abroad, just as his own Congress coldly rejected further unemployment insurance extensions at home citing the spiraling national debt.
[10] Granted a number of bourgeois commentators expect that an additional extension will eventually pass once the Senate reconvenes after the July 4th recess and a replacement for the late Democratic Senator—and one time Ku Klux Klan member—Robert Byrd from West Virginia can be seated and provide the deciding vote. However, even if another extension does in fact pass this does not change the fundamental dilemma facing American state capitalism, which will eventually necessitate a final termination of benefit extensions.
[11] See ‘Debt-Crisis: The State Is Bankrupt, Workers Must not Bail it Out [117] ’, Internationalism, no. 155.
[12] Discussions on unemployed-friends.forumotion.com have been dominated by pleas for a Tier 5 of benefits for months (the current EUC program ends after Tier 4). While such a demand may eventually broaden into a confrontation with the state itself, the tone of the discussions so far have unfortunately remained mired in bourgeois legalism.
[13] C-SPAN is the U.S. cable news network that provides live feeds of the proceedings on the floor of Congress.
Here we are publishing a letter from a sympathiser in South Africa which gives his impressions of the massive hype surrounding the World Cup
So goes the catch-phase/cum call to party and spend beamed to every South African TV for the past three weeks. The message is clear - enjoy this celebration of football and show the world what a capable, multicultural, and business-friendly butterfly the old, divided apartheid caterpillar has become. Nevermind if the metaphor doesn't really work (since when was a caterpillar divided?), this insect metaphor was employed by none other than Desmond Tutu himself at the Cup's opening ceremony.
For my money, from a footballing perspective, this has been a great World Cup. After a lack-lustre and stale beginning featuring a kill-yourself-with-a-rusty-croissant 0-0 draw between Uruguay and France (more on this below), we've seen the dwarf collective (i.e. Messi and Maradona aka Argentina) play some exquisite stuff, Brazil dance to an intriguing new tune (a catchy fusion of Samba and Nazi marching band) and England get their just desserts. By the way, some people might blame the lack of FIFA qualified coaches in England, or the overly busy Premier League season, or the advancing years of key players. I prefer to disregard most of my anthropological training and blame it on the mainstream of English psychology, which, brutalized and bored by two centuries of industrialization and manically tidy front rooms, is left with brute force and conformity (which paradoxically is manifested as individualistic selfishness) as its only means of expression. I'm sure some nit-picking naysayer will find holes in this sophisticated theory.
To get back to my main point. The World Cup South Africa 2010, is, beyond the playing field, in almost every aspect a horrific spectre of contemporary capitalism kitted and booted with the FIFA stamp of approval. I was lucky and unfortunate enough to go to the above -mentioned Uruguay-France draw. The Greenpoint Stadium itself is spectacular - an exquisite example of an industrial kind of craftsmanship put together by workers earning what would be considered a pittance in the ‘developed' world. And this in a city where supermarket food prices often outstrip those of London and Paris.
Looking around the stadium, I saw advertisements for all the key FIFA-approved companies: Budweiser (whose beer Monty Python would have said was like ‘having sex in a canoe'), McDonalds, Visa, Coca-Cola...the usual suspects. Even the grounds of ‘ethical business' which would benefit ‘Africa' upon which this World Cup was supposedly built has in quick measure proven to be a bold-faced lie. Of course, even if local/African companies were given advertising space in the stadium, this would have only benefited a certain bourgeois minority. But the way in which international gigantabusiness, led by FIFA, has so blatantly gone back on its promise of an African World Cup, for the benefit of ‘the people', just shows up the real purpose of the Cup and capitalism in general: to make lots and lots of money for a small number of people.
Shuffling out of the stadium, rusty croissant in hand, I noticed the huge number of police shepherding the Budweiser-filled crowds. Putting this down to the usual high security of South African life, I thought nothing more of it. Later on, speaking with people who work within the stadium and reading The Mail and Guardian I discovered that the overload of Old Bill was down to a security guard strike. Having been promised R300-400 for a 12 hour shift, security guards had refused to work for their actual pay of R190 for the same shift. The Local Organising Committee and FIFA share joint responsibility for stadium security and yet neither were willing to fork out a decent wage for those people taking the job on. In the end, the South African state has had to pay for police to take over the security guards' positions, at rates double the R300-400 originally promised. Given that FIFA will make something like $2,500,000,000 from the World Cup, security guards are justifiably aggrieved. However, incidents like this should not really be seen as ‘unfair play' on the behalf of FIFA, as suggested by some quarters (see for example www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/hosts-see-red-as-world-cup-bill-soars-ndash-but-fifa-is-163-1-7bn-in-black-1994958.html [119]). Rather, this is simply business as usual in a country and a world which is supremely unequal and by definition unfair. If the rules of the game itself favour the rich and powerful, FIFA is simply playing the game well. This is the same game that the many many South African businesses which exploit cheap black and ‘coloured' labour thrive upon.
I believe people are aghast (though probably not surprised) by the huge financial loss the World Cup is turning out to be. The by now common criticisms of FIFA are intermingled with a national mood of patriotism and African pride which is sweeping the nation. These latter phenomena do not come in for criticism. South African flags adorn bars, restaurants, cars, billboards. This may be fine and well for those of us lucky enough to hang out in fancy bars, side-by-side with our equally well-fed and drunk German friends. Such patriotic fervour takes on a different complexion in those parts of the country where people compete for homes, for extremely low-paying jobs, and where xenophobic violence saw some 40,000 people chased out of their homes just two years ago. In these places, rumours abound that when the World Cup is over, foreigners - poor Zimbabweans, Mozambiquans (i.e. probably not those expounding the harmlessness of patriotism in Cape Town's chic cafes) will be kicked out once and for all. Whether these rumours express real intentions, and whether or not these intentions turn into actions, it is clear that patriotism serves more than to sell South African-made products. The most exploited of society identify themselves with the nation, an imagined unifying force which gives them rights to homes, to benefits, to work above those who happen to have been born outside of the borders which history and politics have arbitrarily drawn up. Of course, the reality is far more complicated - when the attacks of 2008 were still happening, many township residents came out to publicly denounce the xenophobia, to welcome their neighbours back to their homes.
To return to where I started, the rainbow nation is, for the majority of the population, anything but a beautiful, multicultural butterfly. I am not a pessimist - I don't think that humanity can ever be entirely lost or defeated, and I do think that a world human community is possible. I think that South Africa is a beautiful, fucked up place and that people should be angry at multi million and billionaire capitalists and national ruling elites selling them division, exploitation, and poverty dressed up as unity, opportunity and wealth.
JWS 1/7/10
On 31 May, Israeli troops raided a flotilla of ships, backed by Turkey to bring ‘humanitarian aid' to the Gaza strip, which is being strangled slowly by Israel's blockade. The results were extremely shocking: marines from one of the best equipped and most highly trained armies in the world killed a number of unarmed members of the flotilla, most of them Turks. The Israeli authorities, as cynical as ever, claimed that they acted in self-defence against militants armed with iron bars and Swiss army knives....
There has been a whole polemic about the real number of victims, with many witnesses saying that there were more than the nine killed and sixty injured (many of them still in Israeli prisons) originally claimed, and that some of the wounded were thrown overboard. But whatever the actual numbers, the violence of the Israeli army was totally out of proportion to the real ‘threat' posed by the convoy.
To justify this raid, Benyamin Netanyahu declared that Israeli soldiers "were mobbed, they were clubbed, they were beaten, stabbed, there was even a report of gunfire. And our soldiers had to defend themselves, defend their lives, or they would have been killed". At the same time he claims that "We want to move as quickly as possible towards direct discussions because the kind of problems we have with the Palestinians can be resolved peacefully if we sit down together round the table". Such statements are pitiful and the State of Israel is making itself look ridiculous in front of the entire ‘international community'.
Meanwhile, continuing in this brazen manner, the head of Gaza District Coordination office, colonel Moshe Levi, said: "The flotilla is provocative, the humanitarian situation there is good: there is no lack of humanitarian products in the Gaza Strip". Levi claimed that access is denied only to products that could help the terrorist activities of Hamas.
1.5 million people live in the 378 square km of the Gaza strip. They are forced to wash and cook in used, soiled water, often to drink it as well; they are subjected to regular bombardments by the Israeli army, which tests its drones and its most up-to-date weapons on the area.[1] The rubbish bins are so full that, in what passes for schools in the area, children are being taught how to recycle rubbish into toys - to reduce the amount of rubbish piling up everywhere, to keep the kids occupied and to help them earn a few pennies in the local economy.
Whether in Gaza or the West Bank, the soil and the sub-soil and thus underwater springs are heavily polluted. First of all because waste water is not being treated, and secondly because of the residues of thousands of tons of phosphorus bombs and low-grade uranium and about thirty other kinds of toxic heavy metals which Israel has been raining down for years. The bodies of the victims of the offensive on Gaza in January 2009 showed high levels of uranium, zinc, mercury, cobalt and other carcinogenetic products. For many years, agricultural production has been irreversibly contaminated as have the few trees the army has not burned down with white phosphorus. All this has given rise to numerous cancers, renal problems and deformed births. This is the dramatic humanitarian situation facing those who live in Palestine. They are hostage to all the warring cliques that have fought over the region for decades. Expecting each day to be worse than the one before, anger is growing among a generation of young people who have only known the Israeli occupation. For many of them, a favourite ‘pastime', for lack of any other perspective, is to throw stones at Israeli troops or enlist as suicide bombers for the terrorist groups.
What happened on 31 May was a new episode in a war that has been going on for over fifty years, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also and above all between the various powers, large or small, who have an interest in the region or in supporting this or that faction.
The main organisation behind the flotilla was the IHH, an Islamist charity that is very well implanted in Turkey in the districts controlled by the AKP, the Islamist party that has been in power since 2002; and the Turkish state provided its services to the IHH to equip the flotilla. The IHH is an organisation close to Hamas. It even has an office in Gaza and has organised other convoys to the Palestinian territories.
Thus, this ‘humanitarian convoy' was also acting in a provocative manner and it was receiving a lot of media publicity. Israel was thus faced with a dilemma; either let the boats pass through and thus concede a victory to the Islamists of Hamas, or intervene by force and assert its will to maintain complete control over the Gaza strip. For the Israeli government, this was to be an exemplary show of force. But its net result was to further isolate the Israeli state on the international stage. It all ended up very badly for the credibility not only of Israel but also its main backer, the USA.
The USA's diminishing political credit, especially in the Arab world, was dealt another blow by this fiasco. It was only able to come out with a feeble protest against the actions of its principal ally in the region. As for the vision of a pro-American Greater Middle East from North Africa to Pakistan, as dreamed up by George Bush, who saw himself as some kind of latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, all this has simply melted away.
The Turkish state has played a preponderant role in this affair. To all intents and purposes it organised the ‘humanitarian initiative' of the flotilla, and following the raid we have had some very aggressive speeches and threats from Ankara. Prime Minister Erdogan said that "the actions of Israel should not go unpunished. The international community must act". More recently, Turkey has threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. Turkey is of course pretending to be helping the Palestinians, but its present stance is dictated entirely by its own imperialist interests.
Up till recently, Turkey was one of Israel's rare allies in the Muslim world. Today it is presenting itself as leader of the war chorus against Zionism. It is doing this because it wants to play a more important role in the Middle East as the loss of US authority pushes the lesser states to seek a new place in the games of imperialism.
The Iran-Syria axis, which has been an important source of support to Hizbollah and Hamas, is now being joined by Turkey - a Turkey that is looking with growing disfavour on the idea of independence for Iraqi Kurdistan[2] and on US support for the Iraqi Kurds, as well as for the Iranian Kurds. To rein in the imperialist ambitions of Ankara, the US is also giving greater latitude to the Turkish Kurds, especially those closest to the east of Anatolia, whom Turkey has been trying very hard to subdue. The USA's current policy is creating a rapprochement between Turkey, Syria and Iran, all the more because these three countries have been kept out of any decision-making with regard to Iraq, whether we are talking about the invasion in 2003 or the management of the crisis there today and in the future. What's more, joining up with this axis gives Turkey a shot of oxygen in the face of the European Union's reluctance to accept its request to become a member.[3]
To this new axis must be added Russia, which has been only too willing to offer its services to counter the big US bully. Russia has played a key role in the decision of these three states to intensify cooperation, open their borders and liberalise trade among themselves. Ankara and Moscow have also abolished the need for visas between their countries. A Turk can now enter Russia without any formalities, something he cannot do either in the US or the EU, even though Turkey is a member of NATO and a candidate for the EU. Moscow is also acting as a go-between for Hamas and Fatah, and, better still, is selling them RPG missiles and S-300s which can be used to pierce Israeli tanks (they will also be sold to Iran for use against any future American bombardments). The Russian companies Rosatom and Atomstroyexport have just completed a civil nuclear power station in Iran (at Bushehr) and are discussing the construction of new ones. They are also going to build a 20 billion dollar plant in Turkey. Stroitansgaz and Gazprom are going to ensure the transport of Syrian gas towards Lebanon, now that Beirut has been prevented by Israel from exploiting its important offshore oil reserves.[4] But Russia has above all consolidated its military position by establishing a new naval base in Syria. This will allow it to re-establish a presence in the Mediterranean which it lost in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.
The US retreat from Iraq is not finished, while the war in Afghanistan goes on and on, and has spread to Pakistan. Iran today is more and more in the US' line of fire. As one failure follows another and both Israel and the US become more isolated, history is accelerating. Things that seemed unlikely a year or so ago are now becoming more tangible. Two weeks after the attack on the IHH flotilla, there has been no attenuation of warlike tensions, despite Israel's pledge to ease the blockade of humanitarian goods bound for Gaza. Far from it: 12 US warships are heading for the Persian Gulf via the Suez Canal, while several Israeli nuclear submarines capable of hitting any target in Iran are making for the same destination. For the moment these are just gestures aimed at backing up Obama's speechifying against Tehran. But the international context is such that we cannot exclude the possibility of things slipping out of control, or even a more ‘planned' episode which would equally be a product of capitalism's delirious slide towards war.
Wilma 28/6/10
[1] The weapons, especially drones like the Heron, which Israel has been selling to the European Union or the USA for the war in Afghanistan, or those which were used in the war between Georgia and Abkhazia in 2008, are advertised as having been "war tested", i.e. in the occupied territories
[2]. What's more, at the economic and even at the military level, Israel is now taking on the role of champion of Iraqi Kurdistan, thus making it a direct rival of Turkey.
[3]. The attack on the flotilla also meant that the second summit of the Union for the Mediterranean, so dear to the French president, was postponed until November. Among other things this Union advocates Israel being integrated into the task of keeping the peace in the Mediterranean. The first summit was completely undermined by the Israeli attack on Gaza. The French right is certainly one of the stupidest in the world.
[4] The ‘energy war' is taking on an increasingly dramatic tone around the question of Iran and this is forcing Washington to make further mistakes. Tehran has signed an agreement with Pakistan, worth 7 billion dollars, launching the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan. This project goes back 17 years but has so far been blocked by the US. Despite this, 900 of the 1500 km of the pipeline have been completed, going from the South Pars gas field to the frontier with Pakistan, which is going to build the remaining 700 km. This energy corridor will, from 2014, bring 22 million cubic metres of gas from Iran to Pakistan. China is also ready to import Iranian gas. The China Petroleum Corporation has signed an agreement with Iran worth five billion dollars to develop the South Pars gas field. For Iran this is a strategically important project: the country possesses the second biggest reserves of natural gas after Russia, and they are largely waiting to be exploited. With this energy corridor to the east, Iran could get round the sanctions being demanded by the US. It does however have a weak spot: its biggest gas field, the South Pars, is offshore, situated in the Persian Gulf. It is thus vulnerable to a naval blockade, which the US could impose by calling on the sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council.
The following article by James Connolly was sent to the Left Communist group forum on www.revleft.com [126] by a comrade in the US who has begun posting under the name Stagger Lee. We suggested that it could be published on our website and asked him to write a short introduction, and also asked him about his political ‘history'. He provided both and we found the personal history worthy of publishing as well, so it appears here in an appendix with the author's permission.
This article by the Irish socialist James Connolly (1868 - 1916) was first published in The Workers' Republic in 1899. It lays out the marxist, hence internationalist, case for proletarian liberation. In this piece, Connolly presents the slogans of national "liberation", then juxtaposes them with a short remark highlighting the shortfalls of nationalism as a path for working class liberation. He shows how romantic calls of "freedom" in the context of nationalism have no class character nor can they ever. Connolly ends with a call for unity, not as a nation, but as a class. He calls not for the liberation of the Irish bourgeoisie, but for the working class. Workers have no country, but one struggle. Connolly's words ring as true today as it did then.
James Connolly, The Workers' Republic, 1899
My interest in politics began shortly after 9/11, where I was a hardline neo-conservative who thought the United States should go around the world bringing freedom to countries that need it. A few years later, I watched an 8 hour video lecture by 2004 Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik about the U.S. Constitution, which turned me towards right wing libertarianism. I held consistent libertarian views for a good while until I found out that my sister was feeding my nephews with welfare and collecting unemployment. She was doing her best everyday to find a job, she went to school, and certainly not lazy. Libertarianism provided a veil that explained the crimes in the world without having to experience it. Libertarianism, unlike socialism, is a simple, pleasant sounding ideology that tells you what you want to hear.
When basic reality hit me that social ills were, shockingly, social and not individual failings, I was your typical American liberal. I soon found out about this Senator we have in this country called Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a "democratic socialist." Now I still regarded socialism as meaning everybody gets paid the same wage, government owns all the businesses, Stalin etc. I learned that nearly every country except the United States has a significant political party affiliated with the Socialist International. My (quick) revulsion at the weakness of American liberals to support single payer health care and other social reforms pushed me to democratic socialism.
My conversion to communism was pretty much by accident. In high school I chose to check out from the school library a biography on Leon Trotsky. The sole reason I did so was A. His facial hair B. Cool name and C. I wanted my teachers to freak out. Totally superficial reasons, but I still read it. I learned what socialism and communism actually are, a basic understanding of class society, and the rejection of reformism as a method to bring about socialism. I didn't consider myself a marxist yet because I still didn't know what it was, but I considered myself a communist. I was also an avid reader of Noam Chomsky, and he mentioned the Spanish Civil War as an example of "anarchism in action", so I decided to read up on it. The Spanish Revolution and the anarchist's story was so enthralling and inspirational, I became an anarchist. This is when I truly started reading leftist texts, by Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman, Goldman etc. Due to this I held typical anarchist misconceptions about what marxism is. I began reading about the debates between Bakunin and Marx, and instead of strengthening my anarchism, I tended to relate more with Marx. I chose to learn more about marxism, namely the critique of political economy, historical materialism and class theory. I then considered myself an "anarcho-marxist": someone who hailed from the anarchist tradition but held a marxian conception of society and history.
Many things happened at once that made me be attracted to Left Communism. One, I was a big supporter of Palestinian "liberation." I guess I had some sort of epiphany and realized that people have been fighting for Palestinian "liberation" for almost 50 years with absolutely no positive results. Imperialists arm the Israelis, but the Fatah party is under the auspices of imperialists as well, not to mention the outright reactionary character of Hamas.
I read the ICC's article about the state in the dictatorship of the proletariat, what it is and what it isn't. It cast aside my anarchist knee-jerk reaction against the word "state" by clearing up misconceptions and filling in blanks that I didn't consider. It made sense, and even more convincing was the analysis not based on the moralism that most critiques of the state are based on.
I read left communist literature about national liberation and it made a lot of sense to me, and put the ideas that I had floating around in my head in writing and in an organized manner.
I restarted my study about the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik party, and Vladimir Lenin. My old rejection of the Revolution evaporated when I actually learned the facts. I realized the necessity for a vanguard party, not to lead or substitute the class, but to uphold a consistent proletarian position amongst the class. My old hatred of Lenin as a "corrupter" of socialism went away as well. There are many things he got wrong, and anybody who has any concern for socialism ought to level criticism against anyone when it is justified (something Lenin did frequently). There are also many things he was right about, and he was no doubt a true revolutionary to his dying day. Removing my biases allowed me to identify with ideas I would have irrationally rejected earlier.
I am a marxist, a communist, and an internationalist. The solution to our ills is world wide revolution. Workers don't have a country, but we do have each other. There is one struggle - the class struggle, and this struggle unites us together. Long live internationalism!
Stagger Lee 7/10
While the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico has become the biggest environmental pollution in the history of one of the most developed countries, the USA, and while it has made the consequences of the failure to protect the environment apparent, the pollution of the environment in a gigantic scale has almost become part of daily life in Nigeria. "In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP [131]'s Deepwater Horizon rig last month." (The Guardian, 30/05/10).
In the wetlands of the Niger delta, which with a size of 20,000 square kilometres is the biggest of its kind in Africa, oil companies extract on average 2 million barrels oil every day. Nigeria is the seventh biggest oil exporting country of the world and one of the main suppliers of the USA. Because of its low sulphur contents the product of this African oil producing country is very much in demand. Around 95% of the income of the country stems from the oil production in the southern region. Most of the 7,000km of pipelines that link the 1,000 pumping stations in the 300 onshore-oil-sites in the Niger delta, were built in the 1950s and 60s. Between 1976 and 2001 some 6,800 oil leaks were reported. In 2009 alone, over 2,000 leaks from oil drilling and, above all, from pipelines, were registered. Each year some 300 leaks of some kind occur. About 50% of the oil leaks occur because of corroded pipelines and tanks, approximately 30% because of 'sabotage' and 20% during regular operations. The scale of pollution is unbelievable. The national authority (NOSDRA) in charge of the investigation and cleaning of oil pollution says that between 1976 and 1997 more than 2.4 million barrels of oil contaminated the natural environment.
Independent oil experts and environmental organisations assume that during the last 50 years between 9 and 13 million barrels of oil were spilled into the environment, ending up in the mangrove forests and swamps of the densely populated Niger delta instead of pipelines and tankers. This corresponds to more oil than leaked during the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 into the shores of Alaska. Fields and the tributaries of the river are chronically polluted. There are areas where the ground water has become black, and others where the sky has been dark for years due to the burning of the petroleum and natural gasses emitted during oil production. Respiratory diseases, skin rashes and eye diseases are widespread amongst the local population. They are attributed to dioxin and other carcinogenic agents, which are emitted during fires close to the soil.
The damage to both humans and the environment is very high in the delta. Innumerable river courses, mangrove forests, fertile cropland and waters formerly rich in fish have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Overland pipelines cross villages or often run in front of houses, so that the residents of the houses have to climb over them to reach their homes. The oil trickles into the ground water or forms lakes as big as football pitches. In many cases the drinking water is poisoned and vegetation destroyed. Life expectancy has fallen to 46 years for women and 45 years for men
With reserves of 6.5bn cubic meters, Nigeria is the seventh biggest producer of natural gas. According to the State run oil company NNPC every year 23 billion cubic meters, or 40% of the gas extracted in Nigeria is burnt-off; sometimes the entire quantity of gas that is generated during oil production is burnt-off. During this process a lot of methane gas is generated, which is one of the main causes of the green house effect and 64 times more dangerous than CO2 for global warming.
How is it possible that a country so rich in raw materials has created possibly the worst polluted eco-system on earth? Why is it that the existence of such large amounts of precious raw materials does not lead to prosperity but instead to the strangulation of nature and to a living hell for human beings?
"In 1958 oil was discovered in Nigeria above all in the Niger delta near Port Harcourt. Particularly large amounts were discovered in Ogoni land, in the north-eastern Niger delta. Ever since oil has counted for about 90% of the export income of the country. Often it is estimated that in this area some 900 million barrels of oil have been extracted (...). It is estimated that since 1960 the oil income amounted to 600 billion dollars, and yet 70% of the Nigerians have an income of less than one dollar a day. (...) 35% live in extreme poverty."
Life expectancy in Nigeria, where at least half of the population has no access to drinking water, has been falling during the past two generations to just over 40 years. The local population in the Niger delta or near the pipelines and oil drilling stations is ruined. The people have not gained anything from the oil riches, on the contrary. Driven into poverty, tormented by terrible diseases due to pollution, many people are forced to tap the oil pipelines every day - putting their lives at risk. At the same time in the background of increasing poverty, more and more people are driven into the fold of armed gangs, which kidnap employees of the oil companies and hold them for blackmail or ransom and sow terror in daily life.
Despite the gigantic oil revenues of more than $300bn that have fallen into the hands of the Nigerian state, no significant industrial zones have arisen, nor has any solid infrastructure been developed. After an initial 50/50 division between the foreign oil companies (Shell, which initially held a monopoly position, later Gulf, Mobil and Texaco) and the ruling Nigerian class, around half of the oil revenues were usurped by foreign capital. Nigerian rulers, and above all the army, snatched the lion's share of the revenues, without investing money in the development of production, so there is no industry worth mentioning. Nigeria has been prevented from becoming a competitive industrial power. A similar situation exists in several other oil producing countries, whose oil resources were plundered for decades (e.g. Venezuela, Iran) and where no modern, competitive industry has arisen. The local population has never benefited from the oil riches; instead more and more people have been driven into migration. After the collapse of the oil prices in the early 1980s Nigerian oil revenues fell from $26bn in 1980 to $5bn in 1986. The response of the Nigerian government was to kick out migrant workers from the neighbouring countries. Some 700,000 Ghanaians were forced out and in 1985 a quarter of a million people were expelled.
Within the country several factors drove people into migration. Desertification, environmental pollution, pauperisation all spurred a rural exodus and drove people into migration abroad. Nigerians form a large part of the African refugees living in Europe and the USA.
Thus the country has not become an industrial power but a cemetery for nature and a hell for most of the people. How can we explain the contrast between wealth and poverty, between the potential and reality?
Some claim that the whole calamity is due to the corruption and incapacity of the army. If the army was not corruptible, bribable and so ‘selfish', the whole country would be better off. Indeed the influence and the weight of the army since the discovery of oil have increased tremendously. But the development of Nigeria results from much stronger forces in society than the mere parasitic life of the military.
Barely 10 years after the beginning of the oil exploitation in 1958 the land was ravaged in a disastrous war from July 1967 to January 1970.
As with many other African countries, Nigeria is an artificial nation constructed by the former colonial power, in this case Britain. Nigeria, which in October 1960 gained independence from Britain, counted some 60 million inhabitants with about 300 different ethnic and cultural groups. In many other parts of the former British empire, Britain governed through the practice of "divide and rule" (e.g. on the Indian subcontinent through the partition of India and Pakistan/Bangladesh that led to war a short time later). In Nigeria too it sought, to maintain a fragile equilibrium between the most important ethnic-religious groups on the one hand, while, on the other, it exploited divisions to set them against each other. The new African rulers inherited and continued these practices after independence in October 1960. Ever since, the struggle for power and a balancing of the interests and positions of the respective groups has dominated daily life in the multiethnic state. The different ethnic groups were coexisting and fighting with each other, while the religious divides were mainly between Christians (most of them living in the south) and Muslims (mostly living in the north). After the end of colonial rule there was no ‘united' national ruling class that could have acted in a unified manner for the defence of the interests of a ‘united' country and the country was split into many regions, where the local rulers depended on a specific source of income, such as a particular agricultural product, and the interests of regional groups (who often belong to an ethnic and/or religious group) collided. In short, the country was a fragile construct with a number of ethnic, religious and regional provincial chiefs and it was only a question of time before this formation was shaken and torn apart.
In the mid 1960s ethnic tensions had sharpened so much that in 1966 ferocious pogroms against the Christian Ibo, who lived in the Muslim dominated north, were perpetrated. Some 30,000 of the 13 million Ibo lost their lives, which provoked a wave of 1.8 million refugees from the North towards the South-East. On May 30th 1967, with the support of civilian political forces of the South-East, parts of the army declared the south-eastern region of Nigeria to be an independent state - Biafra. The Nigerian government, with the support of Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union opposed this split with all its force. More than two million people lost their lives in the fighting or starved to death.
But the cancer of militarism stretched far beyond the fighting over Biafra, because since then violence and marauding gangs have become a daily phenomenon that is not limited to Nigeria but constantly ravages the neighbouring states of the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Congo etc.
Instead of equipping the local population with energy and capital for investment in infrastructure and oil production sites, the exploitation of oil has led not only to a disaster for the environment and to a spiral of misery for most of the people in the region, but has also stimulated the rapacious appetite of other vultures, which in turn take the local population as hostage. In the meantime ‘rebel movements' have also arisen. "The biggest rebel movement (Mend - Movement for the emancipation of the Niger delta) after the first military clashes proclaimed ‘total war' and the ‘general mobilisation of all men in fighting age'. This made it easier for the army to consider the entire civilian population as enemies. And Mend has announced it will block all water ways, in order to strangulate Nigerian oil exports. [In 2009] oil production has fallen to 1.2 million barrels a day, compared to 2.17 million barrels in 2007." (www.counterpunch.org/watts08122009.html [132]).
Nigeria could produce 2.6 million barrels a day. But in reality only around 2 million barrels are produced. At least 600,000 barrels are lost due to political turmoil and other problems. The UN-Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that in Nigeria every year some 55 million barrels of oil are stolen. This helps to feed a shadow economy upon which many high-ranking officers and politicians thrive. Now armed gangs are waging a war against the oil multi-nationals and against their own government. The rebels destroy oil installations, attack company headquarters, and destroy businesses linked with petrodollars. 10,000 highly radicalised fighters have swollen their ranks. Attacks, hostage taking and acts of sabotage have made large areas of the oil production zone inaccessible - and the oil production of Nigeria has fallen behind that of Angola. Moreover, in this region pirates spread terror, much as on the shores of Somalia. "America tries to protect the oil. Along the Nigerian coast US-troops train African special troops who are supposed to prevent an extension of the struggles. The ‘war against terror' has also reached the oil producing country Nigeria." (www.3sat.de/page/?source=/boerse/magazin/94491/index.html [133])
This is what daily life in the seventh biggest oil producing country of the planet looks like. The population suffers not only from environmental pollution but is repeatedly taken hostage by marauding soldiers and the by the police, who regularly extort money. This decomposing state drives more and more people into flight. Militarism and war are becoming an increasing plague. Since 1988 the OPEC states have spent 18% of their state budgets or about 6% of their GNP for military purposes. According to SIPRI in recent years military expenditure has doubled.
Even if the situation has not yet deteriorated as far as in Somalia, all the elements exist which could turn Nigeria into a ‘failed-state'. The country, which gained independence more than half a century ago, and which is always gnawed by pogroms between different groups, contains the risk of a ‘lebanisation' or ‘balkanisation', where it falls apart into hostile different groups that wear eachother down through endless fighting. Nigeria thus may join the chain of decomposing countries such as Sierra Leone, Congo, Somalia etc.
If we draw all these elements together - the incredible ecological destruction, the strangulation of the economy under the weight of militarism, the permanent threat of ethnic-religious pogroms, the pauperisation of the population and the extremely low life expectancy, and a nation state, in the grip of militarism and the opposing interests of different groups - we have to see the deeper explanation in the imprisonment of society within the capitalist mode of production. While the bourgeois media always report, sometimes very clearly, the almost apocalyptical, conditions, they never establish a link between the different elements. This task must be accomplished by revolutionaries.
Dv. 21/6/10
The people who came to The Commune day school, "Beyond Resistance", were all keen to discuss revolutionary politics, and many interesting points were made, both in the presentations and the discussions. However, the points were often dispersed. In the discussion on the crisis, one of the three discussions during the first session, the very important point that the present crisis is the result of the developments from the crisis in the 1960s and 70s was made in one of the presentations, together with points on the way that class antagonism in capitalism has become more impersonal and on the defence of Marx against academic ‘marxism' amongst others. State capitalism was one of the themes of the discussion, with a range of views expressed, from the idea that it is a step towards socialism, to the position that it is a tendency expressing the growing barbarity of capitalism since the First World War. Someone from the "Wine and cheese appreciation society" criticised this as not a real discussion, since we first of all needed to clarify what we mean by various terms. And in fact the discussion showed just how difficult it is and just how far we have to go in order to have a real meeting of minds.
The discussion on "imperialism and the national question" later in the afternoon showed the difference in positions even more sharply. This was a very well attended meeting, with people standing and listening from the doorway, perhaps because one of the speakers, Tom, was from the Anarchist Federation which has written a pamphlet taking a clear position against national liberation, which is so dear to all the leftist groups. He began his presentation posing the question of whether, since we are discussing as communists, it progresses or impedes the development of class-consciousness. He went on to defend Rosa Luxemburg's position that imperialism is not the policy of this or that government but results from the relationships among them, something no nation can stand apart from. And he showed the way nationalism, even in conditions of occupation or colonialism, is a weakness that can only undermine the class struggle. Quite so.
The other presentations took the opposing view. Andy from the Columbia Solidarity Campaign denounced not only the superprofits of British corporations but also the labour aristocracy. This is a theory that tends to make workers here feel guilty for their wages because other workers earn less. And in Columbia he tells us they say "we are poor because you've taken our natural resources", encouraging the workers there to see the nation's resources as their own, and to identify workers over here with the British ruling class. A very clear example of Tom's point about the negative effect of nationalism on class-consciousness.
From The Commune, David Broder began by emphasising the question of hierarchies within the world working class, which seemed to be supporting Andy's points on the labour aristocracy. In the discussion, despite the fact that everyone wanted to oppose imperialism, diametrically opposed views were expressed. On the one hand there were the views that Luxemburg was reactionary to oppose Polish nationalism and that if Hezbollah are fighting Israel, however reactionary they are in other ways, they are objectively fighting imperialism and so must be supported. On the other hand, the ICC, for example, said you can't oppose imperialism by taking sides in imperialist war.
In the closing plenary session that followed, we were asked to think about "where next for communists?" The proposal was for a pluralist organisation, a new Communist League, to unite us for activity. Given the totally incompatible views that had just been expressed this was totally unrealistic. Internationalists can never unite with supporters of Hezbollah or any other nationalist organisation, because it is a fundamental principle of the working class. What we can do is continue the debate, as in the Midlands discussion forum or the class struggle forum in Manchester, where internationalists and those who want to discuss internationalist positions come together. Continuing the discussion doesn't prevent groups and individuals getting together for particular activities, in fact it is the only way to create the level of agreement and the level of trust needed.
May 9/7/10
Contents of ICCOnline for August 2010
This is a translation of an article written by Rivoluzione Internazionale, the ICC's section in Italy, published in December 2009.
With the publication of Gomorra[1] and its distribution internationally, Roberto Saviano has become the symbol of the struggle against the Comorra and, more generally, against the Mafia, receiving warm support not only from the Italian and international media, but also from many people who, disgusted with a more and more fraudulent and hypocritical political class, have welcomed Saviano's denunciation of organised crime and, above all, its multiple links with the political and business world. Today, Saviano is much more than a "writer"; he's become above all a reference for many of the young who feel the need to react against all this rottenness, in particular the youth that are suffering from the constant economic and social degradation in the southern regions of Italy.
More recently, Saviano has also moved on to more general questions: denouncing the Iranian regime for killing demonstrators, the Castro regime for getting rid of an embarrassing homosexual writer, or the Stalinist regime and its Gulag, and othersl[2]. He has become the promoter of an Appeal[3] to the President of the Italian Council (Berlusconi) for the withdrawal of the "short procedures" law[4], an appeal which has amassed a hundred thousand signatures.
The facts exposed by Saviano in his writings and interventions are certainly true, as is the picture he paints of corruption, criminality and oppression. It's also true, from a personal point of view, that he is paying very dearly for his denunciations, above all those in the book Gomorra, which has obliged him to lead a life worse than a prisoner. It's for that reason that we respect Saviano because we consider him an honest person, even if we think that he's mistaken about the remedy he suggests for fighting against the ambient rottenness.
For Saviano, the Mafia is fundamentally a virulent parasite which, from the south of Italy, has invaded and gripped the democratic state through the corruption of politicians and businessmen, thus succeeding in infiltrating and influencing the fate of entire regions and even national politics. For him this is possible because, on the one hand, the political class and the state underestimates the danger of this pathogenic agent: "Whereas politics is not interested in the Mafia, the latter is interested in politics and systematically co-opts itself to it"[5]. This is in part down to the principle of "Omerta" in which the southern population is complicit, playing a role of passive spectators through "fear" or "self-preservation", "without thinking, nor demanding a change in their own territory (...) Omerta is not so much keeping your mouth shut, but above all not wanting to know, not wanting to understand, take a position or take part. Here's the new Omerta"[6] .
With such a vision, it follows that the way to vanquish this evil and return dignity to the nation and the southern populations is denunciation and the mobilisation of the population so that it collaborates with the forces of order to point out and denounce the Mafiosi and their dirty work: "The denunciation of murderers could be the sole means to redeem the humanity of people still at ease in the dehumanisation by which they are constrained and with which they seem comfortable"[7]. In fact, according to Saviano, "we must all take account of the fact that neither the media, nor the magistrates alone, will be up to provoking the least change until it is demanded and supported by the majority of citizens"[8].
Many people, without doubt, have discovered frightening and unimaginable facts in the book Gomorra .However, the great majority don't know (because it doesn't figure in the history books) that states, including the Italian state, have very often utilised the Mafia for all sorts of dirty work both domestically and at the international level. Things that these states couldn't do in their own names but which were decisive in setting up policies and strategies that were of the highest importance for the bourgeoisie. Here are a few examples:
None of these elements[11] can lead us to think that the Mafia is typically Italian or southern, nor a foreign body on the democratic system, but, on the contrary, it is an integral and functional part of it, in Italy but also in the United States, China, Japan, Russia and more generally in all the countries of eastern Europe. One can understand that the power gained and developed by the Mafia in Italy for example, is not only the result of an economic power based on illicit business and the considerable numbers of easily bribed politicians and bosses in Italy, but is above all the result of quite precise imperialist policies and the immunity of those that benefit from them (with the exception of some arrests in order to save the face of democracy and legality) in return for precious services given, services which will continue to be rendered to the dominant class.
To return to Saviano, his view can be summed up thus: there are the good and the wicked, honest and dishonest and there is a state, which even if its functions badly, assures, despite everything, civilisation and democracy. In his eyes, there is thus a rotten part of society which can only be eliminated by getting behind and supporting this democratic state and, on the other hand, an amorphous and brutalised mass whose sole objective is not to have any more problems than it has already.
We find this same way of thinking in Saviano's intervention in the programme Che tempo che fa of November 11 2009, where, regarding oppression suffered in Iran, Chile or in the old USSR, etc., he implicitly brings out radical differences between totalitarian oppressor states and democracy, where one isn't killed or put away for one's ideas.
Saviano relates, with just indignation, the story of two young women killed by the Iranian state simply for protesting in the street and expressing their will to live in a freer society. But where's the difference in these murders and the ones ordered by Carlo Giuliani at the G8 in Genoa in 2001, or numerous massacres of workers committed by the democratic Italian state during demonstrations and strikes - this state born out of the Resistance and whose constitution pretends that Italy is a Republic based on the workers[12]? What's the difference between the atrocities of the Stalinist Soviet state and the non-communist ones that Saviano alludes to? The extermination of a quarter million human lives at Dresden in February 1945, and the 200,000 plus people dying in agony in the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima the 6th and 9th of August 1945?
And why does "our" democratic state send troops into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq to serve the interests of the major powers, even if that means death and misery for thousands of people, as was the case in Serbia and Kosovo, where the Italian air force was in the first wave of bombings?
The basic error of Saviano's arguments is considering things from an individual, or sum of individuals, point of view, outside of the social, economic and political circumstances in which they live, in a historically determined epoch. The context we live in is one of a capitalist society which is based upon exploitation and the domination of one class over the great majority of humanity. The economic motor of this society is profit and pitiless competition in each capitalist country and, above all, between the nation states. The state, its laws and its forces of order are the instruments that each national bourgeoisie provides itself with in order to maintain its domination over society and to defend its economic, political and military interests in the face of international competition. In such a society the lives of human beings are not at the centre of concern; there's no space in this system for the needs of humanity and when we talk of needs we are talking just as much about economic needs as those of which Saviano talks: "liberty... justice, the dignity of man and I also add the right to good health"[13].
Abuse, oppression, physical and moral violence, corruption, the absence of ethics and morality and criminal fraud are not the prerogative of such and such individual, clique or power, but are an integral part of the very nature of the capitalist system.
If, today, the countryside finds itself poisoned by tons of toxic waste coming from the industries of the north and buried by the Camorra, it's not because of a particular dose of immorality in those responsible for these enterprises, but because they are constrained to obey the law of capitalist profit and thus use the cheapest method in order to get rid of toxic waste. If, for decades, the Italian political apparatus has used the Mafia, its killings and lies, it's not because these politicians are a "bad lot", but because it corresponds to the interests of the state, a state which openly reverts to these practices when they are necessary.
Whether totalitarian or democratic, the fundamentals and the substance are the same. Democracy is only the instrument better adapted to make this state of things accepted, thanks to the illusion that if the citizens ask the government for a better society it will listen.
Thus, appeals to denounce the killers, to ask the state to enforce the elimination of the Mafia and corruption, appeals to the high-ups in the state to "defend the law" will never work, but on the contrary, have become a means to spread the illusion that it will be possible to live better inside this system.
The sole means to rid ourselves of all this rottenness is to get rid of capitalism. That cannot be realised through the mass indifference of the citizens but, on the contrary, through the social class whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the dominant class and which really has nothing to lose: the proletariat.
Eva (10.12.2009).
[1] Gommora; In the empire of the Camorra by Roberto Saviano (2007). This book, which has been translated into numerous languages, tells of the grip of this criminal organisation on the economy of the Naples region and its catastrophic consequences on the environment. A film has been made based on it. The Camorra is the name of the Neapolitan Mafia. Gomorrah, as Sodom, was a town in the Bible known for its extreme corruption. Saviano makes the parallel between these two names.
[2] The TV programme RA13 Che tempo che fa, 11th November 2009.
[3] http//www.repubblica.itspeciale/2009/firma-lappello-di-saviano/index.html [139]
[4] one the judicial procedures cooked-up with a Berlusconi sauce.
[5] "La camorra alla conquitsta dei partiti in Campania", la Repubblica, October 24.
[6] "Il filmato-shock sconvolge il mondo, i vicoli restano indifferent", La Repubblica, November 1st, in reference to a film on the assassination of a Mafiosi in Naples which circulated on the internet.
[7] "In cinqe minuti la banalita dell'inferno, ora sogno la rebellion del quartiere". La Rebubblica , October 30.
[8] "Siamo tutti casalesi" L'Expresso, October 7, written after the murder of immigrants by the Camorra at Castel Volturno, a province of Naples.
[9] For more elements on this, see our article "How the bourgeoisie organises: the lies of the democratic state" in International Review no. 77, III-1994.
[10] The bloody attack (16 dead and a hundred wounded) which took place in Milan on the Piazza Fontana is a product of this collusion.
[11] Documents on this subject are on the internet, for example: la storia dell'eroina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tq2My1(Gel&feature=related) [140], In Sicilia si gioca la Storia d'Italia (Mafia CIA Vaticano).
[12] Outside of the massacre already cited at Portella delle Ginstre, see "The Hot Autumn in Italy 1969, an episode of historic resurgence of the class struggle" in the International Review no. 140, January 2010.
[13] "Ecco perche non possiamo tacere", response to Minister Bondi, la Repubblica, 23rd November 2009.
Articles only available online in September 2010
Various comrades and groups have sent us information and comments on this struggle that took place recently. We are deeply grateful to them for their collaboration and encourage them to continue. We all know that the media is not neutral and shamelessly serves its masters, the state and capital, sometimes implementing a total black-out on workers' struggles - particularly those that show clear tendencies towards solidarity, self –organisation and militancy ..., and sometimes organising scandalous campaigns of slander as was seen recently during the Metro strike in Madrid. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the advanced minorities of the class rapidly communicate valuable information about workers' struggles to each other[1].
We are not talking about cheering ourselves up by only publicising the positive bits of struggle. The working class does not need pats on the back. We need truthful information and shouldn't be afraid of highlighting weaknesses, obstacles and problems.
Referring back to the struggles in Panama, we want to underline that despite the weaknesses and limitations that the workers' struggles still suffer from today, we are nonetheless seeing one very positive aspect: struggles are developing simultaneously in the so-called "rich" countries (Great Britain, Greece, France, China, Spain ...) and in the "poor" countries (Rumania, Panama, Bangladesh, India …). This is despite the fact that there are still huge obstacles to overcome for the unity of the international proletariat to be fully achieved in breaking down the barriers between workers in the “rich” and “poor” countries that the ruling class fully utilises for its own ends.
The strike erupted on July 1st in the banana growing province of Bocas de Toro, bordering Costa Rica. Workers were demanding unpaid wages on the one hand and, expressing their opposition to the problems posed to it by the new law proposed by the Martinelli government, Statute 30, which "limits the right to strike and collective bargaining, legalises the hiring of 'scabs' and grants the police immunity by giving it rights outside the Panamanian Constitution "[2]. This Statute 30 also has articles that cancel the automatic payment of union contributions by the bosses. It also includes repressive measures such as the legalisation of spying, with a decree of the Ministry of Public Security to legalise the figure of the "secret agent" who has a free hand to spy on and accuse anyone "engaged in activities that harm national security, State assets, social cohesion”, which means that anyone can be denounced.
The unrest that these measures caused led to more than 10,000 people demonstrating on June 29th in Panama City. But the combativity of the banana workers quickly reached the centre stage of the social situation. The strike spread quickly throughout the province. "From July 1st more than forty pickets blocked the twenty access points to Bocas de Toro, mobilising a huge popular support; and groups of indigenous people from all the estates in the area were quick to join the struggle begun by the banana workers' union, gathering at the barricades the workers had organised and in the occupation of the airport, which was completely shut down." The workers assembled at the entrance to the main city of the province, and then led a demonstration calling for everyone to join the struggle. These actions quickly found an echo in the solidarity of the population, clearly expressed in the demonstrations and daily support in the assemblies. Following some brutal police attacks, barricades were removed from both urban roads and rural pathways. Despite pressure from the authorities, parents decided against sending their children to school and, in the follow up, high school students expressed their solidarity with the struggle, completely shutting down the educational establishments.
"In addition to indigenous and neighbouring groups, the strike of banana workers quickly united the teachers and construction workers working on the extension of the Panama Canal, opposed to cuts in their wages and to some of the principal workers' leaders being sacked. Students at the University of Panama also demonstrated, blocking the Transísmica Way in support of the struggle of the banana workers and against Statute 30, before also coming up against brutal repression that ended with the detention of 157 students from the College of Arts and Crafts who joined in blockading the Transísmica Way with students from the University of Panama."
The government unleashed a savage crackdown. It was particularly brutal in the town of Changuinola, at the centre of the strike in the banana plantations. According to various sources, there were six dead and hundreds wounded, shot by the anti-riot police ordered in by the President of the Republic. They used pellets that caused serious damage to the eyes of many protesters. According to one witness, "Children died in residential areas suffocated by the tear gas. They are victims of respiratory problems, according to the authorities who consequently do not consider them victims of police brutality", which would add to the number of dead. Another witness said that "the police went searching homes and hospitals for the injured to imprison them. With no warrants of any kind they carried out raids on the homes, and right up to the Presbytery they have carried out arrests. They have tortured, beaten up, intimidated and abused ...."
In the face of this brutal repression, the union leaders immediately offered the government an olive branch. Negotiations between government representatives and the union, Sitraibana[3] opened on the 11th. The union called for the resumption of work under the terms of an agreement whose only demand satisfied was the withdrawal of certain articles of as a whole Statute 30, which would have abolished the employers’ payments to the unions! The union was shameless in looking after its own specific interests and has disregarded the workers' demands and the violent attack that Statute 30 represented!
Some sectors of workers have opposed a return to work and remained on strike until July 14th, daily protests across the whole population were not quashed, and on July 18th there were demonstrations across the country as a sign of mourning for workers killed.
To calm the situation down, "Martinelli and Co have visited Bocas de Toro as if they were still on the election trail, offering gifts, with false promises and weak excuses without acknowledging the scale of government responsibility for the massacre of people. The media did not broadcast any more of the many demonstrations of popular protest against what was, without doubt, an affront to the dignity of the people."
In addition, the President organised a Commission of Inquiry, composed of government, employer, religious and trade union representatives, to "shed light on what happened in the province of Bocas de Toro between 5th and 13th July, 2010" and a 'Round Table' was set up to "examine the working conditions of workers in the banana plantations", which, as one of the messages we have received says "is a commission of me and me."
By combining the carrot and stick, fierce repression with displays of dialogue and parliamentary action, the Panamanian bourgeoisie appears to have emerged victorious from this conflict, having toughened and degraded working and living conditions and strengthened repression and the hand of the bosses. Some dissident unions promised a "general strike" without fixing a date.
Union control of the struggle led to the workers being served up with their hands and feet tied. Initially, the Sitraibana has shown itself to be combative and all the leftist organisations and unions cited it as a "model". This "radical" reputation allowed its leaders to make a 180º turn around and draw up an "agreement" with the government that demobilised the workers despite some resistance having been expressed. This shows us that workers, whether unionised or non-unionised, need to take collective control of their struggles by wresting it from the hands of the treacherous trade unions, and need massive assemblies open to others workers, in order to monitor the day to day developments of the struggle, the negotiations, the actions needed, etc.. These measures are vital so that the solidarity, camaraderie, collective strength, heroism and the consciousness that develop in the struggle are not wasted and lost, causing disillusionment and demoralisation.
The fact that the province of Bocas de Toro is one of the poorest areas of the country, inhabited by many indigenous oppressed and impoverished tribes, has been a heavy burden on the struggle and has contributed to it being led off course from a truly proletarian and autonomous struggle. The strike was the signal for a major wave of popular discontent. This is positive when the proletariat is able to channel this discontent onto its own class terrain against capital and the state. However, it is negative and weakens the proletariat as well as the emancipation of these social strata, if - as happened in this fight – it becomes an inter-classist mobilisation that emerges in favour of "restoring the democratic freedoms under attack by Statute 30" and "the implementation by central government of some investments in the neglected province" in order to give "recognition to the ancestral rights of the indigenous peoples".
When the struggle sinks into this populist quagmire, there is just ONE WINNER, CAPITAL. It never declares its real interests for what they are – its own selfish interests at the expense of the vast majority - but dresses them up in the false disguises of "the people" and "citizens", of "social rights" and other meaningless drivel. These deceptions take away the proletariat’s identity and class autonomy and thus succeed in disarming it and all the oppressed population along with it.
ICC (July 27, 2010)
---
We want to salute and give our support to the struggle that the workers in Panama have recently developed. The unity of different sectors shows that workers recognise that their strength lies in unity; this struggle is an effort by the class to free itself from the framework of struggle of the unions and the organisations of the left of capital. The unions play the role of negotiators, as is the reason for their being, and the class are the victims of this. But this does not mean that the proletariat is defeated, it is taking up its international experience in order to know how to confront the bourgeoisie and its agents with accuracy. The unity in struggle that the workers of Panama have shown is being accompanied by a resurgence of solidarity on the part of the working class in relation to different struggles. For some time now atomisation has reigned. Although these efforts have been isolated, they are none the less important because they show the road that the struggle has to take.
Thus spreading these struggles will be a step forwards for the class, carrying different sectors such as the banana workers and students in Panama, workers in all sectors and all countries are carrying out the same struggle, with the same interests.
The banana workers are hit very hard by the most disgusting conditions of exploitation. Here in Costa Rica they are subjected to all kinds of pesticides even those illegal for cultivation, furthermore they have to work in dangerous working conditions the threat of being bitten by poisonous snakes, etc. It is the same for the pineapple workers. The attack on living conditions carried out by the bourgeoisie in Panama is the same as that carried out in the rest of the world, increasingly threatened by the crisis; faced with this the banana workers have carried out a struggle valuable for the whole class.
The unions and organisation of the Left compromised on all sides by Parliamentarism and capitalist democracy, have end up by burying the class efforts to develop its struggle. Thus, when there are no movements they call for strikes and demonstrations in order to be able to undermine general discontent, and when struggles try to spread beyond their sector they take control of it, the unions as much as the leftist groups call for calm, for democratic and pacifist solutions, that is to say the terrain of the bourgeois, from which these representatives gain the slice of the cake.
In Costa Rica has happened in Panama the negotiations in 2000 to end the struggle against the “electricity Combo” took place when the leads of the unions and left groups became part of the negotiating commission. Thus avoiding the class developing their own autonomous mechanisms of struggle, thus clearing the way for the police and their repression. A struggle that the unions initially wanted to carry out for their own ends, was put under pressure by the workers when they took to the streets demanding much more, calling on everyone to struggle. Many workers took part independently of the unions, the neighbourhoods were self-organised and there were confrontations with the police. The unions had to run to catch up in order to control the strikes and to bring democratic calm to the country again and to try and erase the consciousness of hundreds of thousands of workers and exploited who had supported the strikes, an achievement that this protest movement spread beyond sectoral interests.
Today all those leaders that supported the negotiation of the struggles through a commission and called for peace and democracy, are participating in bourgeois elections and looking for parliamentary and unions positions, aspiring to survive as part of this class, as a practical layer. The same story is repeated with the class efforts to develop struggles that really defend class interests, as with May 68. Therefore, we must unite our struggles, beyond boarders in order to be able to develop them, in order that workers can discuss and gain the experience of the whole class.
Enr, July 2010.
[1] We warmly welcome the ESPAREVOL Forum (in Spanish), which makes a significant effort to gather news and find press releases on workers' struggles. See esparevol.forumotion.net/noticias-informaciones-y-comunicados-obreros-f9
[2] The quotations are from information received from different comrades.
[3] Sitraibana: Trade union of workers in the banana industry.
We are publishing a statement written by the comrades of the CREE (Coletivo Revolucionario Espartaquista Estudiantil) about the Madrid Metro workers’ strike at the end of June, in response to wage cuts and tax increases imposed by the local authority.
The CREE’s statement on the metro strike, we believe should encourage other comrades and proletarian collectives to discuss this question in order to prepare new struggles and find confidence in their own strength. There are two precisions that we want to make in order to help stimulate the discussion:
1. The strength of a struggle does not necessarily reside in how radical the strike is, whether it paralyses production and services or not, but in its capacity to push forward the unity of the class through extension and solidarity, and the development of a balance of forces against the bourgeois state. In the present period, with the accumulation of unsold stocks, the stopping of production in this or that factory does not threaten the bourgeoisie, above all if it is not accompanied by class solidarity and unity. Public service strikes, as we have seen with the Madrid Metro strike, even if they totally paralyse services, can be turned against the workers if the struggle remains isolated. The refusal to maintain a minimum service in this struggle expressed the will to try and break out of the prison of legal and union rules aimed at imprisoning and isolating the struggles. Nevertheless the workers’ search to wage an effective struggle that had enough strength to impose their demands was undermined by the fixation on the demand about not respecting minimum services, on the call for the total strike (in isolation). Rather than being a strength this fixation was a weakness. A weakness that allowed the bourgeoisie's propaganda to set the rest of the proletariat and the population against the Metro workers in order to isolate them.
2. Another thing that we need to clarify is that the comrades of the CREE call for a Proletarian United Front. Although we understand what the comrades mean by this - they are calling for the unity of the class - from our point of view the concept of the “United Front” traditionally refers to a unity that is constructed through agreements between organisations, in this case the unions. The unity of the working class in struggle however is the product of its solidarity, its class nature, where there are no divergent interests; while union unity is the product of machinations and negotiations in order to share out privileges, for the distribution of “posts” etc, and generally with the aim of impeding the building of a true unity through open assemblies and the revocable organs that arise from them.
ICC 16th August 2010
The Greek coffers received a far from negligible sum of billions of Euros from the IMF and European Central Bank a few months in order to palliate the fiscal crisis that this country developed at a time of heightened economic activity. It was not the most powerful, nor the most rich, nor the most noticeable of the countries of the European Union; but it was on the edge of bankruptcy and had to be saved in order to stop the Euro entering into a profound coma. From this moment, a castle of cards was constructed with trembling hands, as the other countries began to fall. The alarm was sounded in Hungary: it appeared to be suffocating. The Spanish state has been in the sights of the speculators, who had already been assaulting it for months. Italy has not been able to do anything about its hyper-indebtedness. We are in a new period of the crisis marked by the fiscal debt of different national states, overwhelmed by the payment of credits accumulated over many years and which they appear not to be able to pay. The capitalist state is running short of resources and now it is the working class (since it is “all our fault”) that is acting as the guarantor of its debts. The different austerity plans that are being developed throughout the planet follow the same logic.
In France on the 24th June more than 2 million people took to the streets to protest about the reforms initiated by the Sarkozy government through its Austerity Plan. On the 25th June in Italy hundreds of thousands mobilised against the proposed cuts in public spending, a wage freeze and pension reform. In Greece the 29th June another general strike began on the same day as negotiations commenced in Parliament on the necessity to impose new measures aimed at allowing the country to comply with the credit terms set by the IMF months before. On the same day, an assembly of Madrid metro workers called an all-out strike which did not agree to maintain the minimal service demanded by the Madrid municipality.
Overturning the Collective Agreement that had been legally in force until 2012, the Madrid local government imposed a 5% wage cut on the Metro workers, which was in line with that imposed by the Zapatero government on all civil servants (so much for the difference between the ‘Left’ and the right which so many talk about). Independently of whether the wage cut was large or small, the struggle arose, precisely, from the unilateral breaking of the Collective Agreement, which meant breaking the traditional collective negotiations over working conditions, and replacing it with case by case negotiations. When it was decided to call the strike, the Municipality tried to limit the strike by obliging the strikers to maintain 50% of the Metro services. The workers, in an act of unprecedented courage, took the decision in their assembly not to respect the demand for minimum service. On the 29th and 30th June Madrid was without a Metro. Although the Ministry of the Interior deployed thousands of police, the pickets were successful, despite the traps of the bosses and Madrid municipality, in ensuring that no trains ran.
Today the only way that we can get close to reality is through the media. Thousands of people throughout Spain felt that this legitimate defense of the working class faced with a new “decree” that undermined its historical conquests was an aggression. The mass media unanimously condemned the evils of the “privileged” metro workers, in order to criminalise their demands in every way possible. In the first place, by ignoring the necessity to go into the causes of this social conflict in order to give a more complete and complex vision of the situation. The efforts made by Metro passengers to find other means of transport were given more prominence than the workers’ assemblies. The voices of the disgruntled passengers were more important than those of the discounted workers who were seeing their rights trampled on. It was not a question of the Collective Agreement, but the 5% pay cut which left the Madrid Metro workers looking inconsiderate and stamping their feet despite their privileged working conditions. There was no hesitation in trying to create divisions between workers in the private sector and those in the public. Endlessly they repeated that those in the public sector have to accept the same measures as the rest, that any struggle would be unjustified. These are the standards of the informationsociety. Their aim was to spread vile lies aimed at stopping this example spreading.
Secondly, there was no hesitation about manufacturing an image of the strike as absolutely uncontrolled, calling it a “wildcat”. Pretty soon however somebody informed the newsrooms that “wildcat” means the workers spreading a strike without (and often against) the unions. A strike is not a wildcat because it does not have minimum services. A strike is a mere hoax if there is a minimum services.
The campaign of harassment and wrecking by both the media and the different bourgeois organisations and parties spread demoralisation amongst the striking workers, leading to their submission to the pressure exerted by the government departments and media. This explains why the latest mobilisations have respected the unfair minimum services. The bosses did sit down at the negotiating table on the 10th July but there is still no agreement and 2000 disciplinary proceedings are in place due to breach of minimum service during the 29th and 30th June. The 5% pay cut has been reduced to 1.5%, but the reprimanded workers will stay reprimanded and the Collective Agreement will be a thing of the past.
The Madrid workers strike was an example. An example for workers throughout Spain. The consciousness of class unity and solidarity were stronger than the symbols of the unions, allowing the creation of organs of collective struggle despite the confluence of conflicting tendencies. It reappropriated the method par excellence of workers' organisation: sovereign assemblies, germs of the future workers' councils; where the workers expressed themselves and took decisions, real organs of workers' democracy. It also directly confronted the attack on workers’ right to strike, going beyond maintaining a minimum service and expressing the real nature of a strike, which can only have an impact when economic activity or services are paralysed.
However, we have to be aware that the solidarity of the working class, the sin qua non for achieving workers' demands and confronting the isolation imposed by the forces of the bourgeoisie, was weak and insufficient. The absolute necessity to take to the streets and to combat the lies was of the utmost importance in this conflict, but this did not happen and, due to this, the strike was not able to gain the real support of the wider working class. If this weakness had been overcome, perhaps today we would be talking about the workers having a strong hand at the negotiating table or even something much bigger.
Just for the moment. Because there was not this support and solidarity strikes did not happen, the Metro workers were left feeling guilty and real criminals and soon bowed to the demand for minimum service which only served to stifle the protests and leave them with no impact. Due to this the movement lost strength and was not able to regain the initial conditions of the Collective Agreement. We can see that the movement in Madrid came to nothing, but we must not be discouraged. Madrid is only a small step in recovering the best traditions of workers' struggle in this new period of the resurgence of proletarian combativity. The United Workers' Front defended by the CREE has found expression in this struggle without the need to call for it. This encourages us to continue working because we are going in the right direction. Here we give our support to the workers of the Madrid Metro, who have given a first and very important lesson to the working class about how one day to confront the bourgeois social order.
Last spring, the 18th Congress of RI took place. This plenary assembly of the ICC’s section in France was a moment very rich in fraternal and warm debates in which other sections of the ICC and invited sympathisers took part.
The work of this Congress was centred on 4 main axes:
Concerning the economic crisis, the report presented by the central organ of RI and the debate that followed underlined the present impasse into which the dominant class is driven and its incapacity to hold back the scourge of debt. Despite all its mystifying speeches on the so-called economic “recovery”, the world bourgeoisie has no other solution to reliance on debt that to continue with its policy of state debt. A debate developed, and must be pursued in the ICC, on the objective limits of debt.
The congress was homogeneous on the perspectives of the economic crisis: no return to any sort of period of prosperity is henceforth possible. The bourgeoisie’s margin of manoeuvre is extremely narrow and can only lead it to impose plans of draconian austerity everywhere.
Faced with the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to find any sort of remedy to the bankruptcy of its system, which is now hitting European states like a full-force gale (Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.), the bourgeoisie can only effect one response: attack the conditions of the exploited class still more violently, as is the case in Greece.
These massive attacks are shown through an unprecedented aggravation of unemployment with job cuts in all sectors, a drastic lowering of wages, a growing precariousness in youth employment, the deepening attacks on retirement pensions, a dismantling of the welfare state, etc.
It is in the context of the plunge of the world economy into a more profound and insurmountable crisis that the confrontation between bourgeoisie and proletariat will sharpen.
The debate on the present dynamic of the class struggle and its perspectives for the next two years put forward the difficulties confronted by the working class of the western European countries, particularly France.
The fact that today workers’ struggles are not up to confronting the violence of the attacks gave rise to a very rich debate which allowed the Congress to better discern and analyse the causes of such a gap.
As the last ICC Congress proposed, the working class, despite its enormous discontent, is showing a hesitation to engage in massive struggles. This relative disorientation is due to the massive blows that it is suffering and which, in the first place, can only strengthen its hesitations to engage in the combat for the defence of its conditions of life.
Unemployment, and its fear of job losses, constitutes a factor of paralysis which can’t be overcome immediately and necessitates the proletariat progressively rediscovering its class identity and confidence in itself.
A process of maturation is thus indispensable for the appearance of massive struggles. This maturation is already expressed by workers’ struggles which have developed recently, notably those of workers of Tekel in Turkey which are particularly significant of the class struggle at the international level (see articles on Tekel in the ICC).
The debates of the Congress equally demonstrated the fact that the bourgeoisie of the industrialised countries, and notably the French bourgeoisie, fear an upsurge of these massive struggles. In France, the dominant class cannot allow the risk of a similar social situation which exploded in Greece following the austerity plan attempting to stem the bankruptcy of the state.
The Congress also developed a discussion on the difference between the mass strike and massive struggles. It showed that even if the perspective of the outburst of massive struggles is in front of us, that doesn’t at all mean that we are entering into a historic period of the mass strike, which necessitates a certain level of the politicisation of struggles.
The debate on the social situation in France unfolded in the framework of the analysis of the ICC on the dynamic of the class struggle at the international level, put forward at our last international congress.
The discussion underlined that the proletariat in France contains a long experience of struggle anchored in its collective memory: the Paris Commune, May 68 and, more recently, the struggle of youth against the CPE, which obliged the Villepan government to draw back.
The spectre of massive struggles haunts the bourgeoisie; a bourgeoisie weakened by the successive blunders of the more and more unpopular Sarkozy. That’s the reason why the dominant class is walking on eggshells: it is trying to hide the depth of the attacks as much as possible (notably on the retired) and counts on the unions to sabotage the explosions of discontent of the working class.
The Congress debates thus showed that the continuance of the attacks on the retired in France will constitute a very important test allowing an assessment of the rapport de forces between the classes.
The discussion also allowed us to better discern the present impact of the corralling of the working class by the unions. Although the workers are not yet near to getting out of the union grip and the union ideology in order to take their struggles in hand themselves, the debate brought out the existence, in the workers’ ranks, of few illusions on the role and effectiveness of the struggles advocated by the unions.
If, despite this disillusionment, the working class is not yet ready today to mobilise itself outside and against the unions, it’s essentially because of the difficulty of again finding confidence in its own strength.
The working class more and more feels the need to fight against the attacks of the government and the bosses, but doesn’t know how to struggle without going through the unions. This difficulty is linked to the strength of democratic ideology which weighs very heavily on the consciousness of the exploited class. The workers can’t conceive of massively mobilising themselves outside of the “legal” framework of the democratic state. The union question thus constitutes a major stake in the future dynamic towards massive class confrontations.
The work of the Congress also looked at the present dynamic of our milieu of contacts in France.
On the numbers of new contacts, we noted a certain gap between the countries of Western Europe and the zones of the periphery (Latin America notably).
The Congress wasn’t totally homogenous on drawing out an analysis on the causes of this and put this as an objective on the agendas of all the sections of the ICC.
In particular, an analysis was advanced that merits deeper reflection. Western Europe has been the theatre of two world wars and of the deepest counter-revolution in history with the bloody crushing of the revolution in Germany at the beginning of the 1920s. These tragic events provoked a profound trauma the after-effects of which still mark the proletariat of Western Europe today and this could explain the very strong weight of democratic illusions in this part of the world and, similarly, the distrust towards groups claiming links with the October revolution in Russia 1917. It’s also on this part of the planet that the anti-communist campaigns following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the Stalinist regimes had the greatest impact. Revolutionary organisations belonging to the Left Communist current thus aroused a certain mistrust.
Nevertheless, with the bankruptcy of capitalism becoming more and more evident, a growing number of elements looking for a historical perspective tend to turn towards such groups as the ICC. Thus in France, as in all the countries of Europe, we’ve noted a growth in the numbers of our contacts and sympathisers. And above all, we’ve seen a will to discuss and debate, to confront and clarify divergences in a fraternal and mutually confident ambience, including in our relations with groups and internationalist elements belonging to the anarchist currents (such as the CNT-AIT).
The Congresses’ work also developed a discussion on an orientation text prepared by the ICC’s central organ: “Marxism and Science”.
Following discussions we had around the Darwin anniversary, the ICC felt the need to take up the approach of the workers’ movement relating to the link between Marxism and the sciences.
Inasmuch as Marxism is, before everything, a scientific method of the analysis of social reality, the ICC has to develop its interest in the fundamentals of all scientific method.
Marxism is always interested in science, in its discoveries which are an integral part of the development of the productive forces of society.
The proletariat will only be able to construct a future communist society with the development of scientific research.
Obviously Marxists are not scientific specialists, and the debate at the Congress bore essentially on method. A certain number of divergences appeared, notably around the question of “what is a science?”. Similarly, there’s no official position, no homogeneity amongst us regarding the contributions of Freud to science. The discussion also shone some light on the particular interest that Marxists should bring to the science of man so as to understand better what “human nature” is.
These debates must be pursued within the ICC and towards the exterior.
To conclude, all the delegations of the ICC and the comrades invited to the Congress saluted its work, the richness of discussion and the fraternal climate in which they took place.
This fraternity was manifested not only in the debates themselves, but also through the organisation of a convivial soiree during which all the participants shared a moment of festive relaxation where solidarity and human warmth came together.
This mutual confidence and solidarity must continue to serve as a beacon to us in order to pursue our activity and combat for the unification of humanity and the construction of a new society without want, war and exploitation.
We know that the road is long and strewn with pitfalls, but our conviction of the impasse of capitalism and the confidence in our class which is the bearer of communism is unbreakable. It is this confidence in a future that bears the coming combats of the working class which constitutes the principal strength of the ICC.
Sofiane, 20th August 2010
We publish here an article written by a sympathiser, in response to a debate going on within the CPGB ("Communist Party of Great Britain") which has found expression in a series of articles about the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain on the 80th anniversary of its founding.
In his 1920 reply to Lenin's “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Hermann Gorter requested that readers excuse his frequent repetition of various points, but laments that this was necessary, seeing as the tactics of the “Lefts” were still unknown to the workers' of most countries. Unfortunately, 90 years on, it seems this is still the case. In recent weeks, there has been a noticeable upping of the tempo at which articles are produced in the pages of the Weekly Worker denouncing 'leftism', 'leftist purity', 'left sectarianism' and other related epithets, particularly in relation to the series on the formation of the original CPGB. This has reached something of a crescendo in a full article in issue 837 by Jack Conrad, “Lessons of Lenin's 'Left-Wing' Communism”, attacking this supposed 'leftist' trend. Understanding the CPGB (PCC) as a non-sectarian organisation which allows for the expression of a variety of viewpoints, I have undertaken to correct some of the misunderstandings on the part of Conrad on the tactics of Left-Communists, an exercise which I hope will also correct misunderstandings on the part of other comrades, and contribute to a more fruitful discussion of Communist tactics than some of the usual mudslinging which passes for 'discussion' in the anti-capitalist milieu, and which is unfortunately present in a large degree in the article by Conrad.
Before we begin, I would like to say that it is unfortunate that Conrad's article refers solely to Lenin's work on the subject. If the reader is to get a better and more balanced judgement of the debate in question, they will need to read the original articles and replies to Lenin's work by the Communist Left. In this connection I would like to suggest a couple of works which, in my opinion, go a good way towards expounding on the tactics of the Left. In general it is difficult to pin down works which satisfactorily sum up the positions of the entire Communist Left, as it is not a homogeneous tendency, but I would think I am not being too controversial in recommending Theses of the Abstentionist Faction of the Italian Socialist Party and The Lyons Theses as works representative of the Italian Left. On the side of the German-Dutch Communist Left, Anton Pannekoek's World Revolution and Communist Tactics is something of a classic, as is Hermann Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, in which he responds to the arguments of LWC:AID.
I am willing to put the lack of references to the actual arguments of the Left down to a mere lapse on comrade Conrad's part, but I would like to suggest to him that in future it would be wise to refer to the arguments and works of opposing factions in the Communist movement, if he wishes to engage in constructive debate. As we go through replying to the various points made by Conrad's piece, I hope it will become clear the damage done to the overall argument by failing to make such references. We will begin with what I consider to be the main defect of the article, the lack of any clear conception of what it is arguing against.
Throughout the article Conrad opens fire on targets as diverse as a faction in the CPGB which advocated abstaining form participating in the Labour leadership elections on the grounds that John McDonnell was not a candidate, to the Social-Revolutionaries and their advocacy of individual terrorism. Much like the Trotskyite slur of 'ultra-leftist', the 'leftist' category serves to lump together serious political tendencies with advocates of individualist and anti-Marxist tactics and the various aberrations of otherwise consistent centrists. It will be useful then to, in the first place, clarify exactly what the Communist Left is.
For Conrad, the essence of the Communist Left may be found in it's 'purity mania', the slogan of 'no compromises'. He gives us a wonderfully flattering description of us as petty-bourgeois driven to a frenzy by economic crises, or as young and inexperienced elements of the proletarian movement. We must commend Conrad on his commitment to Communist unity in this fashion. Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that his argument is far from perfect.
In actual fact, the Communist Left is a historical movement consisting of those parts of the workers' movement which supported the Russian revolution and duly joined the Communist International, only to break with Comintern tactics after the 2nd/3rd congress' and be summarily expelled. It consists of differing and heterogeneous trends. For example, the Left in Italy was remarked to be 'more Leninist than Lenin', and supported Lenin's position on the trade unions and struggles against colonialism. On the question of participation in parliament, they considered the debate to be a purely tactical question. The German-Dutch left by contrast rejected the old trade unions and in time came to reject political party organisation altogether. Most modern Left-Communist organisations lean towards a synthesis of perspectives. It is bound historically by its acceptance of Marxist method and principle (such as centralism over federalism), while arguing for a principled break with social-democratic tradition. With this clarified, I cannot claim to speak on behalf of the entire Communist Left, either historically or in modern times, but nonetheless I can perhaps attempt to defend the Left from Conrad's rather confused onslaught.
Conrad follows Lenin in basing his argument on the fact that certain facets of the October revolution have a universal significance. He says that it is mere first world arrogance that denies the relevance of the October revolution to determining our modern tactics. I consider this mistaken, especially with regards to the tactic of participating in parliament.
Russia had only had a parliamentary institution since 1905, and it met precisely four times before the revolution. It did not have time to become a recognised centre of political authority which could pose a challenge to the rule of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' deputies. In Western Europe however, both in 1917 and even more so in the 20th century, we have, as Conrad himself notes, “a long, and more or less uninterrupted, history of bourgeois democracy”. The parliamentary-representative form of government has become a permanent feature of the political landscape, and a recognised source of legitimate political authority.
This does not mean, however, that people think that the parliamentary process is any kind of vehicle for change. In fact, people are becoming more and more apathetic, and voting turnouts are sliding downwards. This should not, in itself, be encouraged by Communists, as it represents mere apathy with political processes, and not an understanding that an alternative form of political administration is possible. Nonetheless, it would be profoundly mistaken for Communists to attempt to get people out voting and rekindling their faith in the electoral process. It is our job as Communists to show that the existing institutions do not provide a vehicle for real social change. To attempt to do this by going into those same organisations we wish to discredit and arguing within in them is nothing but the worst confusionism.
Conrad claims that the German-Dutch Left wanted workers' to abandon the apparently natural forms of labour organisation of the old trade union apparatus for a 'brand new and immaculate' form of organisation, which in reality was an entirely 'artificial'. A comparison is made with the many futile modern projects to create a new 'labour' party, apparently Conrad thinks that an attempt to organise workers' outside and against the trade-union bureaucracy is in anyway comparable to Labourism, an ideology based on the upper levels of same said bureaucracy..
But what exactly does it mean to critique an organisation on the basis that it is 'artificial'? That it is not a product of spontaneous action by the workers perhaps? This is the only interpretation that I can think of. If this is so, then I think I would not be out of place in noting a 'subordination to spontaneity' in this thesis, perhaps even a somewhat 'slavish' one. Perhaps Conrad would do well to remember the 'profoundly true and important' words of Karl Kautsky to the effect that socialism itself was not a product of the proletariat but of the bourgeois intelligentsia, and that it was this strata that communicated the socialist idea to working-class militants who in their turn introduced socialist ideas into the class movement where conditions allowed. Should we reject socialism and Marxism because they are 'artificial' and not products of the 'pure' workers movement (as, I would add, some anti-communists have indeed attempted to do)? And remind me again who here is supposed to have the fetish for purity?
To begin with, the fact that the Arbeiter-Unionen movement was in any way artificial is false. The movement was born from the factory council movement which appeared during the last year of the war, and emerged “almost spontaneously, without any precise ideological definitions or attachments, during the summer of 1919.” What united them was a dissatisfaction with the existing trade-unions and the willingness to use militant tactics. The General Workers Union of Germany (Allgemeine Arbeiter Union Deutschlands or AAUD) had 80,000 members within a month of it's formation in 1920 and some have the number as high as 200,000 by the spring of 1921.
Having satisfied Conrad's infantile workerist purity fetish, perhaps we can move on to discuss the advantages of this new form of unionism from the standpoint of Marxist tactics. The first thing we should note is that, farm from being simply a more 'immaculate' form of the trade-union, the Arbeiter-Unionen represented a decisive break from the old craft and trade unionism in a number of ways. For starters, taking their inspiration in part from the American Industrial Workers' of the World, the AAUD was to be a class wideunion. However, this in itself does not necessarily differentiate the Arbeiter-Unionen form of unionism from traditional syndicalist unions, such as the Free Workers Union of Germany (Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands or FAUD), which were also arising at that time.
What really differentiated the Arbeiter-Unionen movement was it's concept of 'unitary organisation'. This was a concept first theorised by Fritz Wollfheim in March 1917, and developed by the left-radical movement in Germany and Holland, the basic cornerstone of which was the conception of a single organisation combining the functions of party and trade-union. What this meant in practice is that although the Arbeiter-Unionen took on functions of traditional trade and craft unions, they were in actual fact revolutionary political organisations. The AAUD had a programme, according to which it's members were dedicated to the achievement of a classless society through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Early manifestations of the Arbeiter-Unionen movement also had such political objectives, for example, the Port and Shipyard Workers Union of Hamburg, as well as defending it's members immediate economic interests, had a political programme, one of the planks of which was solidarity with the Russian revolution. The Ruhr union had a similar program.
In contrast to the syndicalist unions, the Arbetier-Unionen were willing to affiliate with the Communist movement. The provisional statutes drawn up by the Bremen federation included solidarity with the Communist International. Contrast this fighting orientation with the spineless cosying up to the Prussian junker state by the yellow unions, which resulted in the union bureaucracy putting increasing pressure on the leaders of the SPD to engage in subversive politics, and manifested itself in the SPD's attempt to put a cap on mass political strikes for suffrage reform in Germany which occurred just before the war. Contrast it also with the political activity of modern trade-unions, which usually goes as far as tailing behind various single-issue campaigns, and the general lack of fighting spirit which caused the outlet Reuters to remark that “the most remarkable thing in this age of austerity is just how few strikes there have been and how weak and ineffective unions have proved... the crisis has laid bare a truth partially hidden during the boom years: Europe's unions are less powerful, less influential, and less relevant than they have been for decades.” Contrast it with May 68 in France where the unions put the cap on the strike, with the Italian Hot Autumn where workers drove the union representatives from strike meetings, with Solidarnosc in Poland which diffused the workers' committees and mass meetings and made deals with the Stalinist state apparatus, and with the pamphlets coming out in France in the wake of the current struggle criticising the union leadership for leading them to defeat.
The old trade-unions represent on the economic field what the labour and social-democratic parties represent in the political field. They represent the working-class within capitalist society and as members of that society. Although their early orientation may have been a fighting one, they have increasingly been drawn into the apparatus of the capitalist state. The Arbeiter-Unionen represents the working-class as a class with a historic interest in seizing power and dissolving their own status as proletarians, and in turn the whole of class society.
This is not to say that there were not profound contradictions in the Arbeiter-Unionen movement. Since it was a political and not just an economic movement, the movement had various factions. These factions held together organically during the immediate revolutionary period after the war on the basis of mass action, but as the revolutionary energy of the masses began to recede, the AAUD crumbled and after 1923 almost all of it's former social weight was lost. Its commitment to 'mass action' and an anti-bureaucratic orientation which bordered on anarchism left it unable to maintain itself as a coherent organisation in a period which was no longer suitable to such action. But while it did exist its capacity as an organisation which was relevant to the class was immense. Its activity was frenzied, regularly publishing a dozen weeklies and pamphlets with print runs of up to 120,000 copies. Its role as a bridge between traditional forms of unionism and the factory councils of the future, and it's use as a pole of regroupment for militant workers outside and against the trade-unions mean that the Arbeiter-Unionen still serves as an important model in some respects for our present situation.
Whilst discussing the various 'leftist infections' that occurred within the Bolshevik party, Conrad mentions the Left-Communist fraction, which included Bukharin and Radek, and which formed in 1918. Conrad claims that “signing the Brest-Litovsk treaty was the point at issue.” This is false. Signing Brest-Litovsk was a rallying point for the Left-Communists, but not the only point in issue. For the record, a good deal of Left-Communists would tend to agree with Lenin over Bukharin on the question of Brest-Litovsk. Here is the theoretical journal of the Italian Left, Bilan, for example:
“Of the two tendencies in the Bolshevik party who confronted each other at the time of Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's and Bukharin's, we think that it was the former who was more in line with the needs of the world revolution. The positions of the fraction led by Bukharin, according to which the function of the proletarian state was to liberate the workers of other countries through a ‘revolutionary war', are in contradiction with the very nature of the proletarian revolution and the historic role of the proletariat.”
But when we look at the program of the Left-Communists we find that certain other issues were on the agenda, such the rejection of labour discipline and the introduction of piecework, as well as agreements with the 'captains of industry', arguing that with this “rejection of active proletarian politics, the conquests of the workers' and peasants' revolution will start to coagulate into a system of state capitalism and petty bourgeois economic relations. 'The defence of the socialist fatherland' will then prove in actual fact to be defence of a petty bourgeois motherland subject to the influence of international capital.” Conrad obscures these important elements of the debate between the 1918 Left-Communists and Lenin by trying to whittle down the issues at hand to merely one of Lenin's sensible policy of the cheapest peace possible, and Bukharin's insane calls for a revolutionary war against Imperial Germany.
Conrad informs us that Lenin advocated supporting the Labour party “like a rope supports a hanged man”. He then claims that this was the kind of support which the CPGB gave to Dianne Abbot in the Labour leadership election. In the first place the idea that this support was similar to what Lenin advocated is clearly absurd. The meaning of Lenin's phrase was that in power it would become clear that the Labour party leadership “are petty-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that their bankruptcy is inevitable”, and because of this clarity in the bankruptcy of the Labour party “it w[ould] be possible, with serious chances of success, to overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once”. This exposition first occurred clearly in 1924 when the Labour minority government threatened to use its emergency powers against striking transport workers, and it would be needless to recount how it has occurred in practically every Labour government since. But despite the presence of the 'Official Communist' party which the CPGB so dearly loves because of it's apparent relevance for the class, the latter certainly did not succeed in carrying out Lenin's expectations and overtaking the Labour party in terms of mass support.
In my humble opinion, the failure lies in the confusionist nature of the affiliation tactic. On the one hand, you have a Communist party which advocates voting for the Labour party, which therefore appears to support it, on the other hand you have this same Communist party trying to expose the treachery of the Labour leadership. Excuse me if I am unable to comprehend the clearly quite profound and dialectically advanced reasoning behind this tactic, but to me it seems to be the most ridiculous and contradictory course of action, and I am sure it must have seemed that way to workers looking for an alternative to Labour treachery and finding only a Communist party which supported that same treachery, almost the same as building a second Labour party. I have no doubt that such an absurd course of action would produce a similar effect in the future.
At the start of Conrad's article, he refers to LWC: AID as “a handbook of Bolshevism internationalised.” Although he does not intend it in this way, his language is unfortunately close to the rhetoric of the centrist gangsters who purged the Communist Left from their ranks. This may surprise some CPGB readers, as for the past few weeks we have been subjected to an onslaught of attacks on 'left sectarianism' on the part of elements like Pankhurst who formed the Communist Left in Britain. In Germany and Italy however, the Left was crucial to the formation of their respective communist parties, had a significant influence on tactics early on, and were expelled from the party by centrist leadership. Since Conrad's tactics mirror those of the Comintern expulsionists, I will end this article with a short recount of the processes by which the Left was expelled by the Communist International.
When the Communist Party of Italy was formed at the 1921 Livorno congress, as a fusion between the Abstentionist faction of the PSI and the group centred around L'Ordine Nuovo, the abstentionists comprised the majority of the new cadres, and Amadeo Bordiga was took the position of de facto leader of the party. At the fourth world congress of the Comintern however, Zinoviev demanded the PCI 'fuse' with the PSI seeing that Serrati had just expelled the reformists and declared allegiance to the International. Delegates were sent to arrange the fusion, but a rebellion against the fusion in the PSI ranks led by Pietro Nenni collapsed the negotiations. In February 1923, Bordiga was thrown into jail by Mussolini's thugs. Taking advantage of his incapacitation, the Comintern had him expelled from the leadership. This allowed Antonio Gramsci, Stalin's man through and through, to convince a slim majority of the Central Committee to vote for his position over the manifesto drafted by Bordiga while in jail, which called for freedom of discussion within the party. Bordiga still had support from the party rank and file, but as a committed centralist, instead of initiating a split, he stood his ground and argued his position within the International, one of the only ones who did against the Comintern's policy, made explicit at the fifth congress, of the 'Bolshevisation' of the western Communist parties.
In 1926 at the sixth enlarged executive of the Comintern, Bordiga asked whether “Comrade Stalin thinks the development of the Russian situation and the internal problems of the Russian Party are linked to the development of the international proletarian movement?”. For this crime of questioning Stalin's internationalist credentials, Bordiga's faction was expelled for “Trotskyism”. In his last political work of this period, a letter to Karl Korsch, he advises that the Left “still needs to receive further blows before passing to the open offensive”. Clearly the tactics of an unremitting sectarian.
In Germany, the first organised expression of the Communist Left was the International Socialists of Germany, whom Lenin praised for being the first to make a definitive break with Kautskyism:
“A very great defect in revolutionary Marxism in Germany as a whole is its lack of a compact illegal organisation that would systematically pursue its line and educate the masses in the spirit of the new tasks; such an organisation would also have to take a definite stand towards opportunism and Kautskyism... That the “International Socialists of Germany” (I.S.D.) group alone remains at its post is definitely clear to everybody.”
In November 1918 the ISD became the International Communists of Germany, and in December joined with the Spartacist League to form the KPD. The clear majority of the left can be seen from the fact that, despite opposition from Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the motion opposing participation in the upcoming national assembly elections was passed by a majority of three to one.
After Luxemburg's death, leadership of the KPD fell to a supposed 'Luxemburgist' Paul Levi, who quickly revealed himself as a centrist bureaucrat. At the Frankfurt congress in August 1919, Levi packed the congress with newspaper editors, secretaries and orators, allowing only one delegate per district, a move calculated to weaken the left which was in control of almost all the party's local organisations. The move failed however, because the extraneous elements invited by the central committee moved to the Left.
At the Heidelberg congress in October the Central Committee had another shot. It distorted the voting arrangements by giving each district one vote, regardless of size, and it put forward a motion to restore the Central Committee's right to vote, giving the CC eight extra votes in its favour. The Left was slandered as 'anarcho-syndicalists' because of the fact that their papers allowed a variety of perspectives, including elements which confused the Unionen with syndicalism. Finally, the Heidelberg theses were published, which ended by declaring that “Those members of the KPD who do not share these views concerning the nature, the organization and the activity of the party, or those who have opposed them orally or in writing, must be excluded from the party.”
Initially the KPD left thought there must have been a misunderstanding and tried to mend its split from the leadership. They attempted to negotiate with the Central Committee and asserted the rights of the opposition but were continually rebuffed. They sent delegates to the third KPD congress in February 1920 and proposed the amendment of the Heidelberg Theses, but the congress reiterated that those who did not accept the theses as they stood would be excluded.
After the expulsion of the majority Left current, as Gilles Dauvé reports, the KPD practically ceased to exist:
“The reports of the delegates to the Third Congress provided evidence of the party’s utter prostration. In Berlin, out of 8,000 members, only 500 supported the central committee; in Essen, 43 out of 2,000, etc. “After his experience in Rhineland-Westphalia, Brandler resigned himself to saying, ‘We no longer have a party at all’.””
It had as he notes, “been reduced to a mere skeleton financed by Moscow”. The left was excluded and the party practically destroyed for the sake of a facile 'unity' with the centrists in the USPD. Even in spite of it's exclusion, the KAPD still attempted, and briefly succeeded, to gain entry into the Communist International and argue its case.
By parading under the cover of “Bolshevism internationalised”, and writing slanderous articles which seek to combine disparate elements and canonise them en bloc as “leftist puritans”, Conrad shows that despite his and the CPGB's calls for Marxist unity in a mass Communist party, the rhetoric does not quite match up to the sectarian practice, a sectarian practice derived, however unwittingly, from the practices of the Stalinised Comintern, and going back before that to the liquidationist practices of the KPD under the 'Luxemburgist' leadership of Paul Levi. If Conrad is serious about his commitments, he must drop the bureaucratic centralism which is everywhere the calling card of centrism.
20% of the pumps are running dry and there are endless queues. So says one of the media outlets regarding the economic paralysis of the country. Workers are combative and determined while the President of the Republic bangs his fist on the table and threatens the “hooligans” with the worst reprisals. This strong image is about to make its way around the world.
The workers encamped in front of the refineries do so in the name of workers’ solidarity. If they have the courage to expose themselves to the blows of police repression and the discipline of their bosses (at the Grandpuits refinery in the Paris region, the bosses threatened to close the site once and for all and sack everyone) it’s because they’re conscious of struggling for a just cause which has overtaken them: against the retirement reforms which will hit us all and against the pensions of misery which comes out of them. They are fighting for their whole class.
The paralysis of the transport system provoked by the refinery blockades also shows that the working class runs everything on a daily basis. It’s the workers who produce wealth. In the final analysis, the capitalists are only parasites who live off our backs and take for themselves the fruits of our labour. And it’s enough for one sector, a strategic one to be sure, to stop working normally for the whole national economy to be affected.
But this weapon of the blockade is a double-edged sword.
The blockades of the refineries have the aim of paralysing the economy in order to put pressure on capital. It’s true that there’s nothing dearer to the eyes of capital than to see the accounts of its profit margins. That being said, who is most inconvenienced by the oil shortages? Who suffers the greatest economic pressures: capital or labour? Concretely, the largest enterprises of the country (Carrefour, L’Oreal, Paribas, the Societe Generale, or Danone, etc. ) are not in any danger. They have the solid backing and support (including financial) of the state. On the other hand, the workers are suffering daily from the difficulties of finding fuel to get to work, the reprimands of their bosses for being late, etc. And those on rolling strikes for several weeks will have to prepare to tighten their belts for many long months to come.
“Disrupting the economy in order to put pressure on capital” is moreover a myth inherited from the 19th century. A hundred years ago, workers could block their factories and thus force the boss to give way. In fact, on the one hand, solidarity funds allowed the strikers to hold out, while on the other the boss saw his competitors profit from the situation by pinching his customers. The threat of bankruptcy was serious for the firm and, often, the workers were triumphant. Today the context is totally different. There can still be solidarity funds. Indeed, there are some in place for the refinery pickets. But the bosses, faced with a social movement, no longer roll over. They stand together with each other. And they even have their own “black” funds to face up to such a situation. The refinery workers thus do not confront “their” boss but CAPITAL and, above all, all the power of its state. The economic balance of force is no longer, as it was a century ago, in favour of strikers.
And this is not the only pitfall.
The rolling strike is not generally well-followed today, with only some sectors engaged in permanent struggle: transport (above all SNCF), the port and cleaning services of Marseille and the refineries. Thus isolated, the most combative workers take the risk of exhausting themselves or becoming demoralised faced with defeat and of being violently repressed. It’s for this reason that numerous workers across the board have had the reflex to go to the lines of the blockades and occupations in order to physically express their solidarity.
But there’s an even greater risk: of making this struggle “unpopular”. For the moment, the greater part of the working class and of the wider population supports the struggle against the retirement reforms. Since the first day of action on March 23, there’s been more and more proletarians (and even small traders, liberal professions, artisans and peasants) joining up with the movement. Its strength is really drawing in growing numbers: workers in the public sector and little by little joining up with the private sector, workers’ families (particularly the Saturday demonstrations), precarious workers and unemployed, then students and schoolchildren... The struggle against the retirement reforms has become for everyone a struggle against the degradations of our living conditions and against poverty.
But the paralysis of transport, by affecting precisely those who in the final analysis share this struggle, risks dividing and breaking this dynamic, of going against the necessary massive extension of the struggles. For the present, a great number of proletarians support the blockages but, if the situation persists, this tendency can only turn around.
Moreover, very concretely, the total paralysis of transport makes it impossible for a massive coming together on the days of demonstrations. Wouldn’t making trains run free for example facilitate the greatest number joining in and be a more efficient way to strengthen the movement?
Are we saying that the blockades and occupations are not methods beneficial to the struggle? Evidently not. Simply put, these actions shouldn’t have the first aim of establishing an economic balance of force (because that would be ineffectual), but a political balance of force. Any actions must be animated by attempts to extend the struggle. Our strength is our massive unity and our solidarity in combat.
For example, at the time of the movement against the CPE in 2006, the strike of the universities began by blockades. The most conscious and combative of the students drew in a maximum of their comrades towards the General Assemblies where a considerable number of those who hadn’t understood the significance of the attacks of the government or the necessity to fight them were convinced by the debates and arguments.
The blockade or the occupation of an industrial site, an education establishment or an administration centre, also allows this coming together, allows debates where the most hesitant are convinced and drawn into the struggle. This is the dynamic of extension which alone strikes fear in the heart of the bourgeoisie. And, in the final account, beyond the role that an occupation of a factory or a blockade at a given moment of a strike can play, it is in the street that the workers, the retired and unemployed, workers’ families... will be able to meet up in massive numbers!
ICC, 22/10/10.
Despite the fact that they lost 3-0, it wasn’t only the Turkish national team that was embarrassed last Tuesday night. The first thing that was problematic was that at a match in Berlin, the Turkish supporters outnumbered the German ones, and the second was that throughout the match Turkish supporters booed German midfield star Mesut Özil every time he touched the ball.
The following day there was lots of comment in the German press about how Turks in Germany weren’t patriotic enough, and how they were failing to integrate into German society. It brings to mind English politician Norman Tebbit’s infamous ‘cricket test’ when he criticised immigrants from India and Pakistan for not supporting England in a cricket match.
Of course footballers play for other international sides than the country that their grandparents came from. People even play for countries that they weren’t born in, and as all Turkish supporters are aware Marco Aurélio Brito dos Prazeres is not particularly Turkish. The abuse from Turkish nationalists didn’t seem to effect Mesut Özil much as he put in a great performance and scored the second goal.
More serious than a football match, however, is what these sort of comments in the German press represent. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel felt driven to join in with the general condemnation of immigrants. Speaking to a meeting of members of her party she announced that “This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed”, and that “the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily side by side did not work.”
Of course when these people are talking about people from different cultures they don’t mean the Dutch, or the Belgians many of whom also live and work in Germany. What they mean is people from Islamic backgrounds, and particularly Turks and Arabs.
Nor is it Germany alone. The panic mongering in Germany is similar to that in other European countries. The newly elected right-wing Swedish member of parliament, Björn Söder, stated that “we'll be facing the same problem that Iran did in 1979. It can happen really fast.” Of course, he didn’t bother to mention that the Iranian population is 98% Muslim, and even the highest estimates of the number of Muslims in the Danish population put the number at 5%. Even assuming that every single Muslim in Sweden is some sort of Islamic fundamentalist, it is still quite hard to imagine so few people launching a rerun of the Iranian revolution.
The banning of the burqa in France is a similar issue. To read the international media, one would think that France was overrun by women covered in black. In reality there are about 1,000 women in the whole of France who wear a burqa. This ban in France follows the passing of a similar law in Belgium back in April, and similar bans are now being discussed in other European countries such as the UK, Spain and Italy, and have already been introduced in specific cities in Italy and Spain, such as Barcelona. The question this raises is why the political elites of Europe have suddenly found a passion for women’s’ rights, or whether it is not a question of women’s rights anyway but a question of demonising outsiders. UK Conservative MP Philip Hollobone puts it very clearly wearing a burqa is “offensive”, and “against the British way of life”.
What is happening here is not about women’s rights, but a racist campaign. Racism in Western European countries and the US is a lot more subtle than it was 40 years ago. Back in the 1960s during the period when mass immigration to Western Europe began, the British Conservative party could openly play the racist card. “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour” was a slogan that it used in one election. Nor was it just restricted to the political sphere. Immigrant workers looking to rent a flat were often confronted with the letters NBNI at the end of newspaper ads, which meant ‘No Blacks, No Irish’.
Such overt racism is no longer possible today. That doesn’t mean that racism has disappeared, but has just changed its face. Today it orchestrates its campaigns against immigrants and ethnic minorities by appealing to workers in a different way. Islamists are accused of trying to destroy democratic values, and take away women’s rights. These are the arguments used both in defence of imperialist interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan or when campaigning against the other at home. The racist right today paints a picture of a Europe on the point of being overwhelmed by Islam.
Of course if we look at the facts Europe is not being ‘overwhelmed’ by Muslims at all. If we take Germany as an example the number of Turkish immigrants into Germany last year was at its lowest level since 1983, asylum applications are about a sixth of what they were in the 90s, and last year saw more Turks returning to Turkey than going to live in Germany, so in fact the numbers are falling.
Why then are we seeing a re-emergence of this sort of campaign now. It is because of the ongoing economic crisis. At times like these politicians look for ‘outsiders’ to blame. It not only gathers support for the nation state, but also divides the working class, weakening it and helping employers to drive down wages, and ultimately this is at the root of this racist campaign.
DD
General Assemblies (GA) are the lifeblood of the struggle. This is where workers (from the private and public sectors, the unemployed, pensioners, students, children of working families etc.) can really take ownership of their struggles, decide collectively. This is the true place of workers' democracy. By being open to all, not limited by corporatism, the GA unites the various sectors of our class. It’s the place where the life of the struggle can be built and the struggles extended.
This is why unions concentrate all their efforts to sabotage them! The text below, produced by the CNT-AIT Gers ( https://sia32.lautre.net [161] ) explains succinctly what a truly autonomous GA in the hands of strikers must be, and details the various pitfalls to guard against.
Definition
We call a general assembly the regular meeting, democratic and sovereign, of workers, regrouped as and when, without criteria, which can be varied (those belonging to a union, a confederation of unions, a social movement). At no point should these workers be prevented from being delegates: the principle of the GA is the vote by head count.
Typology
There are several types of GA:
Moreover, it can be limited to a single profession or be ‘inter-professional’. [Regrouping those from many professions – trans.]
Functioning of the GA
Threats to the GA
"The emancipation of the workers will be the task of the workers themselves"
SIA 32 (Member of the CNT-AIT).
Articles published online in November 2010.
Nine months after the earthquake which ravaged Haiti, leaving hundreds of thousands dead[1], the shady practices of the ruling class seem to have no limit. Despite all the fine promises of financial aid, millions of victims are still stuck in overcrowded camps. There have been around 10,000 NGO personnel on the island, plus thousands of well-armed troops from different countries, not to mention all the reporters looking for scoops and the politicians seeking a bit of publicity. But despite all the hypocritical tears of the world’s leaders[2], very little has been done. This is a population of little real interest as a source of profit, although it is still subject to the worst kind of banditry on the ground. But while all the world specialists were announcing as early as April that the worst was still to come with the arrival of the rainy season in an already catastrophic sanitary situation – a combination guaranteed to bring epidemic diseases – the world bourgeoisie did no more than wait for the rain.
The endless laments of the ‘international community’ are at the moment a bit more discreet than the disgusting media show organised at the time of the earthquake. And for good reason! There would be a lot more explaining to do because it is now more obvious than ever that the bourgeoisie is directly responsible for this disaster.
Cholera is a disease linked to insalubrious living conditions, which is what the Haitians are living in. It is transmitted through a bacterium that lives in water contaminated by faecal matter. In a country where less than 3% of the ruins caused by the earthquake have been evacuated, you can imagine the state of the water supply that the population is forced to use. The reconstruction of this country requires material and financial means. They were promised by various bourgeoisies looking to boost their influence and find a few new markets but they have not been forthcoming: more than 70% of the loans that were announced have not actually been handed over.
Furthermore, the diffusion of the bacterium is also facilitated by the chaotic movement of the population and by the thousands of evictions by property owners impatient to get back the land now occupied by the camps.
The law of profit will always make the bourgeoisie a class of unscrupulous murderers.
V, November 2010.
[2] Examples of hypocrisy: Sarkozy, whose minister Besson promised to stop expelling Haitians who had come to France to escape the disaster, a promise that lasted 10 days. Similar story in the US, which has a long history of blocking or expelling Haitian refugees.
From the website of the Daily Mail (22/11/10):
Student militants to picket school gates over tuition fees
“Student militants have joined forces with French communists to picket England’s secondary schools urging pupils as young as 15 to stage a walkout over university tuition fees.
Supporters of using ‘legitimate force’ to try to stop the rise in fees have been joined by members of the International Communist Current (ICC) to mobilise school children.
Activists want to leaflet schools across the country in the latest day of action, planned for Wednesday.
More than 20,000 young people have signed up to take part in a ‘national walkout’ on Wednesday. The majority are school pupils and further education students.
Campaign group Education Activist Network held a protest planning meeting on Saturday at Birkbeck College, London.
This was attended by at least one member of the ICC.
The ICC has a long tradition of direct action dating from the student protests in 1968 which paralysed France.
The EAN’s ringleader is Mark Bergfeld, 23, who has supported the use of ‘legitimate force’ to bring down the Government and called for ‘barricaded schools’.
Mr Bergfeld, who attends Essex University, said at Saturday’s meeting: ‘What you can do is, between now and the 24th, give out leaflets outside the schools so they know what we’re doing. Then on the day, they can join you.’
Also present were town hall and Health Service workers, school teachers and university lecturers”.
Our first response to this article in the Daily Mail was general hilarity. The second thought was 'no publicity is bad publicity'. But the third thought was: 'what’s behind this?'
The conspiracy-mongering of bourgeois journalism, which can never envisage a genuine movement of revolt from below, but must always trace it back to some devilishly cunning Moriaty spinning his webs in the shadows, has a long history, certainly going back to the days of Marx and the First International. The capitalist press habitually blamed the International Workingmen’s Association, to give it its actual title, for stirring up every act of resistance to the bourgeois order from the smallest local strike to the mighty Paris Commune of 1871. The International had a certain influence in those days, of course, but it was nothing compared to the inflated version conjured up by the servants of the ruling class.
We are a tiny group. We participate in the class struggle as best as our forces allow, and we have been active in a number of the discussions, meetings and demonstrations that are part of the present movement of the students against tuition fees and the abolition of EMA payments. We were indeed present at the EAN meeting described. We are proud to be an international organisation (which is different to being a purely French one, of course) and we can indeed trace our origins to the tremendous strike wave that shook France in May 1968.
But we make no pretence to being the organisers of the present movement – we don’t even see that as our role. There’s little point arguing this with the Daily Mail, however, because it’s irrelevant whether or not their hacks believe that they have really uncovered the secret power behind the current rebellion of working class youth in the UK.
The real aim of this and similar articles lies elsewhere. And there have indeed been a number of similar articles recently: anarchist groups like Solidarity Federation and the Anarchist Federation have been identified as the organisers of the occupation and trashing of Tory HQ on November 10, and after the same event a particularly vicious article was published in the Daily Telegraph which fingered a regular poster on the libcom internet forum, naming him and his father and again insinuating without any proof whatever that he was directly responsible for the damage done at Millbank.
‘Exposés’ of this kind are aimed at discrediting revolutionaries and revolutionary organisations, at making them sound as sinister and unattractive as possible, and ultimately at creating an atmosphere where they can be attacked directly by the forces of order. After all we advocate “legitimate force” and - hint hint – are prepared even to drag innocent schoolchildren into our evil schemes. And of course we are foreigners, so why should we even be allowed here?
The kettling of the 24 November London student demonstration was a blatant display of force aimed at intimidating a movement which the bourgeoisie is not yet certain that it can contain, not least because it is not obeying the usual rules of engagement which the trade unions and the left can normally be entrusted to impose. The insinuations against anarchists and communists are another expression of the same kind of reaction from the ruling class. They correspond to its need to block an emerging process of politicisation among young people – a politicisation which threatens to go well beyond the false opposition offered by the capitalist left.
No need to envisage a conspiracy here: these kinds of reaction are almost as ‘spontaneous’ to the ruling class as a demonstration organised on Facebook. But there is consciousness involved too: our rulers learn from what’s happened before and what’s happening elsewhere. They have in front of them the image of Greece and France, for example, where within the recent movements against austerity we saw small but visible minorities posing some very political questions: the self-organisation and extension of the struggles, and the future that capitalist society has in store for us. The students in Britain are also raising the issue of the future and the ruling class would rather that they weren't encouraged to see the possibility of becoming part of a movement leading in the direction of revolution.
WR, 27/11/10.
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331892/Tuition-fee-militants-picket-school-gates.html#ixzz16OoPiMUH [165]
The toxic red sludge coming from the bauxite-aluminium plant close to the village of Aika[1], fouling the Danube and flooding the neighbouring water courses and the villages of Devecser and Kolontar (the worst affected), can only generate a feeling of dread. It is the most serious incident of pollution in Hungary’s history! Thousands of cubic metres of poisoned sludge have been released into the environment and the repeated televised pictures of a bucket attached to a rope being thrown into it every hour to take samples for chemical analysis only added to the feelings of unease.
However, beyond the spectacular images of the desolated countryside in the first televised reports, another reality, just as shocking but much less reported on, is evident outside of the official comments: the deaths this has already caused. The horror generated by the dozens of immediate victims (including a 14-month old girl), the people gone missing, the more than a hundred wounded, affected by serious injuries, is added to today by the many who are still undergoing real suffering. This corrosive red sludge, composed of heavy metals and mildly radioactive, induces deep burns and attacks the eyes. The chemical component of this infamous mixture turns out to be carcinogenic. Thousands of villagers have decided to flee their homes in order to avoid putting their health in peril.
All the human drama of this catastrophe has been intentionally drowned out in the few commentaries that journalists have given. As usual, the dominant class has minimised the disaster: “The risk of the pollution of the Danube by the toxic red mud has been eliminated”. This is the lamentable announcement of the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban during a press conference in Sofia only a few days after the incident. Without turning a hair, he added that: “The Hungarian authorities are in control of the situation”[2]. At the same time, journalists were turning attention and reflection away from the tragic consequences of this incident, showing just spectacular images to frighten the population and thus avoiding any real explanation[3]. In any case, industrial accidents linked to “technological risks”[4] are “the price to pay”, the “inevitable price of progress”. In other words, the fact that there are victims must be accepted as a fatality. This is something “normal”!
We can only angrily and indignantly denounce this nauseous ideology and above all the attempt to hide what are effectively murders by an unscrupulous capitalist class. We can only firmly highlight the barbarity that obliges populations to live in a dangerous environment and then coldly displaces the villagers after the event as if they were battery hens, whereas they had been deliberately exposed to danger with a total contempt for their lives.
It was a long time ago that the seepage of the red sludge coming from the defective reservoir was discovered and that the risks of direct contamination of the neighbouring villages were known. The exposure of the population was an open secret among the local bosses and politicians! But because prevention is not a profitable activity, the bourgeoisie prefers to make economies and play Russian roulette with a part of the population. And they are still playing the same game!
The “experts”, the politicians, bosses and journalists know perfectly well that the industrial rim of the Danube is a gigantic open-air rubbish tip and that the unsafe, decrepit installations – due to lack of investment – along it, can only give rise to new, similar catastrophes. From the first seepages, they have done everything to minimise the impact of the disaster. Then, faced with the evidence, they have affected surprise at the conditions of this new catastrophe, pointing a finger at the past, “vestiges” inherited from the period of so-called “communism” in order to absolve their system and avoid responsibility[5].
If today the media has gone onto other things, if the event no longer makes the newspapers, the catastrophe and the sufferings are from finished!
This devastating event is neither natural nor the product of fate. It is a clear expression of the destructive madness generated by the frenetic search for profits. Exacerbated competition in a world where markets are reducing little by little obliges all industries and states to take more and more risks, to constantly cut back on safety measures in order to make economies. At the same time, natural resources are everywhere subject to a real pillage and are suffering accelerated destruction. The catastrophe in Hungary is already there. Not only is the Danube, the second-largest river in Europe polluted, but some water courses belonging to its hydrographical network have had their ecosystems completely destroyed. This is the case for the river Marcel (which flows into the Raab, a direct tributary of the Danube) where inert fish float on top of the rusty coloured water. It will be a long time, decades even, before life can return here; this is without counting the damage produced in all the surrounding land and in the percolating water and streams that eventually end up in the water table. More than a thousand contaminated hectares will henceforth affect agricultural activity and the food chain of this polluted space. In the long term what are the consequences of the dust from the dried-up sludge, because it turns out that as long as it stays liquid it is less dangerous?
Once again, the bourgeoisie displays its negligence and total contempt for human life. And not only is its instinct driven by its thirst for immediate profits, but its blindness is such that bit by bit it is sawing away at the branch on which it sits. Of course some bourgeois call on the rest of their class to slow down this collapse into catastrophe, but it’s a lost cause. The general logic of capitalism’s hunt for rapid profits, linked to the present decline of the economy as a whole and to the collapse of whole segments of it, can only sharpen the rapaciousness of industry and the financial sector as they seek to suck the marrow dry of those areas of the planet where a profit can still be made. In exploiting the proletariat worse than beasts the bosses turn their noses up at “too costly” safety measures. So they are doing away with them without reflecting for one second on the consequences for the rest of humanity.
WH (14th October)
[1] 160 kilometres west of the capital Budapest.
[3] Let us remember, among other things, the silence orchestrated not so long ago over the 11 deaths following the explosion on the Gulf of Mexico oil platform. The repeated images of this spectacular explosion were accompanied by comments that systematically refused to talk of the victims (see RI no. 413, June 2010).
[4] In French schools’ current geography lessons, there’s a programme of study called “technological risks”. It’s a way of getting the young to accept the fact that urban populations are more and more exposed to catastrophes.
[5] In France, at Gardanne (Bouches-du-Rhone), the problems posed by some of this mud flow in liquid form has been sorted out in advance: it has largely been diverted and dumped into the Mediterranean!
The leaflet below was given out at the large meeting held at King's College on Monday 15th November, under the auspices of the left wing of the unions (Education Activists Network). We would welcome comments, criticisms, and above all, offers to distribute it or improve and update it in this period leading up to next week's Day of Action. A comrade from the ICC's section in Toulouse, which has been very active in the movement for struggle committees and assemblies, was able to speak at the meeting; and despite a frontal attack on the French union strategies, was widely applauded. We will try to piece together more elements about this meeting.
For a long time, it has seemed that the working class in Britain has been stunned into silence by the brutality of the attacks being launched by the new government: forcing the disabled back to work, forcing the jobless to work for nothing, raising the pension age, savage spending cuts in the education sector, hundreds of thousands of jobs to go throughout the public sector, trebling of university tuition fees and scrapping Education Maintenance Allowance bonuses for 16-18 year old students...the list is endless. The workers’ struggles that have taken place recently – BA, tube, fire service - have all been kept in strict isolation.
But we are an international class and the crisis of this system is also international. In Greece, Spain, and most recently France there have been massive struggles against the new austerity drives. In France the reaction against the pension ‘reforms’ provided a focus for growing discontent throughout society, but especially among the youth.
The huge demonstration in London of 10 November showed that the same potential for resistance exists in the UK. The sheer size of the demo, the involvement of both students and education workers, the refusal to be limited to a tame march from A to B, all this expresses a widespread feeling that we cannot accept the logic behind the state’s assault on living conditions. The temporary occupation of Tory HQ was not the result of a conspiracy by a handful of anarchists but the product of a far wider anger, and the vast majority of students and workers supporting the demo refused to go along with the condemnation of this action by the NUS leadership and the media.
Many have said it: this demonstration was just the beginning. Already a second day of action and demonstration is being organised for the 24th November. For the moment such actions are being organised by the ‘official’ organisations like the NUS who have already shown that they are part of the forces of order. But that is no reason for not participating massively in the demonstrations. On the contrary, coming together in large numbers is the best basis for creating new forms of organisation that can express the real needs of the struggle.
Before such demonstrations or days of action, how do we move forward? We need to call for meetings and general assemblies in the universities, colleges and schools, open to all students and workers, both to build support for the demonstrations and discuss their aims.
The initiative by some comrades to form ‘radical student and worker blocs’ on the demonstrations should be supported – but wherever possible they should meet in advance to discuss exactly how they intend to express their independence from the official organisers.
We need to learn from recent experiences in Greece – where occupations (including the occupation of union HQ) – were used to create a space where general assemblies could be held. And what was the experience in France? We saw an important minority of students and workers in many towns holding street assemblies not only at the end of the demos but on a regular basis while the movement was going forward.
We also need to be clear that in future the forces of order will not keep to the softly softly approach of 10 November. They will be tooled up and looking to provoke us into premature clashes to give them a pretext for displays of force– this has been a common tactic in France. The organisation of self-defence and solidarity against the forces of repression needs to come out of collective discussion and decision.
The struggle is not just in the education sector. The entire working class is under attack and the resistance needs to be spread consciously to both public and private sectors. Controlling our own struggles is the only way to extend them.
International Communist Current, 15/10/10.
Below is a translation of the statement of a witness to the police repression meted out against students, youth and workers at a demonstration last month in Lyon, France against the pension “reform” and the attacks of the French ruling class. The French police have also picked up on their British counterpart’s tactic of “kettling”, particularly using it to prevent any collective reflection on the best means of struggle that is emerging in minorities of the working class fed up with being marched up and down and then sent home by the unions.
The British police were strongly criticised for their illegal kettling at the G20 protest and the killing of Ian Tomlinson. But following the overwhelming of the police (deliberately allowed or not) by demonstrators at Millbank on November 10, there was little doubt that the kettling tactic would be used again in the UK, especially after the activist wing of the NUS and other leftists had announced their intention of marching towards Lib Dem HQ on 24 November. And so the 24 November demo was led into the cynical trap laid for them a few hundred yards after leaving the meeting point at Trafalgar Square.
At Lyon, the violence of a handful of demonstrators was possibly manipulated by the police, but was anyway used by them to prevent any coming together and discussion between students and workers at the end of the demonstration. What the bourgeoisie fears above all is that students will join up with other elements of their class under similar attacks: young, old, employed or unemployed. It is these general assemblies, however much a minority they start off with, that can discuss how to take the struggle forward and that were so effective in avoiding police provocations and joining up with workers in the struggles against the CPE in France in 2006. It was precisely the growing threat of this unification that forced the French state to withdraw its immediate assault on students’ and young workers’ conditions.
Lyon, Tuesday October 19, another demonstration against the changes to retirement. More than 45,000 are present, including thousands of schoolchildren. The latter met up in the morning in front of schools and joined up with the main demonstration. The omnipresent police laid into any “outbursts” from the beginning from various points, outbursts that they largely helped to provoke through their aggressive presence.
In the Place Bellecour, right in the heart of Lyon, where a good part of the demonstrators had come and were still arriving, the forces of order were collecting in numbers. Some dozens of youths faced up to them. The police reacted immediately and violently in the middle of thousands of demonstrators; firing tear gas and with loaded flash-balls in hands. All the repressive forces were mobilised – cops, civil forces, GIPN... They used orange markers to stain the demonstrators. Police helicopters hovered overhead to take photographs and to report to and direct the forces below. River police were also posted on the Rhone. In sum all efforts were made to brutally attack the youngsters present and, at the same time, sabotage the end of the demonstration.
Confrontations lasted up to the evening and it wasn’t only with the youths. A number of demonstrators responded to this police provocation and physically prevented heavier attacks.
The question is immediately posed: why such a level of repression, such a disproportionate use of the police faced with this situation. Who profits from the crime?
Obviously, the ruling class didn’t “just let this happen”. In unleashing this deliberately provoked violence it wanted to send a clear message:
- To spread fear among the youth who wanted to join the struggle but did not want to suffer from such repression.
- To frighten parents, demonstrators or not, in an attempt to dissuade them from joining in with the next demonstration.
- To provoke the high school and university students already involved and turn their discontent onto the single issue of repression and physical conflict. And in this way to try to obscure all the lessons of the CPE in 2006 where, rightly, the youngsters refused to respond to police provocation.
-To pervert any questioning during this social movement against the retirement changes and fixate it on the “irresponsibility” of Sarkozy alone; to attempt to wipe out the basis of our anger faced with the crisis that the whole of capitalism imposes on us.
But the unleashing of such violence was aimed above all at preventing hundreds of workers and demonstrators, large numbers of whom remained at the end of the demonstration on the Place Bellecour, from meeting up, discussing, looking to the next stage of struggle and asking, collectively, how to struggle.
Up to this demonstration it had been the unions’ loudspeakers with their deafening noise which had contributed to preventing any real collective discussions or any real massive General Assemblies. All of the unions had openly blocked such gatherings since the beginning of the movement. But today, there have been dozens of arrests and of wounded amongst the young.
Make no mistake about this repression. This violence of the state is directly addressed to the whole of the working class! Order must reign! This is the clear message from the state.
- We must respond but not on the terrain dictated by the cops
- We must first of all affirm our complete solidarity with the school and university students who were attacked and beaten.
- We must then reflect on why this violence took place and directly discuss it in all the General Assemblies held in Lyon and elsewhere!
A direct witness of events at Lyon, 20/10/10.
The bookshop Gondolkodo Antikvàrium in Budapest has begun a series of public debates on the perspectives for the class struggle, and on 5th November invited the ICC to introduce a discussion on “The world economic crisis and the perspectives for the class struggle”.
Our presentation laid its main emphasis on:
the extreme gravity of the crisis throughout the world, which demonstrates capitalism’s irremediable bankruptcy;
the inexorable decline in the working class’ living conditions, and its growing pauperisation on every continent;
the slow, uneven, but undeniable development of the workers’ struggle internationally;
the main factors underlying the proletariat's difficulty in raising its struggle to the level demanded by the present historical situation, and especially its difficulty in rediscovering its class identity and asserting its own revolutionary perspective (as a result of the bourgeoisie's campaigns following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and its Stalinist regimes);
the role played by the unions in sabotaging the workers' struggle, in Europe and everywhere else;
the appearance of working class minorities in search of a revolutionary perspective, confronted with the increasingly obvious collapse of capitalism.
This was the first time that we have been able to take part in such a meeting in Hungary, and for most of those present it was also the first time that they had encountered the ICC. Almost inevitably, the meeting thus adopted the format of a "question and answer" session, with the participants trying to place and understand the ideas and analyses of the ICC and, more broadly, of the communist left. For our part, we greatly appreciated the opportunity offered us to understand better the current debates within the revolutionary milieu in Hungary, and the way in which political questions are posed there.
The discussion turned largely around the class struggle's revolutionary perspective, and in particular the following questions:
The proletarian revolution will pose the problem of the violent confrontation with the bourgeoisie. Does the ICC intervene in the armed forces (as Engels recommended) to draw them towards the proletariat's revolutionary struggle?
Our reply highlighted the following arguments:
Clearly, it will be impossible to overthrow capitalism without a disintegration of the forces of repression. But this can only happen in a period where the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the world proletariat is such that the workers are strong enough to seize power and open the perspective of communism for society as a whole. In such a situation, the soldiers, and even in some cases the police, will end up joining the strongest side. We referred to the way that Trotsky in 1917, called on the demoralised Cossacks not to turn against the revolution. We also pointed out that these days, in the world's main armies, the soldiers are not workers in uniform conscripted for war (as was the case during World War I), but essentially volunteers in a professional army. As a result, the aim of the forces of repression is to maintain the capitalist social order. Even if soldiers and policemen are wage-earners, they are not members of the working class: their labour power is put at the service of capital against the working class. Revolutionary organisations' purpose today is thus not so much to "convince" the forces of repression, as to develop their intervention so that the working class can assert its own perspective against the whole ruling class, against the bourgeois state and all its forces of repression, whose sole function is to uphold capitalist order.
Today we are faced with the very serious problem of capitalism's destruction of the environment. It is urgent to save the planet. But the working class is not mobilised around this question. It is reformist and only wants to improve its situation within the capitalist system. It has no revolutionary consciousness. Will we have the time to build communism before the planet is destroyed by an ecological catastrophe?
The ICC replied that the destruction of the ecosystem is indeed a real danger for the future of humanity. But we cannot go faster than events themselves will allow us, and the outcome of the proletarian struggle will be determined on a historical scale. The bourgeoisie itself is very concerned about the problem, but unable to respond to it.
Like the population as a whole, the proletariat is also worried about it, but – as with the question of war – the question of ecology is not a factor in the mobilisation of the workers' struggles. The proletariat today mobilises essentially on the basis of economic questions, of direct attacks on its living conditions. Only if it develops its struggle against poverty and exploitation will it be able to develop its consciousness to the point where it includes all the other questions (war, ecological destruction, and all the other scourges created by the capitalist mode of production) in its revolutionary struggle.
Other participants were critical of some aspects of our analysis. One comrade was unconvinced by the ICC's view of the present maturation in class consciousness, arguing that even if strikes take place today, the proletarian masses are passive and not revolutionary.
Another felt that the ICC's analysis of class consciousness is not materialist because it is not based on the final aim of the proletarian movement which is to socialise production.
In reply, we pointed to the important workers' struggles taking place in many countries today. The working masses can thus not be said to be passive in the face of capitalism's attacks. One example is the recent mobilisation of the proletariat in France against the reform of the pensions system, where more than three million proletarians (wage-earners of all kinds, casual workers, unemployed, university and school students) took part in massive street demonstrations. We also argued that revolutionaries need to have a historical view and a good deal of patience. The immensity of the task before us means that an international revolutionary movement will not appear overnight. We also think that it is important to avoid the idealist view that revolutionary consciousness can be introduced into the proletariat out of nothing, independently of the proletarian masses' material and subjective living conditions. The masses' revolutionary consciousness necessarily forms in a slow and uneven process, and can only develop on the basis of increasingly massive struggles against capitalism's attacks.
With regard to the argument that the proletariat's aim is the socialisation of production, we replied that the main thing is to break from the logic of the law of profit. The problem is not only whether appropriation is private or social, it is above all the aim of production and distribution: production for the satisfaction of human need, rather than the accumulation of exchange values, of money (whose corollary is poverty for growing numbers of proletarians).
Other participants asked how we view the aim and the organisation of production in communism.
Our reply was extremely brief on this point, due to lack of time, and was unable to go over all the issues involved in the ICC's analysis of the period of transition between capitalism and communism. We limited ourselves to the general statement that production in communism is devoted to the satisfaction of human needs, that it will put an end to the rule of the commodity and of profit. The production and distribution of goods for consumption must necessarily be centralised world wide.
Another participant declared that May 68 in France was a revolutionary movement because it involved the whole working class and the students. Factories and universities were occupied, there were massive demonstrations, strikers confronted the forces of repression, etc.
We replied that although May 68 was certainly the biggest strike in history, and although it opened up a new historical period in the class struggle, it was not a revolutionary movement. There were no workers' councils, and the question of power was a long way from being posed.
Finally, we were asked why the ICC has developed relations with an anarcho-syndicalist group like the CNT-AIT in France, despite its critical attitude towards syndicalism.
For the ICC, the essential criterion that today determines whether a group belongs to the proletarian camp, is internationalism. This is why we avoid adopting a sectarian attitude towards groups which do not share our position on anarcho-syndicalism. Our recent ties with the Toulouse group of the CNT-AIT (as distinct from the "CNT-Vignolles"1) spring from its clearly internationalist position and its fraternal attitude towards the ICC. We pointed out that there are other countries, like Russia, where the ICC also enjoys fraternal relations (whatever our disagreements) with groups belonging to the anarcho-syndicalist current.
This first public meeting organised by the bookshop G and introduced by the ICC was certainly rich and lively. Despite a certain scepticism that appeared in the debate, with regard to the proletariat's revolutionary potential, those participants who spoke all expressed their conviction that capitalism must give way to another social system: communism. All the interventions converged on this point: given the gravity of the world situation, the future lies in the hands of the working class.
The debate took place in a very fraternal and serious atmosphere, where everyone was able to express their point of view, their concerns and disagreements. This is all the more significant in a country where the working class still suffers from enormous difficulties in engaging the struggle against the attacks of capital, and remains strongly marked by nationalist ideology and the consequences of the collapse of Stalinism, particularly in the survival of reactionary ideologies, expressed in xenophobic attitudes towards ethnic minorities, or the violent outbreaks by far right groups.
To conclude, we would like to thank warmly both the bookshop Gondolkodo Antikvàrium for having taken the initiative of inviting us, and also the organisers of the meeting for the translations from English to Hungarian, which made it possible for all the participants to follow what we had to say, and ourselves to take an active part in the debate.
The fact that the ICC, thanks to this invitation, was able to put forward its analyses in public, in the Hungarian capital, is in our view a new expression of an underlying maturation in class consciousness, which is expressed today in the appearance around the world of political minorities and elements, trying to develops mutual ties to break their isolation and clarify their divergences as well as their points of agreement.
ICC, 8th November
In November and December 2010 protests against aspects of cuts in education showed that the imposition of austerity measures is meeting resistance in Britain. We are publishing here extracts from a longer internal report for the rest of the ICC, adapted for our public press. It's a contribution to the wide-ranging discussion that recent events have provoked. We intend to publish a separate text on the ICC's intervention in the movement in the near future.
This slogan was chanted at one of the numerous demonstrations that spontaneously took place across Britain on 24 November. Tens of thousands of school children, sixth form and Further Education students (16-18 years old) and university students took to the streets to protest against the coalition government’s plans to cut the Education Maintenance Allowance - weekly payments of up to £30 for poorer FE students; to increase university fees from £3000 a year to up to £9000; to reduce funding for university teaching by 100% for the Humanities and up to 95% for the rest. A significant part of the younger generation believe they are being robbed of their future, and aren’t willing to accept this passively.
This generation, faced with the deepening crisis, is deeply aware of the need to gain academic or vocational qualifications by at least attending further education. They are also fully conscious of the alternative, becoming one of the 1,000,000 under 18 years without education, benefits or jobs that the system leaves literally with nothing (you cannot claim any benefits until you are 18), or low paid unskilled work. They have had this driven into their heads from a young age, and suddenly they are told they will not get money for support while at college, and if they get to university they will be faced with up to £50,000 worth of debt, which they will be paying back for decades.
The attack on the EMA is particularly important in this movement because it’s an essential part of the social wage for many working class families. It pays for travel to college, books, paper and food, or at least parts of it. Given the high cost of travel in the major cities and rural areas its loss will restrict access to further education for the poorest students. The younger students have seen this as an attack not only on them but their families and in many cases clearly see it as an attack on the working class. It is this attack that has led to the movement being so widespread in cities and towns across England. Older schoolchildren and FE students have taken to the streets where there are no universities. They have also mobilised because even when they don’t feel able to - or don't want to - go to university they need to go on to further education or they want their friends and family to be able to. These young proletarians have been at the vanguard of this movement.
Only a few weeks ago the British media was mocking the social struggle in France, as being typical of those 'hot blooded' Latins who take to the streets at a moment’s notice. At the same time they were extolling the 'common sense', pragmatism and passivity of the working class in Britain.
From The Independent, 21 October 2010.
On the 10 November the wave of protest by students which has been washing across the world since 2006, through France, Greece, Germany, the US, Puerto Rico, and Italy, crashed down upon the shores of the British Isles in a storm surge of militancy amongst the children of the working class. The spontaneous besieging of the Tory Party Headquarters during the first students' protest against the attacks on higher education lit a match to the powder keg of discontent that has been simmering for years. Spurred on by the practical example of the students’ refusal to be corralled into a pointless A to B demonstration and, instead, taking things into their own hands with the surrounding the Tory Party HQ, and completely indifferent to the enraged response of the ruling class and its media, there have been four weeks of demonstrations, occupations of schools, colleges and universities, and an increasingly open defiance of the repressive forces of the state.
A tide of working class militancy has ebbed and flowed across the country as schoolchildren and students have shown their capacity for self-organisation. In some schools pupils have called meetings to discuss the attacks; there have been examples of several schools coordinating their discussions and actions across cities; demonstrations have been called via Facebook; university occupations have opened up their discussions to anyone who wants to join in; they have broadcast their discussions via the internet and set up forums where people can send messages of solidarity or enter into discuss with them. In London some students went to striking tube workers’ pickets (who in return showed their solidarity at the last demonstration in London), while the occupiers of University College London made the payment of a 'living wage' [175] to the university cleaners one of their demands and won it.
These expressions of self-organisation have not been as widespread and clear as in the anti-CPE movement in France in 2006 but they certainly expressed the same dynamic towards the mass mobilisation of a generation of young workers to defend themselves.
In the space of a month this explosion of militancy has gone from the besieging of the Tory Party HQ to around 30,000 school pupils, students and others opening defying the state's increasing use of repression in London on 9 December. On that occasion the demonstrators initially succeeded in outwitting the massive police presence to invade Parliament Square, which was meant to have been sealed and barricaded off (it is illegal to demonstrate outside the home of democracy, without police permission) in order to spare MPs from hearing the anger of their victims as they voted on these attacks. The MPs heard more than their voices: they heard police helicopters, vans, charges by mounted police, baton assaults and the resistance of the protesters as the police contained and beat them for hours for having the audacity to stand up for themselves.
The fury of the ruling class faced with this refusal to be subdued by its repression was expressed by its media. Live TV coverage and news programmes made no pretence at objectivity as these mouthpieces of the ruling class attacked the students, school children, their parents and others as they sought to defend themselves against a police force which, from some reports, had been told to make sure that those participating were terrorised into not wanting to demonstrate again. Only a couple of weeks before the main media channels had tried to hide the use of police horse charges against some on the 24 November demonstration; on the 9th they openly showed the police horses charging, sometimes up to 15 at a time into the crowd. They were also not so coy about showing police beating protesters and did not stint in their praise of these defenders of democracy. A count was kept of the number of injured police whilst injuries to demonstrators were mentioned as an afterthought, or as part of a plea for a less repressive democracy.
Away from Parliament Square the students, drawing on their previous experience of being contained by the police, broke up their demonstration into numerous smaller ones which went off in several directions. From various reports it would appear that these demonstrations were not met with much hostility and indeed were often greeted with applause from people on the pavement.
It was one of these break-away demonstrations that met up with Prince Charles and his wife on a night out. Their startled looks mirrored that of the ruling class: the plebs are revolting and we have not been able to control them.
The idea of there being some form of social peace in Britain has been bludgeoned to the ground along with those students and others who were wantonly beaten about the head by the state. More importantly many of those who have participated in this movement will have had their illusions in democracy battered. They have learnt that the only way to be heard is to stand up and defy the state, not to submit.
Following the 2010 General Election the British bourgeoisie hoped to use the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to maintain and strengthen the ideological attack on the working class:
The events of the last few weeks have marked a serious challenge to the bourgeoisie's ability to keep up this ideological offensive. The fact that the first open display of mass struggle against this coalition was focused on Tory HQ and accompanied by furious chants of “Tory scum” by thousands who have never experienced a Tory government undermined any hope the bourgeoisie may have had of re-branding the Tories. The hatred of the working class for the Tories is so deep that it passes from generation to generation. As for the Lib Dems being a counter-balance, a force for moderation, that has been undermined by the fact that their leadership voted for these attacks after signing pledges before the election that they would not increase fees. In some ways the Lib Dem leadership is even more hated than the Tories. The students and school children expected it from the Tories but not from that nice Mr Clegg and kindly old Vince Cable, who had made such an effort to get the students to vote for them. It will be interesting to see the impact of recent revelations in the Telegraph, whose undercover reporters caught several Lib Dem MPs making unsympathetic comments about their coalition partners.
The government’s mantra that “we’re all in this together” is treated with nothing but widespread contempt. This movement has been animated by a deep, passionate hatred of the rich, who they see as being given billions of pounds in bonuses and tax dodges, while students and schoolchildren, along with the rest of the working class, are having their futures robbed from them. There is no hesitation by the vast majority of schoolchildren and FE students and many university students about seeing themselves as working class and these attacks as being on the working class.
The idea of 'fairness' has been mocked mercilessly. Schoolchildren will point to the fact that the rich get away with paying as little tax as possible whilst they are being told to sacrifice themselves.
Clearly, this rage against the rich is very important for the future development of a wider and more profound class consciousness. However, at the moment it is also been used as the main portal for the influx of bourgeois ideology into this movement. This primal anger, without a wider perspective concerning the nature of the system, is mixed with a sense of unfairness, that the rich should pay their share. More dangerously the Left is using the idea that these attacks are simply ideological, because, so they claim, the ruling class, could readily pay for further education and the EMA if only they taxed the rich effectively, if they only spend money on education and not war, and that this is what we should expect from the Tories. The power of these ideological illusions cannot be forgotten.
If at the moment these illusions are a weight on the movement, many of those participating in it do not hold many illusions in the Labour Party either. They remember that it was them who introduced fees in the first place. Also the Labour Party has not given the movement its backing, nor has it said it will scrap the increase in fees if it is elected.
The culmination of the movement so far, on 9 December, also posed the question of democracy very starkly. Up until then there had been a powerful belief that if they protested enough the government could back down, but the result of the vote showed that it was not able to do so. Not only did these illusions in the reasonableness of the bourgeoisie take a powerful blow: this happened at the same time as the forces of repression where literally beating them about the head. This has left those who participated and the rest of the working class with much to think about.
This movement confronted the ruling class with a huge challenge from the beginning: how to contain and politically control the movement? For a month the ruling class has been faced with a movement which none of its numerous political forces was able to fully contain and control:
All this has left a situation where the NUS, and its various university organisations, have called three national demonstrations while knowing that their ability to control them was decreasing with each demonstration and the increasing confrontations with the police.
On the same days as these national demonstrations there have been numerous local demonstrations called by meetings of FE students, school children, individuals calling for demonstrations via Facebook, by coordinating bodies of schoolchildren such as the network that was set up in Oxford. Or, on the day, schools have spontaneously walked out: in one case 3 teenagers went around a school calling out the students and were followed by 800 others. In many case teachers tried to lock children in or the police threatened to arrest them for truancy. This led to an interesting situation where in large cities such as Manchester the main demonstration drew a few hundred whilst in smaller cities and towns such as Bury 1,200 school children demonstrated. In Brighton up to 2,000 students and children walked out on 24 November, This demonstration ended with 400 school pupils trying to storm the central police station where their friends had been taken when arrested.
The following quotes from The Guardian and Libcom.org give a sense of the spontaneous nature of this movement:
“Hundreds of teenagers poured out of Allerton Grange high school in Leeds just now to join the protest.
"The well-planned action has seen almost the whole school empty with carefully prepared banners picked up from prepared stores.
“The students are now marching to the nearby Roundhay high school in the hope of encouraging students there to join in. The two schools are high-achieving comprehensives in a largely prosperous part of Leeds. Both regularly win Oxbridge places.
“The students are chanting ‘they say cut back, we say fight back.’ Two 16-year-olds said that the focus was on the loss of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. One said: ‘without EMA I'll never be able to go to university. I want to follow my dream.’” (The Guardian [177])
“Bristol was possibly bigger than last week - if you go by Facebook, 700 or so more people had RSVPed (including Avon & Somerset Police). 2,000 was one report, it could have been more. A higher proportion of school & college students, including a kid in a balaclava who looked about 12. At least one school who had been locked in by teachers last week were out this week. As in Brighton, anarchists were handing out legal info / bust cards.
“There was heaps of energy - the march moved quickly in ever widening circles for over 3 straight hours, keeping out of the way of police & occasionally breaking through lines. (Though not the line guarding the M32.) This caused traffic chaos which in turn helped stop the police from being able to move their vans around to contain the demo.
“We went through Cabot Circus & the mall a few times & stopped for a quick break in the middle of the shopping area - I think partly on the assumption that it was a safe place to stop because they wouldn't want to kettle a rowdy crowd in the middle of a bunch of expensive shops.
“There was a brief attempt to get into a Vodafone shop. Police got pelted with mustard from the German Christmas markets. There were a couple of pretty half-arsed attempts to occupy the council house & the administrative centre of the University of Bristol. Snowballs were thrown at cops & at horses (who really don't like them).
“The march got kettled up in Bristol Uni at the end, though a good portion saw it coming & got out before it formed, more jumped out through hedges & some got out with a rope, as reported above.
“Police did cavalry style horse charges into a loose crowd outside the kettle - it really looked like someone could have been hurt. A couple of people were beaten by police around the edges of the kettle. There were 10 arrests, mostly towards the end when people were trying to break out of/avoid kettling, I think mostly of college students.” (Libcom.org [178], 30/11/10)
The information we have on how widespread and large these local demonstrations were is limited because much of the media have played down the involvement of school children. However, it is clear that an important minority of school children, sixth form and FE students have participated in such demonstrations and in many cases organised them themselves.
Here it is necessary to mention use of the internet and smartphones to this movement. The younger generation has made full use of their skills and knowledge of this media. Facebook has played an important role in coordinating struggles; Twitter has also allowed people to stay in contact; the occupiers of the University College of London also set up a Google map on 9 December which showed where the police were gathering in order that the protesters could avoid them. Also the internet has been used for posting photos and videos of the demonstrations, and of the police repression. For example, YouTube footage of the 24 November gave the lie to police denials that they had made mounted charges into the crowd, while a video of police manhandling a demonstrator in a wheelchair and dragging him across the road was accessed internationally
All of these expressions have meant that the main media outlets have been sidelined by many of those participating and they have made their own reports of what has been happening. The mainstream media distort information to the general population but this has encouraged the young to rely on their own sources of information and organisation.
The real difficulties the bourgeoisie have had in trying to deal with this movement is summed up in the plea by the head of the police in Bristol for someone to become the leader of the movement:
“Mr Jackson called for someone from the student body to come forward so they could better co-ordinate what he referred to as a ‘leaderless protest’” (local press quoted on Libcom).
The last month has seen the ruling class escalating their use of repression as the movement has developed. With their political organs as yet unable to control the movement the state has had one main response; increasingly violent repression.
Some have compared the culminating confrontation between the police and students on 9 December to the Poll Tax riot of 1990. But this comparison misses the difference in historical context. The Poll Tax riot marked the end of a movement and took place at a time of a retreat in class consciousness. These recent confrontations between the movement and the police, which have taken place not only in London, but in other cities, are taking place at a time of international upsurge in struggles following five years of increasingly draconian attacks on the working class. Above all this is the first widespread movement in Britain mobilising tens of thousands of young proletarians and others since the resurgence of struggles in 2003.
This confrontation between the classes has not been posed so starkly in Britain since the mid 1980s and the miners’ and printers’ struggles. The bourgeoisie have spent the last quarter of a century boasting about its ability to bring about 'social peace' and very low levels of class struggle. In the last weeks the class war has been brought to the forefront of workers’ attention.
The siege and attack on the Tory Party HQ involved almost no violence against the police and only some breaking of windows. When someone threw a fire extinguisher from the roof of the building they were condemned by the crowd with cries of “Stop throwing shit!”
The small police presence was able to stop a mass invasion of the building. A couple of weeks later these same students would be facing repeated charges by mounted officers and baton charges by police in full riot gear.
The progression of the state's use of naked violence against what in many cases were schoolchildren shows their concern. The demonstration on 24 November witnessed the use by the police of kettling, basically trapping protesters into confined areas by blocking all the means of exit. This method had been used at the G20 demonstration in 2009 and had been criticized even by parts of the bourgeoisie as counter-productive because it fuelled anger. It was used more extensively on 30 November demonstration and finally on the 9th you had a systematic policy of the imposition of several kettles together, Around parliament it would appear the police had the central kettle on the Square with surrounding kettles, which meant that you could get out of one only to find yourself in another. This was demonstrated at the end of the demonstration by the police “releasing” those who had been trapped for hours outside Parliament; only to then kettle them on Westminster bridge for several more hours in the freezing cold and packed together like cattle in cattle trucks.
Along with the kettling there was an increasing use of violence. Before the 9 December demo there had been clashes between some of those trapped in the kettles and the police, as they desperately tried to escape; and there were incidents of police beating protesters, but this was generally hidden by the media. On the 9th however the media openly showed horses charging into the crowds, riot police batoning people etc, obviously all from the angle of the police 'protecting' themselves. But the message was very clear: if you protest you will face the full force of the state. The near hysterical news programmes made it clear that this was the police 'defending' the democratic right to 'protest peacefully', that the violence was due to a small minority etc. On the ground people were being told by the police that they were being so violent in order to discourage people attending future demonstrations.
It is clear that by the 9th some elements had come prepared to confront the police, but the vast majority had come to show their determination to express their anger at the attacks despite the increasing repression. The young protesters learnt very quickly not to allow themselves to be kettled at the beginning, as happened at the 24 November demonstration, and to get to Parliament Square. This they achieved, but then the police systematically kettled them and began to attack them. In many cases they were packed together making it very difficult to escape the police charges, so they had no choice but to fight back or else be trampled by horses [179] or beaten by the police. Even then many protesters were able to see beyond the immediate violence:
“We all go down together, horses looming above us, baton blows still coming down on our heads and shoulders. I am genuinely afraid that I might be about to die, and begin to thumb in my parents' mobile numbers on my phone to send them a message of love.
“On top of me, a pretty blonde seventeen-year-old is screaming, tears streaming down her battered face as she yells abuse at the police. The protesters begin to yell 'shame on you!', but even in the heat of battle, these young people quickly remember what's really at stake in this movement. 'We are fighting for your children!' they chant at the line of cops. 'We are fighting for your jobs!'” (New Statesman [180])
The videos and news coverage of these confrontations do show masked youths fighting the police, but the majority are unmasked and desperately trying to defend themselves.
Within this chaos the youth still displayed their vibrant spirit. Some, following the example of Italian students, had homemade riot shields which were in the shape of books, with Marx on the front, or with titles like Brave New World, Down and Out in Paris and London, and Adorno's Negative Dialectics. The latter apparently played a major role is dismounting a mounted policeman!
From The Really Open University [181]
It was clear the state was going to win such confrontations, but the long-term result of this repression is going to be extremely important. The idea of the state and the Coalition being somehow 'nice and fair' has gone out the window. In its place thousands of young and not so young people have experienced state violence or seen their friends and family members not only attacked but treated like criminals. The police constantly video demonstrations; even in small towns, they photograph participants - often openly doing so by going amongst those kettled and photographing them. A whole generation has seen that the state’s only response to their demand to be listened to is violence. The implications of this are still to be seen.
This movement has shown the first steps in the overcoming of the demoralisation inflicted upon the proletariat in Britain by the crushing of the miners, printers and others in the 1980s. A generation of young proletarians has stood up and been counted. Many older workers have looked on in admiration of this movement and feel a sense of ‘at long last we are fighting back’. The question of violence has taken on a new dimension. For years the media has presented the population, i.e. the working class, as passive. At the beginning of the movement, the media were able to find students willing to criticise the use of violence, but, after the confrontations of 9 December, Newsnight was unable to find one student willing to criticise the use of violence on their own side: instead the students asked the various reporters why don't you denounce the violence of the police? The state's attempts to present the austerity programme as 'fair' and equally shared throughout society have been exposed as fraudulent, and its only response to protest has been increasing violence and repression. The last month has left the working class with much to reflect upon.
While the passing of the law raising tuition fees on 9 December, and the onset of the Christmas holiday period, have inevitably produced a pause in the movement, many of the students have vowed to continue the movement in January. We are already seeing a radicalisation in the tone of the trade unions, for example in an article written by Len McCluskey, head of the main public sector union Unite, in the opinion section of The Guardian of 20 December [182] and summarised as the paper’s lead article:
“Britain's students have certainly put the trade union movement on the spot. Their mass protests against the tuition fees increase have refreshed the political parts a hundred debates, conferences and resolutions could not reach.... Trade unions need to reach out, too. Students have to know we are on their side. We must unequivocally condemn the behaviour of the police on the recent demonstrations. Kettling, batoning and mounted charges against teenagers have no place in our society.
“It is ironic that young people have been dismissed as apathetic and uninterested in politics – yet as soon as they turn out in numbers they are treated as the 'enemy within', in a way instantly familiar to those of us who spent the 1970s and 1980s on picket lines.
“And we should work closely with our communities bearing the brunt of the onslaught. That is why Unite has agreed to support the broad Coalition of Resistance established last month, which brings together unions and local anti-cuts campaigns from across the country.
“The TUC's demonstration on 26 March will be a critical landmark in developing our resistance, giving trade union members the confidence to take strike action in defence of jobs and services”.
The Guardian website for the same day also reports on the announcement by Unite and another big public sector union, the GMB, which they would be backing the next day of action called by the NCAFC and the EAN for 29 January.
Meanwhile RMT leader Bob Crow talks about the need for “Industrial action, civil disobedience and millions on the streets” to raise the profile of the Left and the unions, the better to assist in their attempt to recuperate any movement against austerity attacks.
The prospect looms for bigger and wider class confrontations. The bourgeoisie is now readying its union apparatus to take charge of the situation, but it is not guaranteed in advance that they will succeed.
WR, 23/12/10.
ICCOnline - 2011
We are publishing a call to arms to workers of the world by participants in the "General Assembly Gare de l'Est and Île de France" against the worldwide wave of imposed austerity measures.
We are a group of workers from different industries and sectors (railway workers, teachers, tech workers, casuals...), both in work and unemployed. During the recent strikes in France, we came together to form an All Trades General Assembly, first on one of the platforms of the Gare de l’Est (mainline station in Paris), then in a room at the “Bourse du Travail”. Our aim was to bring together as many workers as possible from towns in the Paris region. Because we had had enough of the unions’ class collaboration, leading us yet again to yet another defeat, we wanted to organise by ourselves to try to unify the different sectors on strike, to spread the strike, and to have the strikers themselves control their own movement.
In Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, France... everywhere we are under heavy attack. Our living conditions are getting worse.
In Britain, the Cameron government has announced that 500,000 jobs are to go in the public sector, £7bn of cuts are planned in social budgets, university fees have tripled, etc...
In Ireland, the Cowen government has just lowered the minimum hourly wage by 1 euro (more than 10%), and pensions by 9%.
In Portugal, workers are facing record unemployment. In Spain, the thoroughly “socialist” Zapatero is cutting everywhere: unemployment benefit, social security, health...
In France, the government continues to break up our living conditions. After our pensions, comes the health service. Access to health care is getting more and more difficult and expensive: more and more drugs are no longer reimbursed, health care plans are increasing their charges, hospitals are cutting down on staff. Like all the other public services (the Post Office, gas and electricity, telecoms), the health service is being broken up and privatised. As a result, millions of working class families are unable to get care!
This policy is vital for the capitalists. Faced with the development of the crisis and the collapse of whole sectors of the capitalist economy, they find it more and more difficult to find markets where their capital can make a profit. They are therefore all the more in a hurry to privatise public services.
However, these new markets offer fewer productive outlets than do the pillars of the world economy like construction, oil, or the car industry. Even in the most favourable circumstances, they will not allow the economy to take off again.
In this context of general collapse, the fight for markets between the great international trusts will be ever more bitter. It will be a question of life or death for the investors of capital. In this struggle, every capitalist will take refuge behind his state to defend himself. In the name of the defence of the national economy, the capitalists will try to drag us into their economic war.
In this war, the victims are always... the workers. For behind the defence of the national economy, every national ruling class, every state, every boss will try to reduce “costs” in order to maintain their “competitiveness”. Concretely, they will not stop attacking our living and working conditions. If we let them get away with it, if we agree to “tighten our belts”, there will be no end to these sacrifices. They will end up putting our very lives in question!
Workers, let us refuse to let ourselves be divided by trade, by branch, or by nation. Let us refuse to wage this economic war within or across national borders. Let us fight together, and unite in struggle! Never were Marx’s words more urgent: “Workers of all countries, unite!”
Today, it is the workers in Greece and Spain, the students in Britain, who are in struggle against governments which – whether right or left – are the servants of the ruling classes. And just like us in France, you are up against governments which do not hesitate to use violent repression against the workers, the unemployed, the university and school students.
This autumn in France, we tried to defend ourselves. We went into the streets by millions to refuse to accept this new attack. We fought against the new law on pensions, and against all the austerity measures which we are subjected to. We said “No!” to the rise in poverty and casualisation.
But the Intersyndicale (joint committee of the unions at national and local level, translator’s note) intentionally led us to defeat by fighting against any extension of the strike movement:
- instead of breaking down the barriers between trades and branches to unite workers, it kept the mass meetings in each workplace closed to other workers;
- it undertook spectacular actions to “block the economy” but did nothing to organise strike pickets or flying pickets which might have drawn other workers into the struggle – which is what some workers and casuals tried to do;
- it negotiated our defeat behind our backs, and behind the closed doors of cabinet ministries.
The Intersyndicale never rejected the law on pensions, it even repeated over and over again that it was “necessary” and “inevitable”! To listen to the unions, we should have been satisfied with demanding “more negotiations between government, unions, and employers”, or “more measures to make the law a fairer reform”...
To struggle against all these attacks, we can count on nobody but ourselves. As far as we are concerned, we defended in this movement the necessity for workers to organise in their workplaces in sovereign mass meetings (“general assemblies”), to coordinate the strike nationally and to have it run by elected, immediately revocable delegates. Only a struggle led, organised, and controlled by all workers – both in terms of its methods and its aims – can create the conditions necessary for victory.
We know that the fight isn’t finished: the attacks will continue, conditions will be more and more difficult, and the consequences of the capitalist crisis will only get worse. Everywhere in the world, we will have to fight. And for that we must once again find confidence in our own strength:
- We can take control of our own struggles and organise collectively.
- We can discuss together openly and fraternally, we can speak freely with each other.
- We can control of our own discussions and our own decisions.
Our mass meetings must be controlled not by the unions, but by the workers themselves.
We will have to fight to defend our lives and our children’s future!
The exploited of the whole world are brothers and sisters of one and the same class!
Only our unity across all national borders can overthrown this system of exploitation.
Participants of the AG InterPro “Gare de l’Est et Île de France”
Contact us at [email protected] [187]
For several weeks now we’ve seen an uprising in Tunisia against the misery and unemployment which is particularly hitting the young. All over the country, street demonstrations, meetings, strikes have spontaneously broken out protesting against the regime of Ben Ali. The protestors are demanding bread, work for the young and the right to live in dignity. Faced with this revolt of the exploited and youth deprived of a future, the dominant class has responded with a hail of bullets. These protestors are our class brothers and these are their children who are massacred in the demonstrations and whose blood flows today in Tunisia as in Algeria! The killers, and those that command them at the heads of the Tunisian and Algerian states, reveal in all its horror the real face of our exploiters and of the domination of the capitalist system across the earth. These assassins are not content to make us die of misery and hunger, it’s not enough for them to push into suicide dozens of youths reduced to despair, no, they also kill us with volleys of bullets fired at the demonstrations. Police units deployed at Thala, Sidi Bouzid, Tunis and above all Kasserine, have not hesitated to fire into the crowd killing, in cold blood, men, women and children, making it dozens of deaths since the beginning of the confrontations. Faced with this carnage, the bourgeoisies of the ‘democratic’ countries, and notably France the faithful ally of Ben Ali, have not raised a finger to condemn the barbarity of the regime and demand that the repression stops. Nothing surprising there. All governments, all the states are complicit! The world bourgeoisie is a class of murderers and assassins.
It all began Friday December 17, in the centre of the country, following the self-immolation of a young unemployed graduate of 26 years old, Mohamed Bouazizi, after the local police of Sidi Bouzid confiscated his sole means of support which was a cart and some fruit and vegetables he was selling from it. Immediately a vast movement of solidarity and indignation developed in the region. From December 19, totally peaceful demonstrations broke out against unemployment, misery and the cost of living (protestors brandished baguettes!). Straightaway the government responded with repression which only accentuated the anger of the population.
A two-day strike of non-urgent medical staff started on December 22 by university doctors protesting against their lack of means and the degradation of their conditions of work. It also involved the medical-university centres of the country. Also on December 22, another young man, Houcine Neji, killed himself in front of the crowd at Menzel Bouzaiane, by gripping hold of a high tension cable “I don’t want any more misery and unemployment” he cried. Other suicides strengthened the indignation and anger still more. December 24, a young demonstrator of 18, Mohamed Ammari, was killed by police bullets. Another, Chawki Hidri, was seriously wounded and died on the first of January. To date the provisional list of deaths by bullets numbers 65!
Faced with the repression, the movement very quickly spread to the whole of the country. Unemployed graduates demonstrated on December 25 and 26 in the centre of Tunis. Meetings and demonstrations of solidarity developed throughout the country: Sfax, Kairouan, Thala, Bizerte, Sousse, Meknessi, Souk, Jedid, Ben Gardane, Medenine, Siliana... Despite the repression, despite the absence of freedom of expression, demonstrators brandished placards reading: “Today, we are no longer afraid!”.
December 27 and 28: lawyers joined in the movement of solidarity with the population of Sidi Bouzid. Faced with the repression meted out to them, arrests and being beaten up, the lawyers called for a general strike on January 6. Strike movements also affected journalists in Tunis and teachers in Bizerte. As Jeune Afrique of January 9 indicated, the social movement of protest and the coming together in the streets was totally spontaneous and was outside of the direction and control of political organisations and the unions: “The first certainty is that the movement of protest is above all social and spontaneous. This is confirmed by credible sources. ‘No party, no movement can pretend that it is directing the street or that it’s capable of stopping it’, declared the regional section of the Tunisian general union (UGTT)”.
A total blackout of information was organised. In the region of Sidi Bouzid, several localities were placed under a curfew and the army was mobilised. At Menzel Bouzaiane, the wounded could not be transported to hospital, the population lacked provisions and schools were used as lodgings by police reinforcements.
In order to try to restore calm, Ben Ali broke his silence and made a 13-minute long public declaration in which he promised to create 300,000 jobs in 2011-12 and to free all the demonstrators except those who had committed acts of vandalism. He dismissed his interior minister using him as a safety-trip and at the same time denounced the “orchestrated” politics of a minority of “extremists” and “terrorists” who were trying to harm the interests of the country.
This provocative speech, which criminalised the movement, could only galvanise the anger of the population and particularly its youth. From January 3rd, schoolchildren mobilised themselves and used mobile phones and the internet, notably Facebook and Twitter, to call for a general strike for all pupils. They demonstrated on January 3 and 4 and were joined by unemployed graduates at Thala. The young demonstrators were faced with truncheons and tear gas from the forces of repression. During the course of these confrontations the seat of government was invaded and the centre of the party in power was set on fire. The call for a national strike of pupils, relayed through the internet, was followed in several towns. At Tunis, Sfax, Sidi Bouzid, Bizerte, Grombalia, Jbeniana, Sousse, schoolchildren joined up with the unemployed. Meetings of solidarity also took place in Hammamet and Kasserine.
At the same time, in Algeria on January 4, in the small town of Kolea to the west of the Algerian capital, a number of impatient and angry workers and unemployed came onto the streets. The same day, dockers at the port of Algiers began a strike against an agreement between the port authority and the union cutting out supplementary payments for night work. The strikers refused to give in to an appeal by union representatives to suspend the strike. Here also the anger rumbled on; for these workers having a miserable wage, feeding themselves and their families is a daily preoccupation with the same content as unemployed youth in Tunis or Alger. The next day, the movement of revolt spread in Algeria notably to the coastal region and in Kabylia (Oran, Tipaza, Bejaia...) around the same social demands: they too are faced with endemic youth unemployment and the lack of lodgings, forcing them to live with their parents or to be crowded into unsuitable rooms (in the suburbs of Algiers these are found in profusion in the city quarters built in the 1950s and now resembling shanty-towns where the inhabitants are regularly harassed by the aggressive forces of the police). The response of the government wasn’t long in coming: immediately the forces of repression hit and hit hard. In the quarter of Bab el Oued in Algiers alone the wounded counted in the hundreds. But here also the ferocious repression of the Algerian state contributed to increasing the anger. In a few days, the demonstration spread to twenty departments (wilayas). Official reports were of 3 dead (at M’Silla, Tipaza and Boumerdes). The demonstrators are angry: “We can’t carry on like this and we don’t want to”, “We have nothing to lose”. These are the cries that you hear most often on the streets of Algeria. The immediate detonator for these outbursts was the brutal increase in the price of basic necessities announced on the first of January: the price of cereals increased by 30%, oil 20% and sugar shot up 80%! After 5 days of repression and lies about the demonstrations, Bouteflika took a step back to try to lower the tension: he promised a reduction of prices in the products that had been put up.
In Tunisia on January 5, during a funeral of the young vegetable seller who killed himself at Sidi Bouzid, anger was overflowing. A crowd of 5000 people marched being the funeral cortege crying in indignation “We won’t cry today, we will make those that caused his death cry”. The procession turned into a demonstration and the crowd stressed slogans against the cost of living which “led Mohamed to kill himself” and shouted “Shame on the government!” The same evening the police proceeded with heavy-handed arrests of demonstrators at Jbedania and Thals. Some youths were arrested or chased by armed police.
January 6, the general strike by lawyers is 95% solid. Elsewhere, in the centre, the south and the east of the country, strikes, street demonstrations, confrontations with the police are taking place and the agitation even spreads to the wealthier towns of the eastern coastal region.
The police are deployed in front of schools and all the universities in the country. At Sfax, Jbeniana, Tajerouine, Siliana, Makhter, Tela demonstrations of schoolchildren, students and inhabitants are brutally dispersed by the police. At Sousse, the faculty of Human Sciences is assaulted by the forces of order which proceed to arrest students. The government decides to close all schools and universities.
Faced with the repression of the movement, on January 7, in the towns of Regueb and Saida close to Sidi Bouzid, confrontations between demonstrators and police result in 6 wounded. Some demonstrators launch missiles at a security post and police fire into the crowd. Three youngsters are seriously injured.
January 8, the official UGTT union finally ends its silence, but doesn’t denounce the repression. Its General Secretary Abid Brigui, contents himself with saying, under pressure from below, that he supports “the legitimate claims of the population of Sidi Bouzid and the regions inside the country. We cannot be outside this movement. We can only range ourselves alongside the right to necessities and the demands for jobs”. Faced with the violence of the repression, he timidly declared: “It is against nature to condemn this movement. It is not normal to respond with bullets”. But he launched no call for a general mobilisation of all the workers, no appeal for the immediate end to the repression which was unleashed with a growing violence during the week of the 8th and 9th of January.
At Kasserine, Thala and Regueb, the repression of demonstrations turns into a massacre. Cold-bloodily the police fire into the crowd killing more than 25 people. In the town of Kasserine, terrorised by the exactions of the police who have even fired on funerals, the divided army not only refused to fire on the population but stood up in order to assure its protection against the anti-riot police. For his part, the high-command of the land army is dismissed for having given an order not to fire on the demonstrators. Moreover, if the army was deployed in the main towns to protect public buildings, it placed itself aside from the operations of direct repression, including in the capital where it ended up withdrawing. Faced with the bloodbath, hospital personnel of the region, although overflowing with emergencies, walked out in protest.
Since the bloody weekend of January 8 and 9, anger has spread to the capital. January 12, struggles exploded in the outskirts of Tunis. The repression results in 8 deaths with one youth killed by a bullet in the head. The government imposes a curfew. The capital is patrolled by the security forces and the official UGTT union ends up by calling for a general strike for two hours on Friday the 14th. Despite the curfew and the deployment of the forces of repression in the capital, confrontations are vigorously pursued in the heart of Tunis and everywhere portraits of Ben Ali are burnt. On January 13, the revolt spreads to the resorts on the coast and notably the great tourist centre of Hammamet where shops are smashed and portraits of Ben Ali torn apart while confrontations continue between demonstrators and police in the heart of the capital. Faced with the risk of tipping the country into chaos, faced with the threat of a general strike, and under the pressure of the ‘international community’, notably the French state which, for the first time, begins to condemn Ben Ali, the state strives to save something from the situation. 12/13 January Ben Ali declares to the population: “I’ve understood you” and he affirms that he would not be standing at the next elections... in 2014! He promises to lower the price of sugar, of milk and bread and finally asks the forces of order not to fire bullets and affirms that “there have been some errors and some have died for nothing”.
Faced with this savage repression, all the ‘democratic’ governments have for several weeks limited themselves to expressing their ‘concern’, calling for ‘calm’ and ‘dialogue. In the name of respect for the independence of Tunisia and non-interference its internal affairs, none of them condemned the police violence and the massacres carried out by Ben Ali’s thugs, even if they have hypocritically deplored the ‘excessive’ use of force. After the bloody weekend of 8 and 9 January, The French state was still openly offering support for this ruthless dictator. The French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in his speech to the National Assembly of 12 January, offered to lend a hand to Tunisia’s security forces: “We contend that the savoir-faire of our security forces, which is recognised throughout the world, would make it possible to resolve the security situation in this country”
The “savoir-faire” of the French security forces: we’ve seen that at work in the police persecution which resulted in the electrocution of two teenagers who had been chased by the cops in 2005, provoking the riots in the banlieues. We also saw this “savoir-faire” at work at the time of the youth revolt against the CPE, when anti-riot brigades invaded some universities with dogs to terrorise the students who were fighting against the prospect of unemployment and casualisation. The “savoir-faire” of our fine French cops was also revealed when they fired the flash-balls that injured a number of high school students during the demonstrations against the LRU in 2007. And more recently, in the movement against the reform of pensions, the repression meted out in particular to the young demonstrators in Lyon once against showed the efficiency of the security forces of the French democratic state. Following this demo, hundreds of young people were condemned to heavy penalties or are threatened with them. Of course, the ‘democratic’ states are not yet using live bullets against demonstrations, but this is not because they are more civilised, less barbaric, more respectful of the rights of man and freedom of expression, but because the working class in these countries is stronger, has a longer experience of struggle and is not prepared to accept such a level of repression.
When it comes to criminalising social movements in order to justify repression, the Ben Ali government has little to envy in its French accomplice, which was the first to use the term ‘terrorists’ to denounce the students in 2006 or the transport workers in 2007 when they came out in defence of their pension provisions.
It is clear that the only thing that really concerns the ruling class in all countries is the need to efficiently strengthen the police state in order to maintain capitalist order, an order which has nothing to offer the younger generations. All over the world, faced with an insurmountable crisis of capitalism, this ‘order’ can only engender more poverty, more unemployment and more repression.
The obvious complicity of the world bourgeoisie exposes the fact that it is the whole capitalist system which is responsible for the bloodshed in Tunisia, and not just Ben Ali’s corrupt regime. The Tunisian state is just a caricature of the capitalist state!
Although Tunisia is dominated by a highly corrupt, totalitarian regime, the social situation in this country is not an exception. In Tunisia, as everywhere else, young people face the same problem: the lack of any perspective. This ‘popular’ revolt is part of the general struggle of the working class and its younger generations against capitalism. It is in continuity with the struggles which have been developing since 2006 in France, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Britain, where all generations have come together in a huge wave of protest against the degradation of living conditions, against poverty, youth unemployment and repression. The fact that the social movement was marked by a vast expression of solidarity beginning with events of 17 December shows that, despite all the difficulties of the class struggle in Tunisia or Algeria, despite the weight of democratic illusions which are a product of a lack of experience and of the extremely repressive nature of these regimes, this revolt against unemployment and the high cost of living is part of the struggle of the world working class.
The conspiracy of silence which surrounded these events for weeks doesn’t just come from the censorship imposed by these regimes. It has to some extent been breached by the activity of young people who have made use of internet forums, blogs, Twitter or Facebook as a means of communication and of spreading information about what’s going on, linking up not only inside the country but also with family and friends abroad, especially in Europe. But the bourgeois media have everywhere contributed to installing a black-out, especially about the workers’ struggles which have inevitably accompanied this movement and about which we have heard only fragmentary echoes[1].
As they do with every workers’ struggle, the media have done all they can to deform and discredit this revolt against capitalist poverty and terror, presenting it to the outside world as a ‘remake’ of the revolt in the French banlieues of 2005, as the work of a bunch of irresponsible wreckers and looters. Here against they have been in full complicity with the Ben Ali government: a number of demonstrators have denounced certain acts of looting as being the work of masked cops aimed at discrediting the movement. Amateur videos showed plain clothes cops smashing windows in Kasserine on 8 January to provide a pretext for the terrible repression which was to descend on this town.
In the face of capitalist barbarity, in the face of the wall of silence and lies, the working class in all countries has to show its solidarity towards our class brothers in Tunisia and Algeria, And this solidarity can only be affirmed effectively through the development of the struggle against the attacks of capital in all countries, against this class of exploiters and murderers which can only maintain its privileges by plunging humanity into the depths of misery. It is only through the massive development of its international unity and solidarity that the working class, especially in the most industrialised ‘democratic’ countries, can offer society a perspective for the future.
Refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis all over the world, fighting against impoverishment and terror, this alone can offer the prospect of an end to capitalist exploitation and the construction of a society founded on the satisfaction of human need.
Solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in the Mahgreb!
Solidarity with the younger generation of proletarians, wherever they struggle!
To end unemployment, poverty and repression, we have to end capitalism!
WM 13/1/11
[1] Let’s recall that in 2008 in Tunisia, the region of phosphate mines of Gafsa was at the heart of a confrontation with the state that was violently repressed, and that in Algeria, in January 2010, 5000 strikers at SNVI and other enterprises attempted, despite a brutal intervention by the forces of order, to assemble with the aim of extending and unifying their struggle at the centre of an industrial zone which contains 50,000 workers and stretches from the Rouiba region to the gates of Algiers.
For weeks, all the democratic states, with France at their head, have been supporting Ben Ali’s blood-soaked regime. There was an almost total black-out of information even though all these governments knew exactly what was happening in Tunisia. All the bourgeois media justified this disinformation by letting on that the country was experiencing riots but was in a confused, chaotic situation which was very difficult to understand. We were supposed to think that no one really knew what was going on. Lies! The savagery of the repression was known about all over the world. Thanks to the video footage put out on the internet by the young demonstrators, by tourists and journalists, all this information was by no means hidden. The reign of silence regarding the crimes of Ben Ali’s murderers was deliberately imposed by the governments and their tame media. The strikes, street demonstrations, revolts in high schools and universities were blacked out so that proletarians in the democratic countries would not feel concerned about the repression of the movement and show their solidarity. Now, after the fall of Ben Ali, tongues are untied and all the cameras are focused on the ‘revolution’ in Tunisia. Immediately after the official announcement of Ben Ali’s departure, when a state of emergency was being imposed and the army was being deployed all over the country, the French TV networks showed us pictures of the Tunisian community celebrating, especially in Paris. But prior to that, for week after week, nothing was shown of the daily demonstrations which were being repressed by the police, whereas images of the immense crowds thronging Bourguiba avenue in Tunis on 14 January are suddenly being broadcast by all the TV networks. Representatives of the political class, experts and special envoys are now being invited to join a grand democratic debate about the situation in Tunisia. And now of course this whole crew is taking its distance from the Ben Ali regime and glorifying “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people”, to use Obama’s own words. The fall of Ben Ali is now on the front pages of the newspapers whereas for weeks previously the torment of the Tunisian population was not seen as being worthy of much ink. This kind of hypocrisy is not gratuitous. If the media are now inundating us with real time information after weeks of black-out, it’s certainly not because the ruling class of the democratic countries is now “on the side of the Tunisian people”, as the French government declared with such boundless cynicism , three days after offering its services to Ben Ali’s repressive forces! If the bourgeoisie of the democratic countries, with its whole apparatus of media manipulation, has now changed its tune and is praising the “jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, it’s because it is in its interests to do so. The fate of Ben Ali has given it the opportunity to unleash a huge campaign about the benefits of democracy.
The bourgeois media continue to lie when they present the lawyers’ strike of 6 January as the motor force behind the revolt. They lie when they claim that it is an educated youth belonging to the “middle class” which brought the dictator down. They lie when they claim that the only aspiration of the exploited class and the younger generation who were at the heart of the movement is to obtain freedom of expression, They lie when they hide the deeper reasons for the anger: poverty, the near 55% unemployment which affects young graduates and which provoked a number of suicides at the beginning of the movement. It is this reality, a result of the aggravation of the world economic crisis, which the media campaign around the fall of Ben Ali is now trying to mask. The only objective behind the media enthusiasm for the “Tunisian revolution” is to intoxicate the minds of the exploited, to derail their struggles against poverty and unemployment onto the terrain of defending the democratic bourgeois state which is just another, more insidious and hypocritical form of capitalist dictatorship
Safiane 15/1/11
Part of the media campaign surrounding the mid-term election results in the US has been a revisiting of the theme of the supposed “conservatism” of the working class in the US. According to many bourgeois analysts of the left, the Republican victories in the Mid-Term elections were largely the result of white working class voters deserting the Democrats in droves and voting for Republicans and the Tea Party. According to this meme, the Democrats suffered their most devastating losses in the old industrial Rust Belt of the Upper Mid-West. These traditionally Democratic areas, where union density has traditionally been high, have been an increasingly difficult electoral constituency to predict. Republican George W. Bush’s two election victories were made possible in large part by his ability to win Ohio’s electoral votes; a state with a large concentration of industrial workers, many of whom are union members. According to the dominant narrative on the bourgeois left, the working class is suffering from a profound case of “false consciousness” in which it votes for politicians who act against its economic interests. The conclusion is that the industrial working class cannot be trusted to act in a socially responsible manner. It is open to manipulation by right-wing demagogues. For the bourgeois left, the working class is potentially very politically dangerous.
This argument is not particularly new and has its roots in the New Left of the 1960s and 70s, when many politically radicalized students grew frustrated with the working-class’ supposed quietism and decided to take matters into their own hand in a series of “exemplary actions.” Today, this theme has been expressed primarily by the left of the Democratic Party who have trouble accepting the purported reality that many working-class people vote Republican instead of Democratic, just as the Republican Party has turned hard to the right and advocates many openly anti-working-class policies, such as abolishing unemployment benefits, privatizing Social Security, busting the unions and redistributing income upwards through tax cuts to the rich.
At the time of writing, the tense stand-off in the Ivory Coast, which contained the risk of a direct conflict between former president Gbagbo and the UN troops protecting the (UN’s) officially recognised winner of the elections, Ouattara, has eased somewhat. Various local African leaders have interceded to persuade Gbagbo to lift the siege of his rival and enter into negotiations without preconditions. But the situation remains extremely unstable. The following article, published by our French section at the beginning of December, provides some of the background to the conflict between the two presidents and in particular to the imperialist machinations going on behind the scenes.
The day after the second round of the presidential election on November 28, the Ivory Coast awoke to find it had two presidents. One of them, Alassane Ouattara was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission and the UN with 54% of the votes; the other, Laurent Gbagbo was named the winner by the Ivorian Constitutional Council with 51.4% of the votes. We thus have two big crocodiles ready to devour each other over control of Ivory Coast’s water-hole.
According to the UN Security Council, this was a “normal” election process. It welcomed “the announcement of the results of the second round of the presidential election which was held in a democratic climate...these were free, just, transparent elections”.
Obviously the reality is a bit different. This election was just a sinister farce which had already resulted in 55 deaths and 504 wounded by the end of the first week in December (Le Monde, 8.12.10). In the wake of Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Togo, Gabon and Guinea, it’s now the turn of the Ivory Coast to enter the bloody arena of these kinds of elections, where the future winner is designated in advance by himself or with the complicity of his imperialist backers. And as always in such cases, the protagonists settle their scores through mutual massacres.
The current situation in the Ivory Coast cannot fail to bring to mind the morbid sequence of events in 2002, when the presidential election ended up with mass killings and a military coup, resulting in years of terror and the country being cut in two, between north and south. During this period the various factions, pro-government or rebels, confiscated the resources under their respective control, using the profits to buy huge numbers of weapons so that they could carry on the struggle for power. It goes without saying that this happened at the expense of the population, 50% of which lives on less than 2 dollars a day. This is a population which is constantly exposed to racketeering and murder. Today, with these new elections, all the conditions are coming together for a slaughter on an even more massive scale.
“The scenario which everyone feared was produced on the evening of 3 December. Laurent Gbagbo had himself declared winner. At the risk of plunging the country into crisis, indeed into war....No doubt Gbagbo could win a gold medal for pugnacity. But someone who has up till now presented himself as the ‘son of elections’ and a ‘child of democracy’ will now have a hard time keeping up this image. At whatever cost, he has decided to go to the bitter end of an approach which has nothing to do with the ballot box... The perspective of a new partition, a new north-south clash, doesn’t bother him: most of the country’s resources (cocoa, coffee, oil) are in the centre or the south; and exports of these materials go through the port of San Pedro. The Ivory Coast has been functioning in this way since 2002. Why shouldn’t it continue to be the case? The real Gbagbo, after these useless elections, is showing his face: arms in hand, ready to withstand a siege from the ‘external enemy’[1] as he never tires of repeating. The Ivory Coast has gone back to square one” (Jeune Afrique 5.12.10)
As for Alassane Ouattara, he has been ready to turn to his partisans, the ‘new forces’, who have said that they won’t stand idly by if Gbagbo remains n power. Similarly, Guillaume Soro, Ouattara’s prime minister, has stated his intention to ‘dislodge’ Gbagbo (whose prime minister he was until the beginning of the elections). In short, each camp is readying its guard dogs – the death squads and machete-wielders. But above all each side is counting on the support of the big imperialist powers, especially France.
When you see how much the question of the Ivory Coast animates the French bourgeoisie, you can get an idea of the importance of what’s at stake in this former hunting ground of French imperialism. Since the shattering of the democratic shop-window at the beginning of the 2000s, resulting in France losing control of its local agents, French imperialism has been trying its damnedest to maintain an influence in the country, in particular through big companies like Bouygues, Total, Bolloré, etc. These companies are the real backbone of ‘Françafrique’ in the Ivory Coast, with state interests and private interests fused together, as shown by the particularly incestuous relationship between Bolloré and the French state.
“It’s difficult to separate the multiple connections between this group, the worthy heir of the colonial trusts and the Françafricain networks, and the French political apparatus. As with other conglomerates, it benefits from the support of the public power in its conquest of the continent’s markets. The President of the Republic or its ministers happily go to Africa to act as lobbyists among their opposite numbers. While Bolloré’s friends on the right are well known, we can see that the Socialist deputy Jean Glavany[2] is, alongside Alain Minc, part of the group’s strategic committee. When France sends - or repatriates – its troops into Africa, as for the ‘Licorne’ operation in the Ivory Coast, the many tentacles of the Bolloré group seem to be indispensable. ‘All the operations are carried out in the greatest security and confidentality’, as we can read superimposed on pictures of armoured cars in a prospectus distributed by the ‘Defence’ branch of the SDV (Manière de Voir, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2009).
But France is badly equipped, lacking sure supporters on the ground. This is why it is now officially giving its support to Ouattara, the democratically elected candidate; but in the corridors, right up until the final result, Sarkozy didn’t stop ‘reassuring’ Gbagbo, trying to make sure he would continue to serve French interests if needed. And it is in perfect knowledge of the fragile nature of France’s situation that Gbagbo, traditionally close to the Socialist Party, decided to blackmail the French authorities by brandishing his Chinese connections in front of them. In the end, therefore, France had to publicly declare its ‘neutrality’ saying that it didn’t have its own ‘candidate’. In sum, it was trying to bet on two horses, but without any guarantee of success either way.
Françafrique under the eye of the US, and the rise of Chinafrique
Behind all the headlines, the fact is that France’s position in Africa is really under threat as it faces sharp competition from the American and Chinese bourgeoisies in particular. The battle is already raging in the UN Security Council between the partisans of Gbagbo and the supporters of Ouattara: the first is defended by China and Russia, the second by the US, Britain and France. We can’t fail to note the hypocrisy of these bandits: all of them talk about ‘peace’ while supplying weapons and ammunition to their armed agencies on the ground.
In France, Alassane Ouattara was at one point described as being ‘pro-American’, but more recently he has developed links with the French government, enjoying coffee and aperitifs with Sarkozy. But he is also hanging on to his friendships in US circles, notably in the IMF in which he has been a vice president. No doubt he will choose the backer who makes him the best offer, above all in the perspective of future confrontations in the Ivory Coast. And, on the continental level, Ouattara can count on a good deal of support in West Africa and from the African Union.
As for Laurent Gbagbo, Angola remains his main supplier of arms and on the diplomatic level he can rely on South Africa, which was his main supporter in his clash with France in 2004.
At the end of the day, behind all the manoeuvres and calls to respect the decision of the ballot box, we are seeing a bunch of criminals preparing to plunge the country into mass slaughter and spread bloody chaos throughout the region.
Amina, 8/12/2010.
[1] In the nationalist campaign around ‘Ivority’ launched by former president Bédié in 200 and taken up by Gbagbo during the civil war of 2002, the Muslim Oattara, originating from the north of the country, was denounced as a foreign agent linked to Burkina Faso.
[2] As a member of the Socialist International, Gbagbo is the now rather embarrassing friend of various SP politicians in France
A tide of revolt is sweeping through Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Yemen. The Syrian regime has cut off the internet in fear that the contagion will spread to them.
These are not Islamist movements, as apologists for Mubarak have been claiming. The whole population has taken part, irrespective of their exact stance on matters of religion. In Egypt thousands defied the instructions of their imams not to go onto the streets; there have also been examples of a conscious rejection of sectarian divisions between Muslims and Christians, in a country where the latter minority has been subjected to massacres very recently.
But neither are they movements for parliamentary democracy, for the cosmetic political reform of a moribund social system, even if many of the movement’s participants may be hampered by such democratic illusions.
They are not ‘middle class’ movements: as with the student revolt over here, the majority of university students in Tunisia, Egypt, France, Greece, are today part of the working class.
These rebellions are part of a worldwide movement of the working class, the proletariat, the exploited. The same class movement that has appeared in Greece, in France, and here in the UK, in response to the capitalist economic crisis, to the despicable corruption and hypocrisy of the ruling class, and to the ruthless austerity drive of all governments, right wing or left wing.
This is why we must proclaim our total solidarity with the workers, unemployed, students and others who are leading these rebellions, and our opposition to all the forces seeking to block their evolution, from the open police violence of ‘dictators’ to the false promises of the democratic or Islamist politicians who seek to use the revolt for their own ends.
These movements are important to discuss at public meetings, demonstrations, and wherever we take up our own struggles.
To discuss what initiatives might be possible or useful, you can email us, post on the forum on our website, or raise the issue on other class struggle forums, such as libcom.org [196]
WR, 29/01/11.
We have just received news from Korea that eight militants of the “Socialist Workers’ League of Korea” (Sanoryun) have been arrested and charged under South Korea’s infamous “National Security Law”.1 They are due to be sentenced on 27th January.
There can be no doubt that this is a political trial, and a travesty of what the ruling class likes to call its “justice”. Three facts bear witness to this:
These militants are accused of nothing other than the thought crime of being socialists. In other words, they stand accused of urging workers to defend themselves, their families, and their living conditions, and of exposing openly the real nature of capitalism. The sentences required by the prosecution are only one more example of the repression meted out by the South Korea ruling class against those who dare to stand in its way. This brutal repression has already targeted the young mothers of the “baby strollers’ brigade” who took their children to the 2008 Candlelight demonstrations and later faced legal and police harassment;4 it has targeted the Ssangyong workers who were beaten up by the riot police who invaded their occupied factory.5
Faced with the prospect of heavy jail sentences, the arrested militants have conducted themselves in court with exemplary dignity, and have used the opportunity to expose clearly the political nature of this trial. We reproduce below a translation of Oh Se-Cheol’s last speech before the tribunal.
Military tensions in the region are on the rise, following the provocative shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November last year and the killing of civilians by the North Korean regime’s canon, answered by the despatch of an American nuclear aircraft carrier to the region to conduct joint military exercises with the South Korean armed forces. In this situation, the statement that humanity today faces a choice between socialism and barbarism rings truer than ever.
The propaganda of the US and its allies likes to portray North Korea as a “gangster state”, whose ruling clique lives in luxury thanks to the ruthless repression of its starving population. This is certainly true. But the repression meted out by the South Korean government to mothers, children, struggling workers, and now socialist militants shows clearly enough that, in the final analysis, every national bourgeoisie rules by fear and brute force.
Faced with this situation we declare our complete solidarity with the arrested militants, notwithstanding the political disagreements we may have with them. Their struggle is our struggle. We address our heartfelt sympathy and solidarity to their families and comrades. We will gladly forward on to the comrades any messages of support and solidarity that we may receive at international [at] internationalism.org.6
(what follows is the text of Oh Se-Cheol's speech, translated by us from the Korean)
Several theories have sought to explain the crises that have occured throughout the history of capitalism. One of these is the catastrophe theory, which holds that capitalism will collapse of its own accord at the very moment that capitalist contradictions arrive at their highest point, making way for a new millennium of paradise. This apocalyptic or extreme anarchistic position has created confusion and illusions in understanding the proletariat’s suffering from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Many people have been infected by such a non-scientific view.
Another theory is the optimistic one that the bourgeoisie always spreads. According to this theory, capitalism itself has the means to overcome its own contradictions and the real economy works well through eliminating speculation.
A more refined position than the two mentioned above, and which has come to prevail over the others, considers that capitalist crises are periodic, and that we need only wait quietly until the storm is over in order to sail on.
Such a position was appropriate for the scene of capitalism in the 19th Century: it is no longer so for capitalist crises in the 20th and 21st century. The capitalist crises in the 19th century were crises of capitalism’s phase of unlimited expansion, which Marx in the Communist Manifesto called the epidemic of overproduction. However the tendency of overproduction resulting in famine, poverty and unemployment was not because of a lack of commodities but because there were too many commodities, too much industry and too many resources. Another cause of capitalist crises is the anarchy of capitalism’s system of competition. In the 19th century, capitalist relations of production could be expanded and deepened through conquering new areas to win new wage labour and new outlets for commodities and so crises in this period were understood as the pulses of a healthy heart beat.
In the 20th century such an ascending phase of capitalism came to an end with the turning point of World War I. From this point onwards, capitalist relations of commodity production and of wage labour had been expanded throughout the world. In 1919 the Communist International named capitalism in that period as the period of “war or revolution”. On the one hand, the capitalist tendency of overproduction pushed towards imperialist war with the aim of grabbing and controlling the world market. On the other hand, unlike the 19th century, it made the world economy dependent on the semi-permanent crisis of instability and destruction.
Such a contradiction resulted in two historical events, the First World War and the world depression of 1929 at the cost of 20 million lives and an unemployment rate of 20% – 30%, which again paved the way for the so called “socialist countries” with state capitalism through nationalisation of the economy on one side and liberal countries with a combination of private bourgeoisie and state bureaucracy on the other side.
After the Second World War world capitalism, including the so called “socialist countries”, experienced an extraordinary prosperity resulting from 25 years of reconstruction and increasing debts. This led government bureaucracy, trade union leaders, economists, and so called “Marxists” to declare loudly that capitalism had overcome its economic crisis definitively. But the crisis has continuously worsened as the following examples show: the devaluation of the Pound Sterling in 1967, the Dollar crisis in 1971, the oil shock in 1973, the economic recession of 1974-75, inflation crisis in 1979, credit crisis in 1982, crisis of Wall Street in 1987, economic recession in 1989, destabilisation of European currencies in 1992-93, crisis of the “tigers” and “dragons” in Asia in 1997, the crisis of the American “new economy” in 2001, the sub-prime crisis in 2007, the financial crisis of Lehman Brothers etc and the financial crisis of 2009-2010.
Is such a series of crises a ‘cyclical’, a ‘periodic’ crisis? Not at all! It is the result of the incurable illness of capitalism, the scarcity of markets with the ability to pay, the falling rate of profit. At the time of the big world depression in 1929 the worst situation did not occur because of an immense intervention of the states. But recent cases of financial crisis, economic crisis show that the capitalist system cannot survive any more with the help of such instant measures as the bail-out money from states or state debts. Capitalism is now facing an impasse as a result of the impossibility of the expansion of productive forces. However capitalism is in a struggle to the death against this impasse. That is, it depends endlessly on state credit and finds outlets for over-production through creating fictitious markets.
For 40 years world capitalism has been escaping catastrophe through immense credits. Credit for capitalism is the same as drugs for a drug-addict. In the end those credits will return as a burden demanding the blood and sweat of workers throughout the world. They will also result in workers’ poverty throughout the world, in imperialist wars, and in ecological disasters.
Is capitalism in decline? Yes. It is heading not for sudden ruin but for a new stage in the downfall of a system, the final stage in the history of capitalism which is drawing to its end. We must seriously recall the 100 year old slogan “war or revolution?” and once again prepare the historical understanding of the alternative “barbarism or socialism” and the practice of scientific socialism. This means that socialists must work together and unite, they must stand firmly on the basis of revolutionary Marxism. Our aim is to overcome capitalism based on money, commodity, market, wage labour and exchange value, and to build a society of liberated labour in a community of free individuals.
Marxist analyses have confirmed that the general crisis of the capitalist mode of production has already reached its critical point because of the falling rate of profit and the saturation of markets in the process of production and realisation of surplus value. We now find ourselves facing the alternative between capitalism, meaning barbarism, and socialism, communism meaning civilisation.
First, the capitalist system is becoming one which cannot even feed the slaves of wage labour. Every day around the world one hundred thousand people are starving and every 5 seconds one child under 5 years old starves to death. 842 million people are suffering from permanent undernourishment and one third of the 6 billion world population is struggling every day for its survival because of rising food prices.
Second, the present capitalist system cannot maintain the illusion of economic prosperity.
The economic miracles of India and China have proved illusions. During the first half year of 2008 in China 20 million workers lost their jobs and 67,000 companies went bankrupt.
Third, an ecological disaster is expected. On the point of global warming, the average temperature of the earth increased 0.6% since 1896. In the 20th century the northern hemisphere experienced the most serious warming for the last 1000 years. The areas covered with snow shrank by 10% since the end of the 1960s and the layer of ice at the North Pole has shrunk by 40%. The average sea level rose by 10-20% during the 20th century. Such a rise means 10 times an increase higher than that of last 3000 years. The exploitation of the earth during the last 90 years appeared in the form of reckless deforestation, soil erosion, pollution (air, water), usage of chemical and radioactive materials, destruction of animals and plants, explosive appearance of epidemics. The ecological disaster can be seen in an integrated and global form. So it is impossible to foresee exactly how seriously this problem will develop in the future.
How then has the history of class struggle against capitalist suppression and exploitation developed?
The class struggle has existed constantly but has not been successful. The 1st International failed because of the power of capitalism in its ascending period. The 2nd International failed because of nationalism and its abandoning of its revolutionary character. And the 3rd International failed because of the Stalinist counterrevolution. Especially the counterrevolutionary currents since 1930 misled the workers about the nature of state capitalism which they called ‘socialism’. In the end, they played a supporting role for the world capitalist system, suppressed and exploited the world proletariat through disguising the confrontation between two blocs.
Further, according to the bourgeois campaign the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the Stalinist system was an “evident victory of liberalist capitalism”, “the end of class struggle” and even the end of the working class itself. Such a campaign led the working class into serious retreat on the level of its consciousness and militancy.
During 1990s the working class didn´t give up completely but it had no weight and ability commensurate to those of trade unions as struggle organisations in a previous period. But the struggles in France and Austria against the attacks on pensions provided a turning point for the working class since 1989 to start its struggle again. The workers’ struggle increased most in the central countries: the struggle at Boeing and the transportation strike in New York in the USA in 2005; Daimler and Opel struggles in 2004, medical doctors’ struggle in the spring of 2006, Telekom struggle in 2007 in Germany; London airport struggle in August, 2005 in GB and Anti-CPE struggle in France 2006. Among the peripheral countries, there were the construction workers’ struggle in the spring of 2006 in Dubai, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2006 in Bangladesh, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2007 in Egypt.
Between 2006 and 2008 the struggle of the world working class has been expanding to the whole world, to Egypt, Dubai, Algeria, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Britain, Germany, France, the USA, and China. As the recent struggle in France against pension reforms showed, the working class struggle is anticipated to become more and more extensively offensive.
As the above showed, the final tendency of decadence of world capitalism and the crisis which has burdened the working class have inevitably provoked struggles of workers throughout the world, unlike those we have experienced before.
We stand now before the alternative, to live in barbarism not as human beings but like animals or to live happily in freedom, in equality and with human dignity.
The depth and the scope of the contradictions of Korean capitalism are more serious than those of so-called advanced countries. The pain of Korean workers seems to be far bigger than those of the workers in European countries with their achievements of previous struggles of the working class. This is a question of the human life of the class, which cannot be measured by the empty pretence of the Korean government playing host for the G20 summit meeting, or the display of quantitative economic indexes.
Capital is international by its nature. Different national capitals have always been in competition and conflict but they have collaborated together in order to maintain the capitalist system, to hide its crises and attack workers as human beings. Workers struggle not against capitalists but against the capitalist system which moves only for the increase of its profits and unlimited competition.
Historically Marxists have always struggled together with the working class, the master of history, by revealing the nature of the historical laws of human society and that of the laws of social systems, presenting the orientation towards the world of real human life, and criticizing the obstacles of inhuman systems and laws.
For that reason they constructed organisations like parties and participated in practical struggles. At least since the 2nd World War such practical activities of Marxists have never experienced any judicial constriction. Rather their thought and practice have been highly valued as contributions to the progress of human society. Such masterpieces of Marx as Capital or the Communist Manifesto have been read as widely as the Bible.
This SWLK case is a historical one which shows to the whole world the barbarous nature of Korean society through its suppression of thought, and would be as a stain in the history of socialist trials in the world. In the future there will be more open and mass socialist movements, Marxist movements will be widely and powerfully developed in the world and in Korea. The judicial apparatus will handle cases of organised violence but cannot suppress socialist movements, Marxist movements. Because they will continue forever as long as humanity and workers exist.
Socialist movements and their practice cannot be the object of judicial punishment. Rather they must be an example for respect and confidence. Here are my closing words:
1 Oh Se-Cheol, Yang Hyo-sik, Yang Jun-seok, and Choi Young-ik face seven years in prison, while Nam Goong Won, Park Jun-Seon, Jeong Won-Hyung, and Oh Min-Gyu are facing five years. At its most extreme, the National Security Law provides for the death penalty against the accused.
2 See this article in Hankyoreh English edition [198]
3 See the text of the declaration [199].
5 See the police assault filmed on YouTube [201].
6 We also draw our readers' attention to the protest initiative launched by Loren Goldner [202]. While we share Loren’s scepticism about the effectiveness of “write-in” mail campaigns, we agree with him that “an international spotlight on this case just might have an effect on the final sentencing of these exemplary militants”. Letters of protest should be sent to Judge Hyung Doo Kim at this address: swlk [at] jinbo.net (messages must be received by 17th January for them to be forwarded on to Judge Kim).
One hundred years ago, a Dublin-born socialist named Robert Croker, also known as Robert Noonan and, most famously, as Robert Tressell, died in Liverpool, England and was buried with 12 others in a pauper’s grave. He was barely 40 years old.
He’s rightly remembered today for his only novel, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, generally hailed as a classic literary endeavour, which describes aspects of Edwardian English working class life from a Marxist perspective.
It’s a posthumously published book that, without resort to preaching or pedagogy, encapsulates the robbery that is the capitalist mode of production through an engaging story of employers and employees in a small English seaside town. Its narrative implies that social change is both necessary and possible, without ever being explicit enough about the means to achieve this.
One of its highlights, which unfolds in a naturalistic and humorous manner, is the exposition of ‘The Great Money Trick’, described by English playwright Howard Brenton as: “nothing less than Karl Marx's labour theory of value, a cornerstone of socialist thinking.”[1] This is the scene in which the book’s central character, a decorator called Owen, explains to his workmates in the building trade how ‘a fair days work for a fair days wage’ in fact produces profits for the bosses at the expense of the workers. It’s an unsurpassed set-piece which has been translated for film, theatre and television.
Before proceeding, a brief explanation of the book’s title. ‘Ragged Trousered’ implies those meagre garments worn by the poor or workingmen. An earlier period in France might use the phrase ‘sans culottes’. ‘Philanthropists’ is a satire on the ‘great and the good’ who gave money to the ‘deserving poor’. In Tressell’s view, it’s the proletarians who are the ‘philanthropists’ because it is their unpaid labour in the form of surplus value which supports the collective class of capitalists.
After his death, it’s thanks to the efforts of his daughter Kathleen that Tressell’s handwritten, 1,600-page manuscript was eventually published, at first in a heavily-edited form (because of its socialist content, according to the original publisher, who, despite his prejudices, nonetheless recognised the literary worth of the work). It appeared in England and Canada in 1914, in revolutionary Russia in 1920, and in its full version in the 1950s.
Because the work so movingly describes the plight of the proletariat as an exploited class, it has become a treasured icon of the left whose function is to keep the proletariat in precisely that condition.
Written in the interregnum between capitalist ascendency and its decadence, by an author whose membership of the Social Democratic Federation gives free reign to today’s trade union and Labour Party (Social Democratic) politicians to claim continuity with its content, the revolutionary kernel of Tressell’s work has been buried in the tomb of recuperation.
At a centenary event in Hastings (South East England), where Tressell toiled and on which the fictional town of ‘Mugsborough’ in the novel is based, one could find local and national Labour Party politicians, trade unionists and other, more well-meaning folk, all laying claim to his legacy.
In a UK left-leaning national newspaper, the Guardian, the aforementioned left-wing playwright Howard Brenton could declaim: “The party Tressell joined, the SDF (Social Democratic Federation), was revolutionary. We know that path led to the disaster of the Soviet Union.”[2]
But the SDF, despite being the UK’s ‘first Marxist-based’ party, was riddled with programmatic and practical ambiguities which saw the likes of Eleanor Marx and William Morris quit its ranks. And contrary to Brenton’s assertion, the ‘disaster’ of the ‘Soviet Union’ was not the result of the workers’ revolution there, but of its international defeat.
The support the majority of the SDF – including Tressell’s inspiration, the ‘Mugsborough rebel’ Alf Cobb - gave to British imperialism in World War One – and the relative failure of its members like British communists John McLean and Willie Gallagher to reinforce their internationalist attitudes with a corresponding organisational practice – only underlines the importance of coherent, Marxist revolutionary organisation, then and now.[3]
The richness of Tressell’s literary and Marxist masterpiece – despite a certain sentimentalism evident in the ending – remains a challenge to today’s communists and sympathisers: how to communicate what we believe and fight for into forms – words, music ,film, whatever – which convey meaning without cliché or cant.
KT 31/1/11
[2] Ibid
[3] See The British Communist Left (1914-1945) by Mark Hayes, published by the ICC (ISBN 1-897980-11-6)
The tide of rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East shows no sign of abating. The latest developments: demonstrations and clashes with the police in the Libyan city of Benghazi following the arrest of a lawyer involved in a campaign demanding an investigation into the brutal massacre of hundreds of prisoners after a protest in 1996. Qaddafi’s regime again displays its ruthless brutality – there are reports of snipers and helicopters firing into crowds, killing many; in Bahrain, thousands of demonstrators occupy the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, hoping to emulate the occupation of Tahrir Square. They raise slogans against sectarian divisions (“No Shia, no Sunni, only Bahraini”) and against self-appointed leaders (“We have no leaders”). At the time of writing, riot police have now cleared the area with considerable violence – many demonstrators have been injured and some killed. In Iraq, there have been new demonstrations against the price of necessities and the lack of electricity.
But perhaps the most important development over the last week or so has been the explicit development of mass workers’ struggles in Egypt. As Hossam el-Hamalawy[1], put it in an article published by The Guardian on 14 Feb, the upsurge of the workers fighting for their own demands was a potent factor in the decision of the army to dispense with Mubarak:
“All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. Mubarak managed to alienate all social classes in society. In Tahrir Square, you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle-class citizens and the urban poor. But remember that it's only when the mass strikes started on Wednesday [209] that the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse... From the first day of the January 25 uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. However, the workers were at first taking part as ‘demonstrators’ and not necessarily as ‘workers’ – meaning, they were not moving independently. The government had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters, with their curfews, and by shutting down the banks and businesses. It was a capitalist strike, aimed at terrorising the Egyptian people. Only when the government tried to bring the country back to ‘normal’ on 8 February did the workers return to their factories, discuss the current situation and start to organise en masse, moving as an independent block”.
An article by David McNally[2] on www.pmpress.org [210] gives an idea of how widespread this movement has been:
“In the course of a few days during the week of February 7, tens of thousands of them stormed into action. Thousands of railworkers took strike action, blockading railway lines in the process. Six thousand workers at the Suez Canal Authority walked off the job, staging sit-ins at Suez and two other cities. In Mahalla, 1,500 workers at Abul Sebae Textiles struck and blockaded the highway. At the Kafr al-Zayyat hospital hundreds of nurses staged a sit-in and were joined by hundreds of other hospital employees.
Across Egypt, thousands of others – bus workers in Cairo, employees at Telecom Egypt, journalists at a number of newspapers, workers at pharmaceutical plants and steel mills – joined the strike wave. They demands improved wages, the firing of ruthless managers, back pay, better working conditions and independent unions. In many cases they also called for the resignation of President Mubarak. And in some cases, like that of the 2,000 workers at Helwan Silk Factory, they demanded the removal of their company’s Board of Directors. Then there were the thousands of faculty members at Cairo University who joined the protests, confronted security forces, and prevented Prime Minister Ahmed Shariq from getting to his government office”
We could add numerous other examples: about 20,000 workers in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, more than 100 kilometres north of Cairo, who have re-launched a strike after a three-day break in the largest spinning and weaving factory in Egypt. Workers in the tourist industry, like the 150 who staged a well-publicised demo against their miserable wages in the shadow of the Great Pyramid; bank workers demanding the sacking of their corrupt bosses; ambulance drivers using their vehicles to block roads in a pay protest; workers who demonstrated outside the HQ of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation denouncing it as a “den of thieves” and “a group of thugs” and called for its dissolution – their words received instant verification as ETUF goons responded with beatings and missiles. The police have also been publicly protesting against the way they have been used against demonstrators, a clear indication of plummeting morale among the lower echelons of the force. No doubt there will be many more examples to be added to these.
As McNally notes, this movement shows many of the characteristics of the mass strike as analysed by Rosa Luxemburg:
“What we are seeing, in other words, is the rising of the Egyptian working class. Having been at the heart of the popular upsurge in the streets, tens of thousands of workers are now taking the revolutionary struggle back to their workplaces, extending and deepening the movement in the process. In so doing, they are proving the continuing relevance of the analysis developed by the great Polish-German socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. In her book, The Mass Strike, based on the experience of mass strikes of 1905 against the Tsarist dictatorship in Russia, Luxemburg argued that truly revolutionary movements develop by way of interacting waves of political and economic struggle, each enriching the other. In a passage that could have been inspired by the upheaval in Egypt, she explains,
‘Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle. . . After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle burst forth. And conversely. The workers condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting spirit alive in every political interval’”.
As both McNally and Hossam el-Hamalawy point out, the power of this movement was not acquired overnight. For the past seven years, it is the workers who have been at the frontline of resistance against the poverty and repression imposed on the entire population. There were a number of strike movements in 2004, 2006-7 and 2007-8, with the textile workers of Mahalla playing a particularly significant role, but with many other sectors joining in. In 2007 we published an article [211] which already discerned the “germs of the mass strike” in these struggles, because of their high degree of self-organisation and solidarity. As Rosa pointed out, the mass strike is something that matures over a period of years – the struggles of 1905 which she wrote about had been fermenting in successive struggles over the previous two decades – and 1905 was also a bridge to the revolution of 1917.
But despite all the talk of revolution in these countries – some of it honest if flawed, some of it part of the mystifying discourse of leftism which always seeks to banalise the very concept of revolution – this movement towards the future mass strike faces many dangers:
- the danger of repression. Now that the massive protests have dispersed, the army which has ‘assumed power’ (in fact it was always there at the heart of it) is issuing urgent calls for Egypt to get back to work. After all, the revolution has won its victory! There have been hints that workers’ meetings will be banned. We already know that throughout the period when the army was claiming to be protecting the people, hundreds of activists were being arrested and tortured by this very same ‘popular’ institution, and there is no reason to expect that this kind of ‘quiet’ repression will not continue, even if head-on clashes are avoided;
- the illusions of the combatants themselves. As with the illusion that the army belongs to the people, these illusions are dangerous because they prevent the oppressed from seeing who their enemy is and where the next blow will come from. But illusions in the army are part of a more general illusion in ‘democracy’, the idea that changes in the form of the capitalist state will change the function of that state and make it serve the needs of the majority. The call for independent trade unions which is being raised in many of today’s strikes[3] is at root a variant of this democratic myth: specifically, it is based on the idea that the capitalist state, whose role is to protects a system which has nothing to offer the workers or humanity as a whole, can allow the exploited class to maintain its own independent organisations on a permanent basis.
We are a long way from revolution in the only sense it can have today –the international proletarian revolution. The authentically revolutionary consciousness required to guide such a revolution to victory can also only develop on a world scale, and it cannot come to fruition without the contribution of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries. But the proletarians (and other oppressed strata) of the Middle East and North Africa are here and now learning vital lessons from their own experience: lessons about how to take charge of their own struggles, as exhibited in the strikes being spread from below, in the neighbourhood protection committees that sprang up after Mubarak unleashed the police and the dregs of society to loot their homes; in the daily ‘direct democracy’ of Tahir Squre. McNally again:
“Developing alongside these forms of popular self-organization are new practices of radical democracy. In Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of the Revolution, the crowd engages in direct decision-making, sometimes in its hundreds of thousands. Organized into smaller groups, people discuss and debate, and then send elected delegates to consultations about the movement’s demands. As one journalist[4] explains, ‘delegates from these mini-gatherings then come together to discuss the prevailing mood, before potential demands are read out over the square’s makeshift speaker system. The adoption of each proposal is based on the proportion of boos or cheers it receives from the crowd at large.’”
Lessons too in how to defend yourself collectively against the onslaughts of police and thugs; in how to fraternise with the army; in how to overcome sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, Muslim and Christian, religious and secular. Lessons in internationalism, as the revolt spreads from country to country, taking its demands and its methods with it, and as proletarians everywhere discover that they face the same declining living standards, the same repressive ‘regime’, the same system of exploitation.
Perhaps most importantly, the very fact that the working class has affirmed itself so emphatically precisely at the moment of ‘democratic triumph’, after the departure of Mubarak which was supposed to be the true goal of the revolt, reveals a capacity to resist the calls for sacrifice and renunciation on behalf of the ‘nation’ and the ‘people’, which are always central to the bourgeoisie’s patriotic and democratic campaigns. Interviewed by the press over the past few days, workers in Egypt have frequently pointed to the simple truth that motivates their strikes and protests: they cannot feed their families, because their wages are too low, prices are too high, or they have no prospect of jobs at all. This is increasingly the condition facing the working class in all countries, and no ‘democratic reform’ will go any near alleviating it. The working class has only its struggle as its defence, and the perspective of a new society as its solution.
Amos, 16.2.11
[1] Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist who blogs at arabawy.org [212] and has written extensively about workers’ struggles in Egypt over the past few years.
[2] David McNally is a professor of political science [213] at York University [214] in Toronto.The titles of his books give some clues to his general political standpoint: Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism, (Winnipeg 2005) and Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique, (London, 1999).
[3] See for example this document https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article20203 [215]. This looks like a serious effort by the workers’ movement in Egypt to develop its self-organisation through general assemblies and elected committees, while at the same time expressing an attachment to democratic and trade unionist ideas.
“Demands of the Iron and Steel Workers
1. Immediate resignation of the president and all men and symbols of the regime.
2. Confiscation of funds and property of all symbols of previous regime and everyone proved corrupt.
3. Iron and steel workers, who have given martyrs and militants, call upon all workers of Egypt to revolt from the regime’s and ruling party workers’ federation, to dismantle it and announce their independent union now, and to plan for their general assembly to freely establish their own independent union without prior permission or consent of the regime, which has fallen and lost all legitimacy.
4. Confiscation of public-sector companies that have been sold or closed down or privatized, as well as the public sector which belongs to the people and its nationalization in the name of the people and formation of a new management by workers and technicians.
5. Formation of a workers’ monitoring committee in all workplaces, monitoring production, prices, distribution and wages.
6. Call for a general assembly of all sectors and political trends of the people to develop a new constitution and elect real popular committees without waiting for the consent or negotiation with the regime.
A huge workers’ demonstration will join the Tahrir Square on Friday, the 11th of February 2011 to join the revolution and announce the demands of the workers of Egypt.
Long live the revolution!
Long live Egypt’s workers!
Long live the intifada of Egyptian youth—People’s revolution for the people!”
[4]Jack Shenker, ‘Cairo’s biggest protest yet demands Mubarak’s immediate departure,’ Guardian, February 5, 2011
This contribution is based largely on the book The Politics of Heroin (CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade) by Alfred W. McCoy. It deals with the period around World War II, the US state’s use of the Mafia domestically, its use in the invasion of Italy and the subsequent explosion of heroin production up to the late 1950s. McCoy’s is a brave book whose detailed research put him in danger both in the 'field' and back home in the USA. If anything, the analysis in the book is somewhat understated and this makes it all the more effective.
In 1980, US President George Bush Senior, ex-head of the secret services, declared his 'War on Drugs' when the CIA were up to their necks in the drugs business through a whole mosaic of alliances and the protection that they afforded it. Nixon had already declared a 'war on drugs' in 1972 and Reagan after him. Clinton followed with his own expanded version in 1996 and then Bush Junior in 2002. Through all these wars on drugs, opium, hashish, coca and their derivatives, as well as synthetic stimulants (amphetamines, MDMA) increasingly traded like major global commodities according to the laws of the market. This in itself is nothing new. Early European merchants and colonial adventurers, including the British, Dutch, Spanish and French, discovered opium’s potential in the seventeenth century.
More recently, in the 40 years of the Cold War (up to 1989), the USA’s prohibition on drugs went hand in hand with using and protecting major drug dealers in the 'fight against communism'. Through the 50s to the 80s, the Central Intelligence Agency (created by Truman in 1947) used tribal armies that under its protection became major drug lords in Burma, Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua. The financing of these armies through the drugs trade relieved the CIA of paying for their costly upkeep (this was in contrast to French imperialism’s role in the drug trade after the war which was much more 'hands on' in the trade itself – see below).
The drugs trade expanded across Asia, Central and Latin America involving Corsican, Italian, nationalist Chinese, Honduran, Haitian, Panamanian and Pakistani gangsters in the CIA 'enforced' non-enforcement areas; generally speaking this went hand in hand with the expansion of the arms trade. After the CIA’s intervention in Burma opium production in this country increased 40-fold; in Afghanistan it was up 460-fold a year or so ago. In 2000, the CIA’s main covert battlegrounds – and thus of the greatest interest to US imperialism – were Afghanistan, Burma and Laos; in that order the three leading opium producers in the world.
In the late 1940s, heroin addiction looked like falling to insignificant levels in the USA which wasn’t surprising given years of world war. Today its prisons are full of drug-related offenders. Five to 10% of all HIV cases are reported to be down to intravenous drug use. The prohibition of drugs, like that of alcohol, facilitated the expansion of the industry and the expansion of corruption where even 'war on drugs' money was channelled into production in some cases. Local suppression turned into global stimulus. The consequences of increased prices and no reduction in demand could only encourage increased production which is pushed back and forth across the globe but always expanding to meet demand. Prohibition has been a major factor in turning the drugs industry into one of the world’s biggest, larger than textiles, steel and automobiles. According to a 1997 UN report “highly centralised” transnational crime groups, with nearly 4 million members (or “associates”) world-wide control most of the drug trade within which police and state corruption and protection are extensive. Despite all these 'wars' on drugs, US diplomats and the CIA have been involved in the drugs trade in what McCoy calls “coincidental” complicity, condoning, concealment and active involvement in transportation.
World War Two had seen the Mafia in Sicily smashed by Mussolini. Surviving only in outposts in the mountainous areas and in Marseilles, the Corsican Mafia was weakened by their collaboration with the Gestapo. Both these structures, and their drugs businesses, were revived and given new life by the US from the beginning of the Cold War as imperialism reacted to the new realities of American and Russian rivalry. In the 1930s, the 'new guard' of Salvatore C. Luciana, aka, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, turned the American Mafia into a centralised, relatively peaceful national cartel ready to take over the prostitution and narcotics rackets, including the Don’s once-forbidden drug, heroin. Luciano was arrested and convicted in the late 1930s Mafia clampdown. In 1942, in order to exert control over the New York waterfront, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) approached Mafia boss Joseph “Joe Socks” Lanza, also a union agent, for his help. Lanza arranged a meeting with an ONI go-between and Luciano who was residing in Albany prison. Apart from helping with the imposition of domestic repression on the docks and on dockworkers, Luciano also helped in the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, providing maps, charts and Mafia contacts in the region. ONI operatives reported that the Mafia were “extremely cooperative”.
In the invasion of Sicily local mafiosi were responsible for the rapid speed of General Patton’s advance through the mined roads into Palermo. Further, there is no doubt about the relationship between the US military occupation of Italy and the Mafia, whose representatives were selected as mayors by the Allied Military Government (AMGOT). The commander of this force, Colonel Charles Poletti, appointed Luciano’s lieutenant and New York gangster Vito Genovese (now living in Naples and doing very well after working with the fascists) to assist the US war effort. Genovese was soon using military transports to move all sorts of contraband goods around, reminiscent of Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22. In the meantime Luciano and his cohorts were beginning to integrate all the aspects of the global heroin trade.
Whether you get your news from the papers, TV or online you won't have missed headlines about an 'Egyptian Revolution.' What's happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen has shown that people from many social strata are fed up with the conditions they live in and are rebelling en masse against those who enforce them. The fact that this movement has affected a number of countries is very exciting, but it does not amount to a revolution, i.e. the replacement of one class by another. Despite the scale and heroism of the uprisings, despite the promise they contain, most of the explicit demands being made only amount to an adjustment of the capitalist political system: bourgeois rule has not been consciously challenged.
In Egypt, for example, the move to get rid of Mubarak now has the support of the army and US imperialism, so as a demand it is clearly no challenge to capitalist rule. Yet the leftists go along with the idea that a revolution is taking place. “Victory to the Egyptian revolution” is the front page headline of Socialist Worker (5/2/11). In the same issue the SWP say that “The overthrowing of Mubarak would fundamentally challenge the status quo in the oil rich region.” In reality the replacement of Mubarak has become part of US policy which it is undertaking through its links with the Egyptian army.
The SWP see the uprising in Egypt as a blow against Israel and ultimately the control of the US in the region who rely on Israel to act as its policeman in the Middle East: " a revolutionary transformation of the region would throw this arrangement into question and give hope that Arab people can win their fight for freedom." Not only is the talk of a 'revolutionary transformation' a misleading description of the immediate potential of the situation, but the genuine struggles of workers and other oppressed strata are obscured by the nationalist jargon about the “Arab people.”
It is not surprising that, in an article in which the SWP says Egypt is “on the verge of revolution”, it refers to “the memory of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9.” Back then, during the period of upheaval which led to the replacement of the Shah by the regime headed by Khomeini, as well as the popular demonstrations there were also militant workers' strikes. In October 1978 the strikes of tens of thousands oil workers, steel workers and rail workers were major factors in the Shah's exit. But that didn't mean there was a revolution. The Islamic regime which came to power in the wake of these events is perhaps even more repressive than the rule of the Shah.
And today the leftists, for all their talk of the importance of the working class, still look to other forces and ideas as the key element in the situation. For example, the SWP describes the Muslim Brotherhood as a “contradictory force”. By this it means that although it is a conservative force and “its leaders include factory owners and rural landlords” it also “has the respect and support of millions of Egyptians.” While revolutionaries are straightforward in denouncing any party that wants to take its place in the capitalist state apparatus, leftists pick out their favourites from the contending bourgeois forces.
The SWP also says that “the hold of Nasser and nationalism remains a strong force.” But instead of exposing the influence of the current generation of Nasserites the SWP claim that they too have an 'ambiguous' role: “They are deeply hostile to neoliberalism―not because they oppose capitalism, but because they believe all industry should be under state control. They support some peasants’ and workers’ demands, yet believe these should be limited by the needs of national unity. This means that the role they will play in the coming period remains unclear.”
Why would we expect any more from a group that thinks (as they did in the 1950s!) that “Nasser’s radical reforms inspired the Arab masses, and threatened imperialist domination of the Middle East.” The truth is that many had illusions in Nasser, but that far from threatening imperialism he was an integral part of the imperialist conflicts in the region. During his rule and that of his successors Egypt became an outpost of Russian imperialism prior to switching sides in the conflict between the two blocs.
The promotion of Arab nationalism is widespread throughout the left. The ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ that publishes Weekly Worker (quotes from nos 850 and 851)is particularly strong on pan-Arabism, in a way that is reminiscent of Bakunin's pan-Slavism. Avoiding a class analysis the CPGB says that Mubarak's Egypt is “An everyday living insult, and humiliation, to ordinary Egyptians and the very idea of pan-Arabism in general” and that “Arab reunification remains an urgent but unfulfilled task.” Instead of a marxist understanding of the international unity of the working class the CPGB argue that “the Arab masses have a shared problem. The answer should be a common solution, which, of course, there is - revolutionary pan-Arab unity.” Referring to the “Arab masses” and making pseudo-scientific pontifications about the “objective and cultural-psychological conditions for pan-Arab unity exist in abundance” does not change the class reality of capitalism, where only a conscious working class can overthrow bourgeois rule, and where all forms of nationalism stand in the way of class consciousness.
The CPGB claim that “A free Egypt, as part of a pan-Arab revolution that rages across the entire region, would challenge the hegemony of Israel.” This shows where their position leads. The expression “challenge the hegemony” ultimately means 'go to war with'. This is where the leftists' ideas lead. The CPGB's idea of a 'revolution' raging across the Middle East means plunging it into an imperialist war in which many of the 'Arab masses' will lose their lives. In the past support for the Palestinian 'revolution' by SWP founder Tony Cliff meant support for Nasser's Egypt in 1967's Six Day War. Not only do leftist ideas hamper the real movement of the working class toward a real revolution, they also lead to imperialist war.
Car 5/2/11
At the time of writing, the social situation in Egypt remains explosive. Millions of people have been on the streets, braving the curfew, the state regime and its bloody repression. At the same time the social movement in Tunisia has not gone away: the flight of Ben Ali, the government reshuffle and the promise of elections has not succeeded in damping down the deep anger of the population. In Jordan thousands of demonstrators have expressed their discontent with growing poverty. In Algeria the protests seems to have been stifled but there is a powerful international black-out and it seems that there are still struggles going on in Kabylia.
The media and politicians of all kinds talk non-stop about the ‘revolts in the Arab world’, focusing attention on regional specificities, on the lack of local democracy, on the exasperation of the population with seeing the same faces in power for 30 years.
All this is true. Ben Ali, Mubarak, Rifai, Bouteflika and co. are true gangsters, caricatured expressions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But above all, these social movements belong to the exploited of all countries. These explosions of anger are rooted in the acceleration of the world economic crisis which is plunging more and more of humanity into grinding poverty.
After Tunisia, Egypt! The contagion of revolt in the Arab states, especially in North Africa, which the ruling class has feared for so long, has arrived with a bang. Populations who have been faced with the economic hardships caused by the world economic crisis have also had to deal with ruthlessly repressive regimes. And faced with this explosion of anger, the governments and rulers have shown their true colours as a class which reigns through starvation and murder. The only response they can come up with is tear gas and bullets. And we are not just talking about the ‘dictators’ on the spot. Our own ‘democratic’ rulers, right wing and left wing, have long been the friends and allies of these same dictators in the maintenance of capitalist order. The much-vaunted stability of these countries against the danger of radical Islamism has for decades been based on police terror, and our good democrats have happily turned a blind eye to their tortures, their corruption, to the climate of fear in which they have lorded it over the population. In the name of stability, of non-intervention in internal matters, of peace and friendship between peoples, they have supported these regimes for their own sordid imperialist reasons.
In Egypt we have seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of deaths, thousands wounded, tens of thousand more wounded or arrested. The fall of Ben Ali was the detonator. It stirred up a huge wave of hope among the population of the Arab regimes. We also saw many outbursts of despair, with a series of suicides in Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, western Sahara, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, particularly among young unemployed people. In Egypt, we heard the same slogans as in Tunisia: “Bread, Freedom, Dignity!” This was clearly a response to the principal effects of the world economic crisis: unemployment (in Egypt it affects 20% of the population); insecurity (in Egypt, 4 out of 10 live below the poverty line and several international documentaries have been made about the people who live by sorting through the Cairo rubbish heaps); the rising price of basic necessities. The slogan ‘Mubarak, dégage’ was taken directly from the Tunisians who called for the departure of Ben Ali. Demonstrators in Cairo proclaimed “It’s not our government, they are our enemies!” An Egyptian journalist said to a correspondent from Figaro: “No political movement can claim to have started these demonstrations. It’s the street which is expressing itself. People have nothing to lose. Things can’t go on any longer”. One phrase is on everyone’s lips: “we are no longer afraid”.
In April 2008, the workers of a textile factor in Mahalla to the north of Cairo came out on strike for better wages and working conditions, To support the workers and call for a general strike on 6 April, a group of young people had organised themselves on Facebook and Twitter. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. This time, and in contrast to Tunisia, the Egyptian government blocked internet access in advance.
On Tuesday 25 January, so-called ‘National Police Day’, tens of thousands of protestors hit the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta and Suez and came up against the forces of order. Four days of confrontations followed; state violence only fuelled the anger. During these days and nights, the riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. Standing by was an army of 500,000, very well equipped and trained, a central pillar of the regime, unlike in Tunisia. The power also made extensive use of the ‘baltageyas’, thugs directly controlled by the state and specialising in breaking up demonstrations, as well as numerous agents of the state security wearing civilian clothes and merging with the demonstrators.
On Friday 28 January, a day off work, around noon, despite the banning of public gatherings, demonstrators came out of the mosques and onto the streets in huge numbers, everywhere confronting the police. This day was named ‘The Day of Rage’. The government had already cut off internet and mobile phone networks and even landline telephones. Still the movement swelled: in the evening, the demonstrations defied the curfew in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez....Police trucks used water cannon against the crowds, made up largely of young people. In Cairo, army tanks were at first welcomed as liberating heroes, and there were a number of attempts to fraternise with the army; this was given a lot of publicity and in one case at least it prevented a convoy of armoured cars from supporting the forces of order. Some policemen threw off their arm bands and joined the demonstrators. But very soon, in other areas, armoured cars opened fire on the demonstrators who had come to greet them, or mowed them down. The head of the army, Sami Anan, who led a military delegation to the US for talks at the Pentagon, came back in a hurry to Egypt on the Friday. Police cars and stations, as well as the HQ of the governing party, were torched and the Ministry of Information ransacked. The wounded piled up in overworked hospitals. In Alexandria, the government building was also burned down. In Mansoura on the Nile Delta there were violent confrontations that left several dead. A number of people tried to take over the state television station but were rebuffed by the army.
Around 11.30 at night Mubarak appeared on TV, announcing the dismissal of his government team and promising political reforms and steps towards democracy, while firmly insisting on the need to maintain the “security and stability of Egypt against attempts at destabilisation”. These proposals merely increased the anger and determination of the protestors.
But although for the demonstrators Tunisia was a model, the stakes involved in the situation are not the same for the bourgeoisie. Tunisia is a relatively small country and it holds an imperialist interest mainly for a second rate power like France[1]. It’s very different with Egypt which is easily the most densely populated country in the region (over 80 million inhabitants) and which above all occupies a key strategic position in the Middle East, especially for the American bourgeoisie. The fall of the Mubarak regime could result in a regional chaos that would have heavy consequences. Mubarak is the USA’s principal ally in the region next to Israel, playing a preponderant role in Israel-Palestine relations as well as relations between Al Fatah and Hamas. This state has up till now been seen as a stabilising factor in the Middle East. At the same time the political developments in Sudan, which is on the verge of splitting in two, makes a strong Egypt all he more necessary. It is therefore a vital cog in the US strategy towards the Israel-Arab conflict and its destablisation risks spilling over into a number of neighbouring countries, especially Jordan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. This explains the anxieties of the US, whose close relations with the Mubarak regime put it in a very uncomfortable position. Obama and US diplomacy have been trying to put pressure on Mubarak while saving the essentials of the regime. This is why Obama made it public that he had spent half an hour talking to Mubarak and urging him to throw off more ballast. Before that, Hilary Clinton had declared that the forces of order needed to show more restraint and that the government should very quickly restore the means of communication. The next day, probably as a result of American pressure, General Omar Suleiman, head of the powerful military security forces, responsible for negotiations with Israel, was brought in as Vice President. The army has gained in popularity for having remained in the rear during the demonstrations and for having on numerous occasions taken a friendly attitude towards the crowds. This allowed it to argue in a number of cases that people should go back to their homes to protect them from looters.
Other expressions of revolt have appeared in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. In the latter, 4,000 people gathered in Amman for the third time in three weeks to protest against the cost of living and to demand economic and political reforms, in particular the resignation of the prime minister. The authorities made a few gestures, some small economic measures were taken and some political consultations held. But the demonstrations spread to the towns of Irbid and Kerak. In Algeria, on 22 January, a demonstration in the centre of Algiers was brutally repressed, leaving 5 dead and over 800 injured. In Tunisia the fall of Ben Ali has not put an end to the anger, nor to the repression. In the prisons, summary executions since the departure of Ben Ali have added up to more deaths than during the clashes with the police. A ‘liberation caravan’ from the western part of the country, where the movement first started, has defied the curfew and been camped outside the PM’s offices demanding the resignation of a government still made up of the cronies and chiefs of the Ben Ali regime. The anger has not gone away because the same old people are holding onto the reins of power. A government reshuffle finally took place on 27 January, chucking out the most compromised ministers but retaining the same PM. This still didn’t calm things down. Ferocious police repression continues and the situation remains confused.
These explosions of massive, spontaneous revolt reveal that the population is fed up and no longer wants to put up with the poverty and repression doled out by these regimes. But they also show the weight of democratic and nationalist illusions: in numerous demonstrations, the national flags are being brandished very widely. In Egypt as in Tunisia, the anger of the exploited has been quickly pushed towards a struggle for more democracy. The population’s hatred for the regime and the focus on Mubarak (as on Ben Ali in Tunisia) has meant that the economic demands against poverty and unemployment have been relegated into the background by all the bourgeois media. This obviously makes it possible for the ruling class in the democratic countries to sell the idea to the working class, especially in the central countries, that these ‘popular uprisings’ don’t have the same fundamental causes as the workers’ struggles going on here: the bankruptcy of world capitalism.
This eruption of the social anger engendered by the aggravation of the world crisis of capitalism in the countries at the peripheries of the system, which up until now have almost exclusively been dominated by war and imperialist tensions, is a major new political factor which the world bourgeoisie will have to reckon with more and more. The rise of these revolts against the corruption of leaders who are pocketing vast fortunes while the great majority of the population goes hungry, can’t lead to a solution in these countries on their own. But they are signs of the ripening of social conflicts that cannot fail to burst to the surface in the most developed countries in response to the same evils: falling living standards, growing poverty, massive youth unemployment.
We are already beginning to see the rebellion of young people in Europe against the failure of world capitalism, with the students’ struggles in France, Britain and Italy. The most recent example is Holland: in The Hague on 22 January, 20,000 students and teachers gathered in front of the parliament building and the ministry of education. They were protesting against the sharp rise in university entrance fees, which will in the first place hit those repeating their second year, which is often the case with students who have to work to pay for their studies. They will have to pay an extra 300 euro a year, while the latest budgets envisage cutting 7000 jobs in this sector. This was one of the most important student demos in the country for 20 years. It was also brutally attacked by the police.
These social movements are the symptom of the international development of the class struggle, even if, in the Arab countries, the working class has not yet clearly appeared as an autonomous force and is mixed up in a movement of popular protest.
All over the world, the gulf is widening between a ruling class, the bourgeoisie, which displays its wealth with indecent arrogance, and on the other hand the mass of the exploited falling deeper and deeper into deprivation. This gulf is tending to unite proletarians of all countries, to forge them into a common front, while the bourgeoisie can only respond to the indignation of those it exploits with new austerity measures, with truncheons and bullets.
Revolts and social struggles will inevitably take on different forms in the years to come and in different regions. The strengths and weaknesses of these social movements will not be the same everywhere. In some cases, their anger, militancy and courage will be exemplary. In others, the methods and massive nature of the struggle will make it possible to open new perspectives and establish a balance of forces in favour of the working class, the only social force that can offer a future to humanity. In particular, the concentration and experience of the proletariat of the countries at the heart of world capitalism will be decisive. Without the massive mobilisation of the workers in the central countries, the social revolts in the peripheries of capitalism will be condemned to impotence and will fall under the domination of this or that faction of the ruling class. Only the international struggle of the working class, its solidarity, its unity, its organisation and its consciousness of what’s at stake in its combat will be able to draw all the oppressed layers of society into a fight to put an end to dying capitalism and build a new world in its place.
RI 30/01/11
[1] France was one of Ben Ali’s main supporters although it has now made its mea culpas about this. However it is once again covering itself in ridicule by continuing to back Mubarak
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
wisconsin-leaflet-final.pdf [225] | 25.9 KB |
As well as this article we have produced a shorter leaflet here [225], which can be downloaded and distributed by our sympathisers.
Over 200,000 public sector workers and students have taken to the streets and are occupying the state capitol in Wisconsin to protest proposed changes to collective bargaining agreements between the state government and its public employee unions. The state’s rookie governor, Tea Party backed Republican Scott Walker, has proposed a bill removing collective bargaining rights for the majority of the state's 175,000 public employees, effectively prohibiting them from negotiating pension and health care contributions, leaving only the right to bargain over salaries. Moreover, according to the legislation, public employee unions would have to submit themselves to yearly certification votes in order to maintain the right to represent workers in future scaled down negotiations. Firefighters not affected by the proposed changes (because their union supported Walker in the November election) have shown their solidarity with those under attack by joining the protests, which many say have taken inspiration from the wave of unrest sweeping Egypt and the wider Middle East. Many Wisconsin protestors proudly display placards giving the Governor the ominous moniker Scott “Mubarak” Walker, while others hold aloft sings asking, “If Egypt Can Have Democracy, Why Can’t Wisconsin?” Protesters in Egypt have even shown their solidarity with workers in Wisconsin!
Meanwhile, although the U.S. State Department has repeatedly called on Arab leaders to show restraint against protestors these past weeks, Gov. Walker has threatened to bring in the National Guard to suppress if necessary! Some veterans groups have responded that the guard’s job is to respond to disasters not serve as the Governor’s personal goon squad. The political situation in Wisconsin is said to be fragile, as a constitutional crisis looms. All 14 Democratic state senators have fled the state, denying the Republican controlled state legislature the quorum it needs to pass the Governor’s bill. It is said that if they are found within the state, the state patrol will arrest them and bring them back to the capitol! On the other hand, union and Democratic leaders openly talk of recalling the Governor and any state senators who support his legislation. American politics just keeps getting more and more cartoon-like with each crisis!
Source: Politico.com [226]
The crisis in Wisconsin has been framed by the national media as the first real clash of a Tea Party backed Republican executive using his newly found political power to enact an ideological agenda of destroying the public employee unions that many Tea Partiers and Republicans blame for the virtual bankruptcy of state governments across the country. These Republicans say that enacting austerity is necessary in order to balance a state budget crippled by a massive $137 million deficit. On the other hand, Democrats and their friends in the unions are making a hue and cry over the Republican governor and his national Tea Party allies making good political use of a real fiscal dilemma to push their union busting ideology. Who's right?
It is true that, just as in Europe, the American states are in effect facing insolvency. While at the national level the federal government can still indulge in quantitative easing (in effect printing more dollars), the states have no such privilege and therefore face an urgent need to push through drastic austerity measures if they are to balance their budgets and remain financially viable in the bond markets. At this level, Gov. Walkers’ legislation appears to fit a vital need of the bourgeoisie to lower the state’s labor costs and gain a lasting advantage in future negotiations by limiting the scope of future contracts. He would seem to be setting a model to be followed in other states, as they struggle to come to grips with their terrible fiscal situations.
However, on a more global level, the bourgeoisie is also well aware of the political and social risks of launching heavy attacks on workers already hammered by high unemployment, pay freezes, furloughs and the collapse of the real estate market. Hence the tried and true American strategy of pushing attacks through in a piecemeal fashion at the state and local level, rather than launching a direct and immediate frontal assault on federal entitlement programs. Still, there is a risk that Gov. Walker’s legislation would go too far in destabilizing the unions—which act as the shop floor police to control workers’ anger, as well as the state Democratic Party itself, which relies on the unions for much of its campaign fundraising. Gov. Walker’s policy could not only risk emasculating the unions when the bourgeoisie needs them the most, it could also threaten to upset the two-party system in a vital swing state that President Obama won in 2008.
Last year saw protests in California against cuts to education budgets and earlier last week workers in Ohio protested a bill that would limit collective bargaining for state employees there, as did teachers in Indianapolis. When the need for further attacks come, the bourgeoisie will need the union apparatus there in order to contain the workers’ militancy and make sure the struggle remains within the scope of bargaining over wages and benefits rather than threaten the state itself.
The perilous state of Wisconsin's finances isn't uncommon. It's facing a $137 million budget deficit this financial year, and a whopping $3.6 billion over the next two years. The most drastic aspects of Gov. Walker's cuts demands that most state and local employees contribute half the cost of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums. However, this is only projected to save the state $30 million by this June, rising to $300 million over the next two years, only 10% of the deficit. The rest of the bill proposes to save $165 million this year by simply refinancing state debt. Thus the biggest savings have nothing to do with public employees. This is of course cold comfort to the workers facing crippling increases in pension contributions and health care costs. One estimate says the proposal amounts to an effective pay cut of 10% for the average Madison teacher.
With the average contract negotiation taking 15 months, the Governor has refused to meet with the unions, instead calling for drastic measures, threatening the layoff of 1,500 state workers if his plan isn't accepted. He certainly seems to be staying true to his reputation of playing hardball. But is this just another case of a Republican trying to out 'right-wing' the right of his party by busting the unions? Walker himself is very clear: “For us, it’s simple. We’re broke. It’s not about the unions. It’s about balancing the budget.” (NY Times [227]) From the union side, David Ahrens, of the UW-Madison's Carbone Cancer Center, disputes the emergency nature of the situation saying, “That would be more believable if he had ever bothered to meet with the unions to begin with.” (Wisconsin State Journal [228])
President Obama also weighed in on the union’s behalf, repaying the $200 million they spent on his November election campaign and calling Mr. Walker’s proposals “an assault on unions.” However, the House speaker, Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio, praised Mr. Walker for “confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth.” As would be expected, the Left has come to the defense of the unions as the workers’ best protection in tough times, while the right descries them as historical anachronisms that stunt economic growth and kill jobs. What are workers to make of all this?
It's important to understand the key role the unions play as part of the state apparatus. They are 'social firefighters', acting as a safety valve at the economic and political levels. The kind of collective bargaining agreements under attack today were introduced by the likes of President Kennedy who saw their benefits in terms of social control offered by the unions, especially when the kinds of 'victories' the unions were winning included no-strike clauses! In the late 60s and early 70s these 'concessions' were certainly more affordable in economic terms than they are today. Forty years of economic crisis has led to great erosions in the social wage enjoyed by the post-war baby boomers. But while the unions are expensive in economic terms, they are also effective tools in imposing austerity on the working class. For example, in Wisconsin the unions [229] “already negotiated a deal with the previous administration for $100 million in cuts to benefits along with an outright 3% pay reduction.” One gets the sense that unions’ anger at the Governor’s plans is not so much about the cuts to the workers they are supposed to represent, but at the prospect of no longer be regarded as partners with the state in managing the economy. In fact, Marty Beil, head of WSEU/AFSCME—the Wisconsin public employees’ union argued that the union was perfectly willing to go along with certain cuts, but could not stand for the Governor’s brazen power play: “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state's budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union... we will not - I repeat we will not - be denied our rights to collectively bargain.” In a conference call with the media she continued, "This is not about money (…) We understand the need to sacrifice." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [230])
All the talk of union busting is at bottom an attempt to derail the discontent shown by the workers against the attacks on their living condition into the dead-end of the defense of unions themselves and the democracy they supposedly embody and away from effective strike action to defend their living and working conditions. Already, in the movement in Wisconsin, the unions have been very effective in couching it in terms of the defense of “democracy” (hence the linking to Egypt), even though it is their allies, the Democratic Senators who appear, for the moment, to have obstructed the functioning of the bourgeois democratic apparatus by absconding from the state. Already, national Tea Party activists have bused in counter-demonstrators coming to the “democratically-elected” Governor’s defense and to protect the “majority of Wisconsinites” who voted for his tough actions against the unions. If your main goal is to defend “democracy,” it’s not clear which side you would support!
In a sense, the hunt of the state troopers for the missing senators is emblematic of the deeper hunt the US bourgeoisie is having for a solution to its economic crisis. As that solution proves ever more elusive, the bourgeoisie on all levels—federal, state and local—will have to resort to further attacks against the working class. Public employees—civil servants, firefighters, highway workers and above all teachers—will be on the front line of this assault. It is no accident, or simply an ideological penchant of the right wing, that Tea Partiers and Republicans have put public employees in the cross hairs. It is their wage and benefit bill that most immediately impacts the fiscal solvency of the state.
Moreover, attacks against public employees have not been limited to states governed by Republicans. In New York, Democratic Gov. Cuomo has threatened nearly 10,000 layoffs if union negotiations stall, while Democrat Jerry Brown in California has talked about the need for painful cuts to solve that state’s perennially budget woes. On the federal level, President Obama himself has frozen federal employees' salaries and his budget commission has threatened to lay off 10 percent of the federal workforce! Nevertheless, the zealousness with which Tea Party Republicans like Walker have carried their crusade against the very foundation of the unions (as distinct from the workers they are supposed to represent) has the potential to backfire if it is carried to its ultimate conclusion. The bourgeoisie will inevitably need to call on the unions as the class struggle continues to heat up. The attempt by a rookie Republican Governor to wipe out the unions in his state is yet another example of the difficulties the U.S. national bourgeoisie is having in controlling its political process as a result of the social decomposition that deepens every day this system still stands.
Colin, 02/20/11.
We are starting a thread on our forum [232] on the nightmarish situation in Japan following the huge earthquake in the north of the country. The first post is translated from the opening post of a thread on our French web page. We encourage others to contribute, to express their horror and anger, and to develop a discussion about the degree to which we can hold capitalism responsible for this so-called natural disaster.
We have received the following information concerning the sentencing of the Korean militants which we have already reported in these pages [234].
The judge sentenced as follows;
1) Oh Se-cheol, Yang Hyo-sik, Yang Joon-seok and Choi Young-ik : imprisonment of 1 1/2 years, but conditional delay of imprisonment for 3 years for violation of National Security Law, and a fine of 500,000 won ($500)each for violation of Assembly-Demonstration Law.
2) Park Joon-seon, Jeong Won-hyun, Nam-goong Won and Oh Min-gyu : imprisonment of 1 year, but conditional delay of imprisonment for 2 years for violation of National Security Law, and fine of 500,000 won each for violation of Assembly-Demonstration Law.
The meaning of the decision is as follows:
1) The SWLK (Socialist Workers League of Korea) is judged to be an organization for propaganda and agitation for national disturbances, violating Article 7 of the National Security Law.
It shows the political nature of Korean judicial branch, which is a part of state apparatus serving for the capitalist class.
2) The conditional delay of imprisonment can be recognized as the result of Korean and international protest movement. The conditional respite for 3 years means that the imprisonment is suspended for 3 years on the condition of that there will be no other sentence for another crime, and after 3 years the validity of imprisonment sentence expires. But if there is another sentence during the next 3 years, imprisonment from this sentence will follow independently of any imprisonment for further convictions. So, the conditional respite of imprisonment is only a bit better than immediate imprisonment.
3) We, the 8 accused will appeal this sentence to the high court. We will live and act confidently as revolutionary socialists without regard to the political oppression of the Korean state apparatus.
Thank you to all socialists and workers in the world who supported the judicial struggle of Korean socialists.
Please transmit our gratitude to the comrades of the world.
We are publishing here an analytical text from the ICC’s section in Turkey on the current wave of revolts and protests in North Africa and the Middle East. The text aims to provide a general overview of these movements, as did the text ‘What is happening in the Middle East? [235]’. The text by the Turkish comrades offers a somewhat different analysis on certain points, particularly regarding the level attained by the class struggle in Egypt, and whether or not the current inter-bourgeois ‘civil war’ in Libya was preceded by a form of social revolt from below. Since the situation is still very fluid and is still raising a lot of questions, it is all the more important to develop the discussion about the significance and perspectives contained in these events.
‘Revolution’, today with the events currently going on in the Arab world this seems to be the word on everybody’s lips. The first thing that it is necessary to understand when discussing the subject is that not everybody means the same thing by it. The term revolution seems to have been completely devalued today so that any change of bosses is deemed a revolution, from the ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia to the now called ‘Lotus Revolution’ in Egypt, where not even the bosses have changed, with seventeen of the old twenty-seven cabinet members still in government, we have been treated to a whole series of so-called ‘revolutions’ by the media; the ‘Orange Revolution’ in the Ukraine, the ‘Tulip (or Pink) Revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan along with the ethnic cleansing that accompanied it, the ‘Cedar Revolution’ in Lebanon, the ‘Purple Revolution in Iraq (this one was actually a term used by Bush, which didn’t catch on at all), and the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran, the list goes on and on.
For us as communists, a revolution is not just the change in management of the current system. It means a fundamental, the overthrow of the capitalist class, not just a change of faces. That is why we completely reject the idea that what is happening today in the Arab world and Iran are in any way revolutions. If they are not revolutions though, it raises the question of what the nature of these events actually is. It is not only the mass media that is talking about revolutions but also many of those on the left as well. Are they all wrong? And if they are wrong what do these events mean for the working class?
If we are to try to understand current events, it is necessary to be able to place them in a historical context. It allows us to understand the balance of power between different classes, and the dynamic of the situation. Certainly over the last decade the working class has began a slow return to combativeness after the dreadful years that were the nineties. However, it would be a terrible mistake to think that class struggle today is at the same level that it was in the 1980s, let alone the 1970s.
While the past ten years has shown the beginning of a return to class struggle, it must be recognised that it is a very slow process. To put it into context we must look back a few years. The wave of international struggles that began in 1968 were reaching a crescendo at the end of the 1970s. The mass strike was a very real possibility internationally. Possibly the three high points of the period, in chronological order, were the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the UK in 1978-799, the mass strike in Iran in 1978-79, and the Polish strikes of 1980-81. The defeat of these movements was catastrophic for the working class, and led to the years of the 1980s being years of, not a general class offensive, but of defensive actions. The struggles of the 1980s although at times very intense, essentially involved different groups of workers being picked off, isolated, and defeated.
The period also saw the rise of neo-conservatism, represented internationally by Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl, and in this country by Turgut Özal. The end of the decade saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the whole ideological campaign, which accompanied it, with bourgeois academics and ideologues proclaiming the end of both class society and even the end of history. How wrong they were, yet for a very, very short while it could have seemed like that, and the lack of class activity in the 1990s only emphasised the point.
By the turn of the century it was becoming obvious that things were not the way they imagined. After Saddam had been defeated for the first time, and this new era of global peace had broken out, the rest of the decade, after the end of history brought over fifty wars across the world, and as the crisis deepened, not openly as in the past few years, but slowly, creeping up, hitting some countries like ours Argentina dramatically, we began to see the working class return to struggle.
Of course it came slowly, ten years without class struggle, after ten years of defeat had taken a terrible toll on the working class. A lost generation, remember how people said in Turkey “Don’t talk about politics, it is dangerous”, meant a loss of vital experience within the class.
Although the last decade has seen this slow increase in struggles, they had still until very recently still been generally struggle of isolated groups of workers. The past few years, however, have seen a growing realisation that in order to win, workers have to fight together. Witness the TEKEL movement here, or even in America, for so long a backwater of class struggle, generalised attacks are leading to a generalised with masses of workers supporting Wisconsin teachers, and many calls for a general strike. It is in this framework of understanding that we have to try to comprehend the events going on today, and to do this we need to look at a couple of recent large scale struggles.
The current struggles in the Arab world are, in our opinion, certainly not struggles where the working class is the leading force. This does not mean that masses of workers are not participating in them, but that the working class has not been able to assert itself as a class, and has ended up being dragged along within an agenda set by others, and in Libya today we see the disastrous consequences of this,with workers on both sides enthusiastically joining up with what is effectively a civil war on behalf of different bosses. We think that it would be instructive at this point to try to situate the events in relation to the recent movement in Greece and Iran.
3. Greece
The movement in Greece in December of 2008 erupted after a fifteen year-old anarchist was shot dead by two policemen on a Saturday night. Within an hour of the murder violent confrontations with the police had begun in the area around Exarcheia Square in Athens, an area which is traditionally a stronghold of the anarchist movement. By the end of the evening confrontations had occurred in nearly thirty different locations across Greece. The next day the demonstrations continued, and on Monday morning thousands of high school students walked out and demonstrated outside of police stations.
On the Wednesday following the shooting there was a general strike involving over a million workers. This strike, however, was not in response to the murder or the demonstrations, but had been organised prior to these events. In fact the country at the time was also in a period of large scale labour unrest due to the government’s economic policies. It is in this context that we need to try to understand the weakness of the Greek movement.
Despite their being widespread anger against the government’s policies and the mass protests over the murder of a child, the two never seemed to connect. The only strike in support of the protest movement was a half day strike of primary school teachers. Although there were of course many workers involved in the protests, the workers did involve themselves as workers, but on an individual level. This is not to say that attempts weren’t made to link the struggle to the working class. Militants occupied the HQ of the General Confederation of Greek Workers in Athens and called for a general strike. And yet the working class didn’t move as a class, and ultimately the protests died out.
We see this as a recurring theme in today’s struggles, large scale protest movements without any real input from the working class. If we go back to the struggles that we mentioned earlier, in the UK, Iran, and Poland, it is clear that the working class played a central role. In these struggles today that is not the case. Why it is not the case and what it means for struggles in the current period is a crucial question. Before we attempt to analyse it, we will first look at another example, the struggles in Iran following the elections of the summer of2009.
4. Iran
In June 2009, following allegations of electoral fraud, mass demonstrations broke out in the streets of Tehran, and rapidly spread across the entire country. The state reacted viciously and unleashed its repressive forces resulting in hundreds of deaths. Whilst the initial protests were clearly fermented by anger caused by the obvious fraud in the elections, more radical slogans quickly began to emerge.
Similar to the movement in Greece we saw massive violent clashes with the forces of the state, this time on an even larger scale, but again we saw workers involved as individuals and not as workers. Although information was hard to come by, it seems that there was only one strike, at the Khodro car factory, which is the biggest factory in Iran, all three shifts walked off for an hour each, in protest against state repression. As in Greece the movement on the streets lasted for a few weeks and then faded out.
In March of 2007 there were massive workers struggles, which started with a 100,000 strong teachers strike, and spread to many other sectors continuing for months. Yet two years ago the working class didn’t move despite the massive repression the state unleashed against the demonstrations, in which most of the participants were working class people.
Without the strength of the working class behind them, movements such as this have a tendency to wear themselves out. If we look back to the period at the end of the 1970s in Tehran, by the autumn of 1978 the movement seemed to have exhausted itself. A popular movement, similar to those we see today, including all of the disposed, but also other classes seemed to be running out of steam. It was in October when the working class entered the struggle with massive strikes, particular those in the vital oil sector, that the situation changed, and revolution seemed to be a real possibility, workers councils were formed and the government fell. After Khomeini power, the state spent the next few years struggling against the workers committees in the factories.
Of course, we could have talked about other popular struggles, the ‘Red Shirt’ movement in Thailand being a prime example, again another mass movement mobilising tens, even hundreds of thousands of people, many of them workers, against the state, another movement that lasted a few weeks, and then burnt out, and another movement where workers weren’t involved as a class.
How did we characterise the period before the recent series of revolts that has spread across the Arab world, and to what extent were we right? Basically we perceived of the current period as one in which the working class was slowly recovering its will to struggle. The reopening of open economic crisis across the world in 2007, certainly changed this dynamic somewhat, but not substantially. It is very clear that it caused a momentary dip in working class confidence with workers being afraid to struggle due to the possibility of losing their jobs. However this can be counterbalanced by the vast number of workers who were forced to struggle due to the severity of the bosses’ economic attacks. Also important was the lack of experience within the working class itself, and the lack of workers consciousness of their power as a class.
The mass outburst of struggle in countries including, but not only, Greece and Iran were seen in this context. The mass austerity programmes taking place across the world were seen as likely to force the working class into struggle and not only the working class, but also other disposed classes, witness the mass food riots in various countries across the world in 2007-08. However we believed that the working class was not yet strong enough to take a definitive role in these struggles. Of course, it was always possible that something could happen and the working class would impose itself on a struggle. “The day before a revolution nothing seems more unlikely. The day after the revolution nothing seems less likely” said Rosa Luxemburg. However we felt that the development of working class consciousness and strength would be a slow process, punctuated by mass revolts where the working class would be unable to play the central role.
Then on 17thDecember last year a young man burnt himself to death in idi Bouzid in Tunisia, and the world seemed to change.
6. Tunisia
Following Mohamed Bouaziz’ self-immolation outside the town hall hundreds of youths gathered to protest and were met by tear gas and violence. Riots broke out. As the scale of the protests increased the town was sealed off by the state. It was too late though the fire had already begun to spread. Four days later there was rioting in Menzel Bouzaiene, and within a week in the capital Tunis. After 28 days President Ben Ali had run off to Malta on the way to his new refuge in Saudi Arabia.
The thing that we need to analyse here as communists is the class nature of this revolt. Many commentators in the mainstream press have drawn an analogy with the events of Eastern Europe twenty years ago when the bosses were changed across eastern Europe, and with the more recent ‘colour revolutions’. For us the class nature is of central importance.
The causes of the revolt seem to be widespread discontent amongst the working class, mass unemployment and low wages as well as anger against a kleptocratic government. Certainly the demands of the movement were centred on working class demands concerning jobs and wages, and of course anger at the resulting police repression played a huge part. Mass youth unemployment and a overwhelmingly young demographic lead to much of the movement being centred around rioting and street protest of, mainly, unemployed youth. However, there were also big workers strikes particularly amongst teachers and miners as well as a general strike in Sfax. The state also used lockouts in the attempt to stop the strikes spreading, a tactic that we will see used again in Egypt. Also we saw the UGTT, the regimes union confederation, taking the side of the struggles and seeming to ‘radicalise’, a sure sign that there was widespread struggle amongst the working class.
It seems clear to us that in the events in Tunisia, although not exclusively, represented on the whole a working class movement. In Egypt this would be less so with the working class still playing an important role, and in Libya the working class would be conspicuous by its absence.
To return to the events in Libya though, after the fall of Ben Ali, a ‘Unity Government’ was announced, with 12 members of Ben Ali’s RCD, plus the President and Prime Minister who had just quit the party in an attempt to gain credibility, , three representatives from the trade unions and a few individual representatives of small opposition parties. Despite the Prime Minister’s assurance that all members of the RCD in the government had ‘clean hands’, the protests continued. The union representatives resigned after a day in office, obviously keen on keeping their new found credibility, and the rats started to leave the RCD like a sinking ship with its central committee disbanding itself on the 20th.
And as protests continued in Tunisia and people continued to protest, and governments continued to fall, a spark had been lit.
7. Egypt
Algeria saw the first signs of flames with large scale rioting hitting many cities in early January, but it was in Egypt that the fire really started to burn. The first protests were held on National Police Day, 25thJanuary. The protests were widely advertised on social media, and particularly through Asmaa Mahfouz’ , a female journalist, youtube video going viral. The media have picked up on all this calling it a ‘FaceBook revolution’, but it is worth remembering that hundreds of thousands of leaflets were also distributed by various groupings.
The protests on the 25thdrew tens of thousands of people in Cairo, and thousands of others in cities across Egypt. As the movement grew there became a real possibility of Mubarak falling just as Ben Ali had done. The government closed workplaces with a clear intention of stopping workers strikes breaking out. There seemed to be splits within the state as the military as an organisation, not individual troops on the ground, refused to fire live ammunition. Mubarak promised to form a new government, then promised that he would step down at the next elections in September. Meanwhile the protests continued. On 2ndFebruary, the ministry of the interior organised an assault of the demonstrations by Mubarak loyalists. The army stepped in, although at times somewhat half heartedly, to divide the two sides, clearly preparing the way for if Mubarak was forced to go. The next week, the reopening of workplaces meant the reopening of workers strikes Workers in many different industries in Cairo and across the delta began strikes. These strikes and the very real possibility of them spreading seemed to be the final point that convinced the military that Mubarak had to go.
On the 11thof February, the military’s representative new Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned and two days later the military enacted a constitutional coup. Strikers were instructed to go back to work, and strikes were forbidden. For a while they continued, but then went back to work mostly after winning wage increases and concessions.
The class nature of the Egyptian events seems different from those in Tunisia. While the movement in Tunisia seemed to have a mostly working class character the events in Egypt seemed to have a wide cross class character encompassing all social classes. Whilst the working class played an important role, possibly even a crucial one, it was never the leading force.
Many on the left talked about their being a mass strike in Egypt. The protests in Egypt saw many more workers strikes than the struggle in Tunisia. We can put this down to Egypt having a more experienced and militant working class. While we believe that the potential for the mass strike was there, and that it was quite possibly this that scared the military into dumping Mubarak when they did, we don’t believe that it materialised. All in all around 50,000 workers were involved in strikes, over 20,000 of them at one factory. While this demonstrates an important movement it was not the mass strike, and was not even on as big a scale as the strike wave in Egypt a few years earlier. The speed with which the movement dissipated showed that it was not as strong as many on the left were saying.
8. Libya
The protests in Libya began on 15thJanuary, and from the start it was clear that these were very different in their nature. The thing that started the protest was the arrest of Fathi Terbil, a lawyer representing Islamicist militants murdered in a massacre in a prison, in Benghazi. Police violently broke up the protests in Bengahzi, but that didn’t stop them from spreading to nearby al-Bayda, as well as Az Zitan near to Tripoli in the West. In an effort to make concessions as the demonstrations spread the state accede to some of the protestor’s demands and realised 110 members of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, a Jihadi group from prison. Still the protests continued.
The state reacted in an extremely violent way with death squads used to demoralise the protestors. Massacres were reported on both sides as senior Islamic figures and tribal leaders issued declarations against the regime, and called for the government to step down. By now protests had spread to the west where demonstrations in Tripoli were crushed viciously by the state. In the South the Tuareg people were called into the revolt at the request of the powerful Warfalla tribe.
On the 22nd Gaddafi appeared on state TV to deny reports that he had fled to Venezuela, and vowed to fight “until the last drop of his blood had been spilt”. The next day as demonstrations grew in size and many tribal leaders, who had been previously silent started to call for Gaddafi to go, William Hague the British foreign minister, first started to talk about ‘humanitarian intervention’. By this point the situation had clearly developed into a civil war.
And where was the working class in all of this? To a large extent Libya, like many of the Gulf oil states, relies on foreigners to do the majority of its manual jobs. The vast majority of the working class in Libya was desperately trying to get out of the country as the situation deteriorated and the violence increased. Unlike in Tunisia, and Egypt, the working class didn’t appear to play a significant role in any way. The movement from the start seemed to be dominated by Islamicism and tribalism. There were no workers strikes that we know of, and the one report of an oil strike in the Arab media was later shown to be just the management closing down production.
Of course there are Libyan workers too. Evidently though they were too weak to play any role in these struggles as a class. That doesn’t mean that workers had no role at all in the events. The demonstrations that took place in Tripoli all seemed to occur in working class districts. However the working class was too weak to assert its own interests and have basically been used as cannon fodder in a civil war in which they had no interest, and are now dying under the bombing raids of the US and its allies. Before we continue with the story of how the war developed and how the imperialist powers became involved, we will quickly look at what was going on in other Arab states.
9. Events in other States and Reaction in Bahrain
The first country to follow Tunisia’s lead was neighbouring Algeria. Protests started there on 3rdJanuary in response to increases in the price of basic foodstuffs. Whilst isolated riots have been common in Algeria over the past few years, these were different in that they spread over the entire country within a week. The protests were virtually entirely around class demands, and were beaten back by a mixture of repression and concessions.
In January large scale protest also began in Jordan and Yemen. In Jordan protests against high prices inflation and unemployment were organised by the Muslim brotherhood. It ended up in the King changing a few faces in the government, and having to make wide-reaching economic concessions.
The protests in Yemen are still continuing as we write. It currently seems that the military is in the process of changing sides with Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a leading generalfor massacres in the 1994 civil war switching to the side of the protestors.
Outside of the Arab world Iran and TRNC have also seen protests with a revival of the ‘Green Movement’ in Iran and protestors shot dead in the streets. Bahrain has also been another focal point of demonstrations eventually resulting in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf co-operation council sending in troops to help to ‘stabilise’ the situation as the Bahraini state unleashed its repressive forces against demonstrators. The movement in Bahrain seems to have taken more and more of a sectarian dimension with members of the Shia majority which was the leading force in the protests against the Sunni monarchy, now openly calling for Iranian intervention. Also protests in the Northern Shia majority areas of Saudi Arabia have been held in support of the Bahraini rebels. Bahrain has also seen attacks launched upon foreign workers, mostly from South East Asia by the demonstrators. Events of this sort have also been reported in Libya.
Finally the Syrian army has just massacred 15 protestors outside a mosque in the small southern town of Daraa, which has been the centre of the protest movement due to local anger about the arrest of a group of children in a school for writing pro-Egyptian revolt graffiti on a school wall.
Virtually unnoticed amongst all of this have been the protests in Iraq, where a minimum of 35 people have been murdered by the state. Of course Iraq is already a ‘democracy’ occupied by US military advisors, which is probably why these murders received less news coverage than others.
Now to return to Libya where today we have a full scale NATO bombing campaign going on. Of course it isn’t the first time that Libya has been bombed by the Western powers. Nor was the 1986 bombing of Tripoli by the US the first time. In fact the first time aerial bombing was used in history was 1911 by the Italians in the Italo-war. The Italians soon upgraded from using bombs to chemical weapons.
At the end of February it looked like Gaddafi had lost the initiative, but by the middle of March, he had regained the upper hand with thirteen of the country’s twenty two districts back under state control, and two more seeming that they were about to be retaken. The road to Benghazi to be open, and the end of the rebellion in sight. It was at this point on the 17thof March that United Nations resolution 1973 was passed authorising a ‘no-fly zone’. After getting a poorly attended Arab League meeting, with only about half of its members present,to back to bombing campaign to give it some sort of ‘legitimacy’, the military operations are now under NATO control with the Arab League criticising the bombings that they called for. It seems like they, like much of the world, had somehow imagined that a ‘no-fly zone’ would just involve shooting down any aircraft trying to bomb civilians, and not a mass bombing campaign murdering civilians. It almost as if Iraq had never happened. For those with short memories 110 Tomahawk missiles and bombing raids by the British and French air forces on March 19thwould have acted as a sharp reminder.
Now it is clear, beyond any doubt, that the events in Libya have degenerated into an all out civil war with workers on both sides being massacred on behalf of those who control, or would control Libya.
It seems now that the reaction has firmly set in. The events in Libya show only the worst extent of where the weakness of the working class, and its inability to impose itself on the situation have left us. How resilient the Gaddafi regime will be and whether it can hold on remains to be seen. We think that it should be remembered that back in the middle of February people were only giving Gaddafi a few days, yet he is still in power in Tripoli. We suspect that he will hold on for longer than the West imagines. At the moment he is appealing to the idea of protecting the homeland and national defence. The Warfalla tribe, over a million strong and nearly 20% of the population are nowfor reconciliation, claiming almost unbelievably that no significant tribal figures are involved in the rebellion. As loyalties shift to and fro large amounts of cash are said to be changing hands.
In Yemen it is becoming increasingly clear that whoever ends up on top it will just be a reshuffling of leaders. Bahrain has seen another rebellion crushed just as the one back in the 1990s was. Syria will probably manage to ride out the protests even if it takes a few more massacres. After all those who remember the tens of thousands of civilians murdered in the city of Hama at the start of the 1980s know that the Assad regime isn’t adverse to a bit of blood.
And so it seems that a movement which began in Tunisia is now drawing to a close. That isn’t to say that there won’t be more murders of protestors, or even the odd dictator falling, such as Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, to be replaced by a military strong man. However the movement that erupted at the end of last year with such promise seems to be over, or at least dead to the working class.
For us our general analysis of the period remains unchanged. The working class is returning to struggle slowly but surely, but is not yet strong enough to stamp its imprint firmly onto the times. We expect that the future will show us more struggles along the lines of the revolts in the Arab states and those previously in Greece and Iran. As the economy continues to stagnate, a process that cannot but be aided by the increase in oil prices caused by an ongoing war in Libya, and the massive withdrawal of capital to Japan that is almost bound to happen in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, states will have no other solution but to resort to increasing austerity and increasing repression.
The working class in some of the Arab states, most notably Tunisia and Egypt, but also Algeria, has made a step towards recovering its experience of how to struggle. In others the weakness of the working class has been brutally exposed and the resulting repression and increase in sectarian tensions, not to mention Libya being dragged into a civil war will almost certainly act as a weight around the neck of the working class.
Those on the left who talked of workers’ revolution in the Arab world have been shown to be wrong. The working class is still too weak to assert itself. The road to rebuilding the lost experience and class consciousness will be long. Yet there are reasons to hope. The speed with which the Egyptian military jettisoned Mubarak after workers strikes broke out shows that the ruling class, at least, is still well aware of the potential that the working class holds, and in a faraway country where working class struggle has for years been conspicuous by its absence, workers in Wisconsin fighting against cuts in the largest struggle the US has seen in years raised banners supporting Egyptian workers implicitly recognising that the class struggle is an international one of workers across the world facing the same sort of attacks.
25/03/11
“Expressing grave concern at the deteriorating situation, the escalation of violence, and the heavy civilian casualties…
Condemning the gross and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions…
Considering that the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya against the civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity…
Expressing its determination to ensure the protection of civilians ….
Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General….to take all necessary measures…. to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack”
From UN Resolution 1973,17 March 2011
Once again, the great leaders of this world are full of fine humanitarian phrases, ringing speeches about ‘democracy’ and the safety of populations, but their real aim is justify their imperialist adventures.
Since 20 March an ‘international coalition’[1] has been carrying out a major military operation in Libya, poetically named ‘Operation Dawn Odyssey’ by the USA. Every day, dozens of war planes have been taking off from powerful French and US aircraft carriers, or from bases inside the UK, to launch a carpet of bombs at the all the areas containing the armed forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime[2]. In plain words, this is war!
Obviously Gaddafi is a bloody dictator. After several weeks of retreat in the face of the rebellion, the self-proclaimed ‘Guide’ of Libya was able to reorganise his elite troops to make a counter-attack. Day after day, his forces were able to gain ground, crushing everything in his path, ‘rebels’ as well the population in general. And without doubt, he was preparing a bloodbath for the inhabitants of Benghazi when the Operation Dawn Odyssey was launched. The air strikes by the coalition took a heavy toll of Gaddafi’s forces and thus in effect prevented the massacre.
But who can believe for a moment that the real goal of this use of force by the coalition really has the aim of ensuring the welfare of the Libyan population?
Where was this coalition when Gaddafi slaughtered over 1000 prisoners held at Abu Salim jail in Tripoliin 1996? The fact is that for 40 years this regime has been jailing people, terrorising them, making them disappear, executing them…with complete impunity.
Yesterday, where was the coalition when Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt or Bouteflika in Algeria were shooting at crowds during the uprisings of January and February?
And what is the coalition doing today when massacres are taking place in Yemen, Syria or Bahrain? Oh yes, it’s closing its eyes to Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain – to help the state repress the demonstrations there.
Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama and Co. can present themselves as saviours, as defenders of the widow and the orphan, but for them the suffering of the civilians of Benghazi is just an alibi to intervene and defend their sordid imperialist interests. All these gangsters have a reason for launching this imperialist crusade:
- This time, unlike in recent wars, the USA has not been at the forefront of the military operation. Why? Why is the American bourgeoisie playing a balancing act over Libya?
On the one hand it can’t allow itself to carry out a massive land intervention on Libyan soil. This would be seen by the whole Arab world as an act of aggression, a new invasion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have greatly increased aversion to ‘American imperialism, the traditional ally of Israel’. And the change of regime in Egypt, a long-term ally of Uncle Sam, has further weakened its position in the region.
But at the same time, they can’t stay outside the game because this would risk totally discrediting their status as a force fighting for democracy in the world. They obviously can’t give a free hand to the Britain and France tandem
- Britain’s participation has a dual objective. It is also trying to polish up its tarnished image in the Arab world following its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is also trying to get its own population used to the idea of foreign military intentions which are bound to get more and more frequent. ‘Saving the Libyan people from Gaddafi’ is a perfect opportunity for that[3]
- The case of France is a bit different. This is the only big western country which still has a certain popularity in the Arab world, acquired under De Gaulle and amplified by its refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
By intervening on behalf of the ‘Libyan people’, president Sarkozy knew very well that he would be welcomed with open arms by people there and that this would be seen in a good light by neighbouring countries, for whom Gaddafi is a bit too unpredictable and uncontrollable for their taste. And we have indeed heard the cry of ‘Vive Sarkozy’, ‘Vive la France’ in the streets of Benghazi. France has, for once, taken good advantage of the USA’s difficulties[4].
Sarkozy has thus made up some of the ground lost by his government’s gaffes in Tunisia and Egypt (supporting the dictators that were eventually kicked out by the social revolts, allowing its ministers to stay too close to their regimes while the struggles were in full flow, even offering to send its police forces to help with the repression in Tunisia….).
We can’t go into all the details about the particular interests of each state in the coalition now at work in Libya, but one thing is sure: there’s nothing humanitarian or philanthropic about it! And the same goes for those who abstained from voting for the UN resolution or did so with great reluctance:
- China, Russia and Brazil are very hostile to this intervention, simply because they have nothing to gain from Gaddafi’s departure;
- Italy actually has a lot to lose from it. The present regime has, up till now, assured it easy access to oil and a draconian control of its borders. The destabilisation of Libya could put all this into question;
- Angela Merkel’s Germany is still a military dwarf. All its forces are tied up in Afghanistan. Participating in this operation would have made its weakness at this level even more obvious. As the Spanish paper El Pais put it on March 21, “We are seeing a rerun of the constant balancing act between Germany’s economic giantism, demonstrated during the euro crisis, and France’s political strength, which is largely based on its military power”.
In sum, Libya, like the whole of the Middle East, is a huge chessboard on which the great powers are trying to advance their pawns.
For weeks Gaddafi’s troops were advancing on Benghazi, the rebels’ fiefdom, slaughtering everything in their path. Why did the great powers, if they had so many interests in intervening in the region, wait so long to do so?
In the first days, the tide of revolt originating in Tunisia and Egypt also hit Libya. The same anger against oppression and poverty was welling up in all layers of society. At this point it was out of the question for the ‘world’s great democracies’ to really support this social movement, despite their fine speeches condemning the repression. Their diplomacy hypocritically rejected the idea of interference and proclaimed the right of peoples to make their own history. Experience shows that it’s the same with every social struggle: the bourgeoisie everywhere closes its eyes to the most horrible repression, when it’s not directly lending a hand with it! But in Libya what seems to have begun as a real revolt by ‘those at the bottom’, by unarmed civilians who bravely attacked military barracks and torched the HQs of the so-called ‘Peoples’ Committees’, quickly turned into a bloody ‘civil war’ between bourgeois factions. In other words, the movement escaped the control of the non-exploiting strata. The proof for this is that one of the leaders of the rebellion and the Transitional National Council is al Jeleil, Gaddafi’s former minister of justice! This is a man whose hands are equally as bloodsoaked as those of his former Guide, now rival. Another indication: while the proletarians have no country, the provisional government has adopted the flag of the old Libyan monarchy. Finally, Sarkozy has recognised the TNC as the “legitimate representatives of the Libyan people”.
The revolt in Libya thus took a diametrically opposed turn to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. This was mainly due to the weakness of the working class in this country. The main industry, oil, almost exclusively employs workers from Europe, the rest of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. From the beginning these workers took no part in the movement of social protest. The result was that the local petty bourgeoisie stamped its mark on the revolt – hence the ubiquity of the national flag for example. Worse, the ‘foreign’ workers, who could not therefore identify with these struggles, fled the country. There were even persecutions of black workers by ‘rebel’ forces, following numerous rumours about the regime’s use of mercenaries from black Africa to repress the demonstrations, casting suspicion on all black workers.
This turn-around in the situation in Libya has consequences which go well beyond its frontiers. First Gaddafi’s repression, then the intervention of the coalition, is a blow against all the social movements in the region. This has permitted other dictatorial regimes to embark on a course of bloody repression: in Bahrain where the Saudi army has come to the assistance of the regime in dealing brutally with the demonstrations[5]; in Yemen where on 18 March government forces fired on the crowd, killing 51 people; and now in Syria where scores have also been gunned down.
Having said this, it is not at all certain that this will be a fatal blow. The Libyan situation is like a ball and chain on the world proletariat’s feet, but there is so much anger against the development of poverty that it will not paralyse it completely. In Egypt and Tunisia, where the ‘revolution’ is supposed to have triumphed already, confrontations continue between demonstrators and the now ‘democratic’ state administered by more or less the same forces who ran it under the ‘dictators’. Demonstrations have also continued in Morocco, despite King Mohammed VI declaring a constitutional monarchy.
Whatever happens, for all the populations facing the most terrible repression, or the bombs of this or that international coalition, the sky will not clear until the proletariat of the central countries, particularly western Europe, develops its own massive and determined struggles. Armed by its experience, especially with the traps of trade unionism and democracy, it would then be able to show its capacities for self-organisation and open up a genuinely revolutionary perspective, the only future for the whole of humanity.
To be in solidarity with all those today falling under bullets and bombs does not mean supporting Gaddafi, or the ‘rebels’, or the UN coalition. On the contrary: we have to denounce all of them as imperialist bloodhounds!
To be in solidarity is to choose the camp of proletarian internationalism, to struggle against ‘our own’ exploiters and killers, to participate in the development of workers’ struggles and class consciousness all over the world!
Pawel 25/3/11
[1] Britain, France, the USA in particular, but also Italy, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Norway, Holland, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
[2] If we are to believe the media, only Gaddafi’s henchmen are dying under these bombs. But let’s recall that at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, the same media were telling us that this was a ‘clean war’. In reality, in the name of protecting little Kuwait from the army of the butcher Saddam Hussein, the war claimed hundreds of thousands of victims.
[3] We have to remember that in 2007, in Tripoli, former British PM Tony Blair threw his arms around Colonel Gaddafi, thanking him for signing a contract with BP. The current denunciations of the ‘mad dictator’ are pure cynicism and hypocrisy.
[4] Let’s not forget that France is also changing its tune here. It received Gaddafi with great ceremony in 207. The images of Gaddafi’s tent in the middle of Paris went round the world and made Sarkozy and his clique look a bit ridiculous. But now we have a new movie: NATO, the Return.
[5] Here again the weakness of the working class facilitates the repression. The movement in Bahrain has been dominated by the Shia majority, supported by Iran.
"Fear the worst!" That's the message now splashed across newspaper front pages, in all the media, and on the lips of the world's leaders too. But it can't get any worse! Because from the earthquake, to the tsunami and then the nuclear accidents, and it's not finished there, it means the current predicament of the Japanese population is horrific. And because now there are millions of people on the planet living under the Sword of Damocles of the nuclear cloud released by the reactors at Fukushima. This time round, it is not a poor country like Haiti and Indonesia that is being hit hard but the heart of one of the most industrialised countries of the world, one that specialises in cutting-edge technologies.
It's a country that has first-hand experience of the devastating effects of nuclear energy, having suffered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Once again, the madness of capitalism and irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie has become front page news. Only now is the world finding out that millions of people have been crammed into wooden houses, along coastal shores, permanently threatened by the risk of earthquakes and giant waves that can consume all before them. And this in a country that's the world's third largest economic power!
As if this were not enough, they have also built nuclear power stations, which are all real time bombs, at the mercy of the earthquakes and the tsunamis. Most of Japan's nuclear power plants were built 40 years ago, not only in densely populated areas but also near the coast. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to flooding. Thus, of the 55 Japanese reactors spread over 17 sites, 11 have been affected by the disaster. As a direct consequence, the population is already exposed to radiation levels that have officially[1] risen to more than 40 times the norm as far away as in Tokyo, 250 km from Fukushima, a radiation level which the Japanese government nonetheless declared to be of “no risk”! And it’s not only nuclear power stations that have been hit but also petrochemical plants built by the coast, and some of these have set on fire, which will only make the disaster worse and add to the existing ecological catastrophe.
The bourgeoisie is still trying to make us believe that it is all the fault of nature, that we cannot predict the power of earthquakes and the magnitude of tsunamis. This is true. But what is most striking is how capitalism, after two hundred years in which it has produced phenomenal scientific knowledge and technical know-how that could be used to prevent this kind of disaster constantly increases the monstrous danger to humanity. The capitalist world of today has enormous technological machinery but is not able to use it to benefit humanity, as it is only concerned with the profits of capital... to the detriment of our livelihoods.
Since the Kobe earthquake disaster in 1995, the Japanese government has, for example, developed a policy of constructing earthquake resistant buildings that have withstood the quake, but which are intended to house the very rich or to serve as city office blocks.
Today, comparisons abound with previous major nuclear accidents, especially with the melt-down of the reactor at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. Officially no-one died in that one. In comparison, all the political leaders are saying that the current disaster is not "for now" as serious an incident as the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. Should we be reassured by these outrageously optimistic remarks? How do we assess the real danger to the populations of Japan, Asia, Russia, the Americas… and the world? The answer leaves us in no doubt: the consequences will be dramatic in every sense. There is already major nuclear pollution in Japan and the TEPCO officials who operate the Japanese nuclear plants can only deal with the risk of an explosion by fiddling with the problem day by day and shamelessly exposing hundreds of employees and fire-fighters to fatal levels of radiation. Here we see the fundamentaldifference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On the one hand there is a ruling class that has no hesitation in sending ‘its’ people to their deaths and, more generally still, endangering the lives of tens of millions of people in the name of its sacrosanct profits. On the other hand, there are workers ready to sacrifice their lives and to suffer the slow and unbearable agony of exposure to radiation on humanity's behalf.Today, the impotence of the bourgeoisie is such that after a week of desperate attempts to cool the damaged reactor, its specialists are forced to play the sorcerer's apprentice, trying to reconnect the different systems for cooling the reactor's core onto the electricity network. Nobody knows if this will work: either the pumps work properly and succeed in cooling the reactor, or the cables and equipment are damaged which could create short-circuits, fires and... explosions! The only solution then will be to cover the core of the reactor with sand and concrete, like... Chernobyl.[2] Faced with such atrocities now and in the future, our exploiters will always respond in the same way: with lies!
In 1979, Washington lied about the radioactive effects of the meltdown of the core of the reactor, while still evacuating 140,000 people; if no actual deaths were reported, the cancers still multiplied one hundredfold in the population, something which the U.S. government never wanted to acknowledge.
With regard to Chernobyl, when the problems mounted with the plant and its maintenance, the Russian government hid the urgency of the situation for weeks. Only after the reactor exploded and an immense nuclear cloud was dispersed miles up in the air and thousands of miles around did the world come to see the magnitude of the disaster. But this kind of behaviour is not just peculiar to Stalinism. The western officials behaved exactly the same. At the time, the French government excelled itself with a whopping great lie about this cloud coming to a full stop right at the western border of France! Another interesting fact, even today, is that the WHO (World Health Organisation), no doubt colluding with the IAEA (International Agency for Atomic Energy), produced a derisory and even laughable review of the Chernobyl explosion: 50 people dead, 9 children deaths from cancer, and a possible 4,000 more cancer fatalities! In fact, according to a study by the New York Science Academy, 985,000 people perished due to this nuclear accident.[3] And today these very same agencies are responsible for producing a run-down on the situation at Fukushima and informing us of the risks! How, after that, are they at all believable? For example, what is going to become of those they call "the liquidators" (those who are now dealing with the emergency) at Fukushima when we know that at Chernobyl "of the 830,000 liquidators brought onto the site after the event, between 112,000 and 125,000 are dead."[4] Even today, the bourgeoisie tries to hide the fact that this reactor is still highly dangerous as there is still an urgent necessity to continue enclosing the reactor core under more and more new layers of concrete, just as it hides the fact that there have been no less than 200 incidents at the Fukushima power stations during the past ten years!
All countries lie about the dangers from nuclear power! The French State expresses unerring confidence that the 58 nuclear reactors of L'Hexagone, the company in charge, are perfectly safe, when most of these power stations are either in seismic zones, or in coastal areas, or on rivers vulnerable to flooding. During the stormy weather of 1999, when gales inflicted serious damage across France and left 88 dead in Europe, the power station at Blaye, near Bordeaux, was flooded and this nearly caused the melt-down of a reactor. Few people knew about it. And then there's the power station at Fessenheim that was so obsolescent that it had to close-down for a few years. But by using replacement parts (many of which aren't the approved standard), it is somehow still in operation, and no doubt the maintenance staff will suffer the consequences of exposure to the radiation. That’s what they mean by "being in control" and “transparency”!
From the beginning of the earthquake in Japan, on Friday, March 11th, the media advisedly reassured us that the Japanese nuclear power stations were among the "safest" in the world. Two days later it contradicted itself and recalled that the company, TEPCO, which manages the power stations in Japan, had already hidden incidents of nuclear radiation leaks. How can it be that the power stations in France, where "in the space of ten years, the number of minor incidents and faults at nuclear sites has doubled"[5], like they have elsewhere in the world, "are any "safer"? In no way at all. "Around 20% of the 440 commercial reactors in operation worldwide are located in areas of ‘significant seismic activity’, according to the WNA, World Nuclear Association, a grouping of industrialists. Some of the 62 reactors under construction are also in areas of seismic risk, just like many of the 500 other projects especially in countries with emerging economies. Several nuclear power stations - including the four reactors at Fukushima damaged by the tsunami on March 11th - are on or near the ‘Ring of Fire’, a 40,000 km arc of tectonic faults around the Pacific."[6]
Thus, reliable information "suggests that radioactive elements are more and more around us. For example, while plutonium did not exist naturally before 1945, we are now finding it in the milk teeth of British children."[7], and this despite the fact that Britain has ended its commercial nuclear programme.
And Japan is not just suffering from the nuclear catastrophe but from another humanitarian disaster too. Thus, the world's third largest economic power has been plunged into crisis, unprecedented since the Second World War, in the space of a few hours. The same terrifying ingredients are present: massive destruction, tens of thousands dead and to top it off, radiation, like that from the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Millions of people in north-eastern Japan are having to live without electricity, without drinking water, with diminishing supplies of food, supplies which may already be contaminated. 600,000 people have been uprooted by the tsunami that has devastated entire towns close to the Pacific Ocean, and have been left destitute, out in the cold and the snow. Contrary to what the Japanese government says – it has continued to downplay the seriousness of the situation, and the numbers affected, providing small details of the increase in people dead, day after day - we can already, without hesitation, begin to count the deaths in the tens of thousands for the country as a whole. The sea is continually depositing dead bodies along the shores. This against a backdrop of massive destruction of homes, buildings, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc.
Villages, buildings, trains and even entire towns were swept away by the power of the tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan. For some towns, located in what are usually narrow valleys like at Minamisanriku, at least half the 17,000 people were swept away and perished. With the warning given by the government of only 30 minutes, the roads were quickly congested, putting the "laggards" at the mercy of the waves.
The population has been saluted by all the Western media for its "exemplary courage" and "discipline", and has been called on by the Japanese Prime Minister to "rebuild the country from scratch", i.e. in plain language, the working class of this country must now expect fresh hardship, increased exploitation and worsening poverty. Admittedly, all this fits in nicely with the propaganda abouta servile population that exercises with the company boss in the mornings, who are silent and submissive, and who remain quite stoical and carry on as normal while the buildings are crashing down on top of them. For sure, the Japanese population is extraordinarily courageous, but the reality is completely at odds with the "stoicism" described in the papers. Apart from the hundreds of thousands who packed into gyms and other communal areas, and whose anger rose to a fever pitch and rightly so, hundreds of thousands of others tried to flee, including a growing number of the around 38 million people in Tokyo and its suburbs. And those who remained, did not do it to brave the dangers but because they had no choice. With no money, where can you go? And who's going to take you in? In every sense, being an ‘environmental refugee’ isn't acceptable in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. About 50 million people are forced to migrate every year for reasons connected to the environment but they have no status under the UN Convention, even if they are victims of a disaster, be it "nuclear" or whatever. Clearly, the Japanese with no money who wants to try to escape the nuclear disaster, or simply to relocate elsewhere in the world, is going to be denied the ‘right of asylum’ all round the world.
This insane system of exploitation is moribund and shows itself to be more barbaric with every passing day. Although immense knowledge and enormous technological power has been acquired by mankind, the bourgeoisie is incapable of putting it to work for the good of humanity, to protect us all against natural disasters. Instead of this, capitalism is a destructive force, not just here and there, but all over the world.
"We have no other choice, faced with this capitalist hell: it's Socialism or Barbarism. We must fight it or die"[8].
Mulan 19/3/11
[1]And experience shows that we can't give much credit to the official figures in general and to those concerned with nuclear especially: lies, manipulation, under-estimation of the dangers are here the golden rule for every country.
[2]As Le Canard Enchaîné reported on March 16th 2011, the current disaster was even predicted: “the eight German engineers from Areva who worked on site at the Fukushima nuclear power station 1, weren't mad (…) surprised by the earthquake 'when the number 4 reactor block was fully operational' on Friday evening (March 11th), they were sent awa to safety 40 miles from the nuclear power station” and then “taken to Frankfurt on Sunday March 13th”.
[3] Source: ‘Troublante discrétion de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé’, Le Monde, 19 March.
[8] The remarks made by someone in one of our forums in France during the discussion of this disaster:https://fr.internationalism.org/forum/312/tibo/4593/seisme-au-japon [242]
On 23 March the Egyptian state passed a law banning strikes and demonstrations. How many people, reflecting on the upheavals there in January and February, thought that it had turned out to be just an '18-day wonder'?
In reality, the events that led up to the resignation of Mubarak were not just a flash in the pan, but had roots going back years and involved forces that are still intact today. For a start it should be underlined that the removal of Mubarak came about after working class action. For all the activities by the many social strata gathered in Tahir Square, it was workers' strikes that convinced the dominant faction of the Egyptian ruling class that it had to dump an unpopular figure.
As we said in an article first published online in mid-February “the power of this movement was not acquired overnight. For the past seven years, it is the workers who have been at the frontline of resistance against the poverty and repression imposed on the entire population. There were a number of strike movements in 2004, 2006-7 and 2007-8, with the textile workers of Mahalla playing a particularly significant role, but with many other sectors joining in.” But also, as we said in ‘What is happening in the Middle East?’ published in mid-March, referring to the various recent movements throughout the region, “we can characterise them as movements of the non-exploiting classes, social revolts against the state. The working class has, in general, not been in the leadership of these rebellions but it has certainly had a significant presence and influence.”
So, although the working class in Egypt is a powerful force it is not the only non-exploiting class. And all sorts of ideas that have been floated in recent years as offering 'alternatives' to Mubarak still have the potential to be employed by the ruling capitalist class.
In a complex situation there will always be a range of explanations available. In late 2009 Zed Books published Egypt: The Moment of Change. Earlier on this year Zed re-publicised the book in the light of events saying that “With many of the chapters written by Egyptian academics and activists who are now on the very first line of the barricades, this is the one book that has all the answers.” The 'answers' are familiar enough – opposition to 'neo-liberalism', support for reforms – but some of the observations give a good impression of the complexity of the situation.
The book describes how there were, for example, many competing currents in the opposition to Mubarak but they were able reach a consensus: “People with radically different aspirations – ranging from the secular socialist state to the Islamist theocracy – have agreed on the need to end Mubarak's rule” (p98). The way the opposition operated allowed for groups with “different ideological leanings, class interests and long-term projects to work together” (p98). This was indeed the view of an opposition that saw the removal of Mubarak as the number one priority. Although the working class has shown its strength and ability to organise outside the official unions, it would be wrong to ignore workers' many illusions. At the moment the possibility of free trade unions or the potential for post-Mubarak capitalism are particularly significant. In the past there were also illusions in what the state could offer. There have been “Popular slogans like 'In the days of defeat, the people could still eat' (raised by strikers in 1975) or 'Nasser always said “take care of the workers” (heard in 1977)” (p71) which show the hold that modern myths and ideology can have. There is a claim that during a 2005 strike “workers believed that they and the broader public were the real owners of the enterprise, not the state mangers” (p78). Although this is just an impression by the author, it does correspond to ideas that many workers have accepted from state capitalist demagogues.
The actions of other groups in society show the situation in which workers find themselves. In 2006 when dissident judges who had criticised corruption and malpractices were taken to court a crowd chanted “Judges, judges, save us from the tyrants” (p99). Whatever the social makeup of the crowd it clearly had illusions in the possibility of an independent judiciary, in the legal process rather than in a struggle against the state.
The book outlines another incident where in 1986 “thousands of police conscripts abandoned barracks and marched on Cairo and Alexandria, destroying many hotels, shops and restaurants in protest against their slave like conditions.... the regime was compelled to bring tanks onto the streets to defeat what was in, in effect, an uprising of peasants in uniform” (p32).
In 2007, alongside protests over food shortages were protests over shortages of drinking water. “For several months demonstrations across the Nile Delta involved large numbers of the country's poorest people in what Cairo newspapers called a 'revolution of the thirsty'”(p32-3).
Overall, all the expressions of protest, all the actions by different social forces are described as “different forms of contention.” These include “social movements, revolutions, strike waves, nationalism, democratisation, and more” (p101).
The listed forms of 'contention' cover a wide range of phenomena. When groups of workers struggle they can inspire others, one strike leading to others until a whole wave of strikes has unfolded. This is not a workers' 'policy' but an expression of the solidarity and the common interests of the working class. When workers struggle they come up against nationalist and democratist ideas that can only undermine the struggle for their own interests. When the social movements of other strata emerge workers have to relate to them, while appreciating that the class dependent on wage labour is the only class that can challenge capitalism.
The working class has only two weapons, its consciousness and its capacity for organisation. Every question it faces has to be seen in terms of the development of consciousness and the implications for its self-organisation. How does the working class organise? What ideas assist the development of the struggle and which hold it back? What institutions and ideologies does the ruling class use against workers' struggles and the development of its consciousness? How do workers relate to other non-exploiting social strata? And, as we are now inundated with glib references to 'revolutions' as just another 'form of contention', what is a revolution in reality?
Over the last couple of decades all sorts of social phenomena have been called 'revolutions', despite the fact that capitalist rule has nowhere been overthrown and the capitalist state is entrenched everywhere. If we take a contribution from someone who could draw on the experience of a real revolution, that of Russia in1917, Lenin's remarks on revolutionary situations are particularly relevant. “For a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the 'lower classes' do not want to live in the old way and the 'upper classes' cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph”(Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920).
If we look at Egypt we can see that, for all the changes that have happened and are promised for the future, the ruling capitalist class remains secure in its position. The nationalist, democratist and Islamist opposition have their differences, but they do not challenge the rule of the bourgeoisie. As for the working class, it has shown its strength, especially in contrast to other strata, but is not yet challenging the rule of its exploiters. As everywhere else in the world, the more we see outbreaks of workers' struggles, developments in the organisation of the struggle, and evidence of the discarding of illusions, the more we can look forward towards mass strikes and open confrontation between the working class and the ruling bourgeoisie.
Barrow 29/3/11
Since this article was written by the ICC’s section in France, it looks as though the presidency of Laurent Gbagbo is nearing its end, as the ‘rebel’ forces led by Alassane Ouattara strengthen their grip on the capital. But this does not diminish the accuracy of its description of this barbaric conflict.
The murders with small arms fire which began the day after the proclamation of the Presidential election results on 28 November 2010, have given way to large-scale massacres right out in the open. According to diverse sources (such as the spokesman of Ouattara on French TV), there have already been a thousand deaths, tens of thousands of injured and hundreds of thousands of refugees, 300,000 of whom fled the town of Abidjan. Fighting is unfolding in most areas of this town, particularly in the densely populated suburb of Abobo
The population is caught in the cross-fire of both camps of assassins who don’t hesitate to march over the bodies of their victims, including women and children. These are not only assassinations and sudden assaults by death squads, there are also tanks, helicopters and other heavy weaponry stepping into this danse macabre. Now the war is moving from Abidjan to the official capital Yamoussoukro and is spreading to the Liberian border where these bloodthirsty gangs are settling accounts. Elsewhere, those that escape death inevitably come up against the misery of a state of war with its scarcity, mass unemployment and permanent insecurity.
“Here, a woman, ‘housewife, a mamma’ as the people affectionately and tenderly refer to the mothers of families, had her head taken off by a soldier shooting in Abobo, the insurgent quarter of Abidjan. About six or seven other women were mown down with bursts of gun fire from an armoured vehicle of the defence forces (FDS) loyal to Laurent Gbagbo which came, according to the crowd, from a neighbouring camp of the Republican Guard, supported by men of the Anti-Riot Brigade (BAE). Diabolical columns are crossing now hostile zones, followed by ambulances and hearses in order to get rid of the corpses (...) Thursday 3 March, the march of women who thought that they could demonstrate peacefully in the style of Egypt or Tunisia with placards saying ‘Gbagbo go!’, turned out not to be the beginning of a ‘revolution’ called for by Guillaume Soro, ex-chief of the rebellion and now first minister of Alassane Ouattara, the President recognised by the international community. The FDS fired on the women with heavy machine-guns whose bullets were capable of tearing off heads, arms and legs. Seven deaths” (Le Monde, 10/3/11).
And the carnage continued on 8 March (during another march on the occasion of International Woman’s Day) at the end of which we saw the extreme barbarity in which the forces loyal to the criminal Gbagbo excelled. But we also shouldn’t ignore the responsibility of the no less criminal camp of Ouattara which has knowingly sent these women to their death without any protection. This same Soro, the right-hand man of Ouattara, has profited from the revolts in the Arab world to push these women into an abattoir under the pretext of unleashing a 'revolution' against the power of Gbagbo. This really monstrous procedure consists of manipulating civilians and women with the single aim of satisfying the politicians’ criminal ambitions. But these two camps of vultures don’t stop there; they enrol the population in absolute horror:
“The unthinkable is happening: each in their own camp, an ill-wind for the neutrals. There are more and more armed civilians; more and more situations where innocents are killed, burnt alive, wounded, martyred, in the two camps. The Ivory Coast is falling apart and the meeting organised by the African Union for Tuesday in Addis-Ababa to communicate a solution ‘constraining’ the two rivals for the presidency of November 2010, doesn’t give rise to great hopes... At the same time, the scale of the violence diversifies. Three mosques have been burnt in the last few days. Groups of militias have also sacked the homes of the leaders of the RHDP of Alassane Ouattara, who is holed up in the Hotel du Golf, discretely tucked away in the country. Eighteen houses have been ransacked based on the growing fears of seeing a new wave of atrocities hitting those that their neighbours suspect of being pro-Ouattara. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Anokoua, an area of Abobo peopled by the ethnic Ebrie, supposedly belonging to the Gbagbo camp, have been attacked the night before. Three deaths, including a woman burnt in her house and numerous injuries. Arms have been distributed to the Ebrie. If the spiral of violence is not stopped it will affect everyone (Le Monde, ibid).
This is the hell in which the populations live their daily lives, unfortunately without hope of escaping. Given the protection given to the killers the most likely outcome is for the entire country to end up in a conflagration.
In order to support Alassane Ouattara, designated the winner (by them) of the second round of presidential elections last November, the United States and the European Union announced a series of economic and diplomatic 'sanctions' against the Gbagbo clan to force him to cede power to his rival. But three months later, Laurent Gbagbo is still there and openly mocks the sanctions because he knows that they have been implemented with a double language and there is unity on nothing. On the contrary, behind the scenes there is a battle to defend the respective interests of those countries involved.
Faced with the attempted blockade of Ivorian cocoa, Gbagbo decided on a reorganisation of the commercialisation of the raw material, calling into question “all powerful western groups” and looking for new outlets. His entourage boasted: “Gbagbo has paid the wages for February; he will pay them for March and April (...) International condemnation of his regime persists, but Laurent Gbagbo is not giving up. He hopes to profit from the disagreements appearing within the international community and thinks that time is on his side. Pharmacies are beginning to run out of medicine because of an unannounced maritime embargo. But European businessmen continue to knock on his door, even if Gbagbo only receives them when the indiscreet cameras are out of the way” (Jeune Afrique, 6/12 March 2011).
The case of France is particularly edifying. In fact, on one side, Monsieur Sarkozy publicly announces a series of measures to sanction the government of Gbagbo, including the threat of an economic boycott, whereas, on the other, he is taking care not to incite the big French companies present (Bouygues, Bollore, Total, etc.) to leave the country. On the contrary, all these groups continue to do business with the Gbagbo regime, mitigating and skirting around the so-called 'economic sanctions'. Yet again, we see the odiously hypocritical character of the 'African policy' of the French in the Ivory Coast. In reality, French imperialism is above all concerned for its capital and cares nothing for the fate of the population, the first victims of this butchery; moreover, the guard dogs of its military operation “Licorne” will be released if French interests are threatened. Clearly, in this business of 'sanctions', no gangster can leave an advantage to the profit of its rivals.
At each big explosion of violence in the Ivory Coast since the beginning of the bloody electoral process at the end of 2010, the Security Council of the UN has been quick to meet up to pass resolutions, but never to stop the massacres. On the contrary, each one of its members more or less openly supports one or the other of the armed camps on the ground. That clearly shows the sordid behaviour of these gentlemen of the Security Council; so cynical that their 11,000 soldiers on the ground do nothing other than record the numbers of victims; worse still, they cover up the fact that armed groups, even when surrounded by Blue Helmets, bombard and fire on the population with impunity.
Thus, not only do the UN authorities remain scandalously indifferent to the suffering of the victims of war, but they have also put in place a black-out on the killings.
Once again, the French president, addressing the entire world, launched an ultimatum to Gbagbo, giving him the 'order' to leave power before the end of 2010. Since then? Nothing... He has observed a scrupulous, total silence on the horrors unfolding in front of his interests and the 'soldiers of peace' on the ground.
As to the African Union, it adopts an attitude that’s just as wretched as the UN. In fact, given all its links with the respective butchers involved in the dispute for Ivorian power, it leaves it to its members to support and arm one bloody clique or the other (like South Africa and Angola for Gbagbo, Burkina Faso and others for Ouattara). In order to mask this reality, it is making out there is a 'reconciliation' of the belligerents by creating commission after commission, the latest of which (meeting in Addis-Ababa 10/3/11) found nothing better to do than nominate yet another “high representative responsible for enacting forceful solutions linking up with a close committee of the representatives of the Economic Community of the States of Western Africa and the United Nations”.
Behind this diplomatic jargon, lies the cynicism of all these imperialist gangsters! All these 'reconciliators' are none other than the real executioners of the Ivorian population.
Amina 17/3/11
There has been no shade of bourgeois opinion that has hesitated to use the term 'Arab Revolution' to describe what's currently going on in the Middle East. Subtle commentators can make out an 'Arab spring', but 'revolution' is the word of the moment.
All sorts of social forces are involved, as well as a range of contradictory ideas, but this use of 'revolution' to describe very disparate phenomena is not new. Modelled on examples such as the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989 in Czechoslovakia, here are ten from the 21st century.
Post-election protests that started with miners led to the removal of Slobodan Milošević. He was replaced by Vojislav Koštunica, a firm nationalist chosen to lead the parties of the opposition. A leader of this coalition said "We could make a revolution but it wouldn't be good. It would create too much instability." The vehicle that was used to charge Serbian state TV station was not a bulldozer, or an excavator, but a wheel loader.
Protests following elections led to the replacement of Eduard Shevardnadze by Mikheil Saakashvili (who had once been Shevardnadze's Minister of Justice). Under Saakashvili troops were sent to Iraq, only the US and Britain having more there than Georgia, and Georgian troops were maintained in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Protests against Saakashvili in 2007 were met with the declaration of a state or emergency and police violence against protesters.
Demonstrations and other protests after presidential elections resulted in the victory of Viktor Yushchenko over Viktor Yanukovych. Yuschenko was just as concerned to get the crowds off the streets as his rival.Yanukovych served as Prime Minister for 18 months under Yuschenko in 2006-7, before becoming president of Ukraine in 2010.
After the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister in February there were massive demonstrations about the Syrian military presence in the country. Syria ultimately yielded to international pressure and withdrew its final troops in April. Life in Lebanon continues to be marked by violence and conflict.
President Askar Akayev fled the country after post-election demonstrations. Under his successor, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, there have been murders of political opponents, corruption and economic decline. In 2010 protests over unemployment, electricity blackouts and other shortages, which were met with police repression and dozens of deaths, led to Bakiyev fleeing the country. Capitalism,corruption and a US military base continue.
Protests over fuel price rises, including a significant role for thousands of Buddhist monks. Met with violent repression. Regime supported by China, opposition by the West. The majority of monks in Burma wear maroon not saffron robes. So, neither saffron nor a revolution.
Against the backdrop of protests by the poor and dispossessed the demands of the Red Shirts are for improved democracy, fresh elections and the reinstatement of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. A social movement has become entangled in a battle between different factions of the ruling class.
Following the 2009 presidential elections there were maybe 2 million on the streets in protests at some moments. Workers have been involved as individuals but not as a class. There are enormous illusions in democracy. In the past the working class in Iran has shown itself a force to be reckoned with.
Non-Tunisian media have tried to christen recent events as the Jasmine Revolution, but this has not caught on. A wave of protest on basic questions of living conditions led to the departure of President Ben Ali. Protests continue and have inspired others in the Middle East.
Known by a number of names, including the Lotus Revolution. People from all parts of society were involved in the events that led to the removal of Mubarak. Two essential elements were the strikes of workers and the behind the scenes manoeuvrings of the US. Mubarak has gone but the capitalist state retains its dominant position in society.
None of these situations warrant being described as revolutions: capitalism, the exploitation of the working class and the oppression of non-exploiting social strata continue. But they do have things in common. For example, genuine material suffering has affected people in all the countries touched. The conditions in which we live continue to worsen, sometimes with rapid lurches. At the same time a focus on elections, nationalism, or the particular personnel in the ruling capitalist team has detracted from the importance of the struggle against material deprivation. Also, these focuses take away from an understanding of what are the real forces in capitalist society. The bourgeoisie can only defend the decaying status quo, and the working class is the only force with the potential to challenge and overthrow capitalism. While there has yet to be a revolution in the twenty first century, the proliferation of workers' struggles, expressions of self-organisation and the development of class consciousness mean that a revolutionary perspective is still realistic.
Barrow 1/4/11
Humour's a funny thing. Some people love Charlie Chaplin, others prefer Buster Keaton. For some slapstick's the thing, for others witty wordplay.
Eddie Izzard is a divisive figure: some acclaiming him as one of the greatest ever standups, with references to the Cat Drilling Behind The Sofa or the Cake Or Death routine, while others sit blank faced at a guy who just seems to ramble on about stuff. Some of his latest material might just convince the doubters.
As the campaign around the AV Referendum fails to interest anyone, with even hardened politicians openly confessing that it's a really boring subject, both sides have started saying just about anything to generate some interest. Enter, stage left, Mr Izzard on behalf of the Yes to AV campaign.
He claims that the AV system of voting “will mean MPs will have to work harder to get your vote.” The AV system will “put power in the hands of the people." Ultimately the Yes to AV campaign was "pushing for civilisation".
Against this typical product of Izzard's whimsical comedy stylings there are some snappy come-backs. The Tories have warned that AV is crazy, undemocratic, unBritish and favours extremists (although the right-wing extremists of the BNP are actually campaigning against AV.) On the left you can read that “A vote for AV is a vote for cuts” and see opposition from Trotskyists, many unions, and the Socialist Party that says that AV will “entrench the power of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.” Meanwhile the Weekly Worker is campaigning for Yes because it will help parties that are marginalised by the existing system. Alan Thornett of Socialist Resistance says “A yes vote should be seen as a small step in the direction of further reform.” The PCS and CWU unions recommend a Yes vote.
No one is talking about the distinctions between the D'Hondt and Sainte-Laguë [251] methods or CPO-STV against Schulze STV; it's all very crude stuff. David Cameron says that First-Past-The-Past is used by half the world, without mentioning that Britain's system is unique in Europe. Everyone is devoted to fairness and democracy, and how individuals can best get to express their preferences.
For or against electoral reform, they all talk about power. And in capitalist society the ruling class, the class that exercises power, the class that holds state power, is the bourgeoisie, the class that is dependent on the exploitation of the labour power of the working class. In different countries there are many ways that the bourgeoisie has evolved for its domination over all aspects of social life, but all are concentrated in the dictatorship of the capitalist state.
Dictatorship? The ideologues of democracy will throw their hands up in horror. Dictatorship is the word they use for the regimes of North Korea, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia. In Europe we have democracy.
But democracy has always been a form of class rule. In Ancient Athens democracy meant the rule of a (male) slave owning class to the exclusion of the majority, that is women, slaves (even when freed), and resident foreigners. In modern democracy all the important decisions that affect our lives are made behind closed doors by a class that uses elections as just one of the spectacles that conceal the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The sanctity of the individual's right to express themselves and participate in the democratic circus goes along with a decision-making process which is only concerned with the interests of the bourgeoisie, in response to the economic crisis, its imperialist interests and against the threat posed by the working class. The bourgeoisie takes nothing else into account, not in parliament, nor in the corridors of real power.
The central division in capitalist society is not between AV and FPTP, not between constitutional monarchies, republics and parliamentary democracies, not even between democracies and various 'authoritarian' regimes.
The big split in contemporary society is between the working class and the ruling capitalist class. The working class can not take over the state apparatus that exists for its repression and continuing exploitation, it needs to destroy the capitalist state, democratic or otherwise, and establish its own domination. Instead of democracy what is needed is the open and frank domination of the working class, a class with no new relations of exploitation to introduce. Where democracy depends on individual alienation, separation from each other and with no control over our lives, a future classless society can only be based on a fundamental human solidarity in all relations.
To conclude on a banal note: when even politicians think the AV referendum is boring, who are we to disagree? Capitalism will continue until the development of the collective struggles of the working class make it a force that can confront the capitalist class, rather than voting for its figureheads.
Car 3/4/11
Transport workers all over India are severely exploited. Whether drivers, conductors or workshop workers, all suffer the same conditions: low wages, long and irregular working hours, tough conditions of work, relentless oppression and persecution by bosses. This is daily grind of their daily life. This is true of workers of state road transport corporations as well, of Delhi Transport Corporation workers in the capital where the bourgeoisie has no qualms in spending any sums for exhibition of its ‘prestige’ in spectacles like Commonwealth games. The conditions of Uttar Pradesh road transport workers are no different from others.
Capitalist crisis is further worsening living and working conditions of workers. This crisis has shaken up the whole world since 2008. Tens of millions of workers have lost jobs in different parts of the world under the lashes of the crises. USA, leader of world capitalism, is ahead of all in this. The jolts of crises have pulled down economies of a whole series of countries like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Everywhere the bourgeoisie is imposing austerity and poverty on the working class.
This is the context in which working class and young exploited populations have been developing their struggles against policies of austerity of the ruling class.
In 2010 alone workers and students have waged struggles against policies of austerity in Greece, Turkey, France, Britain and Italy. Although efforts are being made to derail popular revolts and workers struggles in Tunisia and Egypt by democratic mystifications, there is no doubt that these struggles express explosions of anger of the exploited populations against worsening living conditions.
In India the effects of the crises are expressed in intensification of a series of attacks by bourgeoisie and its state:
- Firing huge number of workers from every part of the economy. Stoppage of recruitment.
- Offensive of state and private sector bourgeoisie against permanent jobs and their substitution everywhere by temporary and contract work;
- The objective of these steps is to lower wages and living conditions of workers. Bourgeoisie is using all tricks, including privatizations, to fulfill its objectives.
Another tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie to worsen living conditions of workers is price rises. By statistics of the government itself, the food inflation has been 18% since several years. This is in fact an average which hides even higher inflation of some of the basic necessities of life. The impact of all the steps is that despite so-called boom in the economy, conditions of living of the working class has gone from bad to worse.
Different sections of the working class have tried to fight against these attacks. There are many examples of this: in Gurgaon workers of Hero Honda, Honda Motor Cycles and Scooters and of many other factories. In Chennai, struggles of workers of Hyundai and other companies. Elsewhere, struggles of banks, airlines and airport workers. Strikes of road transport workers in different states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu etc are also expressions of this. In this, strikes of road transport workers in Kashmir between 2008 and 2010 have special importance. Here workers not only went on strikes several times in the middle of violent fights between separatist and Indian state, their movement also impulsed a ten days strike by all state workers in Kashmir in 2010.
Struggles of Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) workers against attacks by the management are part of this general developing trend. In July 2006, permanent and temporary workers of UPSRTC in Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Kanpur went on strikes for better wages and regularization of temporary workers. Government of UP suppressed this strike by imposing ESMA (Essential Services Maintenance Act) and by repression. Hundreds of permanent and temporary workers were fired from their jobs as part of this campaign of repression. In 2009 UPSRTC workers of Allahabad region went on strike. In April 2010, 15000 temporary workers of UPSRTC throughout UP went on strike for regularization of their jobs and for better wages and working conditions. This was suppressed by repressive steps by the state government.
One of the more militant struggles of UPSRTC workers was in 2008. 25,000 workers participated in it. The government suppressed this by violence. On 5 February 2008, state police attacked UPSRTC workers with batons, tear gas and by bullets. In these attacks one worker was fatally wounded and 20 others were seriously injured. Hundreds of workers were arrested.
But one thing needs to be remembered is that unions played as big a role as the state government in beating down these workers’ struggles.
All the struggles were controlled by the unions and were initiated by them in the face of anger by workers and under their pressure. Before these struggles, unions fanned all types of divisions among workers: divisions between drivers and conductors, between bus workers and workshop workers, between permanent and temporary workers and divisions on the name of castes and on the name of affiliations to competing bourgeoisie political factions (BSP versus SP, Congress versus BJP etc). Thus before the start of workers struggles, instead of strengthening workers unity, unions did everything to wreck it. If the unions still called for strikes under workers pressure, they tried to maintain them at the level of ritual actions of one or two day strikes. Before these strikes could develop, unions put an end to them on the name of fake agreements. These maneuvers by the unions not only sabotaged these struggles, they did everything to weaken workers will to fight.
But this is not a particular character of unions active among UPSRTC workers. Today unions have the same character and role everywhere. This is the character of all the unions, whether they are controlled by Congress, BJP and BSP or unions controlled by CPI, CPM and Maoists or ‘independent’ unions. Not only in India but everywhere in the worlds unions play the same role: to divide the workers, to stop their struggles from developing and, if these struggles cannot be stopped, to turn them into ritual struggles and thus ensure the smooth working of capitalist exploitation.
That is why when we look at workers struggle in different parts of the world today, we note certain things. Workers struggles have been able to advance only where workers have been able to make efforts to get out of unions control and take struggles in their hands. Workers have tried to do this by organising general assemblies. General assemblies are places for workers to discuss and decide about their struggles, its path and their demands. In addition to setting up general assemblies, another step important for their development is to extend the struggles. For transport workers and other sectors of workers to extend a hand toward others sectors of workers. This is a lesson of recent workers struggles throughout the world.
The latest effort of UPSTRC unions to derail workers anger and demoralize them was displayed recently. A strike was declared for 7 Feb 2011. Before the strike took place, on 5 Feb 2011 unions declared – the government has promised to look into their demands.
With this they took back the strike. It was natural for workers to get angry against this. In Kanpur depots, workers assembled to oppose this sabotage by the unions. The meeting called for this discussed how to develop the struggle by taking it out of union control. It proposed to work for calling general assemblies of depots and others workers and instead of fighting separately, workers of UPSTRC should fight along with other workers of Kanpur. This was effort of a small minority and about 200 workers took part in these discussion. But this is an expression of a developing questioning. Only strengthening of this tendency of questioning the unions and taking struggles in their own hands can open the door for the development of workers struggles.
Alok/RB, 14/2/11
Cave of Forgotten Dreams by the celebrated film director Werner Herzog has just been released in the UK. Hertzog was given access to what, up to now, alongside Lascaux possibly, has been the most dramatic discovery of Upper Palaeolithic cave (parietal) art: the Chauvet Cave in the Ardeche region of southern France. The access given was necessarily restricted in both space and time and the director and 3 or 4 crew had to work with special battery powered lighting. The result is worth seeing. Herzog had previously dismissed out of hand films made in 3D but he uses the process here to good effect. It does a little to enhance the engravings and paintings but it’s in the overall effect of the cave interior and related topography that it shines.
Even the capitalist media and politicians had to admit it: the street battle in Bristol wasn't a race riot. It was an elemental revolt by a whole sector of the population against bad housing, high unemployment, spiralling prices, the all-pervading boredom of life in today's cities. Above all, it was against the brutality and arrogance of the police, whose high-handed raid on a local café provoked the revolt.
The fact that most of the 'rioters' were young blacks simply expresses the fact that capitalism always hands out slightly different levels of misery to its slaves. Blacks tend to get shoved down to the bottom of the shit-heap. But the disintegration of this vile society is pushing more and more of us down to the same place. That's why the young blacks were joined by young whites – punks, skinheads, etc, etc, most of them unemployed proletarians with about as rosy a future as the blacks.
That's why white-skinned building workers in St Pals cheered at the sight of the police cars going up in flames: perhaps they remembered the police violence against building workers' pickets a few years back.
That's why white-skinned old age pensioners, fed up with seeing shops full of things they can't afford, were seen calmly filling their trolleys with looted food at the local ransacked supermarket.
Capital in crisis exploits and oppresses all of us with increasing 'equality', with an admirable lack of racial discrimination.
The sight of such spontaneous violence, of the police being booted out of a neighbourhood, of banks going up in flames, or of the streets temporarily falling into the hands of those who live in them, sends shivers down the spines of our rulers.
'Race riots', clashes between black and white, may cause damage, may disturb the tranquillity of everyday profit-production, but they do have the advantage of keeping the oppressed divided against each other. But when the oppressed begin to get together and openly defy the forces of law and order – that's something much harder for capitalism to use to its own advantage. And when you bear in mind that the St Pauls revolt was happening in the same week as angry steelworkers were occupying ISTC headquarters and marching on BSC offices in South Wales, you can see why the ruling class is feeling so jittery.
Right now the various factions of the bourgeoisie are racking their brains trying to find a way of preventing other areas going up like St Pauls, of keeping these tempestuous forces under control. There are three main currents of bourgeois thought on this.
First, there's the 'law and order' brigade: those who think that answer is simply more police repression. Other more astute members of the ruling class know that if you do this too nakedly, too openly, you'll just provoke further rebellions. That's where the other two schools of thought come in: the recuperators, those who claim to 'sympathise' with the plight of young black proletarians or the working class in general, but whose real function, whether they know it or not, is to make sure that this society continues to function.
On the one hand you have the liberal recuperators. The earnest spokesmen for the state's Commission for Racial Equality, the well-meaning local bureaucrats of the Community Relations Councils, the 'responsible' leaders of the 'black community'.
These people condemn violence and looting of course, but they also condemn bad housing, lack of job prospects, police 'abuses' and all the other social evils which give rise to the violence. They call on the government to pump more money into the local communities in order to create job opportunities and get more youth clubs set up. They try to establish closer relations between the police and the 'community organisations'. And they try to get the most dynamic, rebellious elements of the black youth to become high-minded community leaders through the 'grass roots' community set-ups.
In other words: they want to preserve this society by touching up some of its more odious features with a few cosmetic 'reforms'. They want to channel social revolt into organisations and activities that are tied to the capitalist state.
But the reality of a society that's falling to pieces soon shatters these nice liberal dreams. There's no government money to plough into the worst of the decaying inner city areas. Unemployment keeps going up. Unable to do anything but preach sickly sermons about good community relations, the liberals find themselves being despised by the very people they want to help. And when their precious community organisations are no longer able to keep the 'community' under control, they have no choice but to call the police. Like all liberals, faced with spontaneous violence from below, they always run to the forces of repression, to the law and order brigade, to the real guardians of this system.
So, when the schemes of the liberals fall apart, capitalism's last line of defence moves in: the 'extreme left' (SWP, IMG, etc). The leftist organisations write ecstatic hymns to the Bristol revolt. They present themselves as part of the struggle. But in which direction do they try to steer the struggle? Into a series of traps.
- The trap of black nationalism. By presenting such movements as revolts against 'white society', the leftists hide the fact that the enemy is capital, whatever colour skin the capitalists happen to have. A fact that the leftists 'forget' when they cheer the coming to power of black-skinned capitalist leaders like Mugabe, who's just been telling strikers to get back to work in Zimbabwe.
- The trap of inter-classism. Revolts that take place at the level of the 'community' suffer from the fact that the community is generally divided into different classes and social strata. By simply flattering such revolts and omitting to point out their weaknesses, the leftists obscure the fact that the only perspective for unemployed proletarians is to organise and fight on a class basis, and to link their resistance with the working class struggle at the point of production.
- The trap of anti-fascism. For the leftists, the number one enemy is the National Front and similar racist gangs. That's why they have been trying to use the Bristol events to win support for their anti-fascist campaigns. But the enemy number one for black workers and the unemployed isn't the NF: it's the state and its official agents of repression. As one young black worker in London told the Daily Mirror: “We haven't got time to go fighting the skinheads or the National Front. First we've got to protect ourselves from the police”.
Already the St Pauls community has begun to reject the leftist liars. Three weeks after the eruption in Bristol, the Anti-Nazi League rerouted a 'commemorate Blair Peach' march through the St Pauls district. They tried to involve the defence committee which has sprung up in the area to organise the defence of those arrested, especially after the hundreds of dawn raids that have been taking place since the police re-asserted their presence in the area.
The defence committee, having experienced the leftists' cynical recruiting campaigns, was opposed to the march going through St Pauls. But the march went ahead. During the course of the march, a group of black youths spontaneously put themselves at the front of it. In order to regain control of the march, the ANL lectured the youths through a microphone with their particular brand of capitalist liberalism and anti-fascism.
Once again the leftists demonstrated that presenting the NF as the danger diverts attention from the main enemy and is an attempt to drum up support for the more 'reasonable' and 'democratic' factions of the bourgeoisie. Thus the leftists, for their radical talk, end up canvassing support for the liberals, and the liberals have a direct line to the police.
Against all these forces of recuperation, revolutionaries affirm their total solidarity with the 'rioters' against bourgeois law and order, and with the defence committee's fight against repression in the aftermath of the revolt.
To the defence committee we: continue to resist the efforts of liberals and leftists to take you over, but don't see that as a reason for rejecting politics, for refusing to analyse the Bristol events in political terms. Revolutionary working class politics has nothing to do with the distortions of the liberals and leftists!
To all black workers and unemployed, young and old, we say: your identity isn't 'black' or 'British' or 'African' but working class. To all white workers and unemployed, young and old, your identity isn't 'white' or 'British' but working class. The common struggles of black and white in areas like St Pauls, in industries like Ford and British Leyland, show that our fight is as workers, proletarians, against capitalism and all its defenders.
We are a world class, with nothing to lose against a system with no improvements to offer.
Link the revolt in the neighbourhoods to the revolution of the entire working class!
WR30, May 1980
see also Bristol 1980/2011: repression and revolt [259]
ICC Introduction
We are publishing here a contribution sent to us by the anthropologist Chris Knight on the relationship between marxism and science. Chris was invited to the 19th congress of the ICC, held in May, in order to participate in the debate on this same topic, which we have been developing within the organisation for some time. This debate has been reflected in articles we have published on Freud, Darwin, and indeed on Chris’ own theory of the origins of human culture[1]; at the same time we intend to publish some of the internal discussion texts that have been produced to take this debate forward. We will also be writing in more detail about the work of the congress.
Our aim in this debate, which followed logically from prior discussions about ethics, human nature and primitive communism, is not to arrive at a single, homogeneous view of the relationship between marxism and science, or to make adherence to a particular psychological or anthropological theory the equivalent of a point in our platform. Neither does our interest in engaging in discussion with scientists like Chris Knight, or the linguist Jean-Louis Desalles who spoke at our previous congress, require that we share with them a high level of agreement on the political positions that our organisation exists to defend. Rather we are seeking to continue a tradition in the workers’ movement which consists of being open to all authentic developments of scientific inquiry, particularly when they focus on the origins and evolution of human society. This is essentially what motivated Marx and Engels’ enthusiasm about the theories of Charles Darwin and LH Morgan, Trotsky’s recognition of the importance of Freud’s ideas, and so on. And despite the decadence of capitalism and the profoundly negative impact it has had on the advance and utilisation of science, scientific thought has by no means come to a complete halt in the last century or so. At the congress itself, as well as taking part in the general discussion about marxism and science, Chris also made a succinct but extremely well-argued presentation of the anthropological theories he has elaborated in the book Blood Relations and other works. This presentation and the discussion that ensued from it provided a concrete demonstration that fruitful scientific research and reflection about the origins of humanity and the reality of ‘original communism’ is certainly still going on today.
The text that follows is not directly about anthropology, but about the more general relationship between marxism and science. It offers a way of approaching the relationship between the two which is fundamentally revolutionary, affirming the essential internationalism of real science, the dialectical manner in which it moves forward, and its necessary opposition to all forms of ideology. We invite our readers to make use of the discussion forum on this website to send us their views on Chris Knight’s text, and indeed on his anthropological theories. Chris has said that he would be very willing to take part in any discussions that his contributions may generate on this site.
ICC, June 2011
Marxism and Science
Part I
"Science," according to Trotsky, "is knowledge that endows us with power."[2] In the natural sciences, Trotsky continued, the search has been for power over natural forces and processes. Astronomy made possible the earliest calendars, predictions of eclipses, accurate marine navigation. The development of medical science permitted an increasing freedom from and conquest of disease. The modern advances of physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences have today given humanity an immense power to harness natural forces of all kinds and have utterly transformed the world in which we live.
Potentially at least, the resulting power belongs to all of us – the entire human species. Science is the self-knowledge and power of humanity at this stage of our evolution on this planet – and not merely the political power of one group of human beings over others. To Trotsky, as for Marx before him, it is this intrinsic internationalism of science – the global, species-wide nature of the power it represents – which is its strength, and which distinguishes science from mere local, national, territorial or class-based (i.e. religious, political, etc) forms of consciousness. Ideologies express only the power of certain sections of society; science belongs to the human species as such.
By this yardstick, social science has always been a paradox: on the one hand, supposedly scientific, on the other, funded by the bourgeoisie in the hope of buttressing its political and social control. Even the development of natural science itself – although intrinsically international and of value to humanity – has necessarily taken place within this limited and limiting social context. It has always been torn between two conflicting demands – between human needs on the one hand and those of particular corporations, business interests and ruling elites on the other.
Sectional interests and species interests – science has always oscillated between these conflicting forces. Between the two extremes, the various forms of knowledge have formed a continuum. At one end have been the sciences least directly concerned with social issues – mathematics, astronomy and physics, for example. At the other have been fields such as history, politics and (relatively recently) sociology – fields whose social implications have been immediate and direct. The more direct the social implications of a field, the more direct and inescapable have been the political pressures upon it. And, wherever such pressures have prevailed, knowledge has been distorted and blown off course.
Social conditions of scientific objectivity
Is Marxism ideology? Or is it science? In an intense attack penned at the height of the Cold War, Karl Wittfogel – author of Oriental Despotism – denounced Marx as an ideologist. He conceded that Marx would have indignantly rejected that description of himself, and would have been outraged at the use made of his work by Stalin and his followers. The Soviet authorities, wrote Wittfogel in 1953, always cited Lenin's concept of "partisanship" (partiinost) to justify 'bending' science – even to the point of falsifying data – in order to render it more suitable for political use. This idea of "utility" or "manipulation" seemed to follow naturally, according to Wittfogel, from Marx's initial premise that all knowledge was socially conditioned – produced by social classes only to suit their economic and political needs. To the Soviet authorities, scientific truth was always something to be manipulated for political ends. But Wittfogel continues:
"Marx, however, did not hold this view. He not only emphasised that a member of a given class might espouse ideas that were disadvantageous to his class – this is not denied by Lenin and his followers – but he also demanded that a genuine scholar be oriented toward the interests of mankind as a whole and seek the truth in accordance with the immanent needs of science, no matter how this affected the fate of any particular class, capitalists, landowners or workers. Marx praised Ricardo for taking this attitude, which he called 'not only scientifically honest, but scientifically required'. For the same reason, he condemned as 'mean' a person who subordinated scientific objectivity to extraneous purposes: '... a man who tries to accommodate science to a standpoint which is not derived from its own interests, however erroneous, but from outside, alien and extraneous interests, I call mean (gemein)'.
Marx was entirely consistent when he called the refusal to accommodate science to the interests of any class – the workers included – 'stoic, objective, scientific'. And he was equally consistent when he branded the reverse behaviour a 'sin against science'.
These are strong words. They show Marx determined to maintain the proud tradition which characterised independent scholarship throughout the ages. True, the author of Das Capital did not always – and particularly not in his political writings – live up to his scientific standards. His attitude, nevertheless, remains extremely significant. The camp followers of 'partisan' science can hardly be blamed for disregarding principles of scientific objectivity which they do not profess. But Marx, who accepted these principles without reservation, may be legitimately criticised for violating them."[3]
Karl Marx, writes Wittfogel, played two mutually incompatible roles. He was a great scientist, but he was also a political revolutionary. He championed – as every scientist must do – "the interests of mankind as a whole", but he also championed the interests of the international working class. The self-evident incompatibility (as Wittfogel sees it) of these two activities meant that "Marx's own theories ... are, at decisive points, affected by what he himself called 'extraneous interests'".[4]
Wittfogel is cited by the social anthropologist Marvin Harris, whose views on this issue appear to be quite similar. Harris counterposes Marxism's "scientific" component against its "dialectical and revolutionary" aspect, his aim being to render the former serviceable by decontaminating it of all traces of the latter. According to Harris, "Marx himself took pains to elevate scientific responsibility over class interests." But this was only in his scientific work. Much of Marx's work was political, and here, science was subordinated to political ends – and therefore misused. If science is championed for political reasons, this must lead to the betrayal of science's own objectivity and aims, says Harris: "If the point is to change the world, rather than to interpret it, the Marxist sociologist ought not to hesitate to falsify data in order to make it more useful."[5]
Wittfogel's point that Marx tried to base his science on "the interests of mankind as a whole" is a valuable one. We may also agree with Harris that Marx "took pains to elevate scientific responsibility over class interests" – if by "class interests" we mean sectional, as opposed to universal human, interests. But the difficulty lies precisely here. Like Einstein, and like all great scientists down through the ages, Marx believed that it was his responsibility as a scientist to place before all sectional interests the general interests of humanity. The question he faced is the one which still faces us today: in what concrete form, in the modern world, are these general interests expressed?
Marx came to the conclusion, on the basis of his scientific studies, that the general interests of humanity were not represented by the various ruling classes of 19th century Europe. These interests conflicted not only with one another, but also with those of the human species as such. They could not, therefore, form the social basis for a genuinely objective social science.
The weakness in the position of both Wittfogel and Harris is that they have nothing to say on this issue. They are in the peculiar position of both agreeing with Marx's basic premises and yet refusing even to discuss the possibility that his conclusions might have been correct. They fully agree that science must base itself upon general human interests. Marx, basing himself on this idea, reached the conclusions (a) that science was itself politically revolutionary to the extent that it was genuinely true to itself and universal; (b) that it was this kind of 'politics' (i.e. the politics of science itself) that the modern revolutionary movement required; and (c) that the only possible social basis for such a science-inspired politics was the one class in society which was itself a product of science, which was already as intrinsically international as scientific development and whose interests countered all existing sectional interests. But neither Wittfogel nor Harris mount any argument on all this. They simply take it as self-evident that the interests of humankind are one thing, whereas working class interests are another.
Karl Marx knew – and every Marxist worthy of the name knows – that it is not worth committing oneself to a social force unless it genuinely does represent by its own very existence the wider interests of humanity. And every Marxist worthy of the name knows that it is only real science – the real discoveries of scientists working independently and for science's own autonomous ends – which can be utilised by humanity as a means to self-enlightenment and emancipation. From this standpoint we can see the absurdity of Harris's argument that if the point is to change the world the Marxist sociologist "ought not to hesitate to falsify data in order to make it more useful". How can 'falsified data' conceivably be of value to humankind? How can it be useful to anyone interested in changing the world?
Harris is right to insist that when a sectional political interest – be it 'Marxist' or not – takes hold of scientific work, science itself will suffer. A particular nationaland therefore limitedpolitical party or a particulargroup ruling a particular state (as, for example, the Soviet bureaucracy and 'communist' apparatus during the cold war) may well feel itself to have particular interests of its own, which it sets above the wider interests it claims to represent. In that case, to the extent that scientists are involved, science will certainly be distorted. But a distortion of science (i.e. its partial transformation into ideology) can only involve a limitation of its long-term ultimate appeal and human usefulness. Wherever such things happen, therefore, the particular group concerned reduces rather than enhances its power to "change the world".
All distortions, falsifications or mystifications express the power only of sectional social interests in opposition to wider ones. Marx at no time advocated tailoring science to suit the felt needs of this, that or the other sectional interest – whether working class or not: "It is not a matter of knowing what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, conceives as its aims at any particular moment. It is a question of knowing what the proletariat is, and what it must historically accomplish in accordance with its nature".[6]
For Marx, to know "what the proletariat is" constituted a scientific question, which could only be given a scientific answer in complete independence of any immediate political pressures or concerns. Far from arguing for the subordination of science to politics, Marx insisted on the subordination of politics to science.
Autonomy and class interest
Engels wrote: ".... the more ruthlessly and disinterestedly science proceeds, the more it finds itself in harmony with the interests of the workers."[7] We can be confident that this accurately expressed Marx's own views. Science, as humanity's only universal, international, species-unifying form of knowledge, had to come first. If it had to be rooted in the interests of the working class, this was only in the sense that all science has to be rooted in the interests of the human species as a whole, the international working class embodying these interests in the modern epoch just as the requirements of production have always embodied these interests in previous periods.
There was no question here of any subordination to sectional needs. In being placed first, science was destined to cut across sectional divisions and become the medium of expression for a new form of political consciousness. In this sense, science was even destined to create'the international working class' itself. Without science, there can only be sectional working class political movements; only through scientific analysis can the generalinterests of the class be laid bare.
Admittedly, science – as itself a social product - cannot (in Marx's view) add anything to the strength of the working class which is not already there. It cannot impose itself upon the workers' movement as if from outside.[8] It is in and through science alone that workers internationally can become aware of the global, species-wide strength which is already theirs. And it is only in becoming aware of its own power that the 'international working class' can politically exist.[9] There is no question, therefore, of science being subordinated to a pre-existing political force. The political force is science's own and cannot exist without it. The previously prevailing relationships between science and politics are reversed.
For Marx, social science – including his own - is as much a product of class relationships as any other form of social consciousness. His general formulation is well-known:
"The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material action at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that in consequence the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are, in general, subject to it. The dominant ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant relationships grasped as ideas, and thus of the relationships which make one class the ruling one; they are consequently the ideas of its dominance."[10]
For this reason, Marx did not consider it possible to change the prevailing ideas of society – or to produce a universally agreed science of society – without breaking the material power of those forces which distorted science. It was because Marx saw social contradictions as the source of mythological and ideological contradictions that he was able to insist that only the removal of the social contradictions themselves could remove their expressions in ideology and science.
This is what Marx meant when he wrote: "All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which lead theory towards mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice".[11] Or again: "The resolution of theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of man. Their resolution is by no means, therefore, the task only of the understanding, but is a real task of life, a task which philosophy was unable to accomplish precisely because it saw there a purely theoretical problem."[12]
So from the standpoint of Marx and Engels it was in order to remain true to the interests of science – to solve its internal theoretical contradictions – that they felt obliged, as scientists, (a) to identify with a material social force which could remove the "extraneous interests" distorting the objectivity of science and (b) to take up the leadership of this material force themselves. Their idea was not that science is inadequate, and that politics must be added to it.[13] Their idea was that science – when true to itself – is intrinsically revolutionary, and that it must recognise no political project but its own.
Marx and Engels believed science could acquire this unprecedented political autonomy for a social reason: there had come into existence within society for the first time – and as a direct result of scientific development itself – a 'class' which was not really a class at all, which had no traditional status or vested interests to protect, no power to dispense patronage, no power to divide man from man and therefore no power to distort science in any way. "Here," wrote Engels of the working class, "there is no concern for careers, for profit-making or for gracious patronage from above."[14] Only here could science be true to itself, for only here was a social force of a truly universal kind, capable of uniting the species as a whole.
This was the condition for a truly independent, truly autonomous, truly universal science of humankind – the existence of "a class in civil society which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a particular redress because the wrong which is done to it is not a political wrong, but wrong in general". "There must be formed", Marx continued, "a sphere of society which claims no traditional status but only a human status, a sphere which is not opposed to particular consequences but is totally opposed to the assumptions of the .... political system, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society, without therefore emancipating all these other spheres, which is, in short, a total loss of humanity and which can only redeem itself by a total redemption of humanity."[15]
Validation of Marxism
Much of the preceding argument may itself seem tendentious. Almost any political or social philosopher will claim, after all, that their theory expresses general human interests rather than narrow sectional ones. To use 'fidelity to the interests of humanity' as a yardstick by which to measure the scientific value of a conceptual system is therefore not possible – unless some objective test for this can be found. But what kind of test could this possibly be? In the final analysis, no doubt, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What happens when we try out a new hypothesis? Does it prove to be empowering? Does it lessen mental effort in solving intellectual problems? In other words, does the hypothesis add to the power – be it purely intellectual or practical as well – of scientists in the relevant field?
If it does, then everyone should ultimately come to recognise the fact. Assuming intellectual efficiency to be our criterion (and we will not be scientists otherwise), support for the theory will spread. Internal coherence (agreement between the theory's parts) will find expression in widespread social agreement. Such a capacity to produce agreement is the ultimate social test of science.[16]
In the long term, for Marxism or for social science, a similar test must be undergone. Science differs from mere ad hoc knowledge, technique or common sense by virtue of its abstract, symbolic, formal characteristics. Science is a symbolic system. Like any such system, its meaning depends on agreement.The figure '2' means 'two' only because we all say it does. It could equally well mean 'nine'. All symbolic systems – including myths and ideologies – depend in this sense upon social agreement. But, in the case of myths and ideologies, the scope of agreement extends only so far. A point is reached at which disagreement arises – a disagreement rooted in social contradictions. And, when this happens, the need to reconcile incompatiblemeanings leads to contradictions of an internal kind – within the symbolic system itself.
Mythology and ideology are expressions of social division. This is the essential feature which distinguishes these forms of knowledge from science. Science expresses the power and the unity of the human species – a power which, in class-divided societies, human beings have increasingly possessed in relation to nature even though not in relation to their own social world. A science of society, in order to prove itself as science, would have to prove that it was without internal contradictions, and that it was consistent with natural science and with science as a whole. In the long term, it could only prove this practically. It would have to demonstrate its internal consistency by demonstrating its roots in social agreement of a kind uniting the human race. It would have to demonstrate in practice, in other words, that it formed part of a symbolic system – a global 'language' woven out of the concepts of science – which was capable in practice of embracing and ultimately politically unifying the globe.[17]
Yet this is not the only test. In the case of every scientific advance, the first test is theoretical. Copernicus knew that the earth moved. And he knew it long before this fact had been proven to the satisfaction of others and universally agreed. Einstein knew that light was subject to gravitational laws. And he knew this long before it was demonstrated in 1919 during an eclipse watched from observatories in Cambridge and Greenwich (when it was shown that lightrays from a star were deflected by the gravitational pull of the sun). In scientific discovery it has always been the same. A scientific revolution is validated on the level of pure theory long before passing the final test of practice.
The only ultimate validation of Marxism as science would be the demonstration of its power to produce agreement on a global scale – its power to unify humanity. But if Marxism is genuine science, it ought to be possible to demonstrate this potential in purely theoretical terms in advance. The question arises: how? I shall examine this problem in the second part of this article.
Part II
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
In Part I, I showed how Marx and Engels viewed science. They saw it as humanity's only genuinely internationalist form of knowledge. The idea of subordinating science to a political party – even to a party calling itself 'communist' – would have been anathema to them. It is not that science must be subordinated to the Communist Party. On the contrary, the Communist Party must be subordinated to science. It would not be a Communist Party otherwise.
Thomas Kuhn
One of the most important achievements of 20th century historical scholarship was Thomas Kuhn's book, The structure of scientific revolutions.[18] It would be difficult to overstate Kuhn’s influence on the sociology and philosophy of science.
Predictably, postmodernist cynics have used Kuhn to justify their claim that there is no such thing as science – that everything boils down to politics and power. In fact, Kuhn's work leads us to the opposite conclusion: real science is possible only where scientists are in a position to resist external political pressure. The struggle for such autonomy, if this logic is pursued, turns out to involve simultaneously the struggle for human liberation from inequality and class rule.
In his great book, Kuhn's focus is not the relationship between scientific development and social or political events. His work concerns the internal structure of science. Nor does Kuhn accept any absolute distinction between science, on the one hand, and myth or ideology, on the other. For him, this distinction is always a relative one – a matter of the degree to which one conceptual system can produce agreement and prove fruitful in comparison with alternatives.
His main point is that a form of knowledge only acquires the status of 'science' by demonstrating that it can produce very fundamental levels of agreement between thinkers which are beyond the scope of rival systems of knowledge. Schools of thought which prove to be incapable of producing enduring levels of agreement – in scientific communities which cut across local or national barriers – tend not to be accorded the status of science. It is for this reason that 'social science' is so suspect. It seems to be incapable of producing any real agreement at all.
Setting the paradigm
In explaining how he came to work on the subject matter of his book, Kuhn writes: "... I was struck by the number and extent of the overt disagreements between social scientists about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods. Both history and acquaintance made me doubt that practitioners of the natural sciences possess firmer or more permanent answers to such questions than their colleagues in social science. Yet, somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today often seem endemic among, say, psychologists or sociologists."[19]
Kuhn's point is that in the social sciences thinkers not only cannot reach agreement with each other on fundamental issues – they cannot even find a common language of rules or concepts through which to communicate with each other in a rational way. There is a point at which rational debate breaks down and the opposing schools seem to each other to be breaking the rules and resorting to illegitimate techniques of persuasion, including even material inducements or force. In fact, it is not just that the rules are broken – it turns out that there are no rules. Each camp only obeys its own rules. This is in stark contrast to the normal situation among, say, nuclear physicists, who, even when they do disagree with each other on fundamental issues, nevertheless possess a shared language – a set of agreed rules of procedure, concepts, traditions and ideas through which fruitful communication can be achieved.
But Kuhn's most significant point is that the natural sciences themselves were once in a position similar in essentials to that of the social sciences today. They, too, in their early stages of development, were incapable of producing any enduring agreement or language on the basis of which a unified scientific community could form. And they, too – like the social sciences today – were divided by disagreements over fundamentals; disagreements which often seemed to be of a political or even violent kind.
On June 21 1633, Galileo de Galilei was interrogated by the pope and by a tribunal made up of cardinals and high officials of the Catholic church who threatened him with torture unless he withdrew his allegation that the earth circled the sun. In those times, the conflict between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems of astronomy was a political one and anyone supporting Copernicus risked persecution, imprisonment or even death by being burned at the stake. If this example seems historically remote, we should remember that Charles Darwin was considered to be putting forward a theologically dangerous and politically subversive theory when he argued that humanity was descended from a kind of ape.
In the case of both Galileo and Darwin, it was only the political and ideological defeat of the church on the issues concerned – defeats which formed part of a wider process of social and political change – which eventually lifted science from the realm of political controversy. But, conversely, it is only once its initial political coloration has faded away that science produces sufficient general agreement for it to be recognised simply as science. Borrowing from Marx, we might say that science has to "conquer politically" before it can "shed its political cloak".
Achievements such as those of Copernicus and Darwin are termed by Kuhn "paradigms". Paradigms are "universally recognised scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners".[20] Such achievements are products of scientific revolutions. A revolution of this kind is not simply an addition to pre-existing knowledge. It is, within any given field, "a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals ..."[21] It is a complete demolition of an old theoretical and conceptual structure and its replacement by a new one based on entirely different interests, aims and premises.
During the course of a scientific revolution, nothing is agreed, there are no common rules of procedure, everything seems to be ideological and political, and other issues are decided by 'unconstitutional' means. The old paradigm is not defeated on the basis of its own rules, but is attacked from outside. It cannot be defeated on the basis of its own rules, for these rules are not only inadequate to solve the new problems which have begun to arise – they actually preclude any discussion of these problems at all.
For Kuhn, the parallelism with political and social revolutions was profound. He explains: "Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favour of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all. Initially it is crisis alone that attenuates the role of political institutions ... In increasing numbers individuals become increasingly estranged from political life and behave more and more eccentrically within it.
Then, as the crisis deepens, many of those individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. At that point the society is divided into competing camps or parties: one seeking to defend the old institutional constellation; the others seeking to institute some new one. And, once that polarisation has occurred, political recourse fails. Because they differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is to be achieved and evaluated, because they acknowledge no supra-institutional framework for the adjudication of revolutionary differences, the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force. Though revolutions have had a vital role in the evolution of political institutions, that role depends upon their being partially extra-political or extra-institutional events."[22]
It is just the same, writes Kuhn, when, in the course of a scientific revolution, scientists polarise into opposite camps. The opposing camps cannot communicate. They talk 'past' each other, questioning each other's most elementary premises and refusing to submit to each other's logical or procedural rules. In periods of 'normal science' – ie, in periods of consolidation which follow scientific revolutions, and during which all scientists in the field concerned accept the paradigm of the victorious party – everything can seem 'rational'. Because a community exists which bases itself on a set of shared assumptions and traditions, scientists can appeal to certain written or unwritten agreements as to what constitutes 'correct' or 'rational' procedure and what does not. Disputes internal to a single paradigm can be settled in an orderly way, on the basis of the rules laid down by that paradigm itself. This is what 'normal science' is all about.
But when an entire paradigm is being challenged from outside, there is no purely logical way to proceed. The supporters of the new paradigm may feel that their own framework is far more powerful, far simpler, more elegant and more logical than the old one of their opponents. But they cannot convince their adversaries on the basis of those opponents' own rules. If the old guard are to be won over, they must make a leap in abandoning their former conceptions as to what constituted 'proper' procedure:
"Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defence.
"The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual. The man who premises a paradigm when arguing in its defence can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compellingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle. The premises and values shared by the two parties to a debate over paradigms are not sufficiently extensive for that. As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community."[23]
Normal science and anomaly
It is not until a paradigm has been generally accepted that 'scientific research' in the normal sense can get underway. As Kuhn puts it, "Effective research scarcely begins before a scientific community thinks it has acquired firm answers to questions like the following: What are the fundamental entities of which the universe is composed? How do these interact with each other and with the senses? What questions may legitimately be asked about such entities and what techniques employed in seeking solutions?"[24]
Once – following a scientific revolution – a paradigm has become accepted, a period of conservatism sets in. This is a period of "mopping-up operations"– a period in which, over and over again, the validity of the new paradigm is 'proven'. Kuhn writes:
"Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others."[25]
The paradigm validates itself again and again, in ever greater detail, by in effect forbidding scientists to investigate any problems other than those for which the paradigm offers a solution. Only problems whose solutions, like those of a crossword puzzle, are already "built in by their method of formulation are allowed". Other problems, as Kuhn writes, "including many that had previously been standard, are rejected as metaphysical, as the concern of another discipline, or sometimes as just too problematic to be worth the time."[26]
After about 1630, for example, and particularly after the appearance of Descartes' scientific writings, most physical scientists assumed that the universe was composed of microscopic corpuscles and that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of corpuscular shape, size, motion and interaction. Hence the solar system was believed to function mechanically, like a clock. The same applied to all other systems, including living ones, such as animals. This paradigm was extremely powerful and led to immense advances of scientific knowledge, but it was also extremely narrow and limiting.
Anyone in Descartes' time who had drawn attention to, say, such phenomena as are nowadays associated with radioactivity simply could not have communicated in a coherent way. In that time, all the problems which today form the subject matter of nuclear physics would have seemed irrelevant, illegitimate, metaphysical and unscientific even to discuss. And, of course, none of these problems wasdiscussed or even seen as a problem at all. Among scientists, it was 'known' what the universe was composed of. It was composed not of curved space-time nor electromagnetic fields, but very small, hard objects colliding in accordance with mechanical laws.
However, it is not for us simply to condemn the rigid, conservative paradigms which scientific revolutions eventually produce. Kuhn presents instead a subtle, dialectical argument, showing that it is precisely through such conservatism that new scientific revolutions themselves are prepared. Only a rigid, conservative, but extremely detailed and precise theoretical structure can be disturbed by some small finding which seems 'wrong'. It is only a community of scientists who confidently expect to find everything 'normal' who will genuinely know what an 'abnormality' or 'novelty' is – and who will be thrown into a crisis by it. A more easygoing, open-minded community which never expected precise regularities in the first place would not let themselves be bothered by such things. The precious anomaly in that case would be missed and science would not be in a position to learn from it or advance.
Just as state rigidity can build up pressure for social revolution, so normal science in its predictability and rigidity tends to stoke up pressure for scientific revolution. Every historian knows that a social revolution is often sparked by some apparently trivial incident in the workplace or street. In much the same way, some officially forbidden yet persistent laboratory result can trigger an explosion demolishing an entire scientific paradigm.
As Kuhn explains, "Without the special apparatus that is constructed mainly for anticipated functions, the results that lead ultimately to novelty could not occur. And even when the apparatus exists, novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognise that something has gone wrong. Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change.
In the normal mode of discovery, even resistance to change has a use ... By ensuring that the paradigm will not be too easily surrendered, resistance guarantees that scientists will not be lightly distracted and that the anomalies that lead to paradigm change will penetrate existing knowledge to the core."[27]
All scientific revolutions are precipitated by anomalies. A planet is in the wrong part of the sky. A photographic plate is clouded when it should not be. A fundamental law of nature is suddenly found to be wrong. A piece of laboratory equipment designed and constructed merely to add precision to a familiar finding behaves in a wholly unexpected way. To normal science, such anomalies are merely an irritation or a nuisance. In attempts to defend the old paradigm, efforts are made to suppress, obliterate or ignore the bothersome findings or events. New observations are made, new experiments are set up – with the sole intention of eliminating the anomaly concerned.
But it is precisely these attempts to defend the old paradigm which now begin to shake it to its foundations. Had the old, rigid paradigm not had its ardent defenders, the anomaly concerned would probably not even have been noticed. Now, however, an entire community of scientists begins to feel challenged by it, and more and more attention is focused upon it. Attempts are made to explain it away. But, the more such attempts are made, the more inconsistent and inadequate the old paradigm appears, the more strange the anomaly seems, and the more dissatisfied a section of the old scientific community becomes.
It is the internal inconsistencies now apparently permeating the old theoretical structure which convince some scientists – at first only a small number – that something is fundamentally wrong. Writing of astronomical observations, Copernicus complained that in his day astronomers were so "inconsistent in these investigations ... that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year". He continued: ""it is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body, and, since they in no way match each other, the result would be a monster rather than man."[28]
In the period immediately preceding every scientific revolution, similar complaints are made. There is no neat, logical proof that the old paradigm is wrong. Rather there arises a general sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling – on the part of some – that absolutely everything is wrong, and a gradual splintering of the scientific community into schools and factions between whom communication is difficult or even impossible. Few things – not even the most elementary principles – seem to be agreed upon any more. Everything is questioned, anything is allowed.
"The proliferation of competing articulations," writes Kuhn, "the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals – all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research."[29] All these are signs that the old theoretical edifice is crumbling and that a new one is about to take its place.
'Madness' of the new
But how does the new paradigm arise? Kuhn argues that it cannot arise logically out of the premises of the old one, because logic is a matter of symbolism – of the meaning of figures, equations and terms – whereas what is required is a complete restructuring of the semantic field itself. In fact, at first, logically it is unquestionably the old paradigm's defenders who are right:
"The laymen who scoffed at Einstein's general theory of relativity because space could not be 'curved' – it was not that sort of thing – were not simply wrong or mistaken. Nor were the mathematicians, physicists and philosophers who tried to develop a Euclidean version of Einstein's theory. What had previously been meant by space was necessarily flat, homogenous, isotropic and unaffected by the presence of matter. If it had not been, Newtonian physics would not have worked. To make the transition to Einstein's universe, the whole conceptual web whose strands are space, time, matter, force and motion had to be shifted and laid down again on nature whole. Only men who had together undergone or failed to undergo that transformation would be able to discover precisely what they agreed or disagreed about.
Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial. Consider, for another example, the men who called Copernicus mad because he proclaimed that the earth moved. They were not either just wrong or quite wrong. Part of what they meant by 'earth' was fixed position. Their earth, at least, could not be moved. Correspondingly, Copernicus's innovation was not simply to move the earth. Rather it was a whole new way of regarding the problems of physics and astronomy, one that necessarily changed the meaning of both 'earth' and 'motion'. Without those changes the concept of a moving earth was mad."[30]
So it is only in a sort of 'madness' – by the old standards – that a new paradigm can be conceived. It is not logically constructed, step by step. It is unusual for the new structure of thought to be consciously anticipated or viewed in advance:
"Instead, the new paradigm, or a sufficient hint to permit later articulation, emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis. What the nature of that final stage is – how an individual invents (or finds he has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled – must here remain inscrutable and may be permanently so.
Let us here note only one thing about it. Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them."[31]
In other words, even on the level of individuals and personalities, according to Kuhn, the attack on the old paradigm is an external one. Certain individuals or groups from outside the field manage to penetrate it and set about undermining and demolishing the structure around them, using the experience and the materials gained in doing so to build a more stable structure on new foundations in its place. The development is not a gradual or evolutionary one; the 'revolutionaries' possess, right from the beginning, a firm conviction of the necessity of what they are doing and a firm plan – however intuitive or embryonic – of the essentials of the structure they are about to build.
And they themselves have been converted not gradually, "but by a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch. Scientists then often speak of 'scales falling from the eyes' or of the 'lightning flash' that 'inundates' a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution".[32]
The same applies to the gradual conquest, by the revolutionaries, of the scientific field. Before the scientists can talk to each other again, every scientist in the old camp who is capable of it must undergo the same 'sudden' conversion as that experienced by the revolutionaries themselves:
"... before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all."[33]
In this, as in all other respects, scientific development is dialectical and revolutionary to the core.
Conclusion
Kuhn correctly sees all human knowledge as socially constructed. To work within a branch of science, he points out, is to help reproduce and define the identity of a particular community – the community of specialists concerned.
In addition to the obvious practical tests of a scientific theory, there is also an internal test. It is this: how much consensus can the theory generate? A theory which can get only this or that sectional interest to mobilise behind it is not likely to be as influential in the long run as one which can cut across sectional interests, building a community of truly universal scope.
Marx and Engels were interested in assembling the big picture – uniting the natural and social sciences to form a single science. Theirs was a revolutionary new scientific paradigm which failed only in the sense that its natural constituency – the working class – was materially defeated on each occasion when it attempted to bring freedom and reason to the world.
Today, rampant and unrestrained capitalism threatens not only freedom and reason, but the very existence of a habitable planet. Meanwhile scientists aware of the dangers of climate change are struggling against heavy odds to defend their intellectual autonomy, threatened as they are by corporate interests bent on concealing and distorting the facts.
In a world currently dominated by grotesquely wealthy state terrorists politically in league with religious fundamentalists, humanity needs autonomous, free-thinking, self-organised science as never before. Our survival as a species depends on it. Across the world, scientists – and that must include all marxists – need to get politically active precisely in order to defend the autonomy of science. For the scientific community to link up and overcome its internal divisions, it must realise where the true source of disunity lies.
In climate research, for example, it is only scientists in the pay of Exxon-Mobil or other such oil corporations (building on techniques developed previously by the tobacco companies) who make it appear that there are 'two sides' on the issues which matter. There are not two sides. Instead, there is science on the one hand; corruption and irrationality on the other. Following the example of the vast majority of climate scientists, scholars in other areas of research may begin to question their political allegiances, learning to speak out against the very corporate interests which stifle inconvenient truths, yet which unfortunately provide the bulk of funding for scientific research.
In order to find the necessary moral courage and social support, the scientific community will have no choice but to identify with the only truly internationalist, truly incorruptible, truly revolutionary political alternative to market insanity and corporate power. Science will have no choice but to align itself with our class. A Communist Party which did not represent this intellectual and social force would not be worthy of the name.
[1] See for example:
en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/137/pannekoek-darwinism-01 [9]; en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/137/pannekoek-darwinism-02 [261]; en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/04/darwin-and-the-descent-of-man [4]; en.internationalism.org/ir/140/the-legacy-of-freud [262]; en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight [8].
[2]“An individual scientist may not at all be concerned with the practical applications of his research. The wider his scope, the bolder his flight, the greater his freedom in his mental operations from practical daily necessity, the better. But science is not a function of individual scientists; it is a social function. The social evaluation of science, its historical evaluation, is determined by its capacity to increase man's power to foresee events and master nature.” L D Trotsky, 'Dialectical materialism and science' in I Deutscher (ed) The Age of Permanent Revolution: a Trotsky Anthology. New York 1964, p. 344.
[3]K Wittfogel, 'The ruling bureaucracy of oriental despotism: a phenomenon that paralysed Marx'. The Review of Politics No. 15, 1953, pp. 355-56. Wittfogel cites Marx's Theorien über den Mehrwert,
[4]Wittfogel, p. 356n.
[5]M Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory London 1969, pp. 4-5; 220-21.
[6]K Marx and F Engels, The Holy Family (1845). In T B Bottomore and M Rubel (eds) Karl Marx: Selected writings in sociology and social philosophy. Harmondsworth 1963, p. 84.
[7]. F Engels, 'Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy'. In K Marx and F Engels, On Religion. Moscow 1957, p. 266.
[8]As long as the working class is weak, wrote Marx, the theoreticians aiming to help it “improvise systems and pursue a regenerative science”. But, once the working class is strong, its theoreticians “have no further need to look for a science in their own minds; they have only to observe what is happening before their eyes and to make themselves its vehicle of expression ... from this moment, the science produced by the historical movement, and which consciously associates itself with this movement, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary” (K Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy; in Bottomore and Rubel, p. 81).
[9]As Trotsky puts it, “.... the consciousness of strength is the most important element of actual strength” (L D Trotsky Whither France? New York 1968, p116). Marx had the same idea in mind when he wrote: “.... we must force these petrified relationships to dance by playing their own tune to them! So as to give them courage, we must teach the people to be shocked by themselves’” ('Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right'; quoted in D McLellan (ed) Karl Marx: Early Texts. Oxford 1972, p. 118).
[10]K Marx, The German Ideology; in Bottomore and Rubel, p. 93.
[11] K Marx, 'Theses on Feuerbach'; in Bottomore and Rubel, p. 84.
[12] K Marx, ‘The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts’; in Bottomore and Rubel, p. 87.
[13] Actually, Marx had a very low opinion of 'political thought' in general precisely because of its inevitably subjective, unscientific bias: “Political intelligence is political just because it thinks inside the limits of politics. The sharper and livelier it is, the less capable it is of comprehending social evils .... the principle of politics is the will. The more one-sided and thus the more perfect political intelligence is, the more it believes in the omnipotence of the will, and thus the more incapable it is of discovering the sources of social evils” (K Marx ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform’; McLellan, p. 214). If Marx believed in the necessity for political struggle, it was because he understood the political nature of the obstacles to human emancipation and to the autonomy of science. It was not because of anything intrinsically political about this emancipation or its science. Socialism when realised is not political: “Revolution in general – the overthrow of the existing power and dissolution of previous relationships – is a political act. Socialism cannot be realised without a revolution. But when its organising activity begins, when its peculiar aims, its soul, comes forward, then socialism casts aside its political cloak” (McLellan, p. 221).
[14] F Engels, 'Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy', K Marx and F Engels, On Religion Moscow 1957, p. 266.
[15] K Marx, 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right'; in Bottomore and Rubel, p. 190.
[16] See T S Kuhn, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science Vol 2, No. 2, Chicago 1970, p. viii. Marx probably derived this idea at least in part from Feuerbach, although it is also a powerful theme in Hegel's writings. Feuerbach writes: “That is true in which another agrees with me – agreement is the first criterion of truth; but only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth. That which I think only according to the standard of my individuality is not binding on another: it can be conceived otherwise; it is an accidental, merely subjective, view. But that which I think according to the standard of the species, I think as man in general only can think, and consequently as every individual must think if he thinks normally ... That is true which agrees with the nature of the species; that is false which contradicts it. There is no other rule of truth” (L Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. Quoted in E Kamenka The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. London 1970, pp. 101-02).
[17] For this idea as it was expressed during the Russian Revolution see C Knight Past, future and the problem of communication in the work of V V Khlebnikov (unpublished M Phil thesis, University of Sussex, 1976).
[18] Kuhn, T S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edition. International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, Vol. 2, No. 2, Chicago.
[19]Kuhn p. viii.
[20]Kuhn p. viii.
[21]Kuhn p. 85.
[22]Kuhn pp. 93-4.
[23]Kuhn p. 94.
[24]Kuhn pp. 4-5.
[25]Kuhn p. 24.
[26]Kuhn pp. 36-7. The author adds: “It is no criterion of goodness in a puzzle that its outcome be intrinsically interesting or important. On the contrary, the really pressing problems – e.g., a cure for cancer or the design of a lasting peace – are often not puzzles at all, largely because they may not have a solution … A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies”.
[27]Kuhn pp. 64-65.
[28]Kuhn p. 83.
[29]Kuhn p. 91.
[30]Kuhn pp. 149-50.
[31]Kuhn pp. 89-90.
[32]Kuhn p. 122.
[33]Kuhn p. 150.
The social movement that has swept Spain since mid-May is of historical significance. The poor and the working class, especially its youth, are now reacting to the massive onslaught brought on by the economic crisis. But even more than the immense anger being manifested, it's the organisation of the struggle in general assemblies and the reflection that drives the debates that demonstrate a real advance for the struggles of our class. That is why the bourgeoisie, with an iron fist, have ochestrated an incredible media blackout on an international scale. Information about what is really happening on the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Terrassa isn't filtering out. This collection of articles therefore intends to contribute to breaking this silence. We will try to update it as often as possible with translations of articles, videos and eye-witness reports.
On Sunday 19th June there were massive demonstrations in more than 60 cities across Spain. According to some figures there were 140, 000 in Madrid, 100,000 in Barcelona, 60,000 in Valencia, 25,000 in Seville, 8000 in Vigo, 20,000 in Bilbao, another 20,000 in Zaragoza, 10,000 in Alicante and 15,000 in Malaga.
The strength of numbers is impressive enough, but even more important was the context. In the last two weeks, politicians and the media, with the help of Real Democracia Ya from within, have been putting pressure on the movement to come up with ‘concrete proposals’, with the aim of sucking it into the swindle of democratic reforms, but on Sunday the 19th the organisers had to give this mobilisation a ‘social content’ and the demonstrations themselves showed this tendency; in Bilbao the most used slogan was “violence is not being able to make it to the end of the month”. In Valencia the lead banner was “The future is ours”, while in Valladolid it was “Unemployment and evictions are also violence”. In Madrid the demonstration was called by the Assemblies of the Neighbourhoods and People of South Madrid - the area where unemployment is most concentrated. The banner was “All together against the crisis and Capital”, and its demands were “NO CUTS IN THE WORKFORCE, PENSIONS OR SOCIAL SPENDING; AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT; WORKERS’ STRUGGLE; DOWN WITH PRICES, UP WITH SALARIES; INCREASE TAXES ON THOSE WHO GAIN THE MOST; DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES, NO TO THE PRIVITISATION OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, SAVINGS BANKS AND OTHERS NO MATTER WHERE THEY ORIGINATE, LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS”
A collective in Alicante adopted the same manifesto. In Valencia the Autonomous and Anti-capitalist Bloc, composed of collectives active in the assemblies, defended a manifesto which said “We want an answer to unemployment. The unemployed, those in temporary employment along with those working in the black economy meeting in the assemblies give our collective agreement to the following demands and their implementation. We want the withdrawal of the Law on Labour Reform and the atrocious ERE and the reduction of redundancy payments to 20 days. We want the withdrawal of the Law on Pension Reforms since behind this is a life of privation and poverty and we do not want to be thrown into yet more poverty and uncertainty. We want the stopping of evictions. The human need for housing goes beyond the blind laws of business and the maximum profit. We say NO to cuts in education and health, to the new lay-offs which are being prepared in the regional and city administration following the recent elections”
The Madrid March was organised into various columns composed of the people from 7 towns or neighbourhoods on the periphery. It gathered up increasing numbers of people as they went along. These “snakes” took up the proletarian tradition of the strikes between 1972-76 (as well as in France in May 68) of starting out from proletarian concentrations – such as the “beacon” Standard factory in Madrid. The demonstrations would then draw in growing masses of workers, neighbours, the unemployed and young as they converged on the centre. This tradition re-emerged in the struggles in Vigo in 2006 and 2009.
In Madrid, a manifesto was read to the gathering calling for the “Assemblies to prepare for a general strike”, and was greeted with massive cries of “Long live the working class”.
In the article ‘From Tahrir Square to the Puerta del Sol’, we said that “Although it has given itself a symbol, the so-called 15M movement, this mobilisation did not create the movement but rather simply give it its first shell. But this shell in reality contains a utopian illusion around the idea of the ‘democratic regeneration’ of the Spanish State”. Significant sectors of the movement have tried to break from this shell, and the demonstrations of the 19th June went in this direction. We have entered a new stage. We do not know how and when it is going to manifest itself concretely but it is orientating itself towards the development of the assemblies and struggle on a class terrain against spending cuts; towards the unity of all the exploited, breaking down barriers between sectors, firms, origins, social situation etc, an orientation that can only fully move forward within the perspective of the international struggle against capitalism.
It is not going to be easy to concretise this. Firstly, this is due to the illusions and confusions about democracy, about citizenship and ‘reforms’, which weigh heavily on many parts of the movement; and they are reinforced by the pressure of the DRY, politicians, and the media, who are taking advantage of the existing doubts, the immediatist search for ‘quick and real results’, the fear faced with the magnitude of events, in order to keep the movement imprisoned in ideas about ‘reforms’, ‘citizenship’, ‘democracy’; ideas about being able to gain a ‘certain improvement’, a ‘truce’, faced with the savage unleashing of the attacks hitting us all.
Secondly, the mobilisation of the workers in the workplace will be something heroic, given the level of fear, the fact that the loss of income can be the difference for many families between an acceptable life and one of poverty or even between eating or not. In these conditions, the struggle cannot be the fruit of ‘individual decisions’, as the unions and democratic ideology try to pose it. It has to come from the development of collective strength and consciousness which can see the role of the unions who at present appear to ‘disappear in the struggle’ only to be very much in evidence in the workplace spreading their corporatist poison, struggling to keep this or that sector or firm imprisoned, opposing any attempts at open struggle.
It is probable that we are already heading towards the explosion of more or less open struggles, which will be confronted with considerable obstacles. The best contribution we can make to this process is to try and draw up a balance sheet of the unfolding situation from the 15th May to the 19th June and to draw out some perspective for the future.
In the last few years a much repeated phrase has been: how is it possible that nothing has happened given everything that has happened?
When the present crisis broke out we underlined that the first struggles “would probably, in an initial moment, be desperate and relatively isolated struggles, even if they may win real sympathy from other sectors of the working class. This is why, in the coming period, the fact that we do not see a widescale response from the working class to the attacks should not lead us to consider that it has given up the struggle for the defence of its interests. It is in a second period, when it is less vulnerable to the bourgeoisie’s blackmail, that workers will tend to turn to the idea that a united and solid struggle can push back the attacks of the ruling class, especially when the latter tries to make the whole working class pay for the huge budget deficits accumulating today with all the plans for saving the banks and stimulating the economy. This is when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers. This does not mean that revolutionaries should be absent from the present struggles. They are part of the experiences which the proletariat has to go through in order to be able to take the next step in its combat against capitalism” (Resolution on the International Situation, 18th International Congress of the ICC).
This “second stage” is beginning to mature – not without difficulty – with a series of movements, such as those in France against Pension Reforms (October 2010), that of the youth in Britain against the increase in tuition fees (November/December 2010), the big movements in Egypt and Tunisia to which can be added the present struggles in Spain and Greece.
For more than a month, assemblies and demonstrations have shown that we can unite, that this is not some utopia but rather on the contrary is a great stimulus, an immense joy. A search on the internet has brought up the following eloquent testimonies about the 19th June: “The atmosphere is that of a real festival. We marched along together, people of every age: twenty somethings, retired, families with children, those that are not in those groups... and at the same time neighbours standing on their balconies applauding us. We return home with a smile from ear to ear. Not only having the sense of having taken part in something, but something that went very well indeed”.
Faced with the social earthquake that we have been living through we have read a lot that ‘the workers are not moving’ and this has even taken the extreme form of the radical idea that ‘humanity is evil by nature’, etc. Today we are seeing the birth of solidarity, unity, collective strength. This does not mean underestimating the serious obstacles that arise from the intrinsic nature of capitalism – life and death competition, a lack of confidence between everyone – and that work against unification. This development can only come about through enormous and complicated efforts based on the unitary and massive struggle of the working class, a class that is the collective and waged producer of society’s riches; a class which has within itself the ability to reconstruct humanity’s social being.
In contrast to the bitter sense of impotence that predominates, this living experience is forging the idea we can have the strength to face up to capital and its state. “With the collapse of the eastern bloc and the so-called ‘socialist’ regimes, the deafening campaigns about the ‘end of communism’, and even the ‘end of the class struggle’ dealt a severe blow to the consciousness and combativity of the working class. The proletariat suffered a profound retreat on these two levels, a retreat which lasted for over ten years...it (the bourgeoisie) managed to create a strong feeling of powerlessness within the working class because it was unable to wage any massive struggles” (Resolution on the International Situation, 18th International Congress).
As a demonstrator in Madrid said “It is very interesting to see the people in the square, discussing politics or struggling for their rights. Doesn’t this give the sensation that we are retaking the streets?” This retaking of the streets shows that a sense of collective strength is beginning to mature. The road is long and hard, but the bases for the explosion of the massive struggles of the working class are being laid. This will allow the working class to develop confidence in itself and an understanding that it is a social force capable of facing up to this system and building a new society.
The 15th May cannot be reduced to an explosion of indignation. It has provided the means for being able to understand the causes of the struggle and the way to organise of the struggles: the daily assemblies. A demonstrator on the 19th June said “the best is the assemblies, speaking is free, people understand, think at a high level, thousands of people who do not know each other come to common agreements. Isn’t that marvellous?”
The working class is not a disciplined army whose members can be very convinced but whose role is to follow orders from a great leader. This vision of the world must be placed in the museum of history as an old piece of junk! The working class has to be seen as a mass that thinks, discusses, acts, organises in a collective and fraternal manner, combining the best of each in a gigantic synthesis of common action. The concrete means of implementing this vision are the assemblies. “All power to the assemblies” – this was heard in Madrid and Valencia. “The slogan ‘all power to the assemblies’ which has emerged from within the movement, even if only among a minority, is a remake of the old slogan of the Russian revolution: ‘all power to the soviets’”.
In an even more embryonic way, the movement is posing the necessity of an international struggle. On the demonstration in Valencia there were shouts of “This movement has no frontiers”. Initiatives along these lines have appeared elsewhere, even though still timid and confused. Various camps have organised demonstrations “for a European revolution”; on the 15th June there were demonstrations in support of the struggle in Greece. On the 19th June there were internationalist slogans: a placard declaring “A happy world union”, and another in English “World Revolution”.
For years, the so-called ‘globalisation of the economy’ has been used by the left wing of the bourgeoisie to provoke nationalist sentiments, with its talk about ‘stateless markets’, ‘national sovereignty’, that is, calling on workers to be more nationalist than the bourgeoisie itself! With the development of the crisis but also with the growth of the use of the internet, social networks, etc, young workers have begun to question this. A sense that faced with the globalisation of the economy it is necessary to respond with an international globalisation of the struggles, faced with world poverty the only possible answer is a world struggle.
The movement has had wide repercussions. The demonstrations that have been developing over the last two months in Greece have followed the same ‘model’ of concentrations and mass assemblies in the main squares, which have been directly and consciously stimulated by the events in Spain. According to Kaosenlared on the 19th June “thousands of people of all ages have demonstrated this Sunday in Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek parliament, on consecutive Sundays in response to the so-called pan-European movement of the ‘indignant’ in order to protest against the austerity measures”.
In France, Belgium, Mexico, Portugal, there have been regular assemblies, though smaller in scale, which have expressed solidarity with the indignant and tried to stimulate discussion. “About 300 people, in the majority young, marched on Sunday evening to the centre of Lisbon called by the “Democracia Real Ya”, inspired by the Spanish ‘indignant’. The Portuguese marched calmly behind a banner which read ‘Europe arise’, ‘Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal: our struggle is international’; in France “The French police arrested about hundred “indignant” when they tried to demonstrate in front of Notre Dame, in Paris. In the evening, there was a spontaneous sit down demonstration in order to protest about what had happened along the lines of what happened in Spain”.
The sovereign debt crisis worsens by the moment. The supposed experts recognise that in place of the oft-announced ‘recovery’ the world economy could be undergoing a new collapse worse than October 2008. Greece is a bottomless pit: rescue plan leads to other rescue plans and still the state is on the edge of defaulting, a phenomenon that is not confined to Greece but even threatens the USA, the world’s main power.
The debt crisis shows the endless crisis of capitalism, which makes it necessary for the ruling class to impose savage austerity plans that mean unemployment, cuts in social spending, wages cuts, increases in exploitation, increase in taxes... all of which leads to a reduction in the solvent market, which means new austerity plans!
This spiral means that there is no other road to take than massive struggle. This struggle can and should be pushed forward by the intervention of the widespread minority in the assemblies which is distinguished by its defence of a class positions, the independence of the assemblies and the struggle against capitalism. The camps are breaking up; the central assemblies are not taking place; there is a contradictory network of neighbourhood assemblies. However, this minority cannot allow itself to become dispersed. It has to maintain its unity, coordinate itself nationally and if possible establish international contacts. The forms of these collectives are very varied: struggle assemblies, action committees, discussion groups.... The important thing is that they provide a means for the development of discussion and struggle. There is a need to discuss the numerous questions that have been raised in the last few months: reform or revolution? Democracy or assemblies? Citizens’ movement or class movement? Democratic demands or demands against cuts in social spending? Pacifism or class violence? Apoliticism or class politics? It’s a struggle to impulse the assemblies and self-organisation. It is necessary to develop the sense of strength and unity in order to respond to the brutal cuts that the regional governments are preparing in education and health, and the other ‘surprises’ that the government has hidden up its sleeve.
“The situation today is very different from the one that prevailed at the time of the historic resurgence of the class at the end of the 60s. At that time, the massive character of workers’ struggles, especially with the immense strike of May 68 in France and the Italian ‘hot autumn’ of 69, showed that the working class can constitute a major force in the life of society and that the idea it could one day overthrow capitalism was not an unrealisable dream. However, to the extent that the crisis of capitalism was only just beginning, a consciousness of the imperious necessity to overturn this system did not yet have the material base to spread among the workers. We can summarise this situation in the following way: at the end of the 1960s, the idea that the revolution was possible could be relatively widely accepted, but the idea that it was indispensable was far less easy to understand. Today, on the other hand, the idea that the revolution is necessary can meet with an echo that is not negligible, but the idea that it is possible is far less widespread.” (Resolution on the International Situation, 18th International Congress of the ICC).
In the assemblies there has been much talk of revolution, the destruction of this inhuman system. The word ‘revolution’ is no longer frightening. The road may be long, but the movement that developed from the 15th May to the 19th June has shown that it is possible to struggle, that it is possible to organise ourselves for the struggle and that this alone will enable us to grow into a force against capital and its state, while at the same time giving us joy, vitality, and allowing us to get out of the terrible hole of daily life under capitalism.
“Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”
In this sense, the movement we are living through is grist to the mill of this change of mentality and attitude. This great change, of society and ourselves, can only take place on a world scale. Through searching for solidarity and unity with the whole of the international proletariat, the proletariat in Spain can undoubtedly develop new struggles and take forward this perspective: the future is in our hands!
ICC 24/6/11
The May 15 movement in Spain (15M) initiated by Democracia Real Ya (DRY), which is backed by the ‘alternative world’ group ATTAC, has also had some offspring in France, notably in Paris, with the objective of “taking the Place de la Bastille”. In the assemblies in Paris, some ICC militants went to defend class positions and not as simple “citizens” claiming “real democracy now” in the framework of preserving the capitalist system.
Our comrades also brought along a table for showing our publications in the public area where the assemblies were taking place.
May 29, the organisers of DRY came after us protesting with the following arguments:
that this movement was “apolitical” and accepted no party, no political group and no unions;
that the distribution of our press could only “divide” the movement.
A minor altercation then broke out between militants of the ICC and some militants of DRY who asked us, quite scathingly, to pack up and go. Here are the arguments that we used against this attempt to shut us up:
No movement of social protest is “apolitical”. The apoliticism of DRY is just a pure hypocrisy. We know perfectly well that behind the banner of DRY lies ATTAC and its followers who hide behind its ‘alternative world’ ideology;
We are not a political party and still less an electoral party;
DRY does exactly the same thing as the Stalinists in trying to turf us out of public areas considered by them as their back-yard, their “territory”;
Contrary to DRY and all the other bourgeois groups, unions and political parties present in this movement, the ICC doesn’t hide its colours (even if when we speak in the Assemblies we don’t talk in the name of our political organisation);
Even the cops, present at the scene behind their shields, seem more “democratic” than DRY, since they didn’t demand that we moved on. When we insisted on the irony of this situation of a Democracia Real Ya more coercive than the French forces of state repression, the members of DRY were particularly discomforted.
We thus refused to allow ourselves to be taken hostage by the law imposed on us by DRY and remained in the Place de la Bastille and moved aside a little in order to make way for the assembly.
On Sunday June 12, an assembly organised by DRY took place in the boulevard Richard-Lenoir in Paris. Our militants were also present and again brought their table for the press.
Same scenario: some militants of DRY came across to make a scene and get us to clear off with the same arguments. We told them that we had come back from Barcelona and that in Catalonia Square the “indignant” were pleased that we were showing our press. The “logistical commission” had lent us two trestles and boards in order to display our publications. One of the “indignant” from the “art commission” even lent us a megaphone so that we could organise a discussion around our press table.
In an outburst, a militant of DRY didn’t believe us and demanded some “proof”. We showed her our video camera to demonstrate that we weren’t bluffing. We had filmed in the square in Barcelona where one could clearly see the ICC’s press display on the table. But this militant of DRY made like an ostrich and refused to look at our video. She then demanded if the “indignant” of Barcelona had given us... “papers” authorising our press table! Perhaps DRY wanted papers stamped by the local police authorising us to distribute our press?
In reality what the militants of DRY did not want to see above all was the indignation of the “indignant” of Barcelona against the manoeuvres of DRY who, under cover of apoliticism and a-partyism, sabotaged the debates by muzzling the voices who did not sing the praises of citizenship and the bourgeois republic. Here’s the real face of the “real democracy” of DRY!
Truly, the “international extension” of 15M is only a masquerade behind which DRY tries to dragoon the exploited and the young generations of the working class into a “popular front”, shoulder to shoulder with citizens belonging to the left and the right of capital (and even the extreme-right, as this very militant “citizen” of DRY told us).
Against the dictates of DRY, against its reactionary “popular front”, the exploited must oppose a class front!
ICC, June 14th, 2011.
Over recent weeks the squares of the main Spanish cities have seen thousands of people coming together in assemblies where anyone who wants to can speak and can talk with confidence about the lack of a future we are faced with and what we can do about it. And they will be listened to with respect. There is discussion everywhere, in little groups, in bars, between the different generations, the young and the retired; and this has created a collective sense of excitement, of unity, creativity, reflection and discussion around the need to come together in order to understand what we can do about the “no future” capitalism offers us.
What is going on? Are those who say that from the beginning this was a just citizens’ movement for democratic reform, a set up, being proved right? Or is there an attack going on against the assemblies, a sabotage in order to put an end to this massive coming together, this discussion and reflection, because the state is scared and under pressure?
Two days after the brutal repression of the demonstrations of 15th May (the movement of the “indignant” which in Spain is known at the “15-M movement”) the setting up of a camp in the Puerta del Sol served as example for other cities. Ever-increasing numbers of people took part in a completely spontaneous movement of assemblies and discussions. There is a cynical lie being put about that the ¡Democracia Real Ya! Movement began this movement. These same “exemplary citizens” were very concerned to make it clear at that point that the movement to set up camps was nothing to do with them. Or as is said in a text by some anarchists from Madrid: “they distanced themselves in the most disgusting way possible from the events that happened after the demonstration and fingered those who were involved in them”.
On the one hand: the worsening of the attacks on our living conditions, unemployment, evictions, cuts in social spending. On the other hand, the example of Tahrir Square and North Africa, the pensions struggle in France, the students in Great Britain, Greece, the discussions in the workplaces or among revolutionary minorities, the comments on Facebook or Twitter, and of course all the expressions of being fed up with corruption and parliamentary antics... All this and more, has brought about the explosion of discontent and indignation, the unleashing of a torrent of vitality and struggle, ripping open the passivity and the voting of democratic normality.
Thousands and at times tens of thousands of people have come together in the central squares of the most important cities in Spain, turning them into real “agoras”. They have come after work, camped, with their families, searching... and they have talked and talked. Speech has been “freed”[2] in the assemblies. Even the most anti-state have recognized that this movement is not within the channels of the democratic state, as the above anarchist text says: “It is as if, suddenly, passivity and everyman for himself has broken down around the Puerto Del Sol... In the first days there were small groups talking about things, people gathered around to listen, to say something. It was normal to see people arguing in small groups. The work groups and general assemblies were massive events bringing together 500, 600 and 2000 people (sitting, standing, coming together to listen to something) etc. And apart from this, this permanent sense of a good atmosphere, of ‘this is something special’. All this reached its peak on the Friday/Saturday night when a day of reflection began. 20,000 were heard shouting ‘We are illegal’ like children enjoying breaking the law, this was invigorating and impressive”.
The movement has certainly not posed the question of an open confrontation with the democratic state. In fact, each attempt to arrive at concrete demands has deviated towards “democratic reform”, towards introducing the slogans of “Real Democracy Now!” And this is normal, given the working class's lack of confidence in its ability to launch itself into struggle, its lack of clarity about the perspective, and above all given the need for the working class to recover its class identity as the revolutionary subject, and thus its ability to become the head of a revolutionary offensive. However, discussion, reflection and the attempt to take the struggle in hand are precisely the way to gain confidence, sharpen clarity and recover class identity. This has been seen, particularly in Barcelona, in the efforts by striking workers to unite with the assemblies, and the calling of united demonstrations around workers’ demands in Tarrasa[3]. The real confrontation with the democratic state has been taking place in the self-organized and mass assemblies that have spread throughout the country and beyond.
And this is just what the state cannot tolerate.
After the first attempt to put a brake on events at the end of the election week on the 22nd May[4] - legally banning the gathering, which was flouted by the massive demonstrations in the squares at the hour when the law came into force, i.e. the early hours of Saturday the 21st May - the strategy has been to combine the natural weakening of the movement due to tiredness and the difficulty to put forward a perspective for the struggle with sabotage of the movement from the inside.
When the movement began to weaken, a week after the municipal elections, the state unleashed a strategy of media recuperation in Madrid and Barcelona.
In Madrid the complaints of small businessmen and shopkeepers around the Puerta Del Sol were given free reign in order to make the campers feel guilty for the crisis. Support was given for a strategy of dismantling the massive camp and just leaving an “information point”.
In Barcelona, the calculated intervention by Catalan police[5], while initially leading to an increase in the numbers taking part in the gatherings[6], eventually led to the complete derailing of the discussions toward the democratic demand for the resignation of the Catalan interior minister, Felip Puig, joining in with the opposition against the new government of the right and the nationalists.
None of this would have had the same impact if it had not been for the work from the inside by Real Democracy Now!
In the first few days, faced with the avalanche of assemblies, ¡Democracia Real Ya! (DRY) had no option but to keep a low profile, but this did not mean that it did not try to gain positions in the key commissions of the camps and to spread its positions about citizens reforming the system, such as its famous “Ten Commandments” and similar things; of course, without openly showing its face and defending apoliticism in order to prevent those with other political opinions spreading their ideas, while DRY were left free to spread theirs (unsigned).
The anarchists in Madrid already detected this ambiance at the beginning of the movement: “In many commissions and groups we are seeing everything from the accidental loss of minutes, personal ambitions, people who cling to being spokesmen like glue, delegates who remain quiet at general assemblies, commissions that ignore agreements, small groups who want to maintain the refreshment stand etc. For sure many of these are the result of inexperience and inflated egos, others however appear to be directly taken from the old manuals on how to manipulate assemblies”.
We had to wait until the first symptoms of the reflux of the movement before seeing the real offensive of the “citizens' movement” against the assemblies.
At the Puerta Del Sol they (DRY) accepted the complaints of the shopkeepers and hastened the dismantling of the camp in order to leave an “information point”. They filtered the interventions at the assemblies, which were already only discussing the proposals of the commissions, which they controlled. They openly presented their positions as the expression of the movement, rather than having them discussed in the assemblies. DRY called coordinating meetings of the neighborhood assemblies without having been elected as delegates to represent the assembly. They even held a national coordination assembly on 4th June that no one in the general assemblies knew about... And the same dynamic could be seen in all the large cities.
In Barcelona freedom of speech has been kidnapped: the assemblies simply have to pronounce on proposals formulated behind their backs. Conferences of intellectuals and professors have replaced discussion. One of the most obvious symptoms of this offensive against the assemblies has been the increasing weight of nationalism. In the week after the 15th May thousands of people packed into the Plaza de Cataluňa and discussed in different languages, translating into various languages the communiqués issued and received. There was not a single Catalan flag. Recently however, it has been voted that Catalan is the only language used.
In Valencia it has been more of the same but on a wider scale. The text Control of the Assemblies in Valencia, which has circulated anonymously, makes this clear “Since the 27th the internal dynamic of the camp and the daily assemblies has changed radically... and in them it is already almost not possible to talk about politics and social problems... It can be summed up as follows: the commission of ‘citizen participation’ and another called the ‘judicial’ commission, in total 15-20 people, have taken absolute control of the moderation of the assemblies; they are ‘professional moderators’ who impose themselves though cliques and commissions... All the placards with any political, economic or simply social content have been removed from the square. Now it is a kind of alternative fair... There is no freedom of speech in the square or assembly. In the commissions they have been able to install the dictatorship of the system of ‘minimum consensus’ with the result that you can never arrive at any substantial agreement. They have presented a document, which they claim has already been adopted, called ‘Citizen, Participate!’ which contains many beautiful things but establishes that only the commissions have the right to present proposals to the assemblies. In this text, it is established that it will be obligatory for the commissions to function by minimum consensus... this is total control in order to empty out the content of the movement.” And things have not stopped there: today a demonstration against attacks on pensions was converted into a protest against article 87.3 of the Constitution: whilst the retired shouted “for a minimum pension of €800” and “for retirement at 60”, the citizen movement shouted “prisoners since 78”[7] in order to demand a more representative Constitution.
However it has been in Seville where the DRY has exposed itself most clearly. It shamelessly asked for a blank cheque from the assemblies, to do with what it wants according to its whim. It has even dared to call upon the participants to hold their assemblies under its initials.
It is increasingly clear that the strategy of DRY, in the service of the democratic state, consists of putting forward the idea of a citizens’ movement for democratic reform, in order to try and avoid the emergence of a social struggle against the democratic state, against capitalism. The facts have shown however that, when the enormous accumulated social discontent finds even a small area to express itself, it pushed to one side the moaners about the “perfect” democracy. Neither DRY nor the democratic state can stop the development of social discontent and militancy, but they can put all kinds of obstacles in its way.
The drive against the assemblies is one of them. For a “large minority” (if we can be allowed to use paradoxical terminology) these assemblies are a reference point of how to look for solidarity and confidence, of how to discuss, in order to take charge of the struggles against the terrible attacks on our living conditions. Continuing discussing, like in the assemblies, even if these meetings are only small, is the way to prepare the struggles. Organising mass and open assemblies each time there is a struggle is the example to follow. DRY's sabotage and the imposition of a citizen’s movement could make a part of this “growing minority” become disillusioned and think that “it was all a dream”. They cannot erase history like Big Brother, but they can confuse our memory.
Therefore the alternative is to defend the assemblies where they still have some vitality; to struggle against and denounce the sabotage of DRY; and to call for the continuation of the struggle where possible, to fight for taking control of the discussion and struggle. To do this, the most determined minorities in the assemblies during struggles need to get together.
The struggle against capitalism is possible! The future belongs to the working class!
International Communist Current, 03.06.2011
[1] “PSOE and PP: the same shit” is one of the slogans against “bipartisanship” which has become emblematic of this movement
[2] “Free the word” has been one of the slogans of the recent assemblies in the movement against the cuts in pensions in France.
[3] An industrial suburb of Barcelona.
[4] On Sunday 22nd May there were elections in Spain. The law stated that the Saturday was to be “a day of reflection” and that all meetings were banned
[5] The Spanish bourgeoisie is not that stupid in its confrontation with the working class and less so in Catalonia. It is hard to believe that, only a few days after the repression against the demonstrations on the 15th May which sparked the protests, they could put their foot in it so badly. Furthermore, proving that there is always an exception to the rule, there was the pathetic declaration on the main Spanish TV channel by the spokesman for the opposition Socialist Party in Catalonia who spoke with contempt about those involved in the camp and said that the party agreed with the breaking up of the camp although not with the way it was done, demonstrating that this plan had been discussed by the government and opposition.
[6] The Catalan riot squads brutally broke up the camp (leading to some serious injuries) which stimulated solidarity from other assemblies
[7] The date the constitution drawn up after the death of Franco came into effect
A inoffensive protest was called against the new Valencian Regional Government. It asked the politicians not to be corrupt and to listen to the citizens: it was thus caught up in the folds of the illusion that the state “expresses the will of the people”.
The response of the state was very salutatory: demonstrators were beaten, dragged about, and subjected to arrogant and brutal treatment: 18 wounded and 5 arrested. They were not treated as “citizens” but as subjects.
News of this provoked strong indignation. A demonstration was called for 20.15 at the Colon metro (in the center of Valencia), in front of a regional government office. The demonstration grew little by little; a second march came from the Plaza de Virgen -where there had been a gathering held using the Valencian language – which joined up with the demonstration, to great applause. It was spontaneously decided to go the central police station where it was assumed the arrested were being held. The demonstration grow by the minute: people from the Ruzafa neighborhood joined the march or applauded from their balconies. “Free the arrested” “Don't look at us, they also rob you” were shouted. When they arrived at the centre of Zapadores the crowd came together in a large seated gathering, shouting “we are not leaving without them”; “if they are not sent out we will come in”... News of solidarity from the Barcelona assembly[1] arrived and also that the Madrid camp had held another solidarity demonstration in front of Parliament[2]. In Barcelona the shout went up “No more violence in Santiago and Valencia” (in Santiago there had been a police charge).
An hour later, after receiving news that the arrested -they had been transferred to the Central Courts- would be set free, the demonstration broke up, and several hundred went to the Central Courts to await their release, which happened after midnight.
We can draw some lessons from these events.
Firstly the strength of solidarity. The arrested were not abandoned. It was not left to the “good will of justice”: we took this in hand ourselves, because they were our own. Throughout history solidarity has been a vital strength of the exploited classes, and with the historic struggle of the proletariat it has become central to its struggle and a pillar of a future society, the world human community, communism[3]. Solidarity is destroyed by capitalist society which is based on its opposite: competition, each against all, every man for himself.
Along with solidarity there has been a growing indignation against the democratic state. Police charges in Madrid and Granada along with the inhuman treatment inflicted on the arrested in Madrid sparked off the 15th May movement. The cynical and brutal police attack in Barcelona showed the true face of the democratic state, which is usually hidden by the theatrical scenery of “free elections” and “citizen participation”. The repression in Valencia and Santiago on Friday, and today, Saturday, in Salamanca, shows this yet again.
It is necessary to reflect upon this and discuss it. Are the events in Madrid, Granada, Barcelona, Valencia, Salamanca and Santiago “exceptions” due to excesses or errors? Will the reform of electoral law, the LIP (Popular Legislature Initiatives) and other propositions for “democratic consensus” put an end to these outrages and place the state in the service of the people?
In order to answer these questions we have to understand what role the state carries out. In every country the state is the tool of the privileged and exploiting minority, the tool of capital. This applies as much to Spain, even though it uses democratic deodorant, as it does to the foulest smelling dictatorship.
The state is not held together by “citizen participation”, but by the army, the police, the courts, the prisons, political parties, unions and bosses etc; that is to say, an immense bureaucratic network in the service of capital which oppresses and feasts on the blood of the majority and is periodically legitimised by the electoral puppet show, popular consultation, referendums etc.
This “hidden face” of the state is covered over by the multicolored lights of democracy. This is clearly seen in the laws such as the pension reforms, labour reforms, and the new measures recently adopted by the government, the ERE (Expedient Regulation of Employment), which removes regulations around laid-off workers and also reduces redundancy payments to 20 days pay for each year worked, rather than the previous 45 days. Or as when the police share out their batons “in order to avoid problems” as Rubalcaba[4] euphemistically put it. Repression is not the heritage of this or that party or this or that ideology. It is the necessary and conscious response of the state each time the interests of the capitalist class are threatened, or whenever these interests need to be strengthened and propped up.
Immediatism, the pressure “to do something concrete”, led an important part of the assemblies -encouraged by groups such as Real Democracy Now! – to have confidence in the illusion of “democratic reform”: electoral laws, open lists, popular legislative initiatives... This looks like an easy, “concrete” road, but in reality it does nothing more than reinforce illusions about being able to improve the state and “put at the service of everyone”. This only results in bashing our heads against the armour-plated walls of the capitalist state.
In the assemblies there has been a lot of talk about “changing this society”, about putting an end to this social system and economic injustices. This has expressed the aspiration for a world where exploitation no longer exists, where “we are not commodities”, where production is in the service of life and not life in the service of production, where there is a world human society without frontiers.
But how do we achieve this? Is the Jesuit maxim “the end justifies the means” valid? Is it possible to change the system using the means of participation they deceive us with?
The means used have to be coherent with the desired end. Not every thing is valid! The atomisation and individualism of the ballot box isn't, nor is the delegation of these things into the hands of politicians, nor are the sordid machinations of daily politics – in short the usual methods of the democratic game. These “means” are radically different from the ends. The means for drawing us closer to our objective -although it is still far away – are the assemblies, direct collective action in the street, solidarity, the international struggle of the working class.
ICC 11.6.11
[1] In Barcelona hundreds of demonstrators blocked the Diagonal and motorists sounded their horns in support.
[2] On the Thursday there had been a demonstration against Labour Reform
[3] See our "Orientation text on solidarity and confidence [64]".
[4] Minister of the Interior and designated successor to Zapatero
While the media has been full of Obama’s ‘triumphant’ visit to Europe, or the scandal about Dominique Strauss-Khan, they have not told us much about the real earthquake hitting Europe: a vast social movement which is centred in Spain but which is having an immediate echo in Greece and threatens to break out in other countries as well.
The events in Spain have been unfolding since 15 May with the occupation of the Puerto del Sol Square in Madrid by a human wave made up mainly of young people rebelling against unemployment, the Zapatero government’s austerity measures, and the corruption of politicians. The movement spread like wildfire to all the main cities in the country - to Barcelona, Valencia, Grenada, Seville, Malaga, Leon – making use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, and videos uploaded onto Youtube; and that’s largely how we have got information about the movement outside of Spain, because the bourgeois media have pretty much imposed a black-out on the events. If they would far rather have us thinking about Obama, or Dominique Strauss Kahn, or the travails of Cheryl Cole, it’s because this movement represents a very important step in the development of social struggles and of the combat of the world working class faced with the dead-end that is capitalism.
The movement of the ‘indignos’, the ‘indignant’, in Spain has been fermenting since the general strike of 29 September 2010 against the planned reform of pensions. This general strike ended in a defeat mainly because the trade unions sat down with the government and accepted its proposed changes (which involves workers who have been active for 40-45 years getting 20% less when they retire than they had expected). This defeat gave rise to considerable bitterness within the working class. But it also provoked a profound anger among the young people who played an active part in the strike movement, in particular by expressing their solidarity with the workers’ pickets.
From the beginning of 2011 the anger began to take shape in the universities. In March, in Portugal, a call-out to a demonstration by the group ‘Precarious Youth’ mustered 250,000 people in Lisbon. This example had an immediate impact in the Spanish universities, especially in Madrid. The great majority of students and young people under 30 have to live on 600 euros a month by taking on part-time jobs. It was in this context that a hundred or so students formed the group ‘Jovenes sin Futuro’ (Young People with no Future). These impecunious students, who come mainly from the working class, called for a demonstration on 7 April. The success of this initial mobilisation, which brought around 5000 people together, incited the Jovenes sin Futuro group to plan another demo for 15 May. In the meantime the collective Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) appeared in Madrid. Its platform denounces unemployment and the “dictatorship of the market”, but claims to be “apolitical” - neither left nor right. Democracia Real Ya also launched an appeal to demonstrate on 15 May in other towns. But it was in Madrid that the procession had the greatest success, with about 250,000 demonstrators. It was meant to be a well-behaved march that would end tranquilly in Puerto del Sol.
The demonstrations of 15 May called by Democracia Real Ya were a spectacular success: they expressed a general discontent, especially among young people faced with the problem of unemployment at the end of their studies. Everything was due to end there, but at the end of the demonstrations in Madrid and Grenada some incidents provoked by small ‘Black Bloc’ groups led to a police charge and about 20 arrests. Those arrested were treated brutally in the police stations, and afterwards they formed a collective which issued a communiqué denouncing the police violence. The publication of this communiqué immediately provoked an indignant reaction and widespread solidarity against the forces of order. Thirty totally unknown and unorganised people decided to set up a camp on Puerto del Sol. This initiative immediately won popular sympathy and the example spread to Barcelona, Grenada and Valencia. A second round of police repression lit the touch paper and since then increasingly massive gatherings in central squares have been taking place in over 70 towns.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 17 May, the organisers of the ’15 May movement’ had envisaged holding silent protests or various dramatic performances, but the crowd that had come together in the squares shouted loudly for the holding of assemblies. At 8 in the evening, assemblies began to take place in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other cities. From Wednesday 18th, these assemblies became a real avalanche. Everywhere gatherings took the form of open general assemblies in public spaces.
In the face of police repression and given the prospect of municipal and regional elections, the Democracia Real Ya collective launched a debate around the theme of the “democratic regeneration” of the Spanish state. It called for a reform of the electoral reform in order to put an end to the two-party system monopolised by the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the right-wing Popular Party, calling for a “real democracy” after 34 years of “incomplete democracy” since the fall of the Franco regime.
But the movement of the ‘indignos’ to a great extent went beyond the democratic and reformist platform of Democracia Real Ya. It did not restrict itself to the revolt of the “600 euro generation”. In the demonstrations and the occupied squares of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, Seville etc, on the placards and banners you could read slogans like “Democracy without capital!”, “PSOE and PP, the same shit!”, “If you won’t let us dream, we won’t let you sleep!”, “All power to the assemblies!”, “The problem is not democracy, the problem is capitalism!”, “Without work, without a home, without fear!”, “Workers awake!”, “600 euros a month, now that’s violence!”.
In Valencia a group of women shouted “They tricked the grand-parents, they tricked their children too – the grandchildren must not allow themselves to be tricked as well!”
In the face of bourgeois democracy which reduces “political participation” to every four years “choosing” between politicians who never keep their election promises and who just get on with implementing the austerity plans required by the remorseless deepening of the economic crisis, the movement of the ‘indignos’ in Spain has spontaneously re-appropriated a working class fighting weapon: the open general assemblies. Everywhere massive urban assemblies have sprung up, regrouping tens of thousands of people from all the generations and all the non-exploiting layers of society. In these assemblies, everyone can speak up, express their anger, hold debates on different questions, and make proposals. In this atmosphere of general ferment, tongues are set free; all aspects of social life are examined (political, cultural, economic...). The squares have been inundated by a gigantic collective wave of ideas that are discussed in a climate of solidarity and mutual respect. In some towns “ideas boxes” have been set up, containers where anyone can write down their ideas on a piece of paper. The movement organises itself with a great deal of intelligence. Commissions on all sorts of questions are set up, and care is taken to avoid disorganised clashes with the forces of order. Violence within the assemblies is forbidden and drunkenness banned with the slogan “La revolucion no es botellón” (rough translation: “the revolution is not a piss up”). Each day, clean-up teams are organised. Public canteens serve meals, volunteers set up nursing centres and crèches for children. Libraries are put in place as well as a “time bank”, where talks are given on all sorts of questions – scientific, cultural, artistic, political, and economic. “Days of reflection” are planned. Everyone brings along their knowledge and skills.
On the surface, this torrent of thought seems to lead nowhere. There are few concrete proposals or immediately realisable demands. But what appears clearly is first and foremost a huge sentiment of being fed up with poverty, with austerity plans, with the present social order; and at the same time a collective will to break out of social atomisation, to get together to discuss and reflect. In spite of the many illusions and confusions, in what people say as well as on the placards and banners, the word “revolution” has re-appeared and people are not afraid of it.
In the assemblies, the debates have raised the most fundamental questions:
- should we limit ourselves to “democratic regeneration”? Don’t the problems have their origin in capitalism, a system which can’t be reformed and which has to be destroyed from top to bottom?
- Should the movement end on 22 May, after the elections, or should it continue and develop into a massive struggle against the attacks on living conditions, unemployment, casualisation, evictions?
- Should we not extend the assemblies to the workplaces, to the neighbourhoods, to the employment offices, to the high schools, to the universities? Should we root the movement among the employed workers who have the strength to lead a generalised struggle?
In the debates in the assemblies, two tendencies have appeared very clearly:
- a conservative one, animated by non-proletarian social strata, which sows the illusion that it is possible to reform the capitalist system through a “democratic citizens’ revolution”;
- the other, a proletarian tendency, which highlights the necessity to do away with capitalism
The assemblies that were held on Sunday 22 May, the day of the elections, decided to continue the movement. Numerous speakers declared: “we are not here because of the elections, even if they were the detonator”. The proletarian tendency affirmed itself most clearly in the proposals to “go towards the working class” by putting forward demands against unemployment, casualisation, social attacks. At Puerta del Sol, the decision was taken to organise “popular assemblies” in the neighbourhoods. Proposals were made to do the same thing in the workplaces, the universities, the employment offices. In Malaga, Barcelona and Valencia, the assemblies posed the question of organising demonstrations against reductions in the social wage, proposing a new general strike: “a real one this time” as one of the speakers put it.
It was in Barcelona, the industrial capital of the country, that the central assembly at Catalonia Square seemed to be the most radical, the most infused by the proletarian tendency and the most distant from the illusion of “democratic regeneration”. Thus, the workers from the Telefonica, the hospitals, the fire-fighters, the students battling social cuts joined up with Barcelona assembly and began to give it a different tonality. On 25 May, the Catalonia Square assembly decided to give active support to the hospital workers’ strike, while the assembly at Puerta del Sol in Madrid decided to decentralise the movement by convoking “popular assemblies” in the neighbourhoods in order to put a participatory, “horizontal” democracy into practice. In Valencia, demonstrating bus workers got together with a demonstration of local residents against cuts in the schools budget. In Zaragoza, bus drivers joined the assemblies with the same enthusiasm.
In Barcelona, the “indignos” decided to maintain their camp and to continue the occupation of Catalonia Square until June 15.
Whatever direction the movement goes in, whatever its outcome, it is clear that this revolt, initiated by a young generation confronted with unemployment (in Spain 45% of the population aged between 20 and 25 is out of work) is definitely part of the struggle of the working class. Its contribution to the international movement of the class is undeniable.
It is a generalised movement which has drawn in all the non-exploiting social strata, and all the generations of the working class. Even if the class has been part of a wave of “popular” anger and has not affirmed itself through massive strikes and specific economic demands, this movement still expresses a real maturation of consciousness within the only class that can change the world: the proletariat. It reveals clearly that, in front of the increasingly evident bankruptcy of capitalism, significant masses of people are beginning to rise up in the “democratic” countries of Western Europe, opening the way towards the politicisation of the proletarian struggle.
But, above all, this movement has shown that the young people, the great majority of them casual workers or unemployed, have been able to appropriate the weapons of the working class struggle: massive and open general assemblies, which have allowed them to affirm their solidarity and take control of the movement outside the political parties and trade unions.
The slogan “all power to the assemblies” which has emerged from within the movement, even if only among a minority, is a remake of the old slogan of the Russian revolution: “all power to the soviets”.
Even though today people are still fearful of the word “communism” (owing to the weight of the bourgeois campaigns after the fall of the Stalinist regimes of the old eastern bloc), the word “revolution” doesn’t scare anyone, on the contrary.
But this movement is in no way a “Spanish Revolution” as the Democracia Real Ya collective presents it. Unemployment, casualisation, the high cost of living and the constant deterioration of living conditions for the exploited are not at all a Spanish specificity! The sinister face of unemployment, especially among the young, has made its appearance in Madrid as in Cairo, in London as in Paris, in Athens as in Buenos Aires. We are all together in this downward spiral. We are all facing the decomposition of capitalist society, which expresses itself not only in poverty and unemployment, but also in the multiplication of disasters and wars, in the dislocation of social relations and a growing moral barbarity (which expresses itself, among other things, in the growth of sexual aggression and violence against women both in the “Third World” and the “advanced” countries.
The movement of the “indignos” is not a revolution. It is only a new step in the development of the working class struggle on global scale – the only struggle that can open up a perspective for the youth “with no future” and for humanity as a whole.
Despite all the illusions about the “Independent Republic of Puerta del Sol”, this movement is evidence that the horizon of a new society is taking shape in the entrails of the old. The “Spanish earthquake” shows that the new generations of the working class, who have nothing to lose, are already becoming actors on the stage of history. They are precursors of even greater storms that will clear the road to the emancipation of humanity.
Through the use of the internet, of social networks and mobile phones, this young generation has shown that it can break through the black-out of the bourgeoisie and its media, laying the basis for solidarity across national borders.
This new generation emerged on the international social scene around 2003, first in the protests against the military interventions of the Bush administration, then with the first demonstrations in France against the reform of pensions in 2003. It reappeared in the same country in 2006 with the massive movement of university and high school students against the CPE. In Greece, Italy, Portugal, Britain, young people in education made their voices heard in response to the future of absolute poverty and unemployment that capitalism is offering them.
The tidal wave of this “no future” generation recently struck Tunisia and Egypt, resulting in a gigantic social revolt which toppled Ben Ali and Mubarak. But it should not be forgotten that the decisive element which forced the bourgeoisie in the main “democratic” countries (especially Barack Obama) to dump Ben Ali and Mubarak was the emergence of workers’ strikes and the danger of a general strike movement.
Since then, Tahrir Square has become an emblem, an encouragement to struggle for the younger generation of proletarians in many countries. This was the model the “indignos” in Spain followed when they set up their camp in Puerta del Sol, occupied the main squares of over 70 towns and drew all the oppressed social layers into the assemblies (in Barcelona, the “indignos” even renamed Catalonia Square “Plaza Tahrir”).
The movement in Spain is, in reality, much more profound than the spectacular revolt which was crystallised in Tahrir Square in Cairo. It has broken out in the main country of the Iberian Peninsula, a bridge between the two continents. The fact that it is unfolding in a “democratic” state in Western Europe (and - what’s more - one led by a “socialist” government!) can only help to undermine the democratic mystifications deployed by the media since the “Jasmine revolution” in Tunisia.
Furthermore, although Democracia Real Ya describes this movement as a “Spanish revolution”, hardly any Spanish flags have been flown, whereas Tahrir Square was awash with national flags[1].
Despite the inevitable confusions accompanying this movement, it is a very important link in the chain of today’s social struggles. With the aggravation of the world crisis of capitalism, these social movements will more and more converge with the proletarian class struggle and contribute to its development.
The courage, determination and deep sense of solidarity displayed by this “indignant” generation shows that another world is possible: communism, the unification of the world human community. But for this old dream of humanity to become a reality, the working class, the class which produces the essentials of all the wealth of society, has to rediscover its class identity by developing massive struggles against all the attacks of capitalism.
The movement of the “indignos” has once again started to pose the question of the revolution. It is up to the world proletariat to resolve the question by giving the movement a clear class direction, aimed at the overthrow of capitalism. It is only on the ruins of this system of exploitation based on commodity production and profit that the new generations can build a new society, achieve a really universal “democracy” and restore dignity to the human species.
Sofiane, 27.5.11
[1] On the contrary, we have even seen slogans calling for a “global revolution” and for the “extension” of the movement across national frontiers. An “international commission” has been created in all the assemblies. In all the big cities in Europe and America, and even in Tokyo, Pnomh Pen and Hanoi, we have seen solidarity demonstrations by Spanish expatriates.
We are publishing this article even though it was written before the fall of Gbagbo and the victory of the forces led by Outtara. But its denunciation of the brutality of this conflict and the cynicism of the imperialist powers lurking behind it remains as valid as ever.
The murders with small arms fire which began the day after the proclamation of the Presidential election results of November 28, 2010, has given way to large-scale massacres right out in the open. According to diverse sources (such as the spokesman of Outtara on French TV), there’s already a thousand deaths, tens of thousands of injured and hundreds of thousands of refugees, 300,000 of whom fled the town of Abidjan. Fighting is unfolding in most areas of this town, notably Ababo. The population is caught in the cross-fire of both camps of assassins who don’t hesitate to march over the bodies of their victims, women and children mostly. These are not just targeted assassinations and sudden assaults by death squads, there are also tanks, helicopters and other heavy weaponry stepping into this danse macabre. Now the war is moving from Abidjan to the political capital Yamoussoukro and is spreading to the Liberian frontier where these bloodthirsty gangs are settling their accounts. Elsewhere, those that escape death inevitably come up against the misery of a state of war with its lot of scarcity, mass unemployment and permanent insecurity.
“Here, a woman, ‘housewife, a mamma’ as the people affectionately and tenderly refer to the mothers of families, had her head taken off by a soldier shooting in Abobo, the insurgent quarter of Abidjan. About six or seven other women were mown down with bursts of gun fire from an armoured vehicle of the defence forces (FDS) loyal to Laurent Gbagbo which came, according to the crowd, from a neighbouring camp of the Republican Guard, supported by men of the Anti-riot Brigade (BAE). Diabolical columns are crossing now hostile zones, followed by ambulances and hearses in order to get rid of the corpses (...) Thursday March 3, the march of women who thought that they could demonstrate peacefully in the style of Egypt or Tunisia with placards saying ‘Gbagbo go!’, turned out not to be the beginning of a ‘revolution’ called for by Guillaume Soro, ex-chief of the rebellion and now first minister of Alassane Ouattara, the President recognised by the international community. The FDs fired on the women with heavy machine-guns whose bullets were capable of tearing off heads, arms and legs. Seven deaths” (Le Monde, March 10 2011).
And the carnage is reproduced on March 8 (during another march on the occasion of “International Woman’s Day”) at the end of which we saw the extreme barbarity in which the forces loyal to the criminal Gbagbo excel. But we also shouldn’t ignore the responsibility of the no less criminal camp of Ouattara which has knowingly sent these women to their death without any protection. It’s this same Soro, the right-hand man of Ouattara, who has profited from the circumstances of revolts in the Arab world in order to push these women into an abattoir under the pretext of unleashing a “revolution” against the power of Gbagbo. This really monstrous procedure consists of manipulating civilians and women with the single aim of satisfying the criminal ambitions of the politicians . But these two camps of vultures don’t stop there; they enrol the population in absolute horror:
“The unthinkable is happening: each in their own camp, an ill-wind for the neutrals. There are more and more armed civilians; more and more situations where innocents are killed, burnt alive, wounded, martyred, in the two camps. The Ivory Coast is falling apart and the meeting organised by the African Union for Tuesday in Addis-Ababa to communicate a solution ‘constraining’ the two rivals for the presidency of November 2010, doesn’t give rise to great hopes... At the same time, the scale of the violence diversifies. Three mosques have been burnt in the last few days. Groups of militias have also sacked the homes of the leaders of the RHDP of Alassane Ouattara, who is holed up in the Hotel du Golf, discretely tucked away in the country. Eighteen houses have been ransacked based on the growing fears of seeing a new wave of exactions hitting those that their neighbours suspect of being pro-Outattara. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Anokoua, an area of Abobo peopled by the ethnic Ebrie, supposedly belonging to the Gbagbo camp, have been attacked the night before. Three deaths, including a woman burnt in her house and numerous injuries. Arms have been distributed to the Ebrie. If the spiral of violence is not stopped it will affect everyone (Le Monde, Ibid).
This is the hell in which the populations live their daily lives, unfortunately without hope of escaping; given the protection given to the killers, the most likely outcome is for the entire country to end up in a conflagration.
Facades of sanctions, but real imperialist confrontations
In order to support Alassane Ouattara designated the winner (by them) of the second round of presidential elections November last, the United States and the European Union announced a series of economic and diplomatic “sanctions” against the Gbagbo clan to force him to cede power to his rival. But three months later, Laurent Gbagbo is still there and openly mocks the “sanctions” because he knows that they have been implemented with a double language and there is unity on nothing. On the contrary, behind the scenes there is a battle to defend the respective interests of those countries involved.
Faced with the attempted “blockade” of Ivorian cocoa, Gbagbo decided on a reorganisation of the commercialisation of the raw material, including calling into question “any powers of western groups” and was looking for new outlets. His entourage boasted: “Gbagbo has paid the wages for February; he will pay them for March and April (...) The grip of international reprobation towards his regime persists, but Laurent Gbagbo is not giving up. He hopes to profits from the disagreements appearing within the international community and thinks that time is on his side. Pharmacies are beginning to run out of medicines because of an unannounced maritime embargo. But European businessmen continue to knock on his door, even if Gbagbo only receives them when the indiscreet cameras are out of the way” (Jeune Afrique, 6/12 March 2011).
The case of France is particularly edifying. In fact, on one side, Monsieur Sarkozy publicly announced a series of measures to so-called sanction the government of Gbagbo, including the threat of an economic boycott, whereas, on the other, he is taking care not to incite the big French companies present (Bouygues, Bollore, Total, etc.) to leave the country. On the contrary, all these groups continue to “do business” with the Gbagbo regime, mitigating and skirting around the so-called “economic sanctions”. Yet again, we see the odiously hypocritical character of the “African policy” of the French in the Ivory Coast. In reality, French imperialism is above all concerned for its capital and cares nothing for the fate of the population, the first victims of this butchery; moreover, the guard dogs of its military operation “Licorne” will be released if French interests are threatened. Clearly, in this business of “sanctions”, no gangster can leave an advantage to the profit of its rivals.
The UN and the AU let the assassins loose
At each big explosion of violence in the Ivory Coast since the beginning of the bloody electoral process at the end of 2010, the Security Council of the UN has been quick to meet up to take “resolutions”, but never in the sense of stopping the massacres. On the contrary, each one of its members more or less openly supports one or the other of the armed camps on the ground. That clearly shows the sordid behaviour of these gentlemen of the Security Council; so cynical that their 11,000 soldiers on the ground do nothing other than “record” the numbers of victims; and, worse still, they cover up the fact that armed groups, even surrounded by Blue Helmets, bombard and fire on the population with impunity.
Thus, not only do the UN authorities remain scandalously indifferent to the suffering of the victims of war, but they have also put in place a black-out on the killings.
Once again, the French president, addressing the entire world, launched an ultimatum to Gbagbo giving him the “order” to leave power before the end of 2010. Since then? Nothing... He has observed a scrupulous, total silence on the horrors unfolding in front of his interests and the “soldiers of peace” on the ground.
As to the African Union, it adopts an attitude that’s just as wretched as the UN. In fact, taken by the throat by the respective partisans of the butchers involved in the dispute for Ivorian power, it leaves it to its members to support and arm one bloody clique or the other (like South Africa and Angola for Gbagbo, Burkina Faso and others for Ouattara). In order to mask this reality, it is making out there is a “reconciliation” of the belligerents by creating commission after commission, the latest of which (meeting in Addis-Ababa March 10 2011) found nothing better to do than nominate yet another “high representative responsible for enacting forceful solutions linking up with a close committee of the representatives of the Economic Community of the States of Western Africa and the United Nations”.
Behind this diplomatic jargon, lies the cynicism of all these imperialist gangsters! All these “reconciliators” are none other than the real executioners of the Ivorian population.
Amina (March 17 2011)
We are publishing here a brief article from a sympathiser of the ICC regarding the explosion at the Chevron oil refinery.
On the evening of June 2nd an explosion at the Chevron oil refinery at Pembroke dock in West Wales killed 4 workers and another is in hospital with serious injuries. The time it took to indentify the bodies suggests that the unfortunate workers were blown to bits. The following night the BBC reported a “huge” blaze at the Eco-oil storage plant near Kingsnorth power station in Kent. The times of both incidents suggests that the majority of workers, 1400 at Chevron, wouldn’t have been on site. A police spokesman initially called the Pembroke explosion “a tragic industrial accident” which was then changed to a “tragic industrial incident”, and a further statement said that it was “thought not to pose any threat” (from contamination). Incident or accident, one thing for sure is that in Britain, just as elsewhere, capitalism is becoming more and more of a mortal threat to the workers as well as to working class districts close to industrial installations and conurbations. A number of factors will ensure this: the primary one being that capitalism puts profits before lives and working class living and working conditions every time. With the unstoppable development of its economic crisis the ruling class will more and more cut back on safety measures, safety inspections, regular maintenance and the replacement of worn out and dangerous plant. And all this while the usual rot is pronounced about “condolences”, the “inevitability of accidents” and “lessons will be learnt” as one disaster follows another.
The explosion and fire, with the resulting contamination, at the Coryton refinery and depot in Essex in 2007, shows us the way the wind is blowing. Here, 20 health and safety compliance orders are still outstanding from the event, with one very serious safety factor still in the design stage: this will be in place in December 2012, so they say (Thurrock Gazette, 13.5.2011). Along with continuous non-compliance there have been further serious failures at the plant with the latest recorded in January this year. In a 2006 analysis of workplace disasters, Dave Whyte writing in ‘Working disasters’, talks of the “supine collusive ideology that dominates the regulatory landscape”.
Coryton follows the explosion at the Chevron/Total oil facility at Buncefield, Hertfordshire in December 2005 which was called “the largest peace-time fire in Europe” (Wikipedia). It was a fuel-air explosion and the effects of the contamination and the environmental damage remain unknown over five years later. Just like many other instances the state got around the initial contamination of ground water by simply raising the allowed limits of contaminants allowed in drinking water (Hemel Hempstead Today May 2006). The explosion, similar in effect to the fuel-air bombs used in the first Iraq War, registered on the Richter scale and occurred early on a Sunday morning. Had it happened while the plant was fully manned the casualties would have been far worse than the 42 injured. A year later all of the fire stations that were first to respond to the Buncefield blaze (and praised by Tony Blair at the time as “great public servants”) were facing closure and cuts in manpower (Guardian, 12.5.2006).
A similar fuel-air explosion happened at the Flixborough chemical plant near Scunthorpe in 1974. Again this occurred at the weekend and killed 18 workers; had it happened on a working day most, if not all, of the 500 workers would have been incinerated.
And this after “lessons would be learnt” from the still shocking case of the Piper Alpha explosion on a North Sea oil rig, when 167 of the 226 workers on board were killed in the most horrific circumstances in summer 1988. Here again HSE enforcement and improvement notices are ignored or strung out, while scores of workers have been killed in the North Sea oil industry over the subsequent 20 odd years and workers are intimidated or dismissed without cause or comeback and are blacklisted as “troublemakers” if they make any sort of fuss about safety issues. And as Whyte says above, the “collusive ideology” runs through the companies, the HSE and the unions. Twenty years after Piper Alpha the HSE found 50% of platforms had “poor” safety conditions and there was a 15 thousand hour backlog of “critical safety issues” to be put in place.
The Coalition government has shown that it will follow Labour and the Tories in complicity around the threats to workers’ lives and giving the green light to unsafe, cost-cutting procedures. Recent budget cuts show that the 98 North Sea off-shore inspectors have been reduced to 83 at the turn of this year (Hazards no. 113). Companies’ safety procedures are to remain secret and no-one, except top management officials can have full access to these documents. Throughout the whole oil industry, as pipework corrodes, oxidises and remains unreplaced, as valves and connections become more vulnerable to dysfunction and decay, maintenance is being cut, safety measures are subverted and cut, vital components are overlooked; and while company and union lawyers get rich over claim and counter-claim, workers are more and more put at risk. The coming budget cuts along with the already existing primacy of profits and secondary concern for workers’ lives and wellbeing will ensure that these explosive risks to the working class become ever greater.
Baboon. June 7th 2011
We have received the information published below from comrades in Korea. Independently of the events in themselves, their significance is also determined by the fact that they are taking place simultaneously with the movements in Spain and Greece, and reveal a certain number of similar features.
Gatherings for the reduction of tuitionfees by half are taking place everyday in Korea but they have not been growing as big mass gatherings as Candlelight gatherings in 2008.
It is partly because the mass does not have yet enough force for going out to the streets, and partly because leading elements of the gatherings are limiting the issue only to the problem of tuition fees. In addition to these reasons, the participation of bourgeois parties such as Democratic Party in the gatherings prevents those gatherings from growing to mass struggles, too.
On 26th June there was a gathering in the Seoul City Hall Square and the Kwanghwa Gate Square with ten thousands of participants, because KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) organized an all people meeting in which every social stratum was expected to join. All strata including Workers, Peasants and Students came to the gathering, and even it was daytime the streets of the Kwanghwa Tor Square were once occupied by the gathering participants.
In South Korea it was first time since long time to witness occupations of streets and gatherings in the centre of Seoul in daytime. This gathering was possible because there have been the gatherings of university students for the reduction of tuition fees by half. Though in this sense, the gatherings for the reduction of tuition fees by half have to some degree a certain, limited meaning but it remains limited because it the movement has not (yet) expanded.
Meanwhile a new type of movements is being formed at almost the same time in South Korea. In South Korea there is a ship constructing company with the name of Hanjin Heavy Industry. This company is located in Pusan, the second biggest city in South Korea. The Korean ship constructing industry is marking the first place in the world but the company, Hanjin Heavy Industry is middle to small sized, being pushed aside in the competition with other ship constructing companies. This company constructed a new dockyard in the Philippines and is exploiting there Philipine workers by paying them very low wages. In order to eliminate its dockyard with high wage and Trade Unions in Korea, it is giving many orders for construction to Subik dockyard in Philippines. Early this year Hanjin Heavy Industry laid 400 workers off. In order to stop this, a woman worker occupied a crane and is struggling. Ordinary citizens and workers created a way to show solidarity to her, by now it is called “bus of hope”. They determine a certain day, rent buses and go to the company, Hanjin Heavy Industry. Normally there is no workers´s struggle without gatherings organized by Trade Unions. But now a current is rising, a current which shows spontaneously their solidarity with the struggle in Hanjin Heavy Industry. On 11th June, even 3000 workers went to Pusan and entered into the factory. In this struggle not only workers but also ordinary citizens are taking part. Among those people there are famous actors and actresses. An actress named Yeojin Kim went there and happened to be taken to the police station. This news was reported through Twitter in real time base and is drawing attention of the people who did not participate in this struggle. The second ´bus of hope´ is now being prepared on the 9th July. Then 185 buses will be used.
Like gatherings for the reduction of tuitionfees by half, this struggle is not a socialist struggle. Workers are not leading the struggle. The conservative tendency of Lee government is leading even Liberalists to be interested in workers´problems. Among them quite many people will turn their back to workers after the change of government.
Even with such a limit, we think, such processes are preparing a new but different form of movements to the 1980- 90´s.
We recently received this text from the comrades of the TPTG (‘Children of the Gallery’) in Greece, and are very pleased to publish it, because it represents one of the first clear statements on the ‘assembly movement’ in Greece, written by comrades who have been taking part in the movement. Their analysis of recent events in Greece corresponds very closely to what we have been saying about the ‘indignant’ movement in Spain which provided an immediate catalyst for the mobilisations in Athens and other Greek cities. Just as we identified a struggle ‘inside’ the movement in Spain between a ‘democratic wing’ which aims to recuperate the assemblies for the benefit of a project of capitalist reform, and a proletarian wing which stands for the development of self-organisation and a fundamental questioning of capitalist social relations, the TPTG text concludes by saying
“One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades. What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general… the multiform and open character of this movement puts on the agenda the issue of the self-organization of the struggle, even if the content of this struggle remains vague”.
In short: despite its many weaknesses (and the movement in Greece seems to suffer more heavily than its counter-part in Spain from the dead weight of nationalism), this whole experience is a very important moment in the emergence of a deeper form of proletarian class consciousness and organization, and one in which revolutionaries need to be actively involved.
Whatever disagreements may exist between our organisations, it is clear from this text that the principles we hold in common are even more significant: opposition to the manoeuvres of leftists and unions, complete rejection of nationalism, and a determined effort to contribute towards the emergence of what the comrades of the TPTG call a “proletarian public sphere” which will make it possible for growing numbers of our class not only to work out how to resist capitalism’s attacks on our lives, but to develop the theories and actions that lead to a new way of life altogether.
ICC, July 2011
The movement of the assemblies in the squares started completely unexpectedly on the 25th of May in Athens. It’s unclear which was the initial group of people that took the initiative to post a call for a rally in Syntagma square on Facebook to express their “indignation” and anger at the government’s austerity measures. It seems though that some people around a political group influenced by the later Castoriadis’ democratic ideology were involved among others in that initiative. The call was publicized favourably by the mass media and during the first days there was a reference in the media to a banner that allegedly appeared in the Spanish mobilizations: “Shhh, do not shout, we will wake up the Greeks” or something like that. Of course, no one could expect what would follow.
The initial call was a declaration of independence and separation from political parties, representation and ideologies. It also declared the will to protest peacefully against the state management of the debt crisis and “all those who led us here”. Furthermore, a main slogan was the call for a “real democracy”. The slogan of “real democracy” was quickly replaced after a couple of days by the slogan of “direct democracy”. The initial effort of the organizers to set a body of specific democratic rules for the assembly was rejected by the participants. However, certain regulations were established after some days concerning the time-limit of the speeches (90 sec), the way that someone can propose a subject for the discussion (in written form, two hours before the beginning of the assembly) and the way that speakers are being chosen (through a lottery).. We should also mention that around the core of the general assembly there are always plenty of discussions, events or even confrontations among the participants.
In the beginning there was a communal spirit in the first efforts at self-organizing the occupation of the square and officially political parties were not tolerated. However, the leftists and especially those coming from SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) got quickly involved in the Syntagma assembly and took over important positions in the groups that were formed in order to run the occupation of Syntagma square, and, more specifically, in the group for “secretarial support” and the one responsible for “communication”. These two groups are the most important ones because they organize the agenda of the assemblies as well as the flow of the discussion. It must be noted that these people do not openly declare their political allegiance and appear as ‘individuals’. However, these politicos are unable to completely manipulate such a volatile and heterogeneous assembly since the delegitimisation of the political parties is prevalent. It is very difficult to participate as an individual in these specific groups though, since you have to confront the shadow party mechanisms of the leftists.
The rallies organized on a daily basis gradually became very massive and expressed the complete delegitimisation of the government and of the political system in general. In the most massive rally maybe 500.000 people participated (on Sunday 5/6).
The social composition of the mixed crowd that rallies everyday ranges from workers, unemployed, pensioners and students to small entrepreneurs or former small bosses hard hit by the crisis. In these rallies in the Syntagma square, a divide was formed from the first days between those who are “above” (near the Parliament) and those who are “below” (in the square proper). In the first category, some nationalist and extreme right-wing groups have been active from the beginning influencing the more conservative and/or less politicized people who participate in the demonstrations (being either proletarians or proletarianised former small entrepreneurs). It is quite common for most of them gathering outside the Parliament to wave Greek flags, make the open palm gesture against the MPs, cry out populist and nationalist slogans like “Traitors!” or “Thieves!” or even sing the national anthem. However, the fact that these people are more politically conservative does not necessarily mean that they are more controllable when the conflicts with the police escalate or that they can be counted to the lines of the organized extreme right-wing groups. On the other hand, the second group which forms the constituency of the assembly is much more oriented to the democratic left (patriotic, antifascist, anti-imperialist) as it can be seen by the voted communiqués (see https://real-democracy.gr [273]) and is also proletarian in composition (unemployed workers, civil servants, university students, workers from the private sector, etc.)
The leftists have managed to organize a series of discussion events about the “debt crisis” and about “direct democracy” with invited speakers coming from the left academia (e.g. left political economists like Lapavitsas) who are connected to various left political parties (mainly SYRIZA and ANTARSYA). The organization of these events reproduces and reinforces the divide between “experts” and “non-experts” and the content of the presentations of the invited speakers has been centred on an alternative political and economic management of capitalist relations and the crisis. For example, the main views expressed with regard to the issue of debt vary from proposals for the “debt restructuring” and the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” to calls for an immediate suspension of payments on the part of the Greek state or exit from the Euro-zone and the EU. In any case, the political content expressed in these events is that of an alternative and more patriotic path for the “development of the country” and the creation of a real social-democratic state. In other words, these events try to direct the discussions towards an alternative path for the reproduction of capitalist relations in Greece that will be implemented by a different government in which the leftists will have assumed the role they deserve... Occasionally there have been criticisms by participants in the assembly of the prominent role of experts in panels as well as of the conception of the debt as a logistical, national issue. However they have been too weak to change the whole direction. The most well-known proposal for a left management of the “national debt” is coming from the Greek Audit Commission which consists of various left politicians, academics and union bureaucrats and favours the idea of the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” following the Ecuador model. This Commission’s presence was established in the square in the first days against voted resolutions for the exclusion of political parties and organizations with the pretext of being a “citizens’ association”!
Some of us have been involved in a thematic assembly that has been formed by the general assembly around the issues of labour and unemployment called Group of Workers and Unemployed. In cooperation with other comrades, this assembly has tried to promote the self-organized practice of the proletarian “suspension of payments” from below for the direct satisfaction of our needs. Of course, the latter is completely at odds with the left political proposals for the “suspension of payments of the sovereign debt”. Towards this aim some interventions in unemployment offices have been organized calling the unemployed workers to join the group in Syntagma square and attempting to initiate discussions aiming at the organization of local assemblies of unemployed workers (the latter aim was unfortunately not successful). Also 3 direct actions in the metro station of Syntagma square have been organized where, in cooperation with a collective that is already active on this issue, the so-called “I don’t pay” coalition of committees, the ticket validating machines were blocked. The leftists who participate in this assembly have tried to confine its activities to left political demands of “the right to work”, “full, decent and stable work for all”, etc. without any real interest to communicate their struggle experiences (if they had any) and engage in collective direct action. The results of this confrontation are depicted in the communiqué which was produced and is available in https://real-democracy.gr/en/node/159 [274]. But, the main problem is that apart from us, some anti-authoritarians/anarchists and the leftists, the participation of other people both in the discussions and the actions is almost non-existent, although the actions which were organized have been agreed upon by the general assembly.
This leads to another important observation about the assembly of the Syntagma square. Notwithstanding that the assembly has taken all these days decisions involving the organization of direct actions, in the end very few people really participate in them. It seems that the direct democratic process of just voting for or against a specific proposal in such a massive assembly tends to reproduce passivity and the role of the individualized spectator/voter.
This passivity and individualization of a significant part of the people was transcended on the day of the general strike (15/6) when the need to struggle against the attempts of the state to disband the demonstration and to reoccupy Syntagma square not only led practically to the participation of thousands of people in the conflicts with the police but also led to the expression of real solidarity between the demonstrators: people were freed from the hands of the cops by other protesters, the medical team helped anyone that was in danger because of the tear gas and the brutal strikes of the cops, the joyful dance of thousands of people amidst the tear gases, etc.
However, there were certain forces, i.e. the mass media, the left parties and the fascists, who tried to promote separations between the demonstrators around the issue of violence and through the accusation against some violent demonstrators of being instigated by police agent-provocateurs. When the anarchist/antiauthoritarian block and the blocks of the base unions arrived in Syntagma square and some of the comrades moved to the area in front of the parliament, a group of fascists exploited the throwing of a few (2-3) Molotov bombs by some individuals and started to shout through bullhorns to the demonstrators that the “kukuloforoi” (hooded persons) are undercover police provocateurs that should be isolated. This group started the attack against the anarchists/antiauthoritarians and managed to get other demonstrators involved in the attack as well. The anarchists/antiauthoritarians managed to face the attack and to respond successfully. However, the media exploited this incident by portraying it as an attack of the anarchists against the “indignants” (as the crowds demonstrating in the square are called) in order to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters within the movement. The video of this incident was played again and again for the rest of the day. However, on the level of street politics, this attempt was largely unsuccessful since when the police attacked later the demonstration they were confronted by a totally mixed crowd.
Apart from the media, the left parties tried as well to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters through their “provocateurology” and the continuous accusations and propaganda against the anarchist/antiauthoritarian milieu. Their aims are of course different: they want to restrain the movement to the limits of legality and peacefulness so that they will be able to capitalize on it politically according to their wishful thinking to participate in a future government that will follow an alternative left path for the development of Greek capitalism. We should add here that the Group of Workers and Unemployed of Syntagma square where some of us participate issued a resolution condemning provocateurology and false divisions within the movement but the text was never voted as a subject for discussion. This was the result of the leftist organizers’ intervention and manipulation combined with the weak support from other participants.
However, a lot of different views have been expressed concerning the issue of “provocateurology” and also the “violent or pacifist character of our movement”. The dynamic and contradictory character of the assembly can be traced to some of the assembly’s decisions two days before the 48-hour general strike on 28-29 of June. The left organizers managed to win a vote calling the police forces to “show respect to people's will and the constitutional right of people's sovereignty [...] and not to prevent the people from protecting its own Constitution”!At the same time, there was another resolution which condemned “the professionals of violence who serve the system and not the movement”, reflecting the leftist provocateurology against those who do not act according to the ideology of obedience to “law and order”. On the contrary, a day after, in another decision the assembly voted in favour of “those who clash with the repression forces. Nobody with a loudspeaker should speak against them”. On the same day, the proposal for “condemnation of any kind of violence during the coming 48-hour strike” was disapproved.
It must be noted that till now the “movement of the squares” has been really effective in the sense that it managed to widen the field of opposition to the government’s policy, something that the conventional general strikes and the isolated sectional strikes had not managed to do. It obliged the discredited GSEE to call for a 24-hour strike on the 15/6 and a 48-hour strike when the second “memorandum” was going to be voted and many workers took the opportunity to participate in the demos from morning till night. Although it did not manage to cancel the voting of the memorandum, it nonetheless managed to create a deep cabinet and political crisis. Never before, not even during the December 2008 riots, was the political system of representation so irretrievably delegitimised. However, the leftist organizers managed to preserve the mediatory role of unions -at least on an ideological level- through a common poster calling for the 48-hour general strike.
A first observation about this strike is that it’s impossible to make an accurate estimation of the number of people that took part in the events during these two days. There was a continuous inflow and outflow of people to and from the terrain of the struggle in the centre of Athens (i.e. the Syntagma square and the surrounding streets) and the number of demonstrators fluctuated from a few thousands to as many as 100.000 people. However, the participation in the strike, in the rally and in the conflicts was far lower on the first day than in the second day: the number of demonstrators in Syntagma square on Tuesday 28/6 did not exceed 20.000 people.[1] Both days, fierce clashes took place between demonstrators and the riot police over a large part of the centre of the city around Syntagma square. Thousands of chemical weapons were thrown by the riot police creating a toxic and suffocating atmosphere. Certainly, in the second day, the mobilization was more intense and more massive.
According to the police, 131 cops were injured, 75 persons were busted and charges were pressed against 38 people. According to the medical team of the Syntagma square, more than 700 people had been provided with first aid at the improvised medical centres in the square and inside the metro station of Syntagma and around 100 were transferred to hospitals. There were damages on banks, ministry buildings, luxurious hotels, the post-office of Syntagma square and a few commercial shops and restaurants.
There is no doubt that from the beginning the aim of the state was to evacuate the square, to terrorize and disperse the demonstrators.[2] However, the persistent and spirited stance of the demonstrators may be perfectly expressed by the slogan: “we won’t leave the square”. As a result, the confrontation with the police, material and verbal, was almost continuous. On the first day, most of the people were pushed further back in the streets surrounding the square, giving longer or shorter battles, until the police managed to create a cop-boundary around the square, preventing anyone from approaching. Despite that, a few hundreds remained in the square until late in the night.
On the second day, apart from the gathering in the Syntagma square, there were efforts to make blockades early in the morning in order to prevent the MP’s entrance into the parliament. This plan was voted by the Syntagma assembly as well as by the assemblies that have been formed in other neighbourhoods of Athens outside the centre. Unfortunately, only a few hundreds of demonstrators participated in those blockades which were immediately attacked fiercely, pushed away and quickly disbanded by the police. So, the plan to prevent politicians from getting into the parliament didn’t work. In the case of the blockade in Vasileos Konstantinou avenue, the demonstrators were pushed back to nearby streets were they erected barricades and after a few hours and some mild confrontations with the riot police they started a long demonstration that passed through the touristic parts of the centre to finally reach the big rally in Syntagma square. It must be noted that the organization of the blockades was totally inefficient since the leftist organizations that played an important role through their control of the main groups of the Syntagma assembly did nothing to ensure a greater participation and a real confrontation with the police. Of course, the leftists’ attitude is not an excuse for the inability of the assembly itself to implement its decisions and the passivity of a great part of its participants.
As far as the conflicts around the parliament are concerned, similar scenes of the first day took place on the second day as well but it was much more difficult for the police to accomplish its aims. Thousands of demonstrators participated in the clashes of the second day. Most of the demonstrators were prepared for the clashes wearing gas masks or other improvised protection equipment; many carried anti-acid solutions while some were fully equipped for fighting the cops. In most cases, there was a “front zone” where the battles evolved and a “rear zone” where people yelled slogans, gave help to those in need and even “provided” the “front zone” with new people.
The “peaceful people” backed those clashing with the police: the physical presence of the huge crowd itself was an obstacle to the manoeuvres of the police. Protesters blocked a group of motorcycles of the police infamous “DIAS” and “DELTA” forces by standing in front of them while the policemen were ready to launch an attack. “Peaceful” protesters weren't scared by the clashes and only the continuous massive and violent attacks of riot police and motorcycle police forced them to abandon the streets surrounding Syntagma. Contrary to what many were preaching during the previous days and especially during the clashes with the police on June 28th, the clashes didn't “frighten” the “people” but in a sense these clashes expressed the accumulated anger against a largely delegitimized government, the brutality of the police and the worsening of the living conditions of the working class.
Especially this day, there reappeared the insurgents of December 2008 (anarchists, anti-authoritarians, students, ultras, young precarious proletarians) in the streets of Athens alongside a considerable part of the more “respectable” and stable working class that protested against the austerity measures clashing with the police. It was the first time after May 5, 2010 that such a thing happened.
The 48-hour general strike had another similarity with the December 2008 rebellion: playfulness. Many slogans or chants of the protesters against the government and the IMF are based on slogans or chants from the terrace culture while during the confrontations with the police drummers encouraged the protesters and incited them to keep their positions.
Both days, the police eventually “cleared” the surroundings and the central streets late at night, and only few determined ones remained in the square overnight.
The thousands of people that participated in the clashes and their diversity defied in practice the conspiracy theories of the left organizations/parties and the media about “provocateurs” or “para-statal gangs” and proved how ridiculous similar mainstream propaganda about those “specific” groups who always “create chaos” is. Many people realized the necessity of throwing stones, lighting fires and barricading streets against armed, furious and ruthless cops who execute the orders of capital and its state.
This change was also the result of the overcoming of the (usually verbal) confrontations between the “non-violent” and the “violent” protesters during the last month’s mobilizations. Many “non-violent” protesters, especially the elder ones, realized at last that behind the “masks” of the “provocateurs” were mostly common young people, filled with rage. In a case, a sixty-year lady was talking in a friendly way with a “masked” 16-year old about the “right to fight back the cops” while at the same time well-dressed “indignant” protesters were disputing with “rioters” on similar matters. In other cases, “non-violent” people with breathing problems were helped by well-prepared “masked” demonstrators. Violence is just one issue in the continuous social and political discussions and disputes that emerge inside the mobilized crowd and play an important role in the shaping up of the mobilizations and the contradictory attitudes of many demonstrators. We can say that these disputes create a limited proletarian public sphere where theoretical and practical issues are posed.
Another prominent feature of the days of rage was the combination of rioting and celebration. During the fights there was live music, people sang and, as we mentioned before, in some cases drum players accompanied counter-attacks against the riot squads! During the afternoon of the 28th a concert was given despite the fights and chemical gases and the protesters were dancing while the police was tear-gassing the square. Expropriations of pastries, cakes and ice creams from a chain café in the square gave the struggle a sweet flavour on the 29th, although the food supply group later condemned lootings from the loudspeakers, probably after having been scolded by some left “organizers”. Later that afternoon a big group mainly of SYRIZA members tried to prevent people from piling up stones to be used against a possible attack by the riot squads, however, having no alternative plan to face the attack, they soon gave up their effort. Shortly after, the microphone equipment with the loudspeakers was removed from the square on the pretext that they could get damaged. The choice to take away the “voice” of the mobilization at that particular time, when clashes with the police in the surroundings of the square were still raging, was clearly undermining the defence of the square. Some minutes later a lot of riot squads invaded the square and in a particularly violent sweep operation managed to disperse the crowd down the metro station. Only some hundreds would return again and even less stayed in the square until late in the night.
We should also mention that the feeling of rage against politicians and the police is really growing. Except for the widespread clashes, this rage is also reflected in the verbal condemnations that one can catch here and there: “we should burn the parliament”, “we should hang them high”, “we should take up arms”, “we should visit the MP’s homes” etc. It’s remarkable that most of these declarations come from elder people. Several cases of “arrests” of undercover cops by loads of people are also revealing of the degree of anger mounting: in the evening of the 29th demonstrators got hold of an undercover cop inside the Syntagma metro station trying to detain him when the Red Cross rescuers intervened and helped him escape (according to some rumours, he had no gun when he left…).
As far as the role of the unions (GSEE-ADEDY) is concerned, except for their call for the 48-hour strike, which was more or less a result of the pressure of the “square’s movement”, they didn’t really play any important role. It is characteristic that their blocks attracted only few hundreds and on the second day, when the new austerity package would be voted, GSEE arranged its rally late in the afternoon in another square of the city centre (which was just a short stroll towards Omonia square which is in the opposite direction!)! In addition, on 30th of June, GSEE, faithful to the conspiracy theories, published a press release which condemned “the destructions and the pre-decided riots between “hooded people” and the police who co-operate against the workers and the demonstrators […] GSEE condemns any kind of violence wherever it comes from and calls the government to assume its responsibilities…”. On the other hand, ADEDY kept a more cautious stance: in its press releases on the 29th and the 30th of June, it condemned the “barbarism of the government” and “the police brutality” against the demonstrators and it even called for a rally on the 30th June on Syntagma square which it never organized!
Some general points concerning the movement against the imposition of the harshest austerity measures since the 2nd World War:
1) Nationalism (mostly in a populist form) is dominant, favoured both by the various extreme right wing cliques as well as by left parties and leftists. Even for a lot of proletarians or petty-bourgeois hit by the crisis who are not affiliated with political parties, national identity appears as a last imaginary refuge when everything else is rapidly crumbling. Behind the slogans against the “foreign, sell out government” or for the “Salvation of the country”, “National sovereignty” and a “New Constitution” lies a deep feeling of fear and alienation to which the “national community” appears as a magical unifying solution. Class interests are often expressed in nationalist and racist terms producing a confused and explosive political cocktail.
2) The manipulation of the main assembly in Syntagma square (there are several others in various neighbourhoods of Athens and cities in Greece) by “incognito” members of left parties and organizations is evident and really obstructive in a class direction of the movement. However, due to the deep legitimization crisis of the political system of representation in general they, too, have to hide their political identity and keep a balance between a general, abstract talk about “self-determination”, “direct democracy”, “collective action”, “anti-racism”, “social change” etc on the one hand and extreme nationalism, thug-like behaviour of some extreme-right wing individuals participating in groups in the square on the other hand, and all this in a not so successful way.
3) A significant part of the antiauthoritarian milieu as well as a part of the left (especially the Marxist-Leninists and most of the trade unionists) keep their distance from the assembly or are openly hostile to it: the former accuse it mainly for showing tolerance towards the fascists in front of the parliament or the members of the defence group of the assembly and for being a petty bourgeois, reformist political body manipulated by certain left parties. The latter accuse it for being apolitical, hostile to the Left and the “unionized, organized labour movement”.
One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades. What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general. Therefore, the role of provocateurology is crucial: it serves as an exorcism, a slander against a growing part of the population which exiled in the no man’s land of “para-statal activity” should be rendered inert. On another level, the multiform and open character of this movement puts on the agenda the issue of the self-organization of the struggle, even if the content of this struggle remains vague. The public debate on the nature of the debt is a thorny question since it could lead to a movement of “refusal of payments” to the Greek state (an issue well beyond the political horizon of the parties, the unions and the vast majority of the extra-parliamentary left, statist as it is). After the bloody voting of the Medium-term Programme it is uncertain what direction the movement of the assemblies will take in an era where all certainties seem to melt into the air.
TPTG, 11/7/2011.
[1] The fact that most of the people chose to strike on the 2nd day of the 48-hour general strike, when the “medium-term fiscal consolidation framework programme” was voted, emphatically revealed the ideological and deceptive character of the leftist calls for an indefinite general strike. The big reduction in the income and the resources of the workers combined with a full-fledged crisis of the unions make such a prospect totally impossible, at least in the short-term both on the objective and the subjective level. Therefore, the leftist calls for an indefinite general strike are devoid of any real content and are used as a pseudo-militant propaganda in order to hide their total inability and/or unwillingness to engage in the organization of relevant and practical direct actions promoting the proletarian “suspension of payments” from below. The cadres of all the leftist parties and groupuscules are much more keen on retaining their institutional positions in the various unions, associations and non-governmental organizations than promoting any real class antagonistic activity.
[2] As it was revealed later in the media, this aim was planned and decided on a high-level conference of generals of the Greek police already on Tuesday and shows both the importance the government placed on the voting of the new austerity measures as well as the absurdity of the theory of the “provocation” of the cops through violence. Besides, from heated conversations between riot cops and demonstrators we can conclude that those squads must have had some kind of ideological training by government officials so that no moral doubts could stand in their way of executing orders: the dominant argument was that the majority of the demonstrators are “public servants who have lost their privileges”…
We are publishing here the statement on the war in Libya put out by the KRAS, the Russian section of the anarcho-syndialist International Workers’ Association. The ICC warmly welcomes the internationalism which animates this statement. This doesn’t surprise us, because in the past the KRAS has consistently defended internationalist positions: in 2008 against the war in Georgia, and before that against the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, rejecting any political support for the different warring bourgeois camps.
What we have in common, and what really counts for us, is the fact that an organisation like the KRAS places itself without any doubt in the camp of the international working class on a question of such fundamental importance : imperialist war.
While the war between the Russian and Georgian states, a great power and a micro-state, openly revealed its imperialist character as a confrontation between bourgeois gangs, the imperialist character of the war in Libya is veiled behind the lie that this is a ‘humanitarian’ intervention. The bourgeoisie of the states who have been intervening for weeks through massive bombing raids against the brutal and irrational Gaddafi regime have been taking advantage of workers’ sympathies for the revolts in North Africa in order to justify a war supposedly aimed at supporting the democratic wave against ‘dictators’ sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. This is a complete lie, as the KRAS statement clearly shows. Nevertheless, we want to make two short comments on the statement, essentially to stimulate discussion within our class.
We agree with the KRAS that in North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt there has been no proletarian revolution of the kind that came out of the First World War, when the working class was able to constitute itself as a class and, as in Russia, to take power. The situation in Egypt, for example, presented in the bourgeois press as a grand ‘revolution for democracy’, shows clearly that the bourgeoisie has held onto power by using an adroit strategy of dumping the Mubarak clan in favour of a government with a more democratic face. On the other hand, we think that even if the working class in these countries is still tied to illusions in democracy, nationalism and even religion, it has still been through an experience of struggle which is of considerable historical value. The methods of the working class had a real impact on the social revolts in the Arab world : tendencies towards self-organisation, occupation of central squares to assemble and organise on a massive scale, organisation of defence against thugs and police, rejection of gratuitous violence and looting, an effort to overcome religious divisions, attempts at fraternisation with rank and file soldiers… "It is no accident that these tendencies developed most strongly in Egypt where the working class has a long tradition of struggle and which, at a crucial stage in the movement, emerged as a distinct force, engaging in a wave of struggles which, like those in 2006-7, can be seen as “germs” of the future mass strike, containing a certain number of its most important characteristics: the spontaneous extension of strikes and demands from one sector to another, the intransigent rejection of state trade unions and certain tendencies towards self-organisation, the raising of both economic and political demands. Here we see, in outline, the capacity of the working class to come forward as the tribune of all the oppressed and exploited and offer the perspective of a new society"[1]
On the basis of political weaknesses, especially democratic and nationalist illusions, the situation in Libya went from an initial uprising of the population against the Gaddafi regime to becoming a war between various bourgeois cliques for the control of the Libyan state; and upon this was grafted the bloody imperialist action of the great powers. This transformation into a war between bourgeois factions was all the easier because the working class in Libya is very weak. Essentially made up of an immigrant work-force, it was mainly concerned to flee the slaughter because it could hardly recognise its own interests in a movement so dominated by nationalism. The example of Libya is a tragic negative example of the need for the working class to take centre stage in any popular revolt : its disappearance from the scene largely explains the way the situation evolved.
Secondly, the statement from the KRAS calls on the workers of western Europe and the USA to demonstrate against this so-called humanitarian war. This call is fundamentally correct because only the working class in the countries taking part in the war in Libya could stop this massacre. For the moment however it has to be said that this option unfortunately doesn’t exist. Even if there have been protests against the NATO intervention, they have only been by a small minority. In France for example, the country most strongly involved in this war, the bombing has not been widely questioned. The war is also well supported by the parties of the left of capital. For the moment it is easy for the bourgeoisie to win acceptance for this war by speaking in the name of solidarity with those oppressed by the Gaddafi regime.
ICC, July 2011.
The "humanitarian" intervention of NATO states in Libya, aimed at providing military assistance to one party in a local civil war, has once again proved: there are no “revolutions” in North Africa and in the Middle East. There are only a stubborn and bitter struggles for power, profit, influence and control over oil resources and strategic areas.
Deep discontent and social-economic protests by the working masses in the region generated by global economic crisis (attacks on the living conditions of workers, increase of unemployment and poverty, spread of precarious work) are used by oppositional political groups to carry out coups, overthrowing the tyranny of the corrupt, senile dictators and rising in their place. Mobilising the unemployed, the workers, the poor as cannon fodder, discontented factions of the ruling class distract them from their social and economic demands, promising them "democracy" and "change". In fact, the coming to power of this motley bloc of "backbenchers" of the ruling elite, liberals and religious fundamentalists, will not bring the workers any changes for the better. We know well the consequences of the victory of the liberals: new privatizations, strengthening of market chaos, emergence of the next billionaires and further aggravation of poverty, suffering and misery of the oppressed and the poor. The triumph of the religious fundamentalists would mean the growth of clerical reaction, the ruthless suppression of women and minorities, and the inevitable slide towards a new Arab-Israeli war, bringing hardships that would again lay on the shoulders of the working masses. But even in the "ideal" option of establishing of representative democratic regimes in North African and Middle Eastern countries, the working people will not win anything. The worker ready to risk his life for the sake of "democracy" is like a slave who vows to die for the "right" to choose his slaveholder. Representative democracy is not worth a drop of human blood.
In the struggle for power unfolding in the region, the European NATO states and the United States even more openly side with the oppositional political groups in the hope that the victory of these forces and the "democratization" model of political domination will bring them new benefits and privileges. Supporting "democracy" in Tunisia and Egypt, they hope to strengthen its influence there, to deliver their capitalist "investors" from the corruption of dictators and to take part in the upcoming privatization of the riches of ruling clans. Helping the liberal, monarchist and religious-fundamentalist opposition in Libya, which acts in conjunction with a number of former senior officials of the Gaddafi regime, they expect to take control of rich oil reserves. Along with them, some Arab states enter into struggle for influence, having their own ambitions in the region.
The powers-that-be are going in again with bombs and shelling to "save" lives of people and to "liberate" them from dictatorships, killing more people. The governments of Western European countries and the U.S. are lying and hypocritical: yesterday they helped dictators, hugged them and sold them weapons. Today they are demanding that dictators go, "listen to the demands of the people", but do not hesitate to suppress the protests of the population in “their own” countries completely ignoring its demands. When the vast majority of the inhabitants of France or Britain, Greece or Spain, Portugal or Ireland say they do not want to pay from their pockets for state aid to banks and businesses, and demand to cancel the austerity measures, anti-social pension and labor reforms, the authorities answer to them that democracy "is not ruled by the street".
A "humanitarian" intervention gives the rulers of Western Europe and the United States a great opportunity to distract the population of countries-in-their-power from the consequences of the current crisis. The “short victorious” war for “saving people and democracy” is designed to make the European and North American workers forget about the anti-social policies of governments and the capitalists and to experience again the pride in their "humane" and "fair" rulers in a new edition of the "holy alliance" between the oppressors and the oppressed .
We call on workers of the world not to yield to the "democratic"and "humanitarian" fraud and to oppose strongly a new escalation of capitalist barbarism in North Africa and the Middle East.
If we could bring our voice to the oppressed and exploited poor in the region, over thousands-kilometres-long distances and language barriers, we would encourage them to return to the initial social and economic motives and themes of their protest, to rebel, to go on strike and demonstrations against low wages, high prices and unemployment, for social emancipation - but not to allow themsleves to be involved in the political games of a power struggle between different factions of the ruling classes.
We call on the workers of Europe and America to go into the streets to protest against the new "humanitarian" war in the interests of states and capitalists. We appeal to sections of the International Workers Association to increase their internationalist and anti-militarist agitation and to initiate anti-war demonstrations and strikes.
DOWN WITH WAR!
DOWN WITH ALL STATE AND ARMIES!
NOT A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD FOR DICTATORSHIP OR DEMOCRACY!
NO TO ALL GOVERNMENTS AND “OPPOSITIONS”!
FOR SOLIDARITY WITH WORKING PEOPLES STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL EMANCIPATION!
LONG LIVE THE GENERAL SELF-ADMINISTRATION OF WORKING PEOPLE!
Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists,
Section of the IWA in the Russian region
July, 2011.
Thirty years ago this summer over 40 British towns and cities were hit by a wave of social revolts as young people –often black but also white, mainly working class – fought back against police racism and repression. In Toxteth, Liverpool, police deployed CS gas for the first time in mainland Britain after almost losing control of the city.
The following article, first published in WR 38 in May 1981, analyses the international significance of these events as a response by young people – one of the hardest pressed sectors of the proletariat – to the effects of the crisis and mass unemployment hitting the most advanced capitalist countries. As such they were ‘harbingers of the future’. This makes them of far more than just historical importance to us today, when the ‘spectre of social revolt’ has indeed returned with a vengeance to haunt the capitalist system; in North Africa and the Middle East, in Greece and Spain, France, in Britain itself with the student struggles last year...
Of course a full comparison of the revolts and those of today would reveal many differences, not least in the depth and extent of the capitalist crisis, which despite 15 years of deepening in 1981 had yet to enter its final phase of decomposition; the Berlin Wall had yet to fall and the threat of a direct confrontation between the American and Russian blocs was still a real one.
The sheer scale of the more recent social revolts – which in the case of North Africa and the Middle East is the most widespread, simultaneous wave since 1917-19 or even 1848 – also puts the events of 1981 into perspective. But some of the similarities are striking: for example, the tendency shown in some of the earlier revolts towards self-organisation, with the appearance of general assemblies and revocable delegates in Amsterdam and Zurich, has today become a much more widespread feature.
The article was right to emphasise the importance of the workers at the heart of industry to provide a way forward. In Britain, the extremely militant struggle of the miners in 1984-5 followed the ‘riots’ of 1981. This was eventually defeated of course, and the capitalist state mounted a concerted counter-attack on the working class that, along with the negative effects of mass unemployment, atomisation, the flood of cheap drugs into working class neighbourhoods, etc., helps to explain why we did not see further waves of similar revolts. Internationally the working class struggle suffered a deep reflux following the collapse of the blocs and the deafening ideological campaigns that accompanied it.
But the article was absolutely right to focus on the threat of mass unemployment as the key underlying factor in the struggles. The reality of unemployment has become a central issue in today’s struggles, and a key factor in the explosion of revolts in North Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps the most positive difference between 1981 and today is the even greater potential for social revolts to link with the struggles of workers at the heart of production, and to generalise in a movement against the effects of the now chronic crisis of a decrepit world system.
ICC 7/7/11
Far from being a purely local phenomenon, or something uniquely derived from racial problems, the Brixton riots were another episode in a series of social revolts which have erupted in the advanced western countries in the last few years: the ‘autonomous movement’ in Italy in 1977; mass confrontations between squatters and the police in Amsterdam and a dozen West German cities; the uprisings against police racism and repression in Miami, Bristol and Brixton; the ‘youth revolt’ in Zurich and other Swiss cities, which has been echoed in Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna...
Despite all their particularities, all these revolts are a response to the effects of mass unemployment in the major western economies. Among the more concentrated sectors of the working class, really massive unemployment is a relatively ‘new’ experience. With certain important exceptions (e.g. the steelworkers in France and Britain, the miners in Britain), its initial effect has often been to intimidate workers, who fear that going on strike will only provoke further lay-offs. This is one of the reasons why working class struggle in western capitalism has yet to reach the heights of the gigantic class battles that are now going on in Poland.
But the fact that profound social tensions are building up in the west as well as the east is indicated by this series of revolts away from the point of production. In the absence of massive strike movements, the centre of social unrest has momentarily shifted towards those categories of the population who have been feeling the full blast of unemployment for many years, and who are most vulnerable to the bourgeoisie’s general assault on living standards: blacks, immigrants, youth, elements from intermediate strata (students, intellectuals etc), The problems facing these categories can be seen by looking at the immediate grievances behind the revolts:
In short, these categories constitute a sector of the population which is becoming more and more aware that it has NO FUTURE in this society, to use one of the slogans of the German squatters. Since capitalism has nothing to offer them but poverty and repression, they are beginning to feel that they have nothing to lose from violently resisting the present order.
Certain bourgeois commentators, observing the efforts to build a ‘counter-culture’ that have been particularly prevalent in the Zurich movement, have tried to write off these revolts as no more than a re-run of the student and hippy movements of the sixties.
It’s true that the Zurich rebels have revived the old situationist slogan “we don’t want a society in which the risk of dying of hunger is exchanged for the risk of dying of boredom”, which is a little passé in a world that really is threatened by starvation. But Switzerland is a relative newcomer to the crisis, and just as the youth rebellions against the ‘consumer society’ of the sixties actually signalled the onset of a crisis of the entire mode of production, so the protests against consumerism in ‘prosperous’ Zurich express the fact that no corner of the planet can escape the consequences of this crisis.
Besides, even in Zurich the movement is largely made up of young workers and apprentices who have little hope of enjoying the wealth of Swiss capitalism. In nearly all cases, the most militant protagonists of these revolts are made up of a sector of the working class: a sector that is weak, dispersed, inexperienced, but part of the proletariat nonetheless. This is clearly the case with the black youth who led the revolts in Bristol and Brixton: most of them are either unemployed children of workers, or workers themselves. And even if some of the European movements have a strong core of elements from intermediate and petty bourgeois strata, the fact remains that the majority of these elements are being made unemployed, and unemployment is itself a factor which tends to proletarianise the petty bourgeoisie and other strata, at least in countries where the working class has a preponderant weight.
These revolts cannot be written off as petty bourgeois convulsions which are no more than a diversion for the working class: they are essentially based on a sector of the class itself. But this isn’t to deny that these movements are strongly influenced by the attitudes and ideologies of the petty bourgeoisie, of the intermediate strata being driven towards the proletariat by the generalisation of unemployment. In Germany, for example, the ideology of terrorism still has a certain weight, and many elements in these movements still cling to the illusion of building islands of autonomy, of free relationships, within the existing system. Above all, since many of the young people involved in these movements have little experience of associated labour, they have great difficulty in seeing their struggle in class terms, and tend to identify themselves simply as members of a particular category: blacks, youth, squatters, etc. These weaknesses are not merely ideological; they have a material basis in the social position of these elements. Separated from the centres of production, they lack the means to decisively paralyse the mechanisms of the capitalist system. Lacking the focus of the workplace, it is extremely difficult for revolts away from the point of production to generate organisational structures which can unify the struggle against the state.
There can be no question of communists hiding the weaknesses of these movements, and still less of falling into the trap of theorising these weaknesses, as has been done by Toni Negri and other theoreticians of ‘autonomy’ in Italy. According to this current, the diverse categories involved in these revolts are the new revolutionary subject, replacing the ‘guaranteed’, employed workers who have been seduced into defending the system. Thus, the divisions between employed and unemployed, between the more concentrated and the more marginal sectors of the proletariat, are seen as something positive. So are the divisions within the marginal sectors themselves, because according to the autonomists, each category – workers, women, gays, youth, etc. - should be encouraged to organise itself ‘autonomously’.
Communists and workers have to fight these ideas, because they are a pernicious barrier against the unification of the class. It is important to point out the limitations of movements divorced from the point of production, to insist that there has to be a link-up with the workers in Industry. Otherwise these revolts will indeed have NO FUTURE: isolated from the most powerful battalions of the proletariat, they will remain vulnerable to police repression and could easily degenerate into nihilism and despair. As the Polish example has confirmed, the workers at the heart of industry are still the key to the whole situation. It is not the simple generalisation of revolts away from the point of production that will lead towards the revolution; rather it is the mass strikes of the industrial proletariat that can provide an organized and politically coherent framework for the struggle in the neighbourhoods and the streets.
Nevertheless, we can discern a number of positive aspects in these revolts:
Above all, these movements are important as harbingers of the future. When Thatcher said that the issue behind Brixton wasn’t unemployment because there had been mass unemployment in the thirties, but no such riots, she was of course wrong on a number of counts. One of the main issues behind Brixton was unemployment, and there were unemployed riots in the thirties. But the general picture in the thirties was of a class that had been defeated and was allowing itself to be further pulverised by the crisis and marched off to war. Today, although capitalism objectively needs another war, it is going to have a hard time convincing black youth in Brixton, already bitterly hostile to the state, that their interests lie in fighting for Queen and Country. It will be equally hard to make good soldiers out of the German youths who recently scandalised the bourgeoisie by demonstrating against public ceremonies at which recruits to the army are sworn in. The violent insubordination shown by these hard-pressed sectors of the proletariat provide capitalism with a grim warning about what will happen as the most powerful concentrations of the class also come to the conclusion that capitalism has no future to offer them.
C D Ward 5/81
The capitalist ruling class, the bourgeoisie, is often called “Machiavellian” after the Florentine writer, philosopher and republican diplomat of that name who lived around the turn of the sixteenth century. The word is used as shorthand to describe elements, in this case a class, that knowingly plots and intrigues against its enemy or enemies. There is nothing surprising about this as all ruling classes since the beginning of civilisation have adopted and adapted this characteristic of intrigue to their politics and rule, and, with the development of state capitalism, this is even more so with the Lords of the Earth today. In fact, Machiavellianism, shorthand though it is, doesn’t even begin to describe the scheming, conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie, a class that has gone well beyond the works of Niccolo Machiavelli and whose actions leave his works looking quite insipid and dated[1].
Machiavellianism doesn’t go anyway far enough in describing the deviousness, the lies, manipulations and ruthlessness of the bourgeoisie that is the daily practice of this class, which has “become the central mode of functioning for the modern bourgeoisie which, utilising the tremendous means of social control available to it under the conditions of state capitalism, takes Machiavellianism to a qualitatively higher stage” (International Review no. 108, Winter 2002, “Pearl Harbour 1941, Twin Towers 2001, Machiavellianism of the US Bourgeoisie”).
There are other historical examples which can be added to these[2]. Of course the bourgeoisie doesn’t and can’t control everything – nothing like it; particularly when the world is moving into more chaotic times economically, military and socially and when, in the first two, centrifugal tendencies become stronger and stronger with both affecting the third. And the bourgeoisie, from its very nature as a class based on cut-throat competition, is riven by faction fights and tensions within itself. But “even with an incomplete consciousness, the bourgeoisie is more than capable of formulating strategy and tactics and using its totalitarian control mechanisms of state capitalism to implement them. It is the responsibility of revolutionary marxists to expose this Machiavellian manoeuvring and lying. To turn a blind eye to this aspect of the ruling class offensive to control society is irresponsible and plays into the hands of the class enemy” (ibid). At many levels, and particularly in relation to the proletariat, even though this system is built on sand, capitalist decomposition can only sharpen up and concentrate the conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie within the framework of state capitalism, militarism, ideology and repression. The open development of its economic crisis means that the working class should take the ability of the ruling class to manoeuvre against it very seriously indeed.
During and towards the end of the Second World War we see the murderous intrigue that the bourgeoisie uses against the working class. We have the example of Winston Churchill, who with others actively conspired against the Russian Revolution and in the rise of the Nazis to power in order to confront the working class. Having learnt the lessons of World War One and how the working class, even in such unfavourable conditions could still be a major threat, the British and American bourgeoisies developed their massacres of workers through the terror of ariel bombardments. In Italy 1943, the Allies stopped their advance in order, in Churchill’s words, to let the Italian proletariat “stew in its own juice”, i.e., be slaughtered by the Nazis. In a different tack, again in 1943, US imperialism worked with the Italian and American mafia in order to facilitate its invasion and advance through Italy and used them to attack workers’ demonstrations and meetings. Just after the war, the population of Germany was subjected to a regime of forced marches, terror and starvation all planned, organised and executed by the ruling class. The conspiratorial nature of the bourgeoisie is here for all to see but we want to look to the French Connection, Marseille just after the war, to discern some more elements of the nature of this imperialist conspiracy against the working class.
The context is victorious US capital in a bipolar world and the need to confront its Russian rival, secure war-torn Europe against Soviet imperialism and smother any attempts at independent class struggle that could or couldn’t favour the interests of Russia. In Marseille, the CIA joined forces with the Corsican underworld in order to undermine the city’s Communist-led government and to break the 1947 and 1950 dock strikes. Concerned about Russian gains in the Mediterranean and the growth of Russian-backed communist parties in Western Europe the Truman administration came up with the multibillion-dollar European Recovery Plan, later known as the Marshall Plan. The city of Marseille and its docks were vital for US imperialism’s interests and its imperialist reach – including the war in Indo-China. The Corsican mafia had the protection of the French intelligence unit, the SDECE (the French equivalent of the CIA), not least from their cooperation in helping to break the spontaneous outbreaks of class struggle in February 1934 by dockers and other workers in the city by firing into the crowd. The French fascists also used the syndicate to counter workers’ demonstrations in the 1930s. There was continuity in their later use by the Resistance[3], the Gestapo and the CIA. Like the Italian mafia, the Corsican “milieu” was fiercely nationalist, had their own business interests and was happy to work for any paymaster in the interests of the state; they were a major force in the politics of the city. Their cohesiveness, ruthlessness and organisation made them an ideal partner for democracy in the late 40s in the face of workers’ struggles and/or possible Russian influence. When the US occupied Marseille in August 1944, the Resistance was largely infiltrated by thousands of Corsican gangsters and hoodlums[4]. The newly-formed national police reserve, the CRS (Compagnie Republicaine de Securite), had a high number of its officers recruited from the Communist side of the Resistance and they had the task, under the new left-wing coalition, of restoring order and sorting out the gangsters. The clandestine intervention of the CIA subsequently toppled the Communists, purged the Communist elements from the CRS’s ranks and, on the back of working class defeats, a Socialist/underworld CIA-inspired alliance was in charge of the city’s politics: “The CIA, through its contacts in the Socialist Party, had sent agents and a psychological warfare team to Marseille, where they dealt directly with the Corsican syndicate leaders through the Guerini brothers. The CIA’s operatives supplied arms and money to Corsican gangs for assaults on Communist picket lines and harassment of important union officials. During the month-long (1947) strike the CIA’s gangsters and the purged CRS police units murdered a number of striking workers and mauled the picket lines. Finally, the CIA psychological warfare team prepared pamphlets, radio broadcasts and posters aimed at discouraging workers from continuing the strike”[5].
De Gaulle’s RPF won a mandate in the French elections of 1947 and in Marseille their first act was to raise transport prices thus piling increased misery on the working class. The unions organised a boycott of the trams and workers attacked any that were running. Four young sheet-metal workers were arrested for attacking a tram and, early in the morning of November 12, thousands of workers met up in front of the courthouse, attacked the police and freed the young workers. Guided by their US advisors, successive French cabinets had held down wages and increased working hours. Industrial production was restored to pre-war levels but wages had fallen well below the depths of the depression[6], while taxes rose (le Monde called them “more iniquitous than that which provoked the French Revolution”[7]). Workers were eating nearly 20% less in 1947 than 1938. Following the freeing of the young workers in Marseille, demonstrations and repression followed in and 40,000 workers demonstrating in front of City Hall against the Mayor’s Corsican “muscle” were demobilised only by frightened Communist Party officials calling for calm. Corsican gangsters, who later developed an informal “understanding” with Gaullist governments over their heroin production, opened fire on bands of demonstrators several of whom were wounded, with a young metal worker later dying, and a general strike broke out. Spontaneous wildcats and demonstrations erupted in the rest of France and the Communist leadership, which had some credibility in the working class and which had got the latter to swallow draconian austerity measures, was reluctantly forced into action. One US State Department official analyst, showing that the US was just as much concerned with the proletariat as with Russian expansion, wrote in mid-46, that the Communist leadership “could no longer hold back the rank and file”[8]. By late 1947, 3 million French workers were on strike against the worsening conditions imposed on them by the state’s austerity measures. The US sped up its Marshall Plan and the CIA moved to help to break the strike using the Socialists and the unions – with similar moves in Greece, Turkey, Italy, etc.
In June 1948, the US set up a CIA offshoot, the Office of Policy Coordination, which was more independent, more clandestine than the CIA and its brief was to develop “a covert political action capability” including active clandestine trade union infiltration[9]. With this organisation any enemy of the working class or Russian imperialism, ex-Gestapo officers, Corsican gangsters, “free” trade unions, “socialists”, etc., became allies of the US. Working through the American Federation of Labour (AFL), which was operating its own secret networks in Europe, the CIA/OPC indentified its friends and foes. The French Socialist Party was a friend (de Gaulle was too independent for the US) and US trade union money and activity was directed towards setting up their unions. The SP was also bankrolled through these conduits and police repression against striking workers was directed through the Socialist Interior Minister, Jules Moch[10]. Victory in Marseille was essential for the US and the CRS was purged of CP members and began its new life by violently attacking 80,000 strikers, demonstrators and pickets. The US psychological warfare unit did its job and the CIA worked in the city in hand with the Corsican syndicates, the trade unions, the Socialists, in order to mete out propaganda, assaults and murder to the working class. In the face of this relentless onslaught the workers abandoned their strike in December along with most other French workers. Three years after the 1947 strikes and, if anything, things had got worse for the working class. A new wave of strikes broke out across France against austerity and it was particularly well supported by the proletariat in Marseille. This demanded the further attention of the CIA and $2 million of its funds were channelled through the OPC and the AFL delivered blackleg labourers from Italy where they worked alongside local Corsican criminals. By 1950 the CIA/OPC backed Corsican gangsters controlled the Marseille waterfront allowing scabs and military personnel in despite sporadic strikes. A not insignificant side-effect of this was the growth of the gangster’s expert heroin processing which was to become the USA’s main supplier and whose high-grade number 4 product was responsible for the deaths and addictions of many US users.
In May 1968, when General de Gaulle’s government came close to collapsing faced with generalised class struggle; French intelligence organised 5000 French and Corsican gangsters into the Service d’Action Civique (SAC) breaking up demonstrations, silencing hecklers, providing bodyguards, etc., with top police and intelligence officers in charge[11]. When President Georges Pompidou inspected the Concorde supersonic aircraft at Toulouse in 1971, 500 SAC members turned out as bodyguards presumably because of the close proximity of proletarians[12]. They were further used in “dirty” missions.
The idea that the bourgeoisie doesn’t continually conspire against the working class, the idea that it’s just reactive or stupid, that “things just happen”, that it’s not a class of organised gangsters, not only underestimates our class enemy but even more so underestimates the capacity of the working class and the needs of the class struggle overall. The capitalist economic system is breaking down, or threatening to break down at a pace and all the conspiring, planning, plotting and scheming will not alter that in the main; what it will accentuate though is the bourgeoisie’s drive to war and its organisation and plots against the working class. It will defend its imperialist interests against all and sundry and show a unity of interest faced with a working class fighting against the effects of the crisis. It’s got nothing else but ideology, organisation and weapons and it will use them against the working class.
Baboon 8/8/11
[1] Not just in time; in the brilliant TV series “The Sopranos”, depicting a mobster family in modern-day New Jersey, “waste-management consultant”, Tony Soprano, is clear about the limits of Machiavelli’s work for the present day, preferring instead, in relation to understanding and attacking the weaknesses of one’s enemies in order to maintain power, the works of Chinese philosopher and military strategist, Sun Tzu, some two thousand years earlier. The works of Sun Tzu, who may be a composite figure, are also recommended reading for the US Marine corps elite, US Military Intelligence and all CIA officers.
[2] “In 1898, the battleship USS Maine was destroyed in Havana harbour by a mysterious explosion. The US government immediately seized on the pretext to declare war on Spain with the aim of “liberating” Cuba.” The true cause of the disaster is now thought to be an accident. Still with Cuba and the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, Robert Kennedy “suggested looking for a pretext –‘sink the Maine or something’ and go to war with the Soviets.” (International Review no. 113, “US foreign policy since World War II, part one”.
[3] A significant number of the Corsicans sided with the Resistance; they were patriots after all and couldn’t stand the thought of the Italian occupation of their island. The Resistance in Marseille was typical of France; selectively supported by the US and Britain, generally unsupported by the population, no more than a nuisance to the Germans and divided between Communists and non-Communists. The conspiratorial nature and penchant for espionage of the gangsters made them ideal components of the Resistance. See The Politics of Heroin, chapter 2: America’s Heroin Laboratory by Alfred W. McCoy for the role of the Corsican mafia in the 1947 and 1950s dock strikes; Eugene Saccomano, Bandits a Marseille (Paris: Juillaard 1968, pp 53-54) for their role with the fascists and against the working class in the 1930s. And for their role in the Resistance, Charles Tillon, Les F.T.P. (Paris: Union Generale d’Editions, 1967) pp 167-73.
[4] Maurice Agulhon and Fernand Barrat, C .R.S. a Marseille, Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), pp 46-47, 75-77.
In response to the Free French mobilisation of the ruling class in support of the Allies, the lead article of the Communist Left publication L’Etincelle, August 1944, addressing the workers, talked of strikes breaking out “as in Milan, Naples and Marseille”.
[5] Interview with Lt. Col. Lucien Conein, McLean, Virginia, June 18, 1971. He worked as an OSS (forerunner of the CIA)liaison officer with the Resistance during WWII and later served in the CIA. Quoted in McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin.
[6] Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 157.
[7] Ibid., p.147.
[8] Ibid., p.157.
[9] U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, “History of the Central Intelligence Agency”, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book IV, 94th Cong. 2nd sess., 1976 (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, Senate Report No. 94-755), pp. 25-37.
[10] “It was on this occasion that the leaders of the Force Ouvriere faction separated themselves definitively from the C.G.T. and founded with the aid of American labour unions, the coalition which still bears its name” (added emphasis). (Jacques Julliard, Le IV Republique [Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1968] p. 124). It wasn’t the first intervention of US intelligence in funding French leftism. During WWII, the OSS’s Labour Branch, under the direction of Arthur Goldberg, supplied funds to the Socialist leadership of the clandestine CGT: (R. Harris Smith OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972], p.182).
[11] Phillip M. Williams and Martin Harrison, Politics and Society in de Gaulle’s Republic (London: Longman Group, 1971), pp 383-84.
[12] Sunday Times, September 26, 1971.
In Israel, over the last three weeks, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against the dizzying cost of living, the growing impossibility for the average person to afford accommodation, the dismantling of welfare services. The demonstrators are calling for “social justice”, but many are also talking about “revolution”. They make no secret of the fact that they have been inspired by the wave of revolts in the Arab world, now spread to Spain and Greece. Israel’s premier Netanyahu, whose brazenly right wing policies appeared to have had gained a popular following, is suddenly being compared to the dictators of Egypt (Mubarak, now facing trial for gunning down protesters) and Syria (Assad, now ordering atrocious massacres against a population increasingly exasperated with his regime).
Like the movements in the Arab world and Europe, the demonstrations and tent cities now springing up in numerous towns in Israel, but Tel Aviv in particular, seem to have come out of nowhere: messages on Facebook, a few people pitching tents in town squares... and from this, on one weekend there have been between 50,000 and 150,000 marching in Tel Aviv, (with more than 200,000 on the most recent Saturday) and perhaps three or four times that number have been involved in the country as a whole, the majority of them young.
As in the other countries, demonstrators have clashed frequently with the police. As in the other countries, the official political parties and trade unions have not played a leading role in the movement, even if they are certainly present. People involved in the movement are often associated with ideas about direct democracy and even anarchism. A demonstrator interviewed on the RT news network was asked whether the protests had been inspired by events in Arab countries. He replied, “There is a lot of influence of what happened in Tahrir Square… There’s a lot of influence of course. That’s when people understand that they have the power, that they can organise by themselves, they don’t need any more the government to tell them what to do, they can start telling the government what they want.”. These views, even if they only express the conscious opinions of a minority, certainly reflect a much more general feeling of disillusionment with the entire bourgeois political system, whether in its dictatorial or its democratic form.
Like its counterparts elsewhere, this movement is historic in its significance, as noted by an Israeli journalist, Noam Sheizaf: “Unlike in Syria or Libya, where dictators slaughter their own citizens by the hundreds, it was never oppression that held the social order in Israel together, as far as the Jewish society was concerned. It was indoctrination - a dominant ideology, to use a term preferred by critical theorists. And it was this cultural order that was dented in this round of protests. For the first time, a major part of the Jewish middle class - it’s too early to estimate how large is this group - recognized their problem not with other Israelis, or with the Arabs, or with a certain politician, but with the entire social order, with the entire system. In this sense, it’s a unique event in Israel’s history.
This is why this protest has such tremendous potential. This is also the reason that we shouldn’t just watch for the immediate political fallout—I don’t think we will see the government fall any time soon—but for the long term consequences, the undercurrent, which is sure to arrive”. ‘The real importance of the tent protest [284]’
And yet there are those who are only too happy to play down the significance of these events. The official press has to a large extent ignored them altogether. There is an 800 to 1,000-strong foreign press corps in Jerusalem (second in size only to that in Washington) which only began to show any interest after the movement had already been under way for a couple of weeks. You would have to search long and hard for any mention of this movement in ‘progressive’ papers like The Guardian or Socialist Worker in the UK.
Another tack is to label this as a ‘middle class’ movement. It’s true that, as with all the other movements, we are looking at a broad social revolt which can express the dissatisfaction of many different layers in society, from small businessmen to workers at the point of production, all of whom are affected by the world economic crisis, the growing gap between rich and poor, and, in a country like Israel, the aggravation of living conditions by the insatiable demands of the war economy. But ‘middle class’ has become a lazy, catch-all term meaning anyone with an education or a job, and in Israel as in North Africa, Spain or Greece, growing numbers of educated young people are being pushed into the ranks of the proletariat, working in low paid and unskilled jobs where they can find work at all. In any case, more ‘classic’ sectors of the working class have also been involved in the demonstrations: public sector and industrial workers, the poorest sectors of the unemployed, some of them non-Jewish immigrants from Africa and other third world countries. There was also a 24-hour general strike as the Histradut trade union federation tried to deal with the discontent of its own members.
But the biggest detractors of the movement are those on the extreme left. As one of the posters on libcom [285] put it: “I got in a big argument with one of the leading SWP people in my union branch, whose argument was that Israel did not have a working class. I asked her who drove the buses, built the roads, looked after the children, etc and she just dodged the question and ranted about Zionism and the occupation.”
The same thread also contained a link to a leftist blog [286] which put forward a more sophisticated version of this argument: “Certainly, every level of Israeli society, from trade unions to the education systems, the armed forces and the dominant political parties, are implicated in the apartheid system. That was true from the very inception, in the very germinal forms of the Israeli state built up in the British Mandate period. Israeli is a society of settlers, and this has enormous ramifications for the development of class consciousness. As long as it thrives on building colonial outposts, as long as people identify their interests with the expansion of settler-colonialism, then there is little prospect of the working class developing an independent revolutionary agency. Not only is it a settler-colonial society, it is also one supported with the material resources of US imperialism”.
The idea that the Israeli working class is a special case leads many leftists to argue that the protest movement should not be supported, or should only be supported if it first takes up a position on the Palestinian question: “The social protests have been dubbed Israel’s largest since the 1970s and are expected to result in reformed policies or even reshuffled governmental authority. But until the reforms address all of the issues at the core of Israel’s oppressive and discriminatory housing situation, until the policy changes put Palestinians at an equal footing with Israelis, until eviction notices are no longer dealt out on a whim, then the reforms are baseless and the protests are useless” ‘Israel’s one-sided, ‘liberal’ housing protest is not a movement worth joining or even championing’, Sami Kishawi, Sixteen Minutes to Palestine blog.
In Spain, among participants in the 15M movement, similar debates have been taking place, for example around a proposal “that the Israeli protesters should only be supported if they "take a position as a movement on the Palestinian question, denouncing clearly and openly the occupation, the blockade of Gaza and [calling for] the end of the settlements" (from the same thread on Libcom,)
These leftist arguments are being answered in practice by the movement in Israel. For a start, the questioning taking place in the Israeli streets is already challenging the division between Jews and Arabs and others. Some examples: in Jaffa, dozens of Arab and Jewish protesters carried signs in Hebrew and Arabic reading "Arabs and Jews want affordable housing," and "Jaffa doesn’t want bids for the rich only."
Arab activists set up an encampment in the centre of Taibeh and hundreds of people visit it every night. "This is a social protest stemming from profound distress in the Arab community. All Arabs suffer from the cost of living and housing shortages," one of the organizers, Dr. Zoheir Tibi, said. A number of Druze youngsters set up tents outside the villages of Yarka and Julis in the Western Galilee."We're trying to draw everyone to the tents to join the protest," said Wajdi Khatar, one of the protest initiators. A Jewish and Palestinian joint camp was set up in the city of Akko, as well as in East Jerusalem where there have been ongoing protests of both Jews and Arabs against evictions of the latter from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. In Tel Aviv, contacts were made with residents of refugee camps in the occupied territories, who visited the tent cities and engaged in discussions with the protesters[1].
At Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv on Monday 1 August, where the city’s second largest tent city has stood for nearly a week, over a hundred African migrants and refugees gathered for a discussion [287] on the ongoing quality-of-life protests taking place across Israel.
Numerous demonstrators have expressed their frustration with the way the incessant refrain of ‘security’ and of the ‘threat of terrorism’ is used to make people put up with growing economic and social misery. Some have openly warned of the danger that the government could provoke military clashes or even a new war to restore ‘national unity’ and split the protest movement[2]. As it happens, the Netanyahu government seems to be on the back foot at the moment, taken by surprise and trying offer all kinds of sops to take the heat out of the movement. The point remains that there is indeed a mounting awareness that the military situation and the social situation are very closely linked.
As ever, the material situation of the working class is key to the development of consciousness, and the current social movement is greatly accelerating the possibility of approaching the military situation from a class standpoint. The Israeli proletariat, often portrayed by the left wing of capital as a ‘privileged’ caste living off the misery of the Palestinians, actually pays very heavily for the Israeli war effort in lives, psychological damage, and material impoverishment. A very precise example linked to one of the key issues behind the current movement, housing: the government is pouring a highly disproportionate amount of money into building up settlements in the occupied territories rather than increasing the housing stock in the rest of Israel.
The significance of the present movement in Israel, with all its confusions and hesitations, is that it has very clearly confirmed the existence of class exploitation and class conflict within the apparent national monolith of Israel. The defence of working class living standards will inevitably come up against the sacrifices demanded by war; and as a result, all the concrete political issues posed by the war will have to be raised, discussed, and clarified: apartheid laws in Israel and the occupied territories, the brutality of the occupation, conscription, right up to the ideology of Zionism and the false ideal of the Jewish state. Certainly, these are difficult and potentially divisive issues and there has been a strong temptation to try to avoid raising them directly. But politics has a way of intruding into every social conflict. An example of this has been the growing conflict between the demonstrators and representatives of the extreme right – Kahanists who want to expel Arabs from Israel and fundamentalist settlers who see the demonstrators as traitors.
But it would not be an advance if the movement rejected these right wing ideologies and adopted the positions of the left wing of capital: support for Palestinian nationalism, for a two state solution or a “democratic secular state”. The present international wave of revolts against capitalist austerity is opening the door to another solution altogether: the solidarity of all the exploited across religious or national divisions; class struggle in all countries with the ultimate goal of a world wide revolution which will be the negation of national borders and states. A year or two ago such a perspective would have seemed completely utopian to most. Today, increasing numbers are seeing global revolution as a realistic alternative to the collapsing order of global capital.
Amos 7/8/11.
[1] One of the Israelis taking part in these meetings describes the positive effects [288] the discussions have had on the development of awareness and solidarity: “Our guests, some in pious head gear, listen attentively to the story about middle class Jewish youngsters with no place to live, to study and to work from. The tents are so many, so small. They nod in amazement, expressing sympathy or perhaps even some pleasure over the new potential for solidarity. The sharp tongued one is quick to come up with a punch line none of us would have thought of: "Hada Muchayem Lajiyin Israeliyin!" – "A refugee camp for Israelis", she exclaims.
“We laugh at this smart crack. No similarity at all, to be sure – or maybe just a little something, after all. The young people of Rothschild (may Allah help them, may their protest yield fruit), are supposedly able to get up any time and move back to the grim life they were accustomed to before settling into the sizzling Boulevard. However they are condemned to life in the lower end of the Israeli chain of housing – with no property, no land and no roof of their own. Some of the women we have with us this evening –exuberant, full of curiosity and passion for fun – have been living in "real" refugee camps most of their lives. Some were born there, others got married and moved to share the fate of large families condensed into crumbling homes that were started as temporary tents at the outskirts of towns and villages in the West Bank many years ago.
“The angry residents of Israel's "refugee camps" all over the country are going these days through an awakening process from the false consciousness that brought them to this tricky junction of the summer of 2011. It is not an easy process, but well worth making the effort to go all the way to the root of our problems. Those of us, who were privileged last weekend to dance, sing and hug on a Tel Aviv rooftop with our friends from the villages and refugee camps of the occupied territories, will never agree to give up the warm human contact with people we once considered enemies. Just think how many good flats could be produced with the assets wasted over the decades on fortifying the dumb concept that all non Jews are a "danger for our demography".
[2] See for example the interview with Stav Shafir on RT news [289].
Since writing, the unions and bosses at Verizon have decided to re-open negotiations and the strike has ended (shortly before the 2 week period after which workers were entitled to strike pay!) This article was distributed amongst the strikers on their picket lines by our comrades in the US, who had many discussions with them.
For the first time in 11 years, 45,000 Verizon workers across the Mid-Atlantic region have returned to the class struggle, courageously refusing to submit to the bosses’ logic of making the working class pay for the deepening economic crisis of capitalism! Our exploiters say we should sacrifice to help the economy get going again, or to support the profitability of a company in order to safeguard jobs. But the latest draconian assault on pension benefits is proof that the more workers give in, the longer they delay their response to the boss’s attacks, the more emboldened and brutal the next round of attacks will be. This is evident in Verizon’s inhuman characterization of its wireline workers as ‘obsolete’. When the sacrifices already made are no longer enough to satisfy the boss’s insatiable hunger for profit, they simply dispose of us, as if we were mere commodities. Contrary to what the ruling class says, the sacrifices they want us to make do not pave the way for a better future. The truth is, the only future the capitalist system has to offer is one of vanishing pensions, no benefits, speed-ups, frozen wages, increasing unemployment and savage attacks on our living conditions as workers.
When the CWA and the IBEW put forth that Verizon should not ask for the current deep concessions to workers’ health care, pensions, sick days, disability leave, etc., because of the company’s estimated $6 billion profit for the rest of the year (it has made $9.6 in the first half), they actually hide the seriousness of the capitalist economic crisis. In doing so, they consciously weaken the workers’ ability to confront the attacks with a clear idea of the perspectives ahead. The seriousness of the economic crisis and the reality of competition, which imposes that every company will ask, time and again, for more and deeper concessions today as well as tomorrow. As companies lose their competitive edge to the ravages of the capitalist economic crisis, their operations lose profitability. To keep pace with the competition, companies have had to modernize their technology or go out of business. Verizon, like all other capitalist companies, has done so with the sacrifices imposed on its workers, with pension deals and health care benefits negotiated most notoriously at the time of the 2000 strike. As an illustration of how, in this period of capitalist decadence aggravated by the current economic crisis, the unions work hand in glove with the bosses to broker a deal in favor of the latter and demoralize the workers the better to weaken their combativeness in future struggles, we need to remember what the CWA and the IBEW did in 2000. Then, when 86,000 Verizon workers struck over benefits and wages, the CWA and IBEW spilt the membership in two first, then negotiated two separate contracts, each giving in to the demands of management with the result that even the Financial Times hailed the new contract as helping Verizon gain a competitive edge on the developing wireless market. One of the most notorious stipulations of that contract allowed Verizon to transfer 800 of its wireline workers a year to its wireless division, where workers already worked without a pension package. The contract also did nothing to address the workers’ grievances regarding forced overtime. The unions play the role of a broker in negotiations that always favor the bosses, and it traps our struggles by keeping us to the strict guidelines laid down in the trade union rulebook: no mass meetings, no secondary pickets or attempts to spread the strike. In fact, the present strike vote was called by the CWA not because of any specific part of the proposed attacks, but only because the company wasn’t “bargaining in good faith.”
The CWA and the IBEW point at the money Verizon and its CEO’s make as the reason why workers should not give anything back, they further push the bosses’ idea that a strike has legitimacy only when a company is not bankrupt and that workers cannot fight back when a company is not doing well—they must “go down with the ship” so to speak. Workers in the public sector are told the same thing by both the government and the unions: that sacrifices are unavoidable because states are bankrupt. From the perspective of the working class, however, it is clear that the bosses’ interests, driven by profit, stand in open conflict with the workers’ interests, driven by the necessity to safeguard our means of livelihood.
So, if the unions are the bosses’ foils, what are the perspectives for the present strike? Verizon workers should be under no illusion that this struggle will win by simply following the union’s lead. But what workers can do is use it as a means to come together and discuss how to make the movement more widespread and effective. Clearly, other workers are sympathetic to the Verizon strike, but to really win, workers need to spread the strike and really make it a movement for the whole working class. A basic example of this is the picket line. Historically, when workers were on strike they would encircle the struck workplaces to physically prevent machines and replacement workers from going in or out, and to appeal to the workers hired to replace them not to take their jobs. Today, the picket line is behind a fence from which workers are told to simply shout at scabs. Workers need to discuss ways how they can use the picket line creatively and make it effective—to encourage solidarity push Verizon back from its draconian cuts. Union workers should try and convince non-union workers of the necessity of the strike. They should stop them and talk with them explaining the reasons for the strike, spreading the idea that it is only through the widest possible unity among workers that the attacks by the bosses can be resisted. Flying pickets could be created to go and talk with the workers in the Verizon wireless stores (who already work with very poor benefits and almost no pension) during their lunch breaks, to discuss what their grievances are, what we can do to integrate them in the struggle, and to point out that the present strike is also for the protection of their own interests, which could inspire more working people to stand up for themselves across the country and across the world. In this way, even if the bosses win this particular strike (which they are likely to if workers follow the union’s lead and give them complete control) the workers would have gained experience and self-confidence, necessary ingredients to wage the future struggles which the capitalist crisis will inevitably force us to wage.
In the context of the deepest economic crisis of capitalism, with the risk of losing their job or enduring even more oppressive working conditions, the struggle of the Verizon workers is a beacon of hope for the entire working class. But workers in all sectors and in every country are hurting because of attacks on living and working conditions. Cuts in healthcare and increased, lay- offs, wage freezes, endemic unemployment, speed-ups, and increased exploitation at work have been going on for a long time already, and more and more, the working class is looking for ways to resist. Workers, students, and the unemployed across the US and the whole world are looking for ways to give voice to their grievances. In this sense, the current strike by Verizon workers is in continuity with the California student strikes and demos of only one year ago, the Philadelphia and Minneapolis hospital nurses strike, the Mott’s workers strike upstate, the East Coast dock workers strike last fall, and the Madison, Wisconsin public sector workers sick-outs and demonstrations this spring, and also internationally with the tide of revolt that has swept across North Africa and the Middle East, which has reverberated now across Greece and Spain. But it is only when workers are able to take the struggle into their own hands, and out of the hands of the unions, that their resistance becomes really effective.
Internationalism, August 2011.
After four months of protest, generalising from the region’s popular protest against unemployment, repression and a lack of a future, events in Syria are taking a distinctly darker and more dangerous turn. Under the guise of fighting “armed gangs” and “terrorists” the Syrian regime has unleashed its own brand of terror on the population: air-strikes, tank-fire, anti-aircraft fire, sniper fire, torture, deprivation of water, electricity and baby food and, reminiscent of the most sinister regimes of Africa and Latin America, herding whole numbers of people into sports stadia for “questioning”. At least 2000 mostly unarmed protestors have been killed to date, with tens of thousands of refugees and many more made homeless in their own country. These events have been accompanied by large numbers of deserting soldiers refusing to fire on their own people.
Just a few years ago politicians like David Milliband (as British Foreign Secretary) and Nicolas Sarkozy were sucking up to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his regime of murderers and torturers; but now the democracies of the west are lining up to tell him to quit. The powers of the US, Britain, Germany and France have all played a very cautious hand up to now, all but directly complicit in the repression and the atrocities of the Syrian military, allowing the smaller regional powers to exert pressure – while also backing their own “oppositional” forces within the regime (Britain, for example, backing the leading dissident, Walid al-Bunni and his connections). In mid-August, the major powers above, along with the EU, jointly called on Assad to stand down and threatened many of the leading figures in the regime with possible arrest. Reports say that the US told Turkey not to press ahead with its “buffer zone” between the two countries, to stand back from such a provocation. In the meantime the US has considerably strengthened its naval build up in the Med opposite Syria’s coast, in the Aegean, the Adriatic and the Black Sea, with a particular concentration on carrying anti-missile missiles and large numbers of marines. The democracies of the west are not interested in the suffering of the population in Syria; Britain amongst others has been supplying the Syrian military with weapons of repression for years. What they fear most, and this is played on by Russian and Chinese imperialism, is Assad’s possible removal creating further instability and dangers from the “devil you don’t know”: Iran in particular looms large in this nightmare of the foreign ministries of the west. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia, which sent its troops and British-supplied APC’s to Bahrain to crush protests and protesters, is increasingly concerned with the growing strategic relationship between Syria and Iran, including their backing of Hezbollah and Hamas. Further, “It has been rumoured for some time that the Saudis, with the UAE and Kuwait, are quietly financing elements of the Syrian opposition”[1].
In the bi-polar world of NATO and the Warsaw Pact everything was relatively easy in imperialist relations; but the collapse of the Russian bloc has unleashed centrifugal forces where alliances between or against nations are contingent and change with prevailing imperialist winds. Even if the Turkey/Iran/Israel/Syrian relationships, in their different combinations, have shown some changes in the recent past, the abiding cornerstone of US policy, and its necessary war plans, is to protect Israel and target Iran. An Iranian/US rapprochement is not impossible but, with the course of events, military confrontation looks much likelier, particularly given the aggressive policy that American imperialism is driven to undertake in order to maintain its role as the world’s Godfather.
Continuing US difficulties in Iraq, as well as a tendency to US weakening overall, are being kept on the boil by Iranian influence in that country, primarily from the most powerful force in Iran, the al-Quds Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to a report in The Guardian (28.7.11), the above force is virtually pulling the strings of the Iraqi government in what has really been a proxy US-Iranian war in Iraq over the last 8 years. Last year, at the meeting in Damascus that formed the present Iraqi government, General Suleimani, the leader of the al-Quds Corp, “was present ... along with the leaders from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah: ‘He forced them all to change their mind and anoint Malaki as a leader for the second term’”. The report goes on to say that “all but two US troops killed in Iraq in June – the highest number for two years, were killed by client militias under ... (the Revolutionary Guard’s) control, the Keta’ib Hezbollah and the Promised Day Brigades”. The US ambassador to Iraq had already reported that Iranian proxies accounted for roughly a quarter of US casualties in Iraq (1,100 deaths and many thousands of injuries).
Growing Iranian influence in Iraq and in Syria too; according to the Wall Street Journal, 14.4.11, unnamed US officials said straightaway that Iran was helping Syrian security forces in their repression against a whole range of protesters. Syria has long been a conduit for Iranian arms and influence towards Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon where it has increased its role since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005 and alongside the weakening of pro-US forces in the country. While they have their own national interests to defend, and while there are some differences – over Israel for example - the Damascus-Iranian alliance is stronger than ever and though the latter would prefer the Assad clique to stay in power, if it fell then their “partners” would work to install an even more pro-Iranian regime.
As long ago as May 2007, the US Institute of Peace reported that Iran-Syrian relations have deepened. Even allowing for bias here there is no doubt about the stronger imperialist stamp of Iran over the country. A mutual defence pact was agreed in 2006 (the protocol being unreleased), plus an additional military cooperation agreement in mid-2007. Investment and trade between the two countries has also deepened and Syria’s economic woes – worsening with the effects of the crisis – can only strengthen the Iranian hold over it. In fact the development of the economic crisis would seem to make it more unlikely that the US will be able to flip Syria away from Iran.
None of this is good news for the interests of Turkish imperialism and its aspirations to play a major role in the region. The waves of Syrian refugees have been a big headache for the Turkish bourgeoisie and Prime Minister Erdogan had condemned the Syrian regime’s “savagery”. Just as worrying for it is the blow to its efforts to suppress the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in its south-east region. The Guardian reports (Simon Tisdall, World Briefing, 9.8.11) that many of the PKK fighters in the region encompassing Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq are of Syrian origin and recalls the 1990s flashpoints when Turkey and Syria almost went to war over the same issue. PKK attacks on Turkish troops and the resulting air strikes over the 17th/18th of August in northern Iraq are surely not unrelated to a larger and potentially more destructive increase in tensions. Tehran has also rebuffed all Turkish attempts to act as a mediator towards the west.
Even though, beyond the manoeuvres of all the major powers around Syria with its cliques and clans, there is still a strong and extremely brave social struggle going on in the country, it stands to be completely overwhelmed and torn apart, not just by Iranian assisted repression, but by the existing and developing imperialist tensions involving much wider areas of the region.
Baboon, 20.8.11.
The most natural immediate response to Anders Behring Breivik's killings is one of horror. The bombing and shootings that killed 77 people (including 55 teenagers) have provoked expressions of revulsion from the mainstream media and politicians across the world. But while the different parts of the ruling class unite in their condemnation of this particular example of terrorism, they offer many different explanations for what happened.
The response of the Right has been to describe Breivik as insane, a monster, and maniac, a psychopath and perpetrator of evil. Ultimately he is presented as an individual who has done something that needs a psychological or moral explanation. From Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, we get a simple narrative that goes from denying to employing a variety of psychology. The headline to his column in the Telegraph (31/7/11) says “There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer”. However, because “some girl he had a crush on jilted him in favour of a man of Pakistani origin” there were appalling consequences. “Sometimes there come along pathetic young men who have a sense of powerlessness and rejection, and take a terrible revenge on the world.”
The idea that this is madness divorced from any social reality needs to be rejected. The extent of Breivik's alienation from the rest of humanity is certainly exceptional. To shoot down dozens of young people in cold blood because you believe that only the forced deportation of Muslims from Europe can rectify society's wrongs clearly shows a personality with profound problems. But no individual acts in isolation from the society in which they've grown up
To take the most relevant aspect: we live in a world where every faction of the capitalist class participates in a perpetual campaign intended to incite racial and religious divisions. From the fascist groups that openly preach race hate and violence against minorities, to the liberal/leftist insistence on the need for us all to be loyal to an ethnic identity, the bourgeoisie has created an ideological web using the watchwords of assimilation and separatism, nationalism and multiculturalism, to sustain the idea of humanity divided along racial rather than class lines. The distance between a member of a Swedish anti-immigrant party saying of the Norway attacks that "this was caused by multiculturalism" to David Cameron saying that “multiculturalism has failed” is not far. When the Left leap to the defence of the status quo in the name of 'multiculturalism' the jigsaw is complete.
Breivik seemed to have spent a long time in the online twilight and immersed himself on some its furthest shores. He'd clearly been exposed to all sorts of expressions of the disintegration of the most basic of human solidarity. His actions demonstrated the most extreme alienation, but it has to be seen against the background of the bourgeoisie's ideology of racial and religious divisions, which is supposed to be taken as 'normal' and just 'common sense'.
In particular, the propaganda that depicts Muslims as an ever-present threat is only the latest phase of capitalist scapegoating. Over the decades this has embraced anti-semitism, the portrayal of darker skinned immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean as a 'menace' to civilisation, and the arrival of any group speaking a different language or having a different religion as having the potential to disrupt social order. Across Europe there is a consensus among the bourgeois political parties and throughout the capitalist media that immigration is inherently a threat. The lies change, and the propaganda can be more or less sophisticated, but capitalism has found a way to constantly focus on the danger of the 'other', of the alien. This ideology can have an impact on many personalities; in that sense Breivik is not at all unique.
For the Left Breivik is seen as a typical Christian conservative, as evidence of the danger of growing fascist and racist extremism, and a product of Islamophobia. They confront the psychological explanations head on. In the words of Socialist Worker (30/7/11) “These murders were not the act of a psychopath - they were the actions of a man following the logic of a racist ideology which demonises Muslims.” In following this 'logic' “Breivik wanted to start a race war and he thought the conditions were right.” This does follow a certain logic, but it is the logic of the irrational.
Against the Left's rejection of psychological explanations it is necessary to state the obvious – the attacks in Norway were not the actions of a rational being. They do indeed flow from following an ideology that is inherently irrational. How do you 'start a race war' by attacking your fellow Norwegians?
Breivik's actions were not rational, but that puts his behaviour in line with the rest of bourgeois politics. For example, many Palestinian groups have for decades believed that attacking Israel will provoke a vicious response that will finally persuade Arab states in the region to deploy their military forces against the Jewish state. It's not rational, it sounds like it's based on the Book of Revelation, but it passes for a policy. In economics, a hundred years of experts providing solutions to capitalism's permanent crisis that never work will not deter economists, so drenched are they in the dominant ideology. In the US, it's not just the Tea Party and the fringes of Republicanism, but a whole range of Christian, fundamentalist and other ideologies that weigh on the functioning of the bourgeoisie and on the minds of much of the rest of the population.
Wherever you look, capitalism, for all its inherent drive for profit, for keeping out of the red in its balance sheets, is more and more in awe to the cult of unreason. The Left might think that contemporary capitalism is still set on a rational basis, but the actual experience of modern society reveals an increasing decomposition, part of which is expressed in a growing irrationalism in which material interests are not the only guide to behaviour.
In the case of Breivik it is of course possible that he's an unconscious pawn in a larger strategy, but the experience of Columbine, Virginia Tech and all the other massacres show that you don't need a political motive to start randomly killing your fellow creatures.
What we see with events like the attacks in Norway is something which, at a number of levels, demonstrates the decomposition of capitalist society. You can see the depth of alienation in one individual's behaviour, which unfortunately is not that unusual. There's the conscious attempt by the bourgeoisie to impede basic solidarity and foment hatred. Irrational behaviour marks groups and individuals. The ruling class encourages divisions; capitalist culture promotes and reinforces fear of others.
Many commentators have pointed to the response of the Norwegian Prime Minister as being exemplary, especially in the way that he specifically said that he would not use the attacks to strengthen the repressive powers of the state. He didn't need to. In the name of opposition to the atrocities there has been a whole campaign for Norwegian national unity. This is one of the strengths of democracy. The reality of class society is supposed to be put to one side as all come together under the 'protective' gaze of the capitalist state. As a class the bourgeoisie is still capable of using the evidence of social disintegration against the working class's potential for developing a real class unity and solidarity.
In the early stages of the events in Norway much of the media tried to convince us that we might be witnessing an Al-Qaida like attack, but had no difficult in changing tack when it turned out to be a 'home-grown' terrorist. This talent for propaganda is one of the few weapons that the bourgeoisie has left, that and capitalist terror.
Barrow 2/8/11
How do we respond to the recent riots from a working class point of view? As well as the statement put out by the ICC [294], there have been statements from the International Communist Tendency, Solidarity Federation and others, and there has been lively and sometimes heated discussion on various discussion forums, including libcom. Here we will try and take up the main issues rather than look in detail at any particular contribution.
First and foremost, the statements by the three organisations all start by denouncing both the bourgeoisie’s hypocritical campaign to demonise the rioters in the media, which also prepares the ground for the harsh sentences meted out, and the worsening conditions faced by the working class today that underpins the tensions that erupted in rioting. This is absolutely basic regardless of the fact that the riots took place – causing disruption and sometimes danger – in areas where workers and the most disadvantaged live. These are also the areas which suffer most from poverty, unemployment and police repression – the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham being the spark that set the whole thing off.
“It is not for communists to condemn the riots. They are a sign of capitalism’s crisis and decay. Neither do we romanticise the riotous act as an effective form of struggle against capitalist exploitation” (ICT, https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-08-09/riots-in-britain-the-fruit-of-forty-years-of-capitalist-crisis [295]). And SolFed “will not condemn or condone those we don't know for taking back some of the wealth they have been denied all their lives” (https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-respond-london-riots-solidarity-federation?page=1 [296]). This does not mean the working class has nothing to say on the question of behaviour. SolFed, finding the riots blamed on anarchism, their political heritage, say clearly “there should be no excuses for the burning of homes, the terrorising of working people. Whoever did such things has no cause for support” and “people should band together to defend themselves when such violence threatens homes and communities”.
The Solfed statement was generally well received among the anarchists, and in general the question of behaviour, of ‘proletarian morality’ (even if not called that), came up in a lot of the online discussions in the libertarian milieu. The dominant mood was of reflection and concern, not one of blindly cheerleading the riots.
However, there remains a widespread uncritical attitude to the issue of looting in particular. Posts such as “we shall critically sympathise the rioters, showing what is good (bourgeoisie rule and property contested) and also what is bad (hurting working class fellows) in the riots” (piter on libcom) see something positive in the looting, and others that tell us that as revolution will not be ‘pure’ we should accept the riots in their entirety, divisive and anti-proletarian behaviour included. Socialism and/or barbarism goes even further and, while recognising that this is not the negation of capitalism, looks at “the insurrectionary aspect … the fact that many of those rioting are getting themselves organised” and then extends the positive to include shopkeepers defending their property with baseball bats “taking action without waiting for the mediation of the police” (https://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-those-who-condemn_10.html [297]). As if the bourgeoisie, and the British in particular, had not spent hundreds of years honing the art of divide and rule, of setting different groups against each other and using it to their advantage!
A number of people have argued that looting somehow undermines commodity relations – if not subjectively then objectively as one poster on libcom put it. But this view fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the communist revolution and the role of consciousness within it. Under capitalism, commodity relations dominate everything, like a natural force. They can only be overcome by the ‘subjective’ determination of the working class to organise itself, expropriate the ruling class, and redistribute the social product on the basis of need. In massive struggles of the working class that have fallen short of the revolution itself we have seen clear tendencies in this direction. But looting, even when carried out in large groups, does not lead towards such a collective, social awareness: if anything it reinforces the grip of the commodity over the individual. Thus the ICT are correct to argue that “Far from being a liberating form of activity, this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology”. The nature of the riots was put to the test in practice by several contributors to libcom when they first started. They went to see what was happening, and left because the situation was dangerous and there was no opportunity for any positive intervention. A more successful initiative was the one taken by Solfed members in Deptford, who called a street meeting that attracted about 100 people with the concern to put out any fires - an act of solidarity - but also to discuss the causes of the riots: “Many people spoke of the problems that young people and the whole working class is facing and the need to act collectively to make changes. Out of the discussion came a decision to hold an emergency demonstration the next day against the cuts and to highlight some of the causes behind the riots” (https://libcom.org/article/deptford-hackney-tottenham-respond [298]).
The Deptford meeting was focused on discussing the situation and trying to understand it. It did not participate in the riot.
We do not look for a ‘pure’ class struggle. Wherever there is proletarian life and struggle this is always contested by the bourgeoisie. For instance in the assemblies in Spain we confronted the Real Democracy Now ideology aimed at reforming the capitalist state; in any strike workers come up against union efforts to keep them within the legal restrictions on pickets, solidarity and extension – but the key thing is that there is a real workers’ struggle being expressed, a struggle that by its very nature can open out to other sectors of the working class and draw them in. In the riots there was no such possibility. On the contrary, the very methods used by the riots tended to create fear and division within the working class, providing an alibi for increased repression and further austerity.
“We believe that the legitimate anger of the rioters can be far more powerful if it is directed in a collective, democratic way and seeks not to victimise other workers, but to create a world free of the exploitation and inequality inherent to capitalism” (SolFed). True the rioters have much to be angry about, but riots are not the way to do anything about it, quite the reverse. But it is not enough just to address the legitimate anger of rioters – what about the legitimate indignation of the whole working class? Here we agree with the ICT: “unless and until the working class begins to see there is an alternative to capitalism and begins to struggle politically there will be more outbursts from those who have no stake in this society…”. It is the struggle of the working class as a whole that will provide a perspective for all those in society who have no stake in capitalism. Riots express the lack of perspective that results from the absence of a clear proletarian alternative.
Capitalism has repeatedly faced the working class with situations where worsening conditions become increasingly unbearable. At certain moments the exploited have responded by launching a collective revolutionary assault on capitalism, as in Paris in 1871, Russia 1917, or Germany 1919-23. In the 1930s, when the revolutionary wave had already been defeated, there were hunger marches of unemployed workers as well as other struggles and strikes – but all the time the working class was being tied more closely into the bourgeoisie’s ideology and perspective, the insane, murderous perspective of imperialist conflict on a global scale. Today the bourgeoisie cannot provide any perspective for society, they cannot even agree on whether they should emphasise austerity or quantitative easing. Nor, as the ICT point out, has the working class struggle reached the level where it can pose the alternative to capitalism (except for the tiny minority that is convinced of the possibility of communist revolution).
In a post on the ICC forum, a member of the CWO, Jock, makes this comment: “Everyone of us who commented had expected and ICC response that it was "all down to decomposition" but instead we find a materialist analysis which most of us agree with. Ironic therefore that Baboon should then criticise our statement for not mentioning decomposition when we were relieved to find that the ICC had not done so either! After 40 years of capitalist stagnation it is not surprising that social disintegration is taking place…” In fact, the last sentence accords entirely with our analysis of decomposition: it is precisely the long-drawn out nature of the crisis which is at the root of the present tendency towards “social disintegration”. The whole ICC statement on the riots is framed in our materialist analysis of “capitalism’s crisis and decay” in circumstances in which the bourgeoisie cannot impose any perspective on society, however destructive and insane, and where “the race is on for the revival of a really liberating movement of the working class to present an alternative to capitalist barbarism” to use some of the ICT’s words. It is no surprise that the ICT recognise so many aspects of the decomposition of capitalism, even if they do not share our analysis, because that is the reality of the world today.
Alex, 29/8/11
Quite a significant part of the various sectors of the population in this part of India i.e. West Bengal, seems to be agog with the possibility of change. They are celebrating the decisive electoral defeat of the ruling leftist combine and the landslide victory of the rightist combine. Some are excited simply by the thought and fact that the Stalinist ruling combine has at last been ousted from governmental power. People were so much disgusted with the unlimited arrogance and corruption of almost everyone linked in one way or other with the ruling Stalinist clique. Some people said openly, “we don’t bother about what is going to happen in the coming period. We bother only about ousting the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from governmental power. They are unbearable.” Thus this instant jubilation of this part of the masses of people including the working class and the exploited sectors is quite understandable. These people seem to be relishing a profound sense of relief.
Almost the whole media, print as well as electronic, is leaving no stone unturned in propagating and strengthening the notion of change. They are depicting the CPI (M) as the most notorious villain of the whole episode, the embodiment of everything negative, the root of all evils. On the other hand the victorious rightists combine and particularly its supreme leader is being presented as the symbol of honesty and heroism. They are also never tired of singing paeans of praise for the unlimited power of democracy and particularly that of the purity and maturity of Indian democracy. Quite a significant part of the population seems to be swallowing with relish all such materials circulated by the press in this context. It seems to be working overtime to bring home this point to everyone. The new ruling alliance is not only enacting scenes of high dramatic populism to show that it is fundamentally different from the previous regime, on every occasion, almost every day, but also seems to be enjoying it wholeheartedly. The bourgeoisie seems to have been quite successful at least temporarily in the task of mystification.
But it has failed to mystify and befool each and everyone. A significant part of the population has not at all been moved by this propaganda of change. A lot of young people who have been eligible to vote for the first time have refused to cast their votes according to some reliable survey reports.
It is urgently necessary to pause for a while to reflect on the real form and content of the change and stop being swept over simply by the dreamy idea of it.
We cannot but point out that whatever the hype about the virtue and power of democracy, this particular election has shown very clearly the dying condition of democracy. Without the direct protection and prop of the bureaucratic military machine it is absolutely unable to stand steadily and function. In its youthful phase of life in the nineteenth century, capitalism had the upper hand and full control of the bureaucratic military machine. But now in its phase of senility it is under the full control and protection of the latter. What a great fall! The centre of gravity of capitalist power is not in the parliament now; it has shifted more and more to the permanent bureaucratic, military and judicial machinery. Various sectors of the bourgeois think tanks are lamenting over this inevitable transformation and degeneration of democracy.
In this context it should be mentioned that democracy, including the purest, oldest and the maturest varieties, is based on three things. These are use of money, muscle and mystification power. In the backward countries like India the use of money and muscle power is predominant. In addition to this, the power of mystification of the working class and toiling masses plays also a very important role. Every political party and leader participating in the electoral battle resorts to random lying and mystification. It is something like a competition in lying. Those who are able to make the people believe the lies as truth are victorious in the electoral game. In the more advanced countries the use of the power of mystification is very much predominant. Nevertheless, in these days accusations of intimidation of the electorate are also being made even in the USA.
The now ousted leftist combine came to governmental power after a landslide electoral victory way back in 1977 dealing a crushing defeat to the Congress, the rightist ruling party of that time. The leftist combine then claimed to be most determined crusader against the repressive methods and all-out corruption of the then ruling party. They clamored for change and economic development. They pledged to work for the defense of the interest of the working class and the exploited strata of society. They asked their cadres not to be revengeful against those of the previous ruling party who terrorized them and drove them out of their houses and compelled them to flee away. People then, like now, were disgusted with the extreme arrogance, corruption and terrorizing methods of, and the terrorized environment created by, the goons sheltered and used by the Congress party. Then, like now, they were eager for the change of the unbearable, suffocating social atmosphere. They thought and took the election as a means to oust the Congress party and bring the leftist combine to governmental power. Then also there was much hype about the wave of change sweeping over various parts of India. But it did not take much time for the cloud of illusion to be gradually dispersed and the actual reality of the then new leftist regime to be more and more exposed. The protagonists and defenders of that regime gradually began to resort more and more to the same repressive methods and drowned deeper and deeper into the same sea of corruption. They played not only an active but also leading role in the massacre of the masses of peasantry and killing of the working class struggling against the attacks on their living and working conditions in various parts of west Bengal. All such movements have been severely repressed not only by the official police force but also by the unofficial regiment of hired goons. Socio--economic problems, particularly the living and working conditions of the working class and various sectors of the toiling masses of people, began to worsen with each passing day. The problem of unemployment also has worsened.
Today’s victorious parties are very vocal against the all-out corruption and the repressive methods of the crushingly defeated leftist combine. They have claimed themselves to be the vanguard of change. Their most important slogan is “change not revenge” and economic development. They are also pledging to work for the interest of the poor.
But these very parties are the offspring of the Congress party which resorted to repressive methods since the transfer of political power to it by the British in 1947, and particularly in the early seventies. People were afraid of even casting their votes according to will. The members of the Congress party then were the vanguard of the biggest massacre of the sympathizers of the Maoist movement in 1971 in the heart of Calcutta. The state machinery was brazenly used for this massacre by the then Congress chief minister. Lots of leaders, young militants and supporters of the Maoist movement were then killed just after arrest even without the farce of any trial. Many were killed in fake clashes. The houses of lots of poor and landless peasants in various parts of west Bengal who supported the Maoist movement were demolished forcibly by the goons of the then Congress party. Lots of people fled away from their residential places out of fear.
Quite a significant portion of the leaders who were directly involved in those killings and massacre are still leaders of the now victorious rightist combine. But the massacre of the common people struggling for their various demands against a government which has been resorting to more and more repressive methods and all sorts of corruption at all levels has given a good opportunity to those rightist leaders to wipe out the accumulated blemish and polish their political image to a great extent. This may be repeated in course of time in the case of the severely disgraced and humiliated leftists in the opposition now. After some period of time it is quite likely in the present national and international situation that the new ruling combine will be compelled to resort similar repressive measures with one excuse or other against the inevitable movements of the working class, various sections of the peasantry and the unemployed. It may even surpass all past limits. This is likely to provide the necessary conditions to the disgraced leftists of today to wipe out the thick blemish and polish their political image. In this way the left and the right of capital will help each other and keep capital alive.
According to the thoughts of Marx and Lenin also, the working class and toiling, exploited masses of people are given the right every four or five or six years to choose by whom they would like to be exploited and repressed in the next five years. So whoever wins it is basically the same for the working class and exploited people. History has proved the validity of this assertion again and again. There can not be any end to the exploitation and repression of the working class by the change of the ruling team or party. The political management of the capitalist socio-economic and political system is only changed through the election. The real dictatorship of the capitalist system remains unchanged and intact. Again according to the concepts of Marx democracy is the best form of bourgeois dictatorship. This dictatorship lies hidden in the relation of production of capital based on exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses of people. This relation has nowhere and never been determined by democratic methods. Factories are nowhere run by the democratic method. All aspects of production including prices are not determined democratically.
The bureaucratic military machine, the permanent, most important and strongest pillar of the state, the sole weapon for carrying out exploitation and repression, remains the same. The “parasitic excrescence on the social body” will not only remain intact but it will be much more swollen in the coming period. That means nothing but further intensification of the exploitation of the working class and toiling people in the coming period. This can never be lessened in a single country or part of a country.
There is no fundamental difference between the leftist and rightist political apparatus so far as the defense of the interest of capital is concerned. And for this the leftist political apparatus of capital is indispensable, particularly in this historical phase in the life of global capital when it has been transformed into the biggest obstacle in the way of further progress of humanity and proletarian revolution is so urgently needed. Not only that, the present advanced phase of senility and decadence of the capitalist system will lead humanity gradually towards total destruction if there is absence of world proletarian revolution. This only can destroy capitalism and save humanity. In such a situation the leftist apparatus including each and every Stalinist, Trotskyite or Maoist variety without any exception has been and will be the sole savior of the global capitalist system.
The world bourgeoisie has realized very clearly and profoundly that the leftist political apparatus is indispensable to it in this historical period of unlimited barbarism, where the historic choice is between total destruction of humanity or world proletarian revolution opening the door for the creation of a borderless world communist society free from any sort of exploitation and repression. They can point to the Stalinist and Maoist regimes and the ruling ‘communist parties’ to discredit and attack the perspective of communism. They know very well that if this is grasped by the masses of working class their existence will be fatally endangered. They needed and still need the ‘socialist states’ very urgently only to discredit scientific socialism which for the world working class and toiling people had and still has a great attraction. Their sole aim is to deal a fatal blow to this attraction. In this reactionary task for the defense and prolongation of the life of the totally anachronistic and historically needless capitalist system, the leftist political apparatus is absolutely indispensable. With this end in view they openly abuse the Stalinists, Maoists and Trotskyites in a very calculated way so that the latter can present themselves as the true defenders of the interest of the masses of the population against the attacks of the bourgeois state and thus can derail their struggle for liberation from all sorts of exploitation and repression.
The course of history has not been determined by the goodwill or not of this or that individual, male or female or group or political party at the helm of affairs. It has been determined by the material conditions of the predominant relation of production in a particular historical phase and the conditions of class struggle in that phase. The latter has been the determining factor in the political goodwill or lack of it or its change.
Whatever tall promises are made in the time of election propaganda, whatever goodwill for the masses of people are shown in words, the new government will have to serve the interest of the capitalist system in West Bengal. It may shout aloud that its only aim is to serve the interest of humanity (Manush) as a whole. The victorious rightist combine never tires of asserting that their victory is the victory of mankind (Manush), undifferentiated and classless. But can the interest of capital and that of humanity as a whole and particularly that of the working class and exploited masses of people be the same and defended simultaneously, particularly in this historic phase?
The global capitalist system entered its phase of senility or decadence since the beginning of the last century. The First World War was the definitive proof of this. Since then it is passing through permanent crisis which was expressed in the outbreak of the great depression of 1929. This led to the breaking out of the Second World War. This was suppressed to some extent after the war in the new international imperialist configuration of the division of the world into two imperialist blocks led by two victorious superpowers, US and USSR. The crisis raised its head again in the end sixties putting an end to the so-called glorious thirty years. Since then the crisis has been intensifying more and more with the passage of time as the relative saturation of the world market gets deepened. In such an international situation the only condition for the existence of capital is more exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses. The more any government of any capitalist state will be able to ensure this the brighter will be the possibility of continued existence of the historically needless capitalist system at least in that state. The task of any leftist or rightist government is to ensure this. The task of the new government in west Bengal can never be otherwise. Whatever its good will, real or fake, it will be compelled by the evolution of material conditions of global capital and class struggle to further intensify exploitation and repression of the working class and toiling masses and resort to more fascist methods. Attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class cannot but be further intensified in the coming period. There is little hope for any resolution of the problem of unemployment. This is likely to worsen in the days ahead. There is every possibility that the roles of the political parties and alliances will be interchanged. The right in government will demonstrate their true colors in reality and the left in opposition will also show their original colors. They will leave no stone unturned to present themselves as the true defenders of the working class and toiling people and thus try their best to derail their class struggle from the class terrain and the process of coming to consciousness. There is fundamental unity between the left and right of capital so far as the cause of the defense of basic interest of capital is concerned. There is of course a difference—that of methods.
The working class should not be swept away by the hype, hysteria and illusion of change. They should not take sides in the dogfight between the rightist and leftist political apparatus of capital for capturing the covetable post of top political management of the affairs of capital. Both are the sworn enemies of the working class.
It should rather focus its whole attention on the intensification of its class struggle against each and every attack of capital on its living and working conditions, developing the self-organization and control of the struggle, its extension to all sectors and its unification. Constant collective struggle against all sorts of mystification by the left and right of capital and for coming to proletarian consciousness is indispensable. This is the only way to resist the attacks and defend its class interest.
Saki 16/7/11
It has been calculated that between December 2006 and April 2011 the “war on drugs” cost more than 40 thousand deaths (amongst drug dealers, military and civilians). The cost in torture and robbery is incalculable. This is a war waged as much by the politicians and military as the mafia gangs. The bourgeoisie tries to pretend that this is a problem outside of its system, but the truth is that the spread of drugs and crime stems from the same root as any war around capitalist competition to win markets. At the same time it shows the difficulty of the ruling class to act in a coherent, unified manner. The bourgeoisie’s lack of political control, the growing conflicts within the ruling class itself, brutally and clearly express the advance of capitalism’s decomposition.
The weight of decomposition has certainly taken on growing dimensions in the least developed countries, where the bourgeoisie is less able to control its differences. Thus we see in countries such as Colombia, Russia or Mexico that the mafia has merged into the structures of government in such a way that each mafia group is associated with some sector of the bourgeoisie and defends its interests in confrontations with other fractions, using state structures as their battlegrounds. This exacerbates the whole struggle of “each against all” and accelerates the rot in the social atmosphere.
This does not mean that the more industrialised countries are immune to the process of decomposition. Although the bourgeoisie in these countries, for the moment, can to a large extent push some aspects of decomposition onto the periphery and act in a relatively more orderly way to damp down its differences, it is not exempt from this dominant tendency. If the specter of drug trafficking has not become a dead weight for them, there are other aspects of the advance of decomposition that effect them, for example terrorism. It is important to understand that the advance of decomposition, even though it dominates the whole capitalist system, does not unfold in a homogeneous way. Nonetheless, given the circumstances affecting the whole world, we can still affirm that the social disintegration we are seeing in countries like Mexico is the horizon towards which the rest of the world is heading.
Without a doubt it is the advance of barbarism that dominates the present world situation. This is deeply connected to the impoverishment that is being accelerated by the crisis.
At the beginning of the 90s we said: “Amongst the most important characteristics of the decomposition of capitalist society, it is necessary to underline the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the situation at the political level”.[1]The reason for this lies in the difficulty that the ruling class is having in ensuring its political unity. The diverse fractions into which the bourgeoisie is divided are confronting each other, not only at the level of economic competition, but also (and fundamentally) politically. Faced with the drawn out economic crisis, there are some unifying tendencies, which are mediated by the state; but they only take place around short-term economic aims. At the level of political leadership, the worsening of competition caused by the crisis provokes the widespread dispersal of the bourgeoisie’s forces. On the international scale there is a growing tendency towards the struggle of “each against all”, a generalised lack of discipline at the political level, which prevents the imposition of the order that the old imperialist blocs were able to maintain during the Cold War. The atmosphere of “every man for himself” which defines the international situation is repeated in the activity of the bourgeoisie in each country. It is only in this framework that we can explain the enormous growth in drug trafficking.
Decomposition did not begin on this or that day, but is a series of phenomena that were already present in the previous phases of capitalist development and which have increased during the period of capitalism’s decadence. But it is in the last decades of the 20th century that they were magnified and became dominant. Drug trafficking is a graphic example of this “progress”.
In the middle of the 19th century, during the phase of the ascendancy of capitalism, the business of drug trafficking had an impact. The trade in opium created political difficulties that led to wars, but in these cases the state was directly involved and the ruling class was not threatened by any resulting instability. The “Opium Wars” directed by the British state are a historical reference point, but were not in themselves a dominant element during that period.
The importance of drugs and the formation of mafia groups with an underground life (with connections of the state, but secret ones) has taken on increasing importance during the decadent phase of capitalism, although at the beginning it did not have the same dimensions it has today. In the first decades of the 20th century the bourgeoisie certainly tried to limit and control through laws and regulation the cultivation, preparation and traffic of certain drugs, but only because it wanted to gain better control of these commodities.
If you think that “drug dealing” is something that the bourgeoisie and its state repudiate, you would be wrong. It is this class that has encouraged the spread of drugs and has made good use of them. Methamphetamine, for example, was developed in Japan in 1919, but it was in the Second World War that its production and use expanded as the Allied and Japanese armies used it to hype up their soldiers and to exacerbate aggressive attitudes.
Until the last quarter of the 20th century the state did not have too many problems controlling drugs. But in the 60s, with the war in Vietnam, some derivatives of cocaine were given to attack-dogs, and then heroin was distributed amongst the troops to placate demoralisation and to make use of the ferocity that it can awaken. With this use Uncle Sam incubated a demand for the drug, and it was the same North American government which encouraged drug production in the countries of the periphery, even supplying its own laboratories.
And although the effect of social degradation began to spread in the US, this still did not worry the bourgeoisie very much. President Nixon did declare the “War on Drugs” in 1971 but he knew that most drug production and sale was still under the direct or indirect control of the US state and of the states that were allied to the bloc under its command.
In the middle of the 20th century in Mexico, the production and distribution of drugs was still not important. Nevertheless it was strictly controlled by part of the state. Not only did the police guard and protect the incipient mafia (as was the case of “Lola La Chata” famous drug dealer in the Federal District during the 40s), but there was a whole confusion between state structures and the mafias. For example, a character like Mazario Ortiz, who stood in as the governor of Coahuila and was a founding member of the PNR and Secretary of Agriculture, made good use of his “investiture” in order to freely distribute opium. The DFS (Direccion Federal de Seguridad, which functioned as a political police) began life headed by military men who controlled drugs as personal businesses.
In the 80s it was the North American State, once again, which wanted to increase the production and consumption of drugs. In the “Irangate” affair (1986) it came to light that the Reagan government, facing limitations on the budget for aid to the military opposition groups in Nicaragua (known as the “contras”), used resources provided by the sale of arms to Iran, but above all, by CIA funds derived from the sale of drugs. In this tangle, the US government pushed the Colombian mafias to increase production, at the same time assuring material and logistical support from the governments of Panama, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemala. The same government, in order to “expand the market”, produced “derivatives” of cocaine that were cheaper and therefore easier to sale, though more destructive.
This is what the big boss did in order to bankroll similar adventures in the rest of Latin America. In Mexico the US was behind the “dirty war”, which was the war of extermination that the state carried out during the 70s and 80s against the guerrillas, led by the army and paramilitary groups, who were given carte blanche to kill, kidnap and torture. Much of this was funded by money from drugs. Projects such as “Operation Condor”, presented as operations against drugs production, were used in order to attack the guerrillas and protect the cultivators. During this period, according to figures obtained by Anabel Hernandaz, it was the same army and Federal Police who, in association with the mafia groups, controlled the operations to do with drugs[2].
As the above demonstrates the production and distribution of drugs has been constantly under the control of states: what has changed though is that there have been a quantitative and qualitative growth in the indiscipline amongst the different bourgeois groups that have been integrated into the state apparatus. In Mexico the period of the Cold War was associated with the monolithic power of the PRI, which from its foundation (1929) had the task of holding together the “revolutionary family” by distributing sinecures and fragments of power in order to ensure harmony between bourgeois fractions. With the ending of the Cold War, the breakdown of the alliances of the various imperialist powers has been replicated within each country (with their specificities). In Mexico’s case this has been generally expressed through open disputes between fractions of the bourgeoisie. In order to try and overcome this situation there was a change of the governing party and the “decentralisation” of the reins of power. This meant that the state governors and municipal presidents consolidated their own regional power bases, and according to their interests, each of them linked up with one of the mafia gangs, leading to the growth of these groups and at the same time feeding the confrontations between them.
The acceleration of the barbarity that marks drugs trafficking and the “war” associated with it, which brings death and suffering to the many and higher profits to the few has been generated by capitalism. The entire ruling class is undoubtedly involved in this conflict, which does not mean that it suffers the consequences. However it does know that the worst effects fall upon the workers and it is more than willing to use this in order to assure its control over the exploited. Thus it is the exploited masses that are being killed or are abandoning the land due to fear or direct threats. The bourgeois uses this atmosphere to spread fear, to paralyse all discontent or push it towards desperate actions.
The bourgeoisie, cosseted in its own mystified world, believes that the existence of this problem can find a solution through political action and strategies against drugs. An example of this is the “Global Commission on Drugs Policy” which criticises the policies sponsored by the USA since the 70s, and instead proposes as a solution the revision and reform of the classification of drugs, with the aim of legalising the use of some drugs and ensuring better control of their production and distribution. There are other proposals, even put forwards by sections of the non-exploiting classes, such as the peace movement led by Javier Sicilia[3], which although reflecting real discontent and a rejection of the present barbarity, also expresses a dead-end desperation. Javier’s 4th June declaration exemplifies this, talking about the need... “to reach out and touch the head of the political class, those of the criminals and to get them to transform their lives into ones of human beings in our service. They have the possibility of change if they change their hearts”. Thus despite the reality of Javier’s pain and discontent, as that of many of those who participate in his caravan, this approach ends up placing confidence in the bourgeoisie’s ability to carry out compassionate actions and to solve the system’s growing putrefaction
In reality, the only solution open to the bourgeoisie in seeking to limit the further explosion of barbarism is to cohere around one of the mafia groups and thus to marginalise the rest. This is what happened in Colombia where the crimes and outrages were reduced. The bourgeoisie, through the government, backed the dominance of one of the cartels in order to gain a better control of the situation. This did not mean a solution to the barbarity, only that it was pushed into a region which the state did not control and onto other countries. In Mexico’s case, the bourgeoisie will try to find a conciliation of interests, but in the context of the approaching elections (2012), which will produce even greater struggles over economic and political control at the national level, these differences and the struggle of “each against all” will only get worse, there is no possibility that the bourgeoisie will find a solution to the growing decomposition and corrosion of its system. only the revolutionary activity of the working class can put an end to the nightmare we are living in. what engels (1892) said about the choice facing HUMANITY - “socialism or barbarism” - IS truer than ever.
Tatlin 6/11 (First published in Revolución Mundial 123 [302], the ICC’s publication in Mexico).
[1] ‘Decomposition: the final phase of capitalism’s decadence’, point 9, International Review no 62, 1990
[2] Los
Señores del narco, Editorial Grijalbo, 2010.
[3]Javier Sicilia is a famous Mexican poet, novelist, and journalist whose son Juan was killed, with six other people, by a drugs gang in March 2011. In response Sicilia has led a protest movement in many Mexican cities called “We have had it”, which has mobilised 10.000s of people in demonstrations calling for the end of the “the war on drugs”, the removal of the military from the streets, the legalisation of drugs and the sacking of President Felipe Calderón.
Hurricane Irene slammed a vast region of the US from North Carolina to Maine over the course of the last weekend and into Tuesday, dragging away homes and bridges, cutting off roads, submerging neighborhoods underwater, killing at least 35 people, and leaving at least 5.5 million homes and businesses across the region without power in the worst hurricane in decades (still 1,700,000 as of Wednesday, August 31). In New York City alone, some 100,000 customers were without electricity. Utility companies said it would take days to restore electricity in more accessible areas and weeks in the hardest hit and more remote regions. As of Tuesday, August 30 floods were expected to wreak yet more devastation as some rivers in Vermont, upstate New York, and New Jersey were still expected to crest. While homeowners are left to their own devices as to how to repair damage or relocate altogether as they discover that their insurance does not cover flood damage, they, and the rest of the population, are treated to a shameless display of political exploitation and disregard for human suffering by our exploiters. Whether they are to the right or the left or at the center of the capitalist state’s political apparatus, they are trying to reap political benefits from the devastation. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that disaster relief money should be paid for with cuts to other programs. He was immediately rebuked by the White House when Jay Carney took the opportunity to try and win brownie points for the Democratic Party by saying, “I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held by the House majority leader and others, say, during the previous administration when they ran up unprecedented bills and never paid for them". The ruling class, be it the right, extreme right wing of the Tea party, or the democrats, are making use of this event to fuel their respective rhetoric in the developing electoral campaign, as each political actor poses either as the champion of a ‘fiscally responsible’ government with a ‘balanced’ approach to budget deficit reduction that includes some ‘revenues’ – the democrats – or one that ‘helps the middle man’ by not including rising taxes – the right. The media, those mouthpieces of the ruling class, help either this side or the other as they frame the aftermath of the hurricane in terms of whether and how much aid the government should be prepared to give. Cantor and Carney may well pose as ‘opponents’ in the debate as each vies for power for their respective parties. The fact of the matter, however, is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) contingency fund dipped to about $800 million earlier this year and that the damage by Hurricane Irene is estimated at anywhere between $10 and $20 billion. The Republican-led House has already approved annual funding legislation to replenish FEMA’s contingency fund in which additional dollars for disaster aid were offset by cuts elsewhere. The Democratic-held Senate has yet to act on that measure, but the new emergency, coming at the tail-end of a year full of ‘natural disasters’ in the US and in the midst of a ferocious recession, will likely resolve the apparent hesitation by the Democrats in the Senate by giving them a reason to pass the legislation, notwithstanding their raucous blame-game at the present time. Cantor and Carney may disagree as to who is to blame for the current financial dire straits of US capital, but they cannot disagree that cuts will have to be implemented. Facing an unprecedented economic crisis, accompanied by enormous budget deficits which more and more states are unable to finance and sustain, certainly the ruling class has reasons to worry about how it will manage to provide the least possible relief while maintaining its credibility and boost people's confidence in its state apparatus. By contrast, for a great number of the victims of the hurricane, facing the costs of repairing the damage is a real tragedy which may bring with it total financial bankruptcy, not to mention the human loss. Looking at each side from the perspective of the working class, it becomes obvious that the mud-slinging in which the ruling class is currently engaged is proof of their utter failure to address the population's most urgent needs. In an attempt to shore up the tattered image of a quarreling ruling class, the media campaign turned to gathering kudos for the actions of the several governors, mayors, federal agencies, CEO’s of transit systems involved in the evacuations and rescue efforts. Indeed, the pre and post-hurricane media blitz serves several purposes: 1. By imposing a virtual black out on all other news and conducting a veritable media barrage in the days building up to Hurricane Irene’s landing, the media subtly suggested images of a violent and catastrophic ‘natural event’ against which our rulers could not humanly do enough to protect the population in case the hurricane’s impact would have been even more devastating than what it actually was; 2. By giving extensive coverage to the ‘plans of action’ put forth by the various governors and mayors of the cities and states impacted by the hurricane the media helped strengthen the image of a caring, prepared, and efficient state apparatus, thus suggesting that any grievance directed against it regarding the ensuing human suffering is unreasonable and unfounded, while tying the destiny of the affected population to the presence and intervention of the state. The conclusion that the population should draw from all of this is that another ‘Katrina’ will not be repeated.
Cantor and Carney are not the only politicians who see in a human tragedy the opportunity for political advantage. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, that other reckless capitalist, sees in Hurricane Irene an opportunity to boost his own public image, which was battered at the time of the snow storm of last winter. On Friday, August 26th Mr. Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of 370,000 people from low-lying areas most prone to flooding and ordered the Metropolitan Transit System shut down as of noon of Saturday, August 27th, until Monday. Metro-North, the LIRR, the PATH train to Jersey City, and AMTRACK were also shut down. This was an unprecedented action by a mayor of the city. The three metropolitan airports were also shut down. Measures of this kind have been studied ever since the notorious failure by FEMA and all other federal agencies to prepare for and provide relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina put the question to the credibility of the capitalist state in facing up with emergency situations. Therefore, Mr. Bloomberg did nothing ‘extraordinary’. What is indeed extraordinary, are the fame and glory he claims for himself and his ability to ‘save the lives of New Yorkers’, an easy claim to make, given the fact that Hurricane Irene left New York City comparatively unscathed! Had the hurricane hit the city with the same or similar violence as it did the rest of the region, the problems that the latter is experiencing – i.e. power shortages, homelessness, loss of lives and belongings, dirty water – would necessarily be tenfold. Why? Because capitalism has no ability to update the rotting infrastructures of its decaying cities to face up to the demands put on them by a changing climatic situation, ultimately the cause of the innumerable ‘natural disasters’ of the recent times, themselves caused by capitalism. Furthermore, the way in which capitalist production is organized requires the reckless and chaotic concentration of human labor in the megalopolis of the planet. The urban ‘planning’ of cities like New Orleans and Haiti, or the very urbanization of an archipelago like Japan, are a direct result of capitalism’s need to concentrate the population wherever it is the most profitable for its own needs, with no consideration for risk factors to the population it exploits. The catastrophes that ensued in those areas are the total responsibility of capitalism. This kind of urban ‘planning’ makes preparing for emergency situations and rescue operations extremely difficult and inefficient. The need for profit further aggravates the situation by significantly curtailing any serious attempt at evacuations. It also demands that, when evacuations do occur, workers are ordered back to work well ahead of the stabilization of the situation. This is what both Governor Christie of New Jersey and mayor Bloomberg did. In New York City, workers were expected back to work last Monday, even though the transportation system was not back to full operation. In New Jersey, Governor Christie ordered all state employees back to work in a similar fashion. Mr. Christie too, like Mr. Bloomberg, exploited the situation to his own political advantage as his popularity wanes in the face of the draconian austerity measures he has recently imposed on the workers in his state. In a display of total hypocrisy and political calculation he for once edited his right-wing Republican rhetoric of ‘small government’ and started to call on the administration and FEMA for total involvement as he declared the state of emergency for New Jersey!
As it has been the case for every emergency situation in recent memory – from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the infamous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, to the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri a few months ago, just to mention a few events and just in the US – it will be left to the victims themselves and their neighbors, relatives, and friends to pick up the slack and piece together the tattered remnants of their existence. It has become evident that in the face of what they like to call ‘natural disasters’ all our exploiters have to offer us is ineptitude and the inability to either prepare before an emergency or organize effective rescue and repair after it, effectively turning every ‘natural disaster’ into a human catastrophe. Rather than being just an accidental occurrence, their political maneuvering, lack of adequate planning , and disregard for human suffering are symptomatic of a system that has reached its historic limits, with all this implies in terms of the urgency to finally overcome it.
Internationalism, US
The movement of the ‘Indignados’ in Spain provides us with some rich lessons. It shows a gradual rise in combativity of the exploited faced with the relentless deterioration of their living conditions and a deepening reflection about how to struggle, how to respond collectively to the economic crisis and the attacks of Capital. The movement has moreover seen expressions across Europe, notably in Greece, but also further afield, in countries like Israel and in Chile.
And the recent events at the end of July have confirmed this deep social discontent and the maturation of working class consciousness. Indeed, while the international media have largely ignored the events that hit Madrid at the heart of the summer, preferring to shine their spotlight on the removal of the remaining camps of protesters and proclaiming the death of the movement, the militants of the ICC who were present in the square have found instead that the tens of thousands of ‘Indignados’ who occupied the streets were motivated by a genuine desire to continue the struggle, knowing that the crisis would only create furher havoc and that the struggle would of necessity resume. But it was above all the quality of discussions about the real nature of bourgeois democracy, the trap of reformism, sabotage of the movement by "Real Democracy Ya" (DRY), the importance of the assembly debates... that have truly excited our comrades. They immediately reported their intervention to all the militants of the ICC around the world to inform them of what they had witnessed and experienced. We are publishing this text below as it is, almost in its entirety, which explains its very direct and sometimes telegram-like style.
Friday, July 22nd: The first columns of marching workers arrived from the working class towns on the outskirts of Madrid. According to many accounts, the arrival of these marchers resulted in massive assemblies and people being very happy together; they hugged, sang and discussed animatedly.
Saturday 23rd: Plaza Puerta del Sol and the surrounding streets were occupied. Maybe 10,000 or more, far more than was reported by the press and TV who spoke only of "hundreds of the Indignados". We were there and we distributed our supplement[1]. It was very well received. Small groups gathered around us. What was striking was the desire of people to talk and how they expressed themselves spontaneously against capitalism and in favour of the assemblies as the most valuable tool. The general assembly began after 10 o clock at night and was devoted entirely to the accounts from the marches. There were some very moving moments as the speakers were very excited and almost all spoke of revolution, of denouncing the system, of being radical (in the sense "going to the roots of the problem" as one of them said) .
Sunday 24th: In the morning in Retiro Park, the assemblies were devoted to specific themes: international coordination, national coordination, political action, using the web ... In the international coordination assembly there were individuals from Italy, Greece, Tunisia, France and also some young Spanish expatriates. A ‘European Day of Indignados’ was proposed and there were also two interventions talking about a World Day, with the axis being on "the fight against the cuts in social spending that is taking place everywhere today." One of us intervened to insist on the fact that more and more people are “in the same boat”. Someone else took up an initiative which arose in Valencia for an "international day of debate on the 15M" in which collectives would be invited not only from Spain but from other countries too [2]. This initiative was given explicit support by the moderator of the assembly.
That said, in the general assembly that followed, there was some manipulation. The focus was solely on the reports from each of the "themed" assemblies, preventing any unscheduled interventions. In addition, the reports from the speakers were too long. The report from the International Coordinating Committee was relegated to last place when many participants had already left. The spokesperson - who we hadn’t seen in the committee - didn’t say anything about the proposed day and we weren’t able to intervene to rectify this.
In the afternoon there was a massive demonstration (100,000 people). There was a lively atmosphere; we succeeded in distributing our press and there were many discussions. At a given point, the police erected a roadblock in the Paseo de La Castellana. Instead of chosing confrontation, the demonstrators divided themselves onto several adjacent streets and then regrouped, encircling the police. The police plan was made to look ridiculous as they found themselves surrounded on all sides with no possibility of reacting [3].
In the evening there was an assembly dedicated to discussing "state and economy." A Catalan who seemed to clearly defend the positions of ATTAC[4], made a very long speech of 30 minutes, in which he said we needed a "cooperative system", that the state was "disappearing" under the weight of the "markets" and also that nations were being "crushed". He suggested that the state and the nation were "revolutionary alternatives to capitalism today, that defending the state and the nation is revolutionary today." A number of interventions, including ours, vigorously opposed these views.
Monday 25th: There was a forum discussing several topics: ecology, feminism, politics, cooperatives . We had arranged a table for selling the press and decided to participate in one of these forums. We chose the one on For or against a new constitution.
A woman gave a long presentation. She spoke about a development of "representative" democracy towards a "participatory" democracy that the assemblies were spearheading. There should be assemblies for everything: to select the candidates of the political parties, to elect the union leaders, to approve the municipal budgets ... It would be, in her words, "a new order, an order of assemblies". All this, she presented as a new contribution to "political science" (sic) ...
The assembly wasn’t impressed by this "discovery". One young person said frankly that the problem was capitalism and that it was impossible to "reform" it or "democratise" it. Another spoke of revolution and wanted to return to the teachings of Lenin to form a revolutionary party. This provoked the anger of an anarchist who, while defending the need to destroy the state and establish the power of the assemblies (or, he added, Soviets) said that Lenin wanted to form a party without workers, with only intellectuals. Another speaker said that we need a revolutionary party which does not participate in the parliamentary or electoral game, but "only accepts the law of the assemblies."
Other interventions denounced the proposed new constitution. "We were wrong in 1978. Why fall into the same error today?". A youth from Ciudad Real spoke about "dual power": the power of the assemblies and the power of "so-called democracy" and he added that we should have "a strategy to achieve the triumph of the former." One girl expressed her thoughts thus: "They want to combine assemblies and constitution, but this is impossible, the assemblies have nothing to do with the constitution, they stand in total opposition to it". Some interventions were made in defense of a new constitution, but a guy who at first read a long text on a "draft new constitution provided by a group from Granada" came back in a second intervention to say that he was only speaking on behalf of the group, but that he preferred "the power of the assemblies". Interventions on the impossibility of reforming capitalism were loudly applauded as was the need to talk not about democracy in general but about the state. One of our comrades responded by saying that the state was the organ of the ruling class, that it was its repressive and bureaucratic apparatus with its troops, its police, its courts and its prisons, and all hidden by the democratic facade: "We, the exploited, have nothing but the assemblies to unify us, for enable us to think collectively and to make decisions together; the power of the assemblies - even if it is a long struggle – is not a utopia if this fight is part of a world-wide process." Several people came to congratulate us for this intervention.
Sensing that the wind was turning, the Catalan from the previous day changed his tune: he was in favour of "all the power to the assemblies" and for a "world government" and that "in this context, we would have enough force to establish new constitutions"(sic). A "marxist" speech, this? Maybe, but in the "Groucho tendency"[5]!
In the afternoon we went to Móstoles - an industrial town on the outskirts of Madrid - to visit the coordination of the assemblies of the South, the one that called the demonstration on June 19th. This was a very combative collective that had participated in 15 M with a class approach. A youth who was a very active participant expressed his joy about the 15M movement and discussed with us the analysis he had made of it: the denunciation of democracy, the shenanigans of DRY on which he made some very specific points, the revolutionary perspective, the awakening of the proletariat, the trap of immediatism, the need to develop consciousness ... The only point on which he disagreed with us was the analysis of Spain in 1936 which he saw as a self-management revolution. He was very happy to welcome us and we decided we would send our press to this location; he was also going to propose to the collective that it should participate in the meeting in Valencia in October.
These three days were very intense, showing a movement of great depth.
It seems that there is still a large amount of discontent within the movement but there are other important aspects too: a desire to discuss and clarify, a sense of togetherness, a continual search for links ...
From the beginning, DRY and its satellites have done their best to keep the movement inside the straitjacket of a series of "specific demands"- the famous catalogue of democratic demands. There was always muted resistance in a large section and open opposition from a large minority.
However, two months have passed and "the confrontation between classes" has not yet come about[6]. Is this is a weakness? Is it a sign that the movement is running out of steam? If we review the reasons why class movements have ended in recent decades, we see that one of the causes is the physical defeat but the most common cause was the ideological defeat. Led away from its class terrain, the class has found itself locked in a combat with no way forward, which eventually led to deep demoralisation. But the exhaustion of the movement in France in autumn 2010 was not exactly a result of any of these factors. It was mainly due to the fact that the government would not give way despite the massive protest and, faced with that, it was difficult for the core of the assemblies to confront the unions. What we find in Spain, is a characteristic that’s even more "original" and certainly still a bit disorienting for some politicised minorities but also for the bourgeoisie itself: the movement avoids a direct confrontation and devotes itself to reflection and to developing links and solidarity ... We could say that the movement prefers to prepare for future confrontations by "building up its forces."
On the one hand, a degree of consciousness is emerging of the huge stakes on the immediate horizon[7] But there is also a degree of consciousness of the class’s own weaknesses, an awareness of its lack of confidence in itself, the need to rediscover its class identity, in short, a recognition of the lack of maturity in being able to react to the ongoing situation of brutal attacks and deteriorating living standards.
In this context, this attempt to "build up its forces" also shows a certain foresight. This is probably a necessary and inevitable phase in a period in which the perspective of widespread class confrontations is looming. The movement of the 15M renewed and developed a whole range of features that were present in embyonic form in the movement in 2006 against the CPE: assemblies, the emergence of a new generation, giving specific attention to ethical and subjective factors, wanting to establish new links, starting a conscious battle ...
Reflecting on the days in Madrid, a series of observations are striking:
- people spoke quite freely about "revolution", because they saw "the system" as the problem;
- "all power to the assemblies" emerged from the ranks of a small minority and became more widespread and popular ([8]).
- The push for the "international expansion" of the assemblies was quite remarkable, as is indicated by growing support for a proposal for a "world day of assemblies."
It's true that this was all taking place in the midst of great confusion. All sorts of things were added to the cocktail of "revolution": self-management, cooperatives, nationalistion of the banks ... On internationalisation, we had a conversation with a young Valencian: he reproached us for our scathing denunciations of DRY and pointed to the proposal from DRY for a "European day of struggle that could become worldwide" as evidence against this. At the same time, he added: "I do have a problem with the agenda for that day. If the goal is democracy, why is it that no country has a true democracy? "
The proletariat suffers from the weight of the dominant ideology with DRY and other bourgeois forces([9]) present in the assemblies supported by the politicians and the media. At the same time the communist minorities are small in size and influence. In this context how can we not expect a debate taking place in the midst of enormous confusion with a proliferation of the most diverse theories and the most ridiculous proposals? Consciousness has to forge a way through this chaotic and dizzying situation.
In the assemblies, we saw that DRY - the tentacle of the state in our midst - was confronted with muted resistance and by an increasingly active minority[10]. We should differentiate its two parts: the first one, much larger than anyone would imagine, passively resisted DRY’s proposals, let it go ahead, not daring to remove it from its leading roles, but expressed a variety of objections to its proposals.
By contrast, a minority element did oppose the democratic, citizenship and reformist politics, opposing it with support for class politics and for adopting a revolutionary perpsective of the struggle against capitalism, and for the power of the assemblies.
This minority generally organised itself inside "collectives" that became widespread and devoted lot of work to reflecting on things, most notably, to our knowledge, those in Valencia, Alicante and Madrid, even if, for now, these collectives are dispersed and scattered without having succeeded in breaking away from a concern with local actions.
ICC 1/8/11
[1] This includes extracts from the editorial of the International Review no. 146 that provided a balance sheet of the "15M movement" ( also available on our website).
[2] In Valencia there was an "Assembly of Equals" regrouping 5 collectives with a strong anarchist component. A collective of youths has notably proposed holding a day of debate on the 15M in September or October. We supported this proposal by adding the possibility of inviting collectives from outside Spain, which was approved. In our opinion this is an important initiative.
[3] The sensitivity to repression and the will to respond massively are still very alive in the movement. On July 27th, there was a protest outside the parliament and the police attacked the participants. That afternoon, a spontaneous demonstration of solidarity took place bringing together 2000 people who went through the city centre shouting "If you attack one of us, you attack all of us!"
[4] Association pour la Taxation des Transactions Financières et l’Aide aux Citoyens (“Association for a tax on financial transactions and aid to citizens”)
[5] Groucho Marx said: "These are my principles but if you do not like them, I have some others in my pocket."
[6] As we explained in the editorial of International Review 146, the confrontation between the classes was present from the start but not explicitly or on a directly political or economic terrain but more at what we might call the "subjective" level: the development of consciousness, solidarity, building a network of collective action.
[7] There are enormous attacks - particularly the many redundancies in the health and education sectors – that begin at the end of September (in Catalonia, they’ve already happened)
[8] In Rua Alcalá, very close to the Cortes (Parliament) there is graffiti which says: "All power to the assemblies". Indeed the attempt to write this message attracted the attention of the "commission of respect" - a kind of domestic police created by DRY - which considered such writing "too violent" and surrounded the three "guilty" youths but a large group of protesters surrounded these "officials" to ask them to let the youths "express themselves".
[9] Alongside DRY there is IU (United Left, a front created by the Stalinists), UPYD (a liberal centre party), MPPC (a republican movement), and several leftist groups, including the Trotskyists.
[10] Graffiti appeared in Valencia proclaiming "DRY does not represent us", which turns against DRY one of its own slogansthat it used widely against the politicians: "They do not represent us."
For some weeks now, among the posters for L’Oréal, Décathlon, Dior etc there’s a new one from UNICEF: “Hunger Emergency: two million children threatened by the food crisis in the Horn of Africa”. They display graphic pictures of anguished mothers holding undernourished children. But the careful work of the publicity experts is all in a good cause. We the consumers are enjoined to put our hands in our pocket, while at the same time letting us know that the democratic state has set up structures which will allow good citizens like ourselves to come to the aid of the underprivileged.
We reject this way of seeing things because it is an insidious way of making us think of ourselves as “privileged”, as people who are spared the worst kind of misery and should not therefore complain too much about the minor austerity measures being introduced by the governments of the central countries.
It is true that the situation in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya is particularly dramatic and disgusting. An unprecedented drought (the UN is talking about the worst drought for 60 years) has hit the Horn of Africa with merciless force – and this is a region which has been a theatre of war for over two decades. In an interview published in Figaro.fr, Andrée Montpetit, quality controller for the NGO Care in Ethiopia, puts it like this: “I am hearing things that I have never heard before. A villager from Dambi, in the Morena region, explained to me on Friday that even camels are dying of thirst, whereas in the great drought of 1991 the camels survived. In Borena, you have to walk six hours there and back to reach a source of water. This has never been seen before. There is no water, no grass. The cows are dying like flies”. The UN has estimated that more than 12 million people are in a desperate situation. In Somalia, the situation is unbearable. Since 2006 it has been the scene of conflict between the Ethiopian army and the al-Shabab militias which control up to 80% of the country and have imposed a very harsh version of Sharia law. More than 9 million inhabitants are living in a daily hell, deprived of food, wracked by disease and heat, with no water to wash themselves. As for humanitarian aid, the NGO’s themselves are denouncing the lack of any real provision. Even worse, when aid does arrive, it is often blocked or stolen by the Islamist rebels fighting the government, or by the Somali army for the same military reasons. “The most recent example, last Friday (12 August), was the looting of two trucks of food aid by Somali soldiers, just before it was due to be distributed to starving families in a neighbourhood of the capital. The fusillade that followed left five dead” (Courrier International no 1085, 18-24 August 2011). You hardly dare imagine what happened to these families in Mogadishu, or to the thousands of other families who have fled the capital, and have been parked in refugee camps under a burning sun, with no more food and water than needed to survive from one day to the next. “Mahieddine Khelladi, executive director of the NGO Islamic Aid, prefers to talk about ‘the serious risk’ of supplies being stolen. ‘In a hospital that I visited, one which had been sent medicine, the pharmacy was empty’, he said” (‘Somalie: l’aide humanitaire détournee?’ 20 Minutes, 22 August 2011). And the intervention of the great powers is not going to make anything better, far from it. “Since the collapse of the government in 1990, the USA has been in military occupation of part of the terrain. This was pushed through by the ‘Restore Hope' operation in 1992. This was also the time when France's Bernard Kouchner arrived in Somalia carrying sacks of rice on his shoulder, discretely followed by some French army contingents!” , as we wrote in February 2010, in ‘Yemen, Somalia, Iran, the drive to war accelerates [310]’. Acting solely in defence of their capitalist interests in this important geostrategic zone[1], the great powers have done nothing to help the impoverished inhabitants of the region. In fact, the exacerbation of imperialist tensions in the region makes the whole situation worse. Among other things it is pushing the armed groups to recruit more and more young people. “According to a recent report by Amnesty International, al-Shabab, which has lost a lot of fighters since the beginning of the year, has been reduced tor recruiting more and more children” (Courrier International, ibid).
The faces of so many children in the cradle of humanity are cracked with heat, tormented by flies, bleeding and emaciated; or else they are marked with the scars of war, eyes empty yet full of hatred, a machine gun in their hands. Faces sculpted by decades of capitalist barbarism. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution are being put into question by the survival of this utterly cynical system. We should be lucid about this: what is happening in Africa and in all countries ravaged by war and poverty is the future that capitalism is shaping for all of us. No government, no armed force or NGO can hold back the destructive dynamic dictated by the laws of profit and the interests of imperialism. In the central countries, galloping inflation and austerity packages announce where things are going. Only the overthrow of capitalism, the work of a majority seeking for authentic solidarity, can free humanity from the talons of his dying system.
Maxime 27/8/11
[1] The Gulf of Aden, a maritime route towards the Red Sea and the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, is crossed by half of the world’s container traffic and 70% of the total traffic in the oil products which pass by the Arabian sea and Indian Ocean.
Our comrade Claude died in July 2011 from respiratory problems at the age of 60.
It was in the 1970s that she had her first political experiences, in the frenetic post-68 period at the University of Vincennes, where she was initially a member of the Trotskyist LCR. Like many students at that university, even in those days, she had to take on a number of temporary jobs in order to support her studies in psychology. Along with other students, mainly from Vincennes, she took part in a political discussion group and discovered the positions of the ICC. These discussions led her to break with the LCR and Trotskyism. She joined the ICC in September 1975, along with a number of others from the discussion group. She was a member of the ICC’s section in France until 1990, having been somewhat isolated from the organisation over the previous two years following her move to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
When she decided to come back and live in the capital of France, in 1992, it was partly in order to be more closely associated with the activities of the ICC. After a whole period of difficulties when she returned to France, she took part in a number of activities (particularly interventions) alongside the ICC, and the question of rejoining the organisation was then under discussion. However she hesitated to take this step, largely because of the rapid deterioration of her health which was both a physical handicap and a challenge to her morale. For this reason, despite a growing involvement in our work and knowing that she would be very welcome in our ranks, she never formally rejoined the ICC.
In any case, whether as a member or as a very close sympathiser, we can testify to her powerful attachment to the struggle of the working class, to the revolution, and to the ICC, as underlined by her support for the organisation in its political struggles at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s. We thus pay homage to her as a militant devoted to the proletarian cause.
We have many warm memories of her as a militant and a woman of great heart – spontaneous, vivacious, intelligent, extremely generous and sensitive and always willing to offer help and support.
In the life of the organisation, when the comrade was convinced of something, she did not keep it to herself. In her early years as a militant she could even be somewhat opinionated in the defence of her ideas. But this didn’t stop her from listening and learning, from enriching her point of view through discussion. She took part in a number of hard political conflicts in our ranks but never developed any resentments or rancour.
What struck many of us, who were often with her at demonstrations and other interventions, was her ability to establish contact with workers and stimulate discussion among them, even in difficult circumstances of indifference or hostility. She was often involved in carrying on discussions with small groups at the end of demonstrations, while continuing to distribute our press. She was able to put herself in other people’s shoes and find simple and convincing words which struck a cord with them without conceding anything of her convictions. No one was immune to the warmth which accompanied her words. This was a comrade known for her great depth of human feeling.
None of these qualities went unnoticed by those close to her, which of course includes militants but also her family, colleagues and friends, to whom she always showed the greatest loyalty.
We join all of them in sending you a last greeting, Claude. You leave a great gap in or hearts, and we will always hold a magnificent picture of you in our minds.
ICC 10/10/11
We are publishing here a contribution to the discussion within the ICC on the significance of the events of 9/11. The comrade has some concerns that the majority position of the ICC on 9/11 accepted rather uncritically that it was an ‘inside job’, thus leaving the organization open to being associated with the ‘Let it Happen on Purpose’ wing of the ‘Truthers’ movement. Instead he thinks that the incompetence of the Bush administration had a larger role to play before and during the events. Nevertheless, we think the following text is a valuable contribution to the discussion and we hope other comrades can join in with it via the forum on our website.
Readers of Internationalism will undoubtedly be familiar with the “9/11 Truth movement,” a major sub-cultural phenomenon that has developed in response to the official explanation of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. For much of the last decade, it has not been possible to attend a major demonstration or protest march without encountering a contingent of so-called “9/11 Truthers.” Bumper stickers and posters declaring, “9/11 was inside a job” are a frequent site in Manhattan and elsewhere. Jesse Ventura, former Minnesota Governor, navy seal and professional wrestler and current TV host of the cable show “Conspiracy Theory,” has raised the possibility that the Twin Towers and the infamous Building 7 were destroyed not by the molten fire resulting from the collision with the jumbo jets, but by a “controlled demolition.”[1]
The “9/11 Truthers” are a diverse bunch, ranging from serious academics and researchers who do not accept the official version of 9/11 at face value to paranoid individuals and groups at the very fringes of bourgeois society who believe all kind of crazy nonsense and who never heard a conspiracy theory they didn’t believe. While most 9/11 Truthers would seem to hail from the left of the bourgeois political spectrum, there are right-wing versions of the phenomenon as well, such as that spewed by über conservative former judge and current Fox News host Andrew Napolitano. On the other end of the spectrum, Paul Zarembka—Professor of Economics at SUNY Buffalo and self-described Marxist, whose academic work included editing a book on Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy[2]—has recently emerged as a leading figure of the movement.
Over the last decade, 9/11 Truth has developed a considerable weight within the culture in the United States and beyond. Left wing and liberal radio talk shows are often interrupted by callers defending 9/11 Truth, often to the dismay of the embarrassed host. Left/liberal comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s popular show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” has reported being stalked by 9/11 Truthers, several of whom managed to disrupt an episode of his live show in 2009.[3] Just as the spectre of association with “Birther” and other wild conspiracy theories surrounding the legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency haunts Republicans, the threat of being identified with 9/11 Truth is a constant danger for anyone who has the audacity to publicly question whether the US government always tells the truth to its citizenry.
As we all know, the official story on 9/11 offered up by the US government and parroted back by the mainstream bourgeois media is powerful in its simplicity: A group of Islamic extremists, almost all of them from Saudi Arabia, were sent on a daring suicide mission inside the United States by Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network in order to pull off the “big spectacular,” an attack on the United States homeland so brazen and destructive that it would cower the world’s only remaining superpower into submission.
According to this narrative, the plan was hatched in a small apartment in Hamburg Germany, where ringleader Mohammed Atta and others devised an ingenious plan to exploit the US’s lax immigration laws to obtain jumbo jet flight training at American flight schools and then use that training to crash hijacked jets into important landmarks in New York and Washington, DC. In the official story, the 19 hijackers were able to live in the United States for months or years at a time, without harassment from law enforcement or the security services, due largely to the Byzantine nature of US immigration laws and the inability of multiple intelligence services to “connect the dots.” The 9/11 attacks were thus the result of a determined and ruthless enemy’s ability to exploit an open and democratic society to achieve their horrific ends. The lesson of 9/11 was that faced such a persistent foe without any scruples, Americans would have to learn to live with enhanced security measures, scaled back civil liberties and the fear of future attacks indefinitely.
It’s not surprising that this story is questioned by many who simply cannot accept that the world’s last superpower, with military and intelligence assets that dwarf almost all other world powers’ combined resources, could prove so blatantly incompetent as to not know these attacks were coming.[4] For many, it is a short leap to the conclusion that given the events that followed the attacks—the rapid launch of the war against Afghanistan, the quick transition to the invasion of Iraq (a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11) and the rush to curtail civil liberties—that the US government probably knew more about the attacks beforehand then admits. Not willing to fall for the myth that the US is always a benevolent democratic power, the 9/11 Truthers generally agree that the attacks were a pretense for the US to launch an imperial project in the Middle East, with many concluding the goal was to control the region’s massive oil supplies.
While most 9/11 Truthers share the belief that the attacks were foreseen by the state as an excuse to launch a war effort in the Middle East and militarize domestic society—a so-called “False Flag” operation by the US intelligence services—the movement has remained bitterly divided over whether the attacks were actually carried out by US agents themselves—such as planting explosives in the Twin Towers beforehand (a so-called “controlled demolition”)—or whether the attacks were an Al Qaeda operation that was allowed to go forward by the US state with the aim of exploiting the aftermath for military and domestic political purposes. The debate between “MIHOP” (Make it Happen on Purpose) and “LIHOP” (Let it Happen on Purpose) has consumed the bulk of the movement’s energy, resulting in a number of splits and the development of several competing factions that continue to characterize it today.
Bourgeois Machiavellianism and the Role of Revolutionary Organizations
Long-time readers of Internationalism will probably recall the series of articles that we published on the 9/11 attacks earlier in the decade. In fact, our most extensive article on the topic “Pearl Harbor 1941, Twin Towers 2001: The Machiavellianism of the US Bourgeoisie”[5] has been among the most read articles at www.internationalism.org [312] over the years, most likely owing to the similarity of the title to 9/11 Truther David Ray Griffin’s book A New Pearl Harbor. [6]
Readers of those articles will likely conclude that there is much that is similar in the analysis we published and the “LIHOP” version of 9/11 Truth theory. Indeed in the above article it was argued: “We do not have the benefit of investigations after-the-fact by review boards that might reveal secret evidence on whether elements of the ruling class had some complicity in the attacks, or had advance knowledge but permitted the attacks to occur. But as ruling class history demonstrates, particularly the events at Pearl Harbor, such a possibility is far from unthinkable, and if we examine recent events, based solely on what has been reported in the media—a media that incidentally is completely enrolled in, and supportive of, the government’s current political and imperialist agenda—we certainly find circumstantial evidence for such an hypothesis.”[7]
Later in 2004, following the report by the 9/11 Commission put together by the Bush administration to supposedly conduct a thorough investigation into the events that led to the attacks, we published an article that went further: “Public Testimony in the 9/11 Commission’s investigation of the alleged ‘intelligence failings’ offer ample confirmation of the analysis of these events developed by the ICC in the fall of 2001, immediately after the attacks. While bourgeois politicians finger point and try to outdo each other in proposing a revamping of the intelligence apparatus and repressive legislation to strengthen the domestic spying and police powers of the state, the real lesson of the hearing is never mentioned: The American government knew that an attack was coming and consciously permitted it to happen for political and ideological purposes, much the same as the Roosevelt administration permitted the Japanese attack that it knew was coming at Pearl Harbor in 1941, to give it the pretext to mobilize a reluctant population for entry into World War II.”[8]
Still later in an article on the fourth anniversary of the attacks, we published an article with the firmest stance yet: “Our alleged conspiracy theories and paranoia notwithstanding, there is no longer any factual dispute that the American capitalist state was aware in advance that attacks were coming, knew who the specific leaders were, and was aware that they were in the US. For the bourgeoisie and their media, the debate is about how such terrible errors, poor judgment, lack of communications, incompetence, etc, could occur. For us, as revolutionary Marxists, the question has been to understand the political purpose behind the government’s policy to permit the attacks to occur.”[9]
Readers may be wondering at this point what relation the ICC might have with the 9/11 Truth Movement? Are we going to see ICC militants participating on panels at 9/11 Truth conventions? Will Internationalism be contributing to future 9/11 Truth publications? The answers to these questions are: none, no and no! First, the ICC does not have a litmus test for its militants regarding their position on the events surrounding 9/11. While some militants may be convinced—in a manner similar to the LIHOP theories advanced by the 9/11 Truthers—that elements in the US government allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur in order to exploit them for imperialist and domestic purposes; others may be ambivalent or more likely to believe the attacks were a result of the utter incompetence of the Bush administration and thus a function of the growing decomposition of US state capitalism. It is not uncommon that some views expressed in ICC articles—when they do not concern a fundamental class position—reflect the personal take of the author, rather than an official position of the organization.
However, what we all do agree upon is that lies, distortions, manipulations, ideological campaigns and Machiavellian maneuvers are fundamental weapons employed by the bourgeoisie in its struggle to control capitalist society—weapons whose use are only amplified in the period of capitalism’s sheer and utter decomposition. Therefore, what becomes of the utmost importance in the analysis of the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks is not whether or not the US state was involved in carrying them out or allowing them to happen, but to what use it was able to make of the attacks in the aftermath. For if the 9/11 attacks were a function of a completely incompetent Bush administration and the degradation of the intelligence services, they were certainly able to recover from this incapacity with enough rapidity to implement a grand strategic plan that saw the United States launch two new wars in two years. This simply would not have been possible without a massive imperialist offensive in which the US was able to use its victimhood on 9/11 as a club to bludgeon the other major powers into acquiescing to its war aims in Afghanistan accompanied by a major domestic ideological campaign to unite the working class behind its war drive in the Middle East. This latter ideological campaign was initially so successful that on the eve of its attack on Iraq in 2003 a majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks!
Quite simply put, regardless of one’s personal opinion on what really happened in the lead up to the 9/11 attacks, what happened afterwards seems quite clear: The US bourgeoisie launched a major Machiavellian campaign to exploit the attacks for its imperialist and domestic advantage. Is the rapidity with which the US state was able to recover from the attack to launch these campaigns sufficient evidence to conclude it was involved in the attacks or allowed them to occur? Reasonable people can differ on this account, but for us it is not a class line issue. However, as we have argued in our previous articles, it is far from out of the question. History gives us many instances in which the bourgeoisie of a particular state has consciously allowed an attack on its soil to take place in order to manipulate the aftermath to its advantage. As we have pointed out—along with authors in the “LIHOP” camp of 9/11 Truth—there is some historical evidence that the Roosevelt administration was not taken by surprise by the Japanese attacks at Pearl Harbor and allowed them to proceed with the aim of enrolling a reluctant population in the Second World War. But we digress; we are now on the terrain of the Truthers and they know the details better than we do!
As a revolutionary organization we lack the capacity to carry out the kind of investigation that might ultimately get to the precise “truth” of what happened on 9/11; however, we need no such resources to understand the period following the attacks and to appreciate how the ruling class employed them to its full advantage. With or without malice aforethought of the actual attacks, the bourgeoisie is still a class of liars, thugs and murderers. Its rule is still historically obsolete, ready to be replaced by the power of the workers’ councils.
9/11 Truth and The Ideological Fracture of Society
What then of the 9/11 Truth movement itself? Of what significance is it that there has developed a somewhat considerable sub-cultural movement within decomposing capitalism that takes as its central precept the belief that the state is capable of and willing to murder thousands of its own citizens and then construct an elaborate lie to cover it up? Does this reflect a growing questioning within society of the nature of the state or is the 9/11 Truth movement more likely to trap those with serious questions about what happened that day in the dead-end of bourgeois legalism and a fruitless search to get the “truth” from the capitalist state?
From the Marxist standpoint, we think 9/11 Truth most likely performs the latter function. The notion that the “truth” about 9/11 can ever be won from the capitalist state is a sheer an utter illusion. The model of “9/11 Truth” ultimately presupposes an exercise in bourgeois legalism, the appointment of an impartial jury with access to all the relevant documents, witnesses and evidence (to use the legal parlance “full discovery”) that independently judges the evidence and arrives at the “truth” beyond a reasonable doubt. However, anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system knows that this model doesn’t work so well in practice. But even if it did, it is doubtful that in a world marked by ideological decomposition, competing “truth narratives” and magical thinking, society could ever arrive at a genuine consensus of what truly occurred in the lead up to events so historically momentous as the 9/11 attacks. Just as the right-wing conspiracy theorists refuse to accept Obama’s legitimacy regardless of what “evidence” they receive, it is unlikely that many of those who believe 9/11 was an inside job could ever be convinced otherwise. If official evidence were ever to emerge that supported a “LIHOP” interpretation of the attacks, would the proponents of “MIHOP” be convinced? Unlikely.
Moreover, there remains a significant percentage of the population who are simply unwilling to accept the idea that the government is capable of such an exercise in self-injurious barbarism. Is there any document that can be discovered that will change their minds? Let’s face it: The only way we will ever get the “truth” about 9/11 is if the bourgeoisie wants us to have it, and even then we can be assured we will only ever get half-truths and distortions, most likely in the context of a campaign that serves the interests of one part of the ruling class against another in its incessant factional disputes (i.e. Watergate).
Perhaps it is for this reason that the bourgeoisie is so uncomfortable with the 9/11 Truth movement and wastes no opportunity to slam it as just another wacko conspiracist phenomenon to be assimilated to grassy-knoll theories, moon landing skeptics and fluoridation critics.[10] Maybe it is the inability of the bourgeoisie today to forge a lasting social consensus that is proving so frustrating at the moment, so much so that phenomena like the 9/11 Truth movement are summarily dismissed as crazy talk in the bourgeois media and so heavily derided by capitalist society’s official intellectual spokespersons, despite the work it does in trapping critical minds in the dead end of bourgeois legalism. “The problem with 9/11 conspiracy theories is that they presuppose a state that is actually competent enough to pull something like that off,” is a refrain we have heard time and again when this topic has been discussed by pundits supposedly in the know.[11] In order to try to recreate the social consensus it had in the immediate aftermath of the attacks—a consensus that evaporated into nothing in the span of just a few years as a result of the Iraq quagmire and a developing economic catastrophe—the state has been forced to plead incompetence!
At the end of the day, the 9/11 Truth movement leads us nowhere, except back onto the terrain of bourgeois legalism and a fruitless search for a “truth” that is simply impossible to win from the bourgeois state. Perhaps someday, when human society is reconstructing itself in a communist direction, historians of the future will resolve this burning question and a consensus that represents the “truth” of what actually happened in the lead-up to that fateful day can be forged. But for now—in the absence of the ability to conduct the kind of investigation this would require, in the context of a society in which a consensus about the “truth” seems impossible—we must focus on the essential lessons of 9/11 that are detectable today. For whatever else, these attacks stand as prime evidence of the galloping decomposition of capitalist society and the willingness of the bourgeoisie to exploit tragedy for its own imperialist and domestic ends.
--Henk
09/05/2011
[1] Ventura devoted an episode of the first season of his show to examining the various 9/11 Truth claims. More a sensationalized farce than a serious journalistic effort, Ventura’s effort broke little new ground.
[2] See Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation and Rosa Luxemburg’s Legacy (Bradford, UK: Emerald Group Publishing) 2004.
[3] Maher, a hero to the liberal/left, shamefully encouraged violence against the Truthers, telling network security, “….don’t be gentle with them…an ass kicking is what is needed.” Watch at dailybail.com/home/bill-mahers-live-broadcast-interrupted-by-911-truthers-video.html [313].
[4] Interestingly, Richard Clarke—the Clinton era National Security advisor who was retained by the Bush administration and who is said to have tried in vain to warn the latter in its early months of the threat of an imminent attack—has come out as a strong proponent of the “incompetent Bush administration” thesis. As a result, he has become the go to guy for national security commentary in left/liberal media circles.
[5] Online at https://en.internationalism.org/ir/108_machiavel.htm [314]
[6]David Ray Griffin. A New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. (Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishers) 2004.
[7] Internationalism, ibid.
[8] “9/11 Commission Plays Games With the Truth,” Internationalism #130. https://en.internationalism.org/inter/130_911_commission.htm [315]
[9] “Fourth Anniversary of 9/11: The Machiavellianism of the Bourgeois and the Historic Course,” Internationalism #136. https://en.internationalism.org/inter/136_911_4_years_on.htm [316]
[10] As this article goes to press, the bourgeois media is in the midst of a campaign surrounding the publication of journalist Jonathan Kay’s book, Among the Truthers: A Journey into the Growing Conspiracist Underground of 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, Aramgeddonites, Vaccine Hysterics, Hollywood Know-Nothings and Internet Addicts (New York: Harper Collins) 2011. As the title suggests, Kay—who has been making the talk show rounds—assimilates 9/11 Truth with all kinds of bizarre ideas. The attempt to equate 9/11 Truth with the right-wing Birther phenomenon is particularly disturbing to 9/11 Truthers (as it should be!). The sense that this phenomenon is growing, as Kay suggests, must be of concern to the guardians of bourgeois culture.
[11] However, the Obama administration showed little concern for conspiracy theory in carrying out the brutal murder of Bin Laden earlier this year, executing him without a trial and summarily disposing of his remains at sea (Or so they told us!). Of course, the official story of what exactly happened in the course of the raid on the compound changed several times in the span of hours.
We are publishing below an article by the ICC's section in Turkey on recent developments in imperialist tensions in the Middle East.
The ruling class has had its hands full lately as imperialist conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean continues to intensify. The five-point strategy package announced after the publication of the UN's Palmer Commission report into the Mavi Marmara incident[1], the renewal of relations with Israel, and the tension over Cyprus' oil exploration in the Mediterranean, are set to dominate coming talks between Turkey and Israel. Our aim here is to analyse the background to these imperialist tensions and their implications for the working class.
The relations between Turkey and Israel go back to the formation of Israel and have had their ups and downs ever since. A similar version of the recent Turkey-Israel crisis took place in 1980 with the occupation of Eastern Jerusalem. Afterwards, with a series of military agreements and secret protocols, the relationship improved throughout the 1990s. For Turkey, the most important partner of its foreign policy US-oriented was Israel and it is evident today that this creates certain problems for Turkey, and an uncertainty about what will come next. Nevertheless, if we read between the lines of the political messages, it seems that the situation will continue to be determined by the attitude adopted by the dominant partner in the relationship – the USA – and it is unlikely that the relations between the three countries will change fundamentally.
When we look at the history of the relations between Israel and Turkey, we see that Israel lived many of its "firsts" with Turkey. For example Turkey was the first country with a Muslim majority to recognize Israel. Again Turkey is the first country with a Muslim majority where an Israeli president, Simon Peres in 2007, spoke in its parliament. In reality, the fate of this relationship seems pretty much sealed. This relationship determined by the multi-national monopolies or their national governments is extremely significant for the bourgeoisie in the Middle East.
The latest crisis was provoked by the leaking to the press of the UN report about the Gaza flotilla, and the absence from the report of any mention of sanctions against Israel, which forced the AKP government's hand and obliged it to make a move. On September 2nd, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced a strategy package of sanctions. The leaking of the UN report and its results being far from what the AKP government wanted could have reversed the political influence the Turkish government built in the region. This political influence gained especially thanks to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's public rebukes against Israel, had rewarded the AKP with prestige both in Turkey and in the Arab world. The package of sanctions announced did not actually add any new dimension to Turkey-Israel relations. No military agreements or sharing of information was in question anyway since 2009. We can conclude that the sanction package of the AKP was merely a manoeuvre made to avoid the loss of prestige.
One of the five points in the package which declares “Turkey, as the state with the longest shore in the Eastern Mediterranean, will take every precaution it deems necessary for the safety of maritime navigation in the eastern Mediterranean” aims to demonstrate that Turkey, with its military presence in the Mediterranean, is a regional power and a rival for Israel. Turkey claims to be the fastest developing economy in the region, and wants a political presence to match. In this sense too, the only power which can rival Turkey is Israel. This is the main concern underlying all the conflicts. The fact that the Turkish bourgeoisie, in its eagerness to become the regional power, shows sympathy towards Gaza, takes steps which increase its presence in the Arab world and signs more economic agreements with the Arabs compared to the past are all results of its imperialist aims.
This constitutes one of the main points of tension in the Turkey-Israel relations.
The tension over oil exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean added a new dimension to the Turkey-Israel crisis. It was announced by the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz himself that Israel is behind the efforts of Southern Cyprus to search for oil in the Mediterranean. The Minister connected the issue to Israel further by claiming it is a taunt and a provocation. Soon after, Turkey declared with a hastily signed agreement with the Northern Cypriot Turkish Republic that it too was to look for oil in the Eastern Mediterranean. This tension over oil exploration is another product of the race to be the regional power mentioned above and course has heated the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean even further.
Another situation aside from this race to become the regional power is the war which began with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In these projects, Turkey is a strategic partner for the United States. For the Americans, Turkey is the ideal country in this project. Of the US' two strategic partners sin the region, Turkey is a better choice then Israel for the Americans, especially in the Arab world where the Palestinian question and the occupation of Gaza makes Israel undesirable. Israel's aggressive stance and bloody actions ever since its formation makes it easy for Israel to be seen as the country of evil in the Middle East. For the US, which wants to dominate the region, being the strategic partner of a country with such a bad record is an embarrassment. Given Israel's position, it seems the US has preferred Turkey, and this would appear to offer Turkey the material possibility of gaining the regional power status to which it aspires.
Turkey's increasing influence in the Arab world in recent years has resulted in the creation of economical and political relations between the political tradition of the AKP and the Arabs. AKP's moderate Islamic or the secular Islamic model, is followed with interest in the Arab world. This rise, starting with the clash between Erdogan and Israel's Shimon Peres at the Davos summit, accelerated with the Mavi Marmara affair and led to demonstrations that reached a peak during the last crisis with Israel. Following the Davos summit, there were demonstrations in Gaza, Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries in which posters of Tayyip Erdogan appeared prominently. The interest shown in Erdogan in his recent trips to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is again a result of the same policy. For the first time, a Turkish prime minister was greeted with the chant “Saviour of Islam, Saint of Allah”. The fact that such an effect has been created in the Middle East and North Africa makes partnership with Turkey an important issue for the US. Again, the fact that the Ikhwan movement (Muslim Brotherhood) which comes from the same political tradition as the AKP has formed a party called “Freedom and Justice Party” and became the largest partner of power in Egypt sheds light on the background of the mentioned partnership. The construction of the moderate or secular Islamic model in Turkey and its export to other countries in the region is a definite possibility for the project of the US in the region.
With the moderate Islamic model, the new political vision of the AKP and Turkey increase the chances of Turkey being a more effective regional power in the Arab world compared to Israel. However, the US does not want this crisis with its two regional historical partners to deepen further. The statements made in the UN meetings are generally reflective of this situation. It seems that the Turkey-Israel crisis will go back to its normal stance without deepening further with a different intermediary coming in between.
While all this is going on, Turkey is trying play up nationalism at home in order to justify the imperialist conflict. They are making propaganda using Islam to claim to be the friends of the Palestinian people. Through anti-Semitism, they are trying to create further divisions in the working class of the region by adding religious divisions to nationalist ones. Looking at the history of the Turkey-Israel relations would suffice to see what sort of a friendship the Turkish state feels towards Palestine. Turkey is only and exclusively a friend to its own interests. And its actions serve to create illusions in the working class and the masses and acts as an obstacle to the international struggle of the proletariat. The leftist servants of the bourgeoisie support this anti-Zionist atmosphere either openly or discreetly. As in all imperialist conflicts, in the current period also nationalism is an argument of the Turkish bourgeoisie too. Against it the working class has a single weapon: international unity and struggle.
Ekrem
[1] Israel's attack on a ship carrying aid to Gaza, which resulted in the death of nine Turkish nationals.
The text below is largely based on an article of Internacionalismo, the ICC’s paper in Venezuela and published on our website in Spanish https://es.internationalism.org/ [320] this summer. The facts that our comrades relate here once again shows that every country is being hit by the same economic crisis and the same measures of austerity. The factions in power can easily pretend to be “liberal”, “progressive” or “revolutionary” but they are part of the same “wild” capitalist attack faced by workers all across the globe.
The state led by Chavez totally denies the existence of the economic crisis in Venezuela, but that doesn’t prevent the hard reality pitilessly hitting the population. The “Socialist” policy conducted in this country causes no less havoc than that of American “liberalism”. And there’s nothing surprising about this since it’s really a question, in both cases, of the same state capitalism; only the mask changes. In Venezuela, state capitalism is only more of a caricature than elsewhere and performs less well, since it has succeeded in weakening both private and state capital.
Today, the country has to import practically all current consumer goods, which is a bit paradoxical for a country that says that it’s developed a continental “revolution” by exporting its label: “Socialism of the 21st century”. But things are even more ironic: playing up to the gallery, Chavez conducts permanent confrontations with the United States which is designated as the Great Capitalist Satan. Meanwhile, in the corridors, very tight links are maintained between the two countries. The USA is thus the main commercial client of Venezuela[1].
The official figures themselves and those of ECOLA (Economic Commission of Latin America) and of the IMF, are all obliged to recognise the gravity of the economic crisis in the country: Venezuela and Haiti (one of the poorest countries in the world!) have been the only Latin American and Caribbean countries not to have had any growth in 2010. For Venezuela it’s the third year of a decrease in its Gross Domestic Product. The country has the highest inflation of the region and one of the highest in the world; for each of the last three years, it has been 27% on average and it is estimated that for 2011 it will go beyond 28%. That’s a rate of inflation that really hits the wages and pensions of the workers, as well as the social assistance granted by the state.
Evidently, Venezuela is suffering from the world economic crisis. But the measures taken by Chavez are basically no different from those taken by the “right wing” and “reactionary” regimes all over the planet:
* Oil revenues, which have increased considerably in 2011 following the Libyan crisis, are not enough to satisfy the voracity of the state; they are vanishing into “alternative” budgets to the national budget, directly and arbitrarily manipulated by the Executive (with the excuse of making more active “social investment”). This form of management by the regime has facilitated the creation of a vast network of corruption involving several levels of the public and military bureaucracy.
* Whereas a good number of workers just about survive on a little more than the minimum wage (equivalent to about $150 per month), the highest levels of the state bureaucracy, civil and military, receive the highest of salaries and “profits” in order to guarantee their loyalty to the regime.
* Military expenses continue to increase, with the excuse of countering the threat of invasion by “Yankee imperialism”; and this results in a firmer grip on the monopoly of energy resources.
And, as with the other economies of the world, Venezuela’s state debt is exploding. This debt of 150 billion dollars, a little above 40% of GDP, is still manageable today but economic experts note that if it continues to rise at the present rhythm, there will be a risk of default of payment (the impossibility of paying back the interest on the debt) in three years time! Thus, Venezuela could find itself in a situation identical to that of Greece, a situation which demands the assistance of the EU and has given rise to a policy of unprecedented austerity.
Here’s the reality of the “socialist” policy of Chavez:
- devaluation of the Venezuelan Bolivar by 65% in January 2011, after another of 100% at the beginning of 2010;
- a permanent attack on wages and social assistance;
- drastic reductions in food and health programmes;
- increases in electrical charges with the excuse that it’s aimed at ending “the waste of electricity”, which will dramatically affect the cost of living;
- increases in the price of fuel, VAT and various other taxes.
Because of inflation wages have suffered a strong deterioration. According to the ECOLA and the International Labour Organisation, wages of Venezuelan workers have fallen, in real terms, more than 8% in the first 3 months of this year compared to the same period in 2010. As in many other countries precarious, temporary employment has increased in the public and the private sector; according to one recent study made by the Catholic university “Andres-Bello”, 82.6% of the Venezuelan workforce has a precarious job. In short, despite the determination of the Chavez regime to fake the figures, the reality is that poverty continues to get worse.
At the social level, even the “Missions”, the social organisations invented by Chavism to give the illusion of a “conquest of socialism” through distributing crumbs to the most poverty-stricken sectors, have been reduced. Today, programmes for health, education, the distribution of food, etc., are about to be abandoned or severely reduced. It is a fact that the totality of the public services is deteriorating at a growing rate. To all this we can add the almost permanent shortages of several basic food products and the constant increases in the price of food and of other basic products.
The most revolting thing without doubt is that fact that, as always under capitalism, this terrible daily reality is suffered by the proletariat and the poor whereas the big bosses of the regime and those close to them live in the greatest opulence. Any resemblance to certain Arab and African countries is not by chance!
But there are some rays of sunshine coming through the clouds and which give hope for the future. The proletariat of Venezuela itself is taking part in the slow but noticeable rise of class struggle at the international level. The Venezuelan bourgeoisie is well aware of it since it has suspended a great part of its attacks after having seen the workers stand up in Bolivia. In fact, last December, in this other country of Latin America, the government of Evo Morales, after having decreed an increase in the price of fuel, had to do a U-turn faced with the breadth of protest which badly affected his popularity.
In Venezuela, the proletariat in the oil industry, which had suffered the blow of almost 20,000 lost jobs in 2003, led demonstrations against the non-respect of the collective convention. There were also mobilisations of the public sector workers, health and central administration in order to demand pay increases and better conditions of work.
More important still are the huge struggles undertaken for more than two years by workers in the Iron Zone in Venezuelan Guyana in the south of the country, where some twenty enterprises of heavy industry and more than a hundred thousand workers are concentrated. In order to try to mystify the workers of this zone and derail their militancy, the government has tried to put in place several schemas of “socialist” production; after trying “self-management” in ALCAS (aluminium production firm) and having nationalised the Sidor metal works, they are now trying to introduce “workers’ control” of production.
All this shows the significant increase of social protest in 2011, which without any doubt will surpass the 3000 incidents of protest accounted for in 2010 – and which themselves had overtaken records from previous years. This is leading to an important erosion in the support for Chavez given that these protests are taking place among the most impoverished layers which were the main basis of support for this regime. A recent and dramatic example of these protests has been that of families of prisoners of several prisons of the country who have been ruthlessly repressed by the forces of the state when they demonstrated against overcrowding and the repression of prisoners. The barbarity seen in prisons is only an extension of that seen on a daily basis throughout the entire country, above all in the poor quarters. There were more than 140,000 killings during the 12 months of the “Bolivarian revolution”. And Chavez, with indecent aplomb, dared to call it the “pretty revolution”!
The struggles and mobilisations taken up by the proletariat are the best contradiction to the so-called “revolution”, a revolution which has led to new bourgeoisie elites who govern Venezuela. Only the resistance of the workers against the attacks of the state, in the defence of their conditions, in basing themselves on assemblies which tend to unify the workers of different sectors, can develop a reference point for the pauperised masses which are already beginning to lose their illusions in the proposals both of Chavez and the opposition.
These struggles are fully part of the movement opened up by the exploited masses of North Africa, Greece and Spain.
Internacionalismo 30/7/11
see also: Workers against the 'Socialist Guayana Plan' https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4576/workers-against-socialist-guayana-plan [321]
[1] Exports to the United States even increased by 27.7% during the first three months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. Today, they represent 49% of Venezuela’s total exports.
We are publishing here the translation of an article from Internacialismo, our paper in Venezuela
Subjecting the workers of Guayana[1] to a precarious existence, as has already been done to the oil workers, has become a priority for the national bourgeoisie, and especially for the Chavist faction in power. This is because the reduction of costs, especially in the primary industries of the region - iron, steel, aluminium, etc - is an imperative necessity to face up to international competition, which is being sharpened by the deepening economic crisis.
To this end, the workers of the province of Guayana have been the subject of a campaign in which they are being accused of being a ‘labour aristocracy’, earning wages and bonuses which the industry can’t afford to pay and which are threatening to bankrupt it. The oil workers were told exactly the same thing.
However, with the workers of Guayana, the bourgeoisie has a much bigger problem, because of the great concentration of the workers and their traditions of struggle, often against the state. The huge concentration of industrial, service and commercial activities in this area make any workers’ response against attacks on its living conditions all the more powerful.
The Venezuelan state has come up with a strategy known as the ‘Socialist Guayana Plan’, which is based on the Trotskyist slogan of ‘workers’ control of production’. The state is aiming to convince the workers that they themselves control production, and that therefore the strengthening of industry depends on their efforts and their sacrifices. So they should no longer be coming out on strike because according to official propaganda industry is already in their hands. The defence of this Plan is a step towards ‘21st Century Socialism’, the big fraud dreamed up by Chavez and co.
It’s worth recalling that this Plan was preceded by the failure of another plan aimed at bringing in co-management at ALCASA, the state enterprise for producing aluminium. The objective of this plan, directed by the sociologist Carlos Lanz Rodriguez, is to make the workers believe:
- “That the state run by Chavez is carrying out policies leading to socialism”. In reality, the workers of Guayana have already sensed that such a ‘socialism’ is not very different from control by the capitalist state under previous governments;
- “That co-management means a change in the relations of production”. The only ‘change’ here is that workers are persuaded to exploit themselves to consolidate the management of the capitalist state-boss;
- that “justice will be done” with regard to the industrial relations. In fact we know that the only thing this regime can carry through is making labour power more precarious than ever;
- finally, that “ we can humanise the working day and reduce hours, that we can overcome the division of labour and despotism in the factory”. The reality of this humanisation is a cocktail of jailings, trials, tear gas, live ammunition, injuries and deaths, all carried out by armed bands sent in to terrorise the workers .
This plan has been a failure because in general the workers, given that all this is contrary to their real interests, have not swallowed the fine words which Carlos Lanz has fed them in order to get the workers to renounce their own demands and submit to the needs of the capitalist state. The resistance of the aluminium workers has shattered the shop window carefully installed by the Venezuelan state to prove the magnificence of its ‘21st Century Socialism’ to the workers of other countries.
The new ‘Socialist Guayana Plan’, which basically consists of an attempt to:
- convince the workers, once again, that the enterprises are under their control and that exploitation has disappeared;
- make the whole working class of Guayana pay for the very serious financial situation and the deterioration of the infrastructure in basic industries, which means demanding sacrifices to restore their competitive edge. In other words, accepting a degradation of living conditions
- as a result, get the workers to give up fighting for their own demands
This plan was presented as the result of the particapation of some “600 workers representing the working class in Guayana” at “round tables” led by the existing “worker-directors” of the primary industries, Elio Sayago and Rada Gameluch, among others. This group of workers, chosen from those who had taken part in an indoctrination course on ‘21st Century Socialism’ and ‘endogenous development’, were thus convinced of the fact that they had to combat those who opposed the plan because they were part of the ‘labour aristocracy’.
After that, an attempt was made to mystify the workers by polarising them between those who support the unions, of whatever tendency (even the party of the official Chavist party, the United Socialist party of Venezuela) and those who supported so-called ‘workers control’.
The state will use any means to create divisions among the workers. In the first place by creating a polarisation between the leaders defended by the unions and the representatives of so-called ‘workers’ control’. And also, between the workers who are part of the supposed ‘labour aristocracy’, who are supposedly only defending their ‘egoistic interests’ and who are only looking to preserve or improve their wages, and on the other side, those who encourage the workers to join up with the defenders of the fatherland, those who defend nationalisation as a decisive step towards ‘21st Century Socialism’, who are not egoistic and who are ready to make sacrifices for the ‘land of Bolivar’.
Recently, the state has deployed an armada of armed gangs, mafia and other thugs to sow terror among the workers. This is a consequence of the fact that the judicial pressures exerted against workers put on trial has not been enough to make the workers cease their actions in defence of their interests: rather the opposite. The ineffectiveness of ‘criminalising protest’ was shown when the state was forced to free some of those arrested in order to dampen the workers’ anger, an anger that led the pro-government unions, especially those of the current around Maspero, an ‘official’ union leader, to support the struggle for the liberation of the union leader Ruben Gonzalez who had been in prison for several months. The state wanted to show its ‘workerist’ face and hide its tendency towards totalitarian dictatorship.
This action did have the result of restoring the image of certain unions, who were thus better able to exert their control over the workers, above all by imprisoning them in the confines of corporatism, in a struggle for the defence of this or that collective agreement or the fight against corruption, whose unpleasant stench is making the atmosphere at work unbearable.
There is also the will to trap the workers in an internal battle between union mafia and those who advocate ‘workers’ control’, who are also part of the various power blocs around the governor of the Bolivar province, the mayors, the military and sectors of private capital, who have been doing their own wheeling and dealing, taking their own kick-backs, which has contributed to the growing sickness of the industry of the region.
For the representatives of the state, whether they call themselves, ministers, mayors, directors or trade unionists, the slogan is: “if you can’t convince them, mystify them”. However, the main result of the intervention of different state organs, whether acting for their own personal interests or the interests of a mafia clique, whether through direct repression or hired killers, has been a bloody chaos which has become, in this phase of capitalist decomposition, a typical expression of the relationship between bosses and workers.
For revolutionary minorities, the question is how to help develop the class consciousness of the workers. In the first place, against the blackmail which claims that when workers fight against wage-cuts or the loss of bonuses they are acting as part of an aristocracy with no class consciousness. We have to insist that, on the contrary, the struggle for immediate demands is part of the process through which class consciousness develops. This is the way the class unifies itself, discovers who its class enemy is, whether it’s a private boss or a state boss, realises its role in society as the only class capable of putting an end to the chaos of capitalism. At the same time, it’s not in fact a question of fighting for a ‘fair wage’ – in reality it’s the state which determines what’s fair. In the final analysis it’s a question of fighting against wage labour, which is the very essence of capitalist exploitation.
If the proletarian powder-keg in Guayana hasn’t exploded yet this is in large part due to the polarisation of proposals put forward by the different union and state ‘representatives’, each one defending its own fief, doing all they can to ensure that the discussions in the assemblies cancel out any action the proletariat might take to fight against the chaos in the region. It is above all necessary to take back the discussions in the assemblies and put forward the need for the unification of struggles.
The working class in Guayana has not stopped struggling. Very often in front of the big enterprises, assemblies are organised to respond to this or that attack against living conditions. Very often these assemblies manage to neutralise the attacks, while the powers that be seek to place the interests of the ‘collectivity’ against those of the workers, as was the case when the ‘communal councils’ were used against the assemblies.
The emergence of minorities within the working class, seeking to renew links with the historic movement of the class, is being strengthened by the breadth and persistence of the struggles. These minorities fight against a deformed vision of socialism, not only the Trotskyist version with its critical support for Chavism, but also the ultra-reactionary version of ‘21st Century Socialism’, really a form of exacerbated nationalism based on anti-Yankee hatred and a semi-religious ‘Bolivarian’ fundamentalism.
The new generations of the working class in Guayana are seeking to make their own experience of struggle and to learn from previous generations of workers who confronted the state with great determination in the 60s and 70s. Despite the obstacles the bourgeoisie has put in the way of the Guayana workers, they are about to show to other sectors of the class that they are no less determined to struggle against Chavist capitalism with its camouflage of ‘socialism’.
Internacialismo 7/11
See also: ‘Guayana is a powder-keg [322]’.
"Bolivarian Socialism": Aleftist version of "wild capitalism" https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4575/bolivarian-socialism-leftist-version-wild-capitalism [323]
[1] The industrial agglomeration of Guayana is in the Bolivar province of Venezuela, on the Orinoco, with a population of nearly a million inhabitants, formed largely by working class families.
Last September, a discovery hit the scientific world and its news was rapidly spread throughout the media of the entire globe. In the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, a scientific team observed some elementary particles called “neutrinos”[1] sent from the particle accelerator of CERN, a laboratory close to Geneva and situated almost 730 km away[2]. The “Opera” experiment, which has unfolded over a period of more than 3 years, consisted of studying the propagation of these particles as well as measuring their speed to the order of nanoseconds[3]. Once the results were verified and re-verified and the experiment repeated from the beginning, the scientists had to admit the reality of the facts as they were shown: these particles travelled at a speed which was a little greater than the speed of light[4]. If correct, this discovery would overthrow the fundamental laws of physics such as the law of relativity as put forward by Einstein, which defined the speed of light as an insuperable, universal constant. The announcement of this discovery immediately fell prey to the rapacious press who tried to outdo each other in looking for a “scientific” scoop: “Has the neutrino finished off Einstein?” “Einstein contradicted!” “Einstein is busted!” And so it goes on... This vision of science where different theories are essentially competitive and ready to eliminate each other like predators in a permanently mortal struggle is typical of bourgeois ideology and fundamentally inherent to its mode of social functioning. This discovery effectively implies (if it is proved to be correct, which previous similar discoveries have proved not to be) the calling into question of the very basis of modern physics. If correct, it is a discovery whose consequences are presently unimaginable. We could happily hazard a guess about developing theories on what that would mean for our perception of the universe, but such a totally empirical approach would take us into the realms of science-fiction.
Such is not our aim. What appears immediately and in a very clear manner, and what all capitalist propaganda strives to distort and obliterate, is that in any scientific approach, no theory is carved in stone in a permanent and incontestable manner. The perception of scientific reality is eminently historical and in a state of constant evolution. Such a discovery would oblige us to review our previous conceptions and to confront them with this new representation of reality. It’s in this way that the overcoming of past ideas leads us to new questions and to new scientific progress and techniques. And this progress, in its turn, allows us to go beyond certain problematics and bring in new elements without however denying the contributions of those preceding. It is this dialectical character of evolution which makes each stage, each progression (as small as it may be), absolutely necessary as a link in the chain in our process of evolution.
This vision, which appears to be the basis of all honest scientific work, does not however form part of the dominant ideology. At least that’s what one finds when one looks at the facts in front of us: at the time when it is perfectly capable of sending a robotised engine to explore the surface of the planet Mars, the economic specialists of capitalism are almost incapable of foreseeing the subsequent development of our economy for a few days into the future... and, as a consequence of that, we are incapable of supplying the most basic needs of a growing part of the world population! This is for one simple reason: according to the ideology of the dominant class (capitalist ideology), the present system with its democratic ideal based on the production of surplus value, on rivalry and on competition between individuals, is fundamentally the system which corresponds best to the character of the human species and human nature, past, present and future. The everlasting nature of capitalism itself is seen as a real and incontestable absolute. In this view the political ideal of this system, capitalist democracy, is the sole perspective towards which humanity could evolve. Any other perspective is automatically labelled “utopian”, even dangerous, and for good reason! If the greater mass of humanity, the exploited class, in understanding that the scholarly equations of the economic specialists have long since ceased to be a motor for human progress; if today these calculations of charlatans were denounced as being the basis for the extortion of surplus-value which justifies the immense privileges which a minority of exploiters enjoy; if in order to save ourselves, we aim to create a world without states where productive activity is organised exclusively in relation to human needs and with respect to natural resources ; then, effectively, the capitalist class would be completely out of date; its privileges and its ideology would be profoundly called into question. In a society founded on solidarity and social progress, the role and the place of science would be completely different to those that we’ve know so far.
Make no mistake: the scientific world does not escape capitalism’s laws and its reactionary ideology. The milieu of scientific research is impregnated with a spirit of ferocious and permanent rivalry. Most of the time, researchers are in competition one with the others, and cooperation between different teams rapidly reach their limits. The races to publish, the quest for individual prestige, social and financial recognition are so many fetters which are considerable handicaps for humanity in its march towards consciousness and progress[5].
Today, no scientific discovery, as brilliant as it is, could bring humanity out of the obscure prehistory in which capitalism entraps it up to its last breath. The greatest experiment standing in front of us now is nothing other than the profound transformation of society which alone can bring humanity into its real history.
Maxime 23/10/11
[1] It’s the smallest elementary particle known to this day and rarely interacts with other matter. It results from a collision between two protons, elements which constitute the nucleus of atoms. Neutrinos oscillate between their three “flavours”.
[2] This distance represents the most direct trajectory between the CERN accelerator and the detectors of Gran Sasso. The line of the neutrinos thus travels through the earth’s crust.
[3] One nanosecond equals a billionth of a second.
[4] 20 parts per million (ppm) above it in fact.
[5] The weight of capitalism in holding back scientific research is the main element here but there have been some chinks of light in unofficial cooperation. One such case was the accidental discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) by Penzias and Wilson working for Bell Labs in 1964. This discovery confirmed the theory of the “Big Bang” explosion of the universe against the neo-Newtonian “Steady State” theory and was a major advance for cosmology. Though there was ferocious competition to find this evidence and great secrecy surrounding research, not least from Princeton University which was leading research into the question, there was a great deal of unofficial, direct cooperation from lower level scientists at Princeton with Penzias and Wilson who definitely helped to put the latter on the right track. The academic elite at Princeton were furious that a couple of jobbing scientists had made such a leap.
We are publishing here the calls from the Occupy Oakland General Assembly for a general strike on 2 November. This is a significant development in the ‘Occupy’ movement in the US, which while generally critical of ‘capitalism’ has also been hampered by a very confused view of what capitalism is, and in particular about the only way to oppose it: through the class struggle. But this appeal, coming after a number of very bitter experiences of police repression, marks a real step forward in that it is a direct call to the local working class to support the movement through striking. The response to the call by the GA was very impressive, not so much in the number of work places shut down, which seems to have been uneven, but by the willingness of thousands of workers to join the demonstrations even if it was after work. The evening demo to the port was planned in order to allow those at work to participate and drew in several thousand people (some estimates put it as high as 20,000). Although the port had more or less remained open during the day, the demonstrators succeeded in persuading dockers and truckers to join them and the port was closed for the night. This is how the LA Times described events: "As thousands of protesters flowed toward the port, truckers struggled to drive out. Others, like Mann Singh, stuck around with smiles on their faces. The 42-year-old Pittsburg resident said he arrived at 4:30 p.m. with an empty truck, hoping to park it and go home, but as the demonstrators gathered, he said, ‘I stopped to support them’".
Whatever secondary criticisms we may make of the texts that follow, we can only support their overall spirit and approach:
We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.
We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.
All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.
While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.
The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.
The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.
November 1, 2011
WAYS TO PARTICIPATE ON NOVEMBER 2 GENERAL STRIKE & DAY OF ACTION
called for by Occupy Oakland
Occupy Oakland is calling for no work and no school on November 2 as part of the general strike. We are asking that all workers go on strike, call in sick, take a vacation day or simply walk off the job with their co-workers. We are also asking that all students walk out of school and join workers and community members in downtown Oakland. All banks and large corporations must close down for the day or demonstrators will march on them.
The Occupy Oakland Strike Assembly has vowed to picket and or occupy any business or school which disciplines employees or students in any way for participating in the Nov 2 General Strike. Please email [email protected] [327] if you are the subject of any disciplinary action.
Occupy Oakland recognizes that not all workers, students and community members will feel able to strike all day long on November 2, and we welcome any form of participation which they feel is appropriate. We urge them to join us before or after work or during their lunch hours.
Below are some action ideas for strike participants to consider:
Join the Mass Gatherings at 14th & Broadway 9:00am, 12:00pm, 5:00pm. Strike Rallies will be held at these times with political speakers as well as time for open mic so that everyone can make their voices heard. There will also be action announcements made from the stage on this intersection for those who are interested in participating in pickets and shut downs of banks and large corporations.
Lead a march from your neighborhood, workplace, school, community center, place of worship etc into downtown Oakland to join one of these three mass gatherings. Have fun and be loud along the way to let people know why you are marching downtown!
Form a mobile blockade or flying picket that can take over important intersections in downtown with street parties and other creative ways to make our voices heard and shut the city down.
There will be numerous pickets and actions at banks and corporations across downtown but we need more! Get a group of friends, family members, co-workers or fellow students together to form an affinity group and make your voice heard and your presence felt at any of these locations in downtown. Let the stage on 14th & Broadway know about your action so they can announce it to the crowd.
There are many other autonomous actions planned for the day that will be occurring throughout downtown. One of them is the anti-capitalist march at 2pm meeting at the intersection of Telegraph & Broadway and another is the Feminist & Queer bloc against capitalism that will meet at 4:30 at 14th & Broadway.
Join the marches from downtown to shut down the Port of Oakland. These marches will be leaving at 4pm and another will be leaving at 5pm for the 2 mile march out to the port to stand in solidarity with the longshore workers and shut down the evening shift of the port.
Join the 4pm Critical Mass ride from 14th & Broadway out to the Port to join the shut down
Best not to drive into downtown: It is likely that many streets will be blocked to traffic so please bike or take public transportation if possible. It will also be useful to have a bicycle to move between actions or to march to the port.
Gather neighbors, co-workers, or fellow students together and organize group walks and small marches around the neighborhood to have fun, raise awareness and encourage others to join you in the streets! Bring noise makers, signs, banners and let your community know why you are participating in the strike.
Stop at banks, large businesses, chain stores, gas stations, corporate headquarters, large commercial media outlets, etc. to protest and picket
Gather in neighborhood centers and on the corners of main intersections to hold speak outs, BBQs and street parties – make your voice heard and raise awareness by reclaiming space where fellow community members can join you and talk about the issues that affect them most and how we can organize together to build a powerful movement
If you must shop, only spend money at locally owned stores and as much as possible purchase locally-produced goods
Use your personal and organizational social media accounts (websites, facebook, linked-in, electronic newsletters, etc) to support the actions and keep your constituencies updated about what is going on in the streets of Oakland.
In the event of police violence, use your organization to denounce police repression and call for the release of all arrested strikers.
Provide resources for your staff to participate: allow time away to participate in direct actions; encourage work on projects aligned with general strike and occupy goals, host sign and banner making parties!
Bring materials to make signs: Banner material. cardboard, poster paper, markers, paint, spray paint tape, dowels, etc
Bring food and water to share!
Bring noise makers, instruments, sound systems and other ways that we can transform downtown into a celebration of our collective power
Write this legal number down on your body in case of arrest: 415.285.1011 The number will be staffed all day long and will coordinate legal support for those arrested in the strike.
Remember these four common points that the General Strike Assembly has agreed upon:
Solidarity with the world-wide Occupy movement!
End police attacks on our communities!
Defend Oakland schools and libraries!
Against an economic system built on colonialism, inequality and corporate power that perpetuates all forms of oppression and the destruction of the environment!
“Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”
“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”
“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”
“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”
“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”
“Shut Down OPD! Not the Public Library!”
“Let’s Go Oakland! Let’s Go!” [clap] [clap]"
See also: "Occupy Wall Street Protests: The capitalist system itself is the enemy [328]".
Occupy London: the weight of illusions https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4569/occupy-london-weight-illusions [329]
The Anarchist Bookfair, held in London every October, is an event that attracts people who want to struggle against capitalist society. This year they could find “more class struggle themes than previous years, although 'anarchism and spirituality' drew as a large a crowd as workplace organising, which is slightly worrying” (Chilli Sauce, on libcom). Here are our impressions of some of the meetings that sounded most interesting.
The discussion of primitive communism, organised by the Radical Anthropology Group, presented Chris Knight’s theory about the role of women’s solidarity and menstruation in the development of culture (see here [332] for a discussion of this theory). An understanding that humanity lived without either private property or the state for most of humanity’s time on the earth has long fascinated and inspired communists, and all who work to see the end of class society. Naturally the meeting was also interested in the occupations and assemblies going on at the moment, although this discussion did not get very far, and notably only a speaker from the ICC raised the very important experience of the Indignant in Spain.
‘UK Youth Rebellion’ was introduced by two young people from the Anarchist Federation talking about the difficult situation faced by young people today: lack of funds, unemployment, poor education, lack of public spaces to gather. This young generation will be worse off than their parents. The student struggles a year ago were discussed, and the question of how these struggles can link up with other young people, whether at work or unemployed, was a theme in the discussion. A comrade from the ICC emphasised that last year’s student struggles were an inspiration to all generations as an important part of the class struggle.
‘Why do we call ourselves Class Struggle Anarchists?’ had three speakers, but all were brief and to the point, allowing over 30 minutes of discussion – not nearly long enough, but much better than many meetings at the bookfair. The first speaker from ALARM, the All London Anarchist Revolutionary Movement, began by pointing out that the ruling class engages in class warfare – workers don’t have enough to live on, the repression and propaganda after the riots, lack of communal space, shit housing, schools designed for failure… He was in favour of any form of ‘kicking back’, including Occupy Wall Street (although he thinks there is more than 1% we have to fight), riots in spite of much antisocial behaviour, workplace struggles, although ALARM don’t do that. The recession is bringing out the rage although it is not about one night of rage but the need to change society. The IWW speaker described itself as not an anarchist organisation but one that organises in an anarchist way. It is a legally established union. Dealing only with workplace struggles it is growing and having success eg with migrant cleaners who have not been paid for the work they do, which can be sorted by writing letters, daily pickets, etc. The speaker from the Anarchist Federation was best. She began by alluding to the materialist analysis of who is in the working class, according to their relationship with the means of production. Capitalism has been amazingly successful in trying to impose divisions. Laws passed in the 1970s and the procedures they enforce have made struggle harder in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Unions have to be legalised, and they are not revolutionary, but they can be a jumping off point. We cannot unite around the ‘cultural’ working class but only the structure in relation to means of production. All in all we had three very different, and in our opinion contradictory, contributions on the nature of the class struggle.
The facilitator posed the following questions: what constitutes the working class? What is the anarchists’ role? Why be a class struggle anarchist? The discussion concentrated on the first question, and defended a class struggle approach against identity politics. In particular, as a left communist pointed out, the crisis and austerity mean that all workers, even in so-called professional jobs in health or education, will be faced with cuts.
Many more questions had been posed: what is the nature of working class struggle? Is it any kind of disturbance, protest or riot, as the speaker from ALARM thinks? In our view things such as the recent riots are definitely not a way for the working class to struggle, precisely because of the antisocial behaviour the speaker pointed to. Antisocial behaviour reflects the dog eat dog values of capitalist society and has no part in the struggle to overthrow it (see en.internationalism.org/wr/347uk-riots [294]). Can we use legal union structures to defend workers within capitalism today, as the IWW proposed? Unions inevitably keep us locked up in this industry, this sector, leading them to tell their members to cross the picket lines of other unions (for instance UNISON workers to cross NUT pickets and vice versa) undermining the struggle against austerity and cuts. And lastly, the question raised by the AF speaker – what is the relation of defensive struggles to the revolutionary struggle.
The class struggle has a history and several of the meetings addressed this. ‘Red Rosa and the Arab Spring’ organised by the Marxist Humanists in Hobgoblin had two presentations, one on a biography of Rosa Luxemburg and the other on her fight against reformism and her criticism of the ‘authoritarianism’ of the Russian Revolution. Although there was little time for discussion, we made contributions situating her fight against reformism alongside others on the left of social democracy who opposed the First World War, including Lenin, Pannekoek and John Maclean. In addition, as Engels pointed out, we cannot have any illusions in revolution being anything but an act of authority.
‘Is capitalism destroying itself? And can we replace it?’ aimed to take up the most important questions facing us today: “Our rulers are worried. Austerity is not reviving the economy… How did we get here and what are the prospects for anti-capitalist revolution?” The debate that could have been the highlight of the day ended in disappointment. Neither presentation took up the crisis going on today, which lies behind all the austerity measures, and the discussion was unable to make up for this. Even worse, one of the speakers, Selma James, sang the praises of various left wing governments and states – Stalinist Cuba which sends doctors to Africa (let’s forget about the troops sent to Angola), Chavez, Tanzania – and was to a large extent allowed to get away with it by the meeting as a whole.
Many vital questions were raised: the discussion must continue throughout the year.
May 30/10/11
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
nov_30.pdf [335] | 200.1 KB |
Unions predict that maybe two or three million workers will be on strike on 30 November, from education, health, local government, the civil service, and more. The main issue of the strike – the future of public sector pensions – is a very real one because we are all being asked to work longer and pay more for less to retire on. And that’s just for a start. In Greece existing pensions are already being cut. The logic of this system is to make us work till we drop.
And pensions are not the only issue, and it’s not just the public sector. Unemployment is soaring, especially among the young: latest figures put youth unemployment at 20%. More and more young people are effectively working for nothing. It’s becoming more expensive to stay on at college and go to university.
Government austerity plans envisage cuts in social benefits of all kinds, and wages are also under attack: the electricians are fighting against new building industry contracts involving a 30% reduction in pay.
All this is the product of an economic meltdown which didn’t just begin in 2007, which wasn’t caused by greedy bankers or lazy Greeks, but is the culminating point of a world wide, historic crisis of the capitalist system. Today’s deepening depression is the return of the same underlying crisis which broke out in the 1930s. And the rulers of this world have no solution to it. If they go for ‘growth’, it plunges them deeper into debt and inflation. If they go for ‘austerity’, they further reduce demand when the crisis is already a result of glutted markets.
The question facing workers, students, pensioners, and the unemployed everywhere is not whether we need to resist. If we just passively accept these attacks, the bosses and the state will just come back for more. The question is how to fight back. Already this year we have had two big official days of action – 26 March and 30 June – but did they really make our rulers worried? The government has even suggested we should make do with a nice 15 minute general strike, but is a 24-hour stoppage, marshalled from start to finish by the union machinery, any more effective? In fact, such token gestures have the overall effect of sapping our energies and making us feel that we have been wasting our time.
The experience of history has shown that the ruling class only begins to take notice when the exploited class starts to take things into its own hands and unite its forces from the bottom up. And the experience of the last year or so has confirmed that there are indeed other ways of fighting back than marching from A to B, listening to some celebrity speeches, and going home.
All across the world, from Cairo to Barcelona, from New York to London, the occupation and defence of public spaces, and the organisation of general assemblies, have shown the possibility of more massive, self-organised ways of struggling. In the UK, the electricians have taken new forms of unofficial action, using demonstrations to call other workers to join their strikes and holding open mic street discussions. These movements point to the need for general assemblies in the workplaces, uniting us across trade and union divisions.
November 30 provides an opportunity for working class people from many different areas to come together, to discuss and even to put into practice the best methods for resisting the bosses’ offensive. But we need to make the debate as open as possible, which means rejecting passive rallies and instead organising all kinds of public meetings where everyone can speak their mind.
And it can’t all be focused on one day. We are faced with a prolonged period of crisis, and therefore with a growing assault on our living and working conditions. This is why many workers are already sceptical about what can be achieved on 30 November. Many more, faced with mounting bills or redundancies, question the usefulness of strikes and occupations. It’s difficult enough knowing how to resist when your firm is about to go under. The problem is magnified a hundred times when entire national economies seem to be going down the pan.
But that emphasises that not only do we need to find better ways to fight back here and now – we also need to develop a long term perspective. The capitalist system is on its last legs and can offer us only depression, war, and ecological disaster. But the working class can use its struggles to form itself into a real social power, to develop its political understanding of the present system, and create a different future: a global community where all production is organised for human need and not the inhuman laws of the market.
International Communist Current, 25/11/11
Without a doubt the most important eviction took place in New York’s Zuccotti Park—the place that started it all—where Mayor Bloomberg’s police evicted the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protestors in the early morning hours of November 15th. This touched off a curious legal fight in the bourgeois court system, with lawyers for the occupiers arguing that the eviction violated their first amendment rights of free expression. The decision of the bourgeois judge was a pyrrhic victory for the protestors allowing them to return to the park to engage in lawful protest, but refusing to block the city’s prohibition on tents and camping gear. Thus, OWS finds itself deprived of its modus viviendi. With the bourgeois state no longer willing to play nice, it is now an occupation movement without the ability to occupy anything of consequence.
Could this work to extend the movement? Deprived of the right to legally encamp in the park, might the protestors be moved to create a different mode of struggle—one that focus less on the occupation of a particular geographic space and more on developing organs for clarification and theoretical deepening such as discussion groups? At this time it is not possible to say, but it is often the nature of social movements that actions of the state have these kinds of unintended consequences.
Although many in the occupy movement vow to continue their fight against corporate greed, income inequality and the supposed corruption on the United States’ democratic process, it is clear at this point that the initial phase of the occupation movement has come to a close. Throughout the first several weeks of the occupations, the protestors could generally claim the support of public opinion obliging the authorities to operate with some level of restraint towards them. This is no longer the case. While polls continue to show that the population holds tremendous sympathy for the protestors’ goals and grievances, support for the occupations themselves has declined. The sense that the occupiers have overplayed their hand is widespread. Pressure is now being put on the occupiers to find ways to work within the system to voice their grievances.
While we can’t predict where this movement will go from here, or even if it can survive as an independent social movement outside of the institutions of bourgeois politics, it is appropriate at this juncture for revolutionaries to attempt to make a balance sheet of this movement in order to draw the lessons for the future of the class struggle. What was positive in this movement? Where did it go wrong? What can we expect from here?
Despite these unanswered questions and the general ambiguity expressed by this movement, we feel that is a manifestation of the desire by certain sectors of the working class, among other social groups, to fight back against the massive attacks the capitalist system is carrying our on its conditions of life. Even if this movement featured much of the same activist dominated politics we have seen since the late-1990s with the anti-globalization movement, it nonetheless appears to have been carried out on a fundamentally different dynamic than these previous movements, one that might contain the seeds for further radicalization, even if these have yet to fully sprout.
Thus, while we cannot provide a definitive statement on the nature of this movement at this just yet; however, we can attempt to situate it within a class perspective and draw some of the major lessons for the period ahead.
The Occupy Movement in North America constituted a clear link in the chain of protests and social movements that have swept across the far corners of the world over the course of 2011. These movements have overwhelmingly sought to respond to the effects of capitalism’s crisis on the conditions of life of the working class and society in general. From the revolts in the Arab world in the spring, to the outbreak of massive struggles in China, Bangladesh, France, Spain, Israel and Chile, the Occupy Movement was clearly inspired by events that took place far from American shores. Not since the period of the late 1960s/early 1970s, have we witnessed such a broad series of movements across the globe all seeking to respond to the same fundamental provocations: the attack on the population’s working and living conditions resulting from the global recession and the massive austerity attacks unleashed on the social wage in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis and the financial meltdown of 2008.
All these movements have been characterized by the desire of ever increasing numbers of people to do something in response to the mounting attacks on their living and working conditions, even if there is little clarity as to what needs to be done. The Occupy Movement is an important manifestation of this international trend within the “belly of the beast” itself. Like the massive movement in Wisconsin earlier in the year, the Occupy Movement has refuted the persistent idea that the North American working class is totally integrated with capitalism or unwilling and unable to resist its attacks. However, whereas the events in Wisconsin took place within one state, the Occupy Movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the continent and even the world beyond. Moreover, while the Wisconsin protests were very quickly recuperated by the unions and the Democratic Party, the Occupy protestors have been keen to assert their autonomy, believing that meaningful change can only flow from a “new type” of movement. They have shown a very healthy distrust of official parties and programs, demonstrating their increasing suspicion that the official parties only exist to co-opt their struggles.
Like the movements in other parts of globe, the Occupy protests have been characterized by the influx of new generations of workers, many of whom have little experience in politics and carry few preconceived ideas about how to organize a struggle. What unites these participants is an almost precognitive desire to come together with others and feel the experience of active solidarity and community made real—to pose an alternative to the existing society through the lived experience of making the struggle. Undoubtedly, these desires are fueled above all by the increasing sense of social alienation in the face of capitalist decomposition, as well as the tremendous difficulty the younger generations have in gaining admittance to the labor process itself. The absence of the experience of collective labor and the accompanying sense of isolation, atomization and despair is today propelling more and more workers—particularly the young and those who have been kicked out of the production process—to seek solidarity through the struggle. Also present in these struggles are people from other social strata: all sorts of people deeply frustrated and worried about the direction of society. However, in North America, these protests have been dominated by the younger generations of workers and those most deeply affected by the crisis of long-term unemployment.
Of course, this does not mean that the Occupy Movement itself—in particular the tactic of occupying specific geographic spaces—represents the form that the class struggle will take in the future. On the contrary, this movement—like all of its sister movements across the globe—have been marked by fundamental weaknesses, which it will be necessary for the working-class to transcend if it is to go forward. We can conclude that the Occupy Movement represents an important attempt by sections of the proletariat to respond to capitalism’s aggressive attacks on its conditions of life, even if it does not represent a direct model for future struggles.
One of the most important features of the Occupy Movement has been the emergence of general assemblies (GAs) as the sovereign organ of the struggle. The rediscovery of the GA as the form best capable of ensuring the broadest participation and the widest exchange of ideas has marked a tremendous advance for the class struggle in the current period. In the Occupy Movement, the GAs appear to have been adopted from prior struggles—particularly that of the indignados in Spain—demonstrating that in this period there is a tendency to learn from struggles in other parts of the world in quick succession and adopt the most effective tactics and forms. The speed with which the GAs have spread across the globe this past year has indeed been quite impressive.
Like the GAs elsewhere, in the Occupy Movement the GAs were open to everyone, encouraging all concerned to participate in shaping the movements direction and goals. The GAs operated on an ostensible policy of openness. Minutes were circulated. A clear desire was expressed that the GAs remain distinct from any party, group or organization that may seek to usurp their autonomy. The GAs thus represented an incipient realization that the existing parties and institutions—even the parties of the left and the unions—could not be relied upon to run the struggle on behalf of the masses. On the contrary, the protestors themselves would remain sovereign; they alone could determine how to go forward.
Nevertheless, despite these very positive features, the experience of the GAs in the Occupy movement was marked by a profound weaknesses not seen to the same extent elsewhere. From the start, the Occupy Movement framed itself as an occupation of a piece of geographic space. While OWS may have initially set out to occupy the financial district of New York City itself, or set up a symbolic place of protest on Wall Street, once it became clear that the state would not tolerate this, the protestors turned to occupying a nearby park, almost by default. (1) At the foot of the mountain, but not quite the mountain itself, the model was thus set for the movement in other cities, which overwhelmingly took the form of an encampment in a city park. While there is some precedent for this kind of occupation in US history, (i.e. the Bonus Army’s occupation of fallow land in Washington, DC to protest the living conditions of World War One veterans during the Great Depression); the decision to define itself as a movement occupying a specific geographic location constituted a profound weakness that contributed to the Occupy Movement’s isolation.
Rather quickly—particularly in New York—the Occupy Movement became dominated by a sentiment that it had to defend the park that had become the movement’s home and in fact had come to serve as a kind of community for many of the individual protestors. Undoubtedly, the positive sense of solidarity that many of the protestors felt as participants in a movement for change contributed to a tendency to define the limits of the movement as the park’s boundaries and to seek to defend those boundaries against attack by the state or dilution from mainstream politics.
However, this tended towards the production of a tension in the Occupy Movement, between, on the one hand a movement for broad social change and on the other a new experiment in communal living. From a temporary encampment made as a result of tactical necessity, Zuccotti Park tended to be seen by the occupiers as a new kind of “home” within capitalist society. Rumors of imminent police repression only reinforced the desire to “defend the park.” While the occupiers made occasional forays outside the park to protest the banks or demonstrate in bourgeois neighborhoods, the longer the movement persisted, the more the tendency to try to constitute a kernel of an alternative way of life in the park predominated. No real attempt was ever made to carry the struggle to the broader working-class beyond the boundaries of the park.
By contrast, this fetish on occupying a specific geographic space did not characterize the movements in Spain, Israel and the Middle East. In contrast, the public squares were seen more as a meeting point where protestors could come together for a specific purpose, discuss, hold rallies and decide tactics. The desire to hold onto public spaces with permanent encampments has been a peculiarly North American feature of the recent movements, one that demands further examination.
However, perhaps even more damaging than the fetish for occupation, the GAs in the Occupy Movement were ultimately unable to fulfill their function of unifying the protestors, as over the course of the struggle they were transformed from decision making bodies of the struggle to increasingly passive objects of activists and professional leftists—mainly through the activities of the working groups and committees. Rather than constituting the organ of the most widespread debate, the GAs omnipresent fear of working out concrete demands—because they were seen as divisive and polarizing rather than unifying—rendered them powerless in the face of the need to take concrete decisions in the heat of the moment.
One feature of the Occupy Movement that has been common to most of the protest movements we have seen over the past year has been the preponderance of tremendous illusions in “democracy” as an alternative to the present system. In one form or another, the sentiment that some kind of authentic democracy can serve as an effective corrective to, or buffer against, the worst forms of oppression and suffering that the population is experiencing has emerged in Egypt, Spain, Israel and elsewhere.
In the Occupy Movement, these ideas were expressed with a typically American flavor. For the most part, this took the form of an underlying assumption that the problems facing the world could all be traced back to the domination of economic and political life by a parasitic clique of financiers, bankers and large corporations who put their own immediate financial interests above that of society as a whole. In the United States, this phenomenon is said to have corrupted the U.S. democratic process, such that corporations are effectively able to dictate policy to Congress and the President through their control of campaign funds.
Thus, the Occupy Movement has tended to pose the solution to oppression and suffering as the revitalization of democracy against corporate greed and financial speculation. While the precise definition of “democracy” may differ from protestor to protestor—some may be content with an amendment banning corporate campaign contributions, while others have a more radical definition of self-government in mind, the underlying sense is nevertheless that “democracy” is somehow opposed to economic oppression and exploitation.
Moreover, while many protestors are now willing to say that “capitalism” is either part of or at the root of the world’s economic problems, there is no consensus on what “capitalism” actually is. For many, capitalism simply equates to the banks and big corporations. The Marxist understanding that capitalism is a mode of production associated with an entire epoch of human history characterized by the exploitation of wage labor is only broached on the margins of this movement. As such, while many protestors recognize that Marx had something important to say about capitalism’s problems, there is little clarity about the relevance of Marxism and the workers’ movement for their project of building a new world today. These hesitations have also been seen in other movements around the world, constituting a limitation that is vital for future movements to transcend.
If these illusions in democracy remained at the ideological level, we could justly write them off to the immaturity of the movement, as an expression of an opening phase in the class struggle, which the working class would transcend in the light of experience. This may ultimately prove to be the case, but for now the Occupy Movement has turned its view of the nature of democracy into a fetish that came to serve as a fundamental barrier to its ability to move forward. In addition, it provided the basis for precisely what the movement did not to happen in the first place: its co-optation by pro-democracy, reformist ideology in the context of the approaching Presidential election campaign of 2012.
From the beginning, taking the mandate to create a new form of democracy in the course of the struggle seriously, the GAs attempted to function on the basis of a “consensus” model of democracy. In many ways, this was a healthy response designed to ensure the widest possible participation and to make sure nobody felt excluded from the decisions taken by the GAs. Undoubtedly this model was adopted as a response to the bad experiences of previous movements dominated by professional activists and political organizations, in which the average participant was made to feel like little more than a foot solider in a movement led by professionals.
In this sense, the desire to make sure everyone felt included is perfectly understandable. However, in reality, the insistence on operating on a consensus model prevented the movement from moving beyond its limitations by blocking the necessary confrontation of ideas and perspectives that would allow the movement to break out of its isolation in the park. In the absence of being able to take any real decisions, to respond to the immediate needs of the movement—by neglecting to develop an executive organ—the GAs very quickly fell under the influence of the various working groups and committees, many of them dominated by the very professional activists they originally feared. In a way, the insistence on making every decision based on consensus ensured that no real decisions could be made and that the various “parts” (working groups, committees, etc.) would begin to substitute themselves for the “whole” (the GA). Thus, the GAs’ fear of exclusion allowed substitutionism to creep in through the back door—a situation that ultimately led to numerous distortions of the GAs’ sovereignty.
The a priori insistence on consensus based functioning was also evident in the very difficult question of the raising of concrete demands. From the beginning, the Occupy Movement seemed proud of its refusal to specify precise demands or formulate a program. This is an understandable concern for those who wish to avoid being recuperated into the same old reformist politics offered up by the state, but as the fate of the Occupy Movement shows, reformism cannot be blocked by refusing to put forward demands. The movement has been characterized by an extreme heterogeneity of demands. The most radical vision for a total recreation of society on egalitarian terms co-exists with totally reformist demands that remain within the purview of bourgeois legalism, such as the passage of a constitutional amendment to end “corporate personhood.” In the name of excluding no one, the Occupy Movement has been unable to advance and thus unable to fulfill its ultimate goal of transforming society.
With such a plethora of often-contradictory demands circulating, and with the movement consciously refusing to specify which demands would define it, the movement thus allowed others to step-in and speak for it. Unsurprisingly, the Occupy Movement was very quickly adopted by bourgeois celebrities, left-wing politicians and union officials who wasted no time stepping in and declaring themselves the movement’s voice. By refusing to specify demands, the movement ensured that it would characterized in the media—and thus in front of the rest of the working class—by only those demands that fit the immediate agenda of this or that faction of the bourgeois political apparatus.
The refusal to take up the question of demands, the avoidance of the trauma of “exclusion,” served to prevent the movement from figuring out how to move forward. With no ability to undertake a real process of clarification, the Occupy Movement was unable to determine to which social force it should turn to. It was thus doomed to turn inwards on itself in an ultimately fruitless attempt to defend the “communities of consensus” they thought they had built in the parks.
Without question the Occupy Movement’s focus on consensus functioning was a response to the trauma of previous movements and represented, on some levels, a healthy instinct to try to transcend leftist and bourgeois modes of functioning. However, beyond this, the insistence on consensus represented the fundamental penetration of democratic ideology into the functioning of the GAs itself. Thus, the Occupy Movement—and indeed most of the social movements we have seen recently—are characterized by more than mere ideological illusions in the bourgeois democratic state; on the contrary the insistence on democratic functioning have completely distorted the unitary forms of struggle that are merging in response to capitalism’s attacks.
The traumas of the past—of which Stalinism and leftism are paramount—have created a fetish for attempting to create a new kind of democratic-consensus functioning that can avoid exclusion, confrontation and hurt feelings. While this may be understandable on one level, ultimately it comes to function as a roadblock to the development of a real alternative to the present system. In the end, the consensus model proved totally illusory as the GAs’ ultimate inability to live up to the tasks of the moment allowed the committees and working-groups to ultimately assert their hegemony.
One of the most important lessons of the Occupy Movement therefore is that future movements must take up the question of how to develop a competent executive organ that remains responsible to the GAs: A real decision making body that operates with an immediately revocable mandate from the GAs. Such an organ is necessary if the movement is to make decisions in the heat of the struggle and forge solidarity, trust and unity among all participants. As this movement shows, the development of a real executive organ cannot be avoided if the movement wants to advance beyond a very elementary stage. How can tactical decisions be made in the heat of the struggle? How can the GAs maintain their sovereignty over whatever committees and organs will be necessary? These are the vital questions that must be taken-up.
Of course, it is also true that an executive organ cannot be proclaimed ex nihilio. An executive organ that does rest on the basis of the widest discussion and the broadest exchange of ideas between all participants would be at best a total farce and at worst another avenue for substitutions to creep in through the back door. An executive organ can only function as a concretization of the vitality of the GAs—it cannot substitute itself for them. Therefore, while the failure to take up the question of an executive function may have been a key factor in the Occupy Movement’s ultimate demise—this does not mean that an executive organ declared in a purely voluntarist fashion by the most active elements in the struggle would have saved it.
More than anything, what was missing from this movement was a real desire to discuss the roots of the crisis itself. Rather than attempt to engage in what has become an inevitable discussion about the nature of society’s troubles, the Occupy Movement focused instead on a fetish around the mode of decision making itself. Bogging down in process, the movement never broached the fundamental substantive questions: Are the banks to blame for society’s impasse or are their shenanigans a mere symptom of a wider failure of the economic system itself? Can we make meaningful change by prodding the state to act in society’s interests or must we think about ways to transcend the state? While it was possible to find participants on both sides of these questions (and a few more to boot!), the movement never figured out to go about deciding which positions were “right.” Under the guise of “all positions are welcome here,” the Occupy Movement never moved beyond a simplistic faith in its own ability to point the way forward by the example of a new form of consensus living.
One aspect of the Occupy Movement that figured prominently in its ultimate failure was its inability to effectively extend the struggle beyond the various encampment sites. Many factors figured into the movement’s ultimate isolation: the tendency for the occupiers to see the encampment sites as a community, the tendency for the various parks to be seen as fortresses of liberated space that must be defended, etc. However, the most important factor has been the inability of the movement to effectively link up with the broader struggle of the working class to defend its living and working conditions faced with capitalism’s aggressive attacks.
Outside of the controversial general strike in Oakland that shut down the city’s port operations for a day, the Occupy Movement has been unable to inspire a broader response by the working class to capitalism’s attacks against it. (2)
For the most part, the working class at the point of production remains disoriented in the face of capitalism’s broad offensive against its conditions of life and has been unable to launch a mass struggle to defend itself. Outside of a few scattered union-controlled strikes, the broader working class remains largely absent from the struggle at the moment.
On some level, this should not be surprising. The current crisis and the present stepping up of the assault on the working-class is coming after over 30 years of open attacks on the working-class’s living and working conditions and the very basis of class solidarity itself. Moreover, the current attacks are remarkably brutal in their ferocity at both the level of the point of production and the social wage. In addition to this, the ongoing political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie must be factored in to any analysis of the working class’s apparent passivity. The insurgent right wing’s aggressive attacks on the union apparatus, as well as the increasingly bizarre rhetoric emerging from the Tea Party have undoubtedly had a disorienting effect on working class consciousness. Under these conditions, many workers remain on the level of seeking to protect what they still have through the existing institutions of the unions and the Democratic Party. Others have become so disoriented that they sympathize with whatever politician sounds the angriest—even if he/she happened to be from the Tea Party.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulties and barriers it faces to recovering class identity and the working-class terrain of the struggle, the broader working-class has not been totally silent. The examples of the mobilizations in Wisconsin earlier this year, are evidence that we have entered a phase—opened up by the New York City Transit Strike in 2005/2006—where the tendency will be towards increasing class confrontations—towards the recovery of solidarity and a will to resist the paralysis instilled by capitalism’s attacks. If the trauma of the escalation of the attacks in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008 and the current political chaos of the U.S. ruling class are currently weighing heavily on the working class and dampening its militancy, a memory of these struggles still brews on the subterranean level.
However, while public opinion polls have consistently shown a high level of sympathy for the Occupy protestors throughout the populace, this has not translated into any effective mass action. There were of course instances in which this prospect was raised. Mostly, this occurred around the issue of police repression. In New York, Oakland and elsewhere, each time the state appeared to go too far in its repression of the protestors, a massive outrage in public opinion forced the state into restraint. However, while the New York unions were obliged on several occasions to call the workers out to show sympathy with the protestors in the face of imminent repression, only in Oakland did police repression evoke a broader response from the working class.
It is not surprising then, that the Occupy protests have done little to slow down the attacks against the working class, which just keep coming. American Airlines’ bankruptcy petition, the ongoing lock-outs at American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire and the massive austerity planned at the U.S. Post Office are just some examples that show the bourgeoisie has not been cowed by the Occupy Movement to lessen its attacks on the working class. Clearly, the tactic of occupying parks on the edge of financial districts has not proven effective in fighting back against capitalism attacks. Rather than camping out on the fringes of Wall Street, Bay Street and other financial centers, would the protestors have been more effective if they would have taken their efforts to working class districts, showing the workers—still too disoriented to struggle—that they were not alone?
We cannot say for certain, but clearly, a serious conversation about tactics has become necessary for all those seeking to struggle against the current degradation of human life represented by capitalism’s ongoing assault on society. Unfortunately, for the Occupy Movement, it’s a priori fetish for consensus, its almost principled desire to refrain from tactical discussions and its privileging of pluralism above concrete action; have prevented it so far from effectively taking up these questions. Above all, in the face of state repression, it has not been able to effectively ponder the questions, “To whom do we turn for support?” and “Where do we go if we can no longer live in the park?” Unable to consider these questions deeper, the Occupy Movement has for now turned back in on itself and faces an uncertain future.
From our perspective, even if the Occupy Movement represents a very important first step by a portion of the working class most affected by capitalism’s crisis, it is clear that going forward will require a fundamental reconsideration of the goals of the struggle and the method for carrying it out. Above all, there is a need to reexamine the attachment to consensus functioning, which appears to us to ensue from the traumatic wounds emanating from the negative experiences of past movements. How can a social movement advance in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the past, but which allows it to function in a truly effective way in the heat of the struggle? How can a social movement committed to the idea that another world is possible remain true to this goal, but still have the tactical fortitude to confront the bourgeois state? These are all important questions, which revolutionaries and all those committed to a different world will need to consider in the period ahead.
--Internationalism
12/05/2011
Notes:
(1) A similar chain of events occurred in Toronto, where plans were made for protestors to meet in the heart of the city’s Bay Street district, only to later move to a small park on the outskirts of downtown. The Toronto Police Department—still reeling in the court of public opinion over their aggressive crackdown on G20 protestors the previous year—were more than willing to allow the occupiers to take over the park.
(2) See our article, “Oakland: Occupy Movement Seeks Links With the Working Class [338]”
ICC Introduction
The comrades who have written the statements below, instead of being locked up in their sector as usually happens with struggles dominated by the unions, have launched a struggle open to all workers without distinction of sector or situation: in short, a united struggle.
And, in the second place, instead of the struggle being led by a minority of organising and negotiating “professionals” – again, as in the union way of thinking- they have made the centre of decision-making an Open Assembly held in a square, offering a public space where workers from other sectors can unite with their demands, bring their initiatives, and discuss together the measures to be taken.
Confronted with a situation of generalised social cuts, defaults and arrears in the payment of wages, of rampant unemployment, where no government or union can put forward any solutions - in fact, they are part of the problem- the only solution can lie in the united mobilisations organised by assemblies of all workers, of the oppressed and exploited. We do not have any illusions; we know that this road is difficult, that we will make many errors, suffer from traps and repression. But it is the only road that can take us forwards! The other way - having confidence in governments, in elections and the unions - offers no “road” apart from that leading into a bottomless pit.
To “Social care” workers, to all workers,
In our sector cuts, defaults, closures, the worsening of working conditions,... are increasing: as they are for all workers. Rare is the centre or services that is not threatened by closure or cuts, or is already closed.
Over recent weeks comrades from several firms in this sector have spontaneously got in contact with us asking “what to do”. In response we have invited them to the next meeting of the Platform[1]. Given that this interest has been growing we have decided to call an OPEN ASSEMBLY with the intention of testing the situation and assessing the possibility of a united struggle against the cuts in order to maintain jobs and services (the services that are most necessary for those most in need).
We know that it is difficult to envisage such a struggle but we take hope from the unprecedented situation in which we are living, and above all from the demands from various areas “to do something”. We believe that it is possible to try and mobilise ourselves and a good number of our comrades; and with a large movement we could face up to the attacks that we are suffering. We understand that this appears illusory and utopian, but we think that it is illusory and utopian to think that something or someone, other than ourselves is going to “save” us.
We invite everyone to participate and to spread this invitation:
Wednesday 9th November at 18.00 in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante)
Workers’ Open Assembly
Against the cuts, unemployment, the closure of social services and the worsening of working conditions
Unite in order to struggle for ourselves
Plataforma de Trabajadores de AFEMA
(an Independent and assemblyist collective)
This call, though centered on our sector, is open to all workers and those who are interested, because we think that we are all the same and that solidarity is essential.
Alicante 10th November 2011
Dear comrades, we are mainly workers and users of the “social” sector, education and health, (although there are also comrades of other sectors), and we are mobilised and organised through open assemblies against the attacks, which we have been suffering for some time.
We know about the mobilisations of the comrades of Parque Alcosa in Valencia and we are in profound solidarity with them, since we know they are trying to do the same as we are and that we have the same interests.
Yesterday at our first assembly we called for a gathering/demonstation and open assembly for Wednesday the 16th November, against the cuts, unemployment, precarious working conditions and the closure or worsening of services in the social sector. We also want to make you aware of this call in order that on the same day you could also have a gathering and assembly in Valencia (we do know not anyone in Castellon but if you do, it would be great if they could participate). We believe that a joint call would be more effective and visible.
We think that this would be the beginning of a future cooperation and coordination that could bring about unified actions faced with the outrages of the Generalitat Valencia.
We await your response and please accept our cordial greetings.
Workers’ Open Assembly (Alicante)
We invite you to a gathering and after an Assembly next Wednesday 16th November in the Plaza de la Montaneta (Alicante) at 18.00 and would ask you to make this as widely known as possible!!
Attached is the agenda, thanks!!!
AGAINST CUTS AND NON-PAYMENTS BY THE GENERALITAT VALENCIANA IN THE “SOCIAL” SECTOR, EDUCATION AND HEALTH
NO TO LAY-OFFS
NO TO SERVICE CLOSURES
WORKERS AND SERVICE USERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY
WE PROPOSE FORCEFUL AND COORDINATED ACTIONS TO AVOID THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SOCIAL SERVICES AND THE WORSENING OF THE CARE IN EDUCATION AND HEALTH
WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER AT 1800 IN THE PLAZA DE LA MONTANETA (ALICANTE)
WORKERS’ OPEN ASSEMBLY OF VALENCIA
[email protected] [339]
The announcement is open to users, to families and workers from other sectors of workers, faced with trying to stop the economic policies that are daily worsening the living conditions and basic rights of everybody.
The proposed agenda for the Workers’ Open Assembly of Alicante 16th November:
Manifesto of the assembly of workers, users and other sectors of workers. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.
1. Mailing of the protest to the Generalitat. To evaluate the outline drawn up by the responsible work group.
2. Proposal to create a commission against unemployment and the closure of services. To evaluate the proposal.
3. Actions against the Generalitat.
4. Coordination with the comrades of Valencia and Castellon, preliminary information on the tasks carried out.
5. Organisation of work, the possible creation of a work commission.
6. Next assembly (a calendar of the next assemblies) and the name of the assembly (the name used so far has been provisional).
If a comrade or workers’ collective wishes to propose another point, please let us know:
[email protected] [340]
[1] ie, the Plataforma de Trabajadores de AFEMA, the nucleus of militant social care workers who initially called for the open assembly.
Today those involved in the riots that arose in several cities across England between 6th and 9th of August continue to appear before the courts, with many given exemplary sentences that far exceed those usually handed down for the particular offence. They are being punished for their participation in a riot as much if not more than for any crime they committed.
In the immediate aftermath of the riots a discussion developed within the revolutionary movement about the class nature and dynamic of the riots. Left communist organisations and anarchist groups, such as Solfed, saw the riots as arising from the nature and contradictions of capitalist society but criticised the attacks on other workers, whether directly or as the result of setting fire to shops above which workers are living. Others saw the riots as an attack on the commodity and on capitalist relations of production. Some have drawn a distinction between these riots and those of the 1980s, arguing that the latter were more clearly against the forces oppressing and attacking the working class, in particular the police. The following article attempts to contribute to this discussion by looking at the relationship between the riots and the class struggle by placing them in the framework of the nature and evolution of the class struggle. The first part, published here, considers the question in the context of the history of the workers’ movement and the general nature of the class struggle. The second part will look more specifically at the summer riots in the UK.
Those who side with the working class cannot accept the language and framework given by the bourgeoisie. The confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie inevitably involves the working class appropriating goods and property from the bourgeoisie and confronting its forces of control, at times with violence, whether this be the food riots of the 18th century, the struggles to organise and win wage increases in the 19th or to overthrow capitalism of the early 20th. For the bourgeoisie anything that threatens its rule and that imposes on the sanctity of property is rioting, looting, criminal and immoral and calls forth a desire for revenge that leads to repression, incarceration and at times massacres. Thus when the ruling class talks of “riots” we should not be too quick to follow them.
Nor should we be too ready to dismiss any action as that of the lumpenproletariat. While the Communist Manifesto analysis of “the dangerous class” which “may…be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution” but whose conditions of life “prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue” correctly describes a process that has existed throughout capitalism, and which may be increasing under present circumstances, it is also clear that this is not an immutable category.
Those who side with the working class must judge any event by the extent to which it advances or retards the struggle of the working class to end its exploitation. This is above all a historical perspective; immediate gains may not always translate into long term acquisitions. Thus evaluating any particular event means understanding its impact on the working class’ weapons of struggle: its organisation and its consciousness.
Marx and Engels outline the dynamic and unity of these two aspects in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. On the one they hand they describe the development the unions (the form that the mass organisations of the working class took at that time) and the struggles they engaged in and comment: “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers”. On the other, they describe how “The bourgeoisie itself…supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education” before going on to argue that the communists are “practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others…theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march…” Organisation and consciousness; consciousness and organisation; these are the mutually reinforcing qualities of the working class, the fruit of its historical and international being and struggle. They are not identical and arise and manifest themselves in different, but related, rhythms. Elements can and do come to the proletariat from other classes and contribute to its development, but the origin, dynamic and strength of that development arises from within the working class.
In considering the general question of how the working class struggles and the specific question of the place that riots have in that struggle, there are two aspects to the critique the workers’ movement makes: theoretical analysis and practice.
In the Condition of the Working Class in England published in German in 1845 Engels set out the position in which capitalism places every worker (regardless of gender despite the language of the following quotes): “…the working man is made to feel at every moment that the bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy…in our present society he can save his manhood only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie”. He then sketched an outline of the development of the revolt of the working class: “the earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole…The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority.” The working class moved on to oppose the machines that excluded some and dominated others and then to develop unions, first in secret and then openly, to defend their interests by keeping wages up as much as possible and preventing the bourgeoisie from dividing the class with differing rates of pay for the same work
In this analysis Engels made clear that the working class had both to challenge bourgeois legality and be ready to use force when necessary. He gives an example of a strike by brickmakers in Manchester in 1843 when the size of the bricks produced was increased without any increase in wages. When the owners posted armed guards “the brick-yard…was stormed at ten o’clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns” and the workers succeeded in their purpose of destroying the newly produced bricks. More generally, he comments that “the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power when they cannot change it” and gives the example of the attacks on the police that he states take every week in Manchester.
However, neither Marx nor Engels saw violence and law-breaking as revolutionary in themselves and were ready to criticise actions that went against the development of the class struggle, even when they appeared spectacular and confrontational. Thus in 1886 Engels strongly attacked the activity of the Social Democratic Federation in organising a demonstration of the unemployed which, while going through Pall Mall and other rich parts of London on the way to Hyde Park, descended into attacks on shops and looting of wine shops. Engels argued that few workers took part, that most of those involved “were out for a lark and in some cases were already half seas over” and that the unemployed who participated “were mostly of the kind who do not wish to work – barrow-boys, idlers, police spies and rogues”. The absence of the police was “so conspicuous that it was not only we who believed it to have been intentional”. Whatever one might think of some of Engels’ language his essential criticism that “These socialist gents [ie the leaders of the SDF] are determined to conjure up overnight a movement which, here as elsewhere, necessarily calls for years of work” is valid. Revolution is not the product of spectacle, manipulation, (deleted: ‘violence’) or looting.
The practice of the working class
For all the theoretical critique developed by leading figures within the workers’ movement, the most eloquent critique was that which flowed from the actual practice of the working class. In the history of the class struggle, the question facing the working class was not simply whether any particular moment was violent and “riotous” or not but the extent to which it took place on a working class terrain and was controlled by the working class. Amongst the many instances of unrest, riot and insurrection that took place in the last decades of the 18th and the first of 19th it is possible to distinguish between those where “the mob” was manipulated by the bourgeoisie and those where the emerging working class struggled to defend itself and to survive.
Amongst the former, were various incidents intended to stir up religious antipathy, whether it be against Catholics or dissenters and also ‘popular’ political movements, such as that led by Wilkes in the later 18th century. An example of the first are the Gordon Riots of 1780 which began with marches to the House of Commons in protest at concessions given to Catholics and led on to attacks on Catholic churches and the property of rich Catholics and was only stopped when the mob turned its attention to the Bank of England. This loss of control highlights one of the dangers facing the bourgeoisie in its efforts to use the mob: it may slip out of its control. This is illustrated in the movement led by Wilkes, which was essentially a struggle between different factions of the ruling class, when the movement created to back his campaign began to merge with industrial action, and revolutionary slogans were raised.
Amongst the latter, can be seen the food riots that took place in many parts of Britain, which were often characterised by the seizing of food from merchants and its forced sale at a lower price. These movements could be very organised, lasting several days without violence, with the merchants being given the money that the people deemed to be a “fair price”. The latter also included the Luddite movement that took place at various times in the Midlands and north of England and which sought to protect the wages and working conditions of the working class in the face of rapid industrialisation and the reorganisation of patterns of life and work. The movement was characterised as much by its organisation and popular support as by the machine breaking popularly associated with it. The bourgeoisie responded with a mix of force and concessions. At its height in 1812 more than 12,000 troops were deployed between Leicester and York and the total value of the property destroyed has been estimated at £100,000 at contemporary prices.
In The Condition of the Working Class in England Engels traced the development of unions and above all of Chartism that flowed from these first efforts of the working class. For Engels Chartism was “the compact form of the opposition to the bourgeoisie”; “In the Unions and turnouts opposition always remained isolated, it was single working-men or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men…but in Chartism it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie…” Chartism may have been the first political organisation of the working class and it may have struggled for goals such as universal suffrage that were later given as reforms to contain the struggle, but in its time its struggle was revolutionary and in that struggle it was ready to use violence when necessary. The general strike and armed insurrection were discussed and found expression in the Newport rising of 1839 and the general strike of 1842.
Throughout its history working class struggles have been faced with the necessity to use violence at times. The liberals and pacifists who denounce violence never see that ‘ordinary’, ‘peaceful’ life under capitalism is a continual act of violence against the exploited. This is not to praise violence in itself but to recognise that it is an unavoidable part of the class struggle. In his history of the class struggle in the US Louis Adamic shows how the particularly brutal exploitation and repression meted out by the bosses in the US sometimes prompted an equally forceful response.
We can return to Britain to look at the particular example of the Tonypandy riot of November 1910. This was part of the wider Cambrian Combine dispute and arose after the miners were locked out by the mine owners who alleged that they were deliberately working slowly. Other mines came out in support and 12,000 miners took part, closing nearly all the mines in the area. The bourgeoisie responded by sending in police and troops with violent confrontations resulting between the police and the workers. The riots broke out when workers attempted to stop strike-breakers from entering one of the mines to keep the pumps working, leading to hand to hand fighting between the workers and the police. By midnight, after repeated baton charges by the police, the workers were forced back into the centre of Tonypandy where they faced further attacks by the police. During the early hours of the morning shops were smashed and some were looted. The police were not present during the period of looting and it was used by the bourgeoisie as a pretext to call for military intervention. Many workers were injured and one killed as a result of the clashes. The wider dispute prompted reflection amongst miners in the South Wales Miners’ Federation and contributed to the development of a current that challenged the leadership of the Federation and advanced syndicalist ideas in the pamphlet The miners’ next step, published in Tonypandy in 1912.
Time and again the essential question is not how violent a struggle is – whether one uses that as a measure of its proletarian or non-proletarian nature - but the context in which it took place and its dynamic. Thus alongside the history of struggles that advanced the interests of the working class there is another strand of actions that did the opposite and took the working class off its terrain. To give a few examples:
- In the summer of 1919, ‘race riots’ broke out in Liverpool and Cardiff following the discharge of black and white sailors. Trade unions that later became the National Union of Seamen complained about black sailors being given jobs when whites were unemployed, and in May 1919 five thousand unemployed white ex-servicemen complained to the Mayor of Liverpool about black workers competing with whites for jobs. In June black ex-serviceman and their families and homes were attacked. In Liverpool crowds of two to ten thousand people attacked black people on the streets and in Cardiff Arab and black areas were targeted and three people were killed with many more injured.
- In May 1974 the Ulster Workers Council organised a general strike of Protestant workers in opposition to supposed concessions to catholic workers. The strike was controlled by loyalist political and paramilitary organisations and while there is some evidence that workers were reluctant to participate, it successfully divided the working class.
The critique made by the working class is at its most eloquent when it challenges the power of the bourgeoisie and begins to assert the human society it carries within it against the inhuman regime of the bourgeoisie as it did in the Paris Commune of 1871, in the revolution of 1905 in Russia and in the revolutionary wave initiated in Russia.
The basic question of these movements was not so much the direct appropriation of property but the question of power, expressed in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the reorganisation of society.
This lies at the heart of the analysis of the Paris Commune made by Marx in The civil war in France, issued by the International Working Men’s Association in 1871. He emphasises the Commune’s opposition to the organisation of the state, expressed in its first measure that suppressed the standing army and replaced it with the National Guard. Under the conditions of siege in which it existed the Commune could but indicate the direction of the social reconstruction it aspired to “The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts… Another measure of this class was the surrender, to associations of workmen… of all closed workshops and factories…” The elected members of the Commune - the majority of whom were working men - and its administrators were all paid average worker’s wages. The church was disestablished and education made available to all: “the priests were sent back to the recesses of private life… the whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.” (p.71). Attempts by the French government to starve the Commune failed and a regular supply of food was maintained.
The revolution of 1905 saw the appearance of strike committees across large parts of Russia to control the struggle in individual factories and their development, by coming together and becoming permanent elected bodies, into soviets. In short, a movement from the immediate economic struggle to the more general struggle and its fusion with the political struggle for power. Questions of immediate survival were addressed within this wider context: thus workers fired during strikes at the Putilov works “established relief measures, among which were four soup kitchens” The centre of the revolution, the St Petersburg Soviet became involved in the organisation of daily life, including preventing censorship of the press by the state and giving instructions to the railways and post office. In Moscow, the soviet issued directives “regulating the water supply, keeping essential stores open [and] postponing rent payments for workers…”
In 1917, this situation was repeated and then went further as the working class took power from the bourgeoisie: “in many cases the collapse of the central government and local bureaucracies turned these instruments of revolution into governmental bodies that intervened in and arrogated to themselves administrative functions.” When the disruption of revolution led to food shortages in urban areas “local soviets independently adopted stringent measures of alleviation. In Nizhni Novgorod, for example, exportation of bread was curtailed; in Krasnoyarsk, the soviet introduced ration cards; in other places ‘bourgeois’ homes were searched and goods confiscated.” In The history of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky wrote “In the Urals, where Bolshevism had prevailed since 1905, the soviets frequently administered civil and criminal law; created their own militia in numerous factories, paying them out of factory funds; organised workers’ controls of raw materials and fuel for the factories; supervised marketing; and determined wage scales. In some areas in the Urals the soviets expropriated land for communal cultivation.”
Even in struggles less dramatic than those already mentioned the methods of the working class come to the fore. Thus, during the first days of the mass strike in Poland in 1980 representatives from the striking factories came together to form the Inter-Factory Committee (MKS in Polish), which “controlled the entire region and resolved transportation and food distribution problems.”
Thus, we can draw a number conclusions about struggles that take place on a class terrain, whether it be a single strike or a revolutionary movement. Firstly, violence is not an end in itself nor a simple expression of frustration, but a means by which the working class takes and defends power in order to change the world. Secondly, when commodities are appropriated this is done above all as a means of maintaining the collective struggle and it is the use value of the commodity that dominates rather than its exchange value. Thirdly, they are marked by and strengthen collective action and solidarity. The perspective of the such struggle is always towards the future, towards the transformation of society.
North 11/11
A second part of this article on the riots that took place in August will follow.
Kent Communist Group Public Meeting on the ‘Anti-Parliamentary’ Tradition in Britain
This report has been written by our close sympathiser Mark Hayes whose book was the basis for the presentation given to the meeting. As the report makes clear, the Kent Communist Group is a very welcome sign of a growing interest in revolutionary politics in the UK as elsewhere.
On 25 November the Kent Communist Group held a meeting in Canterbury on the ‘Anti-Parliamentary’ Tradition in Britain presented by Mark Hayes, author of The British Communist Left.
The KCG is a new group formed in 2011 active in and around Canterbury University – for more see their blog https://kentcommunistgroup.blogspot.com/ [342]. We’re also reprinting their statement here for information. We think that, whatever its specificities, and whether or not it survives and develops further in 2012, this group, like others that have appeared (like the class struggle forums in Manchester and other British cities), is a very encouraging sign of a commitment to proletarian political activity and of a growing interest in discussing revolutionary politics faced with a revival of struggles worldwide and the deepening capitalist crisis.
Despite being held at 6.30pm on a Friday night in an out-of-the-way
university lecture hall some distance from the town centre, November’s meeting attracted around 20 people. In addition to members of the KCG these included representatives from the ICC, the Communist Workers’ Organisation, the Anarchist Federation, Socialist Party of Great Britain and The Commune, as well as former members of the ICC and half a dozen other students from the university.
The title of the meeting was chosen by the KCG themselves, but as the presentation explained, the left communist tradition is much more than ‘anti-parliamentarism. Focussing on the period at the end of the first world war it showed that opposition to parliamentary activity was a major trend within the early Third International, basing itself on the concrete experience of the seizure of power by the soviets in Russia and the counter-revolutionary role played by social democracy, the Labour Party and trade unions. Far from being an ‘infantile disorder’ as Lenin argued in his notorious pamphlet, anti-parliamentarism was a practical response to the need to develop new forms of mass organisation based on general assemblies, in order to wage an autonomous struggle to overthrow decadent capitalism. Despite eventual defeat, the left communists around Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Dreadnought fought for these positions against the growing trend towards opportunism and centrism in the International itself, while still attempting to form a principled communist party in Britain and fighting for their positions within it.
There was no vocal disagreement with these arguments in the meeting. Instead, the discussion that followed was around two main areas.
The first was dominated by the SPGB whose interventions focused on the need for us today to work in bourgeois parliaments in order to achieve a majority vote to peacefully overthrow capitalism. ‘Why not use parliaments?’ was the question asked by one SPGB speaker. This argument, which has been consistently advocated by this group since 1904, allowed other speakers to repeat the answer given by the left communists of the 1920s: because firstly the power of the bourgeoisie no longer resides in parliaments but rather in the executive apparatus of the state, and secondly because the exploiting class will never willingly give up its power peacefully through some simple vote. The peddling of such arguments today can only help to spread illusions in bourgeois democracy at a time when the power of this mystification is being unmasked by the realities of the economic crisis and increasing examples of mass revolt against it, in Greece, Spain, the Middle East...
The second area of discussion was of more interest in terms of understanding the issues and concerns of a new generation coming towards revolutionary politics and militant activity today, with a whole range of questions and assertions by ‘non-aligned’ students (and also by the Anarchist Federation). Isn’t the whole concept of class outmoded? ‘I’ve never even been in a factory, nor am I likely to’. Isn’t it better to talk instead of ‘the 99%’? Hasn’t the working class in Western Europe been decimated by or integrated into capitalism? Doesn’t the very term ‘communism’ put people off or make them think of Stalinist Russia? ‘We should forget old arguments, go out into the community, and listen to ordinary people’s concerns’....
On the face of it these sound like the same questions raised in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the revolutionary movement was just re-emerging from the counter-revolution. What are we to make of such questions today? In fact they are typical of discussions we’ve had with many others in the students’ struggles and the Occupy movement internationally, and despite their many weaknesses, and the continuing weight of the past, these movements, like the ‘Indignados’ movement in Spain, and the struggles in Greece and Israel, represent an important development of class consciousness – for much more on this crucial issue see the article on social movements in International Review no. 147. [343]
In short, without underestimating the difficulties for the recovery of the class struggle, the situation today increasingly provides concrete answers to such questioning and helps dispel the mystifications behind them – as they were to an extent at the meeting. And whatever confusions were expressed, we can certainly say the discussions among the comrades present were marked by an openness and very fraternal spirit which gives us confidence that they can be overcome.
MH 12/11
We are the Kent communist group.
The aggressive attacks on public service provision and the austerity agenda of the ruling class are symptoms of an ongoing crisis of capitalism. These austerity measures are a way in which the capitalist class attempts to cut costs in order to restore its rate of profit. Today the crisis is not simply a cyclical downturn but shows a system which has become obsolete, which cannot even reproduce that class whose work sustains it – the working class. With this in mind the overthrow of capitalism, and the misery it causes - Poverty, War, and Environmental degradation – is a necessity.
The alternative to capitalism is communism, and by this we do not mean the horrors of Stalinism, or the state dictatorships of the USSR and its ilk. What happened in Russia and other “socialist” countries, was not a challenge to capitalism, but its consolidation in the hands of the state. Whilst private property was abolished the state remained as the only capitalist, it is for this reason we refer to such regimes as “State-Capitalist”.
Instead we put forward a vision of communism as a stateless, classless society based on the principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need”. In such a society a multiplicity of councils and mass assemblies, directly controlled by workers themselves, direct the productive forces towards the fulfilment of society's needs. Communism therefore represents a real human community, where the free development of each is guaranteed by the free development of all.
The only way that this can come about is through the mass movement of the working class organized in its own interest and through its own organizations. However, the ways in which capitalism divides us through racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia provide a barrier to working class solidarity and must be overcome. Workers must unite across national boundaries. Capitalism is a global system, and its overthrow must also be on a global scale.
The Kent Communist Group is an organization of revolutionary communists, from both Marxist and Anarchist traditions. We seek to provide a platform for cooperation and debate between revolutionary communists. We are not a specific political organization but provide points of common agreement as the basis of revolutionary cooperation.
These Points of agreement are:
- Global Revolution for the overthrow of capitalism.
- Proletarian Internationalism and Opposition to Nationalism of all kinds.
- Opposition to Stalinism and State Capitalism.
As an organization seeking to facilitate cooperation between communists of different traditions & tendencies, we seek to provide activities that are practical and activities that are more theoretical and further our understanding of communism – its history and ideas.
If you are interested in taking part in activities and discussions within the organization, please contact us via email: [email protected] [344]
One of the ideas raised at a recent meeting of the Occupy movement in London has been that the ruling class somehow engineered the current economic crisis in order to preserve its own power. This conception is nothing new; conspiracy theories have been around for as long class society and government and vary widely in scope and plausibility. Even the Ancient World had its share with Nero being accused by contemporary historians of starting the Great Fire of Rome.
In more modern times, ever since the rise to dominance of the Rothschild dynasty in international banking and their role in funding the English in the Napoleonic Wars, the idea of banking elites manipulating economic crisis and war for its own ends has been able to find an audience.
Today, as the masses try to make sense of the economic catastrophe that is shaking the foundation of society to its core, and with mainstream bourgeois politics utterly discredited, many are turning to conspiracy theories in order to try and understand the world situation.
Such conceptions are no longer the province of “crazy” extremists. For example, some opinion polls have demonstrated belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories as being widely held by the general public in the US. A poll in 2004 found that 49% of NYC residents believed parts of the US government had advance warning of the attacks and allowed them to happen.
We in the ICC have also been accused of being “conspiracy theorists” because of our thesis on the “Machiavellianism” of the ruling class. In fact, we think there are fundamental differences between a Marxist analysis of the political life of the ruling class and the ideological underpinnings behind many conspiracy theories. This is what we hope to explore in this article.
Another early conspiracy theory surrounds the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 with Lord Salisbury alleged to have either masterminded the plot or have allowed it to continue after discovery in order to justify a crackdown on Catholics in England. This theme of false-flag operations is common in conspiracy theory - that is, a covert operation designed to appear as if it was being carried out by an enemy group or power in order to justify action against it.
Most “false-flag” theories fall at you what might call the plausible or possible end of the conspiracy theory spectrum. Their plausibility is derived from the fact that many real false-flag operations have been planned and carried out throughout history. For example:
· Commonly known as the Gleiwitz Incident, Germany justified its invasion of Poland in 1939 due to an attack by a group of Polish soldiers on a German radio-station. In fact, the operation was carried out by SS commandos dressed in Polish uniforms;
· Operation Susannah was an attempt by the Israeli security forces to plant bombs in various hotels in Egypt which would then be blamed on Islamic extremists, communists, etc. Also known as the Lavon Affair, as the Israeli Minister of Defence, Pinhas Lavon, was forced to resign over the issue;
· Operation Northwoods was a proposed operation submitted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Kennedy administration, suggesting government operatives carry out acts of terrorism in the US and frame Cuba in order to justify military aggression. Although Northwoods was never carried out, it shows beyond question that these kinds of operations are seriously discussed in the upper echelons of the state.
Other examples of proven historical conspiracies include:
· The Ebert-Groener Pact, was a secret agreement Freidrich Ebert (leader of the SDP) and Wilhelm Groener (commander of the Reichwehr) in 1918 during the German Revolution. This was an alliance for counter-revolution between left and right, with the left providing the political cover (the ruling SDP saying it carried out its action in the name of the workers) while the right provided the muscle, the brutal Freikorps who later evolved into the Nazi SA and SS.
· The Propaganda Due (P2) Lodge – “a state within a state”[1] – had tentacles spread throughout the Italian ruling class. It has been linked to both the Mafia and the Vatican and included Italian politicians, business men and state functionaries (including the police and security services). P2 came to light in 1981 during investigations into the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. It also alleged to have been closely linked with the mysterious “Operation Gladio”;
· Operation Gladio itself was initially established by NATO as a “stay-behind” operation in the event that the Soviet Union invaded Europe or a “communist”[2] government seized control of a European state. Strongly linked to the right-wing of the bourgeoisie and organised crime, these structures would attempt to disrupt political and social life under the new regime, through subversion and terror. Various trials and investigations have seen allegations of Gladio and P2 involvement in terrorist events in post-war Italy. Although Gladio was primarily focused on Italy, similar operations were in place throughout continental Europe and Gladio has become a short-hand term covering them.
It is, therefore, a matter of historical record that such conspiracies do exist. Naturally, this doesn’t mean that every event is the product of conspiracies, but nor does it mean that we can naively dismiss any discussion of bourgeois machinations as “just” conspiracy theories.
It goes without saying that while some conspiracies have been proven to exist and others, while not categorically proven are at least plausible, there are many conspiracy theories which are utterly without foundation.
These conspiracy theories usually have very similar characteristics:
· The world is secretly controlled by a covert group that ranges from Jews, Freemasons, bankers (who coincidentally often happen to be Jewish) and even aliens;
· All significant world events are actually the product of the machinations of this clique.
Ironically, the propagation of such conspiracy theories often has its origin (or is at least facilitated) by state organs. The infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, supposedly the minutes of a meeting attended by world Jewish leaders as part of a plot to take over the world, was actually a forgery created by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana.
The Jewish people have, of course, long been the target for accusations of conspiracy. Even the word ‘cabal’, often used to describe a group of plotters, derives from ‘Caballa’, a form of Jewish mysticism. Many modern conspiracy theories, even when they are not the overtly anti-Semitic rantings of the far-right, are still ideological descendents of the kind of hatred embodied in the Protocols. More modern theorists may talk sincerely about “international bankers” and a “global elite” rather than “international Jewry”, but the essential ideological structure is the same. After all, much of the resentment towards Jews was derived from the perception of their dominance of the banking system and the fact that they represented a visible minority with supposed loyalties to something other than the crown or the national state. These sorts of conspiracy theories are thus tightly interweaved with nationalist sentiments. As a side note, the influence of this is even seen on leftist ideology which officially repudiates nationalism and racism - the ideology of anti-globalisation is explicitly bound up with the idea of global capitalists who undermine the national state and exploit its peoples. The underlying similarities with the paranoid ideology of the Nazi regime are obvious.
Communists have also been a popular target for conspiracy theories. In the US, the Protocols were republished in 1919 by the Public Ledger in Philadelphia with all references to Jews replaced with “Bolsheviks” and calling it the “Red Bible”. Drawing on Marx’s Jewish background, anti-Semites have always equated communists and Jews and it was inevitable that the Russian Revolution would be identified with the Jewish conspiracy. The vast literature written on this subject is worthy of an academic treatise in itself but it is safe to say that the well-known total identification between “Jews” and “Bolsheviks” by the Nazi regime is the logical consequence of this line of thought.
While most can see the paranoid fantasies of the far-right for what they are, it is worth pointing out that mainstream bourgeois history has largely interpreted the Russian Revolution along conspiratorial lines. Instead of being the conscious act of the masses themselves, historiography often reduces the Revolution to a coup d’état by the Bolsheviks. Once again, we see that conspiracy theory, for all its avowed rejection of mainstream thought, is not a million miles away from the fundamental axes of bourgeois ideology even if it exaggerates certain aspects to the point of absurdity.
Officially, the bourgeoisie disavows conspiracy theory. In fact, the very term is a pejorative intended to imply that the very idea of conspiracies in the democratic state is so ridiculous that no right-thinking person could possibly believe them. Despite this, as we have briefly examined, the bourgeoisie indulges in conspiratorial activity all the time. Moreover, its own view of history is conspiratorial, a chronicle of ceaseless rivalry between cliques seeking control of the state, of manipulation of the masses, etc.
Conspiracy theories orientated around libels towards particular groups are an expression of the racism and prejudice that’s endemic to capitalist society; in that sense they have a spontaneous character. But they are also employed consciously by the state in order to justify action against certain groups. The venomous lies propagated around the Jews have been used to justify brutal pogroms throughout history.
Similarly, conspiracy theories around communists were used in efforts to mobilise counter-revolution in the period after Red October, both in Russia and beyond. The “Red Scares” in the US, for example, were propagated in order to support the policy aims of the US state. In the first period, the aim was to decapitate the political organs of the working class. The ideological offensive wasn’t limited to communists: anarchists, union members (especially the IWW), strikers of any sort were all routinely denounced as dangers to respectable society. This was part of the international counter-revolution unleashed to crush the revolutionary wave.
In the second Red Scare, the infamous period of “McCarthyism”, the policy aims certainly had a social dimension but were primarily orientated around the imperialist rivalry between the US and its Russian rival. The US ruling class was concerned about the appeal that Stalinist ideology had for the working class and had already uncovered several active Russian spy-rings.
What of conspiracy theories that denounce the state (the 9/11 Truth Movement is an example)? In some respects, they represent the extreme distrust that the petit-bourgeoisie has for the state and big capital. It is no accident that the home of modern conspiracy theory is among the right-wing libertarians in the United States. On the face of things, these conspiracy theories appear to challenge the mythology of the democratic state. But, in fact, they play a role in preserving that very mythology because - in an expression of the historic impotence of the petit-bourgeoisie - they are unable to provide a real alternative to bourgeois democracy. Instead, they are reduced to the entirely utopian demand of calling on the state to be what it pretends to be, the democratic expression of “the people”. For example, John Buchanan stood for the US Presidency in the 2004 election on a “Truther” platform. The more radical elements that see this approach as the futile exercise it is are condemned to holing up in mountain retreats with stockpiles of automatic weapons, waiting for the final apocalypse to descend.
The more paranoid varieties also serve another role. In the first instance, they allow any serious discussion of the inner workings of the bourgeois class to be dismissed from mainstream consciousness through guilt by association: partly because of the ludicrous nature of some of their claims, but also their unsavoury associations with the extreme right and religious fundamentalism.
Although, as we have seen, their underlying themes are not new in themselves, their modern forms are certainly influenced by one of the classical expressions of decomposing capitalism: the tendency for bourgeois ideology to become more and more openly irrational. In part, they are also a response to the growing chaos of capitalist in its everyday, material reality, and it’s no accident that there are close links to the rise of New Age and religious fundamentalism. David Icke, the classic representation of the New Age version, talks of alien lizards that secretly rule the world while Millennialist Christians believe they are living in the time supposedly foretold in the book of Revelations and that the coming of the Antichrist will be accompanied by a totalitarian “New World Order”. Nearly 20% of US Christians (roughly 16% of the country’s population) believe that Jesus will return within their lifetimes[3]. Sales of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, one of the earliest popular paperbacks on the “End Times” had sold over 28 million copies by 1990, in spite of being more or less falsified by failed predictions. The Left Behind series, a fictionalised account of the Apocalypse, has sold millions of copies (in 1998 the first four books held the four top slots of the New York Times best-sellers list).
Many more examples could be given, underlining the fact that such theories have a growing influence on mainstream culture and politics. The impact of “End Time” ideology on the right-wing of the US ruling class is undeniable and we might also point out the successful television series “The X Files” which took up and widely popularised the UFO variety of conspiracism.
But aren’t Marxists (or the ICC at least) also conspiracy theorists? As mentioned above, we stand by the thesis that the ruling class is fully capable of organising elaborate conspiracies in order to further its aims. We identified some historical examples earlier in this article. We also identify an “elite” (the capitalist class) which has concentrated all political and economic power into its hands. Superficially, it would seem, we follow the basic pattern of conspiracy theories.
It is to be expected that, as Marxists, we subscribe to a materialist theory of reality and accordingly reject the notions of that we are living on the brink of Armageddon or that alien lizards are secretly in control of the planet. But why, for example, do we reject the idea of a secret global elite (who are capitalists after all) controlling the entire world, manipulating wars and crises in order to further their own ends?
The reason is based on our understanding of how capitalism functions. While conspiracy theorists may rail against the lizards, the bankers, the Bilderberg Group, etc. they cling to one of the deepest illusions that the bourgeoisie offers: the idea that someone, somewhere, is in control. It seems easier to lay the horror and waste of decadent, decomposing capitalism at the door of a grand conspiracy than understand it for the tragedy it truly is: that is, a society where humanity (even the ruling class) confronts its own economic and social activity as something alien and beyond its control.
The laws of capitalism function independently of the will of capitalists, regardless of how desperately they try to control them (usually through the medium of the state). For example, the current crisis is not the result of the machination of some global elite - on the contrary, the tendency towards crisis more and more escapes their control in spite of their machinations. While it is certainly true that this or that faction of the bourgeoisie will attempt to engineer war or crisis[4] to further their ends, it is important to remember that these aims were usually focused against another faction of the bourgeoisie.
The capitalist class is founded upon the principles of competition, a mechanism that capitalism cannot escape from. Competition is deeply entrenched within the economic processes of capitalism and cannot be overcome by an act of will. This element is expressed with the ruling class’s political and social life in the form of cliques, competition between individuals, corporations, nation states and alliances of nation states. Tendencies acting against competition certainly exist - statification, monopoly, etc - and are exacerbated in the era of decadence, but they can never fully overcome it, merely displace it to a higher level. Competition between companies becomes competition between states; free trade is sacrificed to mercantilism; wars are fought over markets and natural resources and tend towards more and more global conflagrations (world wars). Machiavellianism is a product of the alienated consciousness of the ruling class, the competition of each against all and does not offer the bourgeoisie any means of escaping from the fundamental contradictions in either its economic, ideological or political life.
The highest unity achieved by the bourgeoisie takes place in a revolutionary period, when they are forced to confront the threat of a conscious, organised working class. The Ebert-Groener Pact mentioned above is an example of the intrigues the bourgeoisie is capable of during this situation, but the difficulty of the ruling class maintaining its unity in such a dangerous situation was expressed in the ill-fated Kapp Putsch.
For Marxists then, the bourgeoisie can never achieve the kind of permanent unity required to fully control the evolution of society. Conspiracy theories of the type discussed here thus offer neither a method for understanding the historic crisis of capitalist society, nor do they provide any programme for overthrowing it. Nonetheless, we must expect the influence of conspiracism to grow in the present period as the systemic crisis deepens and class consciousness remains very weak. Communists cannot simply dismiss adherents to such conceptions but confront and expose the reactionary roots of these ideas, while insisting on the genuinely Machiavellian nature of the ruling class.
As the class struggle gathers pace and the proletariat once again feels its own power it will abandon conspiracy theories in favour of its own historic method: Marxism.
Ishamael 8/1/12
[2] Communist in this context was obviously the Stalinism represented by the Eastern Bloc, although it could also apply to any left-wing party that opposed US Imperialism. Naturally, none of these movements represented a genuinely communist or working class politics but similar methods would undoubtedly be used against any true movement of the working class.
[3] pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Beliefs_and_Practices/religion-politics-06.pdf
[4] For example, the Asian crisis in the late-90s was strongly exacerbated by actions taken by the US bourgeoisie to push forward their economic domination in the region but the situation quickly spiralled out of control and threatened the wider global economy with serious consequences for the US economy.
In March 11th 2011 a gigantic tsunami flooded the Japanese east coast. Waves as high as 12-15 meters caused incredible damage. More than 20.000 were killed by the tsunami; thousands are still reported to be missing today; an uncountable number of people lost their home. On the whole planet a big part of the population has settled at the coasts or near coasts; most people live on a narrow space jammed together, more and more threatened by the irreversible rise of sea water levels. The flood waves of the tsunami showed all the dangers that flow from such dense settlement along the coasts.
But contrary to all expectations of the government, a disastrous accident occurred in the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The earthquake and the tsunami brought to the fore the potential dangers arising from both settlement along the coasts in times of climate change and the way the ruling classes deal with nuclear power. For reasons of space, we want to focus in this article on the consequences of the nuclear melt-down.
After the disastrous accident in Fukushima the evacuation of the population began too late and it did not cover the necessary no-go zone. Even though it may be objected that the rescue measures and the evacuation were delayed and made more difficult due to the consequences of the tsunami, the government wanted to avoid a large scale evacuation, because it did not want the population to become aware of the scope of the danger and wanted to downplay the whole situation. All of a sudden it became obvious that the responsible people in Japan (both the company which runs the nuclear plant, Tepco, and the government) had never expected such a scenario and that the safety measures in case of an earthquake and a tsunami of such a magnitude were totally insufficient. The planned emergency measures and the means of emergency intervention were quite inadequate and made hi-tech Japan look like a poorly equipped, helpless giant.
A few days after the disaster, when the possible need for an evacuation of the metropolitan area of Tokyo with its 35 million inhabitants was discussed in the government, this idea was immediately turned down because they simply did not have the means to implement it, and moreover it would have shown the state to be in danger of collapse.
In and around the nuclear plant the recorded radiation reached fatal heights. Shorty after the disaster Prime Minister Kan “demanded the formation of a suicide team of workers who would have to attempt the task of easing the pressure in the plant”. The workers who intervened on the site were totally ill equipped. “For some time there was a lack of dosimeters, and a lack of appropriate and admitted safety boots. One worker reported that the workers had to bind plastic bags with cellotape around their shoes instead. Very often it was impossible for the workers to communicate with each other or with the control centres. Many of the workers had to sleep on the premises of the site, they could only cover themselves with lead blankets. The critical values for male power plant workers in emergency situations was increased on March 15th from 100 to 250 mSv per year”. In several cases workers could only undergo a health check weeks or months later.
25 years ago, at the time of Chernobyl, the collapsing Russian Stalinist regime, due to a lack of other resources, found nothing else to do but send a gigantic army of forced recruits to fight the disaster on the spot. According to the WHO some 600,000 to 800,000 liquidators were sent, of whom hundreds of thousands died or became ill because of the impact of radiation or cancer. The government never published any official reliable figures.
Now, 25 years later, hi-tech Japan tried desperately to extinguish the fire and cool the site amongst others with fire hoses and by spraying water from helicopters. In contradiction to all previous planning Tepco was forced to use large masses of sea water for cooling the plant and to dump the polluted water into the Pacific Ocean. And while the Russian Stalinist regime 25 years ago forcibly recruited hundreds of thousands of liquidators, economic misery forced thousands of workers in Japan to risk their lives. Tepco recruited in particular among homeless and unemployed workers in the poorest area of Osaka, Kamagasaki. In many cases they were not told where they had to work, and they were often not informed about the risks.
But not only were the lives of the liquidators put at risk; the civilian population was also put at risk. In particular children in the radiated area were exposed to high doses. Since the emissions superseded any previously recorded value, the government decided to consider the exposure of children in the Fukushima area to a radiation level of 20 millisievert as “not dangerous”.
During the first days the rulers in Stalinist Russia tried to stay altogether silent about the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl; the government of democratic Japan was equally determined to hide the full scope of the catastrophe. The people in charge in Japan showed no less cynicism and contempt for life than the Stalinist regime in power at the time of Chernobyl.
It is impossible today to assess the long-term consequences of the disaster in a realistic manner. The melt-down means that the melted fuel rods have formed a gigantic radioactive clot, which has penetrated through the pressure container. The cooling water has become extremely contaminated. It needs permanent cooling, and new gigantic masses of contaminated water accumulate all the time. Not only the water but also the “unprotected” reactors emit caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are called ‘hot particles’, which can be found all over Japan, including Tokyo. So far there are no technical means available to dispose of the nuclear waste piled up in Fukushima. The cooling process itself takes years. In Chernobyl it was necessary to construct a sarcophagus which will have to be torn down at the latest in one hundred years time to be replaced by another one. There is not yet any solution in sight for Fukushima. However, in the meantime contaminated water accumulates and the authorities in charge do not know where to dispose of it. A large part of the cooling water is directly poured into the ocean, where the currents spread it across the Pacific, and its consequences for the food chain and for human beings cannot yet be measured. The Japanese northeast coast which counts as one of the richest fisheries will be affected, even the Bering Strait with its salmon resources may be hit[1].
Because the population density in this region of Japan is 15 times higher than in Ukraine the consequences for the population cannot yet be assessed.
The meltdown thus reveals that the consequences of such a nuclear disaster are totally out of control. The authorities in charge had the choice between plague and cholera. Either let the melt-down happen without any means of intervention or attempt to cool the site with sea water, thus accepting a further spread of radioactivity through the dissemination of the extinguishing devices. The helpless government opted for the contamination of sea water through highly radioactive fire fighting water.
The attempts to dispose of the contaminated soil in the surrounding area displayed a terrible lack of responsibility and lack of scruple. Up until August 2011 in the town of Fukushima some 334 school yards and nurseries were cleaned. But the authorities do not really know where to dispose of the contaminated soil. For example in Koriyama in the Fukushima prefecture, it was just buried in the soil on the school yards themselves. 17 out of 48 prefectures of Japan, amongst them Tokyo, reported that there were contaminated slicks, but the prefectures do not where and how to get rid of them. Even as close as 20 km to Tokyo radiated soil was recorded. Thousands of buildings still need to be scrubbed of radioactive particles. Even forested mountains will probably need to be decontaminated, which might necessitate clear-cutting and literally scraping them clean. Japanese media have reported that the government is planning an intermediary deposit for millions of tons of radioactively contaminated waste. Since there is no solution some of the radioactively contaminated garbage has been burnt[2]. This is a way of spreading radioactivity even further via the smoke. This helplessness vis a vis the piles of nuclear waste casts a light on the impossibility of decontaminating the radioactive waste.
The specificity of the production of electricity through nuclear energy is that the radiation does not stop once the nuclear power plants at the end of their operation time are switched off. The process of nuclear fission is not terminated once the nuclear power plant has been switched off.
What is to be done with the nuclear waste, because any material which has come into contact with radioactive material is contaminated?
According to the World Nuclear Association, every year some 12,000 tons of highly radioactive waste accumulates. Until the end of 2010 some 300,000 tons of highly radioactive waste had been piled up in the world as a whole, out of which some 70.000 tons can be found in the USA. In 2008 in Russia some 700,000 tons of radioactive waste were stored, out of which 140,000 tons came from European nuclear sites. At the Hanford Site in the USA some 200,000 cubic meters of radioactive material need to be disposed of. In France more than one million cubic meters of contaminated soil is stored (‘Nucléaire, c’est où la sortie’, Le Canard Enchainé, p74), The geological storage which has been practiced or planned in several countries, for example in old mines, is nothing but a temporary makeshift, the dangers of which the defenders of nuclear energy stay more or less silent about. For example in Germany 125,000 barrels of nuclear waste are deposited in an old mine in Asse; these barrels are eroding due to the influence of salt; contaminated lye is already escaping from the barrels. In the German case intermediate storage experts Gorleben found out about the danger of landslides. Similar risks have been diagnosed in most of the dumpsites. This means that while the “normal running” of a nuclear plant is full of dangers, the disposal of nuclear waste is a totally unsolved question. The people in charge have been placing all the nuclear waste into dumpsites, leaving behind a pile of nuclear waste which an endless number of generations will have to cope with.
And the “normal” running of a nuclear plant is not as “clean” as always claimed by the defenders of nuclear industry. In reality enormous masses of water are necessary for the cooling of the fuel rods. Nuclear plants have to be constructed at rivers or shores[3]. Every 14 months in each reactor one quarter of the fuel rods need to be renewed. However, since they are extremely hot, after their replacement they have to be placed into the spent fuel pit, where they need to be cooled for a period of 2-3 years. The cooling water, which is pumped into rivers, leads to a thermal pollution. Algae develop, fish perish. Moreover, chemicals are emitted into rivers (e.g. hydrochloric acid, sodium, boric acid, detergents) In addition water is also polluted with radioactivity, even though only in small doses.
Are the holders of power, the people in charge, interested in clarifying the root of the problem? Obviously not! As a matter of fact the entire construction plan of the power plant in Fukushima was not adapted to the danger of earthquakes and tsunamis. By now, it has become known that the operating company Tepco covered up many nuclear incidents; important safety deficiencies were camouflaged; widely criticised faults in the safety system were not eliminated, partly because the plant was to be closed after 40 years of operating time. The Japanese state, which usually intervenes heavily in the industry and is known for its intervention through the MITI in the economy, in order to strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese capital, almost issued a blank cheque to the nuclear industry. Even when the manipulation of inquiry reports or the trivialisation of nuclear incidents came to the fore, the state did not intervene more strictly. At any rate, under the weight of competition and the worsening crisis, there is a worldwide trend for less and less money to be invested in maintenance and fewer and fewer qualified staff to be employed in maintenance and repairs. The capitalist crisis makes the nuclear plants even less safe, as safety standards are lowered by employing less qualified staff.
But above all it has become clear that of the 442 operating power plants worldwide many of them were built in earthquake-prone areas. In Japan alone more than 50 power plants were constructed in such areas. In the USA more than a dozen nuclear plants with a similar risk were constructed. In Russia there are many nuclear power plants without an automatic mechanism for shutting down in case of nuclear incidents. In many Russian nuclear power plants cracks and surface subsidence were reported. Chernobyl was probably no exception: such a disaster can occur at any time again. (Le Monde p49). In Turkey the reactor Akkuyu Bay was built near the Ecemi fault. India and China are planning to build the most new nuclear power plants. Yet China with its 27 new nuclear power plants under construction is one of the most seismologically active countries[4].
Saudi Arabia is planning to construct 16 power plants, not least to be better armed against Iran.
In Pakistan a new reactor is to be opened near Lahore, where there is a moderate to high risk of earthquakes. Taiwan has 6 reactors although the country is in one of the most endangered seismological zones. Instead of considering the dangers of nature capitalism has constructed global time bombs. And while safety standards in the most highly developed countries have turned out to be insufficient, the safety philosophy is even weaker in those countries which are starting to draw on nuclear energy. They have even less experience in dealing with incidents and accidents. Hard to imagine what might happen in case of a nuclear disaster…
Moreover the operating time of old nuclear power plants which were to be shut down are now to be prolonged. In the USA their operating time has been prolonged to 60 years, in Russia to 45 years.
While the control mechanisms over nuclear industry by states on a national scale have proven to be incomplete and insufficient, on an international scale the states are opposed to restrictive safety standards or too much intervention by international monitoring organisations. National sovereignty takes precedence over safety.
In Germany the government decided in the summer 2011 to abandon nuclear energy by 2022. As an immediate measure, some nuclear power plants were switched off shortly after the Fukushima explosion. Does German capital act in a more responsible manner? Not at all! Because only a few months before the same government had prolonged the operating time of several nuclear power plants, i.e. before Fukushima it had planned to maintain nuclear energy. If, however, it has decided to abandon nuclear energy now, this corresponds on the one hand to a tactical political move, because the government hopes to improve its chances of being re-elected; and on the other hand there was an economic calculation, because German industry is very competitive with its alternative energy production know-how. German industry now hopes for very profitable markets. Moreover the whole problem of getting rid of the nuclear waste remains unsolved…
To sum up: with or without Fukushima humanity is still faced with these nuclear time bombs ticking away. In many places they can ignite a new disaster because of earthquakes or other weak points.
Time and again we hear the arguments put forward by nuclear energy’s defenders that nuclear power generated electricity is cheaper, cleaner, and without any alternative. It is a fact that the construction of a power plant costs gigantic sums, which – thanks to the help of state subsidies – are shouldered by the electricity supply companies. But the bulk of the costs of the disposal of nuclear waste is pushed onto society by the operating companies. Furthermore the whole economic calculation put forward by the nuclear lobby does not take into consideration the cost of disposing of the waste. And once the nuclear plants which are more than 50 years old have to be dismantled, there are tremendous costs in tearing them down. In the UK it was estimated that the cost of demolishing the existing nuclear power plants would amount to 100 billion euros, some 3 billion euros per nuclear plant. In the USA they want to make it even cheaper – only 104 million dollars are to be spent for the 104 operating nuclear power plants. In France the demolition of Superphénix will cost 2.1 billion euros (Le Monde, p. 68). And again, the remaining nuclear waste cannot be disposed of in any way.
And if there is a nuclear incident or accident, normally the state has to intervene and come to the rescue. In Fukushima the follow-up cost, the size of which is yet unknown, are estimated to amount to 200-300 billion euros. Tepco could not raise this money. The Japanese state has promised its “help”, provided that the Tepco employees make sacrifices – their pensions are to be cut, wages lowered, thousands of jobs to be axed. Special tax charges are scheduled in the Japanese budget. Having drawn the lessons from previous accidents the operating companies in France have limited their liability to 700 million euros in case of accidents: this is peanuts in comparison to the possible economic costs of a nuclear disaster.
From an economic and ecological view the real costs of the running of the plants and the unsolved question of nuclear waste are a bottomless pit. In every respect nuclear power is an irrational project. The nuclear power companies receive massive amounts of money for energy production, but they shove the follow-up costs onto society. The nuclear power plants embody the insurmountable contradiction between the search for profit and the long-term protection of man and nature.
Nuclear power is not the only danger for the environment. Capitalism practises a permanent depletion of nature. It constantly plunders all resources without any concern for sustainability, for harmony with nature. It treats nature like a garbage landfill.
By now entire stretches of the Earth have become uninhabitable, whole areas of the sea have become poisoned. The system has embarked upon an irrational course, where more and more new technological means are developed to deplete natural resources, while at the same time the investment into this exploitation becomes more and more costly and immense and the risks and potential of destruction increase. When in 2010 at the shores of the leading industrial power USA the oil platform Deepwater Horizon exploded, the investigation into the accident unmasked striking deficiencies in the safety regulations.
The pressure flowing from competition forces all the rivals, who have to invest large sums of money in the construction and the maintenance of production sites and their operation, to try to save money and to undermine safety standards. The most recent example is the oil pollution off the Atlantic shores of Brazil. All this negligence does not just crop up in technologically backward countries. In fact it takes on the most unbelievable proportions precisely in the most highly developed countries, because there competition is often even fiercer.
In comparison to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Fukushima meant that for the first time a metropolitan area such as Tokyo with its 35 million inhabitants was directly threatened.
Nuclear energy was developed during World War Two as an instrument of warfare. The nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities inaugurated a new level of destruction in this decadent system. The arms race during the ‘cold war’ after WW2, with its systematic deployment of nuclear weapons, pushed the military capacity for destruction to the point where humanity could be wiped out in one stroke. Today more than two decades after the end of the ‘cold war’ there are still some 20,000 nuclear war heads which can still annihilate us many times over.
With the nuclear disasters in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima it has become obvious that humanity is not only threatened with annihilation through the military use of nuclear power. Its “civilian” use for the production of energy can also cause the destruction of humanity.
The Japanese government estimated that due to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima the radioactive level of Caesium-137 was 168 times higher than the one provoked by the nuclear bomb of Hiroshima in 1945 (Shimbun, 25/8/2011). The amount of Caesium-137 was estimated to have reached 15.000 Terabecquerel, while the effect of the American atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima was ‘only’ 89 Terabecquerel.
The whole development since the beginning of the disaster shows that the authorities and Tepco lost control, that the scope of the disaster was trivialised, that the costs of the rescue operation were skyrocketing and that the people in charge had not drawn the necessary conclusions. On the contrary. Not only concerning the question of nuclear power, but concerning the protection of the environment as a whole, the ruling class is becoming more and more ruthless – as the results of the recent Durban summit show. The destruction of the environment has been reaching higher levels, and the ruling class is totally unable to change the course of events and to take appropriate measures. The planet is sacrificed for the sake of profit.
Moreover the worsening economic crisis, which sharpened even more in 2011, leaves the ruling class with less room for manoeuvre for protecting nature. Thus capitalism pushes humanity towards the abyss through the effects of the crisis such as hunger, pauperisation and trade wars, shooting wars etc., while its power of destruction threatens the whole of civilisation. The nuclear power plants are only the tip of the iceberg.
A race against time has begun. Either capitalism destroys the entire planet or the exploited and oppressed – with the working class at their head – succeed in overthrowing the system. Because capitalism poses a threat to humanity on different levels (crisis, war, environment) it is insufficient to struggle only against one aspect of capitalist reality, e.g. against nuclear energy. We have to highlight the link between these different threats and their roots in the capitalist system. During the 1980s and 1990s there were many “single issue” movements (such as the struggle against nuclear energy, against militarism, against the housing shortage etc.), which reduced their focus only to one aspect. Today more than ever it is necessary to show the bankruptcy of the entire system, to demonstrate that the system cannot take humanity out of this impasse. It is true that the connections between the different elements are not easy to understand, but if we do not take the link between crisis, war and ecological destruction into account our struggle will end up in the dead-end of thinking that things could be reformed within the system.
Di 1/12
[1] Northeast of Fukushima the two currents, the warm Kuoshio and the cold Oyashio, merge. This is one of the most abundant areas of the earth for fishing. And in this area Japanese fishing boats catch roughly half the amount of fish consumed in Japan. Thus fish supplies in Japan could be endangered. “Such a high emission of radioactivity into the sea has never been measured.” hpnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/Zu_den_Auswirkungen_der_Reaktorkatastrophe_von_Fukushima_auf_den_Pazifik_und_die_Nahrungsketten.pdfttp://www.ip [351]
[2] According to information from Japanese environmental organisations, the government is planning to spread contaminated debris from the Fukushima area across the whole country and to burn it. The Japanese ministry for the environment estimates the amount of building rubble at around 23.8 million tons. As the Mainichi Daily News reported a first shipment of 1000 tons of debris from Iwate to Tokyo took place in early November 2011. The Iwate authorities estimate that this debris contains 133 bq/kg of radioactive material. Before March 2011 this would have been illegal, but the Japanese government lowered the norms in July from 100 bq/kg to 8000 bq/kg, and in October to 10.000 bq/kg. The city of Tokyo announced that it would receive some 500.000 tons of radioactive rubble. https://news.ippnw.de/index.php?id=72 [352],
[3]In France, where more than 44 reactors are located at rivers, more than 57% of the water taken from the sea and rivers is used for the production of electricity. A French nuclear plant, Graveline, which needs 300 cubic meter of water per second, returns the water 12° warmer to the river. And if during dry seasons there is not sufficient water available, some nuclear plants have to be cooled by helicopter. (Les dossiers du Canard Enchainé, ‘Nucléaire, c’est par où la sortie?, le grand débat après Fukushima’, p80)
[4] How much safety is valued by Chinese capital can be seen through the training of qualified workers. China would need each year at least 6000 nuclear experts for the planned new nuclear power plants, but presently only 600 are trained every year. In China some 500,000 dollars are spent every year on safety; in the USA 7 million dollars are spent per year (Le Monde, p. 52).
The ICC attended this bookfair hoping to be able, like last year, to have a stall from which to sell our publications and to participate in the various meetings and forums. Unfortunately, we were informed that we had been refused a stall on the grounds that we were not an anarchist group. This is in a way understandable: we are indeed a marxist and not an anarchist organisation (although the ICC recognises the internationalist currents within anarchism as part of the proletarian political movement). But the fact that there were at least three stalls left untaken on the day, and that many of the participants holding stalls were not exactly of pure anarchist antecedents, points to the fact that we were refused because we are the ICC or because we are part of the tradition of the communist left. We also want to recall last year’s Manchester book fair, where under the influence of the late and lamented comrade Knightrose of the Anarchist Federation, the ICC was able to have a stall. The protests of elements in the Manchester anarchist milieu notwithstanding, Knightrose pointed out that comrades of the ICC were participating in the Manchester Class Struggle Forum alongside various anarchist organisations and that it was ridiculous to bar us from having a stall. This not only expressed a proletarian solidarity but also the need to have real political criteria beyond a blanket condemnation of ourselves being ‘marxists’. Knightrose also put forward the need to have wider criteria for a book fair that could include revolutionary marxists and anarchists. This was also raised in informal discussion at this event.
We should be clear that this is not sour-grapes on our part. We wanted to participate at this event to the full, to sell our literature, to put forward our positions in the many meetings that take place at these events.
That apart, comrades of the ICC sold in the foyer of the book fair and we were extremely impressed when a member of the IWW offered to take some of our literature and place it on their own stall. This expressed, like last year, a degree of proletarian solidarity which was much appreciated by all the ICC comrades.
Further, when a significant meeting on the agenda at this event – a discussion on the summer riots - was cancelled, the comrade from the IWW and another comrade who was participating as an organiser and ourselves pushed for a meeting to take place on the recession and the austerity attacks. This was an important meeting in which twenty or so people took part. The comrade from the IWW gave the introduction and there was an encouragement for all to speak. This discussion was focused particularly on the current phase of attacks upon our class. In many areas of the introduction and also the following discussion we found we had much in common with the comrades attending this forum. For example, the real need to go beyond TUC processions; to link up with the fight back against the cuts; to relate to the international dimension of the struggle. Here the experiences in North Africa and in Spain and France were crucial reference points. The question of creating assemblies was also a vital component of this discussion. We listened with interest to the IWW militant talking about his involvement with organising precarious workers. Even though we don’t agree with the IWW policy of unionising these workers (through the IWW), and with the concept of dual unionism, we recognise that the resistance of this mercilessly exploited layer of the working class is going to play an increasingly important role in future struggles.
Melmoth 27/1/12
We are publishing below a resolution adopted on the developments in Kurdistan, adopted by the recent territorial conference of the ICC section in Turkey. Our resolution, aims to explain clearly who the millions of people encircled by this imperialist war are being forced to give their lives for. It is founded on our position that the only solution for the working class which is being forced into butchering its class brothers and sisters for the sake of the imperialist interests of different nations is class war on the basis of internationalism.
1. The Turkish state is a state which is pursuing imperialist interests both in Kurdistan and in the Middle East in general. The PKK[1], although it hasn't succeeded in becoming an actual state, is acting as the main apparatus of the nationalist Kurdish bourgeoisie in Turkey; it attempts to realize its interests in its area of activity as if it is an actual state and it is bound to rely on the direct or indirect support of this or that imperialist state the interests of which rival those of Turkish imperialism at this or that point. As such, although its forces are weaker compared to those of the imperialist Turkish state and its interests narrower, the PKK is as much a part of world imperialism as the Turkish state. This war which escalated in the recent months in Kurdistan is, like all the wars going on in all parts of the world, an imperialist war.[2] Dying or killing their class brothers or sisters for the interests of their masters is in the interests of neither the Turkish nor the Kurdish workers.
2. The situation in Iraqi Kurdistan and in other Kurdish regions has changed with the entry of the United States into the region. Turkey is a power in the region, and a partner of the United States and so is also a partner of the relationships stemming from this situation. Also, the region is extremely profitable for the Turkish bourgeoisie. It has been demonstrated that the relationship between Southern Kurdistan[3] and the PKK can become tense as a result of certain pressures of the Turkish state. On the other hand, the pressure created by the Kurdish population forces the Southern Kurdish government to look after the PKK. A similar relationship doesn't exist between Iranian Kurdistan and Southern Kurdistan.
3. The Kurdish question is completely tied up with imperialist politics in the Middle East. There are two aspects of this: The first is the influence of the United States, while the second stems from the fact that Kurds occupy a key position in the region. When we look at recent developments, it is possible to analyze the situation as regards the Turkish state as follows: while at times there is a partnership with the Southern Kurdish government, these relationships have shown a tendency to worsen at certain moments as well. In the background is the Nabucco project designed by the United States to pump oil to Europe, avoiding Russia. Following the November the 5th talks in 2007, Turkey's perspective has changed. While the perspective before the summit was advancing with completely military methods, afterwards a different course was taken under the guise of democratic reforms. Behind this lies the security of the Nabucco plan. There is a need for the normalization of this problem in order to stabilise the region. For this reason, it is desired for the problem between the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisies should be solved, as they have mutual long term strategic partners.
4. Despite all this, what the AKP[4] government did beneath all the promises of reforms and talks of democracy was nothing but a continuation of the old policy of war. During the process, thousands have been arrested in the KCK trials[5], hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas were murdered while retreating during ceasefire, extremely heavy handed attacks by the police were made on Kurdish demonstrations resulting in the injury of many demonstrators and the deaths of several, social oppression was encouraged in Turkish cities against the Kurds living there, resulting in lynching attempts. Yet, while the AKP government's strategy remained the same as those of the previous governments, its tactics were significantly different. The AKP government pursued an ambitious plan of stalling the representatives of the Kurdish movement in Turkish politics[6] openly with intrigues and false gestures and the PKK in the background with negotiations, while continuing a policy of repression which essentially remained the same. The last part of the gambit was to be winning the support of the Kurdish masses by giving out different sorts of charity such as food, refrigerators, ovens and so forth and by using religious ideology. This, last point perhaps had been the most critical of the AKP government's plan, since like the rest of the Turkish state they had realised that it wasn't possible for them to defeat the PKK by military force alone. For this reason, they had aimed to become a force first rivaling and eventually surpassing and marginalizing the PKK in Turkish Kurdistan; yet this intrigue, worthy of the old Ottoman empire, ended up exploding in the government's face.
5. The reason this plan did not work out was not because the Kurdish bourgeoisie didn't bite the bait, because quite the contrary they did for a long time. The strategy of the Kurdish bourgeoisie to integrate into the Turkish state and to rule in Turkish Kurdistan as the local apparatus of the Turkish state forced them to put up with lots of moves of its rival just for the sake of remaining on the negotiation table. Nevertheless, eventually the Kurdish bourgeoisie ended up having to make a strong counter-move, saying: “We've been fighting for the last 30 years, and you know as well as we do that we can't solve this with such methods; but let us remind you once again so that we can go back to the negotiation table”. Contrary to other forces bested by the AKP government by such intrigues[7], what was at the background of the fact that the Kurdish bourgeois movement could make such a daring move was the fact that the Kurdish bourgeoisie is not a part of the Turkish bourgeoisie; that it is a separate bourgeoisie which is based on different economic and social dynamics and which draws its strength from different conditions.
6. And yet again, despite all this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie wants capital to come to the region. And in this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of Turkey have mutual interests. The words spoken by Leyla Zana[8] in a conference where she participated with Ishak Alaton, the owner of the Alarko Holding, one of the one of the largest business conglomerates in Turkey, are eloquent: “Until today, they've seen the Kurds only as street vendors and shoe polishers”. This expresses the ambitions of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and for this, the Kurdish bourgeoisie needs foriegn investment in Kurdistan.
7. The Turkish bourgeoisie also wants to create a new image for itself. This includes turning Turkey into a heaven for cheap labor. Needless to say, an important part of this is made up of the Kurdish working class. The current period is one in which attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class are being prepared, especially with the new measures in the public sector. By trying to give the image of a social state, surplus value is being increased. An example of this is the fact that the Ministry of Work is planning a new law which will make it a necessity for every worker to be unionized. A potential for surplus value not used well (!) enough exists in Kurdistan. Kurdish workers are working for very low salaries in numerous sectors. The implementation of this cheap labor policy in Kurdistan is being prepared with the new regional minimal wage policy.
8. This point reached as a result of all these reforms and negotiations has demonstrated once again that only war can come of the bourgeoisie's peace, that the solution of the Kurdish question can't be the result of any compromise with the Turkish imperialist state, and that the PKK is in no way a structure even remotely capable of offering any sort of solution whatsoever. The Kurdish question can't be solved only in Turkey. The Kurdish question can't be solved with a war between nations. The Kurdish question can't be solved with democracy. The only solution of this question lies in the united struggle of the Kurdish and Turkish workers with the workers of the Middle East and the whole world. The only solution of the Kurdish question is the internationalist solution. Only the working class can raise the banner of internationalism against the barbarism of the nationalist war by refusing to die for the bourgeoisie.
[1] Kurdistan Workers Party, a former-Stalinist Kurdish nationalist organization based in Turkey but also operating in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan.
[2] The escalating war in Turkish Kurdistan since the May of 2011 claimed the lifes of hundreds, perhaps thousands of guerrillas, soldiers and civillians and included the armed conflict between the PKK and the army as well as bomb attacks in the cities by the PKK and numerous aerial strikes by the army. Among the civillians dead especially due to aerial bombings are dozens of children.
[3] The Kurdish Regional Government in Southern (ie Iraqi) Kurdistan, lead by Masoud Barzani is basically a semi-independent state today with its own officially and legally recognized army, police force, intelligence agency, flag, parliament, national anthem, airlines and so on.
[4] Justice and Development Party, a center-right populist party which can be appropriately described as a Muslim Democrat party in the fashion of the European Christian Democrats. Close to other moderate islamist parties in the Middle East such as the Justice and Development Party of Morocco, the Freedom and Justice Party controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Renaissance Party in Tunisia among others.
[5] KCK or the Democratic Confederation of Kurdistan is the alleged urban organization of the PKK. In reality, the KCK can be explained as the proto-state of the Kurdish nationalist movement based in Northern Kurdistan. Technically, the KCK includes the PKK which is said to be its guiding ideological power; PJAK or the Free Life Party of Kurdistan, its organization in Iranian Kurdistan; PÇDK or the Democratic Solution Party of Kurdistan, its organization in Iraqi Kurdistan; HPG or the Popular Defence Forces, the armed forces of the KCK; Kongra Gel or the Popular Congress, its parliament formation among numerous other organs and organizations assuming numerous different functions of a state. The KCK trials can effectively be described as a Kurdish Scare.
[6] In other words BDP, or the Peace and Democracy Party, the latest name of the ill-fated legal Kurdish nationalist political party in Turkey which had been forced to change its name over and over again since its first formation as the Popular Labor Party in 1990. A significant amount of the KCK detainies are members of this party. The BDP managed to get 36 candidates elected as independents in the last parliamentary elections, although a number of their elected candidadtes weren't allowed to become MPs for being in prison, adding fuel to the tensions.
[7] Such as the army and the secularist bureaucracy.
[8] A symbol of the Kurdish nationalist movement, Leyla Zana is currently an independent MP in the Turkish parliament, not allowed to join the BDP with whose support she was elected because she still has a political prohibition. Previously elected as a deputy in 1991, Zana obained international fame following her arrest directly from the Turkish parliament in 1994, for the crime of speaking a sentence in Kurdish in parliament and was sentenced to spend fifteen years in prison although she was released in 2004. She is known for having closer ties to the Kurdish nationalist leaders such as Barzani in the Iraqi Kurdistan than most people in the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.
The pundits of the bourgeoisie include China in their collection of economic ‘powerhouses’ known as the “BRICs”. This also includes Brazil, Russia and India, which are all supposedly going to be the salvation of crisis-ridden capitalism. These countries are painted as being at the other end of the scale to the “PIIGs” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). In reality, they’re just two sides of the same coin. The PIIGs have fallen far and fast into open economic crisis, the BRICs are about to, thereby extinguishing the faint hopes of the ruling class of an economic miracle capable of overcoming the mortal crisis of the capitalism. As the ICC's International Review 148 says: “The 'emerging' countries, like India and Brazil, are seeing a rapid reduction of activity. Even China, which since 2008 has been presented as the new locomotive of the world economy, is officially going from bad to worse. An article on the website of the China Daily on December 26 said that two provinces (one being Guangdong which is one of the richest in the country since it hosts a large part of the manufacturing sector for mass consumer products) have told Beijing that they are going to delay the payments on the interest on their debt. In other words, China is faced with bankruptcy”.
In an ominous development for the Chinese economy – and for capitalism more generally – there is a massive building boom/bubble swelling up which, like those in the USA, Ireland, Spain and elsewhere, can only burst, with dire consequences. There is a vast overcapacity shown in the hundred odd million square feet of unusable and unsellable building space in Shanghai. Housing here and in Beijing is priced around 20 times more than an average worker's annual pay. 85% of workers who need one, can't afford a new home. The regime has tightened credit because of rising inflation so, just like Britain, the USA, Ireland, Spain, etc., the soon-to-deflate bubble will threaten the banking system, particularly China's version of ‘sub-prime’, the unofficial grey market banking system financed by the large state-owned businesses of the regime. These losses in turn will adversely impact on the important local authorities of the state who will be unable to meet their obligations. Far from being a beacon of hope, the developing global crisis of capitalism means even more that the Chinese economy is just another factor of capitalist despair.
Developments in working class struggle in China show that it is fully a part of the global wave of class struggle and social protest that has been building up since around 2003. Also, because the extent and depth of the struggles, which now involving second-generation, largely literate migrant workers, events in China have a great potential. Not as an expression of bourgeois self-delusion in any ‘economic upturn’, but to as an important beacon for the world proletariat in the development of the class struggle.
The thousands and thousands of reported “incidents” of strikes and protests in the cities, along with unrest in the countryside are growing in number and intensity. Strikes are getting bigger: the three-day strike early in January in the industrial zone of Chengdu, was, according to The Economist (2/2/12) “... unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government”. Here the workers gained a small increase of around $40 a month, but buying off strikes in such a way, along with overt repression, is no longer sufficient. The media black-out of unrest is no longer enough given the use of microblogs. The frequency of strikes at privately owned factories has also increased in the last year.
In the Pearl River Delta, which produces about one-third of Chinese exports, thousands of workers in Dongguan last November, protesting against wage-cuts, took to the streets and clashed with police. Photos of injured workers appeared on the internet. In the last few weeks there have been more protests here.
The Economist continues, observing recent and developing protests in Guangdong, as taking on a different form, in contrast to the settled and peaceful strikes that took place here in 2010: “...these days, rather than bidding to improve their lot, workers are mostly complaining about wages and jobs being cut. The strikers seem more militant... A report published this month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that compared to 2010, the strikes of 2011 were better organised, more confrontational and more likely to trigger copycat action. 'Workers are not willing this time to accept that they have to make sacrifices, and secondly, fewer are willing to pack up and go home’”.
Repression is still the main weapon of the Chinese state – non-uniformed police are everywhere. But there are dangers in this policy. When a pregnant worker was manhandled by the police in Guangdong recently, thousands of workers attacked the police and government buildings. These workers are unlikely to go back to being settled peasants particularly when the countryside is raising its own form of protests against the effects of the crisis – as in the village of Wukan recently. There are a hundred and sixty million migrant workers (20 million lost their jobs when the economic shock-waves of 2008 hit China) and they are living in the cities. There is nothing for them to go back to and, given that, as migrants, they are supposed to pay for their children's education and family healthcare (which companies are supposed to pay for, but like the minimum wage is largely ignored), another area of class conflict has opened up.
The world economic crisis is deepening and this will have a significant effect on China and its economy. Given the present and developing levels of class struggle in this country, we should expect to see further developments in the struggles of workers in China, building on a number of strikes and protests reported in January.
Baboon, 2/2/12
On 2 February, the football match between the Port-Saïd team Al-Masry and the Cairo side Al-Ahly ended in a bloodbath: 73 dead and a thousand injured. The final whistle had just been blown – Al-Masry had won it - when local supporters, or people claiming to be, invaded the pitch and terraces, viciously attacking players and supporters of the Cairo team. During all this mayhem, with bottles, stones and fireworks flying all over the place, and in which the majority of dead were smothered or trampled in the resulting stampede, the police did not intervene. Even though football matches in Egypt have often seen very violent clashes between supporters, which is why they are often very tightly marshalled by the forces of order, on this occasion a lot of questions have been asked about the attitude of the police. According to a number of observers and testimonies, the police seemed to be allowing this explosion of hatred to take place. There are photos of police officers turning their back on the general chaos, as though nothing was happening; and the question is clearly posed whether this was a carefully orchestrated provocation, with cops infiltrated into the Port-Saïd supporters to stir things up and push things towards a massacre. “This was a programmed war” was the accusation of Ehab Ali, Al-Masry’s team doctor who witnessed the passivity of the security forces for a whole hour.
It looks like the new government was attempting to send out a message to opponents of the new regime made up of the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, via this assault on the Al-Ahly supporters[1]. These supporters, many of them sons of workers, took a frontline role in the fight against Mubarak and were very active in the confrontations with the police in Tahrir Square. They see themselves as ‘ultras’, i.e. a radical part of the rebellious youth which is out to change things in Egypt. One of their favourite slogans is “down with the military regime”, and one of their favourite songs is “All Cops are Bastards” – they often wear the acronym “ACAB”. Some of them have even given out a pamphlet called “The crimes against the revolutionary forces will not stop or scare the revolutionaries”.
During the match on 2 February, the Port Said supporters were chanting slogans in favour of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and thus in opposition to the Cairo supporters. But what might have been just another episode in the nationalist and localist craziness which is increasingly infecting sport, and which is assiduously promoted by the media, now became a real “lesson” aimed at the opponents of the existing regime.
This was not just aimed at the young people who make up the ultras – many of whom have overcome the divisions between different groups of supporters to fight together against the post-Mubarak regime – but also and above all at the entire Egyptian population[2]. And it seems that the population knew it: the day after the tragedy, Cairo and other towns saw two days of very violent confrontations in which the police responded to the crowd with live ammunition. In the capital, the Interior Ministry was besieged and attacked. Officially there were ten deaths and hundreds of injuries, which made the population even more angry: “they know how to protect a ministry, but not a stadium”, as the demonstrators put it. They also called for the execution of Field Marshall Tantawi.
This reaction by the population was entirely legitimate, but it fell into the trap of responding to repression by rioting. Immediately after the macabre match in Port-Saïd, the town, along with a number of others in the country, was immediately and heavily patrolled by the army, proof that the regime knew what it was doing, that it was expecting riots and was ready to deal with them.
We need to look at things in a sober way. Popular revolt in the street, however ‘ultra’, is not enough to change society and it does not equal revolution. Let’s not forget that what forced Mubarak to stand down last year was not just the social revolt but above all the workers’ strikes which spread throughout the country and really scared the Egyptian and international bourgeoisie. The Egyptian and American bourgeoisie accelerated the departure of the old dictator in order to prevent this class movement from coming to the fore, from developing to the point where it could undermine illusions in ‘democracy’ and serve as an example to the working class across the world.
Wilma 17/2/12
[1] Henri Michel, who coached the Egyptian team Zamalek between 2007 and 2009, declared on RTL: “I have never felt that sort of danger in any part of Egypt. Passions were inflamed. Accidents can happen but there’s a long way between that and the drama that took place. I never thought such a thing could happen”.
[2] It was probably no accident that these events took place at a time when massive demonstrations were being planned to commemorate the “battle of the camels” of 2 February 2011, when Mubarak’s thugs attacked the demonstrators in Tahrir Square.
The winter months have now placed some distance between us in the here and now and the days when the Occupy Movement created a wave of occupations that seemed unstoppable across the U.S. Was this movement an ephemeral whim of the masses’ imagination, an accident of history, or rather part and parcel of the general and wider struggles put forth by the working class and other non-exploiting strata of society against capitalist oppression? The heat of the movement has clearly dissipated. This seems to be the case when we note that while during the early days of the movement the state’s repressive apparatus had to ‘soften’ its most ferocious tactics of social control in the face of the population’s indignation against police brutality and sympathy with the protesters, by January it was carrying out violent evictions of the most resilient encampments in the nation virtually unhindered. We can also point out that while in Oakland in December the brutal attack against an Iraq war veteran—which resulted in his hospitalization in a coma—sparked the Occupy Oakland blockade of the Longview port and the protest march by thousands of Oakland workers in its support, the social situation today has returned to a relative, if perhaps temporary, calm. Disregarding these signs that the initial vitality and authenticity of the movement have for the moment exhausted themselves, the Occupy Movement’s organizers are planning a ‘general strike’ for May 1st, and are putting forth calls to all affiliated groups to support this action. How successful can this action be in the face of a virtually demobilized movement? Can it develop a perspective for overcoming capitalism -- the root cause of humanity’s suffering-- against which at least initially the movement seemed to be to crystallizing, in isolation, without linking up to the wider struggles of the working class? And, most importantly, who can be the subject of a radical transformation of society today? The activists and organizers who today are largely at the helm of a demobilized movement? The labor parties and attendant unions? Or the non-exploiting masses themselves, consciously and autonomously organized?
As Marxists, we understand that in the period of capitalist decadence the burning questions about the future that decaying capitalism offers –the lack of perspective, the dislocation of a sense of collective, the sense of uncertainty, anxiety, alienation, the never ending wars, the degradation of the environment etc— find expression in spontaneous eruptions, without warning and without being planned in advance, as it used to be the case during the period of the ascendance of capitalism. Then, youthful capitalism had the ability to grant significant and long-lasting reforms. This made it possible to organize struggles with the help of the then existing permanent organizations of the working class –the unions and the socialist parties. But capitalism’s entry in its epoch of decadence irreversibly changed these conditions. The spontaneous nature of the masses’ movement is what has characterized the struggles seen across the globe in the last year and a half. It is what gives them authenticity.
The Occupy Movement in the U.S. did not escape from this fundamental tendency. But once the heat of the struggle is gone, the desire to come together to discuss the big social questions of the day and the determination not to accept the brutalization of existence imposed by capitalism cannot find expression in any permanent form of organization without it becoming co-opted by the superior forces of the state and its apparatus, of which the unions and leftist/bourgeois political organizations have become a part. Without the life given by the spontaneous mobilization of the masses, the call for a general strike is totally voluntarist, when not an outright manipulation by leftist organizations or their activist attendants. An affinity group affiliated with the Anti-Bureaucratic Bloc in Oakland notes how the Occupy Movement has not been able to resist the distortion and usurpation of its originally non-hierarchical General Assemblies by professional activists who established a practice of linking up with the leftist apparatus of the bourgeoisie and the unions. According to this group, this contributed to the de-vitalization of the movement. On libcom.org [196] on January 29, 2012, the day after the Oakland Police Department cleared the encampment there for the second, and last, time, the group writes: “…it was beginning to look like a class-based critique was becoming acceptable discourse. With the usual professional Leftist intelligentsia more firmly in control of the content and direction of Occupy Oakland tactics and strategies, however, the likelihood of a return to that initial wide appeal -- based on the workable and attractive principles (although not without their unique problems) of non-hierarchical decision making and the refusal to issue demands -- seems practically non-existent…bureaucratic tendencies began creeping into the open with [the leadership’s] cozying up to Organized Labor, an early self-destructive move (for Occupy as a whole, not for the leadership, for whom it was an astute career move).” We can discuss with the comrades who posted this on the significance of “non-hierarchical decision making” and the (attractive principle) of “the refusal to issue demands”. But we agree with their general assessment. The Occupy Movement, or whatever is left of it, is today in the hands of experienced activists and organizers. As such, we think it is in great jeopardy of missing the opportunity for a genuine development in the direction of class, proletarian positions.
But what do we mean by this? There's certainly a difference between a small group like Student Loan Justice (a group whose signs were a fixture at the original Occupy Wall Street encampment), for whom the campaign to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy is probably a sincere expression of a desire to improve the deteriorating conditions of life experienced by the younger generations today, and those professionals who hop from social movement to social movement, turning them toward partial struggles, reformism, or premature fights with the cops. Instead of capitalizing on the common grievances of the protesters and the wider working class, such as the necessity to defend one’s self and each other against the concerted attacks of crisis-ridden capitalism, whether they come in the form of precariousness, evictions, student debt peonage, lay-offs, chronic unemployment, cuts to benefits or social spending, the job of professional activism is to take advantage of the movement’s momentary questioning as to whether or which goals to pose for itself, who to turn to for help, and the real causes of society’s impasse to harness the movement’s genuine openness and derail it into reformist and single-issue campaigns. This only contributes to exhausting the potential and initial elan of the struggle into a myriad of meetings and marches, the aim of which is not to build unity and buoy the sense of self-confidence, but rather to weaken their potential.
This was clearly noticeable in the actions of west coast activists who worked in close ranks with the union apparatus there to fragment the potential for unity and solidarity with the working class which was expressed by Occupy Oakland when it shut down the Longview port in solidarity with its struggling longshoremen (see our article online on this issue). While the ‘rank and file’, genuine base of the Occupy movement on the west coast called on workers’ solidarity and organized meetings with longshoremen and other workers, activists worked around the clock and behind their backs to make sure that the unions’ presence would disrupt, intimidate, and discourage attempts by Occupy protesters and workers to build real ties of unity. This is because the more experienced activists and organizers vie for a position of power and status and identify rather with the bureaucratic tendencies of a union’s apparatus than with any spontaneous and autonomous expression of real class solidarity by the ‘rank and file’ protesters. We think these elements have done and are doing their best to occupy the terrain of the struggle ahead on the May 1st general strike in order to be better positioned to dampen all incipient potential for the movement to start at a deeper, wider, more politicized level than when it first started in September. However, even the kind of activism represented by the campaign to reform the student loan system can be absorbed by the ruling class. This campaign, if successful, would integrate more and more with bourgeois legality to "work out a solution" or it would turn to something disruptive and then disappear, but if it was successful the state would seek to bring it into the fold, so to speak, in order to enhance the mystification about its ‘benevolent’ nature.
Activism fully works for the benefit of the ruling class and in its class terrain. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party uses the issue of the widening income gap between rich and poor as a campaign issue, posing as the party that champions the plight of the least lucky and the purveyor of benevolent relief. In this way, rather than encouraging a deepening of the understanding of how capitalism works, why it can no longer offer long-lasting reforms, what needs to be done to address the social problems of the world, and who is to do so, activism ties the movement to the belief that the capitalist state can intervene on behalf of the dispossessed, and that capitalism can still offer ‘opportunities’ and prosperity. Whether the terrain of the struggle will be diverted from the real issues posed by decadent capitalism into the dead-end of reformism and the democratic campaign or otherwise will depend largely on the general situation of the class struggle both nationally and internationally. This does not prove that the movement was from the beginning an orchestration of the bourgeois left and had no proletarian expressions of its own. Neither does it necessarily mean that any genuine expressions of possible politicization are defunct. It does mean, we believe, that the direction the movement ultimately finds its roots in its original difficulties and weakness. Whether these will ultimately prove to be the death knell of the movement, it is impossible to say today.
As it is often the case in similar circumstances, there are certainly individuals within activism who are genuinely interested in advancing the cause of the struggle of the exploited and who cannot be identified as ‘the enemy’. However, their political development, their clarity as to the goals and methods of the struggle will not advance so long as they don’t break free of the traps of activism, which will make every attempt to steer them away from real class positions. As we conclude from the https://libcom.org [196] post, and as we discuss in the article on the west coast longshore workers’ struggle, this is the situation on the West Coast, but what of the East Coast? New York City is, after all, the birthplace of the movement. However it cannot be said that it provides any clearer leadership and way forward. On the New York City Occupy website there is a very interesting post on the present state of the General Assembly and spokes council there, with interesting replies as well, clearly showing that the Occupy Movement as it was at its birth is now good and defunct. Here is a little excerpt: “Proposal to end spokes and the GA
I propose that we end both spokes council and the GA for several reasons.
…Spokes and the General Assembly are a recreation of the US Congress, without the judicial and executive branches to check the legislative branches power.
Both spokes and the GA have completely screwed over the most vulnerable occupiers. Spokes showed how at a whim it could just end a housing program for occupiers. Essentially people were thrown to the wolves by this decision. Both bodies have shown a complete disregard for marginalized voices such as the mentally ill or homeless. Violence has broken out not just because disruptors are bad, but the total disregard of body itself for certain voices has triggered some conflicts…
A secret organization like spokes does NOTHING for OWS in terms of public relations. As neither body is functional, both OWS and Spokes are an embarrassment to the movement…Ending spokes and the GA would not hamper the movement at all. Individuals and working groups could still work on their projects. In fact as both the spokes and GA absorb time from events or projects that occupiers could be working on, freeing up this time would help rejuvenate the movement. Spokes council meetings in particular take people away from downtown Manhattan, and this divides the movement.
Activists who are fighting against the system and against laws they consider injustice shouldn’t submit to a new system with equally oppressive structures (out of control legislative process)"1
While the post contains a number of confusions regarding the structure and purpose of a general assembly, it nonetheless gives a good idea of the situation today. To illustrate how very difficult it will be for the movement to express its voice freely and openly as it had been able to do initially, we can take a look at the calendar of events leading up to the ‘general strike’ of May 1st which Occupy’s organizers have set up. It is filled with guest speakers and personalities from the union apparatus, leftist activism, and radical academia who will hold teach-ins about most notably May Day and the general strike. This being said, we still affirm that this movement belonged to the working class. A social movement of this importance cannot be understood in isolation. When we place Occupy in the context of the international situation, as the movement itself did at the beginning, when it clearly stated it found its inspiration in the movements of the Indignant in Spain and in the students’ and workers’ protests in Greece, the broader context of its grievances is immediately grasped. But the movements in Spain and Greece themselves are the product of a historic period that opened up in 2006 with the anti-CPE movement in France and the Vigo, Spain massive workers’ struggle, breaking the reflux in consciousness which resulted from the campaigns around the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in 1989. The Occupy Movement of the U.S. is inscribed in this dynamic, both regarding the incipient, even if admittedly confused, questioning of capitalism, and the difficulties it is facing in finding a clear class terrain, class identity and class consciousness. In this sense, it is important to assess Occupy Movement on the basis of both its origin and its development in order to trace clearer perspectives for the struggles to come and in order to more fully understand the problems the working class faces in the present period. This can inform us as to how to help it overcome its difficulties.
However, it is not the scope of this article to present the weaknesses of the movement since its inception. We invite our readers to see this article on the democratic illusions in the movement [358], and elsewhere in our press and online articles. But we think it is important to at least point out that the Occupy Movement’s confusions regarding its own identity, its goals, its tactics, and its form of organization created the conditions of isolation from the wider struggles of the working class and opened the door to the intrusion and substitution by strata, political groups and individuals that do not belong to the working class terrain and who have expertly manipulated the openness and amorphous state of the consensus process to distort the functioning of the General Assemblies and install themselves at the movement’s helm. Further, the movement’s own illusions in democracy –expressed in its insistence that the ‘injustices’ of capitalism can be addressed by amending the Constitution, or the tax code, or the juridical definition of corporation- block and obscure a clear understanding of capitalism, which is not regarded as a social relationship between exploited and exploiters defended by the state, but as the usurpation of a state otherwise neutral and beneficial by ‘corporate greed’. This can further provide leftists with ammunition to steer the movement in the direction of electoral and reformist campaigns aimed at defending the integrity of the capitalist state. Given these conditions, what can the most genuine elements within the Occupy Movement do to find a way forward to their questioning, to their preoccupations, without drowning in the swamp of reformism and activism?
Undeniably, the working class is still confronting innumerable difficulties in developing its struggles and its consciousness. It is also true that it has not taken the lead in many of the important mobilizations we have seen in the last year and a half, and that when it has mobilized, even massively, even in general strikes, it has not been able, for the most part, to force the state to relent its brutal attacks. But just as it is impossible to understand the Occupy Movement in the isolation of the U.S., so it is impossible to understand why the working class is the revolutionary class of our epoch if we look at each of its struggles in isolation from their wider historical context. One thing for certain we can say: the string of austerity measures –layoffs, precariousness, cuts to services and wages, cuts to pension and health benefits, cuts to social security in the form of lengthening the stay at work—gives the lie to the ‘theories’ that sprouted up in the 1970’s about the working class having ‘integrated’ as part of some ‘labor aristocracy’! Indeed, one important characteristic of capitalism is that it has created, for the first time in history, a class that is both exploited and revolutionary. This is because capitalism’s mode of exploitation rests on the most developed form of private ownership. The working class does not own the means of production and its existence cannot therefore be based on the exploitation of other classes. On the contrary, it is obliged to sell its labor power to the owners of the means of production. Its conditions of existence are thus completely at the mercy of the market, the general conditions of the production, sale, and realization of commodities. It is this generalization of commodity relations that rests at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism, not ‘corporate greed’, as some occupiers believe, and that generates the crisis of overproduction, with its sequel of layoffs, brutal attacks against the very class that produces all the wealth of society, degradation of the environment as capital desperately tried to reduce its costs of production, wars, etc. A class that produces all the wealth of society without owning a little bit of it has only one interest to defend: the abolition of the conditions of its own exploitation, i.e., the abolition of capitalism itself. This is why the essential place the working class occupies in these generalized relations of commodity exchange puts it at the center of a social conflict which can only be resolved through massive, generalized, and unified class confrontations against the oppression of capital. These confrontations are not inevitable, but it is the working class that will be at their center stage when, and if, they develop. Without a doubt, the working class is still far from developing the capacity to take the system head on and change it through a revolution. But if this task seems enormous from the point of view of the working class, it is because it still needs to find the confidence in itself that when it unites the various threads of its indignation and discontent of which we are seeing the sparks, it will be the unstoppable force in society that can lead the whole of humanity toward the perspective of a new world. For all these reasons, it is when the working class and the Occupy Movement find and forge links of solidarity on a class, autonomous terrain away from unions, activism, and reformism that a real perspective for a real, radical change can open up.
Ana, March 2012
The article below was originally published in February of last year in the aftermath of the shooting death in Sanford, Florida of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by "neighborhood watch captain" George Zimmerman. The case provoked weeks of protests as local authorities initially refused to prosecute Zimmerman citing Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law," which they claimed gave Zimmerman the right to defend himself.
Since the article was published, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida's Governor filed second-degree murder charge against Mr. Zimmerman. This lead to a two-week long trial that has just concluded with Mr. Zimmerman's acquittal. For weeks, the trial dominated the cable news networks, even knocking the scandal around NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden out of the spotlight. The media's lurid media spectacle around the trial featured legal experts handicapping the state and defense cases as if it were a sporting event, right-wing commentators fearing race riots if Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted, and Civil Rights leaders pinning the future of racial justice on a successful conviction.
Given the media circus around the trial, we think it is appropriate to "republish" our original article on the shooting now. In the article, we argued that whatever the outcome of the investigation and possible trial, there could be no "justice" for Trayvon Martin, his family or any other young person subject to similar treatment obtained through the bourgeois justice system.
Clearly, the trial has been a powerful confirmation of our analysis. Prosecuting one man, regardless of how distasteful we may find his character and actions, cannot solve the deep rooted historical scars that produce racial stereotyping and prejudice as persistent social problems in the United States (and many other countries); nor can it compensate for the galloping social decomposition that produced the ideological and social conditions that are ultimately responsible for the tragic and fatal events of that day in February of last year.
Even when the bourgeois criminal justice system functions as it is supposed to (and it rarely does), it can only ever consider the facts and circumstances of individual cases according to its own very limited legal principles; it cannot get to the root of the social, historical and economic problems that produce the context for these individual cases. Bourgeois justice may have exonerated Mr. Zimmerman for now, but it cannot excuse the violence, tragedy and suffering that the continued existence of capitalism will continue to produce everyday. This would be the case even if Mr. Zimmerman had been convicted and sent to prison. Whatever the verdict was, it was only ever going to be the case that there will be more Trayvon Martins to come, as long as this inhuman system continues to exist.
On February 26th, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed seventeen-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a "neighborhood watch captain," as he walked home from a local convenience store in Sanford, Florida. The official investigation into the killing by the local authorities has been fraught with difficulties and controversy. About the only thing we know for sure is that Trayvon was not carrying any weapons at the time he was killed, carrying only a bag of Skittles and an iced tea he purchased moments before his life was tragically snuffed out.
For his part, Mr. Zimmerman claims to have acted in self-defense, shooting Trayvon only after their confrontation turned violent. Citing Florida's controversial "stand your ground law," Zimmerman's camp claim that he had no legal duty to retreat before using deadly force to defend himself. But what was Zimmerman doing in the first place pursuing a young man through the neighborhood for no other crime other than being black and wearing a hoodie?1 Zimmerman's camp claims he was acting to protect his neighborhood, which had been subject to a string of recent burglaries reportedly carried out by young black males. But why should he feel as if it was his job to protect his neighborhood? And protect it from what exactly? In bourgeois society, it seems only individuals can be responsible for crime. Rarely, and only in passing, are social and economic conditions such as the erosion of the social fabric, a pervasive each for their own mentality, mass unemployment and poverty that produce crime in the first place ever considered. No, under capitalism, the poor are considered the "dangerous classes" which it is the duty of all good citizens to keep a watchful eye over. Unfortunately, for Trayvon Martin, in the United States, being young and black is generally enough to raise suspicion that one is up to no good.
Unsurprisingly, this episode has provoked a tremendous outrage in the African-American community in Florida and indeed across the entire country. But the outrage is not just limited to the official African-American spokespersons; a deep sense of remorse and regret are gripping the country over the fact that a young man could lose his life in such a brutal way apparently having done nothing wrong.
The last several weeks have seen Trayvon's case become a cause célèbre for the national civil rights organizations, as well as the national media. Last week, over 30,000 people participated in a rally in Sanford, with similar rallies being held in cities a far afield as Chicago and Washington, DC. The outspoken civil rights activist, Reverend Al Sharpton has taken up Trayvon's case and even President Obama has entered the discussion, saying that, "If he had a son, he would look like Trayvon."2 Of course, the President fails to mention that if he had a son, he wouldn't be walking down the street without Secret Service protection. Even the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, who have not shied away from playing the race card over the course of their bitter campaign, have been forced to denounce the shooting. 3
From our perspective as revolutionary Marxists, Taryvon's death is indeed a terrible tragedy. How revealing is it that in our day and age, a chain of events can occur where a short trip to a local convienence store ends in a brutal death? This incident stands as a stark reminder that whatever advances might have been made over the past several decades, the quest for true human solidarity across racial lines will always be frustrated as long as capitalist society still stands. Trayvon's family, the African American community and all those concerned with human dignity have every right to be outraged by this terrible event. This incident is but one more example that the social system under which we live—capitalism—is more and more characterized by senseless violence and a total disregard for human life. Even if Zimmerman's fears about a pending burglary were correct, there is no rational reason why this should have lead to Trayvon's brutal death in the neighborhood streets. Under capitalism it seems the protection of property rights trumps the dignity of human life. Clearly, this incident should cause us all to think about the root cause behind this type of senseless interpersonal brutality.
However, the involvement of the various bourgeois civil rights organizations and the narrative being developed by the national media appear to be designed to make sure we never get to the underlying issues that have produced this brutal outcome. Over the last several weeks, the civil rights organizations have turned the outrage over this shooting into a campaign to pressure the state into making an arrest and prosecuting Zimmerman. 4 Calls for "Justice for Trayvon," and "No Justice, No Peace," have been the dominant slogans of the rallies and the press conferences.
Indeed, the local police and prosecutors seem to have bungled the investigation into this case from the beginning. This fact seems to finally have been acknowledged by the bourgeois authorities. The Sanford Police Chief has temporarily stepped down, and the local prosecutor has recused himself from the case. Florida Governor Rick Scott—himself a radical Tea Party Republican—has appointed a special prosecutor and a grand jury is scheduled to examine evidence in the case in early April with the goal of finding out if there is any charges that can legally be brought against Zimmerman at all. Moreover, word is that the federal Justice Department is reviewing the evidence to see if there is anyway that Zimmerman can be charged with a federal hate crime—a charge that could bring a life sentence if he were convicted, since the underlying act led to Trayvon's death. 5
Clearly, the failure of the state to bring any charges against Zimmerman has fueled the outrage that continues to brew. How can a man shoot an unarmed teenager to death in the street and no charges are brought? This must be the result of a racist justice system that does not value the life of black people. If the circumstances had been reversed, had it been an armed black man, shooting a white teenager, certainly the authorities wouldn't be discouraged by the state's odd gun laws from making an arrest?6 Surely, there is a way of making some charges against this man stick? After all, we have all seen Law and Order—we now that when the state wants someone to go to jail, there are always creative ways to find a basis for prosecution. The state's seemingly willful failure to bring any charges of Zimmerman seems to harken back to the brutal days in the struggle for civil rights, when the Ku Klux Klan, and even local law enforcement officers themselves, could murder black people with impunity.
We can certainly sympathize with the frustration and outrage expressed here, but for us these are the wrong questions for getting to the bottom of the senseless and often racist violence that so often characterizes capitalist society. Framing the problem as the lack of prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman, does not escape the horizon of bourgeois justice, which for us is no justice at all in the end. After all, what is the bourgeois justice system? A set of laws and institutions set up above all to protect the sanctity of private property. Its version of justice for the masses is no more than cruel retribution. No serious academic who studies these issues really believes the bourgeois justice system is capable of humanely rehabilitating anyone. Its only purpose is to discipline and punish the bodies of offenders and to convince the rest of us to be content that once the state has extracted its pound of flesh, no further questioning of the root basis of crime is necessary.
We have no way of knowing what motivated Mr. Zimmerman to take the actions that he did. However, given his history of making dozens of phone calls to the police sometimes on the same day, it seems reasonable to consider whether he suffers from some kind of detachment from reality, a perverse identification with the repressive power of the capitalist state, which he strove to emulate. This phenomenon is well known to law enforcement officials, something that has been called "Wanna-Be Cop Syndrome" by some commentators. This may be reason enough to call Mr. Zimmerman's mental health into question, something that even under bourgeois justice could mitigate his personal responsibility for his actions.
However, whatever Mr. Zimmerman's mental state, it seems clear that his actions are only the logical fulfillment of a culture and a society that more and more encourages a "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude towards problem solving. An environment that more and more erodes social solidarity and promotes the most lurid interpersonal competition. Whether it is at the workplace or in the streets, decomposing capitalism seeks to turn everyone into an isolated monad, looking after their own best interests. If you aren't prepared to be brutal and ruthless, you are reduced to the status of a social loser, or worse, in Trayvon's case, cannon fodder in the fulfillment of a sick will to power.
For us, the real story in the Trayvon Martin case is the intersection of such a personality disorder with the social decomposition of capitalist society. Racism may predate the development of decomposition, and maybe even capitalism itself, but today's expression of racial animus take place in a context of the utter degradation of human relations characteristic of a moribund society. Rather than focusing on the question of Mr. Zimmerman's possible individual criminal responsibility (which would allow us to think "justice" could be served by his prosecution), we ask what kind of society produces the conditions that allow a personality such as his easy access to a gun, legitimates his power lust by giving him a position as a "neighborhood watch captain" and then emboldens him to fulfill his power fantasy through the "stand your ground" law? Our answer: a capitalist society in full decomposition.7
The absolutely bizarre law that may or may not allow Zimmerman to escape prosecution in this case seems to us to itself be a function of the social decomposition of capitalist society. These laws—on the books in some two dozen states— revise the common law standard for self-defense by allowing individuals to use deadly force to defend themselves and others without first obliging them to exhaust all opportunities to retreat from the situation. Moreover, many of these laws allow individual citizens to use deadly force to prevent the commission of any felony: even crimes against property such as burglary. Couple these laws with the vast expansion of the right to carry a concealed weapon that has occurred over the last decade and American society begins to resemble more and more the days of the Wild West. In the time of the Tea Party, even law enforcement it seems is being privatized with deadly consequences. American society moves further and further towards embodying the "everyman for himself" mentality that characterizes capitalist decomposition on so many levels.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement officials have generally opposed such laws. As professionals in repression, they know they don't need vigilante loose canons armed to the teeth making their job of policing capitalist society any more difficult.8 Not least because it flies in the face of the ideology of equality and justice and creates a social layer that thinks the only way the law will be enforced is to take it into one's own hands. 9 But in today's political climate, it seems as if doesn't matter what the experts say; the legislative process advances according to its own perverted political calculus that often defies logic. The inordinate weight carried by the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) in U.S. politics has only been magnified by the Tea Party ascendancy, a political fact that makes the main factions of the bourgeoisie more and more uneasy, even as the Republicans repeatedly seek political gain by exploiting fears that the Democrats will take your guns away, and Democrats strain themselves to convince the electorate of their pro-gun credentials in awkward campaign photo-ops involving shotguns and dead animals.
In the end, we don't think that there can be any "justice" for Trayvon in the bourgeois justice system. Zimmerman may or may not be prosecuted by the state in the end. But even if he is, this will not address the social decomposition that produces the conditions that allow an act like this to transpire in the first place. The only way we can transcend these episodes of senseless interpersonal violence is to abolish capitalism itself altogether. Only then can we advance towards building a truly human community, in which each individual is valued according to his unique capabilities in service of the species as a whole. In such a society, there will be no need for police, "neighborhood watch captains" or "stand your ground laws." While the outrage over Trayvon's killing is indeed justified—we don't think we gain very much by focusing on the prosecution of one man.10 We need to call the entire society itself into question. To do less only lets the real criminal off the hook: capitalism itself.
Henk, 03/25/2012
1 Fox News Commentator Geraldo Rivera sparked controversy when he said that Trayvon's hoodie was as much responsible for his death as George Zimmerman was.
2 Matt Williams. "Obama: Trayvon Martin death a tragedy that must be fully investigated." The Guardian. March 23, 2012.
3 Although this didn't prevent Newt Gingrich from scolding Obama about politicizing the tragedy and using it to "divide Americans."
4 Indeed, on the face of it the idea that justice for African-Americans—disproportionate victims of the U.S. bourgeois justice system—involves an arrest and a prosecution seems odd. According to Michelle Alexander, writing in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-Blindness (The New Press: New York) 2010, there are now more African Americans under correctional control as a result of bourgeois "justice" than there were slaves in 1850.
5 Curt Anderson. "Trayvon Martin case: US could bring hate crime charge against George Zimmerman." The Christian Science Monitor. March 25, 2012.
6 Of course, the narrative in this case may be slightly complicated by the fact that Zimmerman's mother is Hispanic. The media seems to have downplayed this fact though as it might disrupt the more simplistic and racially incendiary narrative of a "white man" shooting an unarmed black teenager.
7 In fact, rather than taking steps to prevent such a person from obtaining a deadly weapon, the culture and the laws seem to actually encourage it.
8 The "stand your ground" gun laws are just one example of a growing phenomenon of laws being crafted that totally contradict the consensus of the experts in the fields they concern. This seems to be a growing feature of the U.S. political crisis. Other prominent examples include: the anti-immigrant "Papers Please Laws," which many law enforcement officials have argued only make their jobs more difficult and the non-dischargeability of student loans in bankruptcy, which just about every expert to study the matter has denounced. So irrational is this law that it is now even opposed by some student loan companies!
9 Of course, this doesn't mean that the state wouldn't hesitate to use such social layers in the service of the repression of working-class movements if the situation called for it. Perhaps, there is more than a surface connection between these developments in contemporary U.S. society and the Freikorps that crushed the German Revolution?
10 So successfully has the issue been framed in terms of Zimmerman's personal guilt that the so-called New Black Panther Party has issued a $10,000 reward for his capture. What they intend to do with him if he is captured is unclear, but it is hard not to see in this a mirror image of the sick vigilantism that led to Trayvon's death in the first place.
Throughout the 1990s, the territory of the former state of Yugoslavia was the scene of a series of horrifying massacres justified by the ideology of ethnic chauvinism. The war in the Balkans brought imperialist slaughter closer to the heartlands of capitalism than at any time since 1945. The local bourgeoisies did all they could to whip their populations into a frenzy of ethnic and nationalist hatred, the precondition for supporting or participating in the bloody slaughter of the Yugoslav wars.
These hatreds have not been eliminated by the uneasy peace which now reigns in the region, so it is all the more heartening to see signs that there are those in the region who look for a way forward in the social movement against capitalism and not in any dreams of national aggrandisement. We have seen, for example, a number of struggles by students in Serbia and Croatia, which should be seen as another expression of the same international tendency which we have seen in Western Europe and in the USA with the indignados and Occupy movements. And we are now witnessing the development of a genuinely internationalist politicised minority in both countries, a which openly rejects national divisions and seeks cooperation among all internationalist revolutionaries.
One expression of this new movement is the Declaration of the Birov collective in Serbia, which has recently emerged from a growing nucleus there (see their website, www.birov.net [366]). We are publishing it here. The most important thing about this Declaration, it seems to us, is the clarity and directness with which it puts forward a series of fundamental class positions:
affirmation of the revolutionary nature of the working class against all “post-marxist mystifications”;
necessity for the self-organisation of the working class in opposition to the trade unions, defined as organs of the capitalist state;
insistence that the workers’ assemblies and eventually the workers’ councils are the instrument for the mass struggle against capitalism;
rejection of all national liberation struggles and capitalist wars, seen as a fundamental “border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social democratic left”;
characterisation of the so-called ‘socialist states’ as capitalist regimes.
The last two points are obviously especially important given the recent conflicts in the region, and the increasing use of nationalist rhetoric by the ruling class.
Underlying these revolutionary positions is a definite recognition that capitalism is no longer in its progressive phase and can no longer provide permanent reforms: in other words, that it is a system in decline.1
The Declaration also makes an interesting observation on the transition period, recognising the problem of the conservative ‘drag’ exerted by certain semi-state organisms.
Clearly there remain areas for discussion and clarification among internationalists, for example on the question of organisation, the perspectives for the class struggle, and the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism today. At the very least, we can welcome a healthy realism in the Declaration’s statement that “no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates”. These and no doubt other questions can only be elucidated through open and fraternal debate.
ICC, February 2012
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles” - George Orwell
Aware of the class divisions inside the capitalist system, the brutal exploitation of which all of us are victims, the state oppression which makes that exploitation possible, and also the unsustainabile nature of the current militaristic order which is inevitably heading towards a catastrophe, we organize ourselves into “Birov”, an organization with the goal of radically opposing these social phenomena and of achieving their final eradication through class struggle.
By realizing that the working class, as the class hit the most by today’s social structure, holds the largest revolutionary potential, “Birov” organizes class conscious, militant workers with the intention of spreading class consciousness within the working class, and directing it towards organized workers` struggle realized by means of workers` councils. We reject all “post-Marxist” mystifications which talk about the dying out or non-existence of the working class and therefore negate the class struggle and the crucial role of the workers as an agent of revolutionary change. A member of the working class is anyone who has to sell their labour power to capital : a butcher, a worker in the sexual industry or a girl working in a printing shop alike.
Emancipatory actions must be based on the self-activity of the oppressed, and on autonomous workers` councils, striving towards the creation of a self-managed society, without a state, without classes and without the involuntary institutions of civil society. Every new attempt at overcoming the old society must be directed towards organizing the council system on an international scale, because only a radical change in the balance of class forces can initiate progressive social changes. The council form set up after the dissolution of the traditional, hierarchical capitalist state machinery is not something that revolution should strive for – here it only exists as a conservative organ which exists during the revolution, and the final self-organization and emancipation of the working class will imminently threaten its power, as well as the existence of that order itself. In this imminent conflict revolutionaries must recognize autonomously organized workers as the revolutionary vanguard in the final and decisive battle against the old order and for the society of free producers.
Only the open and unrestricted opposition to divisions created by this society will unleash the subversive potential which the existing workers` struggle holds today. Workers` struggle must be founded on the workplaces, where workers recognize themselves as producers and where class differences are being projected and resolved in their essence. We reject the party as completely inadequate for revolutionary organizing of the working class. Old reform parties which are remembered for winning political freedoms and reduced work hours, weren’t that in the first place : their primary purpose was a struggle for economic and political reforms, where an anti-political consciousness was yet to be and where it was still striving towards traditional –hierarchical forms of representation.
We can conclude that “Birov” can be characterized as an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda organization. It addresses workers in struggle and gathers anarcho-syndicalists which act by forming militant class groups at their workplaces. These groups shouldn`t be mistaken for trade unions because their intention is not to grow in numbers but to participate in assembly movements. They don`t have a formal structure and political programme. These groups are formed at workplaces where there is already a tradition of autonomous workers` organization and where a network of workers tends to continue their activities and develop new ways of struggling.
We consider that today the trade unions cannot have a political program which is not reactionary, and thus the only possible way for the mass of workers to organize can be assemblies; mass organizing in a “permanent” organization isn`t possible until the revolution becomes an immediate goal. Trade unions have, as instruments of reform struggle and a separate economic organization, lost their reason of existence in conditions in which they cannot any longer consistently reflect the aspirations of the working class. They are today nothing less than a state incorporated instrument which keeps the workers` struggle depoliticized and within a strictly limited framework They represent a kind of prison for the working class, without which the workers would be free in their tendency towards self-organization. Paid and often corrupt union bureaucrats are nothing but guards and wardens of those prisons. Therefore, unions are just an arm of a state which implements another kind of oppression of the working class. Capitalism cannot provide permanent reforms anymore: every struggle for the immediate and daily interests of proletariat, where they are not suppressed by trade unions and parties, necessarily evolves towards the revolutionizing of the masses and action against the repressive and exploitative foundations of the capitalist order. Because of that, today, any kind of phenomenon that tends to depoliticize the workers` struggle and keep it in the imposed framework, is necessarily reactionary. Claims about how anarcho-syndicalist organizations should be “non-ideological” are no alternative to the fake divisions imposed by capitalism, but only a re-emergence of the old (unenforceable) idea about separate economic organization, and in practice most often end up as leftist activist networks which reproduce the ideology of the mainstream, nationalist “left”. Opposed to those claims, anarcho-syndicalist organizations are class-militant and political organizations : the only principles of anarcho-syndicalism which are accepted by all members are necessarily political in their content.
We see ourselves not as an organization which necessarily tends towards growth in numbers and thus puts itself as a goal, an idea which often results in radical activism; nor do we consider ourselves as a kind of vanguard of the working class which dictates its interests. Our goal is to develop an organization which will be able to intervene in workers` struggle. We share our accumulated experience with the workers and by that we can increase the capacity of the workers` struggle, thus helping its extension and its further organization. Such a relation creates a mutual dependence and therefore no revolutionary organization can be larger or stronger than the current workers` general position dictates; and because of that we aren`t afraid of workers self-organizing and of “loss of control”; it is, on the contrary, our goal. Consequently, the basis for the unification of oppressed groups in capitalism will not be set by any party or “front”, nor by a mass trade union, or an anarchist group which acts in the preparation phase, the phase of re-grouping of revolutionary forces, but by a mass anti-capitalist struggle organized in workers’ councils under whose wing alone can the true emancipatory vision be articulated. Therefore, the best way of expressing solidarity with oppressed groups is the development of our own struggle at the workplace and constant education about the questions of oppression.
We condemn as completely reactionary any stance on the revolutionary character of ’national liberation’ struggles. Drawing a parallel with bourgeois-revolutionary national movements is wrong and in this period anti-nationalism is a border line between revolutionaries and the patriotic, social-democratic left. In today`s capitalist society every state is imperialist and the growth of national consciousness can only be seen as a means of preserving the capitalist order in conditions of permanent crisis and impending doom. Any acceptance of national, populist discourse can only draw workers towards a bloody imperialist war; it is the prelude to such a historic moment, as we all witnessed during the beginning and the middle of the 20th century.
In total contrast to the ideas of the anti-war movement of the First World War, counter-revolutionary ideology subordinates the workers to the needs of the national bourgeoisie and all in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “peoples’ liberation”. The results are historically recognizable and can be seen in the “socialist revolutions” after the end of the October revolutionary period, which were victims of party instrumentation and suppression of any form of workers’ self-organization and have resulted in totalitarian imperialist regimes of state capitalism, or so-called “real socialism”.
The liberation of the working class will be carried out by the workers themselves, or it won`t be at all.
Belgrade, Serbia, October 2011
1See their FAQ, which also gives more explanation of this and other aspects of the group’s politics
From the start, the unions, the left of the bourgeoisie, and even some from among the libertarian milieu on the west Coast have cast the conflict between the Longview (Washington) longshoremen (ILWU Local 21) and Export Grain Terminal (EGT) corporation as a struggle against ‘union busting’. EGT signed an agreement with the Longview Port promising that all cargo work would be done with the International Longshoremen Workers’ Union (ILWU) workers, but has not kept the promise and tried to hire non-union labor unsuccessfully, and then contracted with another union, Operating Engineers Local 701, who incited its workers to cross Local 21’s picket lines. ILWU workers have received the support of the Occupy movement, who, on Monday, December 12 shut down the major west coast ports of Oakland, Portland, Longview, and Seattle. San Diego, Vancouver, and Long Beach partly shut down as well, and echoes of the unrest were felt as far ashore as Hawaii and Japan. EGT has spent $200 million to build an automated grain elevator at the Port of Longview, and had planned to bring in its first ship in mid-January. Operations at Longview, as at other ports, today are highly automated and longshoremen are the highest paid, yet one of the numerically smallest group of workers at the port. This is the result of more than forty years of union’s negotiations with the bosses which, while guaranteeing high wages, benefits, and job security also allowed for attrition of jobs as workers retired and automation in the context of the ongoing economic crisis made the hiring of new workers superfluous. This created the conditions of isolation the longshoremen find themselves in today and the opportunity to create divisions among groups of workers at the port, where the truckers are by far the lowest paid but also the most numerous workers at the port. They are forced to work as independent contractors and are therefore non-unionized. In this context, even some who are critical of the unions have called for the ‘organization of the un-organized’ truckers at the time when the Occupy movement decided to shut down the ports in a sign of solidarity with the struggling workers. This decision by the Occupy movement could have been taken as an opportunity to start establishing real ties of solidarity among the different groups of port and other workers. The open discussions at the General Assemblies organized by the Occupy movement could have been used as spaces where workers could flesh out a set of common demands that can help them unify their forces and strengthen their ability to self-organize. The call for organizing the un-organized, while sounding radical, does nothing more than letting in the usual divisive union tactics through the back door. Under these conditions, EGT has never had an intention to hire workers with ILWU’s salary and benefits. Instead, it understood the opportunity to make use of the existing conditions of isolation and division among the port workers to pit workers against each other and win the day. Further, EGT has known from the beginning of the existing feud between and within the various local unions, who raid each other as union membership dwindles to barely one in ten workers. In the words of Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, in response to calls to support ILWU 21, the AFL-CIO won’t take sides because the feud between ILWU and Operating Engineers is a ‘jurisdictional dispute’. What ‘jurisdictional’ means is the opportunity for this or that local union to curry the favor of any given boss by offering ‘deals’ which would secure their position as brokers between that company and the workers. In order to achieve this goal, the unions must also show the bosses how skillful they are in keeping the working class divided and disoriented, while brokering contracts that are advantageous to the bosses. This is precisely what happened during the dispute between EGT and the ILWU. In this sense, Occupy Longview, Occupy Seattle, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Portland, all of whom organized and participated in several solidarity actions with port workers from December through February, would do well to draw all the necessary lessons about the treacherous actions of both union officials and some of the Occupy’s organizers from the events that happened on January 5th in Portland and January 6th in Seattle, when various officials of ILWU Locals repeatedly disrupted and sabotaged the meetings planned in solidarity with the port workers. In the words of an organizer of the January 6th Longview, WA action planning meeting and solidarity panel in Seattle, we find the excellent intentions and interest in helping the class build unity and solidarity: “The Friday event emphasized the importance of working class unity and solidarity. It was a historic event bringing together rank and file union members, along with those from the 89% of the working class that is not unionized and unemployed. Through this event, we showed that Occupy is a new type of working class movement that goes beyond the limits of traditional trade unionism by bringing together working class people across industrial lines and across lines of race, gender, and national origin. Building off the example of December 12th west coast port shutdown, speakers dare to envision forms of class struggle that exceed the limits set by 20th century labor laws purposed to constraint past struggles into tame truces that are being broken now by companies like EGT.” In the accounts of what followed, union goons provoked fist fights and constant disruptions, attempted to prohibit the attendance to the meeting by their members, and usurped the public microphone to repeatedly warn Occupy protesters that the unions would not accept their show of solidarity to “their’ workers, and insisted that Occupy stop entreating them to come and speak to their meetings. The same writer continues: “We had initially thought we had a functional relationship with the officers of Local 19 (Seattle). Prior to December 12, we had established communications with the union officers where they had expressed respect for our port shutdown efforts even though they said they could not be involved because of labor law constraints and threats from the courts. On November 30th, the President of Local 19, Cam Williams has publicly received a solidarity letter we had written to the local, and in response he held his fist up in the air saying ‘Solidarity Forever’.” This is the same Cam Williams who came to the January 6th meeting with a goon squad who got drunk before showing up at the meeting and who provoked a fist fight. He shoved people around, snatched the microphone and announced that any of his Local’s members present at the event would be penalized their wages for being there. We can only hope the Occupy movement on the west coast will learn from this experience that ‘organizing the unorganized’, contrary to what some present as the way forward for the class struggle, can only lead to the same kind of situation when workers really try to express solidarity and try to unite their struggles. We also hope it is now clear to them that their past insistence on treating the local union official as ‘equal’ partners in organizing the various rallies and marches in support of the port workers was completely wrong. The unions’ divisive tactic, when they can afford to hide their most virulent goon-squad methods, fully aid the bosses achieve the workers’ acquiescence.
It is clear that while the longshoremen have been locked in a battle to protect their jobs and benefits, their struggle is identical with the struggle which the truckers and the workers of Operating Engineers Local 701 would wage in defense of their conditions of life against the attacks of capital. This message of unity is what could forge the solidarity workers need to confront capital. The struggle is a class struggle, not one against ‘union busting’, nor one about ‘organizing the un-organized’. As of January 27th, 2012 a settlement has been reached between EGT and ILWU Local 21, just in time for the first EGT ship to arrive. It arrived escorted by armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters, the first known use of the military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years. The ILWU trumpets the settlement as a victory for the workers because ‘union busting’ has not succeeded, and union jobs are back in Longview. It praises the Occupy movement (!!!) for helping achieve this ‘victory’. Those who called for organizing the unorganized may be baffled by the union’s ‘success’ in achieving this ‘victory’ without the involvement of the more numerous, and un-organized, truckers at the ports. Who won? In effect ‘confidential’, i.e., secret, behind closed doors, out of the control of the workers themselves, negotiations between the ILWU and EGT still continue, and it is likely the decisions will not be brought to light until the social situation is deemed calm, because we can rest assured, it will not be a ‘victorious’ contract. The victory, it seems to us, belongs squarely in the hands of the bosses and the bourgeois state, of which the unions are but an arm. The ILWU has won the confidence of the bosses because it has succeeded in freezing and derailing the incipient attempts at solidarity and unity across various sectors of the working class which Occupy correctly had aspired to. The truckers will continue to work under miserable conditions. The longshoremen are very likely to get a bad contract, while the ‘scabs’ who EGT had hired will continue their existence trying to make ends meet somehow, somewhere. Meanwhile, the ILWU across the west coast boast of having done the job that Governor Gregoire could not do when she intervened a year ago to try to settle the dispute. They say the workers have reasons to have confidence in the union! And the workers that produce the grain used by EGT and the soil they produce it from will continue to be exploited. Occupy, along with the rest of the working class, must learn that the only way to end this misery is through building real unity and solidarity across categories, race, gender, and nationality lines as they have started recognizing: by extending the struggle and keeping it firmly in their own hands and outside of unions’ and activists’ control.
Ana, March 2012
After six months of struggle against the BESNA agreement[1], which would have meant pay cuts of up to 33%, serious deskilling throughout the building industry, and unemployment for all those refusing to sign the new contracts, the electricians have forced the bosses to back off. Following a failed injunction against an imminent official national strike called by the Unite union, the main BESNA signatory, Balfour Beatty, announced that it was dropping plans to bring in the BESNA agreement, and most of the other firms involved have now followed suit.
As we have shown in a series of articles about this dispute[2], the electricians have fought this battle with an extraordinary degree of militancy and inventiveness. They have occupied public places, blocked roads, held open-mic debates in the street, disregarded the laws on picketing, accepted the support of other workers at their protests, and tried to link up with others in struggle, such as the students and the public sector workers at the big November demonstrations. The most significant expression of this combative spirit was probably the almost country-wide unofficial strike action that took place on 7 December when Unite called off an official national strike under the threat of an injunction. This is a far cry from the tame rituals which we have associated with the recent series of official days of action against public sector cuts or attacks on pensions. All this was almost completely blacked out by the media, including ‘left’ papers like the Guardian, indicating that the sparks’ tactics and independent spirit were seen as a dangerous example to other workers.
In recent weeks, however, there have been signs that the movement has been ebbing, certainly in the London region which had been the epicentre of the movement for a long time. The weekly demonstrations outside selected building sites were becoming less well attended and there were often more leftist paper sellers there than electricians. These weekly actions were themselves in danger of becoming ritualised and did not often succeed in getting other building workers to join the movement. And as the leadership of the strike, organised in the Rank and File group made up mainly of shop stewards, began putting increasing emphasis on the need to pressure the union into calling a national strike, Unite’s incessant delaying tactics were serving to sap workers’ energies.
And then in the space of a few days, the picture changed dramatically. On Wednesday February 22nd there was lively demonstration outside the Mayfair hotel where Balfour Beatty bosses and others were gathered for a black tie dinner. Park Lane was blocked for nearly an hour and the mood of the sparks was defiant. The next day it was announced that the courts had thrown out Balfour Beatty’s latest injunction against Unite, who would now have no choice but to organise a national strike. Almost immediately Balfour announced that it was pulling out of BESNA.
The leftist press was exultant, trumpeting ‘victory for the sparks’. A typical example was provided by Socialist Worker (25/2/12)
“Victory shows workers can win in struggle
The electricians’ victory is a simple answer to those that say the working class isn’t a force or that unions are too weak to win. Their determined campaign has humbled a huge corporation—and at the centre has been rank and file workers’ organisation. Despite being ignored by the mainstream media, workers called protests to build up support and show the bosses the depth of opposition to the attack. The threat of an official strike, and the prospect of spreading unofficial action, was enough to force the bosses to back off.
[…]
Strikes are a direct challenge to the authority of the bosses. They can expose the class divide and show the power of the working class. An astonishing level of hesitancy and conservatism from the union leadership marked the electricians’ dispute.
Nonetheless the rank and file rightly fought to get official backing and an official strike. But they were also prepared to act independently of the union bureaucracy. That process needs to be deepened and extended, building up the confidence and organisation of the workers. This can also help to inspire others, in construction and beyond. There should be no return to the corrupt “company unionism” that has infected construction. And the lesson for the rest of the labour movement is simple—militant tactics win”
On the face of it, this was a vindication of the strategy put forward by the leftists and echoed by the majority of the ‘rank and file’ leadership: carry on with the inventive tactics, act unofficially as much as necessary, but put pressure on the union hierarchy to back the dispute. The very threat of a national strike seems to have forced the bosses to cave in.
It’s certainly true that the bosses were worried by the prospect of a national strike. But the unions were also worried. The events of 7 December had shown that the sparks could organise strike action on a national scale without the support of the union machinery. Given the outward looking tactics of the sparks in their local protests and pickets, there was a real danger that a national strike would get increasingly out of their control, even spreading to other sectors. This is why the union was so quick to get together with the industry bosses after Balfour withdrew from BESNA and to issue a joint statement.
On the libertarian communist discussion forum libcom.org, the announcement that BB was withdrawing from BESNA also led to many calls of ‘victory’, but at least one poster (Jim Clarke) sounded a note of caution:
“Have BB really given up on trying to kill of JIB[3]? From having a read of the document sent round today Unite have called off strike action and agreed to come up with a new agreement for modernising the industry, which means electricians and everybody else will still get fucked over but with union approval this time”.
Our comrade Alf supported this approach:
“I agree with Jim Clarke's caution here. A sudden (apparent) climbdown by the bosses on the eve of a union led strike, followed by the cancellation or indefinite postponement of strike action, points to some kind of back room deal. Plus as Jim says, both bosses and union are talking ominously about modernisation. Not to forget that a large part of the workforce in the building trade is not even covered by the JIB in the first place”.
(https://libcom.org/article/attack-electricians-contracts-wobbles-balfour-beatty-folds [369])
There is no doubt that the sparks have achieved a ‘victory’ in the sense of forcing the bosses to retreat. But this was the result of their own initiative and willingness to break out of the established union rules. It would be a serious error to think that the fight is now over and that the union has finally shown itself to be on the workers’ side. Of course, the majority of sparks still see the unions as in some sense their organisations and certainly feel that it’s possible to organise at the rank and file level through the shop steward system. But the shop steward network that ran the strike from below, despite being made up of many sincere militants, also served as the main vehicle for illusions in the trade unions and the strategy of pressurising the union machinery. This is an argument for workers taking further steps along the road towards independence from the unions, by ensuring that general assemblies rather than shop stewards’ committees are really in control of the coming struggle against the ‘modernisation’ plans that are even now being cooked up by the bosses and the unions together.
Amos 28/2/12
[1] Building Engineering Services National Agreement
[2] "Electricians’ actions hold the promise of class unity [370]"; "Electricians: solidarity across industries is key [371]"; "Sparks: don’t let the unions block the struggle [372]"; "Illusions in the unions will lead to defeat [373]".
[3] JIB: the Joint Industry Board regulations which the sparks see as providing basic protection of their interests at work
We are publishing a statement by the occupation of the Athens Law School. This seems significant because it directly attacks all nationalist and state capitalist ‘solutions’ to the debacle of debt in Greek, which it correctly identifies as an expression of capitalism’s global crisis. Such positions no doubt reflect the views of a minority in the present social movement, but it seems to be a growing minority.
The political and financial spectacle has now lost its confidence. Its acts are entirely convulsive. The ‘emergency’ government that has taken over the maintenance of social cohesion is failing to preserve jobs, and the spending power of the population. The new measures, with which the state aims to secure the survival of the Greek nation in the international financial world, lead to a complete suspension of payments in the world of work. The lowering of the minimum wage is entirely with the full suspension of every form of direct or social wage.
Every cost of our reproduction vanishes. The health infrastructure, the educational spaces, the ‘welfare’ benefits and anything that makes us productive in the dominant system are now a thing of the past. After squeezing everything out of us, they now throw us straight into hunger and poverty.
The securing of the abolition of any form of wage, on a legal level, takes place via the creation of a “special account”. In this way, the Greek state ensures that the money supply will be used exclusively for the survival of capital, even at the cost of our lives. The severity of the debt (not of the state, but of that which is inextricably contained in the relationship of capital) threatens to fall on our heads and eliminate us.
The myth of the debt. The dominant patriotic narrative promotes the idea of the Greek debt, promoting it as a transnational problem. It creates the impression that some stateless loan sharks have targeted the Greek state and our “good government” is doing its best to save us, or, on the other hand, that it aims to betray us, being part of international finance capital.
Against this false nationalist conception, the debt is a result of, and an integral part of political economy, a fact that the bosses know only too well. The economy is based upon the creation of shortages, upon the creation of new areas of scarcity (that is, the destructive creation, with negative, always, long-term consequences). The debt and debt obligations will expand to dominate society for as long as there exists property, the routine of consumption, exchange and money.
When we say that the crisis is structural and systemic we mean that the structures of the political economy have reached an end, that their very core has come under attack — that is, the process of value production. It is clear that for capital, we are surplus (see the sky-rocketing unemployment figures) and that at this point, the reproduction of the labour force is merely an obstacle in the process of capital accumulation. The monetary-debt crisis, that is, the replacement of wages with loans, and the inability of issuing of loans, lead the system into a vicious circle of unsustainability. This happens, because it puts into question the value of work itself, that is, the same relationship through which those from below were part of the system.
Should we then head for socialism and a ‘people’s economy’? All kinds of union professionals and wannabe-popular leaders present their own illusions about a political solution within the system and the current political economy. They might talk of the nationalisation of banks, they might take the form of the rebirth of rational liberalism. Sometimes, they even take the form of integration and an alternative ‘revolutionary spirit’. Sometimes we hear about green development, ecological decentralisation, direct democracy and the fetishism of political forms.
While the market itself and state intervention fail to offer any prospects whatsoever, the political spectacle continues to promote all sorts of products such as a people’s economy and state socialism. The mythologies of the various dictatorships of the proletariat, survive at the same time when the masses of those excluded from production, from institutions, the unemployed, all fail to be a reliable customers for political parties and their unions. The reactionary political position of state capitalism has succeeded the previous empty ideology.
Social war knows no borders. Some, amidst the crisis, see a re-drawing of national boundaries. The national body and the various racists seem to see an opportunity to target immigrants, make attacks and pogroms, and to promote the institutional racism of the Greek state. For them, their resistance is painted in national colours; they struggle as Greeks, not as enemies of exploitation and the social repression they face.
We consciously chose sides, believing that any presence of any national symbol or flag belongs to the camp of the enemy, and we are willing to fight it by all means possible. Because the nazis of the Golden Dawn, the autonomous nationalists and the other fascists promote a pure national community as a solution, the pre-emptive attacks against them and solidarity towards the immigrants is a necessary condition for any radical project.
The only solution is social revolution. Against all the above, we propose social revolution, which we consider the only solution in order to have a life, not just survival. This means, to rise up against any financial and political institution. It requires, through the route of revolt, to take measures such as the abolition of the state, of property and any sort of measurability, the family, the nation, exchange and social genders. In order for us to extend freedom across every part of society.
This is what revolution means! Bringing to this direction any struggle centred on wage demands; any self-organised structure and assembly, especially at a time like the present when the political-governmental form of the systemic crisis can lead to a social explosion.
Statement by the Occupied Athens Law School 9/2/12
see also:
The workers at the general hospital in Kilkis in Greek Central Macedonia recently occupied their hospital and declared it to be running under their control. Here is the public statement they issued on 4 February:
1. We recognize that the current and enduring problems of Ε.Σ.Υ (the national health system) and related organizations cannot be solved with specific and isolated demands or demands serving our special interests, since these problems are a product of a more general anti-popular governmental policy and of the bold global neoliberalism.
2. We recognize, as well, that by insisting in the promotion of that kind of demands we essentially participate in the game of the ruthless authority. That authority which, in order to face its enemy - i.e. the people- weakened and fragmented, wishes to prevent the creation of a universal labour and popular front on a national and global level with common interests and demands against the social impoverishment that the authority's policies bring.
3. For this reason, we place our special interests inside a general framework of political and economic demands that are posed by a huge portion of the Greek people that today is under the most brutal capitalist attack; demands that in order to be fruitful must be promoted until the end in cooperation with the middle and lower classes of our society.
4. The only way to achieve this is to question, in action, not only its political legitimacy, but also the legality of the arbitrary authoritarian and anti-popular power and hierarchy which is moving towards totalitarianism with accelerating pace.
5. The workers at the General Hospital of Kilkis answer to this totalitarianism with democracy. We occupy the public hospital and put it under our direct and absolute control. The Γ.N. of Kilkis will henceforth be self-governed and the only legitimate means of administrative decision making will be the General Assembly of its workers.
6. The government is not released of its economic obligations of staffing and supplying the hospital, but if they continue to ignore these obligations, we will be forced to inform the public of this and ask the local government but most importantly the society to support us in any way possible for: (a) the survival of our hospital (b) the overall support of the right for public and free healthcare (c) the overthrow, through a common popular struggle, of the current government and any other neoliberal policy, no matter where it comes from (d) a deep and substantial democratization, that is, one that will have society, rather than a third party, responsible for making decisions for its own future.
7. The labour union of the Γ.N. of Kilkis will begin, from 6 February, the retention of work, serving only emergency incidents in our hospital until the complete payment for the hours worked, and the rise of our income to the levels it was before the arrival of the troika (EU-ECB-IMF). Meanwhile, knowing fully well what our social mission and moral obligations are, we will protect the health of the citizens that come to the hospital by providing free healthcare to those in need, accommodating and calling the government to finally accept its responsibilities, overcoming even in the last minute its immoderate social ruthlessness.
8. We decide that a new general assembly will take place, on Monday 13 February in the assembly hall of the new building of the hospital at 11 am, in order to decide the procedures that are needed to efficiently implement the occupation of the administrative services and to successfully realise the self-governance of the hospital, which will start from that day. The general assemblies will take place daily and will be the paramount instrument for decision making regarding the employees and the operation of the hospital.
We ask for the solidarity of the people and workers from all fields, the collaboration of all workers' unions and progressive organizations, as well as the support from any media organization that chooses to tell the truth. We are determined to continue until the traitors that sell out our country and our people leave. It's either them or us!
The above decisions will be made public through a news conference to which all the Mass Media (local and national) will be invited on Wednesday 15/2/2012 at 12.30. Our daily assemblies begin on 13 February. We will inform the citizens about every important event taking place in our hospital by means of news releases and conferences. Furthermore, we will use any means available to publicise these events in order to make this mobilization successful.
We call
a) Our fellow citizens to show solidarity to our effort,
b) Every unfairly treated citizen of our country in contestation and opposition, with actions, against his'/her oppressors,
c) Our fellow workers from other hospitals to make similar decisions,
d) the employees in other fields of the public and private sector and the participants in labour and progressive organizations to act likewise, in order to help our mobilization take the form of a universal labour and popular resistance and uprising, until our final victory against the economic and political elite that today oppresses our country and the whole world.
2/12
see also:
Mass poverty in Greece, it's what awaits us all [375]
"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [379]
As February came to an end the Greek parliament rushed through a further package of wage and pension cuts as part of yet another round of measures required to secure a second international tranche of bailout loans. The working class in Greece is being subjected to another vicious round of assaults on its living standards. But it is not alone. On the day this article was written (18/2/12) there were demonstrations in dozens of locations across Europe, and as far away as New York. With slogans such as “We are all Greeks now”, “In solidarity with the Greek people, One world, One revolution” and others, the demos expressed a basic solidarity, and an elemental acknowledgement that there are no national struggles in the epoch of a global capitalist crisis.
Facing the umpteenth austerity plan imposed on the Greek population, anger again erupted on the streets. Between 80,000 and 200,000 people gathered outside parliament in Syntagma Square, during the voting for the latest measures on the night of February 12 to 13, and clashed with riot police. The basic balance sheet of what the media called "night of the urban guerrilla" included 48 buildings that were set on fire and 150 shops that were looted. There were also a hundred injured and 130 arrests. The images of these scenes of violence and of Athens in flames, and later the smoking ruins filmed in the early morning, were used by the media, with constant references to the ravages of war, to impress and frighten the rest of the world. But, according to numerous witnesses on the web, nearly 300,000 people could not reach the Greek parliament, being caught by the police in the adjacent streets or at the exits to the underground. And it was the police who threw tear gas to disperse the crowd into small groups throughout the city centre. The media talked about young thugs but you could see many older women and men participating in or encouraging violence. Whether the fires and looting were the work of provocateurs or the product of desperate acts, the rage of the people was undeniable as demonstrated by the images of those throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at the forces of repression.
The final set of measures imposed by the "troika" (International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank) is particularly intolerable. All the protesters were calling out the same thing: we can no longer feed our families or care for our children; we no longer want to continue being suffocated like this. Judge for yourself:
- Reduction in the minimum wage by 22% (reduced from 750 to 480 euros) and a 32% cut for those under 25, with knock on effects for those whose income is determined in relation to the minimum wage – for most workers this means wages have been cut in half;
- The cutting of 150,000 civil servants, over the next two years with an immediate cut to 60% of their current salary;
- Reduction in pensions;
- Unemployment benefit limited to just one year;
- The abolition of automatic wage increases, including those based on seniority;
- Reducing the social security budget, depriving a large segment of the population of any reimbursement of care costs;
- The limitation to three years for collective agreements on wage agreements.
And this list is not exhaustive. The official unemployment rate in November 2011 was 20.9% (up 48.7% year on year). The unemployment rate for youth between 18 and 25 is around 50%.
In two years, the number of homeless has increased by 25%. Hunger has become a daily concern for many, as in the days of the occupation during World War II.
The testimony of a doctor from an NGO was reported in the French daily Libération (30/1/12): "I started to worry when I had one consultation, then two, then ten children who came for treatment on an empty stomach, without having had any meal the day before.”
The number of suicides has doubled in two years, particularly among young people. Every second person suffers from depression as the level of household debt explodes.
The almost unanimous rejection of the latest austerity plan was such that at the time of the vote a hundred deputies abstained or opposed it, including some forty belonging to the two major parties of the right and left, dissociating themselves from the discipline of the party vote. The situation is increasingly chaotic as the two traditional major parties are completely discredited, with opinion polls indicating massive desertion by those who previously supported them. In this climate, the bourgeoisie will have the greatest difficulty in organising the forthcoming parliamentary elections announced for April.
And Greece is one link in this chain of brutal austerity that already surrounds many European countries. After Greece, the "troika" has moved to Portugal to send the same notice. Ireland will be in the spotlight after that. Then comes the turn of Spain and Italy. Even the new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, put in power to administer the same bitter medicine, is concerned about what the future holds for his country, questioning the ”harshness with which Greece is treated.” France, whose economy falters more and more, will be soon on the list. In Germany itself, despite all the praise for its health and economic strength, we see an increasing proportion of its population, especially students, sinking into poverty. Europe is not and will not be the only affected area and no country in the world will be spared. There is no solution to a global crisis that openly reveals the total bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
A desperate teacher said: "Before the crisis, I had about 1,200 euros a month, now it’s more like 760. For each day on strike, that’s another 80 euros and there are retroactive measures: this month I took home 280 euros. It is not worth working, better to go and smash everything so they understand we're not going to let it go on. "
This frustration and anger is further strengthened by the proven sterility and impotence of the sequence of days of general strikes against austerity of 24 or 48 hours over the last 2 years that have been called by the two main unions, ADEDY (public sector) and GSEE (private sector - related to PASOK) which share the work with the PAME (arm of the Greek Stalinists) to divide and undermine workers’ struggles
In this situation, social unrest in Greece leads towards solidarity and attempts to organise. Meetings have been held in neighbourhoods, in cities and villages. Food kitchens and distribution has been undertaken. The occupation of the University of Novicki has served as a forum for discussion. There were occupations of ministries (Labour, Economy, Health), regional councils (in the Ionian Islands and in Thessaly), the Megalopolis power plant, the town hall in Holargos. Producers have distributed milk and potatoes. Workers have occupied the newspaper Eleftherotypia that employs 800 people. While on strike they have published their own newspaper.
But the most significant reaction which shows the determination of the movement in Greece also illustrates all its weaknesses and illusions. It took place at the hospital in Kilkis in Central Macedonia in northern Greece. Hospital staff in a general meeting decided to go on strike and occupy the hospital to demand their unpaid wages while taking the initiative to continue to operate emergency services and provide free care for the poor. These workers have launched an appeal to other workers, declaring that “the only legitimate authority to make administrative decisions will be the General Assembly of the workers.” We are republishing this call which shows a clear desire not to remain isolated, not only by appealing to other hospitals but to all workers in all sectors to join in the fight. However, this call also reflects many democratic illusions, in seeking to rely on a "citizens’ reaction" and an amorphous notion of "workers’ unions", or of the “collaboration of all unions and progressive political organisations and the media with goodwill.” It is also heavily imbued with patriotism and nationalism: "We are determined to continue until the traitors who have sold our country have gone”. This is real poison for the future of the struggle[1].
This is the main factor in the decay of the “popular” movement in Greece. It is stuck in the trap of nationalism and national divisions that politicians and unions use every means to promote. All parties and unions increasingly inveigh against "violated national pride" Prime exponents of this populist demagogy are the Greek Stalinists (KKE), which plays the same role as nationalists of left and right everywhere, and continues to spread its chauvinistic propaganda, accusing the government of selling off the country, of being a traitor to the defence of the nation etc. They put forward the idea that the root of the situation is not the capitalist system itself, but is the fault of Europe, of Germany or the United States.
This poison puts the class struggle on the terrain of rotten national divisions which are the product of specifically capitalist competition. It’s not only a dead end but it a major obstacle to the necessary development of proletarian internationalism. We have no national interest to defend. Our struggle must grow and unite beyond national frontiers. It is vital that the proletarians of other countries enter into struggle and show that the response of the exploited around the world faced with the attacks of capitalism is not and cannot be on a national terrain.
W 18/2/12
see also:
Workers take control of the Kilkis hospital in Greece [376]
"In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy" [379]
[1] However the statement by the occupation of the Athens Law School, which we are also publishing on our site, directly attacks all nationalist and state capitalist ‘solutions’ to the debacle of debt in Greek, which it correctly identifies as an expression of capitalism’s global crisis. Such positions no doubt reflect the views of a minority in the present social movement, but it seems to be a growing minority.
With the recent eviction of the Occupy LSX camp, it seems that the Occupy movement in the UK, for the time being, is winding down. The fact that there was little resistance to the eviction was a clear sign of this.
Occupy London Stock Exchange came in the wake of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in the USA, which itself followed on from the protests and occupations across north Africa, in Greece, Spain and also in the wake of the student protest movement against increased university fees. The main positive factor in the occupation movement, both in the UK and internationally, has been having a physical presence in a public space. Most demonstrations, marches, pickets etc tend to be ‘closed’ affairs with pre-determined routes, barriers separating people on the march from others and so on. By contrast the occupations have been open to all and sundry. A whole range of topics have been presented at the St Paul’s occupation’s Tent University, amongst other places, open to members of the public to take part in. We ourselves have presented three meetings there – one on the contribution of Rosa Luxemburg, one on the ecological crisis, and another about communism.
The occupation has been presented in the mainstream media as ‘anti-capitalist’. However even a short survey would show that the vast majority of the meetings and discussions have tended to be of a ‘reformist’ nature, mainly presenting the idea that particular reforms or policy changes, or the application of pressure on the government, can lead to a more ‘democratic’ form of capitalism - that the 1% can be convinced of sharing its wealth and power with the other 99%. Political discussion on actual revolutionary alternatives was much rarer, although it certainly did happen.
In truth, a movement which was generally ‘against capitalism’ without reference to a specific struggle, would have difficulty maintaining itself. This was the contrast with the movements in north Africa, especially in Egypt, where we could see a number of sections of the working class becoming increasingly mobilised. In Spain and Greece, public meetings have been linked with the movement of the ‘Indignants’ (Spain) and with the savagery of the austerity demanded by the EU paymasters (Greece). In the absence of a real focus for the struggle, it would also tend to become the preserve of ‘professional activists’ separated from the population at large.
This is not to say that these occupations are useless, far from it. But we have to recognise their limitations.
Undoubtedly a few people influenced by them have been led to question the entirety of capitalism as a social and economic system. Many others, by contrast, would have come away thinking that significant change could come about ‘If only the government would nationalise the land/banks/railways/industry…’
It’s clear that ‘occupations’ as a tactic are not going away. It’s also clear that, however uneven it is in different countries, the response of the employed working class is beginning to show itself. So there is a significant potential for the two movements to become complementary in future struggles both in the UK and internationally.
Graham 01/03/12
Exactly a year after the beginning of the uprising in Egypt (25/1/12), the film Tahrir, Liberation Square, by the Italian documentary maker, Stefano Savona, sponsored by the International League for Human Rights (ILHR) and supported by ‘independent’ producers, came out in a number of cinemas in France.
In the preamble to the film, besides an animation of a singer and a musician, celebrating the revolt of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, we're reminded that today the mobilisation on Tahrir Square still continues, and that there are still around 15,000 political detainees in the gaols, although the army has symbolically released 200 other prisoners on the anniversary of what all Egyptians proudly call “the Revolution”.
We should remember, however, that the army still holds the reins of power in this country after the recent elections, where two-thirds of the Parliament is composed of Islamic parties (the Muslim Brotherhood who formally have a majority) plus the Salafists. So nothing has changed since the departure of a dictator to be replaced by... the open dictatorship of the army. And above all, besides the repression, there is no improvement in the poverty and the living conditions of the exploited, now stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the army, democratic illusions and the political influence of the Islamic parties.
For its ‘premiere’ in Paris, the film was also followed by a live debate with the producer in which we participated.
Filmed with a simple hand-held Canon 5D camera, this documentary involves us more closely in the faces and movements of the crowd, the life of tens of thousands of participants and their chance meetings. Over 12 days and, through the eye of the producer, we follow some of the protagonists throughout some of the ‘days of anger’ from the sixth day of the occupation of the square to the announcement of the resignation of Mubarak on 11 February, and in the final images some questions about the future.
The problem with this film is that it pretends, through its aspect of a documentary, to be a witness of living history which is taking place inside Tahrir Square thus giving itself a certain stamp of ‘objectivity’ that's supposedly proper to journalistic reporting showing the reality of life as it happens in front of our eyes. But this film is anything but objective. Not only does it show reality from a certain point of view, but its bias of filming this reality from the inside ends up in partiality, focusing the attention on a very narrow and limited surface as with a magnifying glass, keeping in the shade, or outside the field of vision, the framework which would allow us to see the entirety and understand it.
Whereas the movement in Egypt is not limited to what was happening on Tahrir Square, the latter is presented as the sole point of reference. There's not a single echo, nor any concern for the wave of workers' strikes which swept across the country and which really pushed Mubarak, under pressure from the United States, to quit. If the army did not intervene at this point, if one of the first measures was to forbid strikes, it is because these strikes almost paralysed the country and played a major role in the course of events. The film gives the illusion, the distorted vision, that the sole force of the movement came from the occupation of Tahrir Square. An article on the film in le Monde, (25/1/12) gives the comment: “What does the film show us? First of all an extraordinary effervescence, a palpable intoxication, an exciting reconquest of freedom of speech and movement” It's true. And this intoxication overcomes the spectator as well as the participants themselves paralysing any effort of reflection. In this way, the film takes and leads us to immediately share the emotions and feelings of the crowd in placing us in the middle of the participants without allowing any space for reflection, it espouses its point of view with a maximum of empathy, engagement: its angers, its fears, hopes, doubts, its explosions of joy at the announcement of the fall of a tyrant. The le Monde article continues : “Then (it shows) a diversity of faces, ages, sexes, backgrounds, relationships, mixed attitudes, self-respecting, unifying in the same crowd, in the same challenge, the same fight. Some bearded, some clean-shaven, some people praying, others in keffiyehs, young women carrying stones, youths who throw them, older people that support them. In a word, people on the move, a utopia realised”. And this “utopia” was not realised but bore dangerous illusions and a maximum of confusion with a double label: Democracy and the Revolution of the people.
However, even through the deformed prism of this truncated reality, some aspects of the situation at the time are striking to the spectator. First of all the courage given by the collective: “we are no longer afraid”, the determination: “we will go right to the end to get rid of Mubarak” and the solidarity of the participants: men and women unknown to each other beforehand talking together, protecting each other, sleeping side by side in temporary shelters – tent material or shower curtains – without the least problem, each bringing their own food for the collective. It shows the courageous fight, with bare hands, against the police, against the snipers or against the hordes of criminals released and recruited by Mubarak, including killers handsomely paid and sent to attack the occupiers of the square. It shows the impotence of a high grade military machine incapable of making itself understood and the utilisation of Twitter by some youth to appeal to meet up at various points and go to other strategic points where there was a need for reinforcement in order to ‘hold’ onto territory. Information was widely circulated by word of mouth and there were continual movements across the square. Another striking element is the absence of any general assembly, despite “free-speech”. There’s no collective discussions and decisions on the orientation of the movement outside of small informal groups of discussion on the situation or on the future. At the beginning of the film, some of the people raise the question of demonstrations in other towns, their origins, their jobs. At one moment, this diversity is reflected when three youths talk together: one is a country lad, the other a city dweller, the third a Bedouin, sometimes they give their opinion or state their respective sympathies for such or such fraction, three or four at the most. They talk fraternally to each other despite their different convictions, especially religious and secular. We see some speeches followed by small groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, a few fiery individual speeches, often moving in front of the camera and above all the slogans repeated ad nauseam: “The people want regime change”, “Mubarak must go!”, “The Egyptian people are us, we are here”, “Long live Egypt!” in the middle of a sea of national flags held aloft by individuals or some very large ones flown over the crowd. Because nationalism, the preoccupation of the fate and interests of the country is omnipresent in the square and, it seems, is shared by everyone. Each participant recognises themselves with all the others as “the people” without the least class connotation. Here, the mirage of democracy is functioning. And directly, the trap springs shut. The trap is precisely all the ideological values put forward by the bourgeoisie and the speeches full of illusions that run through this film: someone says it: “the people are united here as the fingers on the hand” around the single idea of “getting rid of Mubarak”. But this will to dump Mubarak and his detested regime alone creates an artificial inter-classist unity: “What we want, what everyone wants, is to overthrow this regime”. Young and old, veiled women or not, religious or secular, Muslim or Christian all say the same, and after that we will see what happens. At the end of the film, after the scenes of celebration provoked by the announcement of Mubarak’s departure with many breaking camp to return home, a woman warns however: “now it’s the army which has full power and suspends our liberties, we shouldn’t leave here, it’s against them that we must continue to mobilise and fight”.
In short, the film is entirely to the glory of the conquest of this democratic dream of which “the Egyptian people” are the heroes. Moreover, new arrivals to the square were welcomed with shouts of “Here they are, the heroes of the nation!” Everyone wants to find a hero or an iconic leader, the crowd wanted a young, imprisoned demonstrator, released after 12 days, to come to the tribune, but scared by the ovations he refuses to speak.
The film insidiously invites us to join with and delight in what is shown to the contrary to be great weaknesses, the immaturity of the revolt and above all the nationalist poison massaged by the pride of having got rid of Mubarak. Alongside the weight of religion, these democratic illusions weigh very heavily on the exploited in the uprising in Egypt. It is moreover, the notions of the people, democracy and revolution which are exploited throughout the “debate” after the film. Whereas most questions of the producer asked about the filming process or about the meetings with people followed throughout the film, three questions showed their unease or called into question the term “revolution” use to describe events in Egypt. One of them said that real revolutions hadn't happened very often in history and the film maker replied saying that living through those days had been an exceptional experience and what had happened had a lasting effect on consciousness including his own. And this is what justifies using the term “revolution”. This “contestationist” element briefly spoke to say that, minus the national flags, the phenomenon was not dissimilar to May 68 in France without anyone calling that a revolution. The response by the producer and his entourage was that this was the beginning of a revolutionary process which was still ongoing because the mobilisation of those at Tahrir wasn't finished, and he finally responded by saying that the question had unnecessarily pessimistic implications. A comrade from the ICC spoke on several levels: on the absence of any reference to the workers' mobilisation in events, on the fact that the film and the debate takes Egypt as an absolute reference point whereas this movement took place in the framework of an international social protest recently. This was expressed almost everywhere and we find it with the Indignant movement of Spain or Greece, Occupy in Britain or the United States in the face of a global crisis of the system. Finally, he recalled that the revolt and the birth of the movement in Tunisia took off from economic demands over unemployment, poverty and the hiking of food prices, not in order to demand more liberty and democracy. He again insisted on the fact that this had been underestimated in the debate on Egypt whereas the precariousness of life and unemployment were strong in Egypt, but the sole expression of this element of protest in the film was one of the protesters shouting out “120 pounds for a kilo of lentils!” The producer tried quite clumsily to counter the importance of element of economic demands, even denying that they played a major role in Tunisia. A member of the team associated with the film more subtly admitted that workers' strikes had also played an important role in the uprising notably since the wave of strikes in 2007/8 in the textile factories of Mahalla and elsewhere in the Nile Delta. And following this the “April 6 Movement” while at Tahrir there were bits of bread stuck to posters expressing the economic aspects. After this the debate, doubtlessly to avoid the discussion taking a more “political” turn, was quickly closed by the organisers.
W (26/1/12)
We are publishing below an article originally written as part of the ICC's own discussions on the relationship between marxism and science. It aims to bring together some of Marx and Engels thoughts on the subject, with modern scientific and historical analysis of science, and concludes with a brief critical examination of the ideas of Karl Popper.
The text was originally written in the summer of 2009.
Carlo Rovelli: Anaximandre de Milet ou la naissance de la pensée scientifique.
Marx/Engels : Lettres sur les sciences de la nature.
John Gribbin: Science, a history – 1543-2001.
Engels: Dialectics of nature and Anti-Dühring
Karl Popper: The poverty of historicism
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian physicist currently working at Marseille university, mainly in the field of quantum gravity (he was one of those responsible for the development of loop quantum gravity theory in 1988).
John Gribbin is a visiting fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex, and a science writer.
Karl Popper is one of the best-known philosophers of science of the 20th century, and as such is a reference for many scientists. One of his major works, The open society and its enemies targeted notably Plato, Hegel and Marx – and he has famously attacked the scientific status of both marxism and psychoanalysis. The open society... being an enormous tome, this text is limited to a slim volume which resumes much of his thinking.
Of Marx and Engels, it was certainly Engels who wrote the most about science (notably in the two works cited above). It is fascinating to read Engels in the light of the history of science described by Gribbin, since this throws light on the remarkable degree to which Engels actually kept in touch with, and was knowledgeable in, the science of his day. Obviously the science itself has moved on, yet Engels still has much to teach us about the way we think about science, and of course about how the scientific method should inform our thinking as marxists.
One of Engels’ main concerns in Dialectics of nature is to show how the laws of nature are themselves dialectical, in other words dominated by the laws of dialectics (transformation of quality into quantity, interpenetration of opposites, the negation of the negation), and that nature has a history. At the time (Engels began preparing the work in 1873), we should remember, many things that we take absolutely for granted today were very recent discoveries or still disputed: Darwin's work on The Origins of Species had been published barely 15 years before (the Descent of Man was only published in 1871, and it seems that Marx and Engels remained unaware of its main message), it was only beginning to be realised that there was no such thing as a “pure gas” (ie a gas that could only exist as a gas), and so on. It is thus very striking to find Engels writing, more than 20 years before the publication of Einstein's theory of relativity in 1905, that matter is only another form of motion. Engels' and Marx's preoccupation with the natural sciences was something that they always considered an important aspect of the development of a materialist view of the world.
Like most other questions, we can only address this one historically. Gribbin takes 1543 as his starting point, a year which by a happy coincidence saw the publication of both Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body – Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern anatomy). Copernicus, Vesalius, and Galileo (born in 1564) all shared a readiness to call into question the accepted authorities of the day – Ptolemaic astronomy in the case of Copernicus and Galileo, Galen’s medical theories in the case of Vesalius.
Gribbin highlights a number of aspects of Galileo’s life and work which represented a critical break with previous thinking about nature, and which lie at the foundations of all the development of science since then. Although doubtless these first scientists did not realise the full implications of the road they were opening up, these aspects are already contained in germ within their thinking:
an understanding that nature must be studied in its own terms, and that nature is not teleological,
an insistence that theory must be validated by experiment,
a realisation that mathematics is the language of nature, that natural laws can be described in the language of mathematics.
Gribbin also points out that the emergence of this new way of thinking was made possible by the advance of technology: in Galileo’s case, the development of glass manufacture which allowed the creation of the first telescopes. This has continued to be the case ever since – old theories have been called into question in part because new technology has made it possible to measure nature’s parameters with ever greater precision (it is no accident that Newton’s achievements coincide with improvements in metallurgy which in turn led to the construction of more accurate clocks, for example) – and this is still the case today.
Until the second half of the 18th century, science remained essentially a way of thinking about the world without any direct effect on the development of technology. Gribbin highlights the work of James Watt (one of the fathers of the steam engine) as the moment when science began to feed its theoretical insights back into the development of technology: Watt was employed at Glasgow University and used the newly emerging understanding of heat and the transformation of water into steam not only to improve on the existing Newcomen engines, but to set up a company which developed steam engines on the basis of the best existing scientific knowledge. From this moment on, we can say that science truly became a productive force in its own right. Indeed, this intimate, dialectical relationship between science and technology (ie production) is a unique feature of capitalist society: capitalism cannot live without a constant revolutionising of its productive apparatus – one reason that decadent capitalism has not (yet) seen the collapse of production and technology that characterised decadent Roman society.
This view of scientific thought’s place in society essentially echoes that of Engels who – to be schematic – makes a clear distinction between three phases of scientific thought: the “brilliant intuition” of the Greeks, the still essentially empirical experimental science that was born out of the Renaissance, and the full flowering of science as a productive force directly related to the development of production that got under way in the 19th century.[1]
For Engels, a true theoretical science (ie one which views the whole natural world in its interconnections, and in its historical movement) could only be born out of the accumulation of empirical knowledge: one-sided empirical natural science is transformed by its own development into a theoretical science.[2] Theoretical propositions must be validated by experiment. [3]
Since Engels wrote, the scientific outlook on the world has been profoundly changed by the work of Einstein and his successors, the emergence of the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Indeed we can say that Engels’ attempt to develop a “dialectics of nature” has been triumphantly vindicated by the historical process which has produced quantum theory, a theory which indeed claims, or attempts, to englobe the whole of nature in a unified theoretical vision, justified and validated by experiment.[4]
It is worth pausing here for a moment to consider Engels’ view of cosmology. In Anti-Dühring, Engels takes Dühring to task for his notion of a “self-equal state of matter”, since “We still do not know where mechanical force was in that state, and how we are to get from absolute immobility to motion without an impulse from outside, that is, without God”. At the time, and given the existing state of knowledge about the universe, Engels was undoubtedly right to attack Dühring’s tendency to smuggle teleology back into the natural sciences. In fact, this provides us with an interesting example of how it is possible for a correct general theoretical approach to lead to incorrect hypotheses.[5] At the time, nothing was known about the red-shift which has demonstrated that the surrounding galaxies are moving away from us (indeed nobody was yet aware that various “stars” and nebulae where in fact galaxies like our own) and that indeed space itself is expanding. The scientific view of the universe (ie the non-teleological view which has no place for God in any form) saw it as in an eternal more or less steady state: this view was still defended by the British astronomer Fred Hoyle in the 1960s.[6] And yet today, the majority consensus among scientists seems to be that the universe emerged from an infinitely small and dense singularity: this consensus is born not from mysticism, but from the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The singularity is explained as the natural, indeed inevitable, consequence of the random variations in the quantum void predicted by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The advance of science and experimental data has demonstrated that the Big Bang model is currently the best adapted to explaining observed phenomena, while at the same time the development of theoretical and mathematical tools has maintained the basic scientific principle of studying nature on the basis of nature itself.
This brings me, by a rather roundabout route, to re-pose the question: what is science? And it seems to me that we can, and should, view science from two angles: on the one hand, science is a productive force, a social form which has emerged from the development of a critique of religious temporal and spiritual authority by the rising bourgeoisie, the development of technology which made new tools available to natural philosophy, and the constant demands of capitalist production for a more advanced productive apparatus. In the period of decadence, science has also become one of the most vital instruments of war. On the other hand, science is a materialist – non-teleological – way of looking at the world which must aim not only to explain but to predict, in other words to justify its theory through experiment.[7]
But – as Engels said – if experimental science began with the Renaissance, the materialist view of the world was born long before that, in ancient Greece. As Carlo Rovelli points out in his study of Thales and Anaximander, and of the society of the Ionian city of Miletos during the first millennium BCE, the materialist outlook is highly atypical: by far the greater part of human history has been dominated by religious explanations of the origins of the world and of man’s place in it. Although Rovelli’s explanation of religious thought is superficial (he visibly understands nothing of Marx, who he cites), his explanation of how materialist thought emerged in Milesian society is far more interesting.
According to Rovelli[8] Anaximander’s importance lies in his “intuitions” (Rovelli explicitly uses the same word as Engels) based on direct observation, but also going beyond observation to seek an underlying principle to the world. Not only does Anaximander propose a model where the heavenly bodies are no longer confined to a dome over a flat earth, but placed at varying distances from a cylindrical earth floating in space, he also proposes the notion of apeiron as the universal constituent of all matter. As Rovelli says, “Anaximander thus proposes that all substances of our common experience can be understood in terms of something else; something which is both natural and foreign to our daily experience. The central intuition here is that in order to explain the world’s complexity, it is useful to postulate, to imagine, the existence of something else, which is not one of the substances we experience directly but which can play the role of an element that unifies all of them”. Anaximander, in fact, sets human thought on the road to quantum mechanics. Rovelli also shows here that intuition is an important element in scientific thought. Experiment and observation are critical, but they cannot take place without the presence of a hypothesis whose validity they are supposed to test, and the hypothesis necessarily precedes the experiment (though of course the hypothesis may itself be the result of previous experiment or observation).
Rovelli goes on to pose the question of how Anaximander’s thought arose in Miletos: what was specific about Milesian society, and later Greek society, that made possible those “brilliant intuitions” that lay the basis for materialist thinking?[9] When we see the answers that Rovelli gives to this question, one can hardly help wondering whether he is not a reader of the International Review, so close are his ideas to those expressed in the article on the Culture of debate. Let us just highlight briefly some of his main points.
Firstly, there is the importance of Miletos as a trading city, in other words a place where many different cultures and strands of thought came together. Amongst these different cultures Egypt played a particular role since it forced the Greeks to recognise that those outside Greek culture were not “barbarians”, indeed that there existed a civilisation whose antiquity was greater than their own legends. All this helped to liberate thinkers like Thales and his successors from their own religious and social prejudices.
The development of trade in turn led to the emergence of a new social structure which destroyed the dominance of the previous aristocratic or oligarchic rule to replace them with a democracy, where decisions are taken by majority vote after discussion. This capacity for debate is in itself a social discovery: “The cultural basis for the birth of science is thus also the basis for the birth of democracy: the discovery of the effectiveness of criticism and dialogue, between equals. Anaximander, who openly criticises his master Thales, does nothing other than transfer onto the terrain of knowledge the common practice of Miletos’ agora: not to approve uncritically and reverentially the god, demi-god, or lord of the moment, but to criticise the magistrate. Not out of lack of respect, but out of an awareness that a better proposal may always exist (...) This is the discovery in the domain of knowledge: that allowing criticism to take its course, and ideas to be called into question, giving the right to speak to all and taking every proposal seriously, does not lead merely to sterile cacophony. On the contrary, it makes it possible to put aside hypotheses that do not work, and to allow better ideas to emerge” (p97).
Rovelli insists on the difference between Anaximander – who challenged the teachings of his master Thales – and the Chinese savants whose main concern was to build and comment on the works of the masters. Anaximander both built on the ideas of Thales and subjected them to criticism, contrary to the Chinese practice (this goes along with a frequent insistence by Gribbin, that whatever the role played by men of genius such as Newton, science is fundamentally incremental, a collective activity of humanity as a whole).
The ability to criticise the ideas of others also implies a willingness to subject one’s own ideas to criticism and debate. But as Rovelli points out, it is the sign of an idea’s strength, not weakness, that it can be called into question. When we are confident in our ideas, in our theories, then we cannot be afraid of debating them – if debate reveals weaknesses or gaps in this or that aspect of a theory then the theory itself can only be strengthened. And even if the theory itself turns out to be wrong (for example, Copernicus’ theory that the sun was at the centre of the universe), by posing the right questions it will have allowed debate to go forwards and the sum of knowledge to increase.
Rovelli writes “in praise of uncertainty”. Science can never take the theories of today as the final “truth”, they are only the best available at any given moment – and we must live with the awareness that we do not know everything, that maybe it will never be possible for mankind to know everything.
It would need a text in itself to examine Popper’s ideas, and subject them to criticism. Such a text will be necessary if we want to treat the question of science seriously since Popper is the reference for scientific epistemology: no scientist talking about method will feel unable to refer to Popper. Perhaps his most important idea (at least the most commonly known), is the principle that to be scientific, a theory or hypothesis must be open to invalidation. In other words it must be possible to prove the theory false experimentally. While a hypothesis may attain the status of a theory (or even a “strong theory”) if it proves able to make enough positive predictions, it can never attain the status of “truth” since one contradictory observation or experiment is always enough to overturn the theory. This does not amount to pure empiricism: “I believe that theories are prior to observations as well as to experiment in the sense that the latter are significant only in relation to theoretical problems” (p90).
Up to a point, this vision of scientific thought can be of value, especially in the field of science itself and in the reflection on experimental procedure. It is not, however, complete. Two brief examples, both drawn from La Recherche n°433 in which several articles are devoted to problems of cosmology and the theory of the “multiverse”, can illustrate this point. The various theories of the existence of multiple universes are certainly materialist, and they are certainly scientific in the sense that they are built on some of the current models of the nature of matter which have proven experimentally successful. And yet in themselves, they cannot be tested since if multiple universes exist they are inherently inaccessible to us. Even if we stick to the known universe, it is impossible to test experimentally theories as to the internal structure of black holes, since the very nature of black holes is that no information can escape from them.[10]
In fact, a critique of Popper’s scientific philosophy would have to start with Engels’ critique of metaphysics, in its inability to accommodate historical change. For Popper, it is impossible to have a science of history, or historical development; indeed, it is also impossible to have a law of evolution because “The evolution of life on earth, or of human society, is a unique historical process (...) Its description is not a law, but only a single historical statement (...) we cannot hope to test a universal hypothesis nor to find a natural law acceptable to science if we are forever confined to the observation of one unique process” (p99). Popper is obliged – almost despite himself – to recognise Darwinism as a “scientific hypothesis” because of its demonstrated explanatory power. He also rejects the idea that it is possible to talk of social “laws” in a scientific sense, because historical “laws” are said to be valid only for particular historical periods (Marx and Engels certainly considered that the economic laws of capitalism that they had laid bare only held good for capitalist society), whereas “it is an important postulate of scientific method that we should search for laws with an unlimited realm of validity”.
Popper’s “critique” of marxism is vitiated by the fact that what he understands by "marxism" is in fact nothing but Stalinist ideology.[11] Most notably, Popper seems incapable of seeing the importance that Marx and Engels give to human consciousness as an active factor in the evolution of society – and the factor of consciousness, and humanity’s ability to act consciously on its own history, is one of the most important elements that distinguishes the natural sciences from the materialist, marxist view of history which must take account both of the unconscious factors at work in society, and of the development of conscious human activity on the world: humanity is capable of teleology whereas nature is not.
That said, I do not propose to enter here into a critique of Popper’s social thinking so I will conclude here with a word on his theories of science. The fact that he denies any scientific validity to marxism, to psychoanalytical theory, and even up to a point to Darwinism, reveals the limits of his theoretical approach: a narrow materialism which, when it comes down to it, has little room for a materialist, scientific approach which it may be impossible (at least in the immediate) to test, but which allows science and even society to look at the world in a new way. The example of Copernicus can serve to illustrate this. According to Rovelli, the Copernican theory (the earth revolving around the sun) is in fact inferior to the fully evolved Ptolemaic system, in terms of its predictive power: yet the important thing about the Copernican theory is that for all its faults, it poses the right questions. Others, beginning with Galileo, were to take up the challenge.
Jens 2/9/09
[1] “Thus we have once again returned to the point of view of the great founders of Greek philosophy, the view that the whole of nature, from the smallest element to the greatest, from grains of sand to suns, from protista to men, has its existence in eternal coming into being and passing away, in ceaseless flux, in un-resting motion and change, only with the essential difference that what for the Greeks was a brilliant intuition, is in our case the result of strictly scientific research in accordance with experience, and hence also it emerges in a much more definite and clear form” (Dialectics of Nature).
[2] “At about the same time, however, empirical natural science made such an advance and arrived at such brilliant results that not only did it become possible to overcome completely the mechanical one-sidedness of the eighteenth century, but also natural science itself, owing to the proof of the inter-connections existing in nature itself between the various fields of investigation (mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), was transformed from an empirical into a theoretical science and, by generalising the results achieved, into a system of the materialist knowledge of nature” (Dialectics of Nature, notes for the history of science).
[3] “We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment” (Dialectics of Nature, the “Old preface to Anti-Dühring”).
[4] A theory which certainly defies all our ‘common-sense’ views of the world, but as Engels says: “sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion” (Anti-Dühring).
[5] Or at least, apparently incorrect, since some scientists continue to prefer some variant of the steady-state model of the universe to the theory of the “Big Bang”.
[6] One reason for the suspicion aroused by Big Bang theory may be that one of its earliest and greatest proponents was the Belgian catholic priest Georges Lemaître.
[7] I cannot resist citing here the great French scientist Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827), who answered Napoleon, when the latter asked why his Exposition du système du monde contained no reference to the world’s Creator, with the words “Sire, I found this hypothesis unnecessary”. When the mathematician Lagrange objected that God is a “beautiful hypothesis that explains so many things”, Laplace is said to have answered that “it explains everything, but predicts nothing”.
[8] Rovelli makes great use of the ideas put forward by Dirk Couprie notably in his book Anaximander in context.
[9] Rovelli also cites GER Lloyd’s brief comparative study of ancient Greek and Chinese science, The ambitions of curiosity which argues that a major difference between the two cultures lies in the competitive nature of intellectual activity in Greece where different teachers and schools are all vying for influence and students, as opposed to the preoccupation with harmony and process in China, where scholars are above all concerned with developing and influencing the institutions of the state, including the emperor.
[10] We are talking here about the internal structure of black holes, not about the information which can be gathered, as Stephen Hawking showed, from a black hole’s event horizon.
[11] As a good bourgeois ideologue, he only recognises the possible “consciousness” of the social scientists themselves – the consciousness of a whole revolutionary class remains a closed book to him.
The general strike called by trade unions representing 100 millions workers spread all across India took place on 28 Feb 2012. All national unions, belonging to all political parties, including the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, joined the strike, as did thousands of local and regional unions. Bank employees, postal and state transport workers, teachers, dock workers and many other sectors of workers participated in the strike. The fact that all unions agreed to call this strike together goes to show the dynamic of workers’ struggles behind it.
The unions put forward a mishmash of demands: defend the public sector, control prices, compulsorily register unions within 45 days, strict enforcement of labour laws, increase of minimum wages to Rs. 10000.00 per month and social security etc. They made no effort to show that the bourgeoisie is mercilessly attacking workers today as its system is in crisis and sick and rotten. Instead, the unions’ efforts were aimed at building trust in the system – the bourgeoisie can concede anything, if it wishes to do so.
But the way the unions went about this whole strike showed their real intent. For one, they did not ask several millions of their members to even formally join the strike. More than one and a half million railway workers, equal or even bigger number of state power sector workers, many others workers, most of whom are members of these unions, were not even called upon to join. While proclaiming a ‘general strike’, unions agreed to millions of their members going to work as usual and not disrupting the smooth flow of the main arteries of capitalism.
Even in sectors whose unions pledged to join the strike, their attitude was more one of proclaiming a ritual strike. Most workers who participated did so by staying at home. Unions made no big efforts to bring them onto the streets and together or organise demos. Not much effort was made to involve millions of private sector workers, who belong to striking national unions, in the strike. We can see the seriousness of this exclusion when we recall that recently and for quite some time private sector workers have been far more militant and less respectful of the laws of the bourgeoisie. Even industrial areas like Gurgaon and auto hubs near Chennai and factories like Maruti at Gurgaon and Hyundai near Chennai that have recently witnessed major strikes did not join this strike. In most industrial areas, in hundreds of big and smaller cities all across India, while public sector workers joined the strike, millions of private sector workers continued to work and their unions did not join the strike.
It is clear that unions did not use the strike to mobilise workers, to bring them onto the streets and unify them. They used it as a ritual, as a means to let off steam, to keep workers apart, to keep them passive and demobilised. Striking workers sitting at home and watching TV do not strengthen workers’ unity or consciousness. It only encourages a sense of isolation, a sense of passivity and of a wasted opportunity. Given this attitude, why did unions then call the strike? And what made all of them, including BMS and INTUC, join it? To understand this we have to look at what is happening at the economic and social level and within the working class in India.
Despite all the big talk about economic boom by the Indian bourgeoisie, the economic situation has been worsening over the last few years. Like capitalism everywhere, the capitalist economy in India too has been in crisis. According to statistics issued by the government, the growth has stalled and come down from nine percent to nearly six percent. Many industries have been badly hit by the crisis. These include the IT sector but also other sectors like textiles, diamond processing, capital goods industries, infrastructure, private power companies and airlines. This has led to intensified attacks on the working class. General inflation has been hovering around ten percent for more than two years. Inflation in food and other items of daily use has been much higher, sometime going up to 16%. This has made the life of the working class miserable.
In the midst of these deteriorating living and working conditions, the working class has also been discovering the path to class struggle. Since 2005 we have seen a slow acceleration of class struggle all across India. Of course this is not unique to India but part of a global resurgence of the class struggle. The years 2010 and 2011 have seen numerous strikes in many sectors, including in auto hubs at Gurgaon and Chennai. Some of these struggles, as the strikes by Honda Motor Cycle workers in 2010 and Maruti Suzuki workers in 2011, had shown great militancy and determination to confront the security apparatus of the bosses. This has also been the characteristic of strikes in Hyundai Motors in Chennai, where workers struck work several time against casualisation and other attacks of the bosses. These strikes showed strong tendencies toward solidarity and spread across factories. They also expressed tendencies toward self-organization and setting up general assemblies, as seen in strikes by the Maruti workers who occupied the factory against the advice of ‘their’ union.
In addition to this slowly rising tide of class struggle, the struggles taking place in Middle East, in Greece, in Britain and the global ‘occupy movements’ have been having an echo in the Indian working class.
In the face of this situation the bourgeoisie has really been worried about the spread of class struggle. At times the bourgeoisie has been very scared. This fear has been clearly expressed in the face of many of the recent strikes.
At the time of violent confrontations at Honda Motor Cycles and in the face of repeated strikes in Maruti-Suzuki, this fear could be seen clearly. Each time the media was full of stories that strikes could spread and engulf other auto companies in Gurgaon and paralyse the whole area. These stories were not speculation. While the main strikes were in a few factories, other workers went to the gates of the striking companies. There were workers’ joint demos, even one strike across the whole industrial city of Gurgaon. The provincial government was itself seriously concerned about the spread of the strike. The Chief Minister and Labour Minister of Haryana, at the prompting of the Primer Minister and Union Labour Minister, brought management and union bosses together to dampen down the strike.
Like the rest of the bourgeoisie, unions have been even more concerned over loosing control over the workers if the militancy increases. Again, this was evident in strikes at Maruti in 2011 where workers took many actions against the directions and the wishes of the union.
This fear has been pushing the unions to appear to be doing something. They have called a number of ritual strikes including a bank workers’ strike in November 2011. The present strike, while without doubt an expression of the rising tide of anger and militancy within the working class, is also the latest effort of the unions to contain and channel it.
Workers need to understand that going on a ritual strike and sitting back at home does not take us anywhere. Nor does it help to gather in a park and listen to speeches of union bosses and party MPs. The bosses and their government are attacking us because capitalism is in crisis and they have no way out. We need to understand that all workers are under attack, all are in the same boat. Remaining passive and isolated from each other does not discourage bosses from intensifying their attacks against workers. Workers need to use these occasions to come out on the streets, to mobilise themselves, to come together and discuss with other workers. They need to take their struggles into their own hands. This will not immediately solve workers’ problems but it will make it possible for us to mount a genuine struggle against the bosses to defend ourselves, to push the bosses back. It will help us develop our struggle against the whole of capitalism and work toward its destruction. As those occupying the Athens Law School in Greece in February 2012 said, in order to liberate ourselves from present crises of capitalism, “we must destroy the (capitalist) economy.”
Communist Iinternationalist, 9/3/12
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
28_march.leaflet.pdf [385] | 70.93 KB |
Thousands of teachers are striking in London on 28 March against the governments pension ‘reforms’
No. It’s the whole public sector. All pensions are under attack, and the latest budget, with its ‘granny tax’, has made it worse. Last November the civil servants, local government employees and others were out alongside those who work in education. Why have the unions decided not to bring them out today?
It’s the whole private sector, where growing numbers of workers can’t look forward to any kind of pension at all.
No. More and more workers face long term pay freezes, worsening conditions at work – if they have a job at all. Over 20 percent of young people between 16 and 25 are out of work.
No. These conditions are faced by workers up and down the country
No. the brutal austerity measures being imposed on the working class and the entire population in Greece, Portugal and Spain, where wages and pensions are already being directly cut and hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out, are what lie in store for all us, because the crisis of this system is world wide and terminal
There are many reasons. The widespread feeling that there is no alternative, the hope that it will all go away, the lack of confidence about taking things into our own hands.
But this lack of perspective and lack of confidence means that those who falsely claim to represent our interests – above all our ‘official’ trade union representatives – can keep us divided into countless little sectors, trades, and categories, call us out on separate days, cancel strikes when the courts give the order, and imprison us in trade union legislation which makes us fight with one hand tied behind our backs.
Yes, if we cut across professional and trade union divisions and come together in assemblies open to all workers.
If we ignore laws about ballots and use these assemblies to make actual decisions about how to struggle.
If we ignore trade union laws about ‘secondary picketing’ and use massive delegations to call on other workers to join our struggle.
If we open out to casual workers, students, the unemployed, pensioners.
If we use demonstrations, occupations and street meetings not to listen passively to speeches by the experts but to exchange experiences of struggle and discuss how to go forward.
If we rediscover our identity as a class – a class which everywhere, in all countries, has the same interests and the same goal: the replacement of this rotten system with a real human community.
International Communist Current, 23/3/12
www.internationalism.org [312]
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
2011_movements_lft2.pdf [388] | 482.16 KB |
This is an international statement that tries to draw a provisional balance sheet of the social movements of 2011 in order to contribute to a wider debate about their significance
The two most important events in 2011 were the globe crisis of capitalism[1], and the social movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, Chile, the USA, Britain...
The consequences of the capitalist crisis have been very hard for the immense majority of the world's population: deteriorating living conditions, long-term unemployment lasting years, precarious work making it impossible to have even a minimum of stability, extreme poverty and hunger...
Millions of people are concerned about the disappearance of the possibility of having a stable and normal life and the lack of a future for their children. This has led to a profound indignation, attempts to break out of passivity by taking to the streets and squares, to discussions about the causes of a crisis which in its present phase has lasted 5 years.
This anger has been exacerbated by the arrogance, greed and indifference shown towards the suffering of the majority by the bankers, politicians and other representatives of the capitalist class. The same goes for the powerlessness of governments faced with such grave problems: their measures have only increased poverty and unemployment without bringing any solution.
This movement of indignation has spread internationally: to Spain, where the then Socialist government imposed one of the first and most draconian austerity plans; to Greece, the symbol of the crisis of sovereign debt; to the United States, the temple of world capitalism; to Egypt and Israel, focus of one of the worst and most entrenched imperialist conflicts, the Middle East.
The awareness that this is an international movement began to develop despite the destructive weight of nationalism, as seen in the presence of national flags in the demonstrations in Greece, Egypt or the USA. In Spain solidarity with the workers of Greece was expressed by slogans such as “Athens resists, Madrid rises up”. The Oakland strikers (USA, November,2011) said “Solidarity with the occupation movement world wide”. In Egypt it was agreed in the Cairo Declaration to support the movement in the United States. In Israel they shouted “Netanyahu, Mubarak, El Assad are the same” and contacts were made with Palestinian workers.
These movements have passed their high points and although there are new struggles (Spain, Greece, Mexico) many are asking: what did this wave of indignation achieve? Have we gained anything?
It is more than 30 years since we have seen such multitudes occupy the streets and squares in order to struggle for their own interests despite the illusions and confusions that have affected them.
These people, the workers, the exploited who have been presented as failures, idlers, incapable of taking the initiative or doing anything in common, have been able to unite, to share initiatives and to break out of the crippling passivity to which the daily normality of this system condemns them.
The principle of developing confidence in each others’ capacity, of discovering the strength of the collective action of the masses, has been a morale booster. The social scene has changed. The monopoly of public life by politicians, experts and ‘great men’ has been put into question by the anonymous masses who have wanted to be heard[2].
Having said all this, we are only at a fragile beginning. The illusions, confusions, inevitable mood swings of the protesters; the repression handed out by the capitalist state and the dangerous diversions imposed its forces of containment (the left parties and trade unions) have led to retreats and bitter defeats. It is a question of a long and difficult road, strewn with obstacles and where there is no guarantee of victory: that said the very act of starting to walk this road is the first victory.
The masses involved in these movements have not limited themselves to passively shouting their displeasure. They have actively participated in organising assemblies. The mass assembles have concretised the slogan of the First International (1864) “The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves or it is nothing”. This is the continuation of the tradition of the workers' movement stretching back to the Paris Commune, and to Russia in 1905 and 1917, where it took an ever higher form, continued in Germany 1918, Hungary 1919 and 1956, Poland 1980.
General assemblies and workers' councils are the genuine form of the struggle of the proletarian struggle and the nucleus of a new form of society.
Assemblies which aim to massively unite ourselves point the way towards breaking the chains of wage slavery, of atomisation, “everyone for themselves”, imprisonment in the ghetto of a sector or a social category.
Assemblies in order to think, to discuss and decide together, to make ourselves collectively responsible for what is decided, by participating together both in the making of decisions and their implementation.
Assemblies in order to build mutual confidence, general empathy, solidarity, which are not only indispensable for taking the struggle forward but can also serve as the pillars of a future society free of class and exploitation.
2011 has seen an explosion of real solidarity that has nothing to do with the hypocritical and self-serving “solidarity” that the ruling class preaches about. The demonstrations in Madrid called for the freeing of those who have been arrested or have stopped the police detaining immigrants; there have been massive actions against evictions in Spain, Greece and the United States; in Oakland “The strike Assembly has agreed to send pickets or to occupy any company or school that punishes employees or students in any way for taking part in the General Strike of the 2nd November”. Vivid but still episodic moments have happened, when everyone can feel protected and defended by those around them. All of which starkly contrasted with what is “normal” in this society with its anguished sense of hopelessness and vulnerability.
The consciousness needed for millions of workers to transform the world is not gained through being handed down by the ruling class or through the clever slogans of enlightened leaders. It is the fruit of an experience of struggle accompanied and guided by debate on a massive scale, by discussions which take into account the past but which are always focused on the future, since as a banner said in Spain “There is not future without revolution”.
The culture of debate, that is, open discussion based on mutual respect and active listening, has begun to spring up not only in the assemblies but around them: mobile libraries have been organised, as well as countless meetings for discussion and exchange of ideas... A vast intellectual activity has been carried out with very limited means, improvised in the streets and squares. And, as with the assemblies this has reanimated a past experience of the workers' movement “The thirst for education, so long held back, was concerted by the revolution into a true delirium. During the first six months, tons of literature, whether on handcarts or wagons poured forth from the Smolny Institute each day, Russia insatiably absorbed it, like hot sand absorbs water. This was not pulp novels, falsified history, diluted religion or cheap fiction that corrupts, but economic and social theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky”[3]. Confronted with this society’s culture that is based on the struggle for “models of success” which can only be a fount of millions of failures, the alienating and false stereotypes hammered home by the dominant ideology and its media, thousands of people began to look for an authentic popular culture, making it for themselves, trying to animate their own critical and independent criteria. The crisis and its causes, the role of the banks etc, have been exhaustively discussed. There has been discussion of revolution, although with much confusion; there has been talk of democracy and dictatorship, synthesised in these two complementary slogans “they call it democracy and it is not” and “it is a dictatorship but unseen”.
If all of this makes 2011 the year of the beginning of hope, we have viewed these movements with a discerning and critical eye, seeing their limitations and weaknesses which are still immense.
If there is a growing number of people in the world who are convinced that capitalism is an obsolete system, that “in order for humanity to survive, capitalism must be killed” there is also a tendency to reduce capitalism to a handful of “bad guys” (unscrupulous financiers, ruthless dictators) when it is really a complex network of social relations that have to be attacked in their totality and not dissipated into a preoccupation with its many surface expressions (finance, speculation, the corruption of political-economic powers).
While it is more than justified to reject the violence that capitalism has exuded from every pore (repression, terror and terrorism, moral barbarity), this system will however not be abolished by mere passive and citizen pressure. The minority class will not voluntarily abandon power and it will take cover in its state with its democratic legitimacy through elections every 4 or 5 years; through parties who promise what they can never do and do what they didn't promise; and through unions that mobilise in order to demobilise and end up signing up to all that the ruling class puts on the table. Only a massive, tenacious and stubborn struggle will give the exploited the necessary strength to destroy the state and its means of repression and to make real the oft repeated shout in Spain “All power to the assemblies”.
Although the slogan of “we are the 99% against the 1%”, which was so popular in the occupation movement in the United States, reveals the beginnings of an understanding of the bloody class divisions that affect us, the majority of participants in these protests saw themselves as “active citizens” who want to be recognized within a society of “free and equal citizens”.
However, society is divided into classes: a capitalist class that has everything and produces nothing, and an exploited class -the proletariat- that produces everything but has less and less. The driving force of social evolution is not the democratic game of the “decision of a majority of citizens” (this game is nothing more than a masquerade which covers up and legitimises the dictatorship of the ruling class) but the class struggle.
The social movement needs to join up with the struggle of the principle exploited class -the proletariat- who collectively produce the main riches and ensure the functioning of social life: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, offices, ports, construction, post offices. In some of the movements in 2011 we began to see its strength, above all in the wave of strikes that exploded in Egypt and which finally forced Mubarak to resign. In Oakland (California) the “occupiers” called a general strike, going to the port and gaining the active support of the dockers and lorry drivers. In London striking electricians and the Saint Paul's occupiers carried out common actions. In Spain certain striking sectors have tended to unite with the assemblies in the squares.
There is no opposition between the class struggle of the modern proletariat and the profound needs of the social layers exploited by capitalist oppression. The struggle of the proletariat is not an egotistical or specific movement but the basis for the “independent movement of the immense majority to the benefit of the immense majority” (The Communist Manifesto).
The present movements would benefit from critically reviewing the experience of two centuries of proletarian struggle and attempts at social liberation. The road is long and fraught with enormous obstacles, which calls to mind the oft repeated slogan in Spain “It is not that we are going slowly, it is that we are going far”. Start the most widespread possible discussion, without any restriction or discouragement, in order to consciously prepare new movements which could make it clear that capitalism can indeed be replaced by another society.
International Communist Current 11/03/12
[1] See: The economic crisis is not a never-ending story, en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201203/4744/economic-crisis-not-never-ending-story [390]. Along with the global crisis of the system, the serious incident at the Fukushima nuclear power station -Japan- shows us the enormous dangers that humanity is facing.
[2] It is not without significance that Time Magazine made The Protester as its “Man of the Year”. See www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132_2102... [391].
[3] John Reed: 10 days that shock the world. www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ch1.htm [392]
We are very pleased to announce the formation of two new sections of the ICC, in Peru and Ecuador.
The constitution of a new section of our organisation is always a very important event for us. First because it is further evidence of the capacity of the world proletariat, despite its difficulties, to give rise to revolutionary minorities on an international scale; and secondly because it means that our organisation is able to strengthen its global presence.
The formation of two new sections of the ICC is taking place in a situation where the working class has, since 2003, begun to recover from the long period of retreat in its consciousness and its militancy that followed the events of 19891. This recovery has been expressed by a whole series of struggles which show a growing awareness of the impasse facing world capitalism and by the emergence, on an international scale, of internationalist minorities looking for contact among themselves, posing many questions, searching for a revolutionary coherence and debating the perspectives for the development of the class struggle. Part of this milieu has turned to the positions of the communist left and some of these elements have joined our organisation. Thus in 2007 an ICC nucleus was created in Brazil [393]. In 2009 we greeted the creation of two new sections of the ICC in the Philippines and Turkey [394].
The two new sections are also the product of a sustained effort by our organisation and its militants to take part in political discussion and clarification, to make links wherever there are groups or individuals searching for communist ideas, whether or not they enter our organisation.
Our new sections were, before joining us, groups of this kind, whether they turned straight away towards political clarification around the positions of the ICC, as in Ecuador, or whether they came from different political backgrounds, as in Peru. In both cases, they developed through discussion with other political forces as well as through systematic discussion with the ICC on the basis of its platform. They always had a commitment to taking position on the major events of the international and national situation2. Today, they continue to evolve in a milieu which is very rich in contacts.
Based in South America, these two new sections will reinforce the intervention of the ICC in the Spanish language, and its presence in Latin America where the ICC was already present in Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil.
The whole of the ICC send a warm and fraternal greeting to these new sections and the comrades who form them.
ICC, April 2012
1 The collapse of Stalinism which gave rise to huge bourgeois campaigns which, once again, fraudulently identified communism and the form of state capitalism which developed in the eastern countries in the wake of the degeneration of the Russian revolution.
2 Some of these statements have been published in Accion Proletaria, the ICC’s paper in Spain, and on ICC Online in the Spanish language
This is a translation of an article from our comrades in Switzerland.
In response to the economic crisis, angry and indignant people in Switzerland set up their first general assembly (GA) of the Occupy movement on October 15 2011. Subsequent weekly meetings in front of the big banks on Paradeplatz (Army Square) in Zurich were inspired by much more important international movements such as the Indignados in Spain or Occupy Wall Street in the United States. The very heterogeneous Occupy movement is an expression of the international emergence of a process of reflection and of revolt faced with the impasse of capitalist society. Despite a convergent tendency at the international level to focus (often in a very restricted fashion) on the “world of finance”, some quite diverse experiences unfolded in different countries, deserving to be taken up at the international level. And these happened when disillusionment within the Occupy movement was clearly appearing throughout. Thus we want to share here some experiences drawn from our participation in Occupy’s activities.
As in New York and other cities in the United States, on October 15 Paradeplatz was transformed into a village of tents, but after two days, threatened with expulsion by the police, the “village” had to move to the central Lindenhof Park. The Occupy movement in Zurich wasn't straight away confronted with direct repression as in Spain, but much more a classical policy of attempting to integrate the movement into the system, with the ruling class in Switzerland resorting to its own version of “direct democracy” to blunt any resistance to capitalism. Here in Switzerland the ruling class had drawn the lessons of events at the beginnings of the 1980s, understanding that it wasn't possible to suffocate social movements by brutality alone and that it could do so much better by offering some possibilities of participation in the system.
Hypocritically, the leaders of the banks and the government thus showed their “understanding” of the Occupy movement. Occupy militants were immediately invited onto one of the most important political TV programmes with the objective of reflecting together with the main bankers and professors as to the possible means to make the financial system better; the leaders of today couldn't adopt the arrogant attitude that “everything's going well”. During this initial phase, the attacks of the bourgeois press were mainly restricted to criticisms of the absence of concrete political positions on the part of Occupy.
When, in its initial enthusiasm, the Occupy movement accepted offers like that of state television, it was in the hope of greater popularisation. But at the end October, the GA managed, most of the time, to spring the trap of “concrete propositions” aimed at ameliorating the capitalist financial system and the parallel trap of integrating itself into the mechanisms of classic democratic participation.
For the ruling class, the most profitable thing seemed to be to tolerate the movement as a whole and wait for its exhaustion rather than immediately integrate it into the democratic game where it would be hammered. In the almost unprecedented culture of debate in the initial phase of October and November, where almost everyone was allowed to speak, a great strength of the movement was that it settled on the principle: “take time to discuss and don't allow ourselves to be put under pressure”.
The tent village of Lindenhof, well organised and welcoming towards those who wanted to participate, rapidly became (as the Saturday GA on Paradeplatz) the real centre of discussion for the Occupy movement. As with the Indignados’ movement in Spain, the collective occupation of a public space provided a framework that allowed the movement to unite. Very quickly however, and despite the open attitude of the militants living in the village, two dynamics appeared:
1. The emergence of an independent community to which only people having the time and staying power to live their lives in this place could participate – whereas that was almost impossible for the majority of people responsible for families and the obligations of wage labour.
2. The daily concern of housekeeping and of the organisation of the tent village progressively took over the time dedicated to political debate – which was at the origins of the hopes of the Occupy movement.
This situation wasn't freely chosen by the occupants and they can't be reproached for it; it was imposed on them through the objective difficulty of making the tent village an inhabitable infrastructure, and above all because of the permanent threat of being expelled by the repressive apparatus of the police. Contrary to Zuccotti Park in New York, the movement as a whole in Zurich didn't go as far in a dynamic of falling back on itself and fetishising the park. It engaged in its general assemblies with an intense reflection on the way in which the movement could link up with the rest of “99%”.
On the eve of November 3, the GA which occupied the University square in order to hold a collective discussion, inviting students to participate directly, constituted an expression of this aspiration to enlarge the movement. For five weeks, free of the daily concerns of the tent village, these weekly general assemblies were collective moments encouraging reflection on questions of general politics. Faced with the emergence of positions absurdly proposing a “leadership” to the movement or describing themselves in a fatalist fashion as “delusional”, the plenary assemblies were strong enough to pose their collective spirit of self-organisation. But the anger and combativity among the students wasn't developed enough to join the Occupy movement to their own preoccupations. Even if the hope of a strong participation of the students didn't come to fruition (a hope based on the fact that in 2009 a movement broke out at the University of Zurich), these evening meetings, called “GA's on the content”, where some new people made an appearance, constituted an enrichment of the Occupy movement which could no longer be reduced to a village of tents. Occupy had tried concrete measures to spread the movement.
As a matter of fact, the positive dynamic of such “GA's on the content” demonstrates that in the future any movement will be able to avoid transferring fundamental political discussions of the plenary GA to the “GA on the content” - in the same way that political life cannot be exclusively delegated to work groups. On the contrary, the plenary GA must take the time to come together in order to calmly and collectively clarify the fundamental political questions of the movement. In December, Occupy Zurich, strongly influenced by activism, got more and more bogged down in the problem of holding GA's in themselves, treating numerous questions of organisational detail in an exhausting fashion.
The pioneer spirit present in the first great mobilisations of October and November on Paradeplatz settled down. Occupy was not dead, as the bourgeois press would have us believe at the end of December with the slogan “Bye bye Occupy!”, expressing the wish to bury protest against the crisis and the financial institutions. But participation in the GA's rapidly fell during December. The tent village was again emptied by the police on November 15 and some militants had demoralising fines inflicted upon them. By the first GA of 2012, January 4, with a participation of about 70 people, several interventions underlined that “there were less and less numbers”. And, in the space of a month, Occupy clearly went from a spontaneous movement mobilising numerous people to a kernel of militants trying to maintain some near-daily actions whatever the cost.
Quite another atmosphere affected the culture of debate of the GA’s: patience and mutual respect while speaking, so impressive at the beginning, began to give way to tiredness, impatience, tensions and feelings of being excluded from any decision-making. A dynamic developed trying to compensate for the growing isolation by an activism that more and more clearly rested solely on the capacities and on the good will of militants taken individually and not at all on any collective perspective. Occupy Zurich held numerous actions that were really no longer possible with a declining force, as the discussion of the GA about the information stand installed on a public square in Stauffacher showed. Though without doubt well intentioned, but quite desperate, the appeals to discipline (which can’t be the basis for any social movement fighting for the emancipation of humanity because it’s equivalent to the individual moralism of capitalist society) only led to still more tensions.
It's a well-known phenomenon in social movements that the great heights of the beginning are rapidly transformed into frustration when the movement remains isolated from the rest of the working class. The question of isolation is here shown to be a key question. The evident fetishisation of Zuccotti Park in New York wasn't due to the isolation coming from Occupy Wall Street, but was rather an expression of it. There are no “survival recipes” for a movement like Occupy because like other social movements it doesn't originate from an activist “feasibility”, but comes from the political fermentation within society. It arises on the basis of the objective conditions of life.
Marked by the progressive decline of the Occupy Zurich movement, the January 4 GA thus turned to a presentation and the adoption of plans of action in which the participants mostly involved themselves in a very individualistic way. In such a moment, it is more productive to pose the questions: “what do we want?”, “what are our common strengths?”, “why is the movement going backwards?”
For the people involved in the movement of Occupy Zurich, confronted with fatigue and the shrinkage of numbers down to a small kernel, the necessity to pose some quite fundamental questions was clearly shown in the two first weeks of January 2012 in the question of the frequency of assemblies. What this discussion shows, in the framework of a social movement in decline, is the insoluble contradiction between on the one hand the maintenance of frequent assemblies as the lungs of the movement and, on the other hand, its declining strength and participation. At the GA of January 4, this question was settled in favour of the sole solution which seems realistic and reasonable (immediately go for one assembly a week) but with the aid of the “thermometer of fatigue”. It was absolutely correct for one of the most active elements to put in writing the day following this assembly the critique that “the decision to hold one GA a week was not taken unanimously, but by a decision of the majority. From the beginning I was clearly against the reduction in the frequency of GA's, however my arguments were not confronted and my preoccupations ignored. When everyone expressed their opinions it turned out that there was a majority for holding less GA's, which finally ended up, when I again wanted to support my position, with me being barracked by all. Unfortunately, two compromise positions were rejected without discussion. I present my excuses here to those that formulated them; in this situation, put under pressure from all sides, I considered these compromise positions without controlling my emotions, which led me to reject them straight away. I regret it. Looking back on them, both had potential if one had been able to discuss them in detail.”
What this comrade is defending here is not a blind principle of about raising the frequency of GA's independent of the dynamic of the movement, but the preservation of the culture of debate. The consensual method of the Occupy movement, even if it can conceal the latent weakness of prematurely taking the smallest common denominator as a result of the discussion, thus preventing the necessary polarisation, had, at least in the initial phase, the advantage of allowing a place for all opinions. It is clear that sometimes concrete decisions must be taken even if everyone is not in agreement. However, when decisions are taken by the majority they must not fundamentally mean the end of discussions around them. At the GA of January 11, the preoccupation of the participant quoted above couldn't find any place because of the overwhelming amount of information and points concerning action, although his critique went to the heart of the problem: the changes in the operation of the culture of debate.
It's difficult to say where Occupy is going. However, the January 11 GA clearly contained a tendency towards seeing itself as a “permanent movement”, wanting to evolve and transform it into a political regroupment. Given that the struggles for working conditions or against the lowering of wages in capitalism today cannot have a permanent character without falling into a trade unionist policy of rotten compromise and accommodations to representative democracy, similar perils lie in wait for Occupy. In the context of the momentary loss of its strength and its own dynamic, some voices made themselves heard in favour of an alliance with leftist groups such as Jusos and Greenpeace, doubtless with the aim of regaining some strength. For example, the GA got completely drawn into an insignificant offer of cooperation with a political spiritualist group. Instead of defending the autonomy of the movement, of discussing questions that are really on the agenda, the GA restricted itself to a debate aimed at arriving at an immediate decision concerning their relations to this particular group and to religious groups in general. Such a discussion can be interesting in itself, but it's impossible to undertake and clarify in such haste, which has been imposed from the outside and which already gives a foretaste of bourgeois leftist politics. What, at the beginning of the movement had been thrown out of the door with a healthy instinct - the blackmail exerted by the bourgeoisie pushing for the formulation of “concrete demands” with a view to making the financial system better, in other words pressure to obtain a position within the framework of bourgeois politics - now furtively reasserted itself through the window.
If the Occupy movement doesn't want to be dispersed and get lost in supporting parliamentary proposals about “disclosing the financing of political parties” or in democratic initiatives against speculation on basic food products, which some participants have presented to the GA as their political project, it is necessary to return to the question at the beginning: why is there this crisis of capitalism? The Occupy movement has to ask itself the question of whether all the problems so sharply perceived by its participants can find a solution within capitalism – or is it time to go beyond this mode of production as a whole? As it is impossible for such social movements to be permanently maintained, and there will be others, it is important to convey all the positive experiences made to future social movements in case Occupy doesn't find a second wind. Because the crisis of capitalism, the element which unleashed Occupy in the first place, will not disappear as long as this system of exploitation survives.
Mario 16/1/12
President Obama has announced US sanctions against those countries that continue to buy Iranian oil. This is not really a new move so much as the next move in applying pressure, already planned 3 months ago. It follows EU measures against Iranian oil, despite Greece and Italy’s reliance on it. Talks between the US and Israel last month were even more bellicose than usual and accompanied by much speculation on whether Israel would launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran’s foreign policy, including its efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal, is shaped by its claim to be a regional power in the Middle East. This brings it into opposition to Israel, as the undoubted leading power in the region, and its US backer. All talk about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and international law only serve as diplomatic weapons when they are not simply propaganda to obscure the reality of the sordid imperialist interests at stake. Particularly given that Israel’s nuclear capabilities are an open secret. Nevertheless, Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear arsenal under cover of wanting to develop civilian nuclear power is indeed a threat to Israel’s status as top dog in the Middle East.
For the moment Obama and Netanyahu have agreed to use diplomacy against Iran. This has important advantages in putting pressure on Iran’s big power allies. Russia is closest, with a strategic partnership based on arms and nuclear energy sales, but it has to distance itself from any intention to build nuclear weapons. China has strong economic ties, buying 20% of Iranian oil, with a 20 year energy agreement at prices below those on the world market, very significant for its economy based on cheap production costs. Both these allies have naturally opposed the oil embargo. Oil is, at least in theory, a good weapon to use against Iran, with 10% of the world’s petrol and 17% of natural gas reserves. However, not only are its largest trading partners not going to cooperate, not only do the EU and Japan already have a dispensation to continue trading, but Iran’s economy also relies on agricultural exports and, based on its natural advantages, has a fast growing economy. As always, at the economic level an embargo will hit only the poorest in the country. As an element in the build up of diplomatic pressure it may be very useful in neutralising Russian and Chinese support for Iran, particularly if there is a future military option.
This is perhaps a very opportune time to pressurise Iran, when its most significant regional ally, the Syrian Assad regime, is looking at best distinctly shaky as the country descends into civil war. But Iran still has the capacity to influence events in the region via its clients in Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as by using the ideology of Shiite unity to gain influence, particularly in Iraq which now has a Shiite prime minister, Malaki.
The US has not taken the military option off the table. It never does, and numerous military adventures show it is never backward in launching attacks. There are strategic and diplomatic considerations to take account of first. Many of those willing to support the oil embargo – at least up to a point, provided it doesn’t impair their supply – may oppose a military attack, much as France and Germany opposed the invasion of Iraq. It is also still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military option discussed at the time of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting last month was an Israeli strike against nuclear installations. While this would be more difficult than the attack on Iraq in 1981 (further, need for bunker busting bombs to reach underground facilities) Israel has clearly calculated that any Iranian retaliation would be weak, or as Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies says “an Iranian missile strike would be only a symbolic gesture” since it would be unable to hit military targets in Israel (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17261265 [396]). For our rulers civilian casualties are of no real significance! But Iran’s response would not be limited to direct strikes against Israel. It has the capacity to close the Straits of Hormuz, which control 40% of the world’s oil supplies, and blocking this would block Iran and Russia’s main competitors in the petrol trade. Oil trade is a two-edged sword. Iran also has the capacity to use its clients, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, to send missiles into Israel, stirring up more destruction and chaos.
There is one other disadvantage, from the US point of view, to an Israeli strike against Iran – it would tend to unite the country behind the policy of nuclear weapons. Iran has major divisions in its ruling class that were shown up in response to the fraudulent elections in 2009.
The policies of the US and Israel, on the one hand, or Iran and its allies on the other, whether hawkish, or seemingly reluctant to go to war, are not determined by the whims of the regimes involved but are compelled by a material situation that forces every imperialism into conflict with its rivals.
Alex 31/3/12
During the past weeks some abominable acts of violence shocked the world. In early March US Sgt. Robert Bales went on a shooting spree in the Afghan Kandahar province. He went from house to house methodically shooting Afghan civilians. Altogether he killed 16 people, mostly women and children. In mid-March in Toulouse and Montauban the young Algerian born Muhamed Merah killed three French soldiers before gunning down three children and a teacher in a Jewish school.
What do the running amok of the US soldier stationed in Afghanistan and the series of murders by Mohamed Merah have to do with each other?
Mohamed Merah claimed that he wanted to take revenge for the prohibition of the burka in France, the deployment of the French Army in Afghanistan and the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. Before being shot during the police siege he regretted that he had been unable to kill more people. The motive of the shooting spree by Robert Bales is still unknown. Apparently Merah, by committing as much slaughter as possible, wanted to draw maximum attention to the oppression of his brother and sister Muslims. The spirit of revenge and retaliation drove him to these murders, which he claimed to be carrying out on behalf of al Qaida. On the other hand, it looks like Bales just went berserk – he later claimed that he had no memory of the killings.
How was it possible that the army man Robert Bales, himself a father of two children, lost control to this degree?
The New York Times reported on March 17th that Bales joined the army shortly after 9/11. “I am going to help my country”, was his justification. However, after being sent to the theatres of war, he became aware that the lives of the US soldiers (as that of all ISAF troops) were in danger 24 hours a day. They had to expect an attack at any moment. In four deployments within a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales suffered from a head and foot injury. The eve before the shooting he witnessed a horrific scene in which one of his fellow soldiers lost a leg in a land mine. We do not know how many victims among civilians or enemy fighters he saw or how many shoot-outs he was involved in. In any case, the experience of Robert Bales in these wars was in no way exceptional.
It is a fact that war creates horrendous psychological damage among soldiers as well as civilians. “More than 200.000 people (i.e. one fifth of all veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) have received treatment since the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in veteran hospitals – all of them were treated because of Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD)”. USA Today published these figures in November 2011, referring to studies by the Veterans’ Association. “The estimated number of unreported cases of sick veterans is probably much higher (…) The army only admits some 50.000 cases of PTSD”. (https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,822232,00.html [399]).
Around one third of the veterans of the Vietnam war returned home with massive psychological disorders. Although only one percent of the population served in the US-army, the suicides of US veterans count for 20% of all suicides. Almost 1000 veterans try to commit suicide every month. As veterans report: “It is a horror. War changes your brain. Between war and life at home there is a world of difference. You change, whether you want it or not. Once you return home, you can no longer find a balance.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [400])
And once they return home many of them have to face unemployment and homelessness. The example of the city of Los Angeles is revealing: “In Los Angeles there are many homeless veterans. They lost everything, their job, their partners, their home. All this because of their psychological disorders and because they do not get any help. Roughly one third of all the homeless of Los Angeles are veterans.” (www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html [400])
Napo, the British National Association of Probation Officers, “estimated that 12,000 [former servicemen] are under supervision of probation officers, with a further 8,500 behind bars in England and Wales. The total of more than 20,000 is more than twice the number currently serving in Afghanistan” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ [401]
If you give patriotism and nationalism an inch, you are drawn into a spiral of destruction which not only damages or destroys the lives of civilian populations, but also the soldiers themselves, who are mentally mutilated and emotionally destabilised. While the ruling class and their ideologues embellish wars by speaking about “humanitarian missons” and “stabilising countries”, the reality inside the theatre of war looks very different. Here the soldiers are dragged into an abyss where their initial anxieties evolve into hatred and paranoia. What is portrayed as a “humanitarian” deployment in reality turns out to be the permanent terrorisation of the population. In these circumstances soldiers often develop a sense of satisfaction if they can damage or destroy symbols which enjoy a high esteem among the local population, or if they can humiliate human beings directly and openly. The local population, which has been pushed into a dead-end, often feels nothing but contempt for the “liberators” – and many of them can easily be mobilised for suicide attacks. The killing machine has come into full swing.
After so many traumatic experiences Bales could no longer feel that he wanted to “help my country”. He was particularly outraged by the fact that after four previous deployments he was being sent to Afghanistan again. According to his wife they would have preferred being stationed in more peaceful outposts like Germany, Italy or Hawaii.
Bales may now be facing the death penalty. Instead of explaining why patriotism and nationalism necessarily lead to orgies of violence, to the destruction of the victims and the perpetrator, the US legal system now acts as prosecutor and judge. The ruling class wants to wash its hands of responsibility for the war, and more precisely, for the army’s systematic dehumanisation of its own soldiers. The army, frequently supported by professional psychologists using the latest techniques of ‘behaviour modification’, has one essential goal: soldiers have to be made fit for combat, which means overcoming any reluctance about killing fellow human beings. The psychologist and film maker Jan Haaken showed in her documentary Mind Zone the role the psychologists play: “We are not here to reduce the number of soldiers. In case of doubt soldiers are diagnosed fit for combat, as long as they can do the job”. https://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/mind_zone_new_film_tracks_therapists [402]
Mohamed Merah, who wiped out the lives of seven people because he wanted to take revenge for the all the acts of violence which this society perpetrates against people, only reproduced the murderous methods of an oppressing system. The means he chose are part of a destructive and self-destructive vicious circle. The fact that his application to join the French Foreign Legion and the army was turned down, although he wanted to offer his services to the French state, may cast a light on his readiness to kill in the service of the state and the nation.
“The spiral of violence which wipes out all that is human cannot be broken using the military methods of the capitalist system. In order to overcome an inhuman system, the goal and the means have to cohere..
The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises murder. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mould the world forcibly according to its ideal, but the action of the great massive millions of the people, destined to fulfil a historic mission and to transform historical necessity into reality”.
(Rosa Luxemburg, ‘What does Spartacus want?’, 14. December 1918, )
Dv. 25/03/12
In many discussions the following is asked: where has all the vitality and combativity, the discussions and occupations of squares gone? Some people tell us “They are being managed by the likes of Democracia Real YA or Assemblies of 15M”[1]. However many think they have simply disappeared and that we shouldn't have any illusions about them.
We are certainly not in an explosive situation like May; does that mean that we have not experienced anything?
Tons of “democratist” rubbish has poured forth from Democracia Real Ya (DRY), likewise the PSOE, in order to bury the militancy, spontaneity, creativity, discussions and mobilisations of the 15M movement. But they cannot draw a veil over these events. Those days in May will remain a reference point for the fact that it is possible to struggle, to decide for ourselves. Each time that discontent and anger overwhelm democratic normality in order to fight back, 15M will be a reference point.
First of all because it was a baptism of fire for the younger generation, for those who had never been in an assembly, who had not felt the solidarity and collective force of the workplace because of the chronic unemployment they suffer. In the squares and demonstrations the youngest and oldest have come together, and begun a transmission of experience, gaining confidence in the possibility of changing things. And this will not be easily forgotten.
It has also made it possible to go to the root of questions. Faced with disgust at reformist, electoral and trade unionist thinking, 15M had the courage to recognise the lack of perspective that this system offers and dared to speak loudly of revolution, although everyone saw its contents differently and it was not posed as an immediate prospect. And this was displayed from the very beginning when the Assembly of the Arrested (Madrid)[2] said in their communiqué: “We are faced with a situation without hope and without a future, a situation we are told to passively accept”.
Furthermore, in the squares, many have discovered for the first time that it is possible to organise the struggle for ourselves, that the assemblies can express a collective reflection, can be a space for experiencing the unity and strength of the movement. The elected commissions did not act on their own, but had to be accountable to the assemblies. The weakening of the assemblies was seen when some commissions elected themselves or where named by DRY or others, and this even included commissions that had initially been elected by the assemblies but which began to function on their own account, trying to impose on the assemblies decisions that they had not made, such as the DRY's “Ten Commandments”.
Despite all the difficulties and differences, 15M saw itself as part of the same thread stretching from Tunisia to Wall Street and has also generated a tremendous solidarity and sympathy; and at times it expressed an internationalist sentiment, seeing itself as part of an international movement of struggle, such as when the first assemblies in the Plaza de Cataluña in Barcelona translated their communiqués of solidarity into different languages.
The movement of the indignant, although not being fully aware of it, is an attempt to respond to the world crisis of capitalism. As we saw at the onset of the movement in Tunisia[3], for example, this was expressed by the fact that many thousands of people felt they could no longer live in a system of commodity and wage relations. We have seen demonstrations of the indignant in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, the USA, Chile, Great Britain....A simultaneity of movements that only has precedents in the 1968 movements or the international revolutionary wave of 1919-20.
The 15M movement continues to be a reference point through the living and active emergence of a considerable (compared with the period immediately preceding) number of minorities who are continuing the process of reflection and preparation for the next struggles.
These minorities cannot be seen as the representatives of the movement, because they have not been elected by the assemblies; nor are they backed by a massive and persistent moblisation. It would be a mistake for them to talk in the name of the 15M movement. Equally it would be an error to think that they have nothing to do with it. Each movement of struggles generates its minorities, who do not represent the whole, but who are part of it. What these groups express is the effort to continue the process of clarifying lessons for the future. They are also creating a network of discussion, of meetings, of confidence and solidarity that will be very important for the organisation of new mass mobilisations. No mass movement, no revolution is possible without the existence of these channels for spreading the struggle and for discussing theory and practice.
Other minorities however, had tried to integrate the militancy of the mobilisations into the channels of the democratic state, following the representative-electoral schema of parliament and the unions. These people, who are characterised fundamentally by the positions of the DRY, aspire to be the official representatives of the movement, putting forwards their programme of demands, calling their own mobilisations, wanting to find a “space” for the spirit of the movement in the bourgeois State. In return they offer to surrender the real movement to the conditions of the system, to take on objectives that are “reasonable” in a situation of crisis. They want a movement without mobilisations, without effective assemblies, without fruitful discussions.
These minorities are not as expression of the 15M but of the totalitarian state, whatever they think they may be doing.
The first spectacular days of 15M, with their massive nature and unity, with all the discussion and emotion, will not spontaneously repeat themselves. The magnitude of the movement surprised the state, though at the same time it did not feel directly threatened and allowed it to run out of steam. The next attempts at massive mobilisation will not find the same open ground; on the contrary, they will only come about through a confrontation. In this sense, things may initially look more like they did in the last days of the movement: manoeuvres in the assemblies, dead end demonstrations etc.
The organizing of sovereign assemblies and massive mobilisations will mean a struggle against the concerted efforts of the DRY, the trade unions, PSOE, and other left parties who will try to maintain their grip over the movement.
Furthermore, the next mobilisations will not be able to avoid a hand to hand struggle with these forces to avoid being trapped on the electoral terrain. The next demands of the struggle will have to be posed directly on the social terrain faced with the gravity of the crisis and the enormous cuts.
There were tentative efforts to bring the workers into the struggle of the assemblies and the 15M movement, particularly in Barcelona, where the local government’s attacks have ignited the public sector[4]. But they were faced with the false dilemma of “if you want to struggle against the cuts, join the union struggle”, because the 15M was a struggle for “electoral reform”. This division of the “political” and “wage” struggles is a knife pointed at the heart of the movement.
This can be avoided by taking further what happened in Catalonia: uniting the workers’ struggles and the 15M assemblies.
In fact there cannot be any more 15M without seeing its content, its forms of struggle and its demands as part of the struggle of the working class,
“The cancer of skepticism dominates ideology today and infects the proletariat and its own revolutionary minorities. As stated above, the proletariat has missed all of the appointments that history has given it during the course of a century of capitalist decadence, and this has resulted in an agonising doubt in its own ranks about its identity and its capacities as a class, to the point where even in displays of militancy some reject the term “working class”.[5] This skepticism is made even stronger because it is fed by the decomposition of capitalism;[6] despair, the lack of concrete plans for the future foster disbelief and distrust of any perspective of collective action.
The movements in Spain, Greece and Israel – despite all the weaknesses they contain – have begun to provide an effective remedy against the cancer of scepticism, as much by their very existence and what they mean for the continuity of struggles and the conscious efforts made by the world proletariat since 2003. They are not a storm that suddenly burst out of a clear blue sky but the result of a slow accumulation over the last eight years of small clouds, drizzle and timid lightning that has grown until it acquires a new quality.” (International Review 147 ‘Movement of the Indignant in Spain, Greece and Israel: From indignation to the preparation of class struggles’). https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement... [406]
Hic Rhodus 21/01/12
[1] This movement that began on the 15th May with huge demonstrations in Madrid and other cities in Spain has been known since as the 15M. On the meaning of the 15M see https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement... [407].
[2] This assembly/collective was formed by young people who had been arrested during police violence at the end of the 15th May demonstration in Madrid and were beaten up by the police in police stations. The assembly/collective issued a communiqué denouncing their treatment. This stimulated the occupation of the Plaza del Sol in Madrid and of public squares in other cities in Spain.
[3] A university educated young man who could not find employment but earned a living through selling fruit on the street burned himself alive after the police destroyed his stall. This event was the detonator of the massive movements.
[4] Delegations of transport and health workers have joined up with the assemblies, as have the unemployed.
[5] We cannot deal here with why the working class is the revolutionary class of society and why its struggle represents the future for all other non-exploiting strata, a burning question as we have seen in the movement of the indignant. The reader can find more material on this question in two articles published in International Review 73 [408] and 74 [409], ‘Who can change the world?: the proletariat is still the revolutionary class’.
[6] See ‘Theses on Decomposition [410]’ International Review No 107.
- Main topic: what can we learn from the social movements of 2011?
- Other discussions on art, religion, etc
The ICC invites you to a day of discussion in London on 23 June. The main focus of the day will be a discussion about the significance of the social movements of 2011. What can we learn from the revolts that broke out Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Spain, the USA, the UK and many other countries? What were their strengths and weaknesses? How do they relate to the more general struggle of the working class against capitalism?
Over the past year we have published a large number of articles and documents about these movements, which can be found on our website. More recently we have published a general statement about them [412]. We aim to start the morning’s discussion with a presentation of this text, but we hope to have time to discuss other contributions and analyses of how these movements took shape in different cities and countries.
In the afternoon we are planning to organise shorter discussions around more general topics. At the moment we have one planned on marxism and art, and another on the origins of Islam, but we are open to further suggestions, and to offers from all directions to present other topics. So far all three discussions will be presented by sympathisers of the ICC rather than ICC members.
We hope that these discussions will be of interest to comrades in or around revolutionary political organisations, to people who have been actively involved in the social movements, and to anyone asking questions about the nature and future of present-day society – and about the feasibility of getting rid of it.
If you are interested in attending, let us know in advance if you can, especially if you have any accommodation, transport or other problems that might make it difficult for you to come along.
The venue is upstairs at the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. The first session will go from 11-2 and the afternoon sessions from 3-6. Food can be bought in the pub but we are also planning to go to a nearby restaurant after the meeting.
Contact us at [email protected] [413]
Over the last decade or so, the proletariat in China, and the rest of East Asia - Burma, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam - have all been involved in a wave of strikes and protests against capitalist exploitation. It's China we want to concentrate on here and to do so we will largely use the information given by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), the publication of a non-governmental organisation based in Hong Kong with links to Human Rights groups and Radio Free Asia. The Bulletin promotes the idea of a “fairer” Chinese state, which includes advocating its adoption of “Free Trade Unions”.
In a subsequent piece, we will look at further recent elements around the “People's Republic”, including the development of imperialist tensions, decomposition and intrigues around the all-powerful Politburo.
Throughout the last decade the working class in China has been involved in a wave of strikes and protests, counting thousands of workers, as anger and combativity mounts under the weight of capitalist exploitation. The spontaneous strikes, born from the workers themselves, have been over issues across the board: overtime pay, relocation compensation, corruption of officials, wage rises, wage and pension cuts, improved working conditions and reductions in hours, education and health benefits. In sum, the whole gamut of conditions expressed in the intensity of the exploitation of the Chinese state. While largely separate from each other these strikes have shown a definite dynamic and a growing strength to the extent that the China Briefing of 29.11.11 warns investors to get used to labour unrest.
Just a few days ago, in the town of Chongqing, the previous fiefdom of the disgraced Party boss Bo Xilai, there were strikes - unconnected to the Politburo manoeuvres - over wages and pension cuts. This town of 30 million in southern China, like many others, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy which is a growing concern (local bankruptcies are a big problem for capitalism, witness some states in the USA, regional governments in Spain, and so on). Against the struggle in Chongquing, the authorities, as elsewhere, blocked the microblogging that workers have used to communicate effectively with each other and spread news in the face of the state's blackout.
The China Labour Bulletin, 5.3.12, reports that strikes and protests continued across the county throughout February 2012, the vast majority taking place in the industrial/manufacturing and transport sectors, with demands mainly for higher wages and against bonus reductions. Five thousand workers at the Hanzhong Steel Co., at Shaanxi in the north, struck against low pay and long hours. Several thousand workers left the plant and made for the city streets in order to demonstrate. The report indicates that the workers elected their own representatives. The March issue of the Bulletin also records the highest monthly total of strikes since it began keeping records 15 months ago, and notes the escalation of strikes over pay and relocations. Riot squads and militia units are actively present in many cases and, apart from getting sacked, many militant workers have been “detained” - there's not a whimper about this from the human rights industry in the west. In China, repression and surveillance is of course the speciality of a Stalinist state and, like the Arab regimes, this state also uses gangs of armed thugs that it pays and transports around the country for use against the workers. Internal police spending in China for 2010 and projected for 2011 outstrips the external defence budget – which is not inconsiderable[1].
At the start of the 21st century, millions of poor, young, rural labourers flooded into the factory towns of South China looking for work. These young men and women worked for long hours for very low pay in often dangerous and unhealthy conditions. These were largely helpless lambs to the slaughter. It was upon this basis that the “Chinese Economic Miracle” was founded. But this enforced acquiescence did not last for long. Tempered in the heat of the class struggle, by the end of the decade the era of cheap and docile labour was well and truly over. A significant number of workers, still young but wiser, better educated, more confident and militant, were organising and undertaking strikes and protests. Summer 2010 culminated in a wave of strikes in the manufacturing sector[2].
In mid-decade, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimated the number of migrant workers to be 240 million, including 150 million working away from home, with 70% of these in the manufacturing sector. Even with these numbers, labour shortages around 2005 saw workers' struggles taking a further step towards offensive struggles and demands with specific outbursts giving material encouragement for others to launch their own protests. The Chinese state records that there were 80,00 mass incidents in 2007 – the last time the state published official figures[3]. The CLB estimates these figures going up year on year since and the strikes taking on a different intensity. For example, in August 2011, thousands of laid-off workers, victims of China's National Petroleum Corporation restructuring, joined in with a demonstration of a thousand employed oil workers on strike for their own demands. This underlined the greater development of taking to the streets, blocking roads and demonstrations and sit-ins in public squares. Another aspect of the microblogging mentioned above was its use in the Nanhai Honda strike in 2010, where communications were established and a small group of workers set up called “Unity is Victory”. The Chinese authorities attempted to stop this form of communication under the guise of preventing “unfounded rumours”[4]. One of the Honda strike leaders told the New York Times that a minority of workers, about 40 in all, communicated and met up before the strike in order to decide on action and demands. At a PepsiCo strike in November 2011, workers elected their own delegates from their general meeting. Despite increases offered by the management, they extended and lengthened the action[5].
Many strikes end up with pay rises and some satisfaction of demands, but many do not. In both cases, workers are sacked and arrested. And where wage rises are given these are often wiped out by the inflation that is becoming a major curse for the Chinese economy. Wage demands are rising not just in the coastal regions, but, since 2010, in the hinterlands, where workers involved in action have family, friends, etc., posing the possibilities of strike action alongside social protest and thus widening the battlefront. On the other hand, migrant workers settled in other towns are often denied basic education and health benefits for them and their children – which their employers should pay but don't. This has opened another arena of confrontation. All this a far cry from a decade ago when these young, rural elements were used and dumped at will by the Chinese state. Unemployment also looms large with the Federation of Hong Kong Industries saying that a “a third of Hong Kong-owned industries will downsize or close”, affecting tens of thousands of workers at the very least.
The China Labour Bulletin states that workers “had no confidence in the All China Federation of Trade Unions”[6] and its “ability to negotiate a decent pay increase”. They consequently “ took matters into their own hands and organised a wide range of increasingly effective collective actions...” ACFTU is clearly linked to the Party and made up of its members and cadres, and the CLB is drawing attention to a big problem facing the Chinese ruling class: the lack of effective trade unions to control and discipline the workers. Repression is never enough and can add fuel to the fire. As the CLB report notes over the Honda strike mentioned above: “Any workers' organisation that develops during a protest is usually disbanded after the demands that gave rise to it has been addressed”. The pro-state CLB would like to make these workers' organisation permanent and enmesh them into a structure of Free Trade Unions with peaceful relations with the state. The ACFTU branches, such as they exist, are sometimes made up exclusively of managers, such as at the Ohms Electronics factory in Shenzhen, where the twelve managers were all union officials! And in a pathetically desperate effort, which also points to the limits of the Stalinist state, the Shanxi Federation of Trade Unions has ordered its province’s 100,000 union officials to publish their phone numbers so that workers can get in touch with them!! Throughout the country, ACFTU branches have sacked workers, hired scabs and called the police and militias against workers. It is completely part of the discredited Party apparatus. The bourgeoisie, not just in China but internationally, need a renovated, elastic and credible union structure and this is where the China Labour Bulletin and its push for Free Trade Unions comes in. We can see this in its call for “greater participation (of workers) in committees and other union structures” and “new employees to be given information about the union's activities”, as after the recent Foxcomm struggles.
The unions in China – unlike their sophisticated brothers in the west – generally don't even see strikes coming let alone defuse and divide them. This was the case at the Honda car plant in Foshan south-eastern China last summer. It took two weeks and a large pay rise to get the workers back to work. Kong Xianghong, an ex-worker and veteran CP member and now a member of ACFTU, said after the strike (and a further rash of strikes that it provoked): “We realised the dangers of our union being divorced from the masses”. Kong added that China needed “To absorb the lessons of the uprisings in Arab nations”[7].
For the working class in China the struggles are intensifying and for the bourgeoisie the problems are mounting. For the latter, if they are at all a possibility, and that must be doubtful, Free Trade Unions would give them a greater element of control. For the workers, the lesson of the Free Trade Union Solidarnosc in Poland, is that these institutions can be more insidiously destructive to the workers' cause than the Party/State union structures – which at least show the unions as the anti-working class formations that they are.
Baboon. 15/4/12
[1]Bloomberg News, 6.3.11
[2]There were an estimated 180,000 “incidents” in 2010, Financial Times, 2.3.11.
[3]CASS, Social Trends Analysis and Projection Topic Group, 2008-2009.
[4]BBC News, 16.3.12.
[5]World Socialist Web: “Signs of a new strike wave in China”.
[6]“A Decade of Change: The Workers' Movement in China 2000-2010”.
[7]Washington Post, 29.4.11
On 16 December last year in Kazakhstan, in Zhanaozen, a town with a population of 90,000 about 150km from the Caspian Sea, the forces of order carried out a real massacre by opening fire with automatic weapons on a rally of 16,000 oil workers and town dwellers who had come to show their solidarity. The workers had been protesting against lay-offs and the non-payment of back wages. There were at least ten deaths, according to the official figures, but in fact there were probably many more, perhaps up to 70 killed and 700-800 wounded.
The struggles in the oil sector go back to the strike at the beginning of May 2011 by the workers employed by KarajanbasMounai, from where it spread to a number of other oil extraction and refining plants in the region: Ersaï Kaspian Kontraktor, KazMounaiGaz, Jondeou, Krouz, Bourgylaou and AktobeMounaïGaz in the neighbouring Aktobe region, with workers demanding wage increases and improvements in safety because of the frequency of accidents at work. The UzenMounaiGaz factory was out on strike for three months. In December, the decision to organise a festival in honour of the twentieth anniversary of independence in the central square of Zhanaozen, which had been occupied by strikers since July, was a real provocation and was clearly seen to be one. Meanwhile the democratic opposition to the regime tried to manipulate this movement of the working class for its own ends: “On 14 December, two days before the independence celebrations, the paper Respublika published an appeal to demonstrate in Zhanaozen, signed by an anonymous group, ‘a group of residents from the province of Mangistau’. For the first time, the Zhanaozen appeal put forward political demands, and the article’s title was ‘Down with (president) Nazarbayev!’ Leaflets distributed in the town called for demonstrators to rally in the town square on 16 December, Independence Day”. Armed police and troops were stationed on surrounding rooftops and armoured vehicles waited for the signs of disorder. Certain demonstrators in the square (who some strikers believed were agents provocateurs) tore down the festival decorations. Police vehicles drove into the crowd, angering the demonstrators, who overturned and burned one of them. They then set fire to the town hall and the HQ of the UzenMounaiGaz company. This was the pretext for mass arrests (130) and the use of arms by the police. The workers had fallen into a trap set up from start to finish by the state authorities and aimed at breaking their movement, which had by then been going on for several months.
A state of emergency and a curfew were imposed straight away and lasted till 5 January. Despite the cutting off of communications (internet and mobile phones) and the blackout by state TV, this violent repression provoked solidarity movements throughout the oil producing region of Mangistau, on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. On 17 December, all the oil fields had been shut down. Although Zhanaozen was encircled by armoured cars and Interior Ministry troops sent in, clashes between strikers and soldiers supported by planes and armoured cars continued. In the neighbouring area of Shetpe, hundreds of demonstrators blocked and derailed a train carrying materials for use in the repression. A thousand people demonstrated in Aktau, the main city in the region with a population of 160,000, defying a large contingent of security forces, protesting against the violence and carrying banners proclaiming “Don’t fire on the people! Withdraw the army!” On Monday 19 December, for the third consecutive day, several thousand oil workers demonstrated and confronted the police on the grand square of Aktau, calling for an end to the violence and the withdrawal of troops from Zhanaozen. Their slogans included “We want the soldiers to go. They have killed people here”, “Find those guilty of killing demonstrators”, and “Nazarbayev resign”.
The Kazakh bourgeoisie has done everything possible to force the workers back into passivity, throwing all kinds of slanders at them (“criminals”, “foreign agents”, etc) while also offering the carrot, with Prime Minister Massimov promising to re-employ all the oil workers who had lost their jobs, and Nazarbayev promising financial aid to the 1800 laid-off strikers in Zhanaozen. Savage repression continued: arbitrary arrests and the torture of prisoners. The president even made use of the conflicts inside the ruling class: on 22 December he announced the sacking of the regional governor and of bosses from the giant state enterprise KazMounaiGaz, including his son-in-law T Koulibayev, and from several of its subsidiaries who employed strikers, presenting all these steps as concessions to the workers. The Kazakh bourgeoisie seems to have broken the militancy of the workers, who for the moment are no longer able to organise collective public actions.
As always when it comes to the proletarian class struggle, the big western media have for the most part kept silent about this episode. They are even quieter when it comes to hiding the complicity of the western bourgeoisies in the crimes committed against the exploited. The Nazarbayev clique only had its way thanks to the complicity and tacit support of the bourgeoisie from great powers like France, Germany, Russia and China, with whom it maintains very good relations. Several western states are deeply involved in key sectors of the national economy, particularly those where the strikes broke out: the extraction and transport of oil and gas. Since 2002 these have been regrouped under the state trust KazMounaiGaz. This trust heads a number of subsidiaries which have joint ventures with the global oil companies.
The major states thus have real strategic interest in the maintenance of social stability in the country and thus in the repression carried out by the regime. Russia, obsessed with its own stability, is hysterically defensive about the social and imperialist stability of its “very dear neighbour”. Chinese enterprises such as AO KarajanbasMounai, a joint venture with KazMounaiGaz and CITIC Group were directly implicated, with the workers demanding equal treatment for Chinese and native personnel. As for France, relations with Kazakhstan were closer after the election of Sarkozy: in June 2008 a strategic partnership treaty was signed by the two countries and in 2010 a Franco-Kazakh presidential commission was created. The Nazarbayev regime was, on this occasion, described as “an island of stability and tolerance” by French Interior Minister Claude Guéant.
Finally, there was Nazarbayev’s reception in Germany in February, where he signed a series of important commercial agreements “aimed at improving the security of German industry as regards the supply of raw materials”. This was not even accompanied by the usual hypocritical expressions of concern about the conditions of working people in Kazakhstan by German democracy. Angela Merkel underlined “the great interest for German companies in further investment in Kazakhstan”. In short, any example of a working class fighting to defend its interests and any revelations about the barbarity of the bourgeoisie had to be well hidden!
Despite the difficulty in getting precise information about the events in Kazakhstan, the long series of struggles that has taken place there undoubtedly seems to be an expression of the international revival of class struggles in response to the worsening economic crisis. Having involved over 15,000 workers, this is the biggest strike ever seen in a country run by the Nazarbayev mafia clique, whose power is based on pillaging the economy and the limitless exploitation of labour power. Workers’ wages have been stagnating (in 2009 the average monthly wage was 550 euro) while the cost of living has gone up by 70% since then and the tenge, the local currency, has lost 25% of its value. The struggle of the workers of Kazakhstan shows the same characteristics as the class struggle internationally. The workers of the Soviet era have been replaced by a more combative younger generation, mainly from the provinces, which is not prepared to put up with such cruel exploitation and terrible working conditions. Women have also played a more important role in this recent movement. Finally, the movement of the oil workers testifies to the same change in the mood of the working class as elsewhere in the world, taking the concrete form of the search for and expression of solidarity against capitalist terror and repression.
The struggle of the oil workers of Kazakhstan around the issue of wages goes back several years. The workers of Zhanaozen had already gone on strike to demand their bonuses in October 2009. Those at KarajanbasMounai JSC launched a strike in December 2010 for a wage increase equivalent to those won after a strike by the workers of UzenMounaiGaz, another subsidiary of KazMounaiGaz. Between 4 and 19 March 2011, ten thousand oil workers at KazMounaiGaz went on strike and organised general assemblies, calling for the cancellation of the new method of calculating their wages, which the management wanted to impose on them by threatening lay-offs, and for a bonus for dangerous work. The town was surrounded by a police cordon. The strike was declared illegal and members of the strike committee hauled before the courts. On 9 May, a huge hunger strike began. 1400 people refused to take their mid-day and evening meals as a sign of protest. 4500 workers went on strike on 17 May, held a general assembly and elected six of their number as a delegation to carry out negotiations. The management of KazMounaiGaz and the local authorities declared the strike illegal and announced the firing of all the workers, hoping to starve them into submission. In the end this resort to massive lay-offs affected a total of 2600 strikers. Women hunger strikers were treated with particular brutality. On 26 May, 22 workers from UzenMounaiGaz came out on hunger strike in solidarity with their colleagues at KarajanbasMounai and the next day were joined by 8000 workers from various subsidiaries of KazMounaiGaz, striking for wage increases. Some of the hunger strikers continued their action, surrounded by a huge picket of 2000 workers who protected them from the police. The movement had been confronting police terror from the start. The authorities gave out leaflets declaring the strike illegal: snitches and plainclothes cops organised provocations, and there were hundreds of arrests. On 12 June, the police attacked the strikers’ wives, beating them and accusing them of taking part in an illegal meeting. In the night of 8-9 July the police attempted to attack the tent village set up by the strikers at the UzenMounaiGaz company. 40 strikers poured petrol over themselves and threatened to set themselves on fire. This only delayed the evacuation till the next day. Then the strikers transferred the tent village to the central square in Zhanaozen, which was now permanently occupied by up to 8000 people. Armed gangs carried out more and more attacks on militant workers and independent trade unionists. Some of them were killed along with family members.
From the beginning the strength of the oil workers was their mass mobilisation and the vitality of their general assemblies, where they could discuss how to take the struggle forward and take collective decisions. But the main weakness of the movement was the fact that it remained limited to one sector and to the oil producing region. The demand for an independent trade union (defended by Trotskyist organisations) was raised by the workers at every stage of the movement, but that too was a weakness.
The Kazakh regime, with its fossilised structures and attitudes directly inherited by Stalinism, unable to tolerate any kind of opposition, is in normal circumstances supported by trade unions which are openly in league with the authorities in maintaining social peace. The official union federation denounced the recent strike as illegal. It is thus completely discredited in front of the working class. The demand for a ‘real’ union representation was, along with the wage demands, a focus for the mass mobilisation of the KazMounaiGaz workers at the beginning of May. But far from taking the struggle forward, it served to hold it back.
To be strong and to build the strongest possible front against the capitalist sate, the struggle needs to extend to the whole working class, going beyond all the divisions imposed by capitalism, including, in the long run, national frontiers, because there is no solution to the situation of the working class within the national framework. In our epoch, the epoch of the decadence of capitalism, there is no possibility of winning lasting reforms and improvements for the working class. The proletariat cannot overcome the profound insecurity of its condition without getting rid of the whole wage labour system, which can only be accomplished on a world scale.
We are certainly not questioning the honesty and decency of the militant workers who are active in the independent unions and who are often subjected to repression and persecuted by the bourgeois courts for “inciting social hatred”, “organising illegal marches, gatherings and demonstrations”, etc. What we do question are the methods of struggle which these organisations propose to the working class. By focusing the workers’ attention on the fact that they belong to a particular branch of the capitalist economy (in this case, the oil industry), the union form imprisons the struggle in sectional demands. It thus disperses the potential force of the proletariat, stands in the way of its unity and fragments it sector by sector. By acting within the national framework, trade unionism cannot see beyond managing the conditions for the exploitation of the working class within the social relations of capital. This is why all forms of trade unionism are doomed to act as an obstacle to the real needs of the class struggle – ultimately, to subordinate the workers to the imperatives of exploitation, to do deals with the ruling class and become an integral part of its apparatus for maintaining the established order.
The workers must not allow their horizons to be limited by demands which imprison them in the sector and in the defence of the national economy. The proletariat is an international class and its struggle can only be based on international solidarity: the struggle of any one of its parts is an example and an encouragement to the struggle of the entire proletariat. To strengthen its overall struggle, the different fractions of the proletariat have to enrich their practice with all the lessons acquired from its long history.
Svetlana 28/2/12
From 2007, France had a president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose arrogance and stupidity knew no limits. His open love of money, his violent tirades against the young people of the poor suburbs and the immigrants, his provocations, his propensity for talking about nothing but himself...all this and more created a very strong feeling of exasperation throughout the population. It was thus no great surprise that the presidential elections ended in his defeat. His replacement, the ‘socialist’ François Hollande, relied almost exclusively on this anti-Sarkozyism to win. Prudently avoiding any promises of a bright tomorrow, even giving to understand that austerity (renamed ‘control of the budget’ or ‘reduction of the deficit’) would be a major axis of his government’s policy, Hollande was happy to present himself as a ‘normal’ president, one who would avoid pointless provocation and bad taste.
This said, it would be a serious error to see this change of colour as no more than the rejection of a particular character, however unpleasant. And it would be even more of an error to hope for a fairer and more just policy now that the left is at the head of the government.
You only have to glance beyond the frontiers of France to see that. Throughout Europe in the last few months, when elections have taken place, the team in power has been replaced, whether it is of the right or the left. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia...all the governments have been ejected. Why? Quite simply because since 2007 and the severe aggravation of the world economic crisis, all governments have been carrying out the same policy of ‘sacrifices’. There is no difference between right and left, except perhaps in the language they use, the colour of the wrapping paper around their packet of ‘reforms’. In Greece, Portugal, and Spain, from 2007 to 2011, the ‘socialists’ in power beat up on the workers, whether at work or unemployed, retired or still at university. Month after month they imposed increasingly drastic measures, endless attacks on their living standards.
But there is a second point in common in all these changes in government teams. The team that came in didn’t get a honeymoon period. Straight away they pushed through brutal austerity policies and straight away faced social discontent. The economic crisis is not a choice for capital, it is something imposed on it. It is the fruit of a world system which is sick, obsolete. Capitalism today is in decline like slavery in the decadence of the Roman empire or the feudal system in the days of absolute monarchy. The ‘debt crisis’ is only a symptom of this. All those who get elected to parliament, whatever their political party or their country, have to follow the same orientation: reduce the deficit, avoid bankruptcy by pitilessly attacking living and working conditions. The very socialist Monsieur Hollande will be no different.
Elections organised by the state are just a moment when the ‘citizens’ choose who’s going to manage the interests of capital. They are entirely inside the system. But today, to put an end to growing poverty for the world’s population, there is only one way to go: the struggle for revolution. Capitalism, this inhuman, mortally ill system, has to be replaced by a world without classes, exploitation, profit and competition. Such a world can only be built by the masses, the masses of employees, unemployed, retired, young people in part time work, united in the struggle. If votes are to be used to really change things, it will be the votes organised by us, the exploited – the votes taken in general assemblies where we decide together, collectively, how we should struggle against the state and its representatives.
Pawel 6/5/12
The president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), was overthrown on March 22 by a handful of almost unknown soldiers who, not having the means to control the country, have let the rebels (nationalists and Islamists) get a grip on the whole northern region of Mali, sowing their terror and provoking the forced displacement of several hundred thousand people. In reality, this coup has only accelerated the chaos of a state that has been corrupt and degenerating for a very long time. Moreover, the coup has happened in the context of struggles for influence and in a zone which is the theatre of trafficking of all types, notably arms and drugs, where criminal groups (Islamic mafias and others) fall out over the price of hostages and the plundering of migrants. But above all, Mali is the weak link of a region in growing decomposition brought about by imperialist tensions which are unfolding in the greater region of the Sahel. This has been accelerated in particular by the war which has ravaged Libya, whose effects have quickly made themselves felt all the way south to Bamako, the capital and largest city in Mali.
“(...) In Libya the transitional government has hardly supervised the stocks of armaments and the control of its frontiers. In September, the discovery of the disappearance of more than 10,000 ground-to-air missiles has created panic on the international scene. (…) At the same time, the Tuareg fighters hired as mercenaries and armed by Gaddifi have returned to their countries, to Niger and Mali, after the fall of the Libyan regime last August. Since January 2012, Tuareg insurgents of Mali, coming out of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) assaulted towns in the north armed with heavy machine-guns and anti-tank weapons, relaunching an old combat of several decades for the creation of an independent Tuareg state” (The National in Courier international, 11.04.12).
More than Sudan and Chad, Mali today constitutes the principal market for armaments in this region where all kinds of killers come to provide themselves with or exchange their “merchandise”, notably in Gao and Timbuktu. But more sombre still for the future of Mali is the fact that as well as being a “great market “ for professional criminals, this country is also coveted for its raw materials.
In fact, outside of gold, of which it is one of the greatest producers, Mali is on the point of becoming an exporter of rough diamonds and its futures market is already the theatre of intense rivalries between well-known greater vultures such as Total, GDE-Suez, Tullow Oil, Dana Petroleum, CNPC, Repsoi, etc. Clearly these Euro-American and Chinese firms are supported by their respective states in the scramble that they are undertaking for the control and exploitation of the raw materials of Mali.
“Impossible (for example) not to note that the recent coup d'etat is an additional effect of the rebellions in the north which are themselves the consequences of the destabilisation of Libya by a western coalition which has strangely shown no remorse nor feeling of responsibility. This ill wind has blown into Mali, after crossing its Ivorian, Nigerian, Guinean and Mauritanian neighbours...” (Le Nouveau Courrier, Courrier international, 11.04.12).
Far from supporting “peace” and “democracy”, the intervention of the imperialist forces of Nato in Libya have only spread chaos and accelerated the decomposition of the states around the region. From now in fact, no less than twelve countries are affected by conflicts, wars and trafficking that are unfolding in a vast zone of nine million square kilometres.
“The strategic forecast recently launched by Jean-Claude Cousseran, an old boss of the DGSE (French intelligence): 'Africa will be our Afghanistan' , will now be taken seriously. From it we discover the banal but ominous compatibility of operations undertaken by small, radical Islamic groups in Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, in the countries of the Sahel and Mali, (…) In the Quai d'Orsay (French foreign office), the Juppé team is concerned about French hostages and about the future of the threatened states. A high-command has set up plans for intervention in case African bosses, the UN or even Nato decide to 'do something'... And the secret services themselves are in constant touch with French officers working in Mali and the commanders of special operations at their posts in Burkina, Niger and Mauritania (…) The objectives aimed for by the fighting groups (…) could end up creating an immense grey zone in the African Sahel under the banner of religion, or criminal bands drawing profit from different fights between the partisans of Islam, tribal nomads, Salafist groups, the remnants of Al Qaida, soldiers lost through the combats against the Arab Spring... With the result of the risk of the decomposition of these states” (Le Canard Enchaîné, 11.04.12).
French imperialism is in quite a panic faced with the development of chaos in Mali and is preparing itself to intervene in order to try to preserve its interests in the region of the Sahel. In fact, beyond its economic and strategic interests, France is trying to get back its nationals taken hostage by the armed Islamic groups. Remember that the French army led a real war in this zone under the name of the “struggle against Islamic terrorist groups (AQIM)”, in Mauritania and in Niger and that the last military intervention here provoked several deaths.
The United States is furnishing advisers and military material to the same countries, still in the name of the “anti-terrorism” and “securitisation” of the region, from where Washington has been able to establish very tight links with different Malian networks.
On their side, rival powers are also playing their own cards. Thus, Algeria and Mauritania, Niger and Mali have decided to organise their own high-command whose seat is based in Tamanrasset (Algeria). But in reality it's everyone for themselves which is the dominant feature over all these gangsters, and as a result alliances don't last very long, being made and unmade according to the relations of forces and immediate “gains”.
“From the ruins of the Malian state appears a document of three pages classified 'very sensitive'. It is a note sent February last to the president Amadou Toumani Touré. It is entitled 'Mauritania and the secret support for the rebels of Azawad’ (a proposed independent Tuareg state). On reading it, the old general (ATT) must have understood that his end was almost imminent. His secret services warned him, in some detail, of the close contacts between the Tuaregs, who had just taken up the road to war, and the neighbouring regime of Ould Abdelaziz (high-ranking military officer and president of Mauritania). The new national movement for the liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was receiving 'material aid' from (Mauritania's capital) Nouakchott (…) At the same time as representatives of the MNLA were opening an office of information in Nouakchott, others were being received several times at the Quai d'Orsa (i.e in Paris). A simultaneity which wasn't, without doubt, by chance. Mauritania, a big ally of France in the region, would not have lent such a strong hand to the Tuareg independentists without the approval, even tacit, of its mentor (…) The MNLA, still according to the secret note, were engaged to fight Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). A priority for Mauritania and France, who reproached president Touré for his weakness towards the jihadists (…) Stupefaction in the west and in the Sahel: the Tuareg insurgents, considered as the best bulwark against AQIM, were fighting alongside them. After having submitted to one of their worst setbacks in Africa, the French authorities acknowledged their impotence. 'We have a real problem' leaked one high official. 'The Malians are incapable of taking back what they have lost. And send in the French army? Nobody thinks that. Franco-Africa is finished!'” (Le Nouvel Observateur, 12.04.12).
In effect, the French state is aiming both to preserve its global interests in the region and free its hostages held by the groups linked to AQIM. But it's opened itself up to be given the run-around by wretched and obscure tiny mafia groups which it's underhandedly dealt with while giving its support to the Malian president ATT. Today, French imperialism is totally paralysed by the amateurism which it has shown in this affair and it risks losing everything on the table.
In addition to their military presence throughout the region, and having negotiated and obtained some agreements of military cooperation with all the regimes, the Americans have the ear of both the overthrown president and of the leader of the putschists.
“The camp of DJCORNI (French military base) where ATT took refuge on March 21st, is close to and under the quasi-protection of the US ambassador – who had, if one believes the telegrams revealed by Wikileaks, alerted Washington on the state of degeneration of the Malian high-command and on the climate of corruption which reigned among the close entourage (including family) of the president. The bodyguards who protected the fallen chief during his flight were trained by the famous Navy Seals of the US army. And the putschist captain Amadou Sanago willingly talked of his times in the United States: the air base of Lackland (Texas); Fort Huachua (Arizona), specialising in intelligence; the officer's school of Fort Benning (Georgia). A longer stay with the Marines, whose pin he wore on his jacket. In brief, we know that the Americans were very implanted and very well informed about Mali. Without doubt better than the French. We have confirmation of it” (Jeune Afrique, April 7 2012).
France would have known something about the overthrow of the regime of ATT and was aware that the principal cause can be found in the links between the latter and the United States, which is ocne again doing everything it can to oust Paris from its ex-backyard.
Here is a country in a state of advanced decay governed by corrupt gangs who are competing against various carrion crows - Islamic mafias, highwaymen, accompanied by imperialist powers looking for influence and raw materials while disguising their plans of capitalist business “as plans of the securitisation of the zone”. And in the meantime, the populations themselves are dying from hunger, suffering generalised misery, or are simply massacred by one side or the other.
Amina 17/4/12
After the replacement of President Sarkozy by Hollande in France, and the electoral slump of the parties of the outgoing Greek government, a commentator in the Guardian (8/5/12) was not alone in declaring that “Revolt against austerity is sweeping Europe.” Leftists saw “a growing backlash against austerity across Europe” (Socialist Worker 12/5/12), “deep popular opposition to austerity measures” (wsws.org 8/5/12) and even declared that “Europe turns left” (Workers Power May 2012).
In reality, whatever the level of dissatisfaction felt at election time, the ruling bourgeoisie will continue to impose and intensify its policies of austerity. Voting against governments can happen because of the depth of discontent, but it doesn’t change anything. For the working class it’s only through the mass organisation of its struggles that anything can be achieved. The election game is played entirely on the bourgeoisie’s terms, but workers still troop into the polling stations (if in decreasing numbers) because they still have widespread illusions in what could be achieved. There’s still a belief that elections can somehow be used as a means for social change, or that there are alternative economic policies that the capitalist state could follow. There has been no ‘revolt’ across Europe expressed in these elections, although there is definitely a lot of anger which has been impotently misdirected into the various democratic mechanisms. Having said that, if you actually examine what’s happened in recent elections they do reveal a lot about the capitalist class and the state of its political apparatus.
Since the financial crisis of autumn 2008 a number of individual leaders and political parties have been replaced because of their identification with public spending cuts, job losses, wage and pension reductions, and all the other aspects of economic ‘rigour’ and austerity. There is no overall bourgeois strategy, just the removal of parties and individuals and their replacement by others, whether from the left or the right or by coalitions. The ruling class is just reacting to events without a clear idea of how it will arrange its political forces in the future. And it’s not taking long for the new leaders to begin to be discredited as they are exposed as being in continuity with their predecessors.
In November 2008 John McCain was defeated by Barack Obama in the US Presidential election partly because of his connection with the policies of George Bush and the fact that the US economy had been in recession since late 2007 in a crisis deeper than anything since the 1930s.
In the UK, following the general election of May 2010, the Labour Party was replaced by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, the first coalition since the Second World War. The British bourgeoisie, usually so assured in its political manoeuvres, was not able to accomplish its usual Labour/Tory swap. Since the election it has also had difficulties in presenting Labour as a viable ‘alternative’.
In Belgium it took 18 months from the election of June 2010 before a government was finally formed.
In the general election in Ireland in February 2011, Fianna Fail, the party that had been the largest since the 1920s, saw its proportion of the vote go from 42% to 17%. The Irish government is now a Right/Left coalition of Fine Gael and Labour. Ireland was in recession in 2008 and 2009. It returned to recession in the third quarter of 2011. The new government has predictably shown itself no different from the previous FF/Green coalition. The myth of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ faded out a long time ago.
In the Portuguese legislative elections of June 2011 the governing Socialist Party saw its support go from 37% to 28%. Electoral turnout declined to a historically low level of 58%. Unemployment continues to rise, up to more than 13%, having been less than 6% in 2002. Portugal is in its worst recession since the 1970s. The conditions for its 2011 bailout from the EU and IMF have meant a vicious series of government spending cuts.
In the Spanish general election of November 2011 the votes for the ruling Socialist Party went from 44% to 29%, and there was growing support for minor parties. Under the conservative People’s Party Spain has fallen back into recession. Unemployment, which has been growing throughout the last five years, has reached record levels with a 24.4% jobless rate (over 50% of under 25s), the highest figures in the EU.
In Italy in November 2011 Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by a government led by economist Mario Monti. His cabinet was constituted of unelected ‘technocrats’. He has introduced a range of austerity measures – with the support of most of both Italian houses of parliament.
In Slovenia in December 2011 there was a parliamentary election in which a new party, Positive Slovenia, that had only been founded in late October, got the highest proportion of the vote. After a period of manoeuvres and negotiations the outgoing 4-party coalition was replaced by a 5-party coalition which only had a Pensioners’ Party in common, but not Positive Slovenia. With the Slovenian economy is in recession, a new programme of austerity measures was adopted by the Slovenian Parliament on 11 May. Major unions which had staged demonstrations against the programme have said they would not oppose it with a referendum. Last year four pieces of legislation were rejected by referendum.
In presidential elections held in Finland in January and February this year the long period of the decline of the Social Democratic Party reached a new low point. The new president is the first in 30 years not to be a Social Democrat. Voter turnout was the lowest since 1950.
In the Netherlands in April this year the coalition government resigned after only 558 days in power. The parties have been in dispute over budget cuts.
In the recent French Presidential election Hollande’s victory was in many ways due to his not being Sarkozy. Despite his claims to have a different approach on questions such as investment he will have no choice but to continue the attack on living and working conditions. Hollande said before his first visit to Angela Merkel that he would bring "The gift of growth, jobs, and economic activity." Although this is the usual politician’s hot air, corresponding to no material reality, at least the situation in France is by no means as desperate as that in Greece.
Following the latest elections in Greece it was clear the parties of the PASOK/New Democracy/LAOS coalition had lost the most support. It should be recalled that the coalition had only been installed last November, to replace George Papendreou’s government and implement the measures required by the IMF/EU/ECB. In the elections, despite there being a choice of 32 parties, there was a significant reduction in the number of people voting to a lowest ever figure of 65%. This contrasts with the previous low figure of 71% in 2009 and previous figures in the high 70s or even more than 80% that Greece was used to. If the French election result mainly expressed opposition to Sarkozy, the Greek result showed mainly opposition to the government coalition and the measures it had undertaken. The fact that the Greek parliament now has four parties of the Left and three of the Right where once it was dominated by PASOK/New Democracy shows the degree to which the bourgeoisie’s political forces have splintered. The prospects of a new coalition without a new election seem limited.
There has been a lot of attention in the media on the role of the leftwing coalition Syriza, portrayed as a new force without whose co-operation or tolerance no government could function. Because they claim to be against austerity they will, for the moment, quite possibly continue to increase their support. However, whether they operate as a buffer between government and striking workers, or actually join a government coalition, they do not represent anything new. Along with its anti-austerity phrases Syriza has clearly stated that Greece should remain in the EU and the euro, debts can not just be written off, but it would prefer some more benign conditions for receiving the latest bailout.
Where the emergence of Syriza is a sign of some residual flexibility from the bourgeoisie, the sharpest evidence of the decomposition of Greek capitalism’s political apparatus is seen in the gains made by Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) at the expense of LAOS. Greece has had right wing parties before (LAOS is the most recent example), and in Metaxas they had a real dictator in the late 1930s, the contemporary of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. However, Chrysi Avgi isn’t just another racist, right-wing party demonised by the Left. It’s anti-immigrant policies are backed up by physical attacks on foreigners. It has also mounted attacks on its political opponents, tried to intimidate journalists and has links with Nazi groups.
Chrysi Avgi campaigned on the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth” with candidates claiming to be more soldiers than politicians. They claim to be ‘Greek nationalists’ in the mould of Metaxas, rather than being neo-Nazis. You could be forgiven for being confused on this when you see the black symbol on the red background of their party flag. It looks very similar to a swastika, although it is in fact a ‘meander’ or ‘Greek fret.’ Whatever label you want to pin on them, Chrysi Avgi are clear evidence of the further decay of bourgeois politics. Parties in Greece that support the return of the monarchy are barred from standing at elections, but Chrysi Avgi has 21 members in the new parliament.
The Greek elections are the most obvious example of how the bourgeoisie across Europe is coping politically with the economic crisis. It can’t offer any genuine economic alternatives to austerity, but it is also using up its political alternatives as parties take their turns to impose programmes that will not challenge the impact of the economic crisis. There is no particular political strategy, just a day-to-day reaction to events. Bourgeois democracy continues to function, but the ruling class has a decreasing variety of ways to deploy its political apparatus. The number of people who are voting is in decline; new parties and coalitions are emerging to cope with changed situations. But, for the working class there is nothing to be gained by the replacement of one government by another, or in any participation in the democratic game.
All the political parties are factions of one state capitalist class. This is one of the reasons that democracy is so important for the bourgeoisie, because it gives the illusion of offering a number of different choices. For the working class only struggle on its own terms can set in motion a force that can break the social stalemate between the classes. The bourgeoisie has nothing to offer, not in its economy, and not in its elections. The working class can only rely on its self-organisation, on a growing consciousness of what’s at stake in its struggles.
Car 14/5/12
Michael Gove, Tory education secretary, wants “facts” about British history taught in schools and to this end “definitely” wants the right-wing historian, Niall Ferguson, of whom he is “a great fan”, involved in the curriculum for children in Britain. Ferguson is more than an apologist for the crimes of the British Empire which he sees as a model for US foreign policy (New Statesman, 1.6.10) – which in many ways it already is. Gove's and Ferguson's position is summed-up well by the British historian Dominic Sandbrook writing in the Daily Mail a couple of years ago: “Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law” (Quoted by George Monbiot in the Guardian, 23.4.12). Not a hint here of the exploitation, racism, torture, starvation and massacres that the British bourgeoisie stood for and exported around the world.
One thing for sure is that under Gove, or any other politician of the ruling class, the children of Britain will not be hearing the truth about the the empire's murderous activity in the British colony of Kenya around the 1950s. Monbiot in the article referenced above gives some of the grisly details:
“Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside-down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping of testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound”.
That was part of Monbiot's summing-up of Harvard professor Caroline Elkin's thoroughly researched book, Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya[1]. Elkin started out sympathetic to the British version of events in Kenya but her ten-year work soon lifted the lid on the reality of the “civilising mission”. In a previous article in World Revolution[2], we used the official British government's figures to show that 90,000 Kenyans were detained by the British authorities. Elkin makes it clear that nearly the whole population of one-and-a-half million were confined to the camps and fortified villages. And here, as Monbiot says: “... thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died”. Some camps’ loudspeakers played the national anthem and other patriotic stuff – Gove would have approved of that – while above the gates of others were slogans such as “Labour and Freedom”, echoing the slogans “Work makes you free” erected above the Nazi concentration camps and the work camps of Stalinist East Berlin.
It was revealed a few weeks ago that the British authorities has systematically destroyed the secret documents showing the atrocities in Kenya and lied about others that pointed out their predecessors’ role in the crimes. Elkin shows that these atrocities weren't the result of “rogue elements” – the British ruling class's usual excuse from Aden to Basra – but sanctioned at the highest level of the state up to and beyond the Colonial Secretary of the time, Alan Lennox-Boyd[3]. As in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the British don't (officially) keep body counts and in Kenya there are mass graves that the victims were often forced to dig themselves, containing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of victims.
The atrocities in Kenya and their cover-up to this day demonstrate the sickening reality of democratic Britain and its concern for “international law” and “human rights”, which are nothing less than a fig-leaf for its own imperialist interests and crimes. Evidence is now emerging (The Observer, 6.5.12) of the cold-blooded murder by British troops of innocent civilians in its Malayan colony. The newspaper shows details of the Batang Kali massacre in 1948 and its continued cover-up. Given the emergence of some of the truth from Kenya, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg in this region with the burning of villages and starvation also being a weapon of the British here. In the World Revolution article on torture mentioned above there's an insight into the modus operandi of the British in general, with reference to the army and RUC approaching the then Northern Ireland prime minister Brian Faulkner: “They told him that the 'in depth' techniques they planned to use (in Ireland) were those the army had used... many times before when Britain was faced with insurgencies in her colonies, including Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, the British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guyana, Aden, Borneo, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf”.
Britain was by no means alone in its bestial colonial activities: France, Belgium and Portugal all played out their own murderous versions. If Britain acted from a position of relative strength and intelligence, its whole colonial adventure was steeped in the blood of innocents which can only be the case in a world dominated by imperialism. Britain's process of decolonisation saw the local, equally bloody, gangsters take over and these “liberated” client states, still acting for Britain's interests, immediately immersed themselves in the proxy wars of the west against Russian imperialism. And the end of the Cold War has not brought peace but growing chaos and instability all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with Britain's ruling class continuing to manoeuvre and manipulate for the “national interest” of the British state.
Baboon 16/5/12
[1] The Pulitzer prize-winning book is thoroughly documented and there's a fully referenced version of Monbiot's article “Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them” on wwwmonbiot.com.
[2] World Revolution 290, “A short history of British torture [425]”.
[3] See his modern equivalent, Jack Straw, denying knowing anything about British kidnapping and torture.
In London, on May 10, while civil servants and university teachers came out for yet another ‘day of action’ around the question of pensions, the centre stage in London was occupied by a 20,000 strong march of off-duty police officers, demonstrating against the government’s proposed 20% cut in the police budget, which will lead to job cuts and inroads on pay and conditions. The following week, Home Secretary Theresa May got a very rough ride indeed when she came to speak at the Police Federation annual conference, explaining why these cuts were necessary.
Does his conjunction between police protests and action by sectors of the working class mean that they are all part of the same struggle? Members of Occupy London certainly thought so, expressing their support for the march through London.
The same question was posed to our comrades in Brazil, although in a much more dramatic way, during the recent strike by the Military Police. The statement that follows aims to make it clear that while police officers may often be recruited from the poorest layers of society, and are also being strongly affected by the crisis of capitalism, the essential role of the police is to defend capitalism from the struggles of the working class. There is thus a fundamental opposition between the interests of the police and the interests of the workers.
The strike by Military Police[1] which took place in several states in Brazil at the beginning of 2012, even though not simultaneously, has had important repercussions. It affected the states of Maranhão, Ceará, and Bahia, and spread to Rio de Janeiro. The movement reached its greatest breadth and strength in the state of Bahia where more than 3000 agents of the National Security Force, the Federal Police and the army were mobilised to deal with it. It was essentially in the Bahia capital Salvador that the mobilisation was at its height. The striking policemen and those supporting them occupied the Legislative Assembly.
The Dilma Rouseff government, following the line of her mentor Lula, condemned the strike movement as an assault on democracy and ordered the mobilisation of the army and the Federal Police in Salvador, Rio and other towns with the very clear aim of repressing the demonstrations. Jacques Wagner, the Workers’ Party governor of Bahia, was given the job of directing operations against the strike movement in this state.
The top representatives of the Workers’ Party, the Communist Party and PSOL and PSTU[2], as well as other organisations of the left and right, all felt obliged to pronounce ‘for or against’ the movement. The first two parties, which are pro-government, took a position against the movement, condemning it as a grave threat to law and democracy. The leftists of the PSTU and the PSOL gave unqualified support to the striking police, seeing them as ‘public security workers’. The population, given the huge media coverage of the conflict, and given all the fear about an increase in homicides and violence, was also faced with the problem of deciding whether or not to support the movement.
This strike by the Military Police was not the first in the sector and certainly won’t be the last. It expresses the difficulties of the Brazilian state in maintaining order and cohesion within its apparatus of repression, which is being affected by the economic crisis both at the level of its functioning and of its members’ living conditions.
The proletariat and its class organisations has to be as clear as possible about this strike and what it means for the coming struggles of the Brazilian proletariat against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, which are being accentuated by the world crisis of capitalism.
The capitalist crisis: the main cause of the movement
The Brazilian bourgeoisie glories in being part of the elite of ‘emerging’ countries, a position attained mainly under the Lula government. It’s considered to be one of the countries known as “BRICS”[3]. Like its partners, Brazil has managed to gain this position thanks to the exploitation of the proletariat and the growing precariousness of its living conditions. This in turn has been made possible by a climate of ‘social peace’ obtained mainly via the control over the masses by the left of capital, with the Workers’ Party at the fore.
The police, like the rest of the wage-earning population, don’t escape the constant pressure capital exerts on their living conditions: low wages, job insecurity, deteriorating working conditions and social benefits, etc. However, by going on strike, the Military Police, whatever their status in the hierarchy, as members of the apparatus of state repression and thus remunerated by the latter, have highlighted the conflicts and contradictions inside the ruling class. The bourgeoisie needs to be able to count on a repressive body capable of exerting violence against the proletariat when it fights for its demands, even the simplest ones like a wage that could make it possible to satisfy the most basic needs. But at the same time the personnel of these organs is drawn mainly from working class families who, while being in the front line of defending the interests of the ruling class, are also among the lowest paid of all those working for the apparatus of state repression (police, judges, etc). All this provokes a good deal of discontent and has led to the strike.
The recent conflict with the Military Police, the biggest such movement within this sector up till now, has posed real problems for the Brazilian state. The repressive measures taken by the federal government against some of the leaders of the movement, far from calming the situation, have further radicalised it. Moreover, the wage increases granted don’t at all meet the initial aspirations of the movement. Its original demands were: reintegration of the police expelled from the MP after the ‘historic’ strike of 2001, incorporation of bonuses, payment of a risk bonus, a 17.28% increase backdated to April 2007 and a revision of canteen benefits. What was granted: a proposed 6.5% wage increase and a new bonus increasing gradually up to 2014. The imprisoned police were not given an amnesty.
The strike movement is part of the weakening capacity of the bourgeoisie to impose its order in a situation where certain of its repressive forces are becoming less reliable. The deepening crisis of capitalism and the resulting measures of austerity are playing a central role in this.
It’s a fact that the great majority of police officers, like the majority of wage earners, don’t possess means of production and can only sell their labour power to survive. They belong to the poorest layers of society and put themselves in the service of the state to receive a wage which allows them to support their needs and the needs of heir families. Because of this similarity in social condition and the fact that they are paid a wage, you could be led to think that the interests and demands of police officers coincide with those of the proletariat, which is obliged to mobilise and struggle against the attacks of capital. But it’s not the case; these are movements situated in opposing camps.
The social origins of police officers should not make us forget that they are working in the service of the dominant order, their function being to repress and terrorise the population, as we can see from the following: “in recent months thee have been many new cases of abuse by the police, of gratuitous aggression against the population, rapes, violent repression of Military Police during the demonstrations, as well as the traditional murders and torture. The Brazilian police murders more people than any other in the world and its daily crimes are never subject to inquiries or manhunts...the Military Police was at the University of Sao Paulo to repress the students, just as it did at the demonstrations in Piaui, Recife, Espirito Santo, etc”[4] We can also see the same thing in the recent evacuation of Pinheirinho[5] and the threat to evacuate the community of quilombos (communities descended from slaves) at Rio do Macaco in Bahia, where the Military Police, which had just been on strike, went back to carrying out its repressive function alongside the Marines.
This is why it is necessary and fundamental for the working class and its revolutionary minorities to be as clear as possible about the class nature of the police and the repressive apparatus in general. The class position of the police is not defined by the fact of working for a wage but by the fact that they represent the first force of repression used by the state, and thus by capital, to confront the proletariat.
This distinction comes from the fact that the proletariat is not made up of a sum of all the wage earners, or even the sum of all the exploited. The proletariat is a social class whose interests are antagonistic to those of the class of capitalists, and its struggles for demands are a link in the chain of struggles for its emancipation, which will lead it to a confrontation with the bourgeoisie and its state. When a sector of the proletariat struggles, it’s not only the exploited worker who is entering into the fight, it’s a whole sector of the revolutionary class which is capable of developing its consciousness through its experience as a social force under capitalism.
The police officer, in deciding to ‘sell his labour power’ to the state and join up with its organs of repression, puts his (or her) capacities at the service of the bourgeoisie with the specific mission of preserving the capitalist system through the repression of the proletariat. In this sense, he or she ceases to belong to the proletarian class. When an unemployed worker or a person looking for a job decides to join the police force, he or she accepts the following ‘contract’: be faithful to the mandate of applying the law and maintaining the established order. This places him or her against any social or class movement which is ranged against the interests of capital and its state. This the police officer becomes a servant of the ruling class, and as such, places him or herself outside the camp of the proletariat.
The recent conflict between the police officers and their bosses is a conflict on the terrain of capital. The members of the police apparatus are asking for better wages and working conditions in order to carry out their tasks better and more effectively, i.e their tasks of repression and maintaining social peace.
In this sense, it is an error to call for solidarity from different sectors of wage earners with a police strike, essentially because the function of the police is the defence of the capitalist state. The fact that police officers are recruited from among the poor population does not modify this function, even if can influence them in other aspects.
The state hypocritically accuses the strikers of being responsible for an increase in crime, of leaving the population at the mercy of criminals. The state thus attributes a ‘social’ and ‘useful’ role to the police: the struggle against criminality. This is indeed the social justification for the necessity of these forces. In this way the workers and the population in general are asked to give their support to the strengthening of the repressive organs, justifying the recruitment of more police officers or giving them better equipment. Criminality and social violence are increasing all over the world because of the contradictions of capitalism and the social decomposition which affects not only the police officers but also the high functionaries of the state and its armed forces[6].
There have been circumstances in which the forces of order, mainly the army, have been persuaded to avoid acting in defence of the capitalist state. This can happen during massive struggles of the working class when large sectors of the population are mobilised and when sectors of the military forces refuse to repress social struggles, sometimes even joining up with the struggle and engaging in armed confrontations with the troops who remain loyal to the bourgeoisie. In these cases, there is the possibility and necessity to support and even protect these members of the repressive organs who come out against the orders of the state.
The acceleration of the crisis of capitalism since 2007, which was at the root of the social movements in North Africa and the Arab countries, as well as the movement of the ‘Indignant’ in Europe or ‘Occupy’ in the USA, can give rise to possibilities for fraternisation between the soldiers and the masses in movement. However, such situations have to be analysed with a great deal of political precision to avoid an over-optimistic attitude, as we saw during the movements in Egypt when the army, feigning sympathy with the movement, allowed the police to do the dirty work of brutal repression. In fact, as we know - and this is much clearer today – the army is the pillar of the system in this country.
The democratic illusions of these movements and the fact that the proletariat as a class did not take on their leadership allowed them to be taken in by the false sympathy of the forces of order and the bourgeois institutions. It led them to look for solutions which resulted in the strengthening of the bourgeois camp. It’s only in very advanced revolutionary situations, when the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is favourable to the latter, that we can expect an effective fraternisation with the military forces, as have seen in the past history of the workers’ movement.
There were important episodes of fraternisation during the Russian revolution of 1917. Trotsky gives a brilliant account of this in his History of the Russian Revolution, approving the attitude of the Russian workers in February 1917 towards the Cossacks, who he describes as having “many elements of conservatism” and as being “those age-old subduers and punishers”. He went on:
“But the Cossacks constantly, though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. Their horses were covered with foam. The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through, and close up again. There was no fear in the crowd. ‘The Cossacks promise not to shoot,’ passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had talks with individual Cossacks...
A worker-Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the authentic leaders in those days, relates how at one place, within sight of a detachment of Cossacks, the demonstrators scattered under the whips of the mounted police, and how he, Kayurov, and several workers with him, instead of following the fugitives, took off their caps and approached the Cossacks with the words: ‘Brothers-Cossacks, help the workers in a struggle for their peaceable demands; you see how the Pharaohs treat us, hungry workers. Help us!’ This consciously humble manner, those caps in their hands – what an accurate psychological calculation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of street fights and revolutionary victories swarms with such improvisations”[7].
The proletariat and its revolutionary minorities must keep it in mind that, in the long run, there can be no military victory over the bourgeoisie without the disintegration of the repressive forces. This will be the product of several factors:
It may be that a number of workers and even elements belonging to political groups in the proletarian camp in Brazil sympathise with the MP strike, given that they share with the workers the situation of poverty imposed on us by capital, They may even call on the workers to take the police strike as an example of how to struggle. However, such an approach can only be harmful to the development of consciousness in the class and weaken its capacity to confront the enemy, not only because it sees the police strike as something that belongs to the proletarian struggle, but also because it feeds a lack of confidence in the capacity of the Brazilian proletariat to develop its struggle on its own class terrain after decades of lethargy resulting from the activity of the Workers Party, the other parties of the right and left of capital, and their trade unions.
When the ‘Old Mole’ which Marx spoke about begins to shake the foundations of Brazilian capital, the tenacious and persevering struggle of the proletariat on its own terrain will be obliged to confront and ultimately undermine the repressive forces of the state.
ICC 14/3/12
[1] In Brazil the police is divided up between the federal branch and the states branch (ie belonging to the different regional states of the country). In the federal branch, you have the Federal Police, the Federal Police for Motorways, and the Federal Police for Railways. In the states sphere you have the Civil Police and the Military Police. The Civil Police is responsible for investigations and the Military Police is the institution responsible for public security and the maintenance of bourgeois order. As well as these police organisations there is the National Guard, which is used in cases of ‘public security’ emergencies. It is formed by trained elements detached from various state organisations.
[2] PSOL: Partido Socialismo e Liberdada, made up of several Trotskyist tendencies; PSTI: Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado, also Trotskyist
[3] BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China
[4] ‘PCO, the MP strike: the government wants the police to repress the population’ www.pco.org.br/conoticias/ler_materia.php?mat=34993 [429]
[5] OPOP. ‘We are Pinheirinho: total support and solidarity with the inhabitants of Pinheirinho’, revistagerminal.com/2012/01/24/nos-somos-o-pinheirinho-todo-apoio-e-solidariedade-aos-moradores-do-pinheirinho
[6] See the article in Revolución Mundial, our publication in Mexico, ‘Social insecurity: another reason for struggling against capitalism [430]’ Revolución Mundial n° 125, November-December 2011.
[7] Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, chapter 7, ‘Five Days’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm [431]
For some time, the Peruvian state has developed a campaign against terrorism, in particular against certain weakened but well-armed groups such as the Shining Path. Originally, it was a simple campaign to weaken the attempt to legalise a faction of the Shining Path – the Movadef[1] - which is hoping to participate in the political game with the other parties. When terrorist groups, as was the case with the IRA in Ireland, or presently the ETA in Spain, try to integrate themselves “normally” into the political circus, the already established forces within the state always unleash campaigns of discredit, demolition and harassment to ensure that the newcomers are as weak as possible and cannot profit from the prestige that they've acquired previously through the armed struggle. When bourgeois parties make alliances, it's usual for them to get in as many low blows as possible. There's nothing paradoxical about this: each tries to ally themselves with the weakest possible “partner”, because in this pitiless market place not to do so would result in them being weakened in their turn.
But after the attempt at the legalisation of Movadef failed, the campaign of the state then attacked the supposed incursions and so-called acts of violence of the SP (from graffiti on the walls, to car bombs, to assassinations, kidnappings, etc). And with time, we are seeing the state beginning to make a link between certain sectors of the population and terrorist groups, in particular sectors such as the mining industry where conflicts are becoming sharper each day, as is the case for Conga at Cajamarca or for the illegal miners of the Amazonian forest for example. Why has the state invented this link? Why has the state begun to tie in the demonstrations of the miners with the Shining Path?
The answer is evident: because it allows them to more easily exercise an extremely violent repression under the pretext “that the Shining Path has infiltrated members into these movements”. The state has already begun this repression against the impoverished peasants who are struggling against the mining pollution in their villages, who are struggling for their survival. The campaign against the Shining Path serves to justify the state's repression against the protest movements and are a clear warning to the movements which will appear in the future.
This campaign also has the advantage of making a link between communism and terrorism. The struggle of the working class has nothing to do with terrorism and terrorism also has nothing to do with the working class. Terrorism is always the enemy of the class struggle and plays a destructive role towards it. Communists thus openly reject the methods and visions of terrorism. Its practices and its positions are antagonistic to those of the working class.
“Terrorism is in no way a method of struggle for the working class. It is the expression of social strata with no historic future and of the decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie, when it's not the direct expression of the permanent war between capitalist states, terrorism has always been a fertile soil for manipulation by the bourgeoisie. Advocating secret actions by small minorities is in opposition to the class violence which comes from the conscious and organised mass activity of the working class[2].
Terrorism is thus a practice which has nothing to do with the tradition of the workers' movement. Terrorism allows neither a process of criticism nor or reflection but on the contrary provokes fear and anguish; as in a country at war, bombings do not favour reflection nor consciousness of the reasons for war, but on the contrary provokes exoduses, flights of the population who are pushed to look after themselves, thus generating obstacles for the development of the collective consciousness of the working class.
Terrorist practices (and those of the Shining Path in particular) only express the despair and decomposition of the petty-bourgeoisie through the “exemplary actions” of elitist groups, a practice which is totally opposed to class violence, which comes from the collective and conscious action of the masses in struggle for the destruction of capitalism, as was the case at the time of the emergence of the soviets in Russia, 1917. Proletarian class violence is based upon general assemblies, collective decisions, common practice and on everything which favours the conditions for the development of consciousness. The consciousness of the working class is forged in the unitary and collective struggle.
We thus reject the politics of amalgamation that the bourgeoisie, and the Peruvian state, with the puppet Humala at its head, serving up the same dish of “terrorism and subversion” or any expression of discontent or of struggle against the social order. Their aim is nothing other than to prepare the ground for justifying bloody repression against the working class in Peru, in the context of the world crisis of capitalism which carries with it a string of attacks against the living conditions of our class, provoking reactions of indignation and of struggle.
We can see at what point these terrorist groups are foreign to the working class with the recent confinement of twenty workers from the gas factory of Camisea by a supposed group of Shining Path, which wanted to exchange them for the imprisoned “comrade Artemio”. The capture of Artemio and the legalisation of Movadef, added to the supposed attacks of this terrorist group, serve as a Trojan horse of the state in order to prepare the ground for a brutal repression of the working class which has begun to struggle in other parts of the world (Spain, Greece...) and whose struggle will be concretised as much in Peru as in the rest of the American continent.
Internacionalismo -Peru 5/12
[1]Movadef: “Movimiento por Amnistia y Derechos Fundamentales” (Movement for amnesty and international rights). The Shining Path movement, founded in 1970, is a movement of Maoist inspiration advocating the armed struggle and terrorist acts. Its “guerrilla tactic” has sown terror throughout the country and provoked bloody massacres of the population (about 70,000 deaths) through the 1980s and 90s in Peru, in particular in the countryside and villages from which it undertook its “actions”.
[2]Extract from the “Basic Positions [436]” of the International Communist Current.
Since Correa's[1] arrival to power in Ecuador, attacks against the working class have not ceased raining down, but have on the contrary intensified. “Correaism” has shown itself much more efficient than the other governments which preceded it from 1979. From this date the military withdrew behind closed doors and the roles played in the new scenario makes for a more effective management of the crisis of capitalism which broke out at the end of the 1960s. This policy of management was essentially expressed through the flight into generalised debt by all states.
Faced with the impasse facing decadent capitalism, marked by a galloping decomposition which makes the future more and more uncertain even in the eyes of the most optimistic economists, the bourgeoisie has had to resort to further debt and to the application of economic policies of austerity which have had the consequence of plunging the working class into the blackest poverty.
The Ecuadorian state did not escape this tendency and here exports have decreased these three last years. The so-called health of the economy rests on the growth of national revenues in dollars based upon the price of oil which is apparently generating an expansion of revenues to the order of 13%. In reality this is a mirage due to the exhaustion of world reserves and the speculation that this unleashes. But the key to the measures taken to face up to instability is tightening the belts of the workers. Thus the indirect part of wages given over to health and education tends to disappear with the reduction of spending in these sectors, which also provokes job losses in the working class – as with Obama, Sarkozy, Angela Merket, Rajoy or any other government in the world.
Correa protects the interests of the dominant class, imposes the policies of flexibility of employment, of brutal job cuts, freezing of wages, the suppression of collective agreements while avoiding the “trauma” of demonstrations in the streets... thanks to his cajoling speeches axed around the defence of democracy imposed in the name of “popular power”.
Here are some concrete examples of what's been put forward:
- April 30 2008: the imposition of ordinance no. 8, aiming to normalise the “Tercecizacion e diacion Laboral” which means the sacking of 39,200 workers of which only a part will be re-hired by the firms that they worked for beforehand, but as sub-contractors;
- From April 30 2009, “decree 1701” was applied aiming to limit the “privileges” given by collective agreements signed by public workers and the state. Thousands of workers were immediately prematurely retired and others, after having submitted to “evaluations” of their capacities, were forced to quit; in teaching no less than 2957 teachers were “sent down the road”;
- From July 7 2011, “executive decree 813” was applied, which changed the rules of public service and instituted the “buying up of compulsory resignations”[2]. 7093 posts have thus been eliminated since 2011, particularly undermining the health sector which has suffered most job cuts.
Among the working population of Ecuador (which reaches 55.5% of the total population), 57% have no stable job, that's to say they are tossed about between informal work (selling whatever in the street), precarious work and the zone of abject misery deprived of everything...
But even the workers who have a fixed job don't get enough wages to pay for their most basic needs. A “qualified” worker (technical or other professional qualification) gets about $280 per month, a doctor coming out of university after seven years of studies varies between $500 and $700 a month. Those who alone have had salary increases are the police and forces of order. Correa has decreed an increase in the salaries of the military which varies from 5% to 25%. Today a simple soldier coming out of the barracks, trained to kill, will receive a salary of $900 a month.
This is the essence of Correaism, wrapped up in this aberration baptised the “citizens' revolution”, which is part of the ignoble and abominable ideology of the “socialism of the 21st century” so dear to Chavez.
The promises of Correa and of his ideologues of the “socialism of the 21st century” are not valid options for the workers. Their struggle alone can contain a real perspective for the future.
Internacionalismo-Ecuador 5/12
[1]Rafael Correa Delgado was a professor of political economy who worked in Europe and the United States. He came out of the harem of the bourgeoisie and became advisor to the president, then he was Minister of Finance under the Palacio regime. He presented himself as a “humanist and Christian of the left” and made himself noticed through a brief ideological “crusade” against the diktats of the IMF and the World Bank. Carried to the head of a coalition between different left parties, he was elected in the second round of presidential elections, October 2006 and found himself at the head of the Ecuadorian state from March 2007. He reformed the constitution and was re-elected at the first round of presidential elections, that he set off, in April 2009 (NDLR).
[2]“Compra de renuncias obligatorias”, facilitating the job cuts.
According to the official story, the Queen is above politics. She truly stands for the unity of the people of Britain. So why don’t we all get together and celebrate the Jubilee?
But what could be more political than the idea of national unity? The idea that despite the growing gulf between those at the top of the pile of Britain, and those holding it up from below, we all have the same interests at heart (especially when those interests are pitted against other ‘national unities’).
Kings and queens, in fact, are nothing but symbols of political power – symbols of the state which only came into being because a few thousands of years ago society had split into different classes with conflicting interests. Just as the state didn’t always exist, neither did kings and queens. They were nothing but the personification of the impersonal state power. Their rule was supported partly by armed force, partly by appropriating and thus distorting the old collective rituals and symbols which formerly expressed the unity of the first human communities. Throughout history, there have been those who have questioned the fraudulent legitimacy claimed by the monarchs – such as the Old Testament prophets who saw that when Israel fell under the sway of Kings, it meant abandoning the old tribal solidarity which had once protected the weak and the vulnerable.
The pomp and ceremony that is inseparable from the monarchy is thus an expression of our own alienation, of our loss of control of society and the way it functions. We ‘invest’ in kings and queens and similar celebrities because of the enforced poverty of our own lives.
In mediaeval England, kings and queens were products of the feudal social order. The bourgeois revolution which broke out in the 17th century tried to get rid of them but it wasn’t able to go beyond its own internal divisions. The bourgeoisie, led by Cromwell and his ilk, was unwilling to push the revolution to its conclusion because he feared the rise of radical democracy advocated by the Leveller party and the embryonic proletarian menace taking shape in the True Levellers or Diggers. The British ruling class displayed its fabled ‘genius for compromise’ by becoming a historic compromise between the new capitalist class and the old aristocracy. Capitalist rule in Britain, after a very brief period in which it took the form of a Republic, thus found ways to make the best use of vestiges of feudalism like the monarchy and the House of Lords.
Some people think that it is high time that the bourgeois revolution in Britain was brought to a conclusion and that we should catch up with countries which have got rid of all inherited political institutions. Politicians who represent this way of thinking like to tie us up in knots about why we should dispense with the Lords and set up a fully functioning modern parliamentary system (with a president as the cherry on the cake).
But the time for completing the capitalist revolution is long gone. Capitalism is a system in profound historic decline and the only revolution on the agenda is the revolution that will overthrow capitalism and create a world human community. No kings and queens, obviously. No lords and ladies. But also no bourgeois parliaments, no presidents, no national unities either! In short, no bourgeois republic. If we have outgrown the rule of monarchs it because we have outgrown the rule of the state, and need to finally restore society to itself.
The original idea of a ‘Jubilee’ (see Leviticus 25:9-17) was of a year of emancipation of slaves and restoration of lands, to be celebrated every 50th year. It was proclaimed by the sounding of a ram's horn on the Day of Atonement. On the Jubilee "Ye shall not therefore oppress one another". But the Jubilee we can look forward to is one which lasts more than a year, and brings with it the definitive abolition of all forms of exploitation.
Amos 30/5/12
Since 2008, and the beginning of the present phase of the crisis, growing austerity has developed everywhere. This policy was supposed to reduce the debts and relaunch growth. And then, like a rabbit out of a magician's hat, a new alternative was flourished which was supposed to cure all ills. It was called recovery. It is called for throughout the press, the television and radio. There's a real magic to it: growth could come back and generalised debt reduced. The debt could be “monetised”, i.e. paid off by printing money. What does this jargon of the bourgeois specialists mean? In reality, a few quite simple questions are posed: why this sudden turnaround by the great majority of the leaders of the euro zone? What is the reality of this policy? Has generalised austerity finished? Will the crisis continue to deepen or not in the near future ?
In Greece, Ireland, Italy, and most dramatically in recent weeks Spain, the population has been attacked on all sides during the last years. Workers at work, the unemployed, youth, the retired, each and everyone has seen their quality of life collapse. Hospitals, schools and all the public services have been butchered. The political justification of this economic war against all the exploited was clear. Listen to all the governments that were in power and they said ‘accept these sacrifices today: reduce state and public debt while lowering the cost of labour in order to easier sell the goods produced and thus growth will be re-launched’. Despite the struggles that developed in reaction to this policy, which looks at the working class like a sheep to be mercilessly fleeced, austerity continued to accelerate. But, to the great confusion of the capitalist class, so did the crisis.
Since 2008, the GDP of the euro zone has remained around the same and close to 8900 billion euros. On the other hand total public and private debt has continued to accelerate and has now reached 8000 billion euros. It is incredible to see that all the wealth created through a year of labour practically corresponds to the existing debt and we are only talking about the official part which is recognised as such. Worse than this for the bourgeoisie is that the economy has now settled into recession. In 2012, Germany alone could show a small 0.5% growth. For the other countries of the zone the collapse is evident. In Greece and Spain activity is rapidly retreating and mass unemployment is an established fact. Debt is exploding and practically out of control in these countries – at the very moment when their GDP is collapsing. As to France, which is just managing to avoid the worst, it is now paying its state employees by borrowing money on what is called the financial markets.
So, the bourgeoisie is simply verifying a fact which has been evident for a long time: generalised austerity and the crisis of credit leads to recession and the deepening of debt. What to do then?
The current debates within the bourgeoisie are basically still those that have been going on since 2008: how and when will we be able to repay the debt? It's then that an idea was presented as if it were new. In order to repay the debt, it will be necessary to create wealth. It was just a matter of thinking about it. This idea which has existed at least since the economic crisis of the 1930s has come to the surface once again. We could ask why it wasn't thought of earlier, for example since 2008 when the bottomless pit of debt made its most spectacular appearance.
How do you revive growth? That’s the question which is haunting the bourgeois class. For some, it is necessary to make production in the euro zone more competitive and thus lower the cost of the goods produced. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to look to lowering wages in order to effectively compete with Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian production, or with the countries of central Europe for example, and thus prevent production being moved abroad. Claiming to revive activity through the sharper competitive edge thus obtained would be laughable if it didn’t involve such suffering for the working class.
For others, the states of the euro zone should directly take charge of the recovery of growth. Here the idea is the following: since banks close to bankruptcy cannot lend enough, either to businesses or individuals, it is the state which has to directly take command. From here would come road construction, high-speed rail lines, etc. The companies concerned would get to work, hire wage earners and participate thus in re-launching growth. The problem is the following: where does the extra money come from that must be invested for such a result? Once the funds are used from existing sources, which represent about 450 billion euros, there has to be recourse to further debts taken on by states already at risk of bankruptcy. At present, in the western countries, in order to produce a euro of wealth, it is necessary to go into debt for 8 extra euros. In other words, a recovery plan implies this: a debt which increases eight times more quickly than the GDP. But goods produced are not goods sold. How much supplementary credit will it be necessary to distribute to bled-dry “consumers” so that they can buy these goods? This is absurd and unrealistic. The capital engaged has become too significant for the profit to be made. Given that capitalism can no longer deal with its current levels of debt, how will it be able to do it in the scenario described here? How does it prevent the public deficits exploding and the financial markets demanding exorbitant interest rates in order to continue lending to states? Behind all the ideological and media campaigns at present, this so-called recovery will have to make do with funds presently available and not yet utilised, which can only have a marginal affect on activity.
The new president of France, Monsieur Hollande, has joined in with many other leaders in the euro zone, except Germany of course, in singing a new tune which is supposed to fill us with hope. The title of this song that he hopes will become popular is: monetisation and mutualisation of the debt. Which if nothing else is very poetic. Quite simply monetisation means the printing of money. The central bank is in charge of it and takes in exchange acknowledgements of the debts of the state or the banks, and in general that guarantees the obligations. Mutualisation means that all states of the euro zone take collective responsibility for the debt. The states that are in less difficulty pay for those in more difficulty.
When enough wealth is no longer created and such wealth no longer sold in order to prevent debt dragging the system into the abyss, the financial markets gradually turn away. A recovery without real effect and a still greater debt makes borrowers more and more rare and borrowing more and more dear. Then comes the time to tap the savings banks, the first stage of the monetisation of the debt to come. The state becomes a thief on a grand scale. The increase in taxes of all sorts and compulsory loans have their effect. This borrowing is evaluated as a percentage of taxes paid by everyone. It must be repaid after a certain period and that gives rise to interest payments. It is this that they are currently looking into in France as for the whole euro zone. A responsibility for the state to pay us back tomorrow with the money that it no longer possesses today! It is quite evident that faced with the vast ocean of the bottomless pit of debt all this can only be a droplet . This however feeds into the austerity that we are already suffering from.
But again the general alert is out. Greece and Spain are sounding the alarm. Only a few months after the Central European Bank injected 1000 billion around the banks, the whole public financial system is wavering.
For 2012 alone in the euro zone, and so as to be able to face up to the part of this debt whose payment is now due, it will be necessary to find between 1500 and 4000 billion euro. These figures have nothing to do with reality of course since the Bank of Spain alone is claiming 23 billion. The sums are enormous and out of capitalism's reach. There only remains a road full of pitfalls for capital in its attempts to avoid immediate bankruptcy. In mid-June, Greece holds new elections. If a party refusing the austerity of the euro zone comes to power in this country, the exit of Greece from the euro zone is a possibility. For the population in Greece this would mean a return to their original money and a devaluation of the drachma by about 50%. This country would sink into autarky and misery. Which changes nothing much of the fate that awaits it. On the other hand, the bill for the banks and for the central bank of the euro zone will be pricey. In the accounts of the banks there are still many acknowledgements of Greek debt, close to 300 billion euros. But the fundamental question is not that. If the euro zone lets Greece come out of it through its impotence to keep it in, what will happen with Spain, Italy, etc?
The monetisation of the debt or the moment the bill is due
And now it’s Spain’s turn: all its banks in real bankruptcy and its regions all financially unmanageable. The mouthful is enormous, too big to swallow. The financial markets and all these institutions which get together the private money available in the world are not mistaken when they claim still more interest to borrow to this country. Presently, the rate over a ten-year state debt is approaching 7%. This rate is the maximum that the state can bear; above it, it can no longer borrow. Mario Rajoy, in a devious manner, appealed for help from the Central European Bank. The latter put up a deaf ear. The Spanish government then announced that it was going to try to finance its banks by going to the market. Soon after that Spain’s banks were given a very substantial lifeline of 100 billion euros. But all this is very odd. Banks in the world have to lend money to the insolvent Spanish state so that it can lend to its insolvent banks which, in exchange, will return with acknowledgements of insolvent debt. The absurdity is total. The impasse manifest.
Then, at one moment or another it will be necessary that at least part of the debt is monetised and mutualised. Paper money will have to be created that Germany will guarantee in part with the wealth that it produces. It is the Gross National Product of Germany that will authorise a certain degree of money creation. Germany impoverishes itself and slows down the general impoverishment of Europe. Why does it do this? Quite simply because it sells a great part of its goods in this zone.
Monetisation of the debt, a recognition of impotence
Monetising part of the debt shows in reality that capitalism can no longer develop, even on the basis of credit. This is the official moment when capitalism tells us: “I am going to create money that is progressively losing its value so that my debt will not explode immediately” I would like to invest it better, create wealth and sell, but I can no longer do so. The debt is too immense. It has me by the throat... quick paper money, more paper money and some time is gained”.
Money, including credit, should represent the wealth produced and the production that will be sold at a profit. For decades, growth has been maintained with credits which they have said would be repaid one day. When? No-one knows. This deadline is always pushed away in time. The wealth produced in ten years is already destroyed in production and sale today. What remains except for debts and still more debts?
Monetisation is the triumph of fictitious capital to the detriment of real capital, that which contains within it real wealth. To create massive amounts of money in order to buy your own debt comes down to the destruction of capital. That provokes galloping inflation of prices, despite the recession. This path also leads to austerity. Because how can you survive if the price of goods is going up every day?
Can capitalism accelerate its own descent into hell? And if Germany was to refuse monetisation thus paralysing the European Central Bank? No-one can totally dismiss such a possibility even if it would lead to a collective suicide. For some months, the German bourgeoisie has made some well-informed calculations in order to evaluate the costs of the break-up of or the financing of the euro zone. In both cases, in time, the bill is too much and unsupportable, but in the short term, what is the most terrifying perspective?
In any case, Germany will demand austerity. For German capital austerity is the hope that through a reduction in the acceleration of public debt, the slate will be a little cleaner. In reality all this is only a tragic illusion which means that proletarians everywhere will face increasingly uncertain living conditions.
The impasse for capitalism at this point is so great that it wants to launch a recovery of the economy at the same time as increasing austerity; to embark upon massive money creation while also reducing debt. Capitalism is becoming mad. It is losing its direction. It no longer knows now how to go forward nor how to manoeuvre in order to avoid the dangerous reefs that surround it on all sides. The euro zone has never been in such a dangerous crisis. The months to come will be those of great economic tempests which will lead to still more devastating shipwrecks, demonstrating the generalised bankruptcy of world capitalism.
Rossi 30/5/12
“The Marxian method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does not do more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means.” (Trotsky, Communist policy toward art, 1923)
“Art, which is the most complex part of culture, the most sensitive and at the same time the least protected, suffers most from the decline and decay of bourgeois society.” (Trotsky, Art and politics in our epoch, 1938)
The rise of capitalism unleashes unprecedented, hitherto unimaginable forces of production that bring into being new feelings and new ideas, together with new means for artists to express them. The extension of this new mode of production over the entire surface of the globe and its penetration into all areas of human experience dissolves the barriers between national cultures and local fixed styles, creating for the first time a single world culture.
By constantly revolutionising production and raising productivity, capitalism also destroys old, rigid social relations and turns everything, including art, into a commodity. From being a hitherto ‘revered’ and ‘honoured’ artisan producing directly for a client, the artist is more and more reduced to a paid wage labourer whose products are thrown onto an anonymous market and subjected to the laws of competition.
Beyond its use as an investment or embellishment to the private life of the individual capitalist, capitalism is inherently hostile towards art as a diversion from its single driving force: the accumulation of capital for its own sake. Moreover, as an exploiting system, capitalism is fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of humanity and therefore to the humanist ideals of the best art. The more conscious art is of this, the more it is led to protest against the inhumanities of capitalist society. In this way, the best artists are able to transcend the limits of their epoch and class origins to create powerful condemnations of the crimes and human tragedies of capitalism (Goethe, Balzac, Goya).
This antagonism between capitalism and humanity is not fully apparent in the earliest stages of the new mode of production when the bourgeoisie is still engaged in a revolutionary struggle against feudal absolutism. The best art is able to reflect the progressive moral and spiritual values of this new exploiting class, whose energy and confidence – and generous patronage – enables the artistic achievements of the Renaissance long before its own rule is established.
In the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions (c1776-1848) art is still able to express the revolutionary aims of the bourgeoisie, but the sordid realities of capitalism are already becoming clear. Romanticism (Blake, Goethe, Goya, Pushkin, Shelley, Turner) reflects the contradictory nature of this period, rejecting feudal and aristocratic values in art but also passionately protesting against the brutal effects of capitalist industrialisation on art and the individual.
Against the ‘rationality’ of the new exploiting class, romanticism argues for the power of subjective experience, imagination and the sublimity of nature, drawing its inspirations from the Middle Ages, mythology and folk art. Politically it often takes a reactionary, backward-looking form, but it also gives rise to a definite revolutionary tendency which expresses an internationalist, communist vision (Heine, Blake, Byron, Shelley).[1] The most profound poetic insights of this tendency anticipate not only the later artistic ideas of Expressionism and Surrealism but also the theoretical developments of Marxism and psychoanalysis.
Once it comes to power and the proletariat appears on the historical stage, the bourgeoisie sheds its progressive values and buries the whole idea of revolution as a mortal danger to its class rule. From this point on, the attempts of art to understand reality and express the interests of humanity inevitably come into conflict with capitalist ideology.
The defining characteristic of bourgeois modern art is that it appears just as the conditions for capitalism’s further progressive development are reaching their zenith.
The decisive victory of industrial capitalism by the mid-19th century in the most advanced countries of Europe and America is reflected in the growth of rationalist, positivist and materialist ideologies in the sciences and philosophy, and realist or naturalist approaches in the arts. Marx and Engels consider realism in literature (Flaubert, Balzac, Elliot) to be the supreme achievement of world art. Realism in the visual arts, (Courbet, Millet, Degas) is a reaction to both classical art and to the emotionalism and subjectivism of romanticism, affirming instead the goals of truth and accuracy and depicting scenes of everyday life, including hitherto ignored harsh realities of working class life. To the bourgeoisie, any art that accurately depicts the ugly realities of life in capitalism is by definition revolutionary and to be rejected.
This period also sees the growth of the workers’ movement, and it is therefore unsurprising that realism gives rise to a revolutionary tendency that explicitly identifies with the working class and the struggle for socialism. Courbet, leader of the realist movement in France, affirms: “I am not only a socialist but also a democrat and a republican, in a word, a partisan of revolution and, above all, a realist, that is, the sincere friend of the real truth.”[2]
Impressionism (Pissaro, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Monet) is an artistic response to the growth of industrial and urban society; to new technological developments and scientific discoveries (photography and optics), the globalisation of trade (seen in the influence of Japanese prints), and the growth of the middle class as a clientele for new art. It retains a commitment to truth and accuracy but focuses on the subjective perception of movement and light: “Whilst the old academic style said ‘here are the rules (or images) according to which nature must be depicted’, and naturalism said ‘here is nature’, then Impressionism said ‘here is how I see nature’”.[3] Impressionist themes and influences can also be seen in music (Debussy, Ravel) and in literature (Lawrence, Conrad).
As a genuinely modern bourgeois art movement, impressionism is a contradictory development. Whereas the classical art of the Renaissance expresses an underlying sense of unity that derives from the vision and confidence of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, impressionism reflects the victory of capitalism and the atomisation of the individual in industrial society. By basing itself on subjective or sensory perception it correspondingly represents reality as a patchwork:
“And so Impressionism was, in a sense, a symptom of decline, of the fragmentation and dehumanization of the world. But at the same time it was, in the long ‘close season’ of bourgeois capitalism ... a glorious climax of bourgeois art, a golden autumn, a late harvest, a tremendous enrichment of the means of expression available to the artist.”[4]
The period between c1890 and 1914 – the so-called ‘Belle Époque’ or ‘Gilded Age’ – sees capitalism apparently at its most optimistic and technologically advanced, with particularly powerful economic growth that creates fertile conditions for artistic and scientific developments (Freud’s theory of the unconscious, quantum and relativity theory). But beneath the surface this is also a period of gnawing uncertainty and doubt, with the rise of militarism and imperialist tensions, increasing state intervention in society and massive working class struggles: all signs of a growing crisis at the heart of capitalism.
The artistic movements that emerge from this period (cubism, expressionism, symbolism) inevitably reflect these contradictions, expressing both a final flowering of progressive bourgeois art and the first symptoms of its end. Cubism (Picasso, Braque), showing the influence of the latest scientific and philosophical theories, abandons the depiction of objects from one viewpoint, analysing, breaking up and re-assembling them in abstracted form from multiple viewpoints. Expressionism rejects realism altogether, depicting subjective meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. It is also influential in literature (Kafka), and in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg) where it rejects traditional tonality for a-tonality and dissonance. Symbolism (Baudelaire, Verlaine) is a poetic reaction against realism and naturalism in favour of mysticism and imagination, which is later described as “a dreaming retreat into things that are dying”.[5]
A radical tendency within bourgeois modern art sees itself as the avant garde of a new progressive society with new artistic values, arguing that art has a role to play in modernising capitalist society. This ‘modernist’ avant garde appears just as the possibilities for reforming capitalism from within are about to end. Futurism (Marinetti, Mayakovsky, Malevich), which is influential in painting, poetry, architecture and music in the early 20th century, especially in Italy and Russia, glorifies themes and symbols of capitalist progress such as youth, speed, dynamism, and power. But other modernist elements, especially in Germany, are more critical of capitalist ‘modernity’ and express the alienation of life in bourgeois society (Munch’s ‘The Scream’).
The outbreak of the First World War divides this Modernist avant garde into the glorifiers of capitalist progress like Marinetti and the Italian futurists, who enthusiastically side with barbarism (and later with fascism), and more radical tendencies like the Russian futurists and German expressionists who oppose the war and, in a more or less confused and partial way, begin to relate to the proletarian movement.
The first specific artistic response to the war is dada. An international anti-war and anti-capitalist movement, dada sees the slaughter on the battlefields as proof of the bankruptcy of all bourgeois culture. Its ‘programme’ is close to anarchism: the demolition of culture and the abolition of art, and its practice embraces chaos and irrationality (poems made from randomly-assembled words clipped from newspapers, etc). The Berlin dadaists (Heartfield, Grosz, Dix, Ernst), closer to the anti-war struggles of the working class, take up more explicitly communist positions, even forming their own political party and actively supporting the German revolution.[6]
The October 1917 Russian revolution is the high point of the post-war revolutionary wave and of the attempts by the modernist avant garde to create a liberating art. For a brief period following the soviets’ seizure of power there is a huge surge of artistic experimentation and activity, much of it explicitly identifying itself with the revolution. With the protection of the young soviet state and critical support from the Bolshevik Party, sections of the Russian avant garde (futurists,productivists, constructivists), inspired by Mayakovsky’s declaration “The streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes”, abandon ‘pure’ art for industrial production, embracing architecture, industrial design, cinema, advertising, furniture, packaging and clothes, with the stated aim of using art to transform everyday life. There are heated debates about culture and the future of art. The influential Proletkult movement, tending to reject all previous culture, wants to create a new revolutionary, proletarian aesthetic, while others like Trotsky reject the whole concept of proletarian culture but support the emergence of a new revolutionary art, expecting this to appear imminently.[7]
In the context of the revolutionary wave that shakes capitalism to its foundations in the years from 1917 to 1923 this does not appear unrealistic. The sentence passed by dada on all bourgeois culture and art seems about to be carried out by the world proletariat, in Germany, Britain, America....
But with the isolation of the Russian bastion, and the defeat of the proletariat’s revolutionary attempts in Europe, the Bolsheviks’ initial backing for modernist experimentation is replaced by the suppression of dissent and increasing state control as the Stalinist counter-revolution tightens its grip. Internationally, modernism eventually ends up by being co-opted as an official architectural style by reactionary state capitalist regimes, whether Stalinist, fascist (especially in Italy) or social democratic.
In the deepening bourgeois counter-revolution, the Russian artistic avant garde essentially faces the same choices as the surviving communist opposition: either submission to Stalinist totalitarianism with its enforcement of ‘socialist realism’, silence or exile. With the rise of fascism the European artistic avant garde is also increasingly forced into exile and/or takes up an explicitly political oppositional stance.
Surrealism (Breton, Aragon, Ernst, Péret, Dali, Miró, Duchamp) emerges from dada but only becomes a distinct movement when the practical opportunities for revolution are already receding. It is an explicitly revolutionary artistic movement which becomes closely associated with political opposition to Stalinism.[8] Surrealism draws its ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis as well as Marxism and emphasises the use of free association, dream analysis, juxtaposition and automatism to liberate the unconscious. Its attempt to maintain a permanent revolutionary artistic practice within capitalism in a period of deep defeat leaves it prone to decay and eventual recuperation, but surrealist ideas are a huge influence on the visual arts, literature, film, and music, as well as philosophy and political and social theory.
With the triumph of the bourgeois counter-revolution in the 1930s – “Midnight in the century” (Victor Serge) – we see a full flowering of all the classic symptoms of decadence in capitalist culture:
“Ideology decomposes, the old moral values run down, artistic creativity stagnates or functions in opposition to the status quo, there is a development of obscurantism and philosophical pessimism. [...] In the sphere of art, decadence has manifested itself in a particularly violent way [...] As in other periods of decadence, art, if it does not stagnate in an eternal repetition of past forms, seeks to take up a stance against the existing order, or is very often the expression of a cry of horror.”[9]
Decadence makes the need for a genuinely liberating art all the more pressing but the deepening crisis of the system and its effects on bourgeois society mean that the minimum conditions for the appearance of such an art are progressively undermined, while the traditional social base of art in the radical petty bourgeoisie is even further eroded and isolated from the life of the mass of the working class.
In these conditions, art which ‘seeks to take up a stance against the existing order’ finds itself increasingly isolated, or is recuperated for use as propaganda by one reactionary political faction or another (Picasso’s ‘Guernica’). Art that expresses a cry of horror at capitalist barbarism similarly finds itself rendered increasingly impotent by the sheer scale of its atrocities: World War Two (over 60 million dead, mostly civilians, compared to 20 million in 1914-18), the Nazi death camps, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hamburg, Dresden, Stalinism’s mass crimes... To paraphrase Adorno, after Auschwitz it becomes impossible to write poetry without contributing further to an already barbaric culture.
But capitalist decadence does not mean that the productive forces come to a halt. In order to survive the system must continue to try to revolutionise production and raise productivity. Rather, we increasingly see what Marx termed ‘development as decay’. Similarly in the sphere of art we continue to see a progression of artistic schools, partly in response to new technological developments and changes in society, but this is increasingly characterised by a frantic recycling of previous styles, violent mood swings between hope and despair, fragmentation, and the splintering and disappearance of each school before reaching its complete development. Human creativity never ceases, but it does find itself increasingly stifled, channelled, blocked and corrupted. We still see artistic developments (jazz), and the introduction of new techniques and styles, but increasingly these developments reflect the decay of a society that has avoided its appointment with its executioner and only survives by cannibalising itself.
This is illustrated by abstract expressionism, the most influential artistic school (at least in painting and sculpture) to appear in the ‘post-war boom’. Abstract expressionism is partly a reaction to the explicit political content of 1930s social realism (Rivera). Influenced by Surrealism and the European avant garde it emphasises the expression of unconscious ideas and emotions through spontaneous, improvisatory or automatic techniques to create images of varying degrees of abstraction (Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still). Influenced by the trauma of WW2 and the repressive post-war climate in the US, it avoids openly political content, turning to primitive art, mythology and mysticism for inspiration. This and its pursuit of pure abstraction facilitates the promotion of abstract expressionism by the US state in the Cold War as a cultural weapon against the ‘socialist realism’ of its Russian imperialist rival.
If art by the mid-20th century displays the classic symptoms of decadence in all class societies, there are also specific developments, especially in the ‘post-war boom’, which transform not only the way that art is produced and distributed in capitalist society but also how it is ‘experienced’ by the mass of the working class. The cumulative effect of these developments is to further undermine the conditions for the emergence of revolutionary art and hasten the disappearance of the surviving artistic avant garde. Many of these developments are themselves symptoms of decadence or attempts by capitalism to overcome the contradictions of its historic crisis. They include:
As a result, for the first time in history capitalism is able to cheaply produce artistic commodities (music, films, etc) for consumption by the mass of the working class, in so doing overcoming its inherent hostility to art as an unnecessary diversion from its drive to accumulate. This greatly facilitates the use of artistic commodities for ideological purposes, not just to help ensure the reproduction of labour by providing means for ‘amusement’ in workers’ ‘leisure time’, but also to recuperate any artistic expression of dissent.
When the proletariat returns to the stage of history in the struggles of ‘May 68, we do see the appearance of radical art movements (Arte Povera) but not on the scale that one might expect. Instead, the most radical descendents of the European artistic avant garde, the Situationists, are distinguished by their critique of ‘the society of the spectacle’, ie. bureaucratic capitalism’s commodification of culture and its use of the mass media to recuperate subversive ideas, and by proposals for practical actions to “bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art”. The Situationists exaggerate the power of this ‘spectacle’ just at the moment when capitalism’s historic crisis returns, but they are closer to reality in identifying the inability of even the most radical artistic activity to avoid recuperation unless it is explicitly political; that is, in this period, revolutionary.
With the entry of capitalism into its final phase, that of decomposition, the very real possibility exists of the destruction of all human culture, along with art, which will, in Trotsky’s phrase, inevitably rot away “as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery”.[10]
By the 1970s modern art is part of official state capitalist culture in America and Europe, supported and subsidised by corporations and government agencies and safely enshrined in museums. Despite successive waves of working class struggle right up to the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989-91 we see only a further decay of art, accelerated by the spurious economic boom of the 1980s and fuelled by an explosion of debt that leads to a gold rush of speculative investment in art as bullion. The excesses of the market finish off what the counter-revolution, the post-war boom and the rise of the ‘culture industry’ have begun.
The appearance of ‘post-modernism’, especially from the 1980s, is in one sense only the final inevitable recognition of this long drawn-out death of modernism. ‘Post-modernism’ has its origins in the arid regions of the leftist intelligentsia (Derrida et al) as a ‘democratising project’. It theorises the abandonment not only of any further avant garde role for art but also of any concept of forward movement in history itself. It therefore fits perfectly with all the bourgeois ideological campaigns in the 1990s about the ‘end of communism’ and the ‘end of history’, only adding to general demoralisation and despair.
Even before the entry of decadent capitalism into its final stage, that of decomposition, we can therefore point to the advanced decomposition of art, ie. “the vacuity and venality of all “artistic” production: literature, music, painting, architecture, are unable to express anything but anxiety, despair, the breakdown of coherent thought, the void...”[11] In fact this description does not go far enough. We can add to it by identifying a trend in art to destroy itself, to become, in the words of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, ‘anti-art’. In decomposing capitalism, even anti-art is ... art: “Art has something which destroys its own cells. Damien Hirst is a great anti-artist. To go to Sothebys and sell your own work directly is destroying art. But in doing it to such exaggerated extent, it becomes art ... the fact that it was two days before the [2008] crash made it even better.””[12]
Beyond the cynical manipulations of ‘artist/entrepreneurs’ like Hirst, whose exploits now appear as one more symptom of capitalism’s pre-2007 speculative bubble, there is a more fundamental truth. The expressionist poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) compares the artist to “a dancer whose movements are broken by the constraint of his cell. That which finds no expression in his steps and the limited swing of his arms, comes in exhaustion from his lips, or else he has to scratch the unlived lines of his body into the walls with his wounded fingers.”[13] If the artist is indeed like a prisoner in a cell, then in decomposing capitalism the best artists are more and more forced to revert to the equivalent of a ‘dirty protest’ at the intolerable conditions of capitalist life and the impossibility of genuine artistic expression. But even smearing the cell walls with your own excrement is no longer enough, it seems, to avoid commodification and recuperation. In 1961 the Italian artist Manzoni produced a work consisting of 90 tins of his own shit. In 2007 Sotheby’s sold one for 124,000 euros.
MH 6/12
[1] See Heinrich Heine: The revolution and the party of the nightingales’, ICC online. (https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/march/heine [444]).
[2] Courbet, a supporter of Proudhon, was imprisoned for his active role in the Paris Commune.
[3] Culture and Revolution in the Thought of Leon Trotsky, Revolutionary History, vol. 7, No. 2, Porcupine Press, London 1999, p. 102 (www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/marxism_and_art.html [445]).
[4] Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach, Pelican, 1963, p.75. The impressionist Cézanne was well aware of this regression: in the work of the old masters, he says, “It is as though you could hear the whole melody of it in your head, no matter what detail you happened to be studying. You cannot tear anything out of the whole. ... They did not paint patchwork as we do...” (Fischer, p.75).
[5] Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle, [446]1931. The symbolists were also known at the time as ‘decadents’.
[6] Formed in early 1919, the ‘Central Council of Dada [447] for the World Revolution’ called for “1) The international revolutionary union of all creative and intellectual men and women on the basis of radical Communism; (...) The immediate expropriation of property (...) and the communal feeding of all (...) Introduction of the simultaneist poem as a Communist state prayer.” (Wikipedia).
[7] Trotsky, Communist policy toward art, 1923. For more on the Proletkult movement and the debates within the Bolshevik Party on culture, see the series “Communism is not just a nice idea” in International Review nos. 109, 111.
[8] Although some surrealists like Aragon became apologists for Stalinism while Dali supported fascism. Leading surrealists made contact with Trotsky and the movement became closely associated with the Left Opposition but the leading surrealist poet Benjamin Péret broke with the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1948 over its reactionary political positions and worked closely with Munis’s group.
[9] The Decadence of Capitalism, ICC pamphlet (https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/decadence/ch3 [448]).
[10] Trotsky, Art and politics in our epoch, 1938 (https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm [449]).
[11] “Theses on decomposition, the final phase of capitalism’s decadence”, International Review no. 107, 2001. We could add to this the whole crisis of the education system and its effects on traditional art skills, knowledge and techniques, etc.
[12] Guardian, 9.12.11.
[13] Quoted in Norman O. Brown, Life against death. The psychoanalytical meaning of history, 1959, p. 66.
We are publishing here an article written by one of our very close contacts in collaboration with ICC militants. We want to salute the comrade’s willingness to contribute to the ongoing discussions and clarification of one of the burning social issues of the time—gay “rights”-- from a working class perspective. We also want to express our appreciation for the focus the comrade chose to give in writing this article. We think it is refreshing to approach the issue from the angle of human emotions. We also agree with the comrade’s political understanding and argumentation. We invite all our close contacts to work in collaboration with ICC militants to write about issues of concern for the clarification and emancipation of working class thought.
The “debate” over whether gay and lesbian people should enjoy the “right” to legally marry and draw from such legal recognition all the financial benefits granted to heterosexual married couples –survivor’s benefits among the most hotly contested— has long been one of those hot button issues the ruling class periodically pulls out of its hat, most notably around election time. In this article we would like to highlight the hypocrisy of the ruling class left, center, and right in taking up the issue from either a “humanistic” point of view—the left’s and center’s—or a moralistic/religious standpoint on the right. The Obama administration likes to show itself as “liberal” and “progressive,” hence its call to reverse the anti-gay marriage laws passed at the state level (most recently by referendum in North Carolina), without, however, attempting to make gay marriage a constitutional “right.” The right needs to satisfy the fears and quell the insecurities of its particularly conservative electoral base, hence the Republican Party to-be-nominee Mitt Romney’s anti-gay marriage stance. The whole “debate” is really a ploy by the Obama administration to appeal to the youth and “independent-minded,” besides the gay electorate itself, and push Romney to discredit himself with the Evangelists if he does not clearly and forcefully come against gay marriage. Romney’s further move to the right risks further alienating the undecided and independent sector of the electorate. It is clear that this legalistic posturing is completely hypocritical. It aims at utilizing a situation which is certainly experienced as dramatic and humiliating by gay and lesbian people by fueling divisions, animosity, and further misunderstandings for the purpose of political gains. Further, the at times vehement opposition to gay marriage expressed by the rights should not confuse us as to the fact that the legalization of an aspect of personal life would do nothing to challenge the established system of capitalist exploitation.
Today, if you turned on the television set and surfed over to any mainstream bourgeois news channel, chances are headlines about the “debate over gay rights” might assault the screen. It is interesting how the bourgeois media is insistent on highlighting our personal human differences, in showing us where we disagree the most as people. But the bourgeoisie and their mouthpieces in the press are highly hypocritical. Especially when “partisanship” is so frowned upon in the current political climate. Now, certain factions of the ruling class claim to support gay marriage. Even further, they claim to do so out of a sense of deeper humanism, often referring to the gay rights struggle as a struggle for “equality” or “civil rights.”
It is at this point we have to ask: “equality” in the name of what? And for which people in society? Is “marriage equality” even an appropriate working class demand? Is sexual freedom even possible under capitalism? As workers, we have to say the answer to both of those questions is negative. Building a world free of homophobia and heterosexism, where each individual is viewed and treated as a human being, rather than a category, is impossible under capitalism.
For some time now, elements of the bourgeois political class have advocated the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Often times their arguments are coded in language that appeals to workers. They say that legalizing same-sex marriage would improve the quality of life for gay and queer workers, as they would gain access to insurance benefits, divorce and property rights, etc. But under capitalism, human relations are reduced to a matter of exchange. Emotions are nothing but mere commodities and finances to the bourgeoisie. So we can see the economic need of legalizing same-sex marriage, but what about the concept of marriage itself within capitalism?
Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that, “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” They later continued, “The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations...On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.”
So according to Marx and Engels' definition of marriage under capitalism, we can begin to understand that “equal marriage rights” is a term which only applies to those who can afford the benefits of marriage. Rights which only apply to the propertied classes, the people who can even afford to legally marry in the first place. Marriage is fundamentally about property rights and inheritance. It has historically defined which people the ruling class deemed acceptable to own property, and even which people could be owned themselves! Originally of course, marriage meant the possession of the wife and her property by the husband. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie marriage is not at all about mutual respect and love—it's about possession, ownership, and property rights.
But why do we need a ruling class to tell us what marriage is and who we can and cannot marry? As we previously said in Internationalism #130 and in other places in the ICC press, a communist society would instead “be a society beyond the family in which human relationships will be regulated by mutual love and respect and not the state sanction of law.”
The bourgeois democratic state and its agents never pose the questions surrounding gay rights in terms of human need. What are the needs of gay and lesbian folks? Or even the basic needs of human beings in general? There is no question that the repression of the gay and queer community is real. We see homophobia, heterosexism, and patriarchy manifested everywhere in capitalism; anyone saying otherwise is simply in denial. The bullying of gay and queer youth for example has recently been referred to as an “epidemic” in the bourgeois media. Many of these traumatizing events where gay and queer people are bullied lead to depression, and in some cases even suicide.
But does the bourgeoisie focus on solving these issues? What about parliamentary legislation? Do any of the bills and amendments touch on any of these social issues? No! The debate is almost always framed in the context of religion, or moralism. Especially in the mainstream media, especially in the rhetoric of the ruling class. For all the vaunted talks—all the legalistic gibberish—about “human rights,” receiving the capitalist state’s approval and recognition under the guise of the law can do nothing to extirpate centuries long religious and moralistic bigotry. Religious people are “blamed” for their backward attitude, which further contributes to the polarizing, witch hunt-like atmosphere. In situations like these, legalizing same-sex marriage only helps portray the capitalist state as a “just” and “beneficent” entity.
If there is even a grain of sincerity in the ruling class' support of same-sex marriage, it comes from their need to distract workers and immerse them in the circus of electoral politics and legalism. Of course it is true that growing support of sexual freedom is part of humanity developing a deeper scientific understanding, and a greater sense of general human solidarity. But the ruling class cares nothing about these things, and why should they? If you have money your rights are never at risk, or up for debate. “Marriage equality” does not equal a good relationship or economic equality; it equals further class domination from the bourgeoisie.
Social struggles which only partially address the fundamental problems of capitalism, while expressing real social problems that exist in our society, distract the working class from revolutionary tasks and discussions. We have discussed already how the bourgeoisie can become fixated on the debate over gay rights, almost to the point of obsession. But this fixation happens among so-called “revolutionaries” as well.
Many people use language exclusively directed at workers in order to “organize” them around what is in essence a cross-class, broad social issue. The argument that gay rights will bring us “closer to full equality” is completely irrelevant, when it is a basic tenet of communists that full equality is impossible under capitalism. Why as revolutionaries should we be fighting to get “closer” to an egalitarian society? We need to stand against all of capitalisms injustices at once! Many of these same “revolutionaries” would call the legal and electoral decisions in favor of gay marriage rights “victories” for the workers. But these victories do nothing but bolster the appeal of bourgeois civil society.
The politics of legalism and democratism have nothing to offer the working class. True human emancipation can only come from working class revolution. Workers should always support gay and queer people themselves, especially in a society where they are alienated and ridiculed in such terrible ways. But we have to remain careful of the bourgeois campaigns which surround these debates. Often times they distract and mislead us from our ultimate goal—ending all forms of repression and exploitation for everyone on earth.
Jam 06/11/12
Due to pressure of work and other factors, the June issue of World Revolution was delayed and combined with the July/August issue. We did however continue to update the website with new material. Subscriptions will be extended to cover the issue that has been missed.
This year is the third time that London has staged the Olympic Games, and each occasion has shown something about the changing state of capitalist society.
The 1908 Olympics were originally going to be held in Rome; however, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April 1906 meant that resources were needed for the reconstruction of Naples. As a global power, with an empire covering nearly a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of the world’s population, the UK was in a position to take on the Games at short notice.
In ten months it was possible to organise the finance, find a site and build a state-of the-art stadium. Financially, costs amounted to about £15,000 and receipts were £21,377. The first London Olympics made a profit, and in that sense were a success. What The Times (27/7/1908) regretted was that “The perfect harmony which every one wished for has been marred by certain regrettable disputes and protests and objections to the judges’ rulings. In many newspapers, the whole world over, national feeling has run riot, and accusation and counter-accusation have been freely bandied about.” This is hardly surprising, bearing in mind the growing conflicts between nations as imperialism became capitalism’s only way of functioning, from the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and all the antagonisms that led up to the First World War.
In 1908 the judges were all British and there was a complaint from the US team, on average, every day. It started with a refusal to dip the American flag to the King at the opening ceremony and continued throughout the events. In the tug-of-war the Americans complained about the heavy service boots of the team from the Liverpool police. When their protest was dismissed the US withdrew from the event. Or, in the 400 metres, the British officials decided that the final would be re-run because a US runner had elbowed a British runner. The US boycotted the re-run. In the end the UK team won more gold, silver and bronze medals than all other countries. Against teams from 22 countries, involving 2000 competitors overall, the UK won more medals, 146, than it has in any other modern Olympics. As The Times (13/7/1908) had said in advance “This year it may be hoped that we shall do our foreign competitors the compliment of showing them that we have not lost our cunning.”
In the forty years that passed before the London Olympics of 1948 a lot had changed for British imperialism. The Allied imperialisms of Britain, Russia and the US had won the Second World War, but the US was now dominant in the West, with Britain in a far more secondary position.
Britain had been uncertain about taking on the Olympics. With a devastated economy, with rationing (including food, petrol and clothing) being more severe than during the war, with high unemployment, widespread homelessness and many workers’ strikes, the UK was desperate for the US funds it received from the Marshall Plan, but not clear what impact the Olympics would have.
Only a month before the Olympics began there was an unofficial London dockers’ strike during which newly conscripted troops were drafted into the docks. For the first time a government used powers introduced by the 1920 Emergency Powers Act to confront the strike. This was not the only time that workers came up against the austerity regime of the post-war Labour government.
There had at least been two years of preparation for the Games. Although no new venues were built the forced labour of German prisoners or war was used on some construction projects, including the road leading to Wembley Stadium.
Not for nothing have the 1948 Games become known as the Austerity Olympics. Other countries were encouraged to bring their own food, although competitors were allowed rations increased to the level of miners’. Male competitors were put up in RAF camps, female in London colleges. British competitors had to buy or make their own kit.
With 4000 competitors from 59 countries, the 1948 Olympics cost £732,268 (coming in under budget) and took receipts of £761,688. It made a modest profit, but the UK only came 12th in the medals table, and everyone knew the US was going to come first before the Games had started.
Although some countries have claimed to have broken even, or made a profit, for example the dubious claims of Beijing in 2008, the Olympics have been a financial disaster for most recent venues taking them on. Montreal’s dept was so great that they didn’t finally pay it off until nearly 30 years later. The original budget for the Athens 2004 Olympics was $1.6 billion: the final public cost estimate as much as $16 billion, with most venues now abandoned or barely-used and millions still needed for upkeep and security. It’s clear that the Olympic Games were one of the factors that contributed to the scale of the crisis of the Greek economy.
For London 2012 the initial budget estimate was for £2.37bn, but, in the seven years since the bid was won, the guesses on the final figure have ranged from 4 times to as much as 10 times the original cost. Not that the organisers are not planning to do everything to recoup the expenditure. The prices for admission, food, drink, and everything else to do with Olympic venues, are mostly outrageous, even for an expensive capital city. And the interests of the official sponsors are being very fiercely guarded. There are very strict rules on “ambush advertising”, that is, the display of anything (including items of personal clothing) that includes the name of a company that is not an official sponsor.
But the area where it seems that London2012 is keenest to break records is in repression. On the busiest days there will be 12,000 police on duty. There will be 13,500 military personnel available, rather more than the number of 9500 British troops in Afghanistan. It’s also planned to have 13,300 private security guards. They will spend a few days training with troops. A spokesman for the security firm involved said “ part of the venue training was to ‘align values’ between the two groups, so games spectators had the same security experience with military and private guards” (Financial Times 24/5/12).
On top of this there have been well publicised plans to install a high velocity surface-to-air missile system on a block near to the main Olympic site. Presumably this is intended to blow planes out of the sky over a heavily populated residential area.
The organisers of the London Olympics, in conjunction with the British state, seem to have thought of everything. Although they might not be able to cope, the Home Office intends to do security checks on all the anticipated 380,000 athletes, officials, workers and media personnel in any way connected with the Olympics. There will be special Games Lanes on roads that will be reserved for Games-accredited vehicles. You will be fined £135 if you stray into one of these lanes. When entering venues you will be searched and not allowed to take any water past security. It will be against the rules to tweet, share on Facebook or in any other way share photos of events.
There will be more than 200 countries represented in the London Olympics, and the organisers will be doing everything to provide a setting suitable for the usual orgy of nationalism, and an advertising opportunity for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, BMW, EDF, UPS and all the rest of the gang.
That has become the menu for the modern Olympics: nationalism and commerce. Meanwhile, in the preparation for London2012, the local council for the area where the Olympic Stadium is situated, Newham, has tried to ‘relocate’ 500 families to Stoke-on-Trent, 150 miles away. Local tenants are being evicted so that private landlords can let properties at massively inflated rents. The Olympics are supposed to be an inspiration for young people. Newham has the youngest age structure in England and Wales, with the highest proportion of children under the age of one. It also has the largest average household size, the highest rates of benefit recipiency in London, as well as high rates of ill health and premature death. For children living in the shadow of this year’s Olympics their future is not going to be improved by the spectacle of the battle for medals.
Car 5/6/12
British broadcasters win a High Court ruling against the police, a former Murdoch editor is arrested and the Leveson ‘inquiry’ into Press Standards meanders on: JJ Gaunt peeks behind the headlines and reviews two recent books critical of the media
On an 1886 tour promoting marxism and working class organisation in America, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling took time out to ridicule and denounce the US press in general and the Chicago Times and Chicago Tribune in particular for their lynch mob coverage of the trial of eight anarchists who had been fitted up by the state of Illinois and faced execution following the infamous Haymarket bomb incident.
More than 125 years and many technological leaps later, modern mass media remain at root little more than megaphones amplifying the ruling class’s ‘values’, its lies, its propaganda, when they are not simply selling its commodities.
Much effort is expended on the part of the ‘fourth estate’ to deny this reality and turn it on its head. Commenting on the High Court’s May 17 decision to overturn a Crown Court judge’s order to hand over unseen footage of the violent police eviction of ‘travellers’ from Dale Farm, Essex in 2011, ITN (Independent Television News) chief executive John Hardie said: "This landmark decision is a legal recognition of the separate roles of the police and independent news organisations. We fought this case on a matter of principle - to ensure that journalists and cameramen are not seen as agents of the state ...” Lawyers for other interested parties – they included the BBC, BSkyB and Channel 5 – had said their clients risked being seen as “coppers’ narks” (police informants) if they had complied with the original order. That would never do, as M’lud wisely agreed.
It also won’t do to have the working class and the rest of the population tune-out of the Murdoch ‘Hackgate’ scandal of criminality, bribery and corruption with the erroneous impression that the media, police and politicians are ‘all in it together’.
It’s to restore public faith in the media mafia that the Leveson Inquiry into Press Standards has been protracted long after the original British state objective of clipping Murdoch’s UK activities had been achieved. (1) With hoards of ‘witnesses’ either denouncing the ‘Evil Empire’ (viz ex-Sunday Times editor Harold Evans) or clumsily attempting to defend the indefensible (viz the testimony of the News International clan itself or the self-serving testimonies of former PM Blair and current Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt), the ‘inquiry’ has turned into a modern Inquisition to exorcise the devil Murdoch, the better to redeem the rest of the media.
In the same manner, it’s to demonstrate the state’s due ‘impartiality’ and incorruptible nature that the very particular friends of PM David Cameron - former News International golden child Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, Cameron’s old school chum - were arrested and charged with the very serious offence (with apologies to AA Milne) of perverting the course of justice. (2)
These recent events featuring the UK state and its media apparatus are of course merely moments in an historic pattern – one long recognised by critics of the capitalist system. As Marx and Engels often argued, the ruling class’s particular interests are falsely presented as those of society as a whole. It’s the primary function of mass media to reflect and reinforce the resultant ‘dominant ideology’.
This material reality is illuminated and fleshed out in a recent and recommended book called Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media by UK lecturer Dr Stephen Harper (3).
His ‘Introduction: to guide and bind the world’ grabs the subject by the kishkas: “Having abolished scarcity and made communism possible by the early twentieth century, capitalism today is an obsolete system whose continuance offers humanity only increasing misery. As the social symptoms of this retrogression – poverty, starvation, holocausts, environmental degradation and economies increasingly based upon drugs, arms and gangsterism – become more difficult to disguise, the media play a vital role, it is argued here, in concealing their systemic origins.”
To this egregious end, the 1928 publication of Propaganda by Edward Bernays, American nephew of Sigmund Freud and known variously as the ‘king of spin’ and ‘the father of public relations’, constituted “a direct response to the socio-economic impasses of US capitalism in the 1920s, as a dearth of new markets, a crisis of over-production and the lingering menace of proletarian revolution forced capitalists to devise ever more ingenious methods of mass persuasion...”
One of the media’s most enduring successes in this regard is revealed in the chapter ‘Normalising the unthinkable: news media as state propaganda’ in which Harper notes how the very notion of wage labour – once widely understood as “an outrage against humanity whose essential continuity with earlier forms of bondage found expression in the now antiquated phrase ‘wage slavery’” - is today throughout the mainstream media “accepted as a fact of life”. “Thus, in a period of austerity, the BBC’s Sunday morning television discussion programme The Big Question asks ‘Is It Time For A Maximum Wage?’ (13 March 2010); but it cannot question the legitimacy of the wages system itself.”
Within this marxist framework, which draws on the analyses of past and present day revolutionary organisations (including the ICC and ICT) and recognises both the decadence of capitalism and the primacy of the nation state over ‘supra-national corporations’, Harper’s other chapters include ‘Not neoliberalism: why the state is still the enemy’; ‘Blaming the victims, eroding solidarity: two media discourses on immigration’; ‘”The only honourable course’’: the media and ‘humanitarian’ war’ and ‘Beyond the news: popular culture against the working class’.
Under such headings he utilises the insights of social critics, media researchers and academics from Althusser to Žižek whilst acknowledging their limitations: Harper both quotes approvingly from Herman and Chomsky’s seminal Manufacturing Consent (1998) while roundly denouncing Chomsky for “the statism of his concrete political attachments” (today, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez; yesterday, North Vietnam’s Stalinist Vietcong).
Before dissecting specific events and gauging what the ruling class accomplished from them (the chapter ‘Bogeyman at the BBC: Nick Griffin, Question Time and the ‘fascist threat’’ is exemplary in this regard) Harper insists that “The power of media propaganda to shape our perceptions of the most fundamental aspects of our lives is exercised neither haphazardly nor clumsily”, thus underlining that the bourgeoisie acts consciously against the proletariat, its potential gravedigger.
For the working class, the author insists that there’s nothing to choose between different media ‘slants’: “...the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels ... was excited by the BBC’s ability to maintain the trust of the British public and to have secured a worldwide reputation for the British media as ‘honest, free and truthful.’ Goebbels understood that this made the BBC the perfect propaganda vehicle. Today, as then, the left-liberal media act not as a foil to capitalism but as its last ditch defence, preventing those who reject conservative political positions from accessing or developing radical ideas. In fact, right-wing and left-wing media can be argued to work not in opposition to each other, but in tandem.”
The role of the media and the ‘pluralistic’ division of labour within it as cheerleaders of imperialist war and mystifiers of the gravity of today’s ecological crisis are also explored and expanded upon. For communists and activists of all stripes, Harper’s work is both required reading and an encouraging sign that proletarian perspectives are today spreading to and being embellished by wider layers of society.
Another book – there’s a veritable overproduction of them! – attempting to critique the media is NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century (4), a title recalling George Orwell’s 1984, a satire of mind control by an omnipresent state apparatus. This work also insists that media such as newspapers – including and particularly those which claim to be ‘independent’, ‘left’ or just righteous and liberal – all owe their origins, development and continued survival as vehicles for corporate advertisers on whose revenue they depend and whose patronage they cannot truly offend. Similarly, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has since its foundation in the 1920s been first and foremost an obedient servant of the state’s overall interests as it demonstrated in the 1926 national strike and ever since.
The work is penned by two co-editors of a an organisation called Media Lens which challenges journalists, editors and broadcasters to justify their censorship, sins of omission and downright war-mongering, while providing e-mails to subscribers which highlight examples of the media’s latest outrages.
Indeed, NEWSPEAK reminds us all that facts are not ‘sacred’ but chosen according to taste and ideology while ‘objectivity’ is a nonsense – “nothing is neutral”. In addition it provides a salutary reminder of the depth and extent of the lies, dissembling and patriotic cheerleading around the build-up to the ‘allied’ invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. It recalls how, as “a shoal of fish instantly changes direction ... as though the movement was synchronised by some guiding hand,” British journalists “all trained and selected for obedience by media all seeking to maximise profits within state capitalist society ... appeared [in 1999] to conclude independently that war on Serbia was a rational, justified response to a ‘genocide’ in Kosovo that had not in fact taken place. In 2002-03, many journalists concluded that war was necessary to tackle an Iraqi threat that did not exist. And yet, to our knowledge, in 2009, not a single journalist proposed military action in response to Israel’s staggering, very visible crimes against the besieged civilian population of Gaza.” The authors demonstrate how the media is again banging the drum for what they say is to be ‘the West’s’ next imperialist adventure: the bombing and possible invasion of Iran.
Similarly, this well-researched and documented work points out the staggering hypocrisy of media demanding ‘action’ over climate chaos as they carry adds promoting cheap flights, powerful motor cars and oil company claims to be forging a ‘cleaner, greener, fossil fuel-free future’.
However, such valid observations are undermined by NEWSPEAK’s own contradictions: despite declaring that ‘democracy’ is “a charade serving privilege and power” its description of the Iraqi slaughter as “an illegal war of aggression” (aren’t all wars ‘aggressive’ and exactly what’s with the fetish of bourgeois legality?); the references to ‘consumerism’ rather than capitalism; to ‘the people’ rather than the working class, etc, speak of an incoherence which ultimately favours the status quo. Equally problematic is the tendency to deal with countries, rather than classes. For example, irrespective of the nuclear issue (the pretext for ‘the West’s’ aggression towards Iran), there’s no mention of the Tehran regime’s own regional imperialist aims and incursions, while the praise lavished by the authors on the state machine of Venezuela’s Chávez is frankly an embarrassment.
These and other elements indicate a set of analyses that fall within the framework of capitalist social relations as do the proposed solutions: the alleged need for ‘awareness, compassion and honest journalism.’ They are not truly radical because they do not go to the roots of the issue. Let’s end with Stephen Harper: “... the radical task is not to ‘work with’ the media industries and their regulatory bodies in order to campaign for ‘better’ media representations of the working class, or to defend so-called ‘public service’ media organisations against the encroachments of the market, but – through what Marx called ‘ruthless criticism’ – to expose the ruses of capitalism’s representational apparatuses until such time as they can be overthrown.”
JJ Gaunt 6/12
Footnotes
This is a presentation that was given to an ICC Day of Discussion held in London on 23 June 2012, prepared by a sympathiser of the ICC
Islam, as a religion, as a historical, revolutionary moment and as a political force in the modern world, has not been adequately dealt with by the Marxist and proletarian movement in general. This is true of all the religions of the world. Marxism with its ingrained and partly - largely in fact- justified distrust of religion has failed to really develop a clear perspective on the meanings and historical origins of religion. For none is this more true than Islam.
This lack of understanding of Islam has long been a tradition in the West, one which has certainly not been improved in recent years. Norman O. Brown author of Life Against Death, the psychoanalytical meaning of history states in Apocalypse that “to bring Islam into the picture (of the history of what he calls the prophetic tradition) is a Copernican revolution; our Copernicus still not sufficiently recognised is Marshall Hodgson (and his work ) The Venture of Islam.”[1] This may sound like hyperbole and Norman O. Brown certainly was fond of exaggeration as a writing technique, but it holds a lot of truth. The role of Islam in world history has long been overlooked by the West and Marxism. If we are to regain a sense of world history (free from Eurocentrist notions) then Islam is of great importance for many reasons, which we will come back to later, but I will outline some major points here.
The historical role of Islamic civilisation is such that without it the Renaissance would either never have happened or would have been completely different in form and content. The study of Islam can also shed a great amount of light on how we understand religion in general and monotheism in particular. We will also touch on another controversial issue within Marxism, the question of the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production and whether this is a helpful term or concept and what role this concept can play if any in our understanding of Islam and world history.
Islam is clearly of huge significance in the modern world and as ‘political Islam’ has become a by-word for terrorism and oppression, and for many people like Breivik, the EDL and others Muslims now play the role of the ‘new Jews’. That is, a new bogey man who is threatening to destroy western civilisation.
It also is a major source of inspiration and motivation for a huge proportion of the world’s population which we as revolutionaries need to understand if we are to build any serious dialogue with members of the international working class who follow the Islamic faith. In particular studying the historical origins of Islam will allow us to understand why it is still such an inspiration for many people and importantly from a Marxist perspective why Islam, or any other religion, is no longer a plausible solution to society’s problems.
While Islam has been under-researched by the Marxist movement, there have still been numerous attempts to discover the ‘class basis’ for the emergence of Islam. Engels evidently had a significant interest in this question and this topic appears relatively frequently in correspondences between him and Marx. Unfortunately neither had a great deal of available information and neither dedicated a published work to the question. Nevertheless both Engels and Marx made a few observations which can serve as a useful starting point for further investigation.
Engels tended to see Islam as emerging from the division of Arabian society into sedentary and nomadic cultures, “it seems to me to have the character of a Bedouin reaction against the settled, albeit decadent urban Fellaheen whose religion was by then much debased.” He saw in this a cyclical pattern, a pattern interestingly noted by the Medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun in Arabian society, for the settled elites to grow decadent: as Engels puts it “the townspeople grow rich, luxurious and lax in the observation of the ‘law.’ The Bedouins, poor and hence of strict morals, contemplate with envy and covetousness these riches and pleasures. Then they unite under a prophet, a Mahdi, to chastise the apostates and restore the observation of the ritual and the true faith and to appropriate in recompense the treasures of the renegades. In a hundred years they are naturally in the same position as the renegades were: a new purge of the faith is required, a new Mahdi arises and the game starts again from the beginning”[2]
Apart from a few factual errors, such as the fact that the term Mahdi is misunderstood (‘Mahdi’ in fact relates to a character in Islamic eschatology, a character who will bring about a global reign of peace and prosperity in the Last Days). More important however is the fact that Engels’ argument fails to accommodate for the radical ‘newness’ and qualitative difference in the rise of Islam from any other changing of local elites in the area.
Engels himself however at other times seems to be aware of this. For example he sees the expulsion of the Abyssinians from Arab territory 40 years before Muhammad’s birth as “plainly the first act of the Arabs’ awakening national consciousness.”[3] Importantly this recognises the new historical situation which was emerging at this time, that is, a development of ‘civilisation’ and trade had brought about a growing sense of a larger community which transcended the tribal divisions of the old Arab society.
During the 20s there were various Soviet attempts to characterise the social basis and historical context of the origins of Islam. Some seem to have been more valid than others; obviously this period is one in which the Soviet Union was losing its last vestiges of real Marxist thought so its theories have to be seen in this unfavourable context. However I will here simply run through the main trends which you can find in slightly more detail on wikipedia ‘Soviet Orientalist studies in Islam’[4]: the earliest theory put forward by Zinatullah Navshirvanov (at a time it must be noted when the Soviets were keen to build good relations with the Islamic world) basically declared Islam to have been a communist movement, citing ‘primitive communism’ in Muhammad and his companion’s dealings and more overt communist trends in later Sufi movements. This has some validity but overstates the case: Muhammad certainly harked back to Bedouin traditions which had there roots in primitive communism and there was certainly a strong emphasis on equality and caring for the poor and marginalised in society, particularly slaves, orphans and women. However he was not a ‘communist’, he was not against, trade, money or social class. This in itself is an interesting difference between him and Jesus and the early Christians, who came mostly from the urban poor, the ‘proletariat’ of the day, and therefore had a stronger sense of the inherent evils of money and trade, whereas Islam emerged among people in a completely different social setting and therefore had a different attitude, which aimed to make these things fair and to develop a morality which could deal with the new social circumstances.
So what was the social basis of Islam? Well, some, such as Mikhail A. Reisner, argued that Islam was in fact a movement of ‘trade capitalists’ and he saw the Koran, its Law and the tenets of monotheism itself as simply a means by which to unite Arab tribes under one law and religion which could help the weaker tribes and merchants to avoid the constant raids which trading caravans were prey to (the weaker families and traders being the most vulnerable and losing the most from these raids). While this again has a certain amount of truth to it and is certainly part of the story, it is a telling fact that Reisner believed that all the ‘mystical’ elements of Muhammad’s life and teachings were simply added later due to Persian influence; this spiritually blind and rigidly rationalist approach is patently ridiculous and stops such theorists from being able to understand anything of the true nature and source of religious movements.
There was also a theory put forward in 1930 by a Soviet scholar called Mikhail L. Tomara, which claimed that Islam was mainly led by the peasants. This seems at first to be unlikely but may have more validity than at first glance. I am not aiming to answer the question here, only to open the question up. While the peasantry may have played a key role, they alone cannot account for the rise of Islam.
What we can say for certain is that Muhammad and Islam (and the prophetic tradition in general) represents in essence an attempt to synthesise the old ‘primitive communism’ with the new world of ‘civilisation’. To create and establish an order of civilisation which does not offend the moral standards of people recently leaving the tribal community, even if those tribal communities have been degenerating for some time, while also seeing in civilisation on a profound level the possibility of peace and of the unity of humanity in one community which was the dream of Islam, and of Judaism, and represents in essence all that is positive about civilisation and ‘empire’.
In terms of the historical context of the rise of Islam we should look at a few main points of departure. Firstly as has been alluded to the Islamic idea of a Jahiliyyah (age of ignorance) has a lot of validity; that is, pre-Islamic Arabia was at a particular stage of development in which the old tribal customs no longer offered a viable model and faced with the new social environment of trade and private property had completely degenerated into a proud love of wealth, disregard of their neighbour, and the endemic violence of the vendetta.
There is a long held tradition in the West of denigration of Muhammad, stretching back to the time of Charlemagne. Karen Armstrong in her biography of Muhammad gives a good account of this tradition, showing how Muhammad has been used like a Jungian shadow, held up as an image of whatever vice or insecurity the western world happened to harbour most strongly at the time. Islam as a religion has subsequently been viewed for a long time as a mere hodge-podge admixture of Judaism/Christianity and Arabian paganism with nothing new or worthwhile in it al all, lead by a charlatan interested only in personal political power.
Maxime Rodinson (a Marxist of sorts) in his biography of Muhammad makes a good case against such a view, While it is undoubtedly true that some of Muhammad’s later revelations have an air of being suspiciously convenient for Muhammad, as his wife Aisha is in fact recorded as saying, there seems little evidence and little reason to doubt Muhammad’s fundamental sincerity or that he did experience the major revelations he claimed to have experienced. While we may argue about their exact source - God, the unconscious etc, the experiences themselves seem genuine, for many reasons. Firstly as Rodinson points out, Muhammad’s personality seems to conform to a man perfectly suited to a prophetic or mystical career: “Muhammad’s psycho-physiological constitution was basically of the kind found in many mystics”[5] Also, we have to take into account the way in which his experiences themselves conform to universal motifs and characteristics. This is especially true of his famous Night Journey which is extremely similar to many reports of visions from shamans across the world.
Rodinson also insists that the role of Muhammad was of vital importance for the course of history and argues against “some kind of primitive determinism or an elementary form of Marxism (which might say that) ‘if Muhammad had never been born, the situation would have called fourth another Muhammad in his place.”[6] A good example of this view with regard to a Marxist analysis of a founder of a world religion is Kautsky in his Foundations of Christianity in which he takes the view that the origins of Christianity can be explained without regards to “this person” (Jesus). This view is clearly ridiculous. If Trotsky (in his History of the Russian Revolution, vol 1 chapter 16) could say of Lenin that his personality had a decisive role in the triumph of the October Revolution, then how much more true is this of founders of the great religions, which gained so much of their impetus and force from the personality of great individuals who seemed to offer an embodied answer to the question of ‘how man should live’.
This should be qualified by saying, Muhammad was not Jesus, he was not a saint (it is telling that among many Sufis there has been a certain kind of preference for Jesus over Muhammad: one saying goes “Muhammad was the seal of the prophets, Jesus was the seal of the Saints”) and was definitely nothing other than a human being. He was a prophet in the mould of the Old Testament, that is one capable of great extremes of emotion and action, given to anger, joy, love, compassion, ruthlessness, desire and asceticism, also a prophet armed, ready to die and kill for his vision of a better world.
This is a question I can only pose. I would need years to research and answer this accurately. It has been called a form of the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production, it has been called a form of Feudalism and there are many other theories besides, none of which I have had time to really get to grips with.
Marx spoke less about Islam than Engels did, Marx’s main comments were in answer to Engels and in particular he urged Engels to focus on the question which he felt was central to the whole history of ‘the East’; the lack of private property in land. Marx seems to have over generalised about the ‘East’, and the mode of production in Islamic civilisations seems to have been significantly different to say China and India.
It was clearly an extremely dynamic mode of production for a while. From a Marxist perspective its forward looking view of history would suggest a basis in a civilisation that was not as closely tied to the primitive communist view of the world as civilisations that kept to a purely cyclical view of history. Norman O. Brown sees Islam as a synthesis of the western historical mode of thought and the Eastern cyclical view. In the Islamic synthesis, history is a series of cycles in which prophets are sent, their knowledge is lost or corrupted and a new revelation is necessary. However in these cycles their is progress, not only in that Muhammad brings the final and most perfect revelation but also because there is a view of a definite end to history in the Hour of Judgement. Whether this means that Islamic civilisation can be said to be a synthesis of Feudalism and Asiatic despotism may be a step too far in mechanically applying Marxism to what I know.
What a real study of Muhammad brings to the attention is the truly revolutionary nature of early Islam. In fact we can see that historically all three Abrahamic religions began as a revolutionary movement of some strata of the oppressed. Norman O. Brown says: “to apply the term ‘revolutionary’ to the politics of Islam is to suggest that the origins of modern radical politics lie in the transformation of prophetic radicalism into a political movement prepared to seize power”[7].
This reiterates and expands what Engels said about early Christianity - that we as communists are the heirs to the Early Christians; we are also the heirs of the Old Testament Prophets and to Islam and Muhammad. This is the starting point for any dialogue with religious workers.
We obviously would say that we are unique, in that it is Marxism and the proletarian movements which alone can carry forward the search for ‘how man should live’. Only the proletarian movement can allow the dreams of the past to be made flesh.
Jaycee 23/6/12
[1] ‘The Prophetic Tradition’ in Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, University of California Press, 1991, p46
[2] Engels, On the History of Early Christianity, 1894.
[3] Engels to Marx, 6 June 1853
[5] Maxime Rodinson, Mohammad, New York, 1971, p 56
[6] ibid, p 298
[7] Apocalypse, p 52
Since mid February the students of Quebec have been fighting against increased tuition fees, but for about three of these months there was a more or less unanimous press blackout outside the country. The 82% increase came on top of previous rises, and, faced with the repressive and provocative attitude of the Charest government, the students have shown that they are not willing to accept such measures passively. Their rallying cry has been “demonstrations every day until we win!”. Most of the media from the start focused on the highly ideological issue of the ‘popularity or unpopularity’ of the movement; but the movement itself has shown a tendency to generalise and go beyond the education sector.
In order to have a better understanding of the context in which this movement is taking place, let’s look at some of the similar measures taken by the government in the last few years, and at the conditions the students are facing[1].
The austerity we are seeing all over the world today is the result of the historic crisis of capitalism. So the rise in tuition fees, like all the other measures aimed at reducing the deficit, are not at all new or specific to Quebec. During Robert Bourassa’s second term as Premier in 1990 the government broke the ceiling on tuition costs, which since 1968 had been fixed at C$540 Canadian dollars a year. They were now increased threefold to C$1668 a year. Then in 2007 it was the centre right government of Jean Charest who carried on in the same vein with an increase of C$500 over five years, mounting up to C$2168 for the year 2011-12. With fees like that (even though still only half what they are in the USA) a large number of students can no longer afford to go on to university. In Canada, 80% of students work while in full time study, but even then half of them live on C$12,200 a year (the poverty line for a single person was C$16,320 in 2010).
In the Quebec budget announced on 18 March 2011, the Charest government confirmed its intention to increase tuition fees by C$1,625 over 5 years, taking them up to nearly C$4,500 by 2016 if you add the extra costs that can be demanded by the universities. Following this announcement, the reaction was not long in coming. On 31 March 2011, several thousand students demonstrated in Montreal, and on the initiative of the FEUQ student union a camp was set up every weekend outside the offices of the education minister.
Was this a method of struggle which would allow the movement to extend by looking for solidarity?
That’s by no means certain. In any case, for the next year there were no major developments. It wasn’t until 22 March 2012 that there was a student demonstration which was surprisingly big. Between 200,000 and 300,000 took part, bringing together both students and workers in the centre of Montreal. The demands put forward were part of a wider historic movement. Some people talked about the ‘Printemps érable’ (i.e., Maple Spring) in reference to the revolts in the Arab countries. The underlying anger being expressed was much wider than the question of tuition fees alone, and there was a clear affirmation of solidarity with the Occupy movement. This movement showed that the increasing difficulties of daily living are pushing a growing part of the population to react.
On 7 April, at a cycle of conferences in Montreal, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesman for the ‘Coalition Large de l’Association pour la Solidarité Syndicale Etudiante’ (CLASSE) had to recognise the breadth of the movement: “our strike is not the affair of a generation, it’s not the affair of a single spring, it’s the affair of a people, it’s the affair of a world. Our strike is not an isolated event, our strike is just a bridge, it’s just a step along a much longer road”. For the Charest government, it’s clear that the students cannot be allowed to occupy the streets, because of the risk that they could win the solidarity of other sectors and spread the movement more widely. The government therefore passed the so-called ‘Law 78’ on 18 May, making any unannounced demonstration illegal. These are the broad lines of this ‘special’ law[2]:
“it removes the right to demonstrate without prior agreement with the police: eight hours in advance, the time, duration, route and means of transport have to be given to the police (this restriction applies to any gathering of more than 50 people. It can impose very heavy fines on organisers of strike pickets: from 1,000 to 5,000 dollars for a single individual and from 25,000 to 125,000 dollars for an association of students – double on the second conviction”.
For the present government, the idea is to strike hard in order to break the mobilisation and remind demonstrators of who makes the laws. These repressive methods bring to mind the violence used against the Spanish or Greek demonstrators in the past year. In France, it is rather similar to the violence used to intimidate the students and school pupils demonstrating in Lyon in 2010, where the police kettled them for hours in Bellecourt Square before finally releasing them one by one after demanding to see their IDs[3]. That looked like an experiment in how to intimidate, to frighten demonstrators, and break their militancy. This also seems to be the aim of the Charest government with Law 78. But events haven’t quite turned out as the Quebec ruling class planned. Far from breaking the movement and bringing the students to heel, this ‘special measure’ was seen as a provocation by the demonstrators and it had the effect of radicalising and spreading the movement. In contrast to most previous student movements in Quebec, students at the major English language universities, McGill and Concordia, have also been on strike.
Police attempts at intimidation were followed by even bigger protests and regular ‘casserolades.’ These are nightly demonstrations, held since 21 May, where workers, unemployed, students and pensioners bang pots and pans, in defiance of the government ban. And the state has responded: “more than 700 people were arrested on the night of Wednesday/Thursday in Montreal and Quebec City on charges of holding demonstrations judged illegal by the police force. Among the 518 arrests carried out after the thirtieth consecutive night of demonstrations in the city, 506 were arrested as a group and 12 as isolated individuals; 14 of them on the basis of the Criminal Code and one on the basis of a municipal rule proscribing the wearing of a mask ‘without reasonable motive’” (le Devoir 25 May 2012)
It’s clear that the strength of this movement is the combative and determined attitude of the younger generation. We can only support this, along with the attempts at extension and the presence of workers from other sectors within it. In one sense, the lack of subtlety and the brutality of the Charest team could serve to generalise the movement. However, the movement does contain a lot of weaknesses and there are many traps that need to be avoided if it is to avoid getting bogged down behind sterile demands.
First there is the idea that that Quebec is different from the rest of North America and can somehow have a more socially responsible ‘non-anglo’ government. Student debt is a central issue, familiar to students across the world, but there is an illusion that Quebec can somehow escape the general tendency. The movement has not really extended beyond Quebec, even though there have been student demonstrations in Ottawa and Toronto. Expressions of solidarity from students in British Columbia can be put alongside demonstrations held in Paris, Cannes, New York, London and Chile. Solidarity from afar, but the struggle has not spread.
Perhaps the most important illusion is that it is possible to live in a better world inside capitalism; the illusion that this system of exploitation can be changed through reforms and through ‘democratic’ channels[4]. This illusion is being peddled by the unions, and particularly by CLASSE with its talk about ‘civil disobedience’. Law 78 also foresees a suspension of courses until August in establishments which are on strike, without the cancellation of the term, and this means that it is difficult to say how the movement is going to continue. What can be said however is that all the workers’ movements throughout the history of capitalism prove that the only way to offer a real perspective is to seek the widest possible solidarity and extension. Toward the end of June demonstrations were still taking place, although not involving the same numbers as at the peak of the movement when 170,000 students were on strike. Meanwhile student unions are engaged in legal battles over Law 78.
Canada is not a backwater in the class struggles. In the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was a significant episode in the working class’s attack on capitalist social order[5]. In the international wave of struggles that emerged at the end of the 1960s, 300,000 workers were involved in the Quebec general strike of 1972, during which factories and radio stations were occupied, and towns taken over. In the current struggles the lessons for Quebec students are the same as elsewhere with the need to escape the control of the unions and hold general assemblies, open to all, where political questions are debated openly, without handing them over to ‘specialists in the struggle’. These are vital steps towards any struggle becoming effective, along with the concern to spread the struggle to other sectors.
Enkidu/Car 29/6/12
[2] According to Rue89.com
[3] See this eyewitness account of the events in Lyon https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/11/lyon-repression [467]
[4] This is what some of the Spanish indignados were criticising when they raised slogans like ‘They call it democracy and it isn’t!’ ‘It’s a dictatorship but you can’t see it!’
We have recently been saddened by the news of the death in hospital of comrade Il Jae Lee, a militant of the Left Communist Group in Korea: he was 89 years old.
Il Jae was born in 1923 in the town of Daegu, in what is now South Korea but which was known at the time by its historical name of Chosun. At the time, the whole of Korea was a Japanese colony valued for its raw materials and agricultural wealth, destined to support the war effort of Japanese imperialism. Official Japanese policy was to reduce Korean culture to the status of a folk curiosity; at school, children were required to learn Japanese, and Il Jae spoke Japanese fluently.
In the midst of the war, not yet 20 years old, he was already taking part in workers' struggles. With the departure of the Japanese occupying forces in August 1945, the country was reduced to chaos and in many places the workers took control of production themselves in what Il Jae described as workers' councils (the Changpyong, or Choson National Workers' Council) – though in the conditions of the time it was impossible for such councils to do much more than produce the bare essentials of life in a war-shattered country.
Il Jae joined the Communist Party in September 1946, and was a leading member of the general strike that broke out in Daegu during the same year. With the suppression of the workers' struggles by the US occupation authorities, Il Jae joined the partisans fighting in the south of the country, being wounded in the leg in 1953.
In 1968, under the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for his continued political activity. His health was permanently damaged by his time in prison, and his face still bore the marks of the torture he suffered there. In 1988 he was released on probation, which did not stop him from involving himself immediately in political activity in Daegu. He became a leading member of the Korean Trades Unions in 1997.
For a young worker to enter the Communist Party in 1946 was perfectly natural. But no matter how sincere and courageous many of its members undoubtedly were, the Party in Korean was in effect no more than the tool of Russian and Chinese imperialism, then at the end of the Korean War, of a particularly grotesque and barbaric caricature of Stalinism: the hereditary dictatorship of the Kim family.
Had this been all there was to his life then we would not be writing this homage: history is full of heroism in the service of bad causes. But Il Jae was truly remarkable in being able, as he neared his 80th year, to call into question the struggle of a lifetime. In 2002 he became active in the Socialist Political Alliance, a new group which was beginning to introduce the ideas of the Communist Left into Korea. When a delegation of the ICC travelled to Korea in October 2006 to take part in the International Marxist Conference organised by the SPA, we met comrade Il Jae. In the debates during the conference, while we disagreed with him on many questions – notably the possibility of reviving the trades union as an organisational form for workers struggle – it was clear to us that we were in the presence of a real internationalist: above all on the key question of North Korea, he rejected any support for that odious regime.
In our discussions with him during his last years, comrade Il Jae was concerned above all with two questions: the international unity of the working class, and in Korea, breaking down the barriers between workers on permanent contracts, casual workers, and the immigrant workers from Bangla Desh and the Philippines who are beginning to appear in Korea. The latter question made him break with the recognised unions, although he still had not given up the hope of using the union form of organisation. He attended the ICC's 17th Congress in 2007, and had hoped to accompany an ICC delegation to Japan in 2008: sadly his declining health made it impossible for him to do so.
Comrade Il Jae Lee was an indomitable fighter for the proletarian cause whose spirit remained unbroken by hardship and prison. He remained an internationalist to the end of his life. Above all, he had the moral courage to continue searching for the truth, even if this meant calling into question the ideas for which he had fought and suffered in the past. The working class is poorer for his loss: it is richer for his example.
The world economic crisis is getting more on more destructive. The bourgeoisie needs the workers' labor more and more in order to strengthen its capital further. With the economic crisis deepening every day, the bourgeoisie started calling more and more for wars, barbarism and exploitation. And in a period as such, the bourgeoisie is increasing its suppression over the working class with its police forces, its governments and all sorts of organs. Preparations against the reaction of the working class is already being made in certain sectors.
The transportation sector is one of the life veins of capitalism. Because of this, the air transportation has an immense significance. So when the Turkish Minister of Economy Ali Babacan said “No offense to anyone, strikes will be banned in strategic sectors such as this one! For example imagine if there is a strike in a bank for three days, it would go bankrupt instantly... The fact that we are stopping strikes is among the elements which made the Turkish Airlines so successful. As a matter of fact I read in a foreign magazine, it said the Turkish Airlines is better than Lufthansa because there are no strikes”, he was clearly expressing not only the significance of this sector but also what was to come.
The working hours in the air transportation sector can go up to 16-18 hours in Turkey. Certain companies are even forcing the cabin crew to sleep in the same rooms to reduce the workers cost when they have to stay outside their hometowns. In a situation like this when the workers have to work for long hours having slept only 2-3 hours before at the expense of their health, social life and human needs, a right such as “the right to strike” has to be out of the question!
For years, strikes weren't banned in the air transportation sector in Turkey; and not a single significant and real strike was planned for the workers who had the right to strike. A strike wasn't declared when hundreds of workers were fired from the Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul. When Ali Babacan openly declared the governments intentions in the statement quoted above, in other words when the rubber met the road, the union which had done nothing when the workers were fired, when they were forced to work for low wages or for long hours, but when the union itself was losing its area of authority sent a message to workers titled “Urgenttt” declaring that the workers were to use their “not being ready for the flight” right. The workers, responded to the fact that the problems they were experiencing were their problems, answered the call and effectively went on a strike on May the 29th. What followed, the firing of 305 workers, a worker being left abroad because he was on an international flight when he got fired, the workers being text messaged by the company informing them that they've all been fired demonstrated the barbarism the Turkish Airlines was unleashing on the working class. And these attacks of the bourgeoisie were done hand in hand with the unions, who still had the nerve to claim to be workers' organizations. Like the Tek-Gıda-Is1 union in the recent TEKEL workers struggle and DISK2 in the workers' uprising of 15-16th of June 19703, Hava-Is, the air transportation workers' union was ready to play its role. The Hava-Is union didn't claim any responsibility for this action taken in the aviation sector.
Now it was clear for the workers that there was a need to struggle not only against the Turkish Airlines administration and the government but also the union they were members of. The May 29th Association, just like the Platform of Struggling Workers which followed the TEKEL struggle, formed by the airline workers as an organ of struggle independent from the union, took the task to deal with the unions attitude in the process and made the following statement: “The administration of the Hava-Is union we are members of played a large role in the declaration of this justified protest as 'illegal' by not even claiming responsibility for an action they themselves had called for. The bosses of the Turkish Airlines intend to take advantage of this ground and suppress all the employees and almost turn them into slaves. Was the Hava-Is administration so inexperienced that they couldn't foresee this outcome when they left hundreds of their members alone in the face of the Turkish Airlines administration? What sort of a union mentality is this?”4 What is significant about this statement is how it exposes the real face of the union these workers are members of, as well as its role.
To be sure, the Hava-Is union has set up a resistance tent in the Turkish Airlines. However the only people present are Atilay Ayçin, the president of the union, and a number of shop stewards and union officials. The bourgeois left which can't find enough words to describe how combative the chairman of the union is occasionally looks back at the tent and manages to ask the question “Where are the workers?” and the chairman of Hava-Is responds by complaining about how the workers aren't acting with him, thus continuing the game. These unions, who say “the worker pays the price if necessary” have never paid the price for anything in their existence; the chairman of the Turk-Is Confederation of which Hava-Is is a member of kept adding fortune to his fortune, and as they say, the workers paid the price in the Turkish Airlines strike as they did in the TEKEL struggle. Besides, as the May 29th Association says, it is the understanding of showing off which makes “a discrimination between workers who supported the struggle and those who didn't” when it comes to the aids to be given to the workers who 'paid the price'.
The bourgeois left claims that the union is in a position to unite the thousands of workers of the Turkish Airlines, while the May 29th Association is dividing the struggle. However the May 29th Association aims to extend the struggle in the interests of the working class as a whole amongst unionized and non-unionized workers alike and emphasized the importance of solidarity.
The public workers strike of May 23rd where 500,000 public workers participated also demanded the right to strike along with a demand for higher wages. The Turkish Airlines workers went on strike only for the strike ban; the main role played by the unions in both events was to isolate the ripened dynamic in order to prevent it from meeting with the other sectors of the class. In accordance with their role to divide the workers into sectors, the unions tried to melt down the energy present in these two struggles within sectoral limits.
The workers know that they can only rise the struggle with their own hands, what happens when those who aren't workers take the decisions and that the interests of themselves and the interests of the unions are antagonistic. The May 29th Association shows this to us. A significant note in the history of the working class in Turkey has been written by the workers of Turkish Airlines. And this note is that only organizations where the workers can take their own decisions can push the struggle forward. As the practice of the May 29th Association has shown, the workers are capable of coming together in the struggles and organize open meetings and mass assemblies; and these assemblies have to appear as the form of workers' self-organization in every real struggle if it is to succeed.
Gül
1The Union of Tobacco, Alcoholic Beverage, Food and Related Industry Workers of Turkey
2The “Revolutionary” (or Progressive as it is rather ridiculously translated nowadays) Workers Unions Confederation was an allegedly revolutionary and socialist split from the Turk-Is, the Turkish Workers Unions Confederation which had been founded based on the AFL-CIO in the United States.
3A massive workers uprising of the Istanbul proletariat where 150,000 workers took to the streets and clashed with the police and the army.
4 www.29mayisbirligi.com [471] and https://imza.la/ [472]
The main factions of the U.S. bourgeoisie have been slapping themselves on the back in raucous celebration the past two weeks after the Supreme Court dealt it two key victories in its vicious faction fight with the insurgent right-wing factions in the Republican Party. First, the Court threw out just about about every provision of Arizona’s contentious anti-immigrant law (SB 1070). Although, the court let stand a provision that requires police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they have in custody for another crime if they have reason to suspect they are in the country illegally, this provision does not represent a dramatic departure from what police officers already do in most cases. The court threw out the other more contentious provisions of the law that were a direct challenge to federal authority, including making it a state crime for an illegal immigrant to be Arizona and allowing police officers to stop and question anyone they had probably cause to believe was in the country illegally (the so called “Papers Please” provision).
Later the same week, the Court released its decision on President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement—his plan to reform the nation’s health care system that has become known as “Obamacare.” This decision was nothing less than a political stunner as the Court upheld the central tenant of the law—the so called “individual mandate” that requires everyone who does not otherwise receive health care insurance to purchase a policy from a private insurance company or pay a tax penalty. This decision flew in the face of most political prognosticators and court watchers, who after the court heard oral arguments on the law in March, were fairly certain either the entire law or the individual mandate upon which the rest of the law’s provisions depend—would be ruled unconstitutional.
What was even more surprising was that in each of these decisions, the George W. Bush appointed, generally conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court’s liberal justices (Breyer, Ginsberg, Soto-Mayor and Kagan) to side with the Obama administration. In fact, it was Chief Justice Roberts’ vote that delivered victory to the President in the health care case when even the Court’s only acknowledged “swing vote” (Kennedy) sided with the court’s right-wing justices (Scalia, Thomas and Alito) to strike down the individual mandate.
This represented a double victory for the President and the main factions of the bourgeoisie he represents. First, on the policy level, his health care reform survived a very aggressive legal challenge from the right and is now the constitutionally validated law of the land. Second, the fact that it was Chief Justice Roberts who sanctioned the law, allows him to make the political case that the law does not represent some attempt to install a Western European socialist style health care system in the United States.
These two legal victories for the President set off a virtual media cavalcade on all sides of the bourgeois spectrum. For the mainstream media, these decisions represented a break in the growing partisan rancor threatening to tear the country apart. According to this narrative, the Supreme Court, and with it the entire American political system, would soon regain a measure of its legitimacy as it dawned on people that despite the growing ideological divide, the nation’s political institutions could come together to get something done of importance for the national interest after all. For the more left leaning media outlets, these decisions, while not ends in themselves, were important moments in checking the right-wing backlash against the President and opening the road to more progressive reforms to come: such as establishing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and “Medicare for all.” Not surprisingly however, the right-wing cacophony of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. was stunned by the decisions. Expecting victory from a Supreme Court that many have described as the most conservative in generations, they got the shaft once again, fueling a vicious outburst in which some right-wing commentators were moved to question Chief Justice Roberts’ mental health.
So, what do these two decisions in the Obama administration’s favor represent for the life of the U.S. ruling class? Regular readers of Internationalism will be familiar with our analysis of the political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie, which we have been developing since at least the disputed 2000 Presidential election that brought George W. Bush into office against the consensus of the main factions of the ruling class. As part of this analysis, we have drawn attention to the increasing difficulties of the U.S. state to act in the overall interests of the national capital due to the reciprocal forces of social decomposition that have manifested themselves within the U.S. political apparatus as a deepening ideological decline of the Republican Party. According to our analysis, the GOP has undergone a progressive process of right-wing ideological hardening such that its ability to act as a credible party of bourgeois national government has been called into question.
However, more than simply a process affecting the Republican Party alone—these tendencies have forced the Democratic Party to move ever further to the right itself in order to negotiate the structures of the American state within which it must function. The result of all this has been a general paralysis of the American state capitalist apparatus on many of the burning issues facing the national capital, especially at the domestic level—immigration and health care chief among them.
Does the Obama administration’s recent victories on these issues in the Supreme Court call our analysis into question? Do they mark a reversal in the process of ideological decomposition of the U.S. political apparatus? Simply put, we don’t think they do. It is true that the main factions of the bourgeoisie won two important victories with these decisions. But it is important to put them in the proper perspective, which we will attempt to do below.
On the immigration issue, it must be acknowledged that the Obama administration only won a defensive victory when the Arizona law was ruled unconstitutional in its main provisions. The President’s victory must be seen in the context of the severity of Republican run Arizona’s challenge to federal authority[1]. If upheld, Arizona’s law would have foreshadowed a serious thereat to the national government’s ability to set immigration policy for the entire country. The spectre of each state having its own immigration laws was obviously too much for the national state to tolerate, and as such the Supreme Court’s decision to back the Obama administration is not surprising. However, it should be kept in mind that three justices actually voted to uphold Arizona’s law. The conservative justice Scalia even used his bench statement to attack the Obama administration’s entire approach to the immigration issue expressly sanctioning each state’s pursuit of its own immigration policy. While Scalia’s view may be in the minority on the court at this time, it is telling of the overall crisis facing the U.S. bourgeoisie that such political sentiment can be uttered from the bench of the nation’s highest court—the supposedly “apolitical” branch of government. Scalia’s actions stand in sharp contrast to the Court’s consensus on crucial issues in previous eras of state capitalism, such as its unanimous decision to end segregation in schools in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Scalia’s vitriol is sure to incite the anti-immigrant right and give the right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie a glimmer of hope that a different court—or a different Chief Justice—would have given them different results.
Clearly, the President’s legal triumph on this issue represents only a defensive victory. The political prospects for enacting comprehensive immigration reform anytime soon seem doubtful. This is an issue that the main factions of the bourgeoisie have been trying to address for some time now, including some of the more rational figures in the Republican Party who fear a coming “Balkanization” of American society. The need to establish a rational immigration policy that integrates the more than 10 million illegal immigrants living within its borders into society, gains their cooperation with police and the state bureaucracy and which faces the coming demographic changes to American society is one of the most important domestic issues facing the U.S. national capital today. However, it is unlikely that much progress will be made on this issue as long as the Obama administration faces a hostile Congress dominated by a Republican Party that seems intent on exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment for immediate political gain. Moreover, it is likely that as the economic crisis deepens the issue of immigration will become an even more divisive issue as the state struggles to manage the crisis and maintain its ideological control over the working-class. While it is true that the stream of illegal immigration to the United States has slowed as a result of the economic crisis, this does not mean the issue will go away anytime soon.
On the health care issue, it is true that the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare is a major victory for the main factions of the bourgeoisie. While we can’t go into all the details of the issue here,[2] the need to address the US’s costly and inefficient healthcare system, which is a major drag on its competiveness, is of the upmost importance to the national capital. If Obamacare had been struck down by the court, it would have a serious political and policy catastrophe for the entire US bourgeoisie and President Obama in particular. First, this would have destroyed the only major piece of legislation to reform the nation’s healthcare system to actually make it through Congress in a generation—forcing the main factions of the bourgeoisie to start from scratch. Second, it would have invalidated the President’s signature domestic policy achievement calling the prospects for his reelection this fall into sharp question and raising the spectre of a Republican President governing with a Republican controlled Congress—an arrangement that the last time it was tried delivered disastrous results for the national capital.
Nevertheless, the President’s victory on this issue is only impressive in the context of how close it was to an actual defeat. In the days after the decision was delivered, it was revealed that Chief Justice Roberts originally sided with the court’s conservative justices voting to rule the individual mandate unconstitutional before ultimately changing his mind to uphold this provision. Although Justice Roberts rejected the Obama administration’s argument that the individual mandate should be ruled constitutional under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce; he nevertheless found an alternate legal basis to uphold it: Congress’ authority to tax. [3]
In fact, it has been reported that the court’s supposed swing vote—Justice Kennedy—spent months lobbying Roberts to change his mind once again and vote with the conservatives to overturn the law. So torn was Roberts that it appears he actually wrote both the majority opinion to uphold the law, as well as the bulk of the minority opinion to strike it down! In the end, the fate of the President’s most ambitious policy to date, and perhaps his entire Presidency, rested in the hands of one man—whom Obama as a Senator had voted against confirming to the Court. So much for the rule of the people! It appears likely that it was only a massive media campaign around the growing illegitimacy of the Court in the public’s eyes, its deepening partisanship and ideological decay that moved Roberts to change his vote in order to prove to the nation that the Court can still be a respected legal body that rules according to the law rather than politics.[4] Either that, or somebody other than Justice Kennedy was partaking in some serious arm-twisting behind the scence. In either case, while the main factions of the bourgeoisie celebrated their victory, they probably couldn’t help but be extremely nervous by how close it appears to have come to being a total rout.
However, the upholding of Obamacare does not in any way represent an overcoming of the healthcare issue for the U.S. national capital. Not by a long shot. As we analyzed in our previous article on the issue, Obamacare is at best a modest reform that leaves many of the structural inefficiencies of the system in place. In its main, it is a mechanism for reducing “free riding” by getting more and more people to pay into the health care system, but it does not attack the basic features of the system that make it so expensive.
Beyond this though, just because the law was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court, does not make it politically legitimate. Although public opinion polls released in the days after the decision showed a modest uptick in support for the law, it remains far from popular with the electorate. Moreover, Republicans have shown no indication that they will let up in their opposition to the law and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney greeted news of the Supreme Court decision with a vow to “repeal and replace” the law as soon as he is elected President. Of course, the fact that Romney was the original author of Obamacare at the state level in Massachusetts has not prevented him from running against his own plan on the national level.
Many pundits have stated their belief that the court’s decision now gives President Obama and the Democrats the opportunity to resell this law to a skeptical public. And certainly they have not passed up the opportunity. But the ideological terms upon which they have decided to approach this have been curious indeed. All of a sudden, as Democratic operative after Democratic operative on the talk shows have stated, Obamacare is really a law to prevent people from “freeloading,” by forcing them to buy insurance. In the end this shouldn’t be surprising. The Democrats have adopted Republican rhetoric to try to sell a law that was originally devised by Republicans. The hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie—left and right—couldn’t be more obvious! All the talk about how the law will help those without insurance has been downplayed, as the cruel language of punishment has surged to the forefront. In bourgeois politics the logic couldn’t be more utilitarian—whatever it takes to win the election.
However, even more ominous is the fact that despite upholding the individual mandate—the Court struck down the part of the law that mandated the states’ to expand Medicaid coverage (the complex state/federal program that provides modest medical coverage to the poor). This provision of the law required states to expand eligibility for Medicaid to all persons whose income is within 133 percent of the federal poverty level or risk losing all federal Medicaid funding. In ruling this provision unconstitutional, the court made participation in the expanded Medicaid program optional for each state. Despite the fact that the federal government would cover the entire cost of this expansion for the first three years and then 90 percent after that, a number of Republican Governors have already said they will refuse to participate in Medicaid expansion. At least 17 million of the supposed 32 million people who would gain access to health care coverage under Obamacare would have gotten it through the expansion of Medicaid. If a number of Republican controlled states refuse to participate, this number will have to be revised downward, as will the expected overall economic benefits of the law to the national economy that are supposed to accrue from expanded coverage.
In addition to a possible fight over Medicaid expansion, some Republican Governors have already stated their intention to obstruct the setting up of the state level insurance exchanges through which people forced to buy insurance through the individual mandate would obtain coverage. This poses the threat of another round of costly and drawn out legal battles between the Obama administration and the various “red states” surrounding the implementation of the law. While some political pundits believe these Republican Governors to be engaged in a cynical political bluff, as many of them did about acceptance of federal stimulus money, others caution that the virulent revulsion to Obamacare in the Republican Party should not be underestimated.
In the final analysis, it is this political opposition emanating from the Republican Party, incited by its Tea Party faction, that represents the most serious threat to the ability of the state to act in the overall interests of the national capital. Driven more by ideology than a practical approach to the problems facing the state, it is perfectly possible that a Republican President governing together with a Republican Congress might completely overturn Obamacare rendering the last four years a total waste. While this is still an unlikely outcome, it is not impossible to imagine. In the current political climate, the very continuity of the state and its policies is threatened by a deepening ideological decomposition, which is reflected in the vitriolic political clashes that are now common place within the US political class, even on issues that seem as if they should bring a more general consensus.
As for the Supreme Court, it would probably be a mistake to view Chief Justice Roberts’ defection on the issues of immigration and healthcare as indicative of some kind of return to normalcy. Later in the year, the Court is expected to take on yet another series of controversial cases that, if Roberts’ prior rulings are any guide, could see the court invalidate long standing precedents on affirmative action and civil rights. The court is also set to take up the contentious issue of gay marriage. While we can’t say which way the Court will rule on these issues, it seems likely it will continue to be a central factor in the overall political crisis of the bourgeoisie, even if it has received a temporary reprieve of its image as a result of Robert’s defection.
From our perspective, the political crisis of the U.S. bourgeoisie is likely to continue indefinitely. On the same day that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the Republican Congress voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress in their investigation into the “Fast and Furious” gun-waking program. So strange is the Republican obsession with this issue, that it appears their interest in the case is motivated primarily by adherence to a bizarre conspiracy theory according to which the Obama administration was trying to stoke violence in Mexico in order to use it as an excuse to abolish the second amendment right to own guns in the United States. It is this far-out belief that has led to the first ever contempt charge against a sitting cabinet member in United States history.[5]
The forces of social decomposition and their reciprocal effect on the structures of the state are driving this ideological deterioration of the US ruling class. While there will be moments when the main factions of the bourgeoisie win battles (it is not for nothing that they are the “main factions” of the bourgeoisie), it is likely that the US state will continue to be plagued by a certain level of paralysis on the main issues facing the national capital, political vitriol of unprecedented proportions and a deepening crisis of legitimacy in the institutions of bourgeois government.
At the root of these developments is the insuperable crisis of the global capitalist system, which shows no real signs of abatement. Even the more rational factions of the US bourgeoisie are beginning to realize that their ability to manage this crisis is fleeting. The talk shows are rife with fearful discussions of the changing nature of the economy—an economy that many now acknowledge will be marked by high unemployment, low consumer demand and continued financial turbulence indefinitely. While Obamacare may be a rational mechanism for addressing some aspects of the crisis in the US healthcare system—one must wonder what the legal obligation to buy private health insurance will do to the economy. The younger generations of workers already have to pay 10 to 15 percent of their income towards their government-backed student loans. Now, under Obamacare, another chunk of their paycheck will go towards health insurance or the tax penalty, before they have even spent a dime in the consumer economy! The bourgeoisie really does seem to be running out of tricks!
Still, there are even more dangerous rocks ahead for the US bourgeoisie. The volatile nature of the situation in Europe presents a political and economic variable they simply do not control. At the same time, the growing imperialist tensions in the Middle East threaten to spiral out of control as the threat of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran looms. Domestically, another round of contentious political battles over the debt ceiling and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are not far off. The announcement of terrible job numbers for the month of June were a strong reminder that whatever Mitt Romney’s political difficulties on health care and his reputation as a “vulture capitalist”, Obama’s reelection is no sure thing.
Against this sordid world of bourgeois politics whose crisis only continues to deepen, revolutionaries pose the class struggle. For all those who seek a more humane and rational world, the path there does not lie through the institutions of the bourgeois state, bourgeois politics and bourgeois legalism. Only the collective struggle of the working class and all the exploited across the globe can point the way forward for humanity today.
Henk 6/7/12
[1] Arizona’s law was only the tip of the iceberg, as a number of other red states had passed anti-immigrant laws of their own. Alabama’s law was probably even more draconian than Arizona’s, making it illegal for anyone to knowingly assist an illegal immigrant in even the most banal of ways, such as giving them ride in one’s automobile.
[2] See our article, “Obamacare: Political Chaos for the Bourgeoisie, Austerity for the Working-Class” Available at: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201205/4927/obamacare-political-chaos-bourgeoisie-austerity-working-class [474]
[3] The significance of the decision to uphold the law on taxing authority rather than through the commerce clause is not yet clear. However, it has caused some anxious political moments for all sides as they struggle to explain the difference between a “tax” and a “penalty.”
[4] Of course, if the leaks emerging from the Court about the decision process on Obamacare are true, it is hard not to see Roberts’ actions as a real capitulation to political pressure, rather than pure jurisprudence. What could be more political than changing one’s legal analysis based on public opinion?
[5] Not even any of George W. Bush’s cabinet members were ever held in contempt of Congress, despite strong suspicion by many that certain cabinet members were guilty of war crimes and other gross violations of the law.
The German Bauhaus 1919-1933, the world's most famous art school, was planned as a model of socialistic design and production. Bauhaus, literally translated into English, means ‘house of construction’.
Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artist! Let us together desire, conceive and create the new building of the future, which will combine everything - architecture and sculpture and painting - in a single form which will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Bauhaus manifesto, April 1919.
The architect Walter Gropius, former chairman of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Art Soviet), wrote this rather romantic manifesto as founder of the new school. He distilled its aims more prosaically a few years later in the slogan ‘Art and technology, a new unity’.
The intention was to breakdown the distinction between:
high and low art (the Bauhaus incorporated the old fine art academy and the school for crafts in Weimar)
luxury art for the privileged and poorly made junk for the masses
industrial and handicrafts production
Artistic creation was to become an integral part of social life rather than a privileged niche within it. he creative process, previously surrounded by mystery, was to be clarified. Printing, pottery, textiles, metal work, furniture, theatre, were all to be integrated within a new modern architecture of light and space. Festivals, plays, parties, play were deliberately fostered to link the artistic community together and help put student and teacher on an equal footing. Hence the aptness of the title of the Barbican exhibition 'Art as Life'. And the title Lyonel Feininger gave to a woodcut illustrating the first Bauhaus manifesto: 'The cathedral of socialism'.
Despite its short life the Bauhaus has had an immense impact that is felt to this day. For example:
modernist architecture, known as the international style, of which the Bauhaus was a progenitor, has left an indelible imprint on building design. Even architectural trends that have reacted against it, like post-modernism, show by their very name that the international style remains a reference point
graphic design (advertising, magazine, newspaper and web design) would be impossible today without the Bauhaus pioneers
art education today retains the main innovation of the Bauhaus curriculum: a foundation course of basic principles and investigation, to be followed by several years specialisation in a particular field
The October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the revolutionary wave it inspired throughout Europe in the following years, especially in Germany, seemed, after the mass destruction of the First World War, to offer a new way of living. In the world of art the Bauhaus exemplified this spirit of modernity that today, walking around the exhibition, still inspires. In a society that seems to conspire against man, the Bauhaus held out the hope that modern industry could be re-fashioned for his benefit.
The Bauhaus was part of a wider international movement that attempted to break the stranglehold of bourgeois philistinism on art. Trends like Dada and Expressionism in Germany, De Stijl in Holland, Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau in France, all shared similar goals. The Bauhaus was staffed by some of the best known international talents of the time: Walter Gropius himself, and later the architect Mies Van der Rohe, and painters like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
Indeed, in the same period, a Constructivist art school, the Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios), with similar principles, but with far fewer resources, was founded in Russia, with the belief that a new proletarian artistic culture could be created on the ashes of the bourgeois regime. Kandinsky, who had helped formulate the curriculum of the Vkhutemas, moved to the Bauhaus in 1921.
Architecture and design were to be brought into harmony with mass industrial production. Hitherto these disciplines had lagged far behind the progress of technology and were still trying to imitate outmoded forms that were appropriate to pre-industrial methods of production, a trend heavily influenced by the conservatism of the bourgeoisie. According to the Bauhaus new forms had to be developed to express the possibilities of new technology at the service of the masses.
The Bauhaus’ radical espousal of modern materials and techniques (such as buildings made of steel and glass; furniture made from metal tubing); their principles of 'less is more', ‘truth to materials’ (elimination of decorative imitation and embellishment) and 'form follows function' (to take a small example: a chess set displayed in the exhibition was designed according to the moves of the pieces rather than composed of traditional figures!), created a new aesthetic sense and developed the appropriate skills to satisfy them.
Ironically in Russia the new materials were so scarce that wood was often used by constructivist architects to imitate the appearance of steel!
Capitalism, in certain periods, has shown a capacity for tolerating educational experiments like the Bauhaus. In the early twenties, in the midst of working class revolt, and the threat of revolution, the Social Democratic Party, the main support of the Weimar Republic, had a strong interest in presenting the latter as a socialist alternative to the danger of a German October. With the reflux of the proletarian movement however the Bauhaus found funding increasingly difficult to obtain and in 1926 it was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau, and from there, in a last ditch move, to Berlin in 1932 where it was finally forced to close by the newly elected Nazi Government in 1933. For the latter modern art itself was ‘cultural Bolshevism’. The National Socialists had no intention of spending ‘German taxes’ on the upkeep of an avantgarde institution that included foreigners and Jews.
In Russia, the Bolsheviks, through the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, founded the Vkhutemas in 1920. Anatoly Lunacharsky, the commissar, favoured the artistic avantgarde. Nevertheless Lenin and Trotsky didn't subscribe to the idea of the former Bolshevik Alexandr Bogdanov that it was possible to create a new proletarian culture from scratch within the isolated soviet bastion. The political power and the relations of production of the bourgeoisie had first to be crushed on a world scale before an extended process of developing a new classless culture could begin in earnest. Within this perspective the working class would have to absorb the achievements of previous cultures rather than simply recreating anew.
The Vkhutemas were closed in 1930 as the Stalinist counter-revolution was tightening its grip on cultural life under the doctrine of socialist realism.
In the end, whatever advances are made within capitalism in the field of education, the ruling class is obliged to subordinate them to its imperialist, political and economic objectives.
The Bauhaus ethos presupposed a system of social production orientated toward consumption and the satisfaction of human needs. But capitalism, while it must satisfy human needs in order to sell goods, nevertheless subordinates this aim for a more pressing one: profit. And if this aim can’t be met, due to the lack of solvent buyers for example, neither can human need.
Capitalist production, in its quest for profit, tries to reduce the consumption of the masses as much as possible by keeping wages to a minimum and by cheapening the production of consumer goods.
For this reason it has proved impossible, despite the great impact of the Bauhaus style, to bridge the gap between quality production for a small luxury market, and low-cost, badly made substitutes for the mass of the population.
Moreover, in the capitalist production process, the quest for profit demands a strict hierarchical division of labour and the unquestioning obedience of the worker, even in the ‘creative industries’. Instead of elevating the craftsman to the status of an artist, as the Bauhaus wanted, capitalism tends to demean him still further to the level of a machine minder – when it is not making him unemployed!
In 2005, according to the United Nations, about 100 million people were homeless in the world. 1 billion people were living in shanty towns. No doubt these numbers have increased since then. The beautiful dream of the Bauhaus appears to have been completely dashed.
But the productive forces of society, which include those of artistic culture, will continue to rebel against the grip of the capitalist relations of production. They will continue to point toward a new society and inspire us.
In this sense it is not the Bauhaus that has failed – it will remain an historical landmark of cultural progress – but capitalism itself.
Como 24/7/12
Why such a title today? Isn't it just a bit anachronistic? Here we are, after all, in the 21st century. Aren't women's rights, the equality of women, recognised in a plethora of conventions and solemn declarations throughout the world?
In reality, the question of woman's suffering in a society which to this day remains fundamentally patriarchal, continues to be of the greatest importance.1 Around the world, marital violence, ritual genital mutilation, reactionary and outdated ideologies like religious fundamentalism, continue to reign and even to develop.2
What the socialists of the 19th century called "the woman question" thus remains posed to this day: how to create a society where women no longer suffer from this particular oppression? And what should be the attitude of communist revolutionaries towards "women's struggles"?
One thing we should say from the outset: capitalist society has laid the foundation for the most radical change that human society has ever seen. All previous societies, without exception, were based on the sexual division of labour. Whatever their class nature, and whether the situation of women in them was more or less favourable, it went without saying that certain occupations were reserved for men, others for women. Men's and women's occupations might vary from one society to another, but the fact of this division was universal. We cannot study why this should have been the case in depth here: suffice to say that the division probably goes back to the dawn of mankind, and originated in the constraints of childbirth. For the first time in history, capitalism tends to eliminate this division. From the outset, capitalism transforms labour into abstract labour. Where before there was the concrete labour of the peasant or artisan, regulated by the guilds or customary law, now there is nothing but labour power, accounted by the hour or by piecework: who actually does the job is immaterial. Since women were paid less, they replaced male labour in the factories – this was the case, for example, of the weavers in the 18th century. With the development of machinery, work demands less and less physical strength, since human labour power is replaced by the vastly greater power of the machine. Today, the number of jobs still requiring male physical strength is extremely limited, and more and more women are entering domains once reserved for men. The old prejudices about women's supposed "irrationality" are dying away almost of themselves, and more and more women are to be found in the scientific and medical professions once thought only suitable for supposedly more "rational" men.
Women's massive entry into the world of associated labour3 has two potentially revolutionary consequences:
The first, is that by putting an end to the sexual division of labour, capitalism has opened the way towards a world where men and women will no longer be limited to sexually determined occupations, but will be able to realise their talents as full human beings. This in turn opens up the possibility of establishing the relations between the sexes on an entirely new basis.
The second, is that women gain an economic independence. A woman wage worker is no longer dependent on her husband for survival, and this for the first time opens up the possibility for the mass of women workers to take part in public and political life.
Under capitalism, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the demand to participate in public life was not limited to working women. Women of the upper and middle classes also put forward the demand for equal rights, and the right to vote in particular. This posed the problem for the workers' movement of the attitude to adopt towards the feminist movements. Whereas the workers' movement was opposed to all oppression of women, the feminist movements – because they posed the question from the standpoint of sex not class – denied the need for a revolutionary overthrow of the existing order by a social class made up of men and women: the proletariat. Mutatis mutandis, the same question is posed today: what attitude should revolutionaries adopt towards the women's liberation movement?
In an article on the struggle for women's suffrage published in 1912, the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg made a clear distinction between women of the ruling class, and women proletarians: "Most of those bourgeois women who act like lionesses in the struggle against 'male prerogatives' would trot like docile lambs in the camp of conservative and clerical reaction if they had suffrage (…) Economically and socially, the women of the exploiting classes are not an independent segment of the population.. Their only social function is to be tools of the natural propagation of the ruling classes. By contrast, the women of the proletariat are economically independent. They are productive for society like the men".4 Luxemburg thus makes a clear distinction between working class women's struggle for the vote, and that of bourgeois women. She insists, moreover, that the struggle for women's rights is a matter for the whole working class: "Women’s suffrage is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women alone, but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat."
The rejection of bourgeois feminism was equally clear for the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, who in 1908 published The social basis of the woman question: "Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of 'above-class' politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their 'younger sisters' are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the 'rights of all women' become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class (...) Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some 'general women’s' principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful".5
World War I was to demonstrate that this distrust described by Luxemburg and Kollontai was wholly justified. At the outbreak of war, the suffragette movement (movement for women's voting rights) in Britain split in two: on one side were the feminists led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel who gave their wholehearted support to the war and the government; on the other were Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain and her sister Adeline in Australia, who split from the feminist movement to defend an internationalist position. During the war, Sylvia Pankhurst abandoned little by little any reference to feminism: her "Women's Suffrage Federation" became the "Workers' Suffrage Federation" in 1916, and in 1917 her paper the Women's Dreadnought changed its name to become the Workers' Dreadnought.6
Luxemburg and Kollontai accept that the struggles of feminists and women workers may from time to time find themselves sharing a common ground, but not that women workers should dissolve their struggles into the feminist movement purely on the basis of "women's rights". It seems to us that revolutionaries should adopt the same attitude today, adapted of course to the conditions of our own epoch.
We want to conclude with some thoughts about "equality" as a demand for women. Because capitalism treats labour power as a book-keeping abstraction, its vision of equality is also a book-keeping abstraction: "equal rights". But because every person is different, equality in law quickly becomes inequality in fact,7 and this is why ever since Marx, communists have never demanded "social equality". On the contrary, the slogan of communist society is: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". And women have one need which men will never have: to bear children.
Every woman should therefore have the possibility of bringing her children into the world, and of caring for them during their first years, without this contradicting either her independence or her full participation in every aspect of social life. This is a need, a physical need, that society must support; it is a capacity of women whose expression a society has every interest in encouraging, since society's future depends on it.8 It is thus easy enough to see that a truly human society, a communist society, will not try to impose an abstract "equality" on women, which would only be an inequality in fact. It will try on the contrary to integrate this specific capacity of women into social activity as a whole, at the same time as it completes a process that capitalism could do no more than begin, and put an end for the first time in history to the sexual division of labour.
Jens
1According to a French national inquiry into violence against women, published in the year 2000, "in 1999, more than 1.5 million women have been confronted with a situation of verbal, physical, or sexual violence. In 1999 about one woman in 20 suffered physical aggression, from blows to attempted murder, [while] 1.2% were victims of sexual aggression, from molestation to rape. This figure rises to 2.2% in the age group of 20-24" (cf. http ://www.sosfemmes.com/violences/violences_chiffres.htm [479])
2To take just one example, according to an article published in 2008 by Human Rights Watch, the USA witnessed a dramatic increase in violence against women during the previous two years. See (cf. http ://www.hrw.org/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-w... [480])
3It goes without saying that women have always worked. But in class societies before capitalism, their labour remained essentially in the private, domestic domain.
5https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm [482]. The "younger sisters" was the condescending term used by the feminists to refer to women of the working class.
6The name was a reference to a type of British battleship
7"Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme).
8Obviously we are speaking here in general terms. Not every woman feels this need to the same degree, or even at all.
This is a summary of the discussion that took place after the presentation on art. The full version of this can be found here: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201206/4977/notes-toward-history-art-ascendant-and-decadent-capitalism [487]
The presentation introduced the online text and summarised its main points.
Art and culture are closely related to the widening discussions in the ICC on questions of ethics, science, etc., and in particular to the deepening of our understanding of decadence. The effect of decadence on art and culture tells us more about the nature and evolution of decadence.
The text started as a personal attempt to understand modern art. It doesn’t answer questions on ‘what is art?’, the role of art, or art in previous class societies. It also became clear that artistic movements cannot be defined or judged in the same way as political movements.
Bourgeois art history is completely mystified about modern art ‘modernism’ because it lacks an understanding of decadence – the key piece of the puzzle. It’s necessary to go back to Marx and Engels and particularly Trotsky who is an important point of departure on art in decadence.
A summary of key points from the text:
The discussion recognised that this can only be an introduction to the subject but underlined the importance of art and literature to the workers’ movement. Art enhances the appreciation of life, eg. the cave paintings of Lascaux. It is the externalisation of our inner life, our humanity.
We need to go back to the beginning to revive the Marxist view of art, as with religion. The Second International was able to devote more time to this but its work is not easily available. With the revolutionary wave and decadence and the ensuing fragmentation revolutionaries have not had the time to devote to the question. It has taken the ICC time to get round to these questions.
Some of the limitations of the text were highlighted, eg. it doesn’t mention female artists or folk art or art outside Europe. Art is a global historical phenomenon. We also need to recognise that the activity of ‘artists’ in class society is based on the suppression of the ability of others.
There is no such thing as Marxist art or ‘socialist realism’. Marxism provides an historical framework for understanding the different phases of artistic expression and critical judgement of artistic representation.
Decadence is not a total halt to the ‘creative forces’, eg. James Joyce’s Ulysses was important for the development of literature. Artistic creativity didn’t die in decadence but it changes the historical context it takes place in.
Can we talk of ‘bourgeois art’? What makes it bourgeois? There is no corresponding ‘proletarian art’. Also, can we generalise about the meaning of individual artistic works or do they remain personal? eg. Munch’s ‘Scream’.
‘Retro’ popular culture is a symptom of culture in decadence. Historically this was also a sign of the onset of decadence, eg. Russia in 1905, harking back to an earlier, more stable and comforting epoch, at the same time as experiments in theatre flowered in the revolution.
Since the beginning of 20thc the visual arts have been regurgitating Dada. There has been very little new since then; even progressive developments like Surrealism could only have come from Dada. Surrealism is arguably the most significant artistic development in decadence, owing a huge debt to Dada. It tried to develop a theoretical understanding of art and human revolution taking on Marxism and psychoanalysis but this was unachievable with the revolution in decline.
We need to understand the extent of state control of art in decadence and its complete commodification, not just by fascism and Stalinism: it was most pernicious in the west – eg USA and the rise of cinema, with funding of different art movements as a tool of imperialism.
Cultural developments are related to massive social struggles, eg in the 60s music was a harbinger of the class struggle but the connection is not mechanical.
‘Postmodernism’ seems to be acknowledgement by bourgeois academia that they have run out of ideas – everything is just another story. But this also gives people liberty to do anything as nothing matters any more.
The working class is arguably the driving force of art in last 1-200 years but it is hijacked by bourgeoisie, eg. hip hop. The split between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art leads to a kind of workerism which rejects certain forms of art, eg. opera.
Capitalism has the technological capability to create new forms of art but it also means the legal fetters of copyright to ‘own’ and therefore restrict access to it, ie. a form of censorship.
The summing up accepted the point that there is no ‘bourgeois modern art’ but rather ‘modern art movements in bourgeois society’. The best tendencies in art always tends to go beyond the limitations of the ideology of the society where they emerge.
The text does not pretend to be a history of global art but we need to understand the most advanced tendencies in the capitalist system, which are clearest in the heartlands of Europe and USA.
While movements like jazz, Bauhaus etc., have their roots in the revolutionary wave, art in the post-war period is much more characterised by decadence. Munch’s ‘The Scream’ illustrates the point that while the subject matter may be personal, the expression of alienation as a valid subject for art was a sign of the onset of decadence.
The discussion has only begun. There is a lot more to say about the culture industry and the way capitalism developed after the post-war boom - Adorno and others have written a huge amount on this. The capitalist state’s ideological apparatus has a huge effect on cultural production. Finally, we have not really said anything about art in the specific phase of decomposition.
MH 7/12
Since last April, a tempest of the same nature as the one initiated by the “Arab Spring”, which itself encouraged a multitude of mobilisations of “indignant” populations all over the world (Spain, Greece, United States, Canada, etc.) blew over the Japanese archipelago. And as in a good number of these movements, we again see a real blackout of the bourgeoisie and its media. In Japan itself, outside of the areas where the discontent took place, there's an identical silence. Thus, for example, a demonstration of more than 60,000 people in Tokyo, has been completely hidden from the eyes of the general public. According to the very words of an “independent” Japanese journalist, M. Uesugi, “in Japan , control of the media is worse than China and similar to Egypt”[1] .
These demonstrations, of some hundreds of people in April, rapidly growing into thousands, unfolded on a real wave of anger which got bigger and bigger. Thus, by the beginning of July, crowds from different regions (Tohoku-north-east, Island of Kyushu-south, Shikoku-south-east, Hokkaido-north, Honsu-centre-west) converged in great numbers close to the Yoyogi Park in Tokyo in order to take over the streets. Very quickly the “monster demonstration” reached close to 170,000 protesters. We've not seen such a demonstration against conditions of life in Japan since the 1970's: the last one of comparable size was against the war in Iraq in 2003.
The factor that unleashed this discontent is linked to the trauma of Fukushima, to the strong indignation faced with the lies of the Japanese authorities and their willingness to pursue a suicidal nuclear programme. The latest national plan envisages the construction of 14 new reactors from now to 2030! Following the catastrophe of Fukushima, the government has no better way of “reassuring” the population than saying: “You will not be immediately affected.. (…) It's not that serious, just like going on an aeroplane or going through an X-ray”. What cynicism! It's not surprising that the angry population asks for a “nuclear halt”, beginning with the station of Hamaoka, 120km from Nagoya, situated in a zone of considerable seismic activity.
Outside of the large numbers, which have taken the organisers themselves by surprise, we see the same dynamic role played by the internet, twitter and the new generation, particularly students and school pupils. For a good number, these are their first demonstrations. Among the almost daily protests, some have been organised by the schoolkids of Nagoya via the social networks and by a collection of anti-nuclear groups[2]. Criticism broke out throughout the web, videos spread and alternative sites swelled. A little in the image of the blog of an old worker from the Hamaoka station, denouncing the lies of the so-called “security” of the nuclear installations, spirits became animated. A student of Sendai (north-east), Mayumi Ishida, wanted a “social movement with strikes”[3]. This movement expressed in depth the accumulation of social frustrations linked to the economic crisis and brutal austerity. In this respect, the movement in Japan well and truly connects up with the other expressions of the international movement of the “indignant”.
Some very angry people didn't hesitate to speak at the assemblies, even if it's difficult to give much of an account because of the lack of precise information.
But, as in many places, this movement shows great weaknesses, notably democratic illusions and marked nationalist preconceptions. The anger rests largely channelled and hemmed in by the unions and above all, in the circumstances, by the official anti-nuclear organisations. Some locally elected critics, through their demagogy and lies, often succeeded in playing on people’s dissatisfaction, isolating them one from the other, and pushing them into sterile actions, solely focussed against such and such a project of the nuclear industry and above all against the “fusible” Prime Minister, Naoto Kan.
Despite these numerous weaknesses, this movement in Japan is symbolically very important. It not only shows that the Japanese proletariat’s relative isolation from other fractions of the class (linked to historic, geographical and cultural factors) is beginning to be overcome[4], but also that all the nauseous propaganda of the bourgeois media about the so-called “docility” of the Japanese workers rests on prejudices which are used to hold back the internationalism of the exploited.
The workers of the whole world are slowly beginning to glimpse the social force it can be in the future. Little by little, it is learning that the street is a political space that it can take over to struggle and express solidarity. In Japan as elsewhere, these are the foundations for building an international revolutionary force that can destroy capitalism and construct a society free from exploitation and its barbarities. It's a long, a very long road, but it's the only one that leads to the reign of liberty.
WH 21/7/12
[1]https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/japon-un-seisme-mondial/article/201111/fukushima-occuper-tokyo-des-manifestations-de-ma [489]
The "post war boom" came to an end in 1967; this brief period of relative economic prosperity came in the wake of the horrors of the First World War, the Great Depression and World War II. The spectre of the economic crisis reappeared in that year. During the first half of the year, Europe fell into recession, in the second half there was a crisis in the international monetary system. Since then, unemployment, insecurity, deteriorating living and working conditions have become the daily lot of the exploited. Just a quick survey of the major events of the twentieth century, one of the most catastrophic and barbaric in the history of mankind, is enough to understand that capitalism has become, like slavery or feudalism before it, an obsolete and decadent system.
But this historic crisis of capitalism was partly obscured, buried under a load of propaganda and lies. In each decade, it was the same old tune: one country, one part of the planet or one economic sector that was doing a little better than the others, was given prominence to create a false impression that the crisis was not fatal, that it was sufficient to carry out effective "structural reforms" to capitalism for it to revive and bring growth and prosperity. In 1980-1990, Argentina and the "Asian Tigers" were brandished as models of success, then after the start of 2000 it was the turn of Ireland and Spain ... Invariably, of course, these "miracles" would turn out to be "mirages": in 1997 the "Asian Tigers" proved to be paper tigers, in the late 1990s, Argentina was declared bankrupt and now Ireland and Spain are on the brink of bankruptcy ... On each occasion, "the incredible growth" was funded by a resort to credit and each time the false hopes were eventually sunk by the burden of debt. But, banking on the short memories of the majority of us, the same charlatans are at it again. To believe them, Europe's sickness is due to specific reasons of its own making: difficulties carrying out reforms and 'mutualising' (i.e. sharing the burden of) its debts between its members; a lack of unity and solidarity between the countries; a central bank unable to boost the economy because it can't print money at will. But these arguments don’t stand up to much scrutiny. The crisis has hit Europe because there's a lack of reform and competition and we have to learn from Asia? Nonsense, these countries are also in trouble. The recovery is not sufficiently under the European Central Bank's control and the answer lies in printing money? That's crazy: the United States and its central bank have championed every kind of money creation since 2007, but they are also in bad shape.
The acronym "BRICs" refers to the four countries whose economies have been most successful in recent years: Brazil, Russia, India and China. But as with Eldorado, this good health is more myth than reality. All these "booms" are financed largely by debt and end up, like their predecessors, sinking into the horror of recession. Furthermore, that ill wind is upon us right now.
In Brazil, consumer credit has exploded over the past decade. But as in the United States during the 2000s, "households" are less and less able to keep up their repayments. The scale of "consumer defaults" has beaten all the records this time around. Worse still, the housing bubble looks identical to what was experienced by Spain before it exploded: large newly built housing complexes stand desperately empty.
In Russia, inflation is getting out of control: it's officially 6%, but it’s more like 7.5% say independent analysts. And prices of fruits and vegetables have literally shot up in June and July, increasingly by almost 40%!
In India, the budget deficit is widening dangerously (it's estimated to be 5.8% of GDP for 2012); the industrial sector is in recession (- 0.3% in the first quarter of this year), consumption is slowing sharply, inflation is very strong (7.2% in April, last October the soaring food prices had risen almost 10%). The financial world now considers India a risky country to invest in: it is rated triple B (the lowest rating in the "below average quality" category). It is under threat of soon being be ranked with countries that are considered bad investments.
China's economy continues to slow and there are growing danger signals. Manufacturing activity contracted in June for the eighth consecutive month. The prices of apartments have collapsed and the sectors associated with construction are less and less busy. A very clear example: the city of Beijing alone, has 50% of it dwellings vacant - more than in the entire U.S. (3.8 million homes are empty in Beijing compared with 2.5 million across America). But the most worrying thing without any doubt is the state budget for the provinces. For if the state is not officially collapsing under the debt, it is only due to the fact the burden of debt is all at the local level. Many provinces are on the verge of bankruptcy. Investors are well aware of the poor health of the BRICs, which is why they avoid these four currencies – the real, the ruble, the rupee and the yuan - like the plague; they have been falling continuously for months.
The city of Stockton, California filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, June 26th as did Jefferson County, Alabama and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania before it. Yet for three years, the 300,000 inhabitants of this city have endured every "sacrifice necessary for the recovery": budget cuts of $90 million, 30% of fire-fighters laid off along with 40% of other municipal employees, a cut of $11.2 million to the salaries for municipal employees, a drastic reduction of the retirement pension funds.
This concrete example shows the real state of decay of the U.S. economy. Households, businesses, banks, cities, states and the federal government, every sector is literally buried under mounds of debt that will never be repaid. In this context, the future negotiation between the Republicans and Democrats when the debt ceiling is raised this autumn is very likely to turn into a psychodrama as it did last summer. We can say that the American bourgeoisie is facing an insoluble problem: it must generate ever more debt to revive the economy while it must reduce debt to avoid bankruptcy.
Each indebted part of the economy is a potential time-bomb: here's a bank close to bankruptcy, there's a city or a company almost bankrupt ... and if a bomb explodes, just watch the chain reaction. Today the "student loans bubble" is a concern to the financial world. The cost of studying is more and more expensive and young people find less and less work on leaving their university courses. In other words, student loans are becoming increasingly essential and the risk of default ever more likely. To be more specific:
- after their university studies, American students are on average in debt to the tune of 25,000 dollars;
- their outstanding loans exceeds that of all consumer loans in the country and is $904 billion (it has almost doubled over the last five years) and corresponds to 6% of GDP;
- the scale of unemployment for university graduates under 25 years is more than 9%;
- 14% of graduate students who have taken out loans have defaulted three years after graduating.
This example is very significant of what capitalism has become: a sick system that can only sign away (literally as well as metaphorically) its future. Young people today must live in debt and "spend" the future salary ...they're not going to see. It is no coincidence that in the Balkans, in England and in Quebec, the new generation has mounted powerful demonstrations in the last two years at the increased costs of enrolling for university courses: drowning in debt for 20 years and facing the prospect of unemployment and falling pay in future years, this is the perfect symbol of the "no future" that capitalism has to offer.
The United States, like Europe, like every country in the world, is sick; and there will be no real and lasting respite under capitalism because this system of exploitation is the source of the infection. After reading this article, can anyone continue to want to hope and believe that an "economic miracle" is still possible? If you are one of these people ... please note that the budget of the Vatican is in the red.
Pawel, 6/7/12
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
austerity_in_spain.pdf [497] | 423.91 KB |
This is a leaflet produced by our section in Spain to denounce the ruthless attacks on working class living conditions now underway in that country. It’s also an analysis of the situation which tries to make proposals to take the struggle forward.
In 1984, the PSOE (Socialist Party) government brought in the first Labour Reform. Just three months ago, the present PP government (the right wing Popular Party) brought in the most serious Labour Reforms up till now. In 1985, the PSOE government brought in the first Pensions Reform; in 2011, a different PSOE government brought in another. When will the next one be? For more than 30 years, the living conditions of the workers have gradually got worse and worse, but since 2010 the deterioration has speeded up at a dizzying rate and with the new measures by the PP government, it has reached levels which, unfortunately, are already low compared to what lies in store. There has also been a sharpening of police repression: violence against the students in Valencia last February, savage beating of the miners and the use of rubber bullets which injured children among others. Meanwhile, Congress has been explicitly protected by the police in the face of the spontaneous demonstrations which have been developing since July.
We, the IMMENSE MAJORITY, exploited and oppressed, but also indignant, we workers of the public and private sectors, the unemployed, students, pensioners, immigrants...we are posing a lot of questions about everything that’s going on. We need to pose these questions collectively, in the streets, on the squares, in the workplaces, so that we can come up with answers together and make a massive, powerful and sustained response.
Governments change, but the crisis keeps on getting worse and we keep getting hit harder. Each summit meeting of the EU, of the G20 etc is presented as the ‘definite solution’...and the next day it’s revealed as a total failure. We are told that the blows aimed at us will reduce the risks to the economy, and the next day we find that the exact opposite is true. After so much bloodletting in our living standards, the IMF recognises that we will have to wait until 2025 (!) to get back to the living standards we had in 2007. The crisis advances implacably and inexorably, leaving in its wake millions of broken lives.
Of course, some countries are doing better than others, but we have to look at the world as a whole. The problem is not limited to Spain, Greece, or Italy, nor can it be reduced to the ‘euro crisis’. Germany is on the edge of recession and has 7 million mini-jobs (with wages around 400 euro a month). In the USA, unemployment is soaring at the same speed as house repossessions. In China, the economy has been slowing down for 7 months, despite a crazy construction bubble which has meant that in Beijing alone there are 2 million empty apartments. We are experiencing in our bones the world-wide and historic crisis of the capitalist system which is pulling in every state, regardless of its official ideology, whether ‘communist’ as in China or Cuba, ‘21st century socialism’ as in Ecuador or Venezuela, ‘socialist’ in France’ ‘democratic’ in the US, ‘liberal’ in Spain and Germany. Capitalism, having created the world market, has for a century been a reactionary system which has plunged humanity into the worse kind of barbarism: two world wars, innumerable regional wars, the destruction of the environment....and, having benefited from moments of artificial economic growth, based on financial and speculative bubbles of all kinds, today, since 2007, it is crashing into the worst crisis in its history with firms, banks and states sinking into bankruptcy. The result of such a debacle is a gigantic humanitarian disaster. While famine and poverty spread throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, in the ‘rich’ countries millions of people are losing their jobs, hundreds of thousands are being evicted from their homes, the majority have nothing left at the end of the month, the increasing cost and reduced availability of social services are making life increasingly precarious, and on top of all this is the crushing weight of direct or indirect taxation.
Capitalism divides society into two poles: the minority pole of the capitalist class which possesses everything and produces nothing; and the majority pole of the exploited classes which produce everything and receive less and less. The capitalist class, the 1% of the population as the Occupy movement in the US put it, appears to be more and more corrupt, arrogant and insulting. It is piling up riches with indecent cheek; it shows itself to be quite unfeeling towards the suffering of the majority and everywhere it demands that we put up with austerity. So why, despite all the big movements of social indignation which unfolded in 2011 (Spain, Greece, USA, Egypt, Chile, etc) is it able to apply policies which go against the interests of the majority? Why is our struggle, despite the precious experience it has brought us, so far below what is necessary?
An initial answer can be found in the fraud of the democratic state. This is presented as the emanation of all citizens, but in reality it is the exclusive and excluding organ of the capitalist class. It serves the latter’s interests entirely, and to do this it has two hands: the right hand made up of the police, the prisons, the courts, the laws, the bureaucracy, which it uses to repress us and crush any attempt at revolt. And a left hand made up of parties based on all kinds of ideology, of trade unions which are apparently independent, of social cohesion services supposedly there to protect us....in sum, of illusions to deceive us, divide us and demoralise us.
What has been the result of all the votes cast every four years? Has any government emerged from the election and carried out one of its promises? Whatever their ideology, whose side have they been on? The electors, or Capital? What has been the result of the countless reforms and changes they have made in education, social security, economics, politics, etc? Haven’t they really been a real expression of the principle that ‘everything must change in order to stay the same’? As the 15 May movement said at the time: “they call it democracy and it’s not, it’s a dictatorship and we don’t see it”.
Capitalism is leading us into generalised misery. But we should not see only misery in misery! In the entrails of this system is the principal exploited class, the proletariat, which, with its associated labour – labour not limited to industry and agriculture but including education, health, social services etc – ensures that the whole of this society functions. And by the same token, this class has the capacity to paralyse the capitalist machine and open the door to the creation of a society where life is not sacrificed on the altar of capitalist profit, where the economy of competition is replaced by production founded on solidarity and aiming at the full satisfaction of human need. The way of life in this society, by contrast, is based on competition, on the struggle of each against all, on atomisation and division.
An understanding of these problems, open and fraternal debate about them, the critical re-appropriation of the experience of over two centuries of struggle, all that can give us the means to go beyond this situation, to respond to the attacks. The very day (11 July) that prime minister Rajoy announced the new measures we saw was the beginning of a response. Many people went to Madrid to express their solidarity with the miners. This experience of unity and solidarity was concretised in the days that followed with spontaneous demonstrations organised through social networks. It was an initiative by public sector workers, outside the unions. The question is how to do we carry on with it, knowing that the struggle will be long and difficult? Here are some proposals:
United struggle: unemployed, public and private sector workers, apprentices and employees, pensioners, students, immigrants: TOGETHER, WE CAN. No sector must remain isolated and imprisoned in its own corner. Faced with a society of division and atomisation, we have to show the power of solidarity.
Open general assemblies: capital will remain strong as long as we leave everything in the hands of professional politicians and specialists in trade union representation, who always betray us. Assemblies to reflect, discuss and decide together. So that we become responsible for what has been agreed, so that we experience the satisfaction of being united, so that we can break the barriers of solitude and isolation and cultivate empathy and confidence.
Look for international solidarity: defending the nation makes us cannon fodder in wars; xenophobia and racism divide us, set us against the workers of the whole world when they are the only ones we can trust to create the force capable of pushing back the attacks of capital.
Group together in the workplaces, in the neighbourhoods, in the collectives, on the internet, to reflect on everything that’s going on, to organise meetings and debates which will prepare the struggles to come. It’s not enough just to fight! We have to fight with the clearest possible consciousness of where we are going, of what are our real weapons, of who are our friends and who are our enemies!
Every social change is inseparable from an individual change. Our struggle cannot be limited to a simple change in the political and economic structures. It’s a change in the social system and thus in our own lives, in our way of seeing things, in our aspirations. This is the only way we can develop the strength to resist the innumerable traps we will meet along the way, the physical and moral blows that will be aimed at us. A change of mentality in the direction of solidarity, collective consciousness, which will cement our unity today, but will also be the pillar of a future society free from the ferocious competition and commercialism of capitalist society
International Communist Current 16/7/12
If you want to contact us, collaborate, work together, you can find us as [email protected] [499] or via es.internationalism.org.
This leaflet is available as a PDF so it can be reproduced and distributed.
The day of study decided to take up the question of Islam because it is an important issue in today’s world. On the one hand it is presented as the bogey man threatening to destroy civilisation, political Islam has become synonymous with terrorism and oppression, but on the other hand it is a source of inspiration for a huge proportion of the world’s population.
In order to get to grips with what Islam represents today, the discussion looked at its origins and the role it has played in history (specifically its contribution to the Renaissance), situating it within the context of the social significance of religion generally. These are enormous questions that merit time and reflection and the day of study could obviously do no more than make a beginning by providing a basis and raising relevant questions to be developed in subsequent discussions.
There was general agreement among those who spoke that religion cannot provide a solution to today’s social problems but the question was raised as to whether or not Islam arose initially as a revolutionary movement. Various hypotheses were put forward as to the historical situation and the factors that gave rise to it; these points could not be adequately dealt with at the day of study and are well worth deepening in future debates. Supporting the idea that it did in fact begin as a revolutionary movement, it was stated that, even though it did not have a position against trade, money or class (as early Christianity did), it too began as a movement of the oppressed classes against their oppression but that the revolutionary message was watered down from very early on in its history – from the Roman period in fact.
Another question raised was the significance of the historical development from a mystical, religious view of the world to the attempt to interpret it scientifically.
Certain interventions insisted on the importance of the scientific method and the social significance of the Enlightenment as an important step forward, saying that one of the benefits of capitalism was the overcoming of religious superstition through rationalism and that Marxism is able to take this evolution even further.
Other interventions warned of the danger of deifying science, noting that rationalism begins with capitalism and expresses the bourgeois world view and that there are aspects of previous societies that it rejects out of hand, unable to integrate their knowledge into its own vision; aspects such as the celebration of society and its cohesion through shared beliefs and religious rites, the practice of linking up with the whole of humanity by means of meditation techniques (the ‘species being’ that Marx talks about in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts).
In response to this, the point was made that the going beyond the individual self towards the development of a true, shared humanity cannot be achieved individually; it can only be undertaken collectively by means of a social movement and that the religious framework creates a false, idealist consciousness. The search for our ‘species being’, a sense of unity with the rest of humanity, against the moral and emotional barrenness of society today, is very valid but to seek it through any form of religion is to look in the wrong place. The religious world view externalises our shared humanity, calls it god and worships it, we are alienated from it. To the working class’ need to reflect, question and discuss, it opposes the injunction to ‘have faith’; to the need for a real human morality, it opposes blind obedience to a higher power. As such, religious authority today is a means of social control and oppression, it aims to act as a brake on the development of proletarian consciousness, which needs free and open discussion and a fearless analysis of the society in which we live.
Another question raised was on how to address Islamic workers.
One suggestion was that we point out the revolutionary origins of religion and the prophetic tradition, that we show that the working class and its revolution are heir to the early religious movements (Islam, Christianity) and are able to realise their aspirations for a society free of oppression.
Many who spoke said that we do not in fact speak to Islamic workers as such, we address workers as a whole; our message is the same whether they are Christian, Muslim, non-believers. First of all we have to discuss what unites us – the fact that we are all exploited and have to defend ourselves against the attacks and how to do so. Religious belief, on the other hand, tends to be divisive; it unites ‘us of the true faith’ against all the rest, who are unrighteous: discussion about it often gives rise to tensions and defensiveness because it is felt as key to the individual’s sense of worth and security. An open discussion involving the whole of the working class on the nature of religion will be possible only late in the revolutionary development of consciousness when the class has sufficient confidence in itself as a class to confront such differences openly and frankly.
A discussion that stimulated a great deal of interest and reflection. It is important to pursue it.
VJ
This was the first meeting in Britain of the International Communist Party which publishes Communist Left in Britain and Il Partito Comunista in Italy. They announced it as their opportunity to “introduce themselves to the British proletariat”, and, gathered in front of a very smart and probably brand new red ICP banner resplendent with the hammer and sickle, they laid out their wares. This report will not attempt to dissect the ICP’s presentation on the ‘The Historical Need for Communism’, a six and a half page text that was delivered by the presidium following a brief introduction. It may eventually be published on the ICP’s website for readers to devour at their leisure and those who defend an internationalist perspective will find much to agree with. They have also written their own report of the meeting which, again, readers will find provides much food for thought[1]. Rather, the focus of this report is on what we think was missing from the meeting: discussion, which for us is central to the communist project. It is the lifeblood of the workers' movement as it struggles to clarify the many questions thrown up by the class struggle and in its fight for communism.
The ICP’s report makes much of the contributions from the floor following their presentation and as they describe these gave valuable examples of the hardships suffered by workers who have been, or still are, struggling to defend their interests. But as the report infers these contributions were perceived as and responded to, as questions, to be answered individually, one to one, by the presidium, all of which prevented a deeper exploration of the different positions held by those present. While no one was actually prevented from speaking, this ‘method’ effectively stifled discussion. There was no opportunity, or desire, to challenge alternative positions, no clash of ideas, so the meeting descended into a sterile ‘question and answer’ session ending far too quickly. If, like on many websites, we had been provided with some FAQs at the door the meeting need never have taken place. We could have digested the ‘correct’ position in the comfort of our own homes.
This attitude was most clearly demonstrated in the response to ‘questions’ on the Occupy movement, not worthy of a mention in their report, and on the need for those organisations who defend the communist left to discuss with each other. On Occupy, despite the article, ‘From Occupy Wall Street Movement to the blockade of the West Coast ports’, in Communist Left No. 31/2, which puts forward many of the same criticisms the ICC has made of the Occupy movement, the ICP’s response to our ‘question’ demonstrated a very different method in attempting to understand and respond to this phenomenon. The Occupy Movement, argued the ICP, is infected, watered down, by other, particularly petit bourgeois, class interests. It is not a progressive movement. It is an inter-classist movement. Full stop, question answered. On the communist left they were just as unequivocal, no discussion, 'we are the party': “The rebirth of the Party in 1952 on firm and clear foundations, after the period of elation that followed World War II, meant a neat and definitive separation from the ‘Internationalists’[2] and from their positions. To talk now of mergers or joint actions is therefore deprived of any historical significance. But, of course, any revolutionary who sees in the International Communist Party the party of the revolution can join as an individual basis”.
It is this ‘method’, which finds its justification in the idea that Marxist theory is one invariant block and expressed in statements and texts, often written in capital letters to emphasise their importance, like, “we represent the continuity of Marxism”, ‘The unitary and invariant body of party theses’ and “we represent the views of the Communist Left” that reinforces the commonly held view that the organisations who historically defend the Italian left, especially those in the Bordigist tradition, are sectarian, sclerotic parodies of what a communist organisation should be. ‘We are right you are wrong’ – there is no space, for example, for a shared agreement on the fundamental class line of internationalism – appears to be the rallying cry of the ICP. So much for Marx’s useful reminder to ‘question everything’. They could, without irony, adopt Millwall FC’s infamous terrace chant: ‘nobody likes us but we don’t care’.
More seriously, swimming against the tide of bourgeois ideology, communist organisations, especially those like the ICP who have never betrayed internationalism, don’t, of course, exist to be ‘liked’. But this attitude, a consequence of the invariance they so proudly defend, is hardly the way to convince those interested in discussing the communist programme or building the future party. You need to engage with what's been said by others; their questions, hesitations and misunderstandings, not demand that they engage with you solely on your terms. We have to dispel the image of the monolithic party. Unless, of course, you see yourself as the teacher, the guru, the only one competent to impart knowledge. Workers will only be convinced of the need for, and the possibility of creating, a future world communist party by the words and deeds of the current revolutionary minorities. A key part of this process is the ability of different tendencies to discuss differences - capital letters are no substitute for this.
So, what does this meeting tell us? As Alf, for the ICC, put it on a recent post on libcom, the ICP are “a current which - for all its weaknesses, especially on the national question - has not abandoned the principles of internationalism” and “that's why we have to approach this meeting from a standpoint of solidarity - even though this may not be reciprocated by the [ICP]”[3]. It wasn’t but Alf was correct. Over the last ten years the ICC has had to learn some hard lessons about the way it is perceived by, and responds to, others, especially in the ‘Internet age’. We are concerned about the need to improve relations, to create a culture of debate, within the internationalist milieu, of which, at least in our eyes, the ICP is a member, and approached this meeting from a standpoint of solidarity with this in mind.
Given the positions defended by the ICP their attitude didn’t surprise us - invariance, after all, suggests a certain stagnation, an inflexibility, which was clearly demonstrated at this meeting – but it did disappoint us. In a period where the crisis of capitalism is deeper and more evident than ever and the challenge facing the working class greater than ever, it is imperative that revolutionaries, i.e. those that intransigently defend internationalism, find a way to, at the very least, talk to each other and those interested in the positions they defend. We are not talking about mergers here, just the absolute basics of proletarian debate and solidarity. The ICP’s ‘method of discussion’ at this meeting prevents this. The same goes for their method of intervention on web forums like Libcom and Red Marx, where they simply upload recent articles or historic texts and make no attempt whatever to respond to the comments and criticisms that they may provoke.
Although we doubt they’ll listen we encourage the ICP to stop building an ever higher wall around themselves and lower their trowels and buckets of cement, or at least turn the caps lock off, just long enough to start engaging with those who want to discuss with them, help build a culture of debate amongst revolutionaries, before it’s too late and they’re completely walled in.
Kino 1/8/12
[2] ‘Internationalists’ is a reference to the other half of the split, the ‘Damen’ tendency which kept the name Internationalist Communist Party and published Battaglia Comunista. It is now the Italian affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency
The inbuilt tendency of capitalism is towards war – ever more destructive generalised warfare. Looking at Syria today massacre follows massacre with up to 20,000 killed; whole districts are destroyed; millions of people are displaced, with many living in overcrowded, insalubrious refugee camps in Turkey or in tents in the Jordanian desert in the middle of constant sandstorms. Instead of the masses unifying across lines of division, they are now retreating behind them. Alawite, Christian, Druze, Kurd, Sunni and Shia divisions are reinforced on the basis of fear of the next massacre from whatever side. Some are supporting the “Free Syrian Army”, while others fall in behind the regime, fearful of the consequences. Capitalist terror has been unleashed and is stalking the population throughout Syria and over its borders. What started out, seventeen months ago, as a real, popular uprising across divisions of religion, sex and age, against unemployment and repression, has been subsumed, drowned for the foreseeable future, under the wave of imperialist war which now threatens to spread throughout the region. To call this development, as some leftists do, a “revolution” is obscene. It is an inter-imperialist free-for-all. On one side stands the one-time ally of the west, the ruthless killer regime of Bashir al-Assad, backed by Russia, China and Iran; on the other side stand the local powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, looming over them, the United States, Britain and France. While this expression of capitalist carnage might look like the old proxy wars of the Cold War, with the US using Turkey as its local agent for example, it's much more unpredictable and dangerous than that, particularly given the stakes for the wider region, the military build up against Iran – which is currently being squeezed in a western vice - and the wild card of Israel.
There are factors relating to oil here but these are completely secondary. The USA and Britain are interested in the strategic value of Syria in relation to its geographical and political proximity to the real target of this war – Iran. In fact the possibilities for implanting American and British interests in this respect, ie, the basis for the present war, were laid down in Washington under the Bush administration in 2005 in conjunction with Whitehall (see below on the Syrian opposition). That the real target of this war is Iran has been increasingly recognised by a number of international newspaper correspondents, and none of them clearer than Robert Fisk in the Independent, July 29, who writes with some irony on the position of the British ruling class: “... that all the while we forget the ‘big’ truth. That this is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for the Syrians or our hatred for our former friend Bashir al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrad's across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans – if they exist – and has nothing to do with human rights, or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies. Quelle horreur!” And Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, August 5: “What began as a peaceful uprising and then became local self-defence has been hijacked, under Saudi. Qatari and US leadership, and with British, French and Israeli approval, it has turned into an anti-Iranian proxy war”.
While the regime is responsible for most of the killing in Syria, the main responsibility for the generalisation of war lies with America, Britain and the French cockerel, the “socialist” Hollande, strutting his stuff in continuity with his predecessor Sarkozy: France is now outbidding its “allies” and calling for the rag-bag and fractious Syrian opposition to form a government in exile which it will recognise. As for the western-backed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), already, as early as November 17 last year, the BBC's Newsnight was reporting on atrocities committed by it. On January 18 this year, The Guardian reported a recent article from ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi that: “...Turkey, a Nato member, has become Washington's proxy and that unmarked Nato planes have been arriving at Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons seized from Gaddafi's arsenal. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground... assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communication equipment and intelligence.”(there were also reports that British and French special forces were on the Lebanese/Syrian border) The Libyan connection is confirmed in a report by RTE News, August 14, that senior members of the western-trained Libyan rebel unit that took Gaddafi's compound were active in Syria, leading a team of Syrians including specialists in communications, logistics and heavy weapons[1]. On July 26, Newsnight reported that the Turkish military was making nightly deliveries by the lorryload of arms and ammunition to the FSA accompanied by the CIA in order to make sure the weapons “didn't fall into the wrong hands”. The Daily Mirror reported on August 18 that these weapons included ground-to-air Stinger missiles – which is somewhat credible given that a MIG- 23 jet fighter has already been shot down over the town of Mohassen in the east while bombing rebel positions, one helicopter gunship has been shot down and latest reports say that another jet-fighter has been shot down over Idlib[2]. Talk by William Hague and the US of “non-lethal assistance” to the FSA is a nonsense, given their arms deliveries and their closeness to Saudi and Qatari weapons provision.
The diplomatic war also rages across the United Nations' den of thieves. The Annan “peace plan”, largely promoted by the Russians and supported by China, was sabotaged by the US, Britain and France, who threw a spanner in the works with a rival resolution that Annan referred to as “finger-pointing and name-calling”. There was no real interest from the west in any plan that entertained talks while the regime – which they've been saying for twelve months is “on the verge of collapse” - remained in place. They were only interested in pursuing the war. For its part Iran has hosted a “non-aligned” conference in Tehran (week beginning August 27), with over a hundred countries sending delegates, in order to garner support. Notably the new Egyptian president, Morsi, has made a visit, which along with friendly words towards Iran, has caused some concern in the west[3]. Saheed Jalili, Iran's security boss, previously said on Syrian TV: “Iran will not allow the axes of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be a vital part, to be broken in any way” (BBC, August 7). But relations between Tehran and Hamas in Gaza have already soured over Syria and fighting has spilled over the Syrian/Lebanese border affecting Hezbollah. This “axes of resistance” has been somewhat weakened in this respect but this will by no means attenuate the imperialist drive of Iran which itself has forces fighting alongside the Syrian army. Syria is indeed Iran's main ally in the region and in this spread of war and instability the former has not hesitated to use its ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which in turn supports the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has control of several towns along the Turkish border in northern Syria (AFP, August 2). Troop deployment in these areas are currently being massively reinforced by the Turkish military, adding another dimension to the unfolding chaos.
Who are these people of the Syrian opposition who appear on western TV and call for “action”. Who are these “democratic spokespeople” in exile urging military intervention and no talks with the Assad regime? Charlie Skelton in The Guardian of July 12 lifts the lid on this nest of vipers who are enmeshed in some of the highest levels of the American and British states and who have been funded by both for the last 6 or 7 years[4] . The Syrian National Council is recognised by both America and Britain as the “main opposition coalition” (BBC) and “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” (William Hague, British Foreign Secretary). The most senior of these SNC spokespeople is Bassma Kodmani who was promoted from her work for the Ford Foundation in 2005 – after US/Syrian relations collapsed – to become executive director to the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI). This is linked to the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFI), which is linked to the “US Middle East Project” composing senior diplomats, intelligence officers and business people. This in turn is linked to the British Centre for European Reform (CER) headed by Lord Kerr, former head of the British diplomatic service. As Skelton notes, this is not some naive pro-democracy activist but someone who has links with the highest levels of the two states as well as with the French intelligence service DGSE. It's similar for her colleagues in the SNC. In 2005, the year that US foreign policy tilted against Syria, opposition leaders met in a Washington government building for a meeting sponsored by the US Democracy Council and the British Movement for Justice and Development and chaired by Joshua Muravchik, author of the 2006 op-ed “Bomb Iran”. Skelton lays the links and the funding bare[5]
The Muslim Brotherhood, which Britain has shown interest in, has now split from the Free Syrian Army to set up its own armed faction, “The Armed Men of the Muslim Brotherhood” which is said by its leader to be “trying to raise awareness for Islam and jihad” (Daily Telegraph August 3). There are also Saudi and Qatari backed fundamentalists, jihadists from abroad with many coming back from Iraq, some of whom work under the loose al-Qaida franchise and the Libyan mercenaries. A real recipe for disaster for the Syrian population.
In a word dire. It's already dire for the masses in Syria and while the thrust against Iran by the west is an open secret here the course events will take are unpredictable and dangerous for the region and beyond. Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze sect, a politically shrewd veteran fighter in the region, said in The Guardian August 16: “This is the unravelling of the Sykes-Picot agreement”. Here he's referring to the secret Anglo-French agreement of 1919 to carve up their spheres of influence in the Levant after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – this itself has been a basis for the instability and the running sores of conflict that have ravaged the Middle East for nearly a century. Jumblatt goes on: “We are seeing the end of what was created 90 years ago. The consequences will be very, very grave unless they are managed properly”. Referring to the British/French construction of Middle Eastern borders after World War I, and the “divide and rule” tactics used, one western diplomat talked of “unfinished business at many levels”. Within the framework of the overall weakening of the US to police the world, the go-it-alone tendency of Israel and the centrifugal tendencies at work tearing Syria apart, it's very unlikely that this will be managed properly. The “management” of the major powers has rather been to push this war and the threat of wider war further forward.
Baboon. 30/8/12
[1]Just over a year after the end of the western-backed war, Libya is in a complete mess with the highest-ever unemployment and armed gangs of all persuasions terrorising the increasingly impoverished population. The wider north African region is hit by further war and terrorism as a direct consequence.
[2]The Daily Telegraph, August 2, reports that the Taliban have opened an office in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan and that communications intercepted from there suggest that Iranian Quds forces planned to send surface-to-air missiles to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran has been supplying the Taliban with fairly basic weapons to use against the Americans in Afghanistan but this, if true, would be a real escalation.
[3]This is all part of the inter-imperialist game. Egypt has recently also made overtures towards China. Prior to the Libyan war, Egyptian access granted to Iranian warships through the Suez Canal caused alarm in the US and Britain. But at the “non-aligned” conference Egyptian President Morsi outraged the Syrian delegation and upset the Iranians by referring to the Syrian “rebels” as similar to the Palestinians.
[5]For references to this and a good analysis of the overall situation in Syria, see Syria, Imperialism and the Left, parts (1), (2) and (3) on libcom, written by rooieravotr. libcom.org/blog/syria-imperialism-left-1-08082012 [507]
“Where are you going?”
“We are going out brother, we won't work.”
“Well then, let’s go out together, let’s not work.”
The textile workers in the organised industrial zone of Antep, a city on the border of the Kurdish area of Turkey, recently went on a strike against their working conditions, low wages and cuts in their bonuses. The strike, which started with the participation of 3 to 5 thousand workers according to different sources, quickly spread to a total of seven factories in the industrial zone, including a total of 7 thousand workers.
About their working conditions, the workers whose working hour is on average 12 hours were saying the following: “What we want is just wages which will suffice to feed our families and our social rights. We don't want anything else. We have nothing against anyone in particular. Nor do we have ill intentions, we want what we deserve”[1].
A worker who participated in the strike expresses how the Turkish bourgeoisie, which recently has taken an important step in furthering its solid integration into the web of international imperialist relations under the slogan of “becoming a superpower”, was spreading nothing but false hopes in its 'addresses to the nation': “They say we are second only to China in the economy. They say we are pioneers when it comes to exports. No one is asking how much this reflects on the workers, how much bread the workers can afford when going home. No one cares about the worker. We've been on strike here for days, and the human demands of thousands of people are being ignored”[2].
Another important characteristic of the strike is the reaction against the Oz-Iplik-Is Trade Union, a part of the Hak-Is confederation[3] of which a significant part of the strikers are members. The strike from the start was independent from the direction and the orientation of the union, and the workers didn't hesitate to criticise the union. The clearest statement about the situation was made by Nihat Necati Bencan, the Antep Regional Representative of DISK[4], which we feel the need to quote not only for its clarity about how the trade unionists felt about the strike, but also because of its irony: “...Instead, the demands of the workers in 5 factories are expressed by the representatives they've delegated among each other. However none of the factory managements are taking these demands seriously and they aren't taking the necessary steps to meet these demands. Steps need to be taken in order to solve the problem soon. Otherwise the strike wave will continue and expand”[5]
The agreement for a ridiculously low pay rise between the union and a factory boss, for instance, is among the reasons triggering the strike. The workers who, when they figured out that the union negotiated a 45 TL pay rise, which almost means a zero rise, immediately went on strike in July. In fact Mehmet Kaplan, the Antep Regional Chairman of the Oz-Iplik-Is union, was held in the factory by the workers for a while after being met with slogans such as “sell-out chairman, sell-out union!” So the workers had concretised their direct strike against a union from the start.
As the strike went on, the lackeys of the bourgeoisie continued their suppression through different means. The state, which sent its packs of dogs to the factories right from the beginning of the strike wave, tends to be very disturbed by workers' actions which aren't controlled by the unions. The “advice” given the workers by the policemen during the strike were striking: “If you don't accept this, you won't find work anywhere else ever again. The bosses can only afford so much. Accept it and go back to work.” It seems the actual police force is as knowledgeable as the police of the factories, the unions.
On the eleventh day, the strike ended with real gains for the workers. Among the gains was a rise in wages from 780 TL to 875 TL. The workers in the Motif Textile factory will go back to work with 905 TL a month. Also thanks to this strike, the workers will get a 10 day bonus in every major national holiday.
The bomb attack which led to the deaths of 9 civilians in Antep right after the strike quickly came to dominate the atmosphere in the city and dispersed the air created by the strike. In a country like Turkey where the public agenda is too easy to manage and very changeable, the news, which as in all other countries is managed by the bourgeoisie, is used to stop such movements from meeting up with the rest of the class. In fact the ruling class does everything it can to prevent the rest of the working class from even finding out about such strikes. For instance, while the significant Turkish media companies repeatedly reported the massacre of the South African miners by the police, this strike in the country they operate was evidently not seen fit to be reported, even as the tiniest piece of news in the television or the newspapers. Of course we are not surprised: it’s their public agenda to manipulate. And the workers who said the strike is ours have strengthened themselves.
The bosses in some of the factories want to make the workers sign documents saying “I regret participating in the movement”. Against these maneuvers of the bosses, who are capable of all sorts of repressive measures, the workers are refusing to sign such documents.
This strike is a corner stone for the working class movement in Turkey which progressed as a series of isolated struggles in single factories and workplaces after the TEKEL tobacco workers struggle, such as the struggle of the workers in Hey Textiles who were laid off for no good reason, and the Turkish Airlines strike.
Certain details highlight the significance of the strike. The workers managed to meet almost all their needs throughout the struggle aside from some limited small aid which was given later during the strike. They acted together in subjects such as food, transportation and so on, and they took all their decisions with a committee they had formed among each other. One of the most important qualities of the strike was the fact that the workers had found a way of acting outside the union and among the most important gains of this self-organised strike is the fact that the workers took the initiative to take the struggle into their own hands. For the criticisms towards the union during the strike demonstrate that this is now a burning question for the workers: We don't need the union in our struggle.
Besides, all the bourgeois left press writes on this strike, which was fully independent of the unions and was even against them, is that the workers will be discussing the need for stronger unions. The claim that the workers will discuss this when their struggle has been concretised in a place other than the union exposes another political maneuver. So instead of writing about the wildcat action itself, the bourgeois left can only make news corresponding to their trade unionist and pro-capitalist programs.
Also, we see a remarkable difference when we compare the duration of struggles or strikes controlled by the unions and the ones which aren't. The former, while producing a wide anger against the union formations which are nothing but the apparatus of the state, also cause exhaustion and despair on the part of workers, especially when it comes to taking control of their own struggle. However, we can see, also taking into consideration the experience of the working class world-wide, that the movements managed and directed by the workers themselves always make proletarian history, and tend to be very successful at boosting morale. For the workers organise, manage and as we've seen in this experience, conclude these struggles themselves. On the one hand, the active will of the workers to struggle wins in merely 11 days, and on the other hand the strikes organized by the unions can turn into dead ends, wasting the energy of the workers and pushing them into despair over a period of months; and this results in new bad experiences filled with bitter disappointments for the workers.
“Despite everything our wages rose from 780 TL to 875. This is not much, but is not a small pay rise. This strike might be over today; our struggle is not”[6].
The workers, following the end of the strike, took the decision to organise a congress by their own struggle committee where they will discuss their own problems. While there are differing accounts of the details of the strike in different bourgeois news sources, what we see as significant is the fact that the workers are creating discussion platforms to clarify the gains of this wildcat strike and the struggle.
“Unions are totally inconceivable without the existence of wage-labor, which in turn presupposes the existence of capital. As long as capital is held by individual owners engaged in competition and represented by many individuals and parties in the government, unions are at least able to bargain for an improvement in the conditions of labor exploitation. Their function is to regularize the sale of labor power, a function which has become indispensable to the modern capitalist system. From this fact comes their importance as complementary structures of the state, if not part of the state itself, everywhere in the world today (…) Their existence as an organization is entirely dependent on the continued existence of the labor/capital duality (…) However, they can side with capital as much as they choose without destroying this duality. On the contrary, they become increasingly indispensable to the maintenance of the capitalist system. As a result, the more gigantic and anonymous the concentration of capital, the more the unions take the side of capital and consider their role to be directly determined by the great ‘national’ interest”[7].
Nevin 3/9/12
[3]Hak-Is is a pro-government and Islamist trade union confederation.
[4]DISK, the Revolutionary (or Progressive, as it is nowadays translated by the confederation) Workers' Unions Confederation, is the main leftist union in the Turkish private sector.
[7]Munis, G. Unions Against Revolution, https://libcom.org/article/unions-against-revolution-g-munis [512]
Readers may be aware that we have had a problem finding articles using the grey tabs on the front page. Following intensive efforts at repair by our dedicated team of technicians (let us dream a little...) the problem should now be fixed. If you find any unattached articles "floating" or you notice any problems, then please let us know on the forum or by using the site contact form.
The transport sector is crucial for capitalism. Air transport is particularly important. In Turkey on 29 and 30 May a strike movement in the national air company, Turkish Airlines, paralysed Istanbul airport, with hundreds of flights being cancelled or delayed.
The working day in this sector can reach up to 16 or 18 hours. Some airlines oblige their flight crews to sleep in the same apartment to reduce labour costs when the employees are away from home. Pilots also have to work long hours, sometimes after no more than 2 or 3 hours sleep, in complete disregard for their health, their social life and human needs. Before the strike broke out, the industry minister carried out a real provocation by threatening to ban the right to strike “in strategic sectors like transport”. The unions, who had done nothing when hundreds of workers were made redundant at Sabiha Gokeen airport in Istanbul, or when workers were forced to work extra hours on miserable wages, now addressed an “urgent” message to the airline workers, calling on them to “exercise their right to strike”. And the workers did indeed launch an “illegal” strike on 26 May. Turkish Airlines used this as a pretext for massive sackings. Thus, when they were on the picket line, 305 strikers, most of them women, were sent a text informing them that “your work contract has been terminated”. All this shows that these attacks by the bourgeoisie were done hand in hand with the unions.
The workers therefore had to fight not only against the administration of Turkish Airlines, but also the unions they belonged to. Thus, the May 29 Association, formed by employees of the air companies as an organ of struggle independent of the unions, declared, mirroring the Platform of Workers in Struggle after the Tekel strike: “the administration of the Hava-Is union, of which we are members, has played a major role in the fact that this justified protest was declared ‘illegal’ by taking no responsibility for an action which it had itself called. The bosses of Turkish Airlines count on taking advantage of this situation to get rid of some employees and treat others almost like slaves. Does the administration of Hava-Is lack experience so it could not foresee what would happen when it left hundreds of its members on their own against the administration of Turkish Airlines? What kind of trade union mentality does that reflect?”
The bourgeois left has waged a campaign deploring the lack of support for the workers shown by the president of the union, who also described the May 29 Association as “dividers of the struggle”. On the contrary, the Association puts the accent on the importance of solidarity and has called for the extension of the movement to defend the interests of the working class as a whole and for the organisation of assemblies open to all proletarians.
Arno 31/8/12
The new ‘Socialist’ government in France came to power with the slogan “the change is now”. But like the previous government, the new one has made use of the summer period to mobilise its cops against gypsies. The forces of repression carried out a real manhunt in the suburbs of Lille and Lyon. Nothing like the summer holidays, when so many people are away, to push through such brutal measures with less risk of any reaction from the population.
The fact that the Socialists are carrying out the same policies as the UMP government should come as no surprise. In the 1980s, the Socialist government built up a real arsenal of repression against immigrants[1]. The ‘Voix des Roms’ association has commented ironically that the new minister of the interior, Manuel Valls, “could wear the UMP colours in 2017”. So there’s no ‘betrayal’ here, even if, during his presidential campaign, François Hollande hypocritically declared “we can no longer accept families being chased from one place to another”[2].
In reality, this persecution of marginal, vulnerable populations, who are easily criminalised, is a general practice of the bourgeoisie. All governments, whatever their political colouring, are obsessed with ‘public order’ and are always looking for scapegoats, above all in a time of crisis. Thus, at almost the same moment that Valls and his cops were doing their dirty work in France, the Greek police in Athens were engaged in a vast anti-immigrant operation, baptised ‘Xenos Zeus’, in which 1595 people were arrested and 6000 more were issued with summons. The real aim of this was to criminalise illegal immigrants and blame them for the dramatic economic situation, when they are its first victims. The Greek minister Nikos Denias came out with this nauseating statement about the operation: “in the name of your patriotism and the survival instinct of the Greek citizen, I ask you to support this effort. The question of illegal immigration is one of the country’s biggest problems, along with the problem of the economy”[3]. The police were so violent that an Iraqi they were chasing was killed.
The Italian bourgeoisie uses the same methods in hunting gypsies: very regularly, camps are viciously destroyed in Milan and Rome. In Germany, although the Nazi past imposes a certain level of discretion, the 10,000 gypsies who fled the war in Kosovo are also fearfully expecting expulsions since Berlin decided to kick out 2500 people a year. Even in a ‘social’ country like Sweden, where 80% of gypsies are unemployed, begging is a pretext for deportation. 50 gypsies have already been deported this year[4]. We could multiply examples of this kind of contempt and terror[5].
The fact that France is being put under scrutiny by the European Commission over its ‘management’ of the gypsies is just hypocrisy, like the dishonest proposals of politicians who use similar tactics. Thus, Manuel Valls, who claims that his policies have nothing to do with the methods of Nicolas Sarkozy, uses exactly the same justifications as former foreign minister Bernard Kouchner when he defended the former president over his measures against the gypsies: “the president of the republic will never stigmatise a minority on account of its origins”[6]. A real carbon copy! Similarly, Michel Rocard, when the Sarkozy team was in place, exclaimed “we haven’t seen this kind of thing since the Nazis!” In response, we got a lot of stories about ‘problems of hygiene’, ‘criminality’, ‘threats to public order’ being handed down by the team in power, and they are being repeated today.
Behind both the open crudity and the hypocritical concern of the ruling class lies the cold mechanics of capital. The working class can only express its anger and indignation in the face of this barbarity. RI 5/9/12
[1] The Joxe law, arrests and deportations under the minister Edith Cresson, etc.
[2] Cited in www.ldh-france.org [517]
[3] www.lepoint.fr [518]
[5] In Britain of course we have had the Dale Farm evictions of travellers and gypsies, and more recently the new laws against squatting and the expulsion of foreign students.
[6] Cited in Révolution Internationale 415
Governments everywhere are cutting jobs, services and wages in the attempt to reduce sovereign debt. Sometimes they still increase borrowing, but that’s another story.
In Britain, in August, the government announced the success of its efficiency savings for the year 2011/12. Included in the list of savings were reduced spending on consultants, cutting staff, cutting services, stopping IT projects, making more processes digital, renegotiating with suppliers, reducing building costs, avoiding major projects, and other forms of avoiding waste.
In the campaign against waste in the public sector there has been a widespread introduction of what are known as Lean practices. These are based on the Toyota production system. It could be argued that the need to recall millions of Toyota vehicles in recent years was not a good advertisement for such a way of working, but governments have a habit of following fashions in such things.
In dealing with waste, the Lean/Toyota approach means eliminating, among other things: unnecessary product/file movements, people moving more than is needed, unnecessary waiting, overproduction, duplication, over-processing, and defects that have to be fixed (get it right first time). In practice it means a good old fashioned time and motion study of all working practices, so that time is spent more and more on productive activity. Efficiency savings end up in focussing on individual workers and how much the employer can get out of them.
That efficiency savings should be among the watchwords of modern governments would not have surprised Frederick Winslow Taylor whose Principles of Scientific Management was published in the US just over a hundred years ago in 1911. Taylor’s approach to getting the most out of workers was brutal but effective. In the 1880s he was able to reduce the number of workers shovelling coal at the Bethelem Steel Works from 500 to 140 without loss of production. Every part of a work process was timed with the aim of identifying what could be omitted from the process, and which workers should take on what task.
In the Principles Taylor had a very low view of workers – “the natural laziness of man is serious”. But he also knew that straight repression was not the best way to exploit workers. He described his approach as scientific, but it was as much ideological: “One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. … Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.” In the case of handling pig iron the best candidate for the job “was a man so stupid that he was unfitted to do most kinds of laboring work, even.”
Critics of the Taylorist method saw it as dehumanising in the way it exploited, deskilled and alienated workers. In reality “Scientific management did not - as Taylor liked to claim - ensure that workers ‘look upon their employers as the best friends they have in the world (!)’ Rather, it sowed class conflict on an epic scale” (Mike Davis https://libcom.org/history/stopwatch-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-i... [522]). Describing the wave of strikes in the US between 1909 and 1913 Davis says that “It is particularly significant that the storm centers of these strikes were located in the industries being rationalized by scientific management and the introduction of new mass-assembly technologies”. This is hardly surprising as Taylor wanted workers to "do what they are told to do promptly and without asking questions or making any suggestions." (quoted in Davis op cit). This goes against human nature: unlike machines people are questioning and creative. Not for nothing did Lenin denounce Taylorism as the “enslavement of man to the machine”.
However, following the overthrow of the Russian state in 1917, Lenin thought that capitalist production methods could be adopted. In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government Lenin wrote: “The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is - learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field.” This approach, along with the militarisation of labour and one-man management, seemed appropriate to some Bolsheviks in a period when the young Soviet Republic was surrounded and fighting for its life in war against the White armies and their imperialist backers. Other Bolsheviks, especially Left Communists like Ossinski, opposed the introduction of such methods, which undermined the capacity of the working class to direct production and was one of the factors that exacerbated the gulf and ultimately the conflict between workers and the Soviet state.
Taylorism was dictated by the needs of capitalist exploitation but in its pure form it proved to be inefficient in drawing on workers’ talent and potential. In time the bourgeoisie recognised the inadequacies in Taylorism, and crude Taylorist methods were mostly deemed obsolete by the 1930s. This didn’t, however, mean the end of time and motion measurement.
Among newer management theories have been the Theory X and Theory Y that were introduced by Douglas McGregor in the 1960s. Theory X assumes that workers are lazy and will only respond to the carrot and stick, to reward and punishment. Theory Y relies on workers’ self-motivation. Workers have to identify with the needs of their employers and bring their own initiatives to the work process, so that they end up taking the lead in their own exploitation.
Today, with the Lean practices introduced into major departments of the British civil service (including HMRC, DWP, MOJ, and MOD), workers have ‘efficiency savings’ as an integral part of their job. There are regular meetings (often daily) on work priorities; these are held standing up, for reasons of efficiency. Workers time the work processes, identify forms of waste, and propose changes in work practices. This ‘bottom-up’ approach goes along with an increasing emphasis on management being described as ‘leaders’. Efficiency savings are made from workers’ suggestions, the ‘leaders’ try to enforce impossible targets, and decide whose post is next to be eliminated.
As part of the precariousness of employment workers must now worry not only about losing their jobs, but also have to propose measures which, in the name of efficiency, might put them out of work. Human creativity and ingenuity can be directed towards the greatest of achievements, but they are manipulated or crushed within the brutality of capitalist social relations.
Car 7/9/12
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
striking_chicago_teachers.pdf [524] | 163.89 KB |
On Monday, September 10th 2012, 26,000 teachers in Chicago struck for the first time in 25 years and after years of suffering attacks on their benefits, wage freezes, and ever more appalling and degrading working conditions.
This strike is in continuity with those that have sprung up during the summer by Con-Edison workers in New York City, the janitors in Houston, the pizza workers at Palermo pizza factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin -to mention just some of the better publicized strikes- and, stretching back more than one year, with the Verizon workers strike, in New York City, and the Madison, Wisconsin public workers mobilizations. Teachers are finally catching up! As part of the working class, teachers have not been spared by the economic crisis and our rulers’ relentless attacks against their living and working standards. Yet, because of their position as a part of the public sector in charge of educating the future generation of workers to fulfill the needs of capitalism’s drive for profit and competition, teachers have been particularly denigrated and demonized by a brutal media campaign which has two fundamental aims:
1. To divide the working class, to pit one sector of it against another
2. To justify the draconian attacks against job security, benefits, and working conditions with the claim of a much needed “education reform”.
These attacks and media campaign are an international phenomenon taking place in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and the rest of the world. The reactions have often been massive not only in the European countries but also in India, in Africa (Swaziland ) and Latin America. The mobilization of the Chicago teachers inscribes them in the international arousal of working class combativeness against the bosses’ attacks.
There are many reasons for teachers’ discontent. Regardless of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s claim that the strike has no economic cause and, on this ridiculous basis, his request that an injunction be brought against the ‘illegally’ striking union, there are plenty of economic concerns that have moved the teachers to strike: a longer school day and year; a freeze on health insurance contribution rates; the introduction of a new teacher evaluation tied to students’ test performance, i.e. an attack on job security, particularly in the context of the threatened closure of at least 100 schools; and more. The ‘wage increase’ peddled by the contract would not even be enough to pay for the extended school day and year, and they call it an increase! Are these not economic issues?? Only our bosses and rulers, who have no economic concerns to keep them awake at night, can conceive of these attacks as non-economic! But of course, teachers are totally correct in going beyond the economic issues. They command the respect of all their class brothers and sisters by fighting for their dignity as human beings, by refusing to subject their passion for teaching to a matter measurable by standardized tests; and by refusing to subject their students to the bosses’ mentality and practice that views human beings as objects to quantify according to the law of capitalist profitability and competition, reducing humans to mere commodity to sell or toss away. This in essence is the meaning of their vaunted education “reform”! It amounts to an actuarial calculation: how much are the bosses willing to ‘waste’ on public education in light of the restructuring of the workforce forced upon them by the relentless economic crisis of capitalism! We can only say to our fellow teachers: We admire and support your courage! You are an inspiration for all of us in your same conditions!
In the media, the ruling class and bosses express their concern at what this strike will mean for the perspective of re-electing a Democratic president versus a Republican. Are they worried that the working class will more and more be able to see through their smoke and mirror mystifications and realize that whether painted blue or red, the size, aims, and content of the attacks is virtually the same? If they are worried that the working class puts it in its head that the real struggle has to be waged in the streets, alongside other workers, and not at the ballot box, the working class would do well to reflect about the role each party plays in the implementation of the attacks, and hence ask the question: who is our real friend? Who do we need to turn to for help? Is the official “uniondom” the answer to this question? How can the answer be “yes”, when the union leaders negotiate with the bosses behind closed doors? How can it be possible they are our friends when contract after contract our working and living/economic conditions have deteriorated? How to believe them when they trumpet what to every worker is a defeat as a “victory” because it could have been even “worse”? Isn’t this what Karen Lewis has had the nerve to say when she peddled that Rham Emanuel scaled down his proposal of having the teachers evaluated on the basis of students’ test performance from 40% to 25%? But, if we cannot trust the official union, what else do we have?
The most effective way to wage a struggle is by establishing open General Assemblies, as workers have historically done and are re-learning to do. We have seen these first attempts at re-taking the destiny of the struggle in our own hands in Spain, during the Indignado movement, and here in the States, by the Occupy movement. What these movements point to is the need to create a space for open discussions where we can freely and creatively consider real solutions to our problems. We are the only “experts” and the accountability for our decisions should rest solely in the workers’ General Assemblies themselves, controlled by the workers themselves. When we are able to hold the struggle in our hands, it is possible to extend it to other sectors and workers, to parents and students, and, in this way, gain real strength, unity, and solidarity, and break free of the isolation in which our unions trap us! The sympathy that your strike has aroused in many other workers, even among parents who have been up to a million difficulties to find care for their kids, is a testimony to the urgent need to extend the struggle, to express real solidarity, to trust the rest of the working class. This strike has for now been drowned in isolation and teachers have returned to work without having gained anything in terms of the contract. But if teachers are able to gain in terms of the lessons about how to struggle more effectively in the future, and who our real class friends and enemies are, they will not have lost.
In the two weeks before the final ratification of the contract, teachers should meet to discuss and draw the lessons of this struggle, and prepare to break out of the isolation imposed by the union by going out to other workers and hold open discussion forums where decisions can be made collectively and can stay in the hands of the workers themselves.
Internationalism 10/9/12
At the time the papers said that “they came in triumph”; Cameron and Sarkozy went to Tripoli and Benghazi around a year ago in order to accept the cheers of a war-weary crowd and to “hail a new dawn for Libya”. This after supporting both anti and pro-Gaddafi factions of the Libyan state and shortly after killing an unknown number of Libyans as they “liberated” them from the grip of Gaddafi with bombardments from the air and their special forces on the ground. The war, contrary to early reports, was fully backed by American imperialism from the beginning, who, “leading from behind”, pushed the British and French to secure this vital oil region for their own interests while also opening up a further scramble among the other imperialist players to gain what influence they could. Germany, who played a back seat role during the war, seems to have done particularly well from Libyan contracts by dint of its economic clout and contacts; and German economic strength is a growing factor on the imperialist chessboard. The local and wider spread of imperialist barbarity goes beyond any possible economic advantages coming from the Libyan war. Another factor in pushing forward this war forward that must have weighed on the imperialist scales from the US point of view was the growing instability in the eastern Mediterranean with the post-Mubarak regime in Egypt suddenly ambiguous towards Israel and allowing Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal.
It's not that the first anniversary celebrations of such an important event have been muted; the one year on celebrations of the “triumph of liberation” from Cameron et al have been non-existent. Not surprising really. This was supposed to be the war where they finally learnt the lessons about Iraq in securing and rebuilding the nation after the fall of a tyrant. But, for the greater population of Libya, the “liberation” and its aftermath has brought nothing but more misery, with terror, intimidation, shortages, inflation and unemployment – one of the triggers of the original uprising – higher than it's ever been. The country itself is riven by various warring factions including a resurgent jihadist force linked to al Qaida. On August 27 the US State Department issued a statement warning US citizens against unnecessary travel in Libya adding: “Political violence, including car bombings in Tripoli and assassinations of military officers and alleged former regime officials in Benghazi, has increased. Inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place in the country”. Simon Tisdall, who gave the quote in The Guardian on September 13, goes on to say about the breakaway army in Misrata controlling 30,000 small arms with “revolutionary brigades” controlling “more than 820 tanks, dozens of heavy artillery pieces and more than 2,300 vehicles equipped with machine-guns and anti-aircraft weapons”. Looking further afield in the region, the fallout of the war in Libya has spread more war and bloody instability throughout Mali and the Sahel giving a “new dawn”, if you like, to the Islamic fundamentalists of al-Qaida in the Maghreb. In Libya itself, the British Consulate in Benghazi had already been hit in June this year with the ambassador lucky to escape alive. It's these sorts of events that could well presage an Iraq-style breakdown along with an unremitting Afghan-type war. It's not a matter of America, Britain, etc., “learning the lessons” from their disastrous wars of the recent past, because imperialism generally, and these imperialisms in particular, can, whatever their intentions, only spread more chaos, instability and war.
The killing of US ambassador Stevens and three other embassy staff in Benghazi, September 11, is being put down by the US administration to reactions to a now notorious film denigrating Muslim beliefs. But the date is the clue and the way the supposed secret US safe house in Benghazi was also targeted, as well as the previous unpublicised warnings from the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security, suggest a much deeper and more worrying plot for the Americans and their allies. The attack was thought to be a pre-emptive assault against a CIA operation, which then necessitated a large number of US personnel to get out of the country quickly – according to officials in Washington.
It's more or less established that the al-Qaida linked Islamist brigade of Ansar al-Sharia was responsible for the US killings. The acting president of Libya's parliament, Mohamed al Magriaf, said he would be considering action against the militants and went on to say that this, the fifth attack on diplomatic targets in Benghazi since April, was “part of a wider campaign to destabilise Libya” (The Guardian, September 17). Magriaf was a leader of the National Front for the Liberation (Salvation) of Libya since 1981. He has historic links to the American and British establishment and his group was reportedly funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia. It had hardly any support in Libya and this victor of the liberation and friend of the western coalition is presently president of the National Transitional Council government – a clear indication of the extent of western implantation in this so-called liberated country. But while Magriaf was “considering” action against the Islamists a quite extraordinary uprising of the local population took things into their own hands on September 22. After a demonstration of over 30,000 people in the afternoon against the militias, many hundreds, mostly unarmed young men, took on the militia at their compound, resulting in about 20 of them being killed, but driving the hated militias out. It wasn't just the anti-American Ansar al-Sharia that was attacked but the pro-government, pro-American Islamist militiamen of Rafallah al-Sahiti which was licensed by the government and answered to the Libyan Ministry of Defence. Since the end of the war there have been a small number of strikes and demonstrations in the country against the appalling conditions and there's been particular anger against the Islamist militias (and other militias) with their check-points, searches, kidnappings, swaggering around pointing their guns at anyone. But while there was certainly a kernel of social discontent underlying this mass movement, it has already been recuperated as “support for the army and the government” and in the west, reported as a “pro-democracy movement” (Channel 4 News, 23.9.12). Jihadist militias were also attacked and driven out of Derna in the east by the local population. Derna has long been a hot-bed of Islamic fundamentalism, tolerated, perhaps encouraged by the Gaddafi regime with the idea of creating a problem that it can then be seen “dealing with” in order to curry favour with the Americans and British.
The recent history of British imperialism's manoeuvres in Libya is marked by its particular low cunning and ruthlessness in dealing with the “Arab World”. Britain welcomed and sheltered anti-Gaddafi terrorists in the 1990's and paid large sums of money to an anti-Gaddafi al-Qaida cell in Libya in 1996. Then after Tony Blair's embrace of Gaddafi in 2004 the former British terrorist allies were delivered up, rendered in fact, to the Libyan regime's torturers. The deadly imperialist circus lurches around and once again the western powers backed the fundamentalists in the war against Gaddafi and now begin to reap the whirlwind. There's nothing new about this, it's just that it get progressively worse and more dangerous. It was the CIA and MI6 that set up the fundamentalists and the Taliban for the war across the AfPak border. The Americans and British in Iraq worked alongside the forces of Islamic fundamentalism in order to pursue their own aims and protect their own backs. In Basra particularly, the British used the Shia fundamentalists for both self-protection and to keep the local population under control. It was the Americans that funded, trained and armed the Chechen jihadists for their war in Bosnia in the 90s. And today, in Syria, the Americans and British are once again using the forces of Islamic fundamentalism to further their own aims. There have already been links here between the Foreign Office and the Muslim Brotherhood and the US has transported Libyan elements, some religious, through Turkey and into Syria. It's not that they keep on making the same mistakes, or that they don't learn from their mistakes – it's that imperialism has nowhere else to go except to arouse and utilise the forces of reaction, death and destruction. Imperialism is itself the condemnation of the impasse of decadent capitalism. And the forces of Islamic fundamentalism are particularly useful to the major imperialisms. There's something distinctly ironic in that while a large number of mainly peaceful protests by Muslims are taking place against another crap movie, the activities of the governments of Britain and America have been engaging in the financial, military and political support of the worst kind of Islamic fanatics across the most sensitive regions of the world. We have the Orwellian vision writ large of the bourgeoisie actively promoting the very forces of destruction that we are supposed to be at war with.
The famous film, or rather the clip of it, debasing the prophet Mohamed, has been used by all sides. It's been used by local religious and political leaders to shore up their support base by mobilising demonstrations and in one case a Pakistani minister offered a bounty on the film-makers' head. Over twenty people were killed in Pakistan in demonstrations against the film and the perceived insult. It isn't too difficult to raise a demonstration against the US in Pakistan given the pounding the country is receiving from the US military[1]. On the other hand, in the west, the issue around the film (or its trailer) has been turned into one of the defence of “our way of life”, “freedom” and “defence of free speech” with Salman Rushdie and various other artistic personalities wheeled out to testify in favour of democracy.
There is another, growing, factor of the decomposition of capitalism here that the ICC has long analysed: the historic weakening of US imperialism following the collapse of its Russian adversary and the appearance of the “New World Order” of 1990. The centrifugal tendencies of an imperialist free-for-all are increasing as are the challenges posed to US domination. Relations between the US and Israel are growing ever more estranged and bitter, and with a US ally like Pakistan who needs enemies? Despite their apparent rapprochement, there are tensions between the US and Turkey and its role in the region. The governments, such as they are, of Iraq and Afghanistan tend to go their own way and despite a $1.2 billion “grant” to it every year, a week ago Obama refused to describe Egypt as an “ally”. And despite enormous, sustained, high-level diplomatic efforts, the USA's “Asia/Pacific Vision” is already being seriously undermined by the actions of Chinese imperialism. As the “triumph of the liberation of Libya” turns rancid, it offers one more example of the weakening of US imperialism and its British and French allies – for now - and a further twist down in the spiral of imperialist chaos, instability and war.
Baboon. 25/ 9/12
[1]There was a report out yesterday from Stanford and New York Universities that US drone attacks on the Pakistani tribal areas have a “militant kill rate” of just 2% and the latest wheeze is to send in another Hellfire missile some time after the first attack. This was originally a terrorist tactic to get the rescuers, emergency services, relatives and concerned passers-by. These are a real weapon of terror beyond the scale of the Nazi V-I rockets. They are visible in the air all day and can be heard all night. Any gathering, wedding, party, whatever, is a potential target. This is another example of the Obama administration going beyond the Neocon's wildest dreams. The British currently have an advertisement running on TV for the air force telling the lie that there are no civilian casualties. Otherwise the British military and media remain very quiet about the increasing number of British drone attacks.
On 15 September, 700,000people hit the streets of Lisbon and 30 other towns and cities in Portugal to demonstrate against the austerity policies of the new government of Pedro Coelho. The 7% increase in the TSU – Single Social Tax – for the workers, together with a 5.75% reduction in the contributions of the bosses, was behind this spontaneous outbreak of anger which outflanked the official unions. The demonstration had been organised largely through social networks. Faced with the massive scale of these demonstrations, the government temporarily appeared to retreat. But there should be no illusions: this will only be to come back more effectively tomorrow with the same measures, and more besides, with the assistance of unions like the CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers), who next time will be better placed to occupy the terrain, as they have been doing for more than a year, and make their own contribution to getting the austerity measures through. The CGTP reacted fast to regain control of the movement. It immediately called for a new demonstration policed by its own stewards and under its own slogans for the 29 September...a demonstration which was much less well attended.
In Greece, following the third general strike called by the unions, the Pame union in particular, there were new demonstrations on 26 September in Salonica and Athens, drawing over 30,000 workers. The anger was such that we once again saw new violent clashes with the police, including between striking policemen and other forces of order!
In Spain, tens of thousands of demonstrators came to express their rage on 25 September in front of a parliament protected by 2000 police officers. There were outbreaks of wild police violence “like in the days of Franco” according to many witnesses. 5 days later, on 29 September, parliament was again surrounded.
In Italy, 30,000 civil servants were on the streets of Rome on 28 September to protest against a new series of austerity measures dealing with pensions and “re-grading”.
In short, the last week of September has seen rising anger in a number of European countries in response to the brutality of the attacks and the endless succession of austerity plans.
The governments as well as the opposition parties and unions pin responsibility for these measures on the ‘Troika’ composed of the EU, the Central European Bank and the IMF. All these people want us to believe that the problem of the crisis can be solved country by country and try to fill our heads with the illusion that the whole world is not in the same boat, that some countries can avoid the worst, can get their economy going again if they make the necessary effort. The reporting on the economic situation of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) has the aim of reinforcing the false idea that things aren’t so bad in Britain or France, who are in fact carrying out the same kinds of attacks on our living and working conditions. And this is the lot of the working class all over the world: increasing exploitation, a growing battle to survive, and the whip of repression if we revolt.
The bourgeoisie does all it can to prevent us becoming aware that workers are under attack everywhere, to block the development of an understanding that we belong to one international class. This is why the media say very little about movements of resistance against austerity, unless they become too big to hide. And then they focus our attention on scary images of violence or on this or that weakness of the movement. And this is why it’s all the more important for us, the exploited, to look beyond the frontiers, to discuss these experiences, these present and past struggles, and draw the lessons for the struggles that lie ahead.
There is no way out of this crisis. This has to be clear and unambiguous. Although everyone wants a brighter economic future, this capitalist system can offer us only poverty and misery. For 30 years now they have been telling us that things will be better tomorrow, if only we agree to sacrifices today. But then every sacrifice just opens the door to the next one, which is even worse! It’s not simply a matter of the bad intentions of the bosses or the state. It’s the inexorable plunge into bankruptcy which imposes this implacable logic on the entire system[1].
Despite the growing anger, expressed by increasingly regular confrontations with the police, the official ‘days of action’ have proved to be useless. For decades we have seen that this kind of ‘action’ serves as a means of sterilising and containing the class struggle, lining us up behind union banners, dividing us up into different sectors, trapping us between police lines and union loudspeakers which prevent any real discussion.
The working class more or less knows this, but if it doesn’t affirm consciously and massively a clear understanding that it has to take charge of its own struggles, put forward its own demands, any advances in the movement will come to nothing.
Here the example of Spain is very striking. Last year, the movement of the Indignados was a real and powerful demonstration of the will of the population and of the working class to come together in a collective way, outside the trade unions, to look for and discuss the way to fight against the attacks and express disgust with the miserable conditions being imposed by the Spanish state. The most significant aspect was the creation of spaces for discussion in the street through a whole number of general assemblies, open to everyone, and to all the struggles being waged across the world. In Spain, when a worker from ‘abroad’ took the mic to bring his/her solidarity to the movement and sometimes to describe what was happening in the country they were from, the sympathy was immediate and palpable, the welcome warm and enthusiastic. At that point few national or regional flags were in sight and those who wanted to limit the struggle to the demand for regional independence were not especially welcome; in any case their speeches were not widely supported. And the Indignados movement did not stay locked up inside the borders of Spain. It had children in many countries from Israel to the USA and the UK with the Occupy movement.
The bourgeoisie itself is well aware of the potential danger in the ripening of such preposterous ideas in the minds of the exploited: from its point of view, it’s never a good thing for feelings of solidarity to be born in the course of workers’ struggles, above all when this happens on an international scale. We are now seeing a counter-offensive by the bourgeoisie, aimed at instilling the poison of nationalism and regionalism in the whole working class. Thus during the day of action on 15 September, the ‘social summit’ (CO, UGT[2] and 200 other platforms) was called in Madrid under the slogan “we mustn’t let them steal the country from us”. On 25 September an umbrella of organisations made up of a whole series of groups, from the classical left of capital like the CP to the decomposed remnants of the 15M movement, organised an action to protest “against the sequestration of national sovereignty by the markets” in front of the Chamber of Deputies. All this ended in confrontations with the cops (in which provocations by shady elements was obvious). The day after that, the most radical trade unions (in other words, the CGT and the CNT[3]) called, alongside nationalist unions like ELA, LAB, etc[4], for another general strike in certain parts of the state, and in others a day of struggle. In other words, calling on workers to struggle behind nationalist interests, which are not theirs. The real and serious danger of this kind of recuperation was underlined by the fact that on 15 September we had seen a million people taking part in a Catalan nationalist demonstration.
What was most promising about the Indignados movement and the discussions that took place within it was the hope for a different world. This hope, this self-confidence that the working class needs to develop, are powerful levers to breaking out of the traps set by a desperate bourgeoisie. This will make it possible to go beyond methods which can only end in demoralisation.
This will not come about through the touch of a magic wand but through a profound understanding that the only perspective for humanity is the one offered by a working class that is united internationally and heading towards the overthrow of this decaying social order. The gravity of the crisis brings with it a huge amount of anger, but it also has a terrifying aspect: it makes it clear that it’s not a question of beating this or that boss, kicking out this or that minister, but of a radical change in the system, of struggling for the liberation of the whole of humanity from the chains of exploitation.
Are we capable of doing that? Can we, the working class, carry out such a task? How could it come about? Given that capitalism can offer us nothing but mounting barbarism, all these questions are being raised in our minds, whether consciously or not. The proletariat does have the ability to unite, to make solidarity something real, but the path is never an even one, as Karl Marx noted in the early years of the workers’ movement:
“proletarian revolutions....constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
- Here is the rose, here dance!”
Wilma 28/9/12
[1] Under the heading, ‘could you tell a bigger lie?’, we have to put the last editorial of the ‘revolutionary’ paper Lutte Ouvrière, which explains that there is no crisis, it’s all down to the bosses lining their pockets.....
[2] The CO (Workers’ Commisions) and the UGT (General Union of Workers) are the majority unions in Spain. The first is linked to the Communist Party, the second to the Socialists
[3] The CGT in Spain is an anarchist union, a split from the historical anarchist union, the CNT
[4] ELA and LAB are two Basque nationalist unions: the first one is ‘moderate’ (originally created to counter the ‘marxist and anarchist’ unions; the second is part of the abertzale (patriotic) left.
The film that appeared on Youtube on September 11, The Innocence of Muslims, is by all accounts a very poor and extremely stupid one, the product of a small-time Californian fraudster who claims to be a Coptic Christian. But for two weeks it was at the centre of the world’s attention. This denunciation of the prophet Mohammed and his followers, presented, among other caricatures, as immoral, brutal paedophiles, has provoked reactions throughout the Muslim world. Angry demonstrations have led to confrontations and violence aimed mainly at the USA, including the murder of the US ambassador to Libya.
These mobilisations, led by Salafist radicals, have been given a lot of coverage in the western media. But we are talking about a maximum of some tens of thousands of protesters scattered over a number of countries from Tunisia to Pakistan via Yemen. This isn’t really a lot when you consider that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Arab countries alone, not counting the millions of Muslims who live in Europe or America.
It’s not a question of minimising the violence which took place, but these events have been deliberately played up to fuel the idea of the ‘Muslim danger’. In Germany Angela Merkal expressed her “great disquiet”, while in France Manuel Valls was shaken by “threat to the Republic” contained in the tiny demonstration at the Élysée which took place “without official permission”. In the US, we heard Hilary Clinton declare that “the Arab countries did not swap the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of the crowd”, referring to the “Arab revolutions” of spring 2011. And then we had the Pope calling for the eradication of fundamentalism (Muslim, obviously)!
In this concert of concern by the politicians, a few commentators did point out the evident ideological manipulation going on here, on both sides:
It’s clear that there was an escalation on both sides at a time when new military interventions and massacres are on the horizon. These kind of campaigns serve to prepare the ground on the ideological level.
The ruling class and all its fractions, whatever their religion, will use events like this to divide and intimidate the exploited. But above all, for all their hypocritical appeals for calm and reason, their aim is to justify new steps towards the barbarism of war.
Mulan 28/9/12
[1] We should reflect on the fact that this video was up for two days on Youtube, a branch of Google, whose charter says that “we will not authorise speech inciting hatred or which attacks or slanders a group on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, handicap, sex, age, veteran status or sexual identity”
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
capitalism_has_no_future-leaflet.pdf [531] | 51.11 KB |
According to the TUC’s pamphlet ‘A future that works’, to the Labour party, to François Hollande in France, to the whole ‘left’, the present economic crisis is the fault of the bankers and need never have happened; but then again, getting into debt isn’t as bad as all that and by using a bit more of it we can grow the economy out of the recession.
We want to argue against all these ideas, not from a conservative point of view, but from a revolutionary one.
According to the TUC, the answer to the present recession and the accompanying austerity is to go for economic growth.
But ‘growth’ in this society (by which we mean the whole world economy, not just Britain) can only mean the accumulation of capital, the hunt for profit. And it is this growth which is at the root of the crisis.
Capitalism’s crisis is the product of its own contradictions, which would still be there even if there were no bonuses for the bankers and all the billionaires paid their taxes.
The TUC also talks about investing in a ‘green economy’, but a capitalist economy can never be green. Remorseless rivalry between companies and countries means that if you don’t go for all out growth, you get destroyed by the competition.
As for the idea that “there’s nothing dangerous” about countries being in debt, this not only plays down the astronomical, impossible to repay levels of debt weighing on the world economy, but ignores the fact that for several decades now, capitalism has been injecting itself with debt to keep itself from collapsing altogether. What happened in 2008 was just the point where the medicine of debt turned poisonous from over-dosing.
Capitalism has actually reached a historic dead-end. If it goes for ruthless austerity, it further restricts the market and makes the recession worse. That much in the TUC pamphlet is true. But if it follows the lead of Obama and the ‘left’, and tries to pay its way out of the crisis by printing money and racking up even more debt, it will pave the way to even bigger credit crunches while generating huge pressures towards runaway inflation.
If by some miracle capitalism was able to start ‘growing’ again it would pose an even greater threat to the natural environment which sustains our very existence. And increasing capitalist competition not only pollutes the planet, it accelerates the drive to war between capitalist factions and nations.
Wherever it turns, capitalism is faced with crisis and self-destruction. And whether the management team is ‘right’ or ‘left’, the system can only protect its dwindling profits by attacking the living standards of those who actually create wealth – the working class – through unemployment, precarious work, wage freezes, cuts in pensions and social benefits, the deterioration of housing, and all the rest of it.
Almost a hundred years ago, when they were faced with the choice between supporting the capitalist world war and defending the interests of the workers, the Labour Parties and TUC’s of the world chose the side of capitalism and war. When the working class in Russia, Germany and elsewhere tried to make a revolution against this barbarism, the Labour Parties and the TUC’s of this world chose the side of the counter-revolution. They have remained on that side ever since, and that is why we cannot look to them for honest answers to the present crisis of the system.
Faced with the austerity policies of the ruling class, the working class needs to respond. It can’t just lie low and hope the storm will pass. But to respond effectively we can’t use the old, outworn institutions that pose as our friends but in reality keep our enemies alive. We need forms of organisation that can unite us across divisions of job and union, where we can debate about the best methods of fighting and the overall goals of our fight; where we can make and enforce decisions, where we can exert our real power. The movement of the ‘Indignados’ in Spain or similar revolts in Greece and the Middle East have given us a glimpse of what happens when thousands of the exploited – students, unemployed, precarious workers - assemble on the streets, seek to take control of social life, and recognise that they are part of a world-wide struggle. But these kinds of movements can only move onto a new level if the employed working class adds its decisive weight by taking up the challenges they posed: self-organisation in assemblies; extension of resistance across all national borders; a struggle not just against this or that aspect of capitalism, but against capitalism as a system, against wage labour and production for profit.
Revolution will be dismissed by the ‘realistic’ politicians of the left as a utopia. But the utopians are those who think that capitalism can be saved, reformed, or improved. Revolution is not only possible: it’s a necessity if humanity is to have any future at all.
International Communist Current
Write to us: [email protected] [532] or BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX
Visit our website and discuss with us on our online forum: www.internationalism.org [312]
This article is available as a leaflet here [531] to download and distribute. If you wish to help us distribute it during the TUC rally on October 20th in London then please get in touch via email [533].
We are publishing below the translation of an article written by Internacialismo, our section in Venezuela, which was written before the election result was announced.
The presidential elections of 7 October in Venezuela represent a moment of heightened tension between bourgeois factions: the ‘Chavistas’ and the opposition parties. The latter, grouped together in the Platform of Democratic Unity have chosen Henrique Capriles as their candidate, while the official power is counting on its perpetual candidate, Hugo Chavez, who disposes of his party apparatus and hundreds of millions of bolivars1, to win votes, mainly among the working masses, who have been ground down since the arrival of the Chavista regime and before that by thirty years of political confrontations.
The rise of Chavez was the product of the decomposition of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, in particular the political forces which governed the country prior to his coming to power in 1999. Because of his strong popularity, various sectors of capital supported him, with the aim of struggling against very high levels of corruption, of re-establishing the credibility of official institutions and above all of the government. In other words, of improving the system of oppression and exploitation in the interests of the nation and thus of the bourgeoisie. The opposition forces, though weakened, quickly entered into a trial of strength with the regime, most notably at the time of the coup d’Etat in 20022 and the blockade of oil production at the end of the same year. This proved fruitless in the end and merely reinforced the power of Chavez, who was re-elected in 2006.
After more than a decade of Chavismo, the crisis has pushed the different factions of the bourgeoisie into dispute over the central state power. The opposition forces are benefiting from the regime’s loss of popularity, which can be traced to two main causes;
the growing decomposition of the Chavista regime, which we characterised in a previous article in Internacialismo: “New civil and military elites have been formed and divided up the posts at the top of the state bureaucracy. They have failed in their aim of overcoming the problems accumulated by previous governments since they are much more concerned with their personal interests and with dividing up the booty from the oil industry, resulting in an exponential growth in corruption and a progressive abandonment of serious state management. This situation, intensified by the megalomania of the Chavez regime which has the ambition of extending the “Bolivarian revolution” to the whole of Latin America, has little by little emptied the state coffers. It has also exacerbated the political and social antagonisms which have raised the inability to govern to a level even worse than it was in the 90s”.
the intensification of the crisis of capitalism in 2007 acted against the aspirations of the Chavez regime to develop its project of “21st century socialism”. Although Chavez, like other governments, declared that the Venezuelan economy was “armour-plated”, in reality the world crisis of capitalism has shown up the historic fragility of the national economy: it is utterly dependent on the price of oil. To this can be added the fact that the regime’s populist schemes have been made possible by attacks on wages and the reduction or suppression of ‘gains’ like the collective agreements which Chavismo has got rid of, referring to them as ‘tips’ for the workers.
The strategy of the opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, based on daily ‘house to house’ tours trough the towns and villages of the country, is to exploit the failures of Chavismo and widespread feelings of social abandonment. According to the opinion polls there has been a sharp rise in his popularity. His tactic is to propose social, populist programmes similar to those of Chavismo, while avoiding direct confrontation, and it has brought results. Hugo Chavez, on the other hand, has put a lot of emphasis on the (pseudo-)success of his projects towards the poor and on his quality as the “guardian or order” against the anarchy threatening Venezuelan capital as a whole.
Despite all its weaknesses (losing control of provincial governments, conflicts of interests in its own ranks, the illness of Chavez, etc) Chavismo does not intend to abandon power and in the last few month has not neglected any details in areas where the opposition might draw an advantage: it has introduced obligatory membership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (the Chavista party) for public sector employees; placed obstacles against votes from abroad, especially from Miami and Spain; neutralised the parties which support the opposition (PODEMOS, PPT, COPEI) through convictions pronounced by the supreme court, etc. To which can be added the control exercised over the media and the means of communication which gives Chavez a decisive advantage at the level of election propaganda.
Chavez has also elaborated other strategies aimed at helping him win. He as already announced that the opposition has a plan for denouncing electoral fraud. To carry through this strategy, he is relying as always on the state power and especially the army, which has abandoned its status as “professional force at the service of the nation, non-decision making and apolitical” in favour of being “a patriotic, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and Chavista force”. We can understand from this what lies behind the frequent threats made by Chavez and his entourage against opponents.
The party in power also accuses the opposition of refusing to recognise the results that are due to be announced by the National Electoral Council (NEC): this is why the government is issuing an alert to prevent opponents from agitating the population when the NEC announces the triumph of Chavez. For its part, the opposition has explained that it can’t give a blank cheque to the NEC, which is both judge and participant, and which has issued sanctions against the opposition without criticising the government’s manipulation of the rules. To sum up: this is simply a confrontation between bourgeois parties in which each clan is using the tricks typical of that class to boost its bid for power.
The Venezuelan proletariat has to stay on its guard and not become the victim of this ‘final battle’ between the forces of national capital, who are trying to mobilise it behind their power struggles.
Chavismo has some very powerful ideological weapons for mobilising the “poor” and the “excluded” who still hope that Chavez will keep to his promises, especially those about the “Missions”, which are in theory directed “against the predatory bourgeoisie, who want to go back to the past”. But Chavez is also preparing for an armed confrontation if that proves necessary. He knows he can count on the Bolivarian militia and on the shock troops constituted in various “collectives”, both in Caracas and in the interior of the country, and which are armed by the state.
The opposition forces, for their part, although they don’t have a public strategy in case there is a show of strength, won’t stand with folded arms. They include traditional parties like the social democratic Democratic Action, which has decades of experience in the organisation of armed “collectives”. In the ranks of the opposition, there are also organisations of the left who supported Chavismo in the beginning and are well acquainted with its methods of confrontation.
The workers must be aware that it is impossible to fight against precarious work and exploitation by changing the government. The crisis of capitalism will remain and deepen whoever wins, Chavez or Capriles. Both will bring in austerity programmes.
We must not fall into the ideological trap being dug by those who claim that this election is about ‘communism vs democracy’ or ‘the people against the bourgeoisie’. Chavez and Capriles both defend state capitalist programmes that can only be based on the exploitation of the Venezuelan proletariat.
The electoral dispute is just a moment in the confrontation between different factions of national capital. The proletariat must refuse to let itself be pulled into the conflicts between bourgeois gangs. It has to break with democratic ideology, draw the lessons from its own struggles, continue its efforts to rediscover its class identity, its unity and solidarity.
Revolucion Mundial, October 2012.
1 The local currency
2 Between 11 and 13 April 2002 the coup, led by Pedro Carmona, vainly tried to dislodge Chavez from power
The article we are publishing below appeared in Acción Proletaria, the paper of the section of the ICC in Spain.
In September 2011, the education sector workers in Madrid reacted to 3000 layoffs and the lengthening of the working day with mass general assemblies that united teachers, students and all the workers in the education sector. The five unions in the field of education did their best to stifle the initiative and to control the struggle. What was the outcome? The mass assemblies were replaced with "inquiries" and with meetings of union committees, keeping the teachers isolated, and successive demonstrations got progressively smaller. In the end, the struggle was terminated and the measures of the regional government eventually prevailed.
In February 2012, the students of Valencia, who had experienced brutal repression, went out onto the streets each day and called for workers' solidarity. This movement spread across Spain and the central government had to withdraw its repressive measures. The unions were quick to take control of the struggle against repression and against reform of the Labour Code. They organised a one-day "general strike"- to let off steam – for March 29th, which was a huge con. Deceiving many workers, they promised new mobilisations. They limited themselves to calling for demonstrations at the end of April and on May 1st. The result: the state introduced the reform of the Labour Code with all its dramatic consequences.
On July 11th, the government of Rajoy adopted the worst austerity program for over fifty years. The unions remained silent. But on the same day spontaneous demonstrations broke out, especially in Madrid. After this, the unions "woke up" and offered their "loyal services": they called for demonstrations across Spain on July 19th. But in view of the support and the rage inside the population, the unions - once again - postponed the action to a later date, and as far away as possible: a march on Madrid for September 15th, a referendum for October, a new one-day "general strike" scheduled for who knows when. This amounted to throwing a bucket of cold water over the struggle and the workers' anger!
A few days after the (postponed?) demonstration on July 19th, we learned that the leaders of the CCOO and the UGT had met Mrs Merkel in early July. This visit was combined with another one to the Moncloa Palace to discuss with Rajoy. We are left in no doubt about the purpose of these secret meetings: Merkel, the Spanish government and the unions in all probability agreed on a strategy against the workers.
And, before the March 29th strike, Rajoy had met separately with each union leader. The Vice-President of the Government even acknowledged holding 33 "technical meetings" between government representatives and the unions!
This is nothing new. Throughout history, many blows have been struck against workers through secret meetings between its enemies (governments) and its false friends (the unions and left parties). In 1980-81 when Poland was hit by a massive strike, at the time of the supposedly "Communist" regime, the trade union Solidarity gradually demobilised the workers to make the coup de grace possible: the martial law declared by General Jaruselski, the then Head of State, on December 13th 1981. However, two days before the coup, a secret meeting was held between the general, the Cardinal Primate of Poland and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa![1] You don't have to be especially clairvoyant to see that this cabal prepared the repression, sending hundreds of workers to their deaths and thousands of others to prison, with the army flooding the mines with the miners trapped inside!
We know perfectly well what the governments and employers do. Nobody has any illusions where they are concerned. They don't even attempt to hide their desire to impose the worst sacrifices on workers. But what do the unions do? What is their role?
A first task of trade unions is to organise mobilisations which, in reality, only demobilise and divide workers. The "struggles" led by the CCOO and UGT only serve to dampen their spirits. The union appeals are systematically inopportune: when people are eager to struggle, the unions demobilise and make no appeals, whereas when people are tired and disoriented, they want to step up the "militant activity". Many people are sick of the posturing with the "general strike days", the "protest marches", the isolated struggles confined to one particular sector or to one particular company.
This is the problem that the miners' strike had to face. The miners were trapped in a struggle to "save the nation's mines". All the combativity and all the anger were channelled into sterile confrontations with the police to block the rail lines or highways. However, on July 11th during the miners' march on Madrid, many workers in the capital joined the demonstration in solidarity and entered the struggle on their own account. The unions then hastily sent the miners back to where they had come from, cancelled the appeals for support and promised some future mobilisations but on dates far into the future.
The unions called for the demonstration on July 19th with the slogan: "They want the country to fail!" They say that Merkel wants to see Spain suffer and the Rajoy government behaves like a willing servant. The aim of the struggle should be to "save the country" from Merkel and Rajoy.
Machiavelli, the philosopher who inspired governments of successive generations since the sixteenth century, said that a good statesman should make the state appear to defend its subjects. One of the best lies the exploiting minority uses to establish its domination is the assertion that the nation belongs to all of us, that the exploiters and the exploited are part of a community that share a common interest and a common bond. This "common interest" is the disguise for the specific and selfish interests of the capitalists.
What is the nation? The nation is the private property of a group of capitalists who conduct their operations from within a country. Defending the nation means defending private property. In other words, we, the workers, set aside our own interests and the future of all mankind to serve as pawns of the capitalists, and sometimes as cannon fodder in their wars against other capitalist states.
Rajoy continues repeating the claim that the austerity measures are being taken "for the good of all Spaniards." Each time, fewer people believe this lie. So, how is it possible to further credit the mystification that the national interest is "everyone's interest"? This is where unions play their part by deflecting the workers towards inter-classist demands, alongside the police, the "honest" politicians, the business leaders, the "entrepreneurs", etc.., demands which are based on saving the country.
Struggling in defence of the national interest is the best way to submit to austerity, layoffs, unemployment, evictions, and what is the ultimate sacrifice, war.
Just as they bind us to the national capital, the unions divide us from and oppose us to workers the world over, the only people on whom we can rely, the only people with whom we can forge a united front and solidarity against capital with a view to creating a new society, free of classes, states and national borders, a global human community.
Before the budgetary cuts, the unions proposed an alternative: a referendum on the Rajoy government. They argued that Rajoy has committed a fraud on the voters, he was elected on one programme and once in government, he adopted another. They are right, but this is what all governments do, not just Spain's, but in every country of the world! Elections are always a fraud because all parties promise things and are quick to do the opposite when they are in power. When they are in opposition, they claim they will do what nobody else will do, and when they are in government, they do what nobody else says they would do. This is the essence of the democratic state: the party that wins continues the work of its predecessor, just as the one that succeeds it will do too... And the alternative offered by the unions is a referendum to topple Rajoy for the fraud of the new government and for a new fraud! That would mean we are drawn into a permanent fraud! How can we break this endless chain of fraud?
Firstly we should break with the union proposal and refuse to participate in the referendum and in elections. The vote is always a trap and always a con. It is based on a supposed “free vote" exercised by a sum of supposed sovereign citizens. But it is a deception! Because we are subjected to alienating and atomising living conditions that put us in competition with one another; because we suffer from the intoxicating daily media and propaganda that condition our thinking; because the dominant ideology produces conflicts amongst us, which mean fighting for the interests of a minority instead of struggling for our own interests. Under such conditions, there is no other choice but to elect those that capital and the state have chosen for us. The vote given to one party or another will, no matter who is elected, only serve the needs of capital.
Also, voting only consists in delegating the management of our affairs to a minority of professional politicians and union leaders who are given a blank check to "defend us", when what they always do - and it can't be otherwise - is to defend the interests of capital and the state.
By setting the referendum as the goal of the struggle, the unions divide us and sabotage what would be the source of a solution to the serious problems facing workers and humanity: the general assemblies and the united, direct and massive struggle. These assemblies rely on the strength that comes from association: building unity on the basis of solidarity and empathy so that everyone can give the best of themselves for a common goal, debating, taking joint decisions and taking responsibility for all those decisions. The alternatives are clear: the struggle inside the unions, with its demobilisation and its traps, or the autonomous struggle of the exploited class.
Acción Proletaria, 31/08/12.
[1] We should also point out that Mr Walesa eventually went from being boss of the union to head of state in the 1990s.
Over the last several months, the bourgeois media has been in an uproar over the efforts of a number of Republican controlled state governments to restrict access to the ballot box in this November’s Presidential election. According to many analysts, there appears to be an orchestrated campaign by the national Republican Party to use Republican controlled state governments to impose new legal requirements for voting. Typically, this has involved passage of a new “Photo ID” law, which—under the guise of preventing voter fraud—requires voters to produce a state approved photo identification in order to cast a vote. Other tactics involve using federal government immigration records to purge the voter rolls of suspected non-citizens (Florida) or passing confusing restrictions on early voting (Ohio).
Many of these laws have been passed in staunchly conservative states such as Texas and Georgia (states that Republican Mitt Romney would almost certainly win anyway), but what seems to concern the main factions of the bourgeoisie is that these laws, and other tactics, are also being put into place in many of the “swing states” that will ultimately decide the Presidential election in November. Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida have all been in the headlines recently over the efforts of Republican controlled state governments to implement various measures to “suppress the vote.” According to the analysis, the Republicans are out to make it much more difficult for traditionally Democratic constituencies to have their votes counted. The photo identification requirements would almost certainly impact the poor, minorities, and the young (particularly students attending college out-of-state) the most—groups that tend to vote for Democrats. One Republican legislator in Pennsylvania is even on record as saying that the new photo identification law is what is going to allow Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania and become the next President of the United States. [1]
For their part, the main factions of the bourgeoisie (centered in the Democratic Party)[2] have counterattacked against these Republican tactics with a concerted campaign around defending the right to vote, protecting the foundations of American democracy and preventing the Republicans from “stealing the election.” According to this narrative, many of these new voting restrictions, in particular the requirement to produce a photo ID, which can be very costly to procure for lower income voters, amounts to a “poll tax” reminiscent of efforts by racist authorities to prevent African Americans from voting in the pre-civil rights era South.
So, how should revolutionaries interpret these events? The ICC has long argued that voting in bourgeois elections is a complete distraction for the working class that ties it to the bourgeois state and prevents it from finding its own class terrain. We have often maintained that, under the conditions of state capitalism, bourgeois elections are mere moments through which the state manages society by keeping up the appearance of democracy, an illusion that keeps the working class from searching out its own answers for the burning problems that plague humanity. Bourgeois elections tend to be decided well in advance of Election Day, mainly through well–coordinated media campaigns that tend to bring the consensus candidate of the main factions of the bourgeoisie to power. While sometimes mistakes can happen (such as the fiasco of the 2000 Presidential Election), and sometimes election campaigns have been used to decide real differences within the bourgeoisie, under the conditions of state capitalism they tend to be mostly managed events that the working class would do best to avoid. [3]
So what about this current furor over “voter suppression”? What exactly is happening here? Is this a mere ideological campaign to try to reinforce the importance of participating in the “democratic process” among the working class or is there something deeper taking place that reflects a significant level of difficulty on the level of the cohesion of the US state? Do these events call into question the way revolutionaries have conceptualized bourgeois elections in the period of state capitalism?
The Growing Political Crisis of the US Bourgeoisie
First, in order to understand the nature of these voter suppression efforts, we need to review some of the main developments in the life of the bourgeoisie over the last 12 years (since the Bush-Gore election fiasco of 2000). While we cannot get into depth of detail here, it would be useful to review some of the main features of this period:
· The 2000 election was a total disaster for the US bourgeoisie. The consensus candidate of the main factions of the bourgeoisie, Al Gore, lost the election in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote. This brought the clumsy, inarticulate and mostly incompetent George Bush into office, while it also called the democratic process itself into question among a significant percentage of the population. While Bush did not necessarily represent the right wing of the Republican Party, his cavalier style and lack of diplomatic skill would soon become a major problem for US imperialist relations. [4]
· In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration launched the very unpopular invasion of Iraq, sparking major civil war in that country, bogging down the U.S. military in what many believed was an unnecessary war and completely alienating foreign governments and international public opinion.
· In the 2004 Presidential election, the main factions of the US bourgeoisie, despite the need for a major course correction, failed to unite behind John Kerry with enough time and resources to allow him to win the Presidency. Bush was thus reelected. Nevertheless, allegations of Republican “voter suppression” first came to the surface in this election with reports of poor and minority voters being forced to wait in line for hours to cast their votes in Ohio.
· Bush’s second term was characterized by continued chaos in Iraq and the completely botched response to Hurricane Katrina that saw a major US city completely devastated. In the 2006 mid-term elections, under a major media campaign around “changing the course”, the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress, with the intention of acting as a counterweight to a rapidly deteriorating Bush administration.
· As the 2008 Presidential election approached, the main factions of the bourgeoisie united around Barack Obama—a candidate with “rock-star” appeal—who it was thought could reignite the population’s enthusiasm for democracy after eight disastrous years under Bush. After a tough primary campaign against Hillary Clinton[5], Obama surged to the Presidency, just as the global economy entered the worst crisis in its history since the Great Depression.
· Although the Obama election provided a major boost to the Democratic illusion, over the course of his first term he has faced trenchant opposition to his policies from an increasingly belligerent and aggressive Republican Party, which after 2010 controlled the House of Representatives. In the 2010 mid-term elections, the Republicans road the Tea Party wave to power in Congress, but just as importantly, it won the governorship and control of state legislatures in a number of states that are considered toss-ups in Presidential elections.
· Since the 2010 mid-term elections, Obama has faced increased opposition to his agenda, including a strenuous legal campaign to have his signature health care reform legislation thrown out by the courts. Although Obama would ultimately prevail on this score in the Supreme Court, the Republican Party continues to vow to repeal it at the first opportunity.
This context suggests that the current furor over voter suppression is not simply an ideological campaign to reinforce the democratic illusion. It may have that effect, but the main factions of the bourgeoisie, who are now united behind Obama’s reelection, really do fear that Republican voter suppression tactics could ultimately throw the election to Mitt Romney. In a close election, in which the country is already mostly divided up into ideological camps, the success of this or that party ultimately lies in voter turnout. In high turnout elections, the Democrats will have an advantage (Obama’s victory in 2008), while a low turnout election will favor the Republicans (the Tea Party wave of the 2010 mid-terms). Although the key to the election is now voter turnout, this only makes the fight over the dwindling number of persuadable voters that much more intense.
Under the conditions of state capitalism, in which the state has tended to structure the political life of the bourgeoisie into more or less stable and predictable structures, it could be expected that getting the “wrong result” in an election probably would not have been a total disaster for the bourgeoisie. Both candidates would have been carefully vetted to prevent this and each party could be more or less trusted to pursue a broad general program that worked in the overall interests of the national capital as a whole. However, since the 2000 election, the US bourgeoisie is finding that this is less and less the case. While Bush’s incompetence may have been more of a personal flaw than a reflection of an overall crisis of the political system, today the US bourgeoisie is more and more finding out that the structures of its state, and most importantly its electoral process, no longer function as they used to.
Over the last decade and a half, the forces of social decomposition—which emanate from the inability of the bourgeoisie to find a solution to the economic crisis which dogs its system—have begun to work their effects on the bourgeoisie’s own political structures. In the United States, this has mostly been manifested as an ideological decline of the ruling class. While no faction of the bourgeoisie has been immune to this process, it has disproportionately affected the Republican Party to the point where it has been mostly taken over by its Tea Party right wing.
More and more, the Republican Party is becoming unable to function as a credible party of bourgeois government. Increasingly, it puts its own confused ideology ahead of attempting to solve the burning problems facing the entire national capital in a rational way. It is for this reason that the main factions of the ruling class have united behind Obama’s re-election. While Mitt Romney may not be a feverous right-wing ideologue on the order of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, in order to win the Republican primary he had to move dramatically to the right and openly embrace some of the more extreme elements of Tea Party ideology. While this may not be who Romney is on a personal level, for the main factions of the bourgeoisie it is clear that he simply cannot be trusted. At this point, there is no telling what a President Romney, faced with a Congress beholden to the Tea Party, that would expect to get its way, might be compelled to do. Would he repeal Obamacare? Would he fail to address the need for comprehensive immigration reform? Would his campaign clumsiness on foreign policy issues carry over into office? Would he be forced to implement some of the more extreme attacks to Medicare and Social Security, as advanced by his Vice Presidential running mate Paul Ryan, too quickly? For the main factions of the bourgeoisie, there are just too many questions about what a possible Romney Presidency would mean to comfortably support his candidacy.
The Structure of the US State and the Crisis of State Capitalism
Whatever the preference of the main factions of the bourgeoisie for a second Obama term, they are growing increasingly concerned that their efforts to bring this about may actually come to naught. Although Romney has, so far, proven himself to be something less than a blockbuster candidate, making one mistake after another on the campaign trail—something which the bourgeois media has relished in documenting—there is a growing realization that a concerted media campaign may no longer be enough to determine the outcome of a Presidential election.[6]
Today, when it comes to manipulating the outcome of Presidential elections, the American bourgeoisie is being haunted by two key developments:
· The ideological decay of a significant part of the ruling class (particularly the Republican Party), which correlates with the ideological hardening of society in general. More and more, American society is divided into two ideological-political blocs, each counting for slightly less than half of the voting population. Increasingly, society is divided into two opposed cultural narratives, between which little rational discourse and exchange is possible. As a result, politics degenerates more and more into a pure power contest. There are so few voters left that are “persuadable,” that each side engages in a increasingly fierce contest over the few remaining “undecideds” in which fewer and fewer tactics are ruled out.
· In the context of these ideological developments, the federal structure of the US state is now making it more and more difficult for the main factions of the bourgeoisie to dominate politics and set the agenda for the entire nation. State and local politicians are becoming increasingly emboldened in challenging federal authority, leading to an increasingly chaotic situation in which state and local officials can actually impact national politics.[7] In a situation in which the country is so closely divided, the most important figure in the Presidential election may not be President Obama or Mitt Romney, but the Secretary of State of Ohio—in whose hands rests the administration of the electoral process in his state.
It is in this context that the trend towards voter suppression in Republican controlled swing states has the main factions of the bourgeoisie so concerned. If these laws are enacted, it could exclude enough Democratic leaning voters to actually throw the election to the Romney against the preferences of the more rational elements of the ruling class. However, more and more they are beginning to realize that the structures of the US state they have inherited from the late 18th century mean that there may be little they can do about it. The Presidential election may be to decide the leader of the world’s last remaining super power, but the elections themselves are run by state and local officials. In the past, when the main factions of the bourgeoisie were capable of building a more unified national narrative about where the country should go, this might not have been such a problem. However, today, in the context of ideological decay, it is becoming a big impediment.
Fortunately, for the main factions of the bourgeoisie, the courts have taken a grim view of these Republican voter suppression efforts and many of these new laws have been invalidated or put on hold. Still, a great deal of concern remains that the mere fact that these laws were put forward will confuse enough voters that they will in the end have their desired effect, even if they do not reflect the current law. For example, although the courts in Pennsylvania have ruled that voters do not need to produce an ID to vote this November, they are still allowing local election officials to ask voters to produce an ID! This alone may be enough to dissuade enough voters to make a difference in a close race.
We appear to have reached a critical point in the evolution of the crisis of US state capitalism. Over the course of the twentieth century the trend in most of the central countries has been to extend the franchise as deeply as possible throughout society in order to give the working class the feeling of having a stake in national politics and to enroll them in the electoral circus. The more workers became enrolled in the electoral process, the less likely they would be to search for solutions to their problems on their own class terrain. As state capitalism became more entrenched over the course of this period, elections became more and more moments of a predetermined process. Extending the franchise was no longer dangerous to bourgeois class rule and in fact actually buttressed it. The bourgeoisie has every reason to make sure as many people are participating in the electoral process as possible, and certainly that is what we have seen: endless campaigns about “Rocking the vote,” commandments from hip hop moguls to their fans to “Vote or Die!,” voter registration drives in minority and poor neighborhoods, etc. In decadence, under the managed conditions of state capitalism, the extension of the franchise has been in fact, one of the central weapons of the bourgeoisie against the development of proletarian consciousness.
Today, however, the tables seem to have been partly turned on their head. A militant and aggressive faction of the bourgeoisie is now engaging in a more or less open campaign to suppress the vote, to make sure as few minorities, poor and young people vote as possible in order to reap the short-term electoral benefits for their preferred candidate. The furor over voter suppression thus reflects a very real concern on the part of the main factions of the bourgeoisie that the sanctity of the electoral process is now being put into question—by a faction of their own class!
This furor is thus another example of the increasing “short-termism” of much of the bourgeoisie faced with the deepening crisis of the society they preside over. In the case of US politics, this is manifesting itself in the increasing decay of the Republican Party, as it is more and more taken over by an extreme right-wing element that appears to have lost any serious consideration of the long and medium term needs and goals of the national capital. [8]
While the main factions of the bourgeoisie are certainly exploiting this situation to run a countervailing campaign on the terrain of bourgeois legalism about protecting the right to vote, this situation reflects more than a mere attempt to revive the democratic illusion. It is also an inter-bourgeois fight about what constitutes acceptable means for settling differences within its ranks. The main factions of the bourgeoisie must attempt to reinforce a level of respect for certain boundaries. After all, it was not that long ago that the main factions of the US bourgeoisie fought a long and messy campaign with certain retrograde elements in the South to fully extend the vote to African Americans, making sure that they would be included with the electoral process. Today, the fruits of that campaign are spoiling with the putrid air of ideological decomposition as an insurgent faction of the bourgeoisie puts the very right to vote itself into question. In the end, this fight is ultimately about the continuity of the bourgeois state and its policies.
The furor over voter suppression reflects the growing crisis of US state capitalism as a result of the reflexive effects of social decomposition on the life of the ruling class itself. While the main factions of the bourgeoisie continue to attempt to manage the economic crisis and national politics the best they can, they are increasingly hampered in this travail by the deepening fracturing of society under the weight of social decomposition. Just as society itself more and more splits apart, the bourgeoisie itself appears to be losing its discipline and the state is less and less able to enforce the level of unity necessary for it to act in the overall interests of the national capital.
While we should be careful not to overstate this process—there will certainly be moments in which the main factions of the bourgeoisie will be able to enforce its will—it is very real and is causing increasing difficulties in the functioning of US state capitalism.
When it comes to the electoral circus, these developments do not change the fundamental message of revolutionaries since the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase: the working class should have nothing to do with the bourgeois electoral process. The problems that continue to haunt capitalist society cannot be solved there. The road forward for humanity can only lie in a world beyond capital and this can only come from the working class struggling on its own class terrain. Participating in bourgeois elections can only distract us from this goal.
Part of the bourgeoisie may be currently attempting to keep us from voting, but this is not because the nature of the bourgeois electoral process has changed. It is only because they think this gives their faction a better chance of sniffing power. This is not our fight. Our struggle must take place outside of the electoral arena. Only our massive struggle, through general assemblies and workers’ councils can pose any real alternative to this system.
For revolutionaries, the developments in the internal life of the US bourgeoisie are not without significance. They stand as powerful evidence of the deepening crisis of bourgeois society, which more and more manifests itself as a crisis of state capitalism. While the fundamentals of the revolutionary analysis of state capitalism have not changed, we do need to be more attuned to the new realities of a period in which the reflexive effects of social decomposition pose novel developments that may not appear to fit some of our past schemas.
The nature of the electoral process itself may not have changed, but this does not mean that all factions of the bourgeoisie are united in the foresight that the extension of the franchise is in the overall interests of all those fighting to preserve bourgeois rule. While the old dictum, “If voting changed anything, they would outlaw it” remains true—this doesn’t mean that, today, some factions of the bourgeoisie might not want to outlaw it regardless, if it fits their short-term political interests.
--Henk
10/06/2012
[1] Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8 [535]
[2] We understand that readers may demand a better definition of who exactly constitutes the “main factions of the bourgeoisie.” Indeed, this subject is something that must be developed further. However, it is clear that today the “main” or “central” factions of the US bourgeoisie are located in the center of the Democratic Party. While there are some moderate Republicans that belong to this faction as well (possibly Mitt Romney himself); it is clear that the Tea Party represents a faction that cannot be trusted to act in the overall interests of the national capital.
[3] Of course, corruption and allegations of “vote fixing” are not new in American politics even at the Presidential level. It is widely suspected by many that John F. Kennedy only won the 1960 election after his father and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley engaged in wide scale voter fraud through big city political machines allowing Kennedy to win a tight race against the sitting Vice President Richard Nixon. Still, this occurred in a much different period in which the differences between Kennedy and Nixon were not of such depth as to make the choice critical. Moreover, part of the 2000 post-election chaos involved paranoia on the part of Republicans that Al Gore was trying to steal the election by counting “dimpled chads” and the like.
[4] For more on the 2000 election see our article "Election of George W. Bush [536]".
[5] However, as soon as he won the Presidency, Obama was quick to offer the jilted Clinton a position in his cabinet as Secretary of State in order to preserve the unity of the Democratic Party.
[6] Of course, a large part of this difficulty lies in the changing nature of the media itself. The splintering of “news media” along ideological lines only further complicates the task of building a general narrative. This process has only deepened since Obama’s election. Today, it is becoming more and more problematic to talk about a “bourgeois media” in the singular, even if it remains true that some media outlets command more respect that others.
[7] The challenging of federal authority by state and local officials has been a constant theme in the debate over illegal immigration and Obamacare. See our article, Recent Supreme Court Rulings on ”Obamacare” and the Arizona Anti-Immigration Law: A Momentary Respite in a Downward Spiral at https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201207/5061/recent-supreme-court-rulings-obamacare-and-arizona-anti-immigration-law-moment [537]
[8] Republican voter suppression efforts are only tip of the many ways in which this party has succumbed to short-term thinking in a way that puts its long-term viability into question. Its often open hostility to minorities, frequent appeal to white racial fear and strong anti-immigrant streak threaten to make the Republican Party electorally irrelevant on the national level in the near future if current demographic trends hold. It is for this reason that some more moderate Republicans. such as former Florida Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Christ, have openly questioned the direction of the party. Christ, defeated in his race for Senate by the Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, has left the Republican Party altogether. All of this, of course, poses a different problem for the US state capitalism—the destabilization of its two-party system.
November 2012
All around the world people have seen the images of coastal towns’ destruction and the desolation of the hundreds of thousands left homeless –40,000 in New York City alone. They evoke the recent memories of last year’s tornado in Joplin, Missouri; of last year’s hurricane Irene; of 2005’s hurricane Katrina, to name only a few, and only the ones that struck the US. Each time the same questions are raised: Why, with growing awareness of the link between of global warming, rising sea levels, shifting sea currents and weather patterns, and more frequent and violent storms, is nothing done to prevent similar catastrophes from inflicting the damage which is to be expected? Why are the so-called rescue efforts never enough to address the needs of the population? Why aren’t the pre-storm evacuations better planned and organized? Is there even a way to prepare for and then to organize the necessary relief, given the chaotic and irrational way in which urban development is ‘planned’ and implemented? Each time these questions are raised after a new disaster, the ruling class avoids a direct confrontation with them, resorts to outright lies, or chooses to focus on how to make political hay out of real human loss and suffering.
Pre-storm preparedness: the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule
Much of the blame for the human hardship in the aftermath of ‘Superstorm Sandy’ has been laid on the choice individuals made not to leave their homes and relocate to shelters. Indeed, ever since the criticisms prompted by the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the ruling class has been intent on refurbishing the image of its state. In an attempt to restore the masses’ confidence in its apparatus, it needs to project the idea of a state capable of safeguarding the well-being of its population. However, cutting through the state apparatus’ byzantine layers of bureaucracy to get the help required in an appropriate time frame has proved impossible time and again.
Even making the communication faster and better between the various federal agencies charged with warning of the potential dangers of a storm is a task that the capitalist state is not able to fulfill. In the words of Bryan Norcross, a well-respected meteorologist for more than twenty years, “They [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA] made outstanding forecasts. Their strength forecast was essentially perfect, and their storm surge forecast for New York City was absolutely as good as a forecast can be these days.” Indeed, forecasts of potentially destructive storms can be made quite accurately one week ahead of their hitting land these days. But the National Hurricane Center chose not to issue any hurricane advisory until just one day before Hurricane Sandy landed because it kept receiving information that the storm may change its path and weaken to a tropical storm. By the time it had become clear the storm wasn’t changing its path and wasn’t weakening, and the Center finally issued the hurricane warning, not enough time was left for people to clearly understand what was about to happen and prepare accordingly. Considering the magnitude of the storm and the fact it was on course to slam into the most populated part of the country, it really was not rational, certainly not responsible, on the side of the agencies and authorities in charge, to decide not to issue the hurricane warning earlier. It certainly is not rational to downplay a storm that was described as a ‘super-mega-combo’ freak of a storm the like of which had never been seen.
NOAA has one set of warnings for tropical storms and another set for northeaster or winter storms. Partly because Hurricane Sandy was a hybrid-type storm which did not fit the description of any prior storm, NOAA got tangled up as to which warning to issue, not knowing which guideline to follow. Without a doubt this had the effect of hindering the ability of the Center to issue the most appropriate warning in time. However, the Center’s decision to issue a clear hurricane warning only one day before the storm’s impact cannot be explained by its sclerotic bureaucracy alone. It also offers a view into the tattered infrastructure of capitalist metropolises and begs the question to our rulers as to what solution, if any, they have to confront similar storms in the future? It seems impossible, under the present conditions of urban ‘development’ under capitalism, to organize a rational protection and evacuation of areas at risk for several reasons: 1. the sheer number of people living in those areas; 2. the lack of infrastructures needed to mobilize them for the evacuation and shelter them in the aftermath of a storm; 3. the destruction of the natural environment and the continued urban development of areas that should not be developed for urban uses; 4. the displacement of financial, human, technological resources toward military goals. These resources could be used for research, innovation, and building of new infrastructure capable of confronting the threats to the environment and human life posed by climate change.
In the case of New Jersey, which was hard hit by the storm, most of the communities on the barrier islands along its coast have been developed to attract tourists and summer residents. For decades, concrete sea walls, rock jetties, or other protective barriers have lined the barrier islands to spur the development of the tourist industry. This kind of urban development has meant that since 1985 80 million cubic yards of sand has been applied on 54 of the state’s 97 miles of developed coast line: a truckload of sand for every foot of beach. Aside from the fact that this periodic replenishment of artificial beaches with natural sand from elsewhere means an increased toll on the highways (trucks filled with sand are extremely heavy) and the depletion of a natural resource, rising sea levels and more frequent storms wash away replenishment projects sooner than expected. Buildings, houses, and roads also pin down the beaches, which contributes significantly to making these communities more vulnerable to rising sea levels and storms and to the further deterioration of the natural protection once provided by undeveloped beaches. Undeveloped beaches deal well with storms. Their sands shift; barrier islands may even migrate toward the mainland, in this way protecting it. But the need for capitalist profit, rather than a harmonization of nature’s own principles with human needs, is what drives the choice to continue the development of artificial beaches. In the logic of capitalism, economic benefits, even though temporary, outweigh the cost of protecting human lives.
New York City has suffered a similar fate, but on a much larger scale. Now that Superstorm Sandy hit and everyone realizes how vulnerable the city and its millions of inhabitants are, the inevitable cacophony about what to do for the future has started again. Proposals for the human engineering of what used to be the harbor’s own natural protective barriers are being considered. Some of these proposals are quite interesting and creative; some even take into account the recreational uses of such projects and their aesthetic attraction. This shows that at the technological and scientific levels humanity has developed the ability to potentially put science at the service of human needs. Storm-surge barriers have been built around the city of St. Petersburg in Russia; Providence, Rhode Island, and in the Netherlands. The technological know-how is available. However, the geography of New York City is such that building a storm-surge barrier to protect Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn could affect tidal flow in such a way that a surge bouncing back against the barrier would double-up its strength against parts of Staten Island and the Rockaway, among the hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. It is not impossible that an engineering solution can be found to this problem, but, given the track record of capitalist development and the realities of the economic crisis, it is not far-fetched to imagine that New York City will rather recede in what engineers call “resilience”, a term that describes small scale interventions such as installing floodgates at sewage plants and raising the ground level of certain areas in Queens. Considering that New York City is a multi-million inhabitant city that runs part of the world economy and whose infrastructure is very complex, old, and extensive, small interventions of this sort clash against the simplest common sense. It is also not far-fetched to foresee that if the choice will go in favor of a proposal for a storm-surge barrier, the question of who gets included to be behind the gate, and who doesn’t will be answered by the needs of capitalist profit rather than those of human beings.
The aftermath of the storm: we are on our own
President Obama’s electoral campaign saw in Hurricane Sandy an opportunity to revamp the dispute between the most conservative right wing of the ruling class and its more liberal wing over the role of government. Of course, it did so to its own political advantage. It has been claimed that the present administration’s response has been more effective than the response of the George W. Bush’s administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The images of the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded for days and where the most awful conditions of survival set in, have been juxtaposed to the images of the National Guard in Hoboken, New Jersey moving in the day after the storm struck to deliver food and water and rescue stranded residents. The message was to be clear: the government is there to help people in need and can do a better job at it if Democrats are at the helm of the state. It was quite obvious from the publicity the Obama administration received from the supposedly ‘prompt’ response by the mass media, and their bashing of the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, that the media were completely open to helping Obama out in winning the election.
But human reason must stand to the test of facts. Anybody can read or watch the news to get a sense of the real catastrophic conditions in which hundreds of thousands of people are living in two weeks –at the time of writing- after the storm. From reopening schools that are also serving as shelters, to the continued power shortages for vast swaths of the population across the area, to the fuel rationing and the recent plan by mayor Bloomberg to have the most devastated neighborhoods in the metropolitan area resuscitated through his Rapid Repair program - which promises to be a quick-fix aimed at quelling the population’s rising anger and frustration, the test of facts shows that the ruling class and its extensive bureaucratic state apparatus have hit an impasse and are unable to efficiently and meaningfully address the urgent and long-term needs of its population.
But we do not conclude from this, as the right wing conservatives do, that we need to replace the government with charities and encourage people to save for the rainy days. This is would link the masses to the whims of the ruling class anyway, either by making them dependent on the magnanimousness of philanthropic and religious organizations, or the capitalist market’s swings between periods of employment and unemployment, with the resulting instability as to the ability to save. This does not help the exploited masses raise their consciousness from the level of resignation to the system of exploitation they are subjected to, since it makes no difference whether we are directly repressed and exploited by the state, or by the market, or by the individual capitalist who also happens to be a philanthropist. What we think is needed is the revolutionary and autonomous action of the masses aimed at taking political power. This is the only way to ensure that all important decisions are made in the interest of what needs to be done to create, administer, deliver, and distribute the resources of society for society’s own needs, and not for the needs of profit, capital, the government, or the philanthropist.
Probably learning from the experience of the recent climatic events linked to climate change, most notoriously Hurricane Katrina, that the ruling class and its various agencies, such as FEMA, won’t help, or won’t give the help needed, or enough of it, or as promptly as needed, it is the population itself that poured in its resources, time, money in a significant show of real solidarity. This shows the fundamental and significant sense of identity that exists among the exploited and that it is them who have the potential to create a new world.
The working class is the only class with a future
In each instance of a ‘natural disaster’, the ruling class has been particularly keen on preventing deeper questions of a more general nature from being posed and given a revolutionary answer: What is the perspective for the future of the planet and the human species under the rule of a social class that shows no regard for the safety and well being of the classes it exploits? If the future under capitalism has nothing more to offer other than more environmental destruction and greater threats to the survival of the human species, what needs to be done? What alternatives for the construction of a different, new world? Because it has no particular economic interests to protect and no position of power to maintain and defend in capitalist society, the working class and its revolutionary minorities are the only social forces who can give answers that are stripped of ideological mystifications and that aim at searching for the truth. It is only on the basis of knowing the truth about how economic, social, and political factors determine our human existence that the exploited classes can find in themselves the confidence in their own ability to offer a different vision of the world and ultimately concretize it.
Ana, November 10, 2012
The 2012 Presidential election has come and gone with a positive result for the main factions of the U.S. bourgeoisie. Beating back a firm challenge from his Republican rival Mitt Romney, President Obama has secured re-election meaning the Democratic Party will now survive to guide the ship of state for another four years.
The post-election media narrative has been deafening. Obama won in a landslide they tell us, taking 332 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 206 and beating his rival by over 3 million popular votes. All the doomsday scenarios of another contested election like 2000 came to naught.[1] All of the state level GOP attempts to suppress the votes of likely Obama supporters hardly mattered at all. Obama now has a national mandate to govern and Obamacare is set to remain the uncontested law of the land. The Republicans, still licking their wounds from a trouncing that also saw them lose seats in the Senate, will almost certainly have to moderate their rhetoric and come to the negotiating table. Finally, after four years of obstinate obstructionism, the GOP will be forced to get a grip on reality and strike the grand bargain on deficit reduction that eluded the US bourgeoisie throughout Obama’s first term.
The more rosy pundits even expect that this election will spell the end of the Tea Party insurgency within the Republican Party. They claim the more rational elements within the GOP (Jeb Bush perhaps?) will now be able to assert themselves and regain control of the party, reinvigorating a healthy two party system once again. Still others foresee a civil war in the GOP as it struggles to come to grips with a new demographic reality in which its commitment to race baiting, retrograde sexual politics, anti-science conspiracy theory and immigrant bashing will never again permit it to secure the Presidency.
For our part, against the optimistic interpretations, we feel the results of the election, and the preceding campaign, confirm the analysis we have developed since Obama’s initial election regarding a developing “political crisis” of the American bourgeoisie. We should review what we have analyzed as some of the main features of this crisis:
So, does Obama’s reelection spell the end of these difficulties, what we have labeled a “political crisis’? Are the main factions of the bourgeoisie right to celebrate their victory, believing, as they do, that it will mark a return to political normalcy in which the business of the nation will be the top priority once again? What about the working class? What role did it play in this election? Was the bourgeoisie able to maintain its momentum from 2008 and keep the population convinced that electoral democracy is the best way to protect its interests? What does Obama’s victory mean for the working class? What can it expect from his second term in office? We will try to shed some light on these questions, from a Marxist perspective, here.
The Meaning of Obama’s Victory For the Working Class
We should have no illusions about what Obama’s second term will mean for the working class. We can sum it up in one word: austerity. For all the campaign rhetoric the Obama team spewed, aided by their union and “progressive” allies, about protecting Social Security and Medicare from the right-wing “evil genius” Paul Ryan, it is clear that cuts to both programs have always been on the agenda for Obama’s second term. The only question is how deep the cuts will be and how fast they will be implemented.
It is pretty simple really. The US bourgeoisie, Democrat or Republican, left or right, are all in agreement that the nation’s fiscal course is simply unsustainable. They all recognize that in order to attempt to get the deficit under control “reforms” will have to be made to the so-called “entitlement” programs, which account for a large share of the nation’s budget woes. It is true that the policies advocated by former VP candidate Ryan, such as turning Medicare into a voucher program, were simply too draconian to enact at this time. It is also true that the main factions of the bourgeoisie reject the right-wing trope by which Social Security must be privatized in order to “save it”. However, none of this means that they will endeavor to preserve these programs as they are now. On the contrary, painful cuts are in the offing.
President Obama has already signaled his willingness to slash these programs. It was a major part of the so-called “grand bargain” he was in the process of negotiating with Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner in the lead up to the debt ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011. The only real difference in that matter was the President’s desire to bundles the cuts with certain tax increases on the wealthy in order that he could sell the bargain to the population with the poll-tested language of “shared sacrifice.” It was only Tea Party intransigence that prevented Boehner from agreeing to the grand bargain, forcing the complex machinations that now pose the threat of the so-called “fiscal cliff”: automatic tax increases and draconian spending cuts to kick in at the beginning of the new year unless a deal can be reached.
In fact, the political pundits are already on record that this is the real import of the election. Obama now has the political capital he needs to force the Republicans into a grand bargain that, at the very least, includes some tax increase for the wealthy that can be sold to the population as “shared sacrifice.” We don’t know for certain how deep the cuts will be or how fast they will be implemented, but there is little question that they are coming. The left of the Democratic Party can cry all it wants about “protecting the Big Three[2],” but can one really doubt that in the aftermath of whatever deal is reached, they won’t try to sell us on the idea that it could have been much worse if the Republicans controlled the White House? Or try to make us feel a little bit better that at least the billionaires will be kicking in their fair share? Of course, how exactly any of that helps the Medicare beneficiary who just saw their benefits slashed or their premiums go up, or the 65 year old coal miner, who will now have to wait another year or two to collect his measly Social Security check is never explained.
In terms of the overall economic picture, it is not at all clear that the situation can get any better in Obama’s second term. While the bourgeoisie turns its attention to deficit reduction, any thought of providing more stimulus for the economy is completely abandoned. There is simply no political will for any more government spending, despite the fact that the more serious bourgeois economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have continuously called for another round of stimulus in order to try to pull the economy out of the doldrums.
It’s symbolic of the dead-end the bourgeoisie finds itself in that its focus on deficit reduction runs smack into the face of stimulating economic growth. The best the pundits can do on this score is to hark back to the glory days of President Clinton, who raised taxes and balanced the budget while presiding over the “largest economic expansion in American history.” So ahistorical and short sighted has the bourgeoisie become that they fail to remember that much of the “growth” of the Clinton years was the result of the debt fueled tech-stock and real estate bubbles that led to the current Great Recession! They seem to believe that the recipes of the Clinton era can be resurrected and applied today, regardless of the historical and economic context.
It is unclear whether or not the Obama administration really believes all its campaign hype about how much better the economy is getting under its tutelage. Regardless, even if it does recognize the need for further stimulus, there isn’t a whole lot it can do about it. Whatever new mood of cooperation the GOP may acquire as a result of their electoral “trouncing,” it is unlikely they would agree to a new round of stimulus. With Congress gridlocked on this issue, the Federal Reserve has recently been compelled to act on its own by buying up more mortgage securities, but most serious economists agree that this amounts to nothing more than a peashooter, when what is needed is something closer to a howitzer. In the end however, even if there were political will for such an endeavor, its unclear where all the money would come from—the printing press? Borrow more from China? All of this would fly directly in the face of the pressing need for deficit reduction. The bourgeoisie is truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if they are able to pull off another round of stimulus, this would—in the end—amount to nothing more than kicking the can down the road.
All of this makes it patently clear that Obama’s triumph was not as victory for the working class. On the contrary, he now has enough political cover to enact the austerity he has planned all along and which the needs of the national capital demand. While there remains a certain danger to the bourgeoisie that the Democratic Party will be perceived as the party that presided over the looming cuts, this is tempered to some degree by the Obama administration’s ideological success in selling the population on the fact that under the Republicans, the cuts would have likely been much worse. It is most likely for this reason, rather than through a deep conviction and support for Obama’s policies, that many working class people bit the bullet in this election and voted for the Democrats. The logic of the lesser of the two evils appears to have carried the day.[3]
However, those workers who still have illusions in Obama’s Presidency, who still believe that he can “restore the middle class” or that he is some kind of champion of “workers’ rights,” need look no further than the events surrounding the Chicago Teachers’ Strike to get a real sense of where the President stands on these issues. We must not forget that it was the President’s cronies in Chicago that carried through these assaults on the teachers.[4] Can there be any doubt that this vision for the education sector—indeed for the entire working class—is ultimately shared by the President himself? The original architect for Mayor Emanuel’s plan to reform the Chicago school system was none other than former Chicago School Chancellor Arne Duncan—Obama’s current Secretary of Education!
We must assert against all the possible electoral calculations that the interests of the working class lie elsewhere—in its autonomous struggles to defend its working and living conditions at the point of production. It is understandable that workers fear the Republicans’ draconian attacks. It is quite possible that this party has lost any mooring in reality and would proceed to enact the most retrograde policies at the national level if it ever makes it back into office. However, should this mean we have to find solace in the Democrats? It’s clear that the only real difference between the parties at this point is how fast and how dramatic the cuts will be. In the end, both roads lead to the same place. When we vote for Democrats, it is we workers who are kicking the can down the road. The only real solution for our condition is to return to the road of our own autonomous struggles around class issues.
Is the Political Crisis Finished?
This brings us to the issue of the political crisis of the US bourgeoisie itself. Will Obama’s re-election put an end to the all the rancor within the ruling class as the bourgeois media has been telling us? Will the Republicans’ electoral “trouncing” cause the more rational factions in that party to reclaim it from the Tea Party lunatics? Is a new era of cooperation and progress in the offing in which both parties will turn their attention toward governing in the best interests of the national capital?
In answering these questions, it is first necessary to address the issue of the alleged electoral “trouncing.” It is true that Obama won by a large margin in the Electoral College, but only in the context of recent American politics can a 51 to 48 percent margin in the popular vote be considered a “landslide.” On this level, the election results only seem to confirm the reality that the United States is a deeply divided country. The population is so sharply divided that even month after month of relentless campaign propaganda painting Romney as a greedy vulture capitalist and Obama as an un-American socialist barely moved the final election tallies from 2008, when Obama bested McCain by 53 to 46 percent. So hardened have the ideological lines in society become that the challenge of building a national narrative is more severe than ever.
It is likely true that the emerging demographic trends within the electorate spell serious trouble for the GOP. If it is intent on continuing its brand of hard right policies based in large part in playing to white racial fear and gender based demagoguery, it is unlikely a Republican Presidential candidate will ever be able to build a broad enough electoral coalition to make it competitive against a strong Democratic one[5]. However, can we conclude from this reality that the GOP will necessarily be able to right its ship as the media predicts? This seems unlikely. Having stoked the flames of the white male backlash it does not seem reasonable to expect this element in the party to go quietly into the night. Should the Republican leadership compromise with Obama on comprehensive immigration reform (as most pundits suspect it will try to do), it seems quite possible that there could be a split in the Republican Party—something that would throw a major spanner in the works of the US two-party system. While we can’t say for certain that this will happen, the fault lines within the GOP are clear. It will be torn for some time between a wing of the party seeking to refurbish its image in order to maximize electoral success, and another intent on preserving ideological purity.
However, the Republicans are not the only ones with a demographic problem. Obama lost the white vote by a large margin. Whatever his advantages among blacks, Latinos, single women and young voters, he suffered severe deficits among blue-collar whites (in particular men). While in the context of a high turnout Presidential election, this arrangement favors the Democrats going forward, it remains unclear whether or not this will translate into lower turnout mid-term, state and local elections. The GOP, in whatever form, reformed or retrograde, will likely continue to be a force at these levels. In fact, even in the current Presidential year—largely due to corrupt gerrymandering—the GOP was able to retain control of the House of Representatives. The perspective appears to be one of continued partisan bickering rather than real cooperation.
On another level, the US bourgeoisie will continue to be dogged by the practical “reversal” of its traditional division of ideological labor. If it were obliged to keep the Democrats in power indefinitely pending a resolution of the Republican Party’s meltdown, this would pose serious problems for the legitimacy of the Democratic Party itself. Forced to preside over the coming austerity, the Democrats would have to own the policies they enact. This is something we saw play itself over the course of the recent campaign. What an odd sight it was, in the midst of a terrible recession, for the Democratic candidate to have to run on the illusion that the economy was improving, while the Republican candidate ran as the voice of the long-term unemployed whom the President had failed to help! How long can this situation hold? The Democrats only response to this is to argue that an intransigent GOP forces them into these policies and prevents them from being able to act to their fullest capabilities. While they have had some success with this tactic so far, how much longer can they keep it up before the Democrats become viewed as the party of austerity?
We should also acknowledge that President Obama’s first term was marked by the emergence of a genuine extra-parliamentary movement around the issues of the economic crisis in the Occupy Movement, which captured the public imagination for a period of time in the fall and winter of 2011. It appears that the U.S. bourgeoisie was able to recuperate much of the energy of this movement into Obama’s re-election campaign under the same “lesser of the two evil” logic that moved many workers to support the President. However, now that the election is over, it is reasonable to consider whether or not there is a perspective for the reemergence of similar movements should the economic situation fail to improve given that there will no longer be a pressing electoral campaign with which the bourgeoisie can blackmail it? If the Democrats come to be viewed as the party of austerity, will it continue to be able to divert the energy of future extra-parliamentary social movements into the electoral dead-end?
In the realm of foreign policy, it is clear that the Obama administration will continue to face growing threats to US hegemony, which it will find increasingly difficult to head off. Although foreign policy may not have been a major issue in the Presidential campaign, as evidenced by the third and final debate in which Romney basically agreed with Obama on most major issues of foreign policy, this does not mean that there are no tensions within the US bourgeoisie on these issues. Already, just a week after the election, President Obama is dealing with a major public relations debacle regarding the sexual indiscretions of CIA Director and Iraq surge hero General Petraeus.
While it is not clear what the ultimate import of this crisis will be, it seems the Republicans smell blood in the water and will certainly use this scandal to ramp up their investigations into the administration’s mishandling of the Benghazi consulate attack that left the US Ambassador to Libya dead. However this plays out, the US bourgeoisie will continue to face severe challenges to its imperialist hegemony including the possibility of a wider war emerging from the Syria crisis, continued tensions with Iran, increasing difficulties keeping its Israeli running dog in line and the growing threat to its hegemony coming from an increasingly aggressive Chinese imperialism.
In the end, while we think the main factions of the US bourgeoisie may have won another victory with Obama’s re-election, this does not completely reverse the tendency towards political crisis that has been gripping the US bourgeoisie for over a decade. While we do not have a crystal ball and we cannot tell how this situation will play out exactly, it seems likely that the road will continue to be very rocky. It is instructive that some political scientists who study US politics think we are on the verge of another party realignment. What shape that will take is not quite clear. The reality of decomposition makes it very difficult to predict with any certainty.
From our perspective, the re-election of President Obama does not herald a new era of peace, prosperity and cooperation. While it is true that there will probably be an attempt by the more rational factions of the Republican Party to retake it from the Tea Party, this does not guarantee success. Moreover, it would be a mistake to reduce the problems of the US bourgeoisie to this alone. The challenges facing it are immense and in all probability insurmountable. For the working class, the conclusion is clear—there is no salvation in this mess of bourgeois electoral politics. We can only pursue our interests on a fundamentally different terrain—that of our autonomous struggles around class issues.
--Henk
11/14/2012
[1] It is worth noting that the election in Florida was another disaster. Although it was ultimately decided in Obama’s favor—it was by a razor thin margin and it took nearly a week to count the votes, amidst allegations that the election was run in third world fashion.
[2] This is left wing Democrat and talk show host Ed Schultz’s term for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
[3] It should be noted, however, that the electorate was about 10 percent smaller this year than it was in 2008.
[4] See our article/leaflet “Solidarity With the Chicago Teachers” here: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201209/5162/solidarity-chicago-teachers [543]
[5] Of course, it is worth considering that even a “rock star” candidate as Obama was barely able to move the results much beyond a “margin of error” victory. One wonders what the results would have been with a less sensational candidate without such compelling personal appeal?
Once again, Israeli jets and missiles have been pounding Gaza. In 2008, ‘Operation Cast Lead’ led to almost 1,500 deaths, the majority of them civilians, despite all the claims made about ‘surgical strikes’ against terrorist targets. The Gaza Strip is one of the most impoverished and densely populated areas in the world and it is absolutely impossible to separate ‘terrorist facilities’ from the residential areas that surround them. With all the sophisticated weapons at the Israelis’ disposal, the majority of causalities in the current campaign are also women, children, and the old.
Not that this concerns the militarists at the head of the Israel state. Gaza is once again being collectively punished, as it has been not only through the previous onslaught but through the blockade which has crippled its economy, hampered efforts to rebuild following the devastation of 2008, and kept the population at near starvation levels.
Compared to the firepower wielded by the Israelis, the military capacities of Hamas and the more radical jihadist groups in Gaza are puny. But thanks to the chaos in Libya, Hamas has got its hands on longer-range missiles. Not only Ashdod in the south (where three residents of a block of flats were killed by a missile fired from Gaza) but Tel Aviv and Jerusalem itself are now in range. The numbing fear that grips Gaza residents every day is also beginning to make itself felt in Israel’s main cities.
In short: both populations are held in hostage to the opposing military machines that dominate Israel and Palestine – with a little help from the Egyptian army that patrols the borders of Gaza to prevent undesirable incursions or escapes. Both populations are in the firing line in a situation of permanent war – not only in the form of rockets and shells, but through being compelled to shoulder the growing burden of an economy distorted by the needs of war. And now the world economic crisis is forcing the ruling class on both sides of the divide to introduce new cuts in living standards, new increases in the prices of basic necessities.
In Israel last year, the soaring price of housing was one of the sparks that lit the protest movement which took the form of mass demonstrations, street occupations and assemblies – a movement directly inspired by the revolts in the Arab world and which raised slogans like “Netanyahu, Assad, Mubarak are all the same” and “Arabs and Jews want affordable housing”. For a brief but exhilarating moment, everything in Israeli society – including the ‘Palestinian problem’ and the future of the occupied territories – was open to question and debate. And one of the main fears of the protestors was that the government would respond to this incipient challenge to national ‘unity’ by launching a new military adventure.
This summer, on the occupied West Bank, rises in fuel and food prices were met by a series of angry demonstrations, road blockades and strikes. Workers in transport, health and education, university and school students and the unemployed were on the streets facing the police of the Palestinian Authority and demanding a minimum wage, jobs, lower prices, and an end to corruption. There have also been demonstrations against the rising cost of living in the Kingdom of Jordan.
For all the differences in living standards between the Israeli and Palestinian populations, despite the added oppression and humiliation of military occupation suffered by the latter, the roots of these two social revolts are exactly the same: the growing impossibility of living under a capitalist system in profound crisis.
There has been much speculation about the motives behind the recent escalation. Is Netanyahu trying to stir up nationalism to boost his chances of re-election? Has Hamas been stepping up rocket attacks to prove its war-like credentials in the face of a challenge from more radical Islamist gangs? Does the Israeli military aim to topple Hamas or merely to degrade its military capacities? What role will be played in the conflict by the new regimes in Egypt? How will it affect the current civil war in Syria?
These are all questions worth pursuing but none of them affect the fundamental issue: the escalation of imperialist conflict is totally opposed to the needs of the vast mass of the population in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the Middle East. Where the social revolts on both sides of the divide make it possible for the masses to fight for their real, material interests against the capitalists and the state which exploits them, imperialist war creates a false unity between the exploited and their exploiters and sharpens divisions between the exploited on one side and the exploited on the other side. When Israeli jets bomb Gaza, it produces new recruits for Hamas and the jihadists for whom all Israelis, all Jews, are the enemy. When the jihadists fire rockets into Ashdod or Tel Aviv, it makes more Israelis turn to ‘their’ state for protection and for revenge against the ‘Arabs’. The pressing social issues which lay behind the revolts are buried in an avalanche of nationalist hatred and hysteria.
But if war can push back social conflict, the opposite is also true. In the face of the current escalation, ‘responsible’ governments like those of the USA and Britain are calling for restraint, a return to the peace process. But these are the same governments currently waging war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. The USA is also Israel’s main military and financial backer. We cannot look to them for ‘peaceful’ solutions any more than we can look to states like Iran who have openly armed Hamas and Hezbollah. The real hope for a peaceful world does not lie with the rulers, but with the resistance of the ruled, their growing understanding that they have the same interests in all countries, the same need to struggle and unite against a system which can offer them nothing but crisis, war, and destruction.
Amos , 20/11/12.
The massacre of innocent lives at Sandy Hook elementary school is a horrific reminder that short of a thorough revolutionary transformation of society the spread and depth of decomposing capitalism can only find expression in ever more barbaric, senseless, and violent acts. There is absolutely nothing in the capitalist system that is capable of offering a meaningful understanding of why such an act could even be conceived, let alone a viable proposal for change: not in the media, not among the politicians, whether left, right, or center, and not among the academic talking heads. It is impossible, under the yoke of capitalism, to truly address the problem, and even truly understand how to. In the aftermath of the Connecticut school butchery, as has been the case in all such violent sprees in recent memory, all the different parts of the ruling class have offered an ‘explanation’. How is it possible that in Newtown, Connecticut, dubbed “the safest town in America” a deranged individual could find a way to unleash such horror and terror? Whatever ‘explanations’ are offered, their primary purpose is to create a fig-leaf for the ruling class and cover up its own murderous mode of life.
The Right lays the blame on individual agency, effectively suggesting that Adam Lanza’s action can be explained by his choice to allow the ‘evil’ side of ‘human nature’ to take over. They claim that there is nothing psychological or behavioral in the shooter’s action. In the words of Nancy J. Herman, associate professor of sociology at Central Michigan University, “Today, the medicalization of deviant behavior has made it difficult for us to accept notions of ‘evil’. The diminution of religious imagery of sin, the rise of determinist theories of human behavior, and the doctrine of cultural relativity have led further to the exclusion of ‘evil’ from our discourse.” Accordingly, the ‘solution’ the Right offers to this problem is the revival of religious faith and collective prayer. This is how the Right dismisses the advances made in many decades of studies of human behavior which can actually offer a window into the understanding of the complex interconnections between individual and society proposed in particular by evolutionary studies of human social and anti-social behaviors. It is also how the Right justifies its proposal to just lock up those who express a deviant behavior, because they criminalize it by attributing to it a moral nature.
From various reports we learn that the 20-year old gunman had Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that can lead to social awkwardness and isolation, but there is no connection between the disorder and violence. It is also the case that only 5% of all gun-related violence in America is linked to any mental illness. This fact alone should be enough to dispel the widely-held belief that mental illness and violence are mechanically and deterministically linked. However, this does not mean that Lanza’s behavior was determined by a rational choice, or the choice of doing ‘evil’, as the Right claim. Also, it does not mean that his action can be understood simply as the act of an individual isolated from the social context in which he grew up. Much attention is given to “profiling” potential shooters when what needs to be done is develop a profile of the society that produces people driven to such drastic measures. Whatever surveys are used to measure the extent or increase of mental illnesses among the population, they have all gone up dramatically in recent years. These surveys also show a general decline in empathy in society. It is a painful irony, and proof of their hypocrisy, that while the bourgeoisie talks about gun control, they are also deploying in Turkey, thinking about keeping China in check, and also continue to encircle Iran. The nature of violence cannot be understood divorced from the social and historical context in which it is expressed. Mental illnesses have existed before, but it seems their expression has reached levels of paroxysm in a society under siege by an 'every man for himself' mentality, the loss of social solidarity and empathy, and even the weakening of the most basic human interaction. People feel they have to 'protect' themselves against...against who? Everybody is a potential enemy, and this is an image, a belief reinforced by the nationalism, militarism, and imperialism of the bourgeoisie. Yet, the ruling class poses as the guarantor of ‘rationality’ and carefully skirts the issue of its own responsibility in the spread of anti-social behavior. This is perhaps clearest in cases when the United States Army court-martials soldiers who engaged in acts which are considered ‘atrocious’—and which certainly are—as with Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who went on a rampage and killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, at least nine of whom were children. Never mind Bales’ use of alcohol, steroids and sleeping aids to soothe his physical and emotional pains, and the fact that he was deployed in one of the most intense battlegrounds in Afghanistan for the fourth time.
If media and games violence teach or reinforce the value that fighting - even killing - is an acceptable way to resolve a conflict, they are not the source of anti-social behavior, as many on the left like to point out. It is both the competition embedded in capitalist mode of functioning and its militaristic expressions which inform the content of the media and video games. When children grow up in a culture that celebrates fighting and violence as an acceptable way to win, and when society teaches that one must win at all costs, they are highly likely to acquire those ‘values’. These ‘values’ exist pervasively under capitalism all over the world, and what we see in the media and video games is just a reflection of this. Violence is not an American prerogative, even if it can be argued that gun violence is particularly pernicious in this country. It is true that with less than 5% of the world's population, the United States is home to roughly 35–50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns, heavily skewing the global geography of firearms and any relative comparison. It is true that the ratio of gun to people in America is roughly 88 to 100, which is higher than in Yemen, which comes in second. Yet the prizes for gun-related murders go to countries like Jamaica and Puerto Rico. 42% of the homicides that occur on the planet happen in a part of the world where only 8% of the world population lives: Latin America. This is not to trivialize the pervasiveness of violence in the United States, but rather to highlight that the context in the present period is one of a society dangerously developing a ‘culture’ of suspicion and fear in other fellow creatures, and a disposition toward ‘every man for himself’ in which murder, rather than human solidarity, becomes the ‘solution’ to differences, conflicts, and personal problems.
This is what lies at the root of Adam Lanza’s mother’s obsession with guns and her practice of taking her two children, including Adam himself, to the shooting ranges. Nancy Adams was a survivalist. The ideology underpinning survivalism is that of the ‘each for themselves’ in a pre and post-apocalyptic world. It preaches self-reliance, or, rather, individual survival, and relies on weapons as the instruments for individual protection and appropriation of vital and scarce resources. In preparation for the collapse of the American economy, as survivalists believe is about to happen, they stockpile weapons, ammunition, food, and teach themselves ways to survive in the wild. This type of social psychosis may have been heightened by the recent esoteric predictions about the end of the world supposed to have happened on December 21, with the end of the Mayan calendar, and which many survivalists followed. Is it so strange that Adam Lanza may have felt overwhelmed by this sense of no future? Or that he may have perceived children as future competitors over scarce resources that need to be eliminated? Whatever the actual mental landscape Adam Lanza experienced, it is certain it was not a rational, clear-minded, happy state of mind.
At the time of this writing, it is less than a week after the Newton killings. The initial vow by President Obama that “This time the words need to lead to action” and that he “…will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this” is already showing up for what it really always had boiled down to be: a political arm-wrestling exercise between two factions of the ruling class that have been at each other’s throats on virtually every social issue for the last decade. Their divisions are so insurmountable that not even a massacre of these proportions can instill at least a minimum of decency in their diatribe over gun control and the care of the mentally ill. For its part, the National Rifle Association expresses a paroxysm of paranoia and total irrationality when it proposes that there should be an armed officer in every school in America because “a bad guy can be stopped only by a good guy”. Schools are already half-way from becoming full-fledged jails and have been so for a number of years. This insanity does not only show the bankruptcy of the Right’s ideology, but also its total infection of decomposition: in a society that cannot offer viable answers and solutions to its problems, the only possibility is for each individual to be against everybody else. Leading House Republicans, fearing the loss of the NRA’s support, have already openly restated their firm opposition to new limits on guns or ammunition, setting the stage for yet another legislative battle and drawn out sessions over the Second Amendment. It is so obvious that whatever ‘concern’ and urge for ‘action’ the ruling class feels is not for the well being and safety of the population, but rather for their own political purposes. The Left offers the narrative that if only the Right were more reasonable and flexible, it would be possible to pass meaningful and effective health care legislation to better address the needs of the mentally ill. It would also be possible to reduce the daily bloodshed from gun violence if only the Right could be persuaded. In this narrative, the inaction over the issue of gun violence in America is the result of the Right’s hardened stance. It is a sorry fact, however, that there are so many guns privately owned by Americans that any new restriction would do virtually nothing to control any violence. This was already the case for the eight years between 1996 and 2004 when a ban on assault weapons was enforced in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings. Even though the National Rifle Association has recently lost some of its clout and its opposition may be slightly easier to resist, Republicans are posed to carry out a long and vicious battle. And even if there was less animosity between the two factions of the American ruling class, the changes proposed by the Administration amount to mopping up a flood with a Kleenex. In their disgusting political self-interest, the faction of the ruling class now in power is manipulating the natural horror that the Connecticut school slaughter raised in order to weaken their opposing faction and pass for the defenders of the social safety net and being intent on making preventative service accessible to everyone. For their part, the Right’s proposes to strengthen the repressive apparatus so that anyone who is potentially dangerous can be locked up. In their vision they see schools as prisons in which teachers become wards and policemen in a public place that needs to be on lockdown.
It is natural to feel horror and deep confusion at the assault on innocent victims. It is natural to look for possible explanations of what is obviously a completely irrational behavior. This expresses a deeply felt need to reassure ourselves that we can have at least a degree of control over our own destiny, that humanity can get out of what appears to have become an endless and ever more extreme spiral of violence. But the ruling class can only capitalize on the present emotions of the population and manipulate its need to trust in order to channel it into the mythology according to which the state is willing and capable to resolve society’s problems. Revolutionaries must affirm clearly that it is rather the continued existence of class society and class rule, and the protraction of the relations of capitalist exploitation that are solely accountable for the exponential increase in irrational behaviors and the patent inability to reverse this trend.
Ana, 21 December 2012
As the CGT and the CCOO-UGT regrouping five different unions in Spain called for yet another 24-hour ‘general strike’ for October 31 and November 14 respectively, comrades of the Assembly movement - Indignant and Self-Organized Alicante Workers - published and distributed a declaration called "In the face of the 24-hour strikes: What strike do we want? The mass strike!".
These workers have been actively involved in a struggle for more than two years and have the merit of having denounced mobilizations which only de-mobilize and demoralize, and which only complement the attacks of the Rajoy government. But this is not all they have done. They have posed a perspective: to struggle for the mass strike. Faced with the unions’ demobilizations, this is the orientation which the workers’ struggles have tended to take since the 1905 Russian Revolution.
It is a mistake to think that there are no alternatives to the unions “mobilizations to demobilize”. Following in the steps of the Alicante workers, we think a debate has to develop to clarify the alternative which the proletariat has had since 1905. The two contributions by two workers which we are publishing here go in that direction.
We salute the declaration and the contributions, and we would like to encourage other workers and groups to give their input.
ICC November 1, 2012
Why is a 24-hour strike, a strike? Most importantly, how can it benefit the working class?
We identify with the political positions of internationalism and proletarian autonomy. We think that all action by conscious minorities should be orientated toward generating class consciousness, unity, and the self-organization of the working class. We know that there have been many mobilizations as of late and a great effort toward organization by the working class. This period of new and massive mobilizations has started, symbolically, in May 2011 and is the answer against the ever more brutal attacks against the population’s conditions of life. This development has not been linear and has gone through different phases. At first, there is a strong impulse toward self-organization and an embryonic, yet wide-spread movement toward the creation of General Assemblies. Later, the unions and the left of capital take advantage of the exhaustion and visible decrease in the masses’ participation to gain the center-stage. This leads the mobilizations toward the typical union-inflicted defeat: mobilization which are controlled by them, mobilizations which break the unity and are carried out sector by sector, demoralizing mobilization led into dead-ends and which only generate a sense of isolation and disgust in the participants. This is why the absence of a majority of the workers in these mobilizations is only logical, since they are perceived as alien to their own interests, opening the possibility of reflection.
We need to think, learn from our experiences and look for the path toward our own self-organization. This will not be given birth to by ‘specialized vanguards’ or anxious impulses, even if these may have the best of intentions.
It is the workers themselves who have to call for and extend everywhere, the kind of strike which we is needed and efficacious. It is the workers who have to occupy all the spaces and create new types of relationships and social communication. This type of strike does not detain life, it rather generates it. This type of strike is the mass strike, which during the last century has become a feature of the struggles, and which all its enemies-all bourgeois strata- have conscientiously silenced until its memory has become blurred. This is because the bourgeoisie fears its attraction and legitimacy for the proletariat.
A true strike is a massive and integral movement which does not consist solely in a work stoppage. It is the fundamental weapon of a working class in the process of taking control of its life, expressed by the fact that the working class struggles against all aspects of exploitation. In this process, the exploited class also expresses the human society to which it aspires. However, this is not a process that can be prepared ad hoc, not even with the best intentions. It is a part of the process by which the class struggles and comes to its consciousness. It is not a question of 24, or 48 hours, or of indefinite time. Its radical nature is not a matter of time. Its radical nature is based in the real movement of the working class as it organizes and leads itself.
The mass strike results from a particular phase in the development of capitalism starting in the XX century. Rosa Luxembourg developed it from the revolutionary movement of the workers in Russia in 1905. The mass strike “is a historic phenomenon at a given moment because of a historic necessity resulting from social conditions”.
The mass strike is not an accident of history. It is neither the result of propaganda nor of preparations taking place ahead of time. It cannot be created artificially. It is the product of a specific stage in the development of capitalist contradictions. The economic conditions which produced the mass strike were not inscribed in one country only. Rather, they had an international dimension. Such conditions generated a type of struggle which has historic impact, a struggle which was a fundamental aspect of the birth of proletarian revolutions. In short, the mass strike “is nothing more than the universal form of the working class struggle, resulting from the present stage of capitalism’s development and its relations of production.” This "present stage" was capitalism’s final years of prosperity. The new historic circumstances accompanying the birth of the mass strike were: the development of imperialist conflicts and the threat of world war; the end of the period of gradual improvements in the conditions of life of the working class; the growing threat against the very existence of the class under capitalism. The mass strike is the product of a change in the economic conditions at a historic level. Today we know those conditions marked the end of capitalism’s period of ascendance and heralded capitalism’s decadence.
The great concentrations of proletarians in the advanced capitalist countries had acquired great experience with collective struggles, and their conditions of life and work were similar everywhere. In addition, as a result of economic development, the bourgeoisie was growing into a more concentrated class who more and more became identified with the state apparatus. Like the proletariat, the capitalists too had learned how to confront their class enemy. The new economic conditions made it more and more difficult for the working class to gain durable reforms at the level of production. In a similar way, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy made it more and more difficult for the proletariat to consolidate gains at the level of parliamentary activity. Therefore, the political and economic contexts of the mass strike were not the product of Russian absolutism, but rather of the growing decadence of bourgeois rule in every country. In the economic, social, and political spheres, capitalism had laid the foundations for the great class confrontations at a world level.
The goal of the union form of organization was to obtain reforms and betterments within the framework of capitalist life. Under decadent capitalism, this was more and more difficult to accomplish. In this period the proletariat does not engage in struggles with a perspective of gaining real improvements. The great demonstrations of today, the strikes of today gain nothing. As a result, the role of the unions to obtain economic improvement within capitalism has disappeared. But there are other revolutionary implications deriving from the dislocation of the unions by the mass strike:
The struggle needs to be joined to the reality in which it happens. It cannot be posed as a separate entity. Since the beginning of the last century the decadence of the system has dried up the extracapitalist markets. In this way capitalism’s insatiable need for growth has been severely blockaged. In turn, this has caused a constant crisis and constant social cataclysms -wars and unprecedented misery for humanity.
The period since 1968 expresses the permanent nature of capitalism’s crisis. It express the impossibility for the system to expand and the acceleration of imperialist antagonism, the consequences of which threaten the entire human civilization. Everywhere the State takes charge of the interests of the bourgeoisie and extends it repressive apparatus. It is confronted with a working class who, admittedly numerically weakened in relation to the rest of society since the 1900’s, is ever more concentrated, and whose conditions of existence are becoming shared in all countries at an unprecedented level. At the political level, the decomposition of bourgeois democracy is so evident that it can barely mystify its true function as a smokescreen for the terror of the capitalist state.
In which way do the objective conditions of the present class struggle correspond to the conditions of the mass strike? Its nature rests in the fact that the characteristics of the present period express the highest point reached by the contradictions of capitalism, starting in the 1900’s. The mass strikes of that period were the answer to the end of capitalist ascendance and the dawn of decadence. Taking into account the fact that these conditions today are chronic, we can conclude that what pushed toward the mass strike is today much stronger and much more wide-spread. The general consequences of the development of international capital which were at the root of the historic birth of the mass strike have continued to ripen since the beginning of the century.
What can we do to foster the development of the mass strike, the international self-organization of the proletariat, and its indispensible unity? Our contributions cannot be more than that: contributions of a conscious part of our class. We cannot do more, nor less.
One such contribution is the very critique of the mistakes which fetter self-organization and the deepening of consciousness. Even with the best intentions activism, base-unionism, leftism…all are part and parcel of the barriers that workers have to overcome to accomplish class autonomy. Another contribution is to encourage reflection and the clarification of the experience of the struggle. We can also aid in the re-appropriation of the memory of our struggles and their fundamental weapon: the mass strike
ALACANT 2010
Assembly
Indignant and Self-organized Workers “for a pro-worker, anti-capitalist 15M”
At the end of 2011 comrades of the Indignant and Self-organized Workers (“Take the Square” commission) proposed the idea to collaborate with various groups in favor of the workers’ assemblies. We made the proposal to TLP and addressed ourselves mainly to organization such as the CNT, CGT, and SO which had taken part in joint actions and theorized in favor of the workers’ assemblies. This is what we call “the extension of the assemblies movement”, a project which sponsored what its name suggests from the point of view of the exploited and going beyond party divisions. We put it in writing and made a first attempt at contact. At the time of the 29M strike a Critical Bloc (1) is formed, reflecting our idea about unifying initiatives in order to extend the movement of workers in the assemblies in a wide sense, and question the present situation globally. In the assemblies that were generated that day, a rough outline of how to continue to work was drafted. From this outline followed different orientations. Several supported self-management, others centered on the organization and the struggles by the workers. I took part in the second, which gave birth to several interesting proposals: a solidarity commission with the workers to take care of the work-places, a solidarity fund - which TIA (2) still keeps - protocols for the realization of assemblies after massive mobilizations - and many assemblies took place - protocols for how to respond to repression.
In the summer of 2012 TIA makes an attempt to re-start the Bloc through summer meetings centered on the debates taking place in the Carolinas Community Garden. The initial idea was to meet workers and militants to share experiences and see if activities would surge. This is how the first meeting took place, in which it did not matter at all which group any one participant belonged to. This dynamicchanges once a group who had not attended any meeting makes the proposal to take part in the day of struggle of September 26 within the framework of the national day of struggle organized by several organizations. This was the last act by this bloc-transformed into 'Space': the September 26 day of struggle. This day of struggle changed for me the meaning of what I understood to be the aim of the bloc: "the extension of the movement of the workers’ assemblies".
What happened in this day of struggle? We can analyze it in two parts, according to how the events were posed. On the one hand, there was the assembly. It was participatory, sometimes dispersed, as it often happens. We talked about many subjects but not of the fundamental issue: the workers’ means of struggle, without labels or party identification. It was respectful and at times emotional. It provided a sense of unity and posed the question of a collective reflection.
On the other hand, there was the demonstration. There were many slogans, many blocs separated from each other, a superficial ‘radicalism’ and the absence of common perspectives that go beyond the slogans, totally isolated from the few people in the street who looked on with strange gazes. The feeling was of a disconnect with reality and a lack of unity. In my opinion, the wide-ranging debates that took place before the two events were joined in a kind of consensus which only peddled a false unity. On the one hand there were people who posed the question of a contribution to the generation of consciousness, unity, and workers’ self-organization and who thought that the best place for this is the general assembly. For us, the movement is the autonomous movement of the proletariat, and nothing can change it or direct it other than itself. Obviously, this movement only comes to the forefront in small and short explosions, but this only reinforces the idea that the emancipation of the workers is either the workers’ own action, or it won’t happen. This is why we give priority to ‘horizontal’ spaces that have no labels and where we look for all that we can have in common and what we can pose in common, even though we are open to collaborate with comrades who belong to organizations with their own slogans and ideology.
However, those who defend the idea that it is the organizations of the ‘radical left’ who must unify because they represent the workers, want a common front with a minimum common program, yet they also want to preserve their differences (which are many) and peculiarities and even their own activities. It is not difficult to see who was in favor of the assembly and who for the demonstration, who wanted labels and who didn’t, and who valued a common, general, name with each any worker could identify with, and who was more interested in the particular labels, but not in the importance of a common name.
After all this, we need to pose what we want to do. We were wise in leaving the disputes for later and to postpone the assessment of the event. An assessment will necessarily imply a confrontation of the two tendencies which appeared and which are not likely to consent with each other eternally. However, a serious assessment needs an understanding of the reality in which we move and needs to answer a number of questions: why did the bloc’s conception change? How is it possible to move from posing the question of a space for reflection to a leftist posture within a day? How can we consider a success the fact that we had a night stroll with other 500 people? Certainly, the dynamic has changed. When the bloc developed the idea to extend the assembly movement, this was then a possibility because of the number of massive struggles taking place, and a certain tendency toward self-organization-i.e., the first assemblies of the 15 M, the first moments of the mobilization of the teachers…). But the situation has changed and the mobilizations have been first controlled by the unions and others, and then de-mobilized or taken into a dead-end. The extreme left sees this movement as its property, where they have to denounce the role of the ‘bad managers’ in order to create a pole of attraction toward their positions. From this perspective, the present mobilizations have a meaning. For us, THEY DON’T.
If the workers are not mobilized right now, it is because they know that they can’t get anything with these ‘leaders’ and these ‘struggles’, even though they know things have to change…but they do not know how. For us, this is a moment of collective reflection. We have to contribute toward helping the workers develop a sense of confidence and find the path toward their autonomous organization and their own direction of the future struggles. It is now the time to learn the lessons, be loyal to our class, and not abandon our class.
About one year ago something like the day of struggle of September 26 was inconceivable because the masses would have gone beyond it, since they would have not allowed any organization to take center stage. If today these organizations try to substitute themselves for the participation of the masses, it is precisely because the masses are not ready to mobilize at all. Without understanding this we cannot understand anything else, and we can only end up following the dynamic of activism, which has nothing to do with the real rhythm of the working class struggles. It is possible that some of us felt less lonely in these actions than if we were in our small groups, but the need for ‘company’ is not a political imperative, at least for a working class politics. What is indeed needed are coherence and honesty. Revolutionaries are not ‘lonely’. We are a part of a class that needs and can change the world. Outside of this we lack meaning and we become something else.
What are the conditions for the formation of a permanent collaboration amongst comrades of different groups? We need to understand two things:
I mean permanent collaboration, not an occasional one based on tactical questions.
I mean honest comrades with whom we have serious differences, but of whom we don’t doubt their commitment to the cause of the exploited.
Here, I will explain how, in my opinion, we can have a permanent space for meetings and discussion. Assuming the following premises:
That it be a space of debate, struggle, and meeting with comrades who may or may not be in other organizations, but who give priority to creating common organizational spaces for the working class.
That it be a space for assemblies, both in form and content. Not only is it organized as an assembly, but it also tries to transmit this model to the working class as the embryonic form of the future society.
That is be radically critical of the capitalist system and that it search for the way to transform reality to create a society capable of satisfying all human needs.
That it be a unitary space which searches for a workers’ unity that goes beyond borders, categories, sectors, and organizations. It is a space without labels.
That it be an internationalist space because workers unite as a world community who defends human interests. We belong to the same class, not a fatherland, flag, ideology, or organization.
I am aware that these premises do not exist today, and I have no pretensions of coming to an agreement on questions which each one of us considers fundamental. That is the false unity I referred to before. If I think that these positions are necessary and basic for the struggle of our class, it is obvious I cannot renounce them in favor of a ‘consensus’. When do I think will these conditions exist? When the very autonomous dynamic of the proletariat imposes them. Therefore, debating over them would be absurd. Until then, until the moment that history decided, we can only keep discussing all of the above and much more. I think that we cannot aspire to anything more or less than this in the present period.
V
I am adding some incomplete reflections in the context of the present situation, taking account of the recent texts, “The organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle” and “Analysis and reflection about the Alicante’s bloc”.
Draba
Notes
It is often said that the history of the class struggle in America for the last four decades, that is, since the late 1960’s, is the history of an almost uninterrupted wave of defeats and rollback. Indeed, looking across the Atlantic toward Europe, and south, and east, we would have to make the same conclusion. This is perhaps more spectacularly so in the case of Greece, where in the last year alone six general strikes have been called by the unions, yet not even this has stopped the onslaught of brutal austerity measures in that country. To come back to America, over the course of the last four decades the decline in the standard of living of the American worker has been relentless, quite brutal, and undeniable. In the course of the last four decades, the ruling class has imposed a series of very deep cuts and changes to the entire apparatus of exploitation needed to secure the reiteration of the process of capitalist production: from cuts to education and its increasing costs, to cuts to real wages, to the increase in the work week and the intensification of exploitation, to the erosion of employer-sponsored health care benefits, all the way down to the more recent practice of creating new tiers for new hires in which traditional defined benefit pensions are shifted to 401k-type schemes. The working class has often put up very intense struggles and it has also gone through somewhat lengthy periods of relative quiet, all of which we have written about in this press. However, its attempts at defending its living and working conditions, attempts at times very bold and courageous and carried out notwithstanding the threat of losing one’s job, have not succeeded, for the most part, in deterring the ruling class from proceeding with what have become ever more brutal, more frequent, and more frontal attacks. The frontal nature of the more recent attacks, and those to come, are without a doubt a reflection of the economic impasse in which the bourgeoisie finds itself.
Is it then correct to conclude that the working class has lost its battle against capitalism? Should we accept that we are at the point where the reversal of the balance of forces in favor of the working class is no longer possible? Are the struggles that the working class still engages in a sign of its waning, a reflection of a slow, but irreversible process toward all-out defeat? Does all of this mean that the working class is no longer the social force in society that has the potential and historic mission to destroy capitalist relations of exploitation and give birth to a communist world? Yet, as quiet as it's kept, the working class in the United States continues to wage struggles and there are some signs of reflection and strategizing in the willingness to fight for a younger generation of workers as this has become a subject of capital’s particularly vicious attacks. Despite the weakness and lack of confidence workers feel - which gives the unions a relatively free hand to run the struggles - workers don't exactly trust the unions either.
We do not think that the working class has exhausted its potential. We think that it is going through, and has for some time, a very difficult process of re-discovering its class identity and confidence, of understanding how to confront the class enemy on its own class terrain, and of transforming the lessons and defeats of the past into acquisitions that can be used as sign-posts for the struggles to come. We think that the most decisive struggles for the fate of humanity have not been waged yet, and that the working class is still at the center of history and is a fundamental actor in its development. But in order to have this conviction, we need a method of analysis and understanding. We need to place the struggles of the class in a wide historical setting and assess the balance of forces between the two major classes in society not on the basis of the number of struggles waged and not even in terms of any temporary victory, or painful defeat. A struggle can be massive and protracted without bringing to the class any fundamental theoretical, organizational gain and without helping the class to strengthen solidarity and class-identity, as in the recent examples from Greece. On the other hand, a struggle which on a strictly economic level does not bring even the least of temporary relief, can foster an important sense of self-identity and confidence, politically much more significant than a temporary economic victory - if any can still be obtained. As the economic crisis that started in 2007-2008 continues unabated, it is particularly important that the class continues to develop its struggles with a new understanding of what is at stake, and that its self-identity and confidence be restored.
From 1989 to 2003 the working class globally went through a protracted reflux in its consciousness and combativeness, the result of the campaigns about the ‘end of communism’, and ‘the end of history’ unleashed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first signs of the return of the class struggle were seen in Austria and France starting in 2003, and in the U.S. these struggles were echoed in the New York City MTA (transport) strike of 2005. More struggles happened everywhere, with a significant increase in combativeness, and, most importantly, the emergence of intergenerational class solidarity. In particular, the MTA strike of 2005 was waged in support of the younger generation of workers, for whom the MTA bosses had proposed a new tier with a reduced benefits package. This went on until about the 2007 financial crisis, which, when it hit, created a momentary paralysis amongst workers at the point of production. In 2009 there were record lows of only 5 major work stoppages, after which there has been an uptick in the combativeness of the class, most notably with the mobilization of students and public sector workers in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011, which clearly linked itself to the movement of social protest going on in the Arab world. Soon after, the Verizon strike involved 45,000 workers and then in the same year we saw the movements of protest of Occupy Wall Street, borrowing methods of struggle of the working class through the formation of the General Assemblies, but also going beyond bread and butter demands, opening up a space for a wider questioning of capitalism, of humanity’s future under it. A big component of the context of the struggles in the US has been the election campaign, which had a dampening effect on the class struggle, and which also gave ammunition to the unions against the working class. The unions have made use of the union-busting posture of many Republicans and even some Democrats to rally the workers to their defense. This proved somewhat problematic to do, especially in the case of the Chicago teachers’ strike of last September, which saw a Democratic mayor pitted against the teachers union, a stance that threatened to abort the unions’ usual work of mobilizing public sector workers votes in favor of the Democratic candidate. Notwithstanding the deafening noise of the electoral campaign, disputes at the work place returned as early as the summer of 2012.
In New York City Con-Edison workers went on strike over changing pension plans for new hires. The union decided to call the strike, but when the company asked for one week’s notice, the unions refused, and Con-Edison locked out the workers. The whole campaign then turned to reinstating the workers who had been locked out, and the proposed changes to the contract receded in the background, until on the verge of a storm Governor Cuomo intervened by forcing Con-Ed to reinstate the workers. This tactic has been utilized in the past, particularly during the Verizon strike: the union went on strike because of stalled negotiations. Workers ultimately went back to work without a contract.
Attacks against the workers are being implemented even without contract negotiations. In some cases, step increases linked to longevity have been frozen. New budgets assume no raises for any number of years, when contracts for city workers already expired in some cases as long as four years ago. Retired workers are not being replaced. In New York State, a new tier for new hires at the Department of Education has been approved by the legislation of the state, without any contract negotiations. The issue becomes one of getting the workers back to work or re-starting the negotiations, rather than talking about the new contract per se. This is a strategy of the unions and the bourgeoisie to confront the older, more experienced workers who have shown on several occasions that the attacks against the young generation of workers only stimulate their willingness to struggle in the youngsters’ defense. It seems clear that the ruling class, at least where the workers are more greatly concentrated and experienced, consciously tries to avoid a direct confrontation with the existing workforce because it has learned that the older generation of workers is in a different mood than during the years of its reflux from 1989 to 2003.
This strategy has happened consistently enough to have become a pattern--whether it was a well thought out strategy at the beginning or whether the ruling class has learned from it. It started with General Motors about four years ago with the creation of two tiers for different pension and salary plans. After GM every company has tried to do the same thing. This situation does add the element of demoralization to workers who have struggled - the Lockheed strike, which also was going on during the summer, went on for a couple months, also over the creation of a new tier for the next generation of workers. The strike ended in a terrible defeat for the workers, with all major concessions won by the bosses, including the provision about the new tier. However, as it was apparent by the reactions of many Lockheed workers, workers are having a deeper reflection on the role of the unions. This time, the union could not brag about its outcomes.
While the Lockheed strike was going on, janitors in Houston also walked out, followed by a number of other janitors in several cities across the country. Their demands were around wages and working conditions, and their struggle was successful. But this was not at all thanks to the unions’ mobilization. Indeed, their demands, even though they were on the class terrain, were very modest: a wage increase to a little over $10 an hour is something that JPMorgan - who contracts out the janitors’ bosses - can afford, especially after four years of bad publicity! This little victory by the Houston janitors poses a larger question: what do the Lockheed workers think about seeing the janitors get a little bit while they've gotten nothing? Does it make them doubt their own strength or does it put union methods in question? It is a terrible thing to have to go back to work having lost a struggle for one's posterity; however, this has not succeeded in inflicting a sense of defeat amongst the working class and it has not destroyed the sense of solidarity people feel. In fact, while this strategy has been successful in the past, it is now resulting not as much in a sense of demoralization but in resentment about this strategy - the working class is starting to see that this is what is becoming the pattern. There's an attempt to recuperate the sense of solidarity that the bourgeoisie has tried to attack. As we wrote before, this intergenerational solidarity is something that appeared clearly already in 2005 with the MTA workers’ strike. This is an important dynamic that has the potential for an interesting development in the struggles to come.
That the workers doubt their own strength may not be all that negative after all, if they are able to turn that sense of doubt in a deeper reflection on how to struggle more effectively. The reason the unions make such a deafening noise in cases of small victories is not simply to refurbish their own image, but specifically to try and sap the incipient questioning of union tactics among the larger, more experienced sectors of the working class. The strategy is to isolate and wear down the larger workforces while showcasing small victories in less important and insecure sectors of the working class such as the janitors.
Also in the summer we saw the Palermo pizza workers strike over wages, benefits, and condition s of work. The company fired more than 80 workers on pretense of a presumed immigration check by ICE at the same time as the unions were running a unionization campaign. The company was ultimately forced by ICE to reinstate the fired workers. This strike showed the mood of defiance the working class is getting in. Even immigrant workers without papers showed they did not fear to struggle. However, we should be cautious and not conclude from this that the working class is prepared to defend itself against the attacks of the repressive apparatus of the ruling class. ICE - and Palermo - took a step back in the face of the angry complaints by the union, who pointed out that federal intrusion into illegal immigration - a vital source of cheap labor for small and medium-size companies like Palermo - risked sabotaging the drive to unionize immigrant workers, an important sector of the working class which the unions across the country have been courting in an attempt to shore up the dwindling numbers of their membership. Again, this instance was showcased as a union victory.
Another component of the ruling class’ strategy is, in struggles where there are no gains to be won, long battles of attrition lock the workers in desperation and demoralization. This has been the case of the Crystal Sugar workers strike, run by the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union, which is part of the AFL-CIO and which also represents the Hostess workers, 15,000 of whom have just recently been fired by the company after being locked out. 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers were locked out after a majority of its workers rejected a contract proposal three consecutive times. The company hired replacement workers for the sugar beet season, and shows no intention of wanting to re-hire the fired workers, while the AFL-CIO is launching a boycott campaign to 'force Crystal Sugar to rehire its workers'. In both instances, Crystal Sugar and Hostess, the lockout followed stalled negotiations and workers were drawn into a protracted battle of attrition. This is an example of how the unions mystify the workers on several accounts:
Unions may talk about unity. During the Con-Ed strike in New York City, all the major unions came out. Yet, at the Con-Ed pickets the union had posted a banner clearly reading: “At this time we are not addressing any other union’s grievances”, while workers belonging to a different union stood across the streets with signs that expressed their solidarity with the Con-Ed workers. In a similar way, in the case of the janitors’ strike where the unions really conducted a national campaign of support, demonstrating with other workers, engaging in rolling strikes city by city, the Lockheed workers were totally isolated and not a word was said about them. At the end, concessions are made behind the backs of the workers, not enshrined in the contracts.
It is clear that the working class has not given up its fight. Its combative mood under the most difficult historical conditions since the counterrevolution - a ferocious economic crisis, the threat of an environmental catastrophe, ever bloodier and more dangerous wars, the decomposition of the social fabric - can lay the foundations for even more combative struggles tomorrow. The most fundamental dynamic that surfaces in all the struggles the working class in America has undertaken since 2005 with the MTA workers strike is an incipient development of class identity and solidarity which is apparent in the working class’ open willingness to fight on behalf of the next generation of workers. Its potential to develop further is linked to a series of factors: the bourgeoisie’s ability to manipulate and mystify the workers, the dynamic of the class struggle world -wide, the aggravation of the crisis. The stakes are very high, but the decisive battles are yet to be fought.
The bourgeoisie is always very keen on spreading the idea among the working class that the class struggle does not pay, even that it is over. Indeed, if we were to base ourselves on the statistics, trends, academic studies and the propaganda of the ruling class, we would be very hard placed in making an adequate and dispassionate assessment of where the class struggle is now, and worse placed yet in tracing its perspective. This is because the bourgeoisie has an obvious interest in trying to destroy the working class sense of self-confidence and discredit the class’ own theory of history and its revolutionary project. Our rulers dream of a proletariat without a vision. For the class itself and its revolutionary minorities, though, the whole question about how to assess the class struggle, its history, its weaknesses, strengths, and perspectives is a very serious business that cannot be understood through statistics alone, by ignoring the historic context or though academic studies the aim of which is not to understand reality, but rather to mystify it. The class and its revolutionary minorities must study and understand as carefully and objectively as possible the development of the class struggles in order to be able to see the underlying dynamics and tendencies, because their task is to help to orientate, to give a general line of march to their movement, to foster reflection and generate an understanding of how to move forward in the struggles to come.
The importance for the working class to develop and strengthen its own class identity, its confidence, and its solidarity cannot be overstated. As the first exploited class in history that also has the potential to take humanity to the next level of historical development, the working class is in a unique and contradictory historical situation. On one hand, capitalism itself has developed the productivity of labor necessary to make abundance - the freedom from necessity and the realm of communism - possible. On the other hand, the unleashing of society’s productive potential at all levels, including, but not limited to, the economic level, cannot be concretized until capitalist relations of production are destroyed. As an exploited class, the proletariat is constantly subjected to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and propaganda about the superiority of the capitalist system. This includes the mystification of how wealth and value are created through the separation of the laborer from the means of production, the specialization of production, the piecemeal fashion in which production takes place, and also, very importantly, the expropriation of the producer’s ability to make decisions about how to produce, for which goals, and how to distribute production to the full benefit of all of society’s members. In the chaos generated by the anarchic way capitalism produces - each capitalist entity blindly setting in motion tremendous human resources as it furiously seeks profit in an ever-shrinking market- the worker experiences the entire process of production as an incomprehensible, alien and alienating activity. However, because it is only the proletariat that can produce value which capital transforms into profit, the worker inevitably becomes the target and victim of ferocious attacks against his own conditions of life and work. The relations of capitalist production inevitably force the capitalist to attack, and the worker to defend himself. It is during this struggle that the worker can become aware of being part of a social class, not just an alienated member of society. Historically, it is this confrontation against the exploitation by capital that has helped the class forge its own identity, understand the need for solidarity, and become attracted to the theory of communism.
Ana
November 22 2012
On the face of it, if it was at all possible to weigh up the phenomena of current wars, the recent Israeli-Hamas conflict around the Gaza Strip wouldn't be the worst slaughter taking place. British-backed Rwandan 'rebels' have killed, raped and brutalised their way deep into the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, itself a wider field for massacres, rape, child-soldiers and terror which, when not directly orchestrated by them, are allowed to happen by the big powers while the United Nations watches. Further north in Africa, across the Sahel, again the widespread killings of civilians, rape, child-soldiers, big power manoeuvres and rivalries, along with the abject barbarity of religious fundamentalism. In Syria, over the same days as the recent Israeli operation "Pillar of Defence" took place, many more were killed and wounded within an ongoing general slaughterhouse. But the conflict between Israel and Palestine has a particular resonance for revolutionaries, which is also glimpsed by wider layers of the working class, because it shows the permanent expression of militarisation and war which is the hallmark of a decayed and further decaying social system. Whatever its specifics, strategies and rationales - and there are certainly plenty of those - the Israeli-Palestine conflict is first and foremost the expression of a decomposing capitalism that holds an enormous threat for the working class and the whole of humanity. This particular conflict, increasingly along with the whole geopolitical situation of the Middle East, represents the tendency towards greater militarism, imperialist war, instability and chaos. Its absurdity, intractability and irrationality perfectly sums up the future that this crisis-ridden system offers to us and the generations to follow. There can be no peace here, no meaningful negotiations, and any possible Palestinian two-state solution, if it ever sees the light of day, would only be a contributing factor to deeper instability and war. The Middle East shows how, even in the face of chaos, the nations and cliques are inevitably driven to growing tensions, rivalries and military competition planet. Every major nation has become a military monster and all of the national state creations in decadence are created in their own image, where every aspiring clique or 'national liberation' force are also monstrous expressions of the universal decay. Israel and the 'Palestinian question' shows this in spades.
The Department of Political Science at Oslo University, in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute, has concluded in 2009, through the person of its Professor Havard Hegre that, in relation to war "the number of conflicts is falling" and "we expect this fall to continue"[1]. It's the imperialist version of economic crisis denial and the putting forward of an everlasting more or less peaceful capitalism. It's pure fiction! We've already mentioned the wars in Africa and the wider Middle East above, wars that show every sign of extending and deepening. To these we can add the war in Libya, which the good professor above categorises, along with the war in Syria, as "democratisation processes", as if that was some sort of excuse and in whose view, like many bourgeois academics, capitalism can maintain equilibrium, become more humane and even progress towards eternal life. To the wars above we can add the continuing war and bombings in Iraq which are more and more threatening to link up and slot in with the wider Syrian war, or the 'Kurdish Question' which is a war in itself and a potential war across several countries, again threatening to link in with the Syrian war. Then there's the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the de facto declaration of war by the western powers against a Russian and Chinese backed Iran (in a line-up similar to Syria); and in this vein we mustn't forget the myriad tensions and rivalries around and emanating from an aggressive and voracious Chinese imperialism. And we must add, for future reference, the fragile and militarised imperialist fault-lines of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the ex-Russian republics, Africa (Somalia, the Sahel, Congo). Everywhere we look we see greater tendencies not towards peace, rationality and coherence, but to incoherence, fragmentation, separatist centrifugal tendencies that, in the relatively economically weaker areas of the world - a growing, expanding area of the globe - show a slide into permanent militarisation and war. This is the direct consequence of an economic system that, for all its former glories, is now staggering about on its last legs.
The Middle East is made up of economically incoherent territories where ethnic and religious divisions are manipulated and manoeuvred by all the major imperialisms. In the early 1900s, as the capitalist system had covered the globe and there was no room for any real, new expanding nations, countries like Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories were all creations, or rather abortions, of imperialism in general and specifically Britain and France[2] which used the arbitrarily imposed borders of these newly created countries to divide-and-rule and defend their own imperialist interests. Later, the US used the terrorist factions of Zionism in order to help dislodge the British, and later on, during the Cold War, Russia used the whole region as its one of its stamping grounds in order to confront the USA. The Israeli state, like all the Arab states mentioned above, which, incidentally, have killed more Palestinians than the Israelis, is a permanent expression of militarism and war which, as the economic crisis deepens, will become more and more unstable. Within this process, not just the Palestinians but the Israelis and the masses of the Arab populations become hostages and pawns in the unfolding chaos and contradictions of imperialism, which has been expressed more widely in a situation of more or less permanent war from around 1914.
When capitalism was a vibrant, progressive and expanding system wars and divisions were still part of it, but overall the system tended towards a certain coherence at the level of the construction and unification of the nation state, as all elements, religious, ethnic, etc., tended to merge for the greater good of a more effective process of capitalist accumulation. This wasn't because of the 'moral superiority' of capitalism but emanated from its fundamental need for successful exploitation and expansion. In decadence however we see that the formation of new states does not lead to the integration of different groups in society into a higher capitalist unit but more often results in ethnic cleansing, the reinforcement of racial, religious and ethnic divisions, the expulsion of different groups or their ghettoisation. We've already mentioned above the Balkans, the Caucasus, the ex-Russian republics - and we could add the Indian sub-continent - regions where many of these 'nations' were created for and by imperialist interests and whose very existence is founded on ethnic and religious tensions, centrifugal forces and the defence of every man for himself. Exactly the same is true for the 'nations' of the Middle East: Jordan, Syria, etc., and particularly Israel whose specificities and existence as a fortress state very precisely reflects the general decay of capitalism. Many of these nations are not viable economic units and mostly rely on a bigger imperialist shark or sharks and become a focus for greater tensions. They express not a positive move forward but rather a real fetter on the productive forces.
But does this mean that around the Middle East there are no rationales in this equation, no strategic and economic motives at work; oil production and distribution for example, electoral motives, tactical considerations and so on? No, there are bundles of them. They come thick and fast in the Middle East but the point is that they are all entirely secondary to the overwhelming tendency towards breakdown. In fact they can only contribute to the latter within the absurdity of the defence of borders, arbitrary divisions and of the framework of a profound, insurmountable impasse only worsened by the deepening economic crisis. This infernal spiral towards destruction won't stop and cannot be attenuated or negotiated away. Whatever the bourgeoisie does to try to 'regulate' the situation only rends the situation still more fragile, and this is exemplified in the Middle East where we first saw the clearest signs of the weakening of the world cop, the USA, as its reach is stretched and compromised, opening the door to still more centrifugal tendencies. This phenomenon of a society being torn apart in a series of wars with different ethnic, religious and racial groups fighting each other with hidden imperialist interests behind is a typical expression of a decadent society - a repetition of what both the Roman Empire and feudal Europe saw in their epochs of decline.
If it was President Netanyahu's intention to strengthen his political position by launching operation "Pillar of Defence" in mid-November once the US elections were out of the way and before the Israeli elections next January then, like much manoeuvring in the Middle East, it's gone badly wrong. Hamas, which had been losing credibility within the Gaza Strip for several years now, has been enormously strengthened by the outcome of the 8-day war. The brutality of the Israeli response comprising of tank fire, huge naval guns, attack helicopters and fighter jets into the narrow, densely populated strip has backfired politically. Hamas, which along with its more fundamentalist 'allies' has been firing rockets into Israel for months from the same densely populated areas, has been strengthened by signing a truce with Israel and through further talks aimed at 'facilitating' the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip. In return Hamas has said that it will stop the rocket attacks on Israel and to this end has also strengthened itself against more militant groups like Islamic Jihad. Hamas has also strengthened itself against the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas on the West Bank where the stock of Hamas has risen to the detriment of the former. This accounts from the warning this week from Abbas to Europe and the US (The Guardian, 28.11.12) that some crumb of statehood (i.e. giving the Palestinians some sort of Vatican-like status within the UN) has to be given to the PA or Hamas will be further strengthened. To the disappointment of the US and the rest of the Middle East Quartet (special envoy Tony Blair), Hamas has become more included in the whole process and its isolation is broken with support coming not just from Iran but also from Qatar, Tunisia, Egypt (officials from all three countries have visited Gaza recently) and others. British Foreign Secretary Hague welcomed the Egyptian-brokered truce as "an important step to a lasting peace" . No such thing of course but it shows how Hamas and the smaller groups have to be taken into account now by all those that were trying to isolate it. The US administration knew that an Israeli invasion of Gaza would be a disaster given the geopolitical issues, held its nose and rapidly gave the Egyptian/Hamas ceasefire deal its full seal of approval.
Another 'winner' in this whole shaky process has been the Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, who, with his spy chief Mohamed Shehata (echoes of ex-president Murabak and his spy chief Omar Suleiman) met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadam Shalah (Christian Science Monitor, November 22) to do the deal which Hillary Clinton had to personally welcome on behalf of the administration. Only a few months ago, the US was trying to undermine Mursi and, just to underline the volatility and fragility of the whole region, the US is again denouncing Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood for taking on Murabak-type dictatorial powers just days after his ceasefire 'victory'[3].
Further factors from this imperialist cesspit are that Israel would like Egypt to take more responsibility for Hamas, and according to that view the West Bank and Gaza - at either ends of Israel - could be further isolated one from the other if Egypt's scrutiny over Gaza could be reinforced. Mursi has rebuffed such moves and doesn't want Israel to dump the problem of Gaza onto Egypt. While there have been tensions and a certain distancing between Hamas and their previous backers Iran (a vacuum that Qatar stepped into) over the war in Syria, there appears to be something of a re-warming given the perceived role that Iranian weapons (particularly anti-tank weapons) provided to Hamas had in dissuading an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Not surprisingly there are splits in Hamas regarding its relations with Iran which is a further complicating factor. There's suspicion at least from Saudi Arabia towards the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt as there is in the United Arab Emirates, a major investor in Egypt. Then there is the ambiguous attitude of the Brotherhood towards Iran, typical of the ever-more tangled relationships in the Middle East. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is a further unpredictable factor expressed in the elements above and its increasing activity in Jordan is contributing to making this country more and more unstable. All this, along with major questions over Iran and Syria, makes for further problems for US imperialism and its "Light Footprint" strategy for the Middle East (as it 'rebalances' or 'pivots' towards its greater priority of the Asia/Pacific and the increasing threat that China poses to its dominance in this region).
Whereas in 2008/9, at the time of the last Israeli incursion into Gaza, there was a relative 'calm' on the borders with Syria and Lebanon, while Turkey was still friendly with Israel, Mubarak could be relied upon in Egypt and US/Iranian tensions weren't as sharp. Now the situation is much more unpredictable with many of the nations playing their own game and deepening the tendencies toward each for themselves.
The leaders of the stateless Palestinian bourgeoisie, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, have nothing to offer their population except increasing misery and martyrdom. They are nothing but an expression of the despair and hatred whose aim is to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. They can offer no constructive alternative but, similar to the war lords of Africa whose child armies kill, rape and plunder - another phenomenon of decomposing capitalism - they can only push desperate young Palestinians into revenge and rages of destruction for their empty nationalist projects. The Israeli state feeds the spiral of terror and violence with daily indignities, collective punishments, land-grabs, random shootings and blowing up civilians who happen to be near the Palestinian gangsters.
Despite repression and the permanent atmosphere of war, the Middle East has seen many signs of the social protest against the crisis of capitalism and leaders on all sides: over the last couple of years we've seen social protest in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and more recently Jordan; and these movements have mainly been directed against fundamental questions such a price rises in food, energy, etc., as well as all the regimes that impose and police these measures. Such movements, while not revolutionary in themselves, have to be welcomed by the working class because they show that, even in these more militarised and brutal regimes, even with the hatreds and enmities that emanate from the ruling cliques, there is still the will and ability to fight back. While many workers of these regions have taken part in the protests they have largely done so as individuals and not as a distinct, independent force. The nearest expression of this is that of the working class in Egypt, where the organised working class was, and remains, a real factor in the class struggle. But the reality of the working class in the areas around Israel is that it is too weak and will find a way forward out of the ambient barbarism very difficult without the moves of their brothers in the more central capitalist nations.
These social movements in the region around Israel involving the working class are important but, while they can destabilise the bourgeoisie or cause it problems, they are not strong enough to continue to push the ruling class back - nor could they be due to their own limitations. As a cry of the oppressed and exploited the social movements throughout the Middle East were part of an international wave of protests that continues to reverberate. But here the contradiction is that the weakness of that positive movement has left something of a vacuum that imperialism has poured into, leading, in part, to the wars in Libya and Syria. It has also contributed to reinforcing the wider destabilisation of the regimes which in turn have tended to further weaken the USA's control over the region and promote more centrifugal, independent tendencies among the local bourgeoisies. We don't expect an upward, linear movement of force against capitalism even with the stronger development of class struggle. The region of the Middle East will be particularly difficult for the exploited and oppressed that live there and there will be very hard times for the class struggle overall with imperialism being an ever-present threat and danger. Only significant developments of the class struggle in the capitalist centres can push imperialism back and begin to question the fragmentation and war that it imposes.
Baboon (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
29.11.12
[2]See the three parts of "Notes on the History of Conflict in the Middle East" in International Reviews nos. 115, 117 and 118.
[3]The British bourgeoisie and its intelligence agencies have been more supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have supported it historically in the 1940s and 50s and there have been reports of its direct support to the MB as a fighting force in Syria over the last year. Like Murabak and his spy chief Suleiman, whom Britain backed to the hilt, we can imagine similar support to Mursi and his vicious crew. A press release dated March 2012, for the updated version of Mark Curtis' book: Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, states: "Foreign Office officials have recently held various meetings with the MB, which have been unreported in the British media. The policy is one of "insuring" Britain in the event of the Brotherhood playing a key role in Egypt's transition and protecting an £11 billion investment by BP. Freedom of Information requests by the author for more details on these meetings have been refused by the F.O. on the grounds of 'public interest'".
The ICC Section in France held its 20th Congress recently. Like all RI congresses, this plenary gathering of our territorial section had, of course, an international dimension. This is why delegations were present from different sections of the ICC, composed of comrades from several countries and continents, who were able to actively participate in the discussions. Also present at this Congress were a number of contacts and supporters of the ICC, invited to the various discussions (except those dealing with our internal functioning).
As with the plenary gatherings of our other territorial sections, an important part of the work of the RI Congress was devoted to the discussion of the activities of the ICC. Moreover, in the way in which in recent years our organisation has devoted its congress debates to analysing the evolution of the economic crisis and the class struggle in particular, this Congress of RI gave itself the task of conducting a specific discussion on the dynamics of the imperialist conflicts by placing them in a historical and theoretical framework.
The report and discussion on the imperialist conflicts gave itself the objective of making a balance sheet of the events that have unfurled since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 to see if it confirms the validity of the ICC's analyses.
After the collapse of the USSR, the ICC had asked the following question: with the demise of the Eastern bloc, would we now see the hegemony of one imperialist bloc and a decline in military conflicts? The ICC replied: No! Indeed, we have always rejected the thesis of ‘super-imperialism’, developed by Kautsky before the First World War, which was opposed by revolutionaries in the past (including Lenin). This thesis has been disproved by the facts themselves. "It was just as false when it was taken up and adapted by the Stalinists and Trotskyists claiming that the bloc controlled by the USSR was not imperialist. Today, the collapse of this bloc is not going to revive this kind of analysis: as a consequence of its collapse, the Western bloc is tumbling too." (International Review n ° 61, January 1990).
The debates at the congress showed that events have fully confirmed the validity of marxism: the disappearance of the Russian imperialist bloc was not going to open up an ‘era of peace and prosperity’ for humanity as claimed by the western ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie. Since 1989, the militarist barbarism of capitalism continued to unfold in the Middle East, in Africa, Pakistan, and even in Europe with the war in the former Yugoslavia.
The congress also examined the other analysis that the ICC had developed in 1989: if the historical tendency for the formation of imperialist blocs (characteristic of the period of capitalist decadence) was still correct, only Germany could be a new bloc leader opposing the United States because of its economic power and its strategic geographical location. But, as we said at the time, this hypothetical perspective could not be realised in an immediate sense, particularly because Germany has little military strength; it does not have nuclear weapons, needed to become the leader of a new imperialist bloc. Twenty-three years after the collapse of the USSR, the RI Congress noted that Germany has not emerged as a rival to challenge American power on the world stage (therefore this ICC hypothesis has not been verified). By contrast, it is China that is emerging as the main rival of the first world power. The congress has clearly stated that this is a new element that the ICC had not expected (and could not have foreseen) when the USSR collapsed. Nevertheless, although China increasingly shows its commitment to be a world power, it does not have the military might to oppose the imperialist aims of the United States. Its aggression towards the United States is expressed mainly on the economic and strategic level (as confirmed by the global competitiveness of its goods, its extensive international relations and its presence on the African continent).
The debates at the congress recalled that, although the military conditions for a Third World War have disappeared with the collapse of the USSR (which led to the collapse of the former American bloc created after the Second World War), armed conflicts haven't at all gone away and the death tally continues to rise globally. The only difference lies in the fact that these conflicts are no longer contained by a bloc discipline, as was the case during the period of the Cold War. Our analysis of the decomposition of capitalism, the final phase in the decadence of this mode of production, has also enabled the ICC to say that the tendency towards 'every man for himself' and the instability of the military alliances would form an obstacle to the formation of new imperialist blocs. If the militarist barbarism of capitalism has continued over two decades in the form of 'every man for himself' (including the emergence of terrorism as a weapon of war between states), it is precisely because no world power has been able in this time to play the role of world policeman and impose a new 'world order' as claimed at the time by U.S. President George Bush. The congress demonstrated that the predictions of the ICC and of marxism are totally confirmed: peace is impossible under capitalism. This is what we have seen since 1989 with the two Gulf wars, the massacres in the Middle East and in Africa, the conflict between India and Pakistan and for the first time since 1945, the outbreak of a European war, in the former Yugoslavia.
If the 20th RI Congress has found it necessary to remind us of the framework of analysis of the ICC, it is also to convey to young militants the method of marxism. Only this historical method and the scientific verification of the facts can enable us to avoid the pitfalls of empiricism based on a purely photographic picture of events from day to day.
The second discussion that animated the debates at the Congress was focused on the situation in France and led to the adoption of a resolution published in RI no.438. The 20th RI Congress was held shortly after the recent presidential elections in which François Hollande was the victor. The debates in the congress affirmed that this change of government would further increase the difficulty of the French bourgeoisie to manage the national capital. There is now a "socialist" government that will have to deal with the inevitable worsening of the global economic crisis. This "left-wing" government (that has moreover inherited the blunders of "Sarkozyism") can only continue to intensify the attacks against working class living conditions. The only "change" can come in the language and types of mystification used to implement the austerity policies of the new government, as the Resolution adopted by the congress clearly spelled out [550].
The debate on the report on the situation in France presented to the Congress also dealt with the dynamics of the class struggle. It showed that, despite the depth of the economic crisis and the significant deterioration of living conditions of the working class in France, as in all countries, the proletariat has not, as yet, launched itself into large scale struggles since the movement against pension reform in the autumn of 2011: "If, as in other countries, expressions of combativity are characterised by a dispersion of struggles, the brutal attacks on working class living standards that results from the economic crisis, will force workers into developing their struggles on a much broader scale. This is true for the working class of all countries but it is particularly true for France because the working class of this country has a long tradition of mobilising en masse. This tradition explains why, unlike what occurred in countries such as Spain and the United Kingdom, movements such as the Indignados or Occupy Wall Street have not taken place in France. The reason lies in the fact that, unlike the other countries, the militancy of the working class of this country had already produced massive mobilisations such as the struggle against the CPE in 2006 and more recently the one against pension reform. Thus, there was less of a feel for the need of such movements to express the discontent inside the working class, which tells us that the lack of movements similar to that of the Indignados in France, does not mean that the working class here is lagging behind, especially when compared to other developed countries. Despite the big handicaps that hinder the working class (loss of class identity and lack of perspective), the speed with which living conditions will continue falling in France, as in other countries, is going to push the exploited to try and develop their combativity in the manner we've seen recently with the massive protests that took place in Portugal, Spain and Greece. Even if the ideological garb which the bourgeoisie uses to push through its attacks will delay and make the explosion of struggles more difficult, it will not be enough to prevent them." (Resolution on the situation in France, Point 7).
The plenary assembly of our section in France is also the time when it must draw a balance sheet of its activities from the previous RI congress and draw up perspectives for the next two years. And, of course, in a centralised international organisation like the ICC, the activities of its territorial sections can only be examined in the general framework of the activities of the whole organisation. This is why the congress gave an important place in the discussion to the ICC activities (which we will report on eventually in our press after holding our next international congress).
On the basis of the report submitted by the central organ of the section in France, the Congress drew an undeniably positive balance sheet of all the RI activities (including its intervention in the class struggle, and among the politicised minorities). It was on the basis of this review that the Congress also had to examine with the utmost clarity the weaknesses and challenges that the ICC section in France had come up against in the last two years, and how it might overcome them:
The debates at the Congress, which took place mainly around the adoption of the Activities Resolution, gave an orientation for our section in France of improving its internal functioning to meet the challenges that lie ahead: the need to transmit to the new generation of militants the method of marxism and the acquisitions of the ICC at the political and theoretical level, as well as the organisational level. To ensure this transmission and the ‘organic’ link between generations, the Congress noted that the older generation is engaged in a permanent fight against the tendency to lose sight of its acquisitions (which we have already noted on several occasions previously). As the ICC has existed longer than any other international organisation in the history of the workers' movement, it is ‘normal’ that the acquisitions of its past experience can tend to be forgotten over time.
The Congress of the section in France adopted the perspective of having a better balance in its activity in order to allow all its militants to find time to read and reflect so that the entire organisation can collectively develop its theoretical debates (especially on new questions that can't be entrusted to ‘specialists’).
In the framework of rationalising our activity, the Congress also had a discussion on our territorial printed press and the Internet, and the role of these two media. Given that today our website is our main tool of intervention (our articles are put on line as soon as they are written), the Congress began a reflection about the reduction in the frequency/ regularity of the publication of the RI paper (whose sales only increase with interventions at demonstrations, while the numbers reading our articles on our website is not dependent on the vagaries of the class struggle).
Faced with the danger of immediatism, the Congress recalled that intervention in the ongoing struggles of the working class, as indispensable as it is, is not however our main activity. Like all revolutionary organisations of the past, the primary responsibility of the ICC is to prepare the conditions for the proletarian revolution, and in particular the conditions for the formation of the future world party. This is why our long-term work of building the organisation, must remain at the centre of our activity.
The Activities Resolution, adopted by Congress after a long debate (where all the militants were involved) said: "The activity of revolutionaries is not limited to the intervention in the immediate struggles of the working class and its minorities, but lies first of all in the ‘political and theoretical clarification of the goals and methods of the proletarian struggle, of its historic and its immediate conditions’. (see the point about our activity in our basic positions published on the back of our publications) (...) Our work of theoretical elaboration is by no means complete, far from it, and will never be completed. This theoretical clarification is still ahead of us and must remain our priority in the fight to build the organisation and in continuing to fulfill our responsibility as a vanguard of the proletariat. " (Point 14).
"...The struggle for communism doesn't just have an economic and political dimension, but also a theoretical dimension ("intellectual" and moral). It is by developing 'the culture of theory'; that is to say, the ability to permanently situate all aspects of the organisation's activities in a historical and /or theoretical framework, that we can develop and deepen the culture of debate internally, and better assimilate the dialectical method of marxism."
Clearly with this approach the ICC section in France has provided itself with the perspective of strengthening its organisational tissue and improving its functioning by developing a theoretical debate on the roots of its present and past difficulties.
"This work of theoretical reflection cannot ignore the contribution of science (and notably the social sciences, such as psychology and anthropology), on the history of the human species and the development of civilisation. In particular the discussion on 'marxism and science' was of utmost importance for us and we should continue with it and build on it in our reflections and in our organisational life." (Activities Resolution, Point 6).
As our readers know, in the year of the celebration of the ‘Darwin anniversary’, the ICC revived a tradition of the past workers' movement: an interest in scientific research and the new scientific discoveries, including those that provide marxism with a better understand of human nature. For it to build communism in the future, the proletariat must go to the "root of things" and, as Marx said, "the root of things for man is man himself." This is why we have conducted a discussion on "marxism and science" and have invited scientists to the last two ICC congresses.
Our interest in the sciences continued in the 20th RI Congress. A small part of this work was devoted to a debate with a scientist around a topic chosen by us: "Confidence and solidarity in the evolution of humanity: what distinguishes our species from the great apes?".
Camilla Power, teacher of anthropology at the University of East London (and collaborator with Chris Knight), had agreed to come to the RI congress and lead a discussion on this topic. In her very interesting and well-illustrated presentation, she explained the development of solidarity and confidence in the human species by recalling the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Everyone at the congress, including our contacts and the invited sympathisers, appreciated the materialist approach and the scientific rigour of the presentation, as well as the quality of the debate. For her part, Camilla Power warmly thanked the congress with these words before her departure:
"I just want to say thank you; it was very exciting for me to come to your congress. I learned a lot from the questions and answers from the different contributors. I was very impressed with the reading you have done, and what you have learned. I have always felt very committed to marxism and to Darwinism. I'm an anthropologist. We must combine an understanding of the natural history and social history. And anthropology is central to this. Marx and Engels spent a lot of time towards the end of their lives doing research in anthropology. It happened very late in life, but it shows that they recognised how important it is. It's very exciting to meet people who want to think scientifically about what it means ‘to be human’. This is a very important issue for everyone, for the international working class. For us, it is about rediscovering the nature of our humanity. We must not be afraid of science, because it is science that will give us revolutionary answers. Thank you very much, comrades."
We can now make a very positive assessment of the invitation of a scientist to our congress. It is an experience that our organisation will try and repeat as much as possible in future congresses.
The road leading to the proletarian revolution is a long, difficult and fraught with pitfalls (as Marx underlined in The 18th Brumaire [551]).
The work of the ICC is just as long and difficult as the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation. It is all the more difficult as our forces remain extremely limited today. But the difficulties facing the communist organisations in carrying out their work has never been a factor of discouragement, as we see in this quote from Marx cited at the end of the Activities Resolution adopted by the 20th Congress of RI: "I've always found it in all those truly steeled characters, that once they have engaged in revolutionary work, they will continually draw new strength from defeat and become even more committed as the tide of history sweeps them along"(Marx, Letter to Philip J. Becker).
RI 22/12/12
At the start of 2013 the UK’s Coalition government voted in the latest tranche of austerity measures aimed at reducing the budget deficit. The Spending Review put forward by George Osborne factored in the planned attacks on welfare benefits and pensions. These attacks have been phased in by the British bourgeoisie over a number of years and didn’t start with the Lib-Cons coming to power. The attacks are plainly focussed on the working class.
To start, the government has placed a cap of 1% increase per annum for a period of three years on all welfare benefits. This has jettisoned the link of benefits to inflation that had previously been in place. When we consider that the present level for JSA is £71 (if you are 25 or over, £56.25 if under), an already impoverished situation is bound to get worse. The Department of Works and Pensions has insisted that this is not a cut, but is committed to establishing a further £10 billion ‘saving’ in the welfare bill in the coming period.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Works and Pensions, has promised to introduce a ‘Universal Benefit’ which will impose a £500 ceiling on all benefits for every household. This is currently being trialled in different boroughs in the country because the DWP does not have in place the infra-structure to implement it immediately. However, the cuts will still take place. These cuts will affect JSA, working tax credits, and pension credits. The Disability Living Allowance will be replaced by a ’Personal Independence Payment’.
The cuts to child credit payment will affect 2.5 million single women workers and a further million whose partners are in work. This in effect will be throwing millions of children into poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group has said that these changes will cut 4% from benefits over the next three years. The overall plan is to subsume all payments into the one ‘Universal Benefit’ payment. The government will thus cut its welfare bill. All the guff about lazy ‘shirkers’ versus hard-working ‘strivers’ is just so much camouflage to hide the attacks. According to another report, this time by the Children’s Society, “up to 40,000 soldiers, 300,000 nurses and 150,000 primary and nursery school teachers will lose cash, in some cases many hundreds of pounds” (Guardian 5/1/13) So much for targeting ‘shirkers’!
The government has placed a cap of £500 per household per week on the rent of a family home. In places like London this is impossible for many to find. According to the government’s own figures on risk assessment, this will affect some 2.8 million people. 400,000 of the poorest people will be included. 300,000 households stand to lose more than £300 per week.
The government in its ‘war on welfare dependency’ will hit the young hardest. The government intends to refuse housing benefit to the under 25’s. This is to effectively throw thousands of young people onto the streets.
The government is cutting its subsidies to local councils by 10% while leaving local authorities to implement the cuts in Council Tax payments. This will mean an average £10 per week that social tenants will have to find to supplement their rents. Those occupying dwellings which have a spare bedroom will have to find a minimum of £10 per week under the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax’ since they now fall into the “over occupancy” category. This will again hit young people the hardest. The homeless charity Shelter say that only 1 in 5 of rental homes are affordable to single people on benefits.
The Labour Party, far from being opposed to the cuts, have declared that they agree with the ‘basic principle’ that work for the jobless should be encouraged and should be part of a package for welfare benefits. In response to the government attacks Liam Byrne (shadow employment secretary) has come up with his own ‘workfare’ scheme. This scheme would see every claimant under the age of 25 who has been unemployed for more than two years forced into compulsory jobs. These workers would be paid the minimum wage only. Anyone who refused such Mickey Mouse ‘jobs’ would, under the Labour Party scheme, lose 13 weeks of benefit for the first time and 26 weeks of benefits for the second time. This would not only be a way of reducing the welfare benefit costs but would also force unemployed workers into the hands of unscrupulous bosses. It is reminiscent of the ‘Dole Schools’ of the 1930s where, to claim the dole, you had to attend ‘schools’ to perform menial work or lose what little benefit you could receive.
This Labour party scheme will only mean jobs for six months, after which workers will be back on the dole - and unemployment will still remain at the same massive levels, since most workers won’t qualify for the scheme anyway.
The attacks are only just beginning. The benefit cuts are part of a wider push to make the working class pick up the bill for their crisis. Governments all around the world, particularly in the centres of the Eurozone like Greece and Spain, are doing the same.
If the working class is to mount any resistance to this offensive, it must reject out of hand all attempts to make it feel responsible for the crisis of capitalism, and all the nauseating campaigns about shirkers and strivers, which are aimed at dividing the working class. Unemployment and poverty are the product of capitalism in crisis and the working class can only defend itself by developing its unity in the struggle against this system.
Melmoth 12/1/13
In September 2012 legislation came into force that made squatting in the UK a criminal offence. At the end of the month the first person was convicted under the new legislation and sentenced to 12 weeks in prison. He had come from Plymouth to London looking for work and had occupied a flat owned by a housing association.
Prior to this a number of Tory MPs and newspapers made much of cases where homes that were lived in had been squatted and used this to justify the new law, despite knowing that there were a number of laws already in place aimed at preventing squatting. This suggests that the new law is actually aimed at keeping squatters out of unoccupied houses, offices and other buildings, which are those usually squatted. It is also part of the wider campaign to divide and control the working class. This was given a new boost at the start of 2013 with the spat over ‘scroungers’ versus ‘strivers’ that preceded the vote to limit increases in most benefits to 1% a year.
No official figures on the number of people squatting have been collected since the mid 1980s, but a recent article in the Guardian reported that there are between twenty and fifty thousand people squatting, mostly living in long-term abandoned properties.[1] This is part of the larger picture of increasing numbers struggling to keep a roof over their heads. For example, the figures gathered about homelessness show increases in the last few years: in England 110,000 families applied to their local authority as homeless in 2011/12, an increase of 22% over the preceding year. 46% of these were accepted by the local authority as homeless, an increase of 26% over the preceding year. The figures for Wales and Scotland also show increases in both the numbers applying and being accepted.
The charity Crisis, from whose website the figures above are taken, underlines that these official figures are likely to be very inaccurate since the majority of those who are homeless are hidden because they do not show up in places, such as official homeless shelters, that the government uses to gather its data. Another indicator that housing is becoming an increasing problem is provided by the data about the numbers sleeping rough. In 2011 official figures show that over two thousand people slept rough in England on any one night in 2011, an increase of 23% over 2010. However, once again, the real figure is probably far higher as non-government agencies report that over five and a half thousand people slept rough in 2011/12 just in London, an increase of 43% over the previous year.
Globally, it is estimated that at least 10% of the world’s population is squatting. Many of the slums that surround cities such as Mumbai, Nairobi, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro are largely comprised of squatters.[2] The types of accommodation, the services, or lack of them, available to inhabitants, the type of work undertaken and the composition of the population all vary, but collectively they show that, for all the goods produced and all the money swirling around the world, capitalism remains unable to adequately meet one of the most basic of human needs. The purpose of this article is to try and examine the reasons for this.
The starting point is the recognition that the form the housing question takes under capitalism is determined by the economic, social and political parameters of bourgeois society. In this system, the interests of the working class, and of other exploited classes such as the peasantry, are always subordinated to those of bourgeoisie. At the economic level there are two main dynamics. On the one hand, housing for the working class is a cost of production and thus subject to the same drive to reduce the costs as all other elements linked to the reproduction of this class. On the other, housing can also be a source of profits for part of the bourgeoisie, whether provided for the working class or any other part of society. At the social and political level, housing raises issues about health and social stability that concern the ruling class, while it can also offer opportunities for both physical and ideological control of the working class and other exploited classes. This was true in the early days of capitalism and remains true today.
The situation in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a consequence of the full unfolding of the capitalist system that had been developing for several centuries previously. The industrial revolution that was a consequence of these early developments led to a transformation in all areas of life within the capitalist world, in the economy, in politics and in social life. The development of large factories led to the rapid growth of cities, such as London, Manchester and Liverpool, and drew in millions of dispossessed peasants, transforming them into proletarians. Advances in productivity and the cyclical crises that typified early capitalism periodically ejected hundreds of thousands of workers from employment while the expansion of production and its extension into new fields, driven on by the same crises, drew them back in. For the bourgeoisie this meant there was a readily available workforce: the reserve army of those ejected from work or newly driven from the land, that tended to help keep the cost of all labour down. For the working class the result was a life of exploitation, poverty and uncertainty.
The Condition of the Working Class in England [554] written by Engels after he moved to Manchester in 1842 and published in German in 1845, revealed the true face of the industrial revolution. A central theme of the work is an examination of the living conditions of the working class. Drawing on various official reports as well as his own observations he described the accommodation endured by workers in cities such as London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds: “These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns, usually one or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built…The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings live here crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men’s quarters may readily be imagined.”[3]
He notes the gradations of misery within this overall picture. In St Giles in London, which was near Oxford Street, Regent Street and Trafalgar Square with their “broad, splendid avenues”, he distinguishes between the dwellings located in the streets and those in the courts and alleys that ran between them. While the appearance of the former “is such that no human could possibly wish to live in them” the “filth and tottering ruin” of the latter “surpass all description”: “Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, door-posts and window-frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in this thieves quarter…Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all directions, and the foul liquids emptied before the doors gather in stinking pools. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution, indiscriminately huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have not sunk into the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.”[4] In the new factory towns industrialists and speculators threw up houses that were poorly built, overcrowded and lacking in ventilation. Within a few years most had become slums, albeit profitable ones. From these and many other descriptions of the environment Engels goes on to consider the consequences on the physical and mental health of the inhabitants. He shows the link between mortality, ill health and poverty, examines the poor quality of the air breathed by the working class, the lack of education of their children, and the arbitrary brutality of the conditions and regulations of employment.
The pattern set by Britain was quickly followed by other countries such as France, Germany and America as they industrialised. Everywhere that capitalism developed the working class was housed in slums and in most of the great cities the working class areas were places of poverty, filth and disease from which the new bourgeoisie drew the wealth that allowed them to live comfortably and moralise according to their various tastes about the immorality and fecklessness of the working class.
In The Housing Question [555], published 27 years after the Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels acknowledges that some of the worst slums he described had ceased to exist. The principal reason for this was the realisation by the bourgeoisie that the death and disease that reigned in these places not only weakened the working class, and thus the source of their profits, but also threatened their own health: “Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, small-pox and other ravaging diseases spread their germs in the pestilential air and the poisoned water of these working class districts… Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pleasure of generating epidemic diseases with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in the ranks of the capitalists as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers.”[5] In Britain this resulted in official inquiries, which Engels notes were distinguished by their accuracy, completeness and impartiality compared to Germany, and which paved the way for legislation that began to address the worst excesses.
This was the era that saw the building of sewerage and water systems in towns and cities in Britain. If the impulse for these reforms came specifically from the self-interest of the bourgeoisie and more indirectly from the pressure of the working class and the need to manage the growing complexity of society, the possibility of realising them was due to the immense wealth being produced by capitalism. Engels notes that the interests of the bourgeoisie in this matter are not only linked to issues of public health but also to the need to build new business premises in central locations, to improve transport by bringing the railways into the centre of cities and building new roads, and also by the need to make it easier to control the working class. This last had been a particular concern in France after the Paris Commune and resulted in the building of the broad avenues that still characterise much of this city.
However, Engels goes on to argue that such reforms do not eliminate the housing question: “In reality the bourgeoisie has only one method of settling the housing questions after its fashion – that is to say, of settling it in such a way that the solution poses the question anew.”[6] He gives the example of a part of Manchester called Little Ireland that he described in The Condition of the Working Class in England. This area, which was “the disgrace of Manchester”, “long ago disappeared and on its site there now stands a railway station”; but subsequently it was revealed that Little Ireland “had simply been shifted from the South side of Oxford Road to the north side.”[7] He concludes: “The same economic necessity which produced them in the first place produces them in the next place also. As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist it is folly to hope for an isolated settlement of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the lot of the workers.”[8]
Subsequent developments in Britain seem, ultimately, to refute this since the slums of the 19th and early 20th century are gone. The First World War left a shortage of 610,00 houses with many pre-war slums untouched. In its aftermath local authorities were given powers to clear slums and to build housing for rent. Between 1931 and 1939 over 700,000 homes were built, re-housing four fifths of those living in slums.[9] Many of the new houses were built in large estates on the outskirts of major cities including Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and London. Some local authorities experimented by building blocks of flats. However, these efforts were dwarfed by the two and half million homes built privately and sold to the middle class and better off parts of the working class. Nonetheless, this did not mark the end of slums and severe overcrowding remained common in many working class areas. The Second World War saw a regression as house building all but stopped and inner city areas were exposed to bombing. The post war period witnessed the most concerted house building programme by the state in British history, which reached its peak under the Tory government of the late 1950s when over 300,000 council homes were built annually. The building of large tower blocks was a more prominent feature this time. Support was also given to private building and by 1975 52.8% of homes were privately owned, compared with 29.5% in 1951 (private rented properties fell from 44.6% to 16% during the same period).[10]
However, these developments were the product of their time and reflect the prevailing economic situation. In Britain and the other major capitalist powers, the post war period allowed some significant changes in housing. The post-war boom that was based on the very significant improvements in productivity that followed the destruction of the war gave the state the means to increase spending in a range of areas, including housing. As already noted, some important working class areas in cities that had been centres of production had been destroyed or damaged by bombing. The industries that developed after the war, such as car making, led to the building of new factories, often outside the old concentrations. This required the building of accommodation for workers. There was also a political motive in meeting social needs in order to reduce the risk of unrest following the war. In this the state drew on the failure of the policy of ‘Homes fit for heroes’ proclaimed after World War I, a failure that had helped to discredit the post-war government of Lloyd George.
However, the post war boom did not reach many parts of the world. These included some countries in the west, such as Ireland where severe poverty and slums remained until the economic boom that developed there in the 1980s. Above all, it encompassed what has been called the ‘Third World’, which essentially comprises those continents and countries that were subject to imperialist domination by the major capitalist countries. In short, most of the world. Looked at from this perspective it becomes evident that Engels’ argument is not just confirmed but confirmed on a scale he could not have imagined.
The present global situation is shaped by the structural crisis of capitalism that lies behind both the open recessions and the booms of the last 30 to 40 years, including the astonishing levels of growth seen in China, India and a number of other countries. This period has seen a reshaping of the whole world and its full analysis is far beyond the scope of this article. For many on the left this reshaping is a consequence of the triumph of neo-liberalism with its doctrines of reducing the state and supporting private enterprise. This is frequently presented as an ideologically based strategy and the crisis of 2007 as being of its making. While the critique of neo-liberalism and globalisation may describe aspects of the changes that have taken place in the global economy, it tends to miss the essential point that this transformation is the result of the response of capitalism to the economic crisis. It is the result of the unfolding of the immanent laws of capitalism rather than the outcome of ideology. It is this that links the situation in the old heartlands and the periphery, in the Third World and the first, in the countries experiencing economic growth and those not. The housing question everywhere has been posed anew by these developments.
Today, one billion people live in slums and the majority of the world’s population is now urban. Numbers continue to grow every day and the slums that surround cities of all sizes in these countries grow ever-larger. Most of these slums are in the third world and, to a lesser extent, parts of the old eastern bloc (what was once called the Second World). This is a new situation. In the book Planet of Slums, published in 2006, the author, Mike Davis, argues that “most of today’s megacities of the South share a common trajectory: a regime of relatively slow, even retarded growth, then abrupt acceleration to fast growth in the 1950s and 1960s, with rural immigrants increasingly sheltered in peripheral slums.” [11] The slow or retarded growth in many of these cities was a consequence of their status as colonies of the major powers. In India and Africa the British colonial rulers passed laws to prevent the native populations moving from the country to the city and to control the movements and living arrangements of those in the cities. French imperialism imposed similar restrictions in those parts of Africa under its control. It seems logical to see these restrictions as linked to the status of many of these countries as suppliers of raw materials to their colonial masters. However, even in Latin America, where the colonial hand was arguably less severe, the local bourgeoisie could be equally opposed to their rural countrymen and women intruding into the cities. Thus in the late 1940s there were crackdowns on the squatters drawn to urban centres such as Mexico City as a result of the policy of local industrialisation to replace imports.
This changed as colonialism ended and capitalism became ever more global. Cities began to grow in size and increase in number. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with populations of over one million. By 2006 this had reached 400 and by 2015 is projected to rise to 550. The urban centres have absorbed most of the global population growth of recent decades and the urban labour force stood at 3.2 billion in 2006.[12] This last point highlights the fact that in countries such as Japan, Taiwan and, more recently, India and China this growth is linked to the development of production. One consequence of global significance is that over 80% of the industrial proletariat is now outside Western Europe and the US. In China hundreds of millions of peasants have flooded from the countryside to the cities, principally those in coastal regions where most industrialisation has taken place; hundreds of millions more are likely to follow. By 2011 the majority of China’s population was urban.[13]
This can give the impression that the process seen in the 19th century is continuing; that the early chaotic development will be replaced by a more steady progression up the value chain of production with resulting increases in wages, prosperity and the domestic markets. This is used to support the argument that capitalism remains dynamic and progressive and that in time it will lift the poor out of poverty, feed the starving and house the slum dwellers.
However, this is not the full story of the current period. In many other countries there is no link between the development of cities and the slums that go with them and the development of production. This can be seen by comparing cities by size of population and GDP. Thus, while Tokyo was the largest by population and by GDP, Mexico City, which was the second largest by population, does not figure in the top ten by GDP. Similarly Seoul, which is fourth largest by population also does not appear amongst the top ten by GDP. In contrast, London, which was sixth by GDP, is 19th by population.[14] Population growth in these cities seems more a consequence of wider economic changes, such as the reorganisation of agriculture to meet the requirements of the international market and fluctuations of the price of raw materials on the one hand and the often linked impact of war, ‘natural’ disasters, famine and poverty on the other. In some cities, such as Mumbai, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires there has actually been de-industrialisation. Davis also highlights the neo-liberal policies of the IMF as having a particular role in this process and in the impoverishment of many of the recipients of its ‘aid’ and ‘advice’.
The consequences can be seen in the shanty towns that encircle many cities in the south. While it is the megacities that hit the headlines, the majority of the urban poor live in second tier cities where there are often few, if any, amenities and which attract little attention. The accounts of the living conditions of the inhabitants of these slums that run through Planet of Slums echo parts of Engels’ analysis. In the inner cities the poor not only crowd into old housing and into new properties put up for them by speculators but also into graveyards, over rivers and on the street itself. However, most slum-dwellers live on the periphery of the cities, often on land that is polluted or at risk from environmental disaster or otherwise uninhabitable. Their homes may be made of bits of wood and old plastic sheeting, often without services and subject to eviction by the bourgeoisie and exploitation and violence by the assorted speculators, absentee landlords and criminal gangs that control the area. In some areas squatters progress to legal ownership and succeed in getting the city authorities to provide basic services. Everywhere they are subject to exploitation.
As in England in the 19th century there is money to be made from misery. Speculators large and small build properties, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally, and receive rents, which for the space rented are comparable to the most expensive inner city apartments of the rich. The lack of services provides other opportunities, including the sale of water. The inhabitants within the slums are divided and sub-divided. Some who rent shacks may rent a room to someone even poorer. Some may have jobs that are more or less precarious, others scrape a living through petty trading or providing services to their fellow inhabitants. This mass of proletarians, semi-proletarians, ex-peasants and so on constitute a reserve army of labour that helps to lower the cost of labour regionally, nationally and, ultimately, globally. They also pose a threat to capitalist order and offend the sensibilities of the bourgeoisie just as the slum-dwellers of Britain did in the 19th century.
The bourgeoisie continues to try to ‘solve’ the housing crisis that its society creates. Today as in the past this is always circumscribed by what is compatible with the interests of the capitalist system and of the bourgeoisie within it. On the one hand, there have been attempts simply to bulldoze the problem away, evicting millions of the poor, whether workers, ex-peasants, petty-traders or the cast-offs of society, and dumping them in new slums, or in the open countryside, away from the eyes, ears and noses of the rich. On the other hand, a whole bureaucracy has grown up aimed at solving the housing problem, including the IMF, the World Bank, the UN as well as both international and local NGOs; but they always do so within the framework of capitalism. Thus, new housing often benefits the petty-bourgeoisie and better off workers who have the contacts or can pay the bribes or afford the rent, rather than those it was nominally intended for. A priority is usually to keep costs low, resulting in either barrack-like housing schemes or reforming the slums without ending them. The latter has seen a particularly unusual alliance between would be radicals who want to ‘empower’ the poor and international capitalist bodies such as the World Bank who want to find a market solution that encourages enterprise and ownership.
Finally, there is the unspoken but ever-present objective of dividing the exploited through the usual mix of co-option and repression. Thus bodies that begin with radical demands, such as squatters’ groups, often end up collaborating with the ruling class once they have been given a few concessions. Amongst some ideologues there are even echoes of the past, such as the idea that the solution lies in providing the poor with legal entitlement to the land on which they are living. This echoes the ideas that Engels combated in the first part of The Housing Question that deals with the claims by a follower of the anarchist Proudhon that providing workers with the legal title to the property they are living in will solve the housing question. Engels shows that this ‘solution’ will rapidly lead back to the original problem since it does not change the basic premise of capitalist society that “enables the capitalist to buy the labour power of the worker at its value but to extract from it much more than the its value…”[15]
In the old capitalist heartlands of Western Europe and the US, the return of the open economic crisis at the end of the 1960s led to two major changes that impacted on the provision of housing for the working class. The first was the need to reduce the expenditure of the state, and especially the social wage paid to workers; the second was the shift of capital from productive investment to speculation where the returns seemed higher. We will focus on Britain in examining this, as we did at the start of this article, mindful of the fact that the particular form taken varies from country to country.
The tightening of state spending led first to a slow down in the number of council houses built and then, under Thatcher, to the selling of the council housing stock and the restriction of further building by local authorities. This is frequently portrayed as an example of Thatcherite dogma and it is indeed true that it was partly an ideological campaign to promote home ownership. But none of this began with Thatcher. We have already noted the efforts to promote home ownership by both Tory and Labour governments both before and after the Second World War, principally through tax relief on mortgages. The selling of council houses not only reduced the capital costs of building homes but also the revenue costs of maintaining them, since the new owner assumed individual responsibility for this. The idea that owning property would help to curtail the threat from the working class goes back further still. In The Housing Question Engels quotes one Dr Emil Sax’s paean to the virtues of land ownership: “There is something peculiar about the longing inherent in man to own land…With it the individual obtains a secure hold; he is rooted firmly in the earth…The worker today helplessly exposed to all the vicissitudes of economic life and in constant dependence on his employer, would thereby be saved from this precarious situation; he would become a capitalist…He would thus be raised from the ranks of the propertyless into the propertied class.”[16]
Financial speculation became ever more feverish as the struggle to find a profitable return on capital became more intense over the last 40 years. The financial deregulation that was a feature in both Britain and the US in the 1980s allowed the bourgeoisie to develop ever more complex forms of speculation. In the 1990s money flowed into a range of new instruments based on the extension of credit to ever larger parts of the working class. The development of sub-prime mortgages in the US typified this approach. Speculators thought they were safe because of the complex nature of the financial instruments they were investing in and the high rating given to them by rating agencies such as Standard and Poor. The collapse of the sub-prime market in 2007 exposed this as the illusion it always was and laid the foundations for the wider collapse that followed, whose effects are still with us. In Britain ever-larger mortgages were offered with ever-smaller deposits and relaxed financial checks. The result was that mortgages made up the majority of the growth in personal credit that helped to underpin the ‘booms’ of the 1990s and early 2000s (the longest period of post-war growth as Gordon Brown used to claim).
The first housing bubble burst in the 1990s and plunged many into negative-equity, resulting in a high level of repossessions. This time round the bourgeoisie has managed to limit the impact so there are less repossessions. However, housing has now become less affordable due to a combination of the lasting increases during the bubbles and the tightening of credit following 2007, with the result that many young people can no longer afford to buy. At the same time, the rented sector has reduced. Council provision is limited and tightly controlled, with eligibility criteria that condemn younger people to small and poor accommodation if not to B&B. The new limits on Housing Benefit will also force families to move away from their home area or face being thrown on the street where one of the few options is to squat one of the thousands of empty properties. Thus we return to where we began.
The housing question that confronts workers and other exploited classes around the world takes quite different forms in one country or another and often divides the victims of capitalism against each other. Between a young worker squatting on land prone to flooding or subject to industrial poisons on the margins of a city like Beijing or Mumbai and a young worker ineligible for a council flat in London or unable to get a mortgage on a house in Birmingham there can seem to be an unbridgeable gulf. Yet the question for all workers is how to live as a human being in a society subordinated to the extraction of profits from the many for the few. And for all the changes in the form and scale of the question the content remains the same. Engels’ conclusion remains as valid today as it was over a century ago: “In such a society the housing shortage is no accident; it is a necessary institution and can be abolished together with all its effects on health etc., only if the whole social order from which it springs is fundamentally refashioned”[17]
North 11/01/13
[1]. Guardian 03/12/12, “Squatters are not home stealers”. Part of the ideological campaign whipped up to justify the anti-squatting law involved loudly publicising cases where individual homeowners retuned from a period of absence to find their house being squatted
[2]. Ibid.
[3]. The Condition of the Working Class in England, “The Great Towns”. Collected Works Volume 4, Lawrence and Wishart p.331.
[4]. Ibid., p.332-3
[5]. The Housing Question, Part ii “How the bourgeoisie solves the housing question”. Collected Works, Volume 23, Lawrence and Wishart, p.337.
[6]. Ibid. p.365.
[7]. Ibid. p.366.
[8]. Ibid. p.368.
[9]. Stevenson British Society 1914-45, chapter 8 “Housing and town planning”. Penguin Books, 1984.
[10]. See Morgan, The People’s Peace. British History 1945-1990. Oxford University Press, 1992.
[11]. Davis, Planet of Slums, chapter 3 “The treason of the state”, Verso 2006. Much of the information that follows is taken from this work.
[12]. Ibid., chapter 1, “The urban climacteric”, p.1-2.
[13]. UN Habitat, The state of China’s cities 2012/13, Executive Summary, p.viii.
[14]. Davis op. cit. p.13.
[15]. Engels op cit., p.318
[16]. Engels, op.cit. p.343-4.
[17]. Ibid., p.341.
On 11 January 2013, the French president François Hollande launched Operation Serval to wage the ‘war against terrorism’ in Mali. Planes, tanks and men armed to the teeth are now being employed in the southern Sahel. As these lines are being written, bombs and machine guns are speaking and the first civilian victims have fallen. The British bourgeoisie has pledged planes and logistical support to the French effort, and Cameron has not ruled out the deployment of British troops. And the ‘blow back’ from this conflict has already appeared in the shape of the blood-soaked hostage crisis in Algeria.
Once again the French bourgeoisie has thrown itself into an armed conflict in Africa. Once again, it is doing it in the name of peace. In Mali, it’s presented as a fight against terrorism and thus for the protection of the population. Quiet clearly, there’s no doubt about the cruelty of the armed Islamist gangs which reign in the north of Mali. These warlords sow war and terror wherever they go. But the motives behind the French intervention have nothing to do with the suffering of the local peoples. The French state is there only to defend its sordid imperialist interests. It’s true that the inhabitants of Mali’s capital, Bamako, have, for now, joyfully welcomed Hollande as their saviour. And these of course are the only images of this war which the media are disseminating right now: happy populations, relieved that the Islamist mafia’s advance towards the city has been halted. But this mood is not likely to last long. When a ‘great democracy’ passes through with its tanks, the grass is never green afterwards. On the contrary: desolation, chaos, and misery are the legacy of their intervention. The attached map shows the main conflicts which have ravaged Africa since the 90s and the famines which followed in their wake. The result is evident: each war – often carried out under the banner of humanitarian intervention, like in Somalia in 1992 or Rwanda in 1994 – has resulted in serious food shortages. It’s not going to be different in Mali. This new war is going destabilise the whole region and add considerably to the chaos.
“With me as President, it’s the end of ‘Francafrique’”. François Hollande’s blatant lie would make us laugh if it didn’t mean a new pile of corpses. The left has never failed to talk about its humanism but for nearly a century the values it drapes itself with have served only to hide its real nature: a bourgeois faction like all the rest, ready to commit any crime to defend the national interest. Because that’s what we seeing in Mali: France defending its strategic interests. Like François Mitterand, who took the decision to intervene militarily in Chad, Iraq, ex-Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda, Hollande has proved once again that the ‘socialists’ will never hesitate to protect their values – i.e. the bourgeois interests of the French nation – at the point of a bayonet.
Since the beginning of the occupation of the north of the country by the Islamist forces, the big powers, in particular France and the USA, have been egging on the countries of the region to get involved militarily, promising them money and logistical aid. But in this little game of alliances and manipulations, the American state seemed to be more adept and to be gradually gaining influence. Being outwitted in its own hunting ground was quite unacceptable for France. It had to react and react with some force: “At the decisive moment, France reacted by using its ‘rights and duties’ as a former colonial power. Mali was getting a bit too close to the USA, to the point of looking like the official seat of Africom, the unified military command for Africa, set up in 2007 by George Bush and consolidated since then by Barack Obama” (Courrier International, 17.1.13)
In reality, in this region of the world, imperialist alliances are an infinitely complex and very unstable web. Today’s friends can become tomorrow’s enemies when they are not both at the same time! Thus, everyone knows that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the declared allies of France and the USA, but they are also the main suppliers of funds to the Islamist groups operating in the Sahel. It was thus no surprise to read in Le Monde on 18 January that the prime minister of Qatar had pronounced himself against the war France is waging in Mali and had questioned the pertinence of Operation Serval. And what can be said about superpowers like the USA and China who officially support France but have been whispering in the corridors and advancing their own pawns?
Like the USA in Afghanistan, there is every possibility that France is going to get stuck for an indefinite period in the quicksand of Mali and the Sahel in general (“for as long as necessary”, as Hollande put it). “While the military operation is justified because of the danger represented by the activities of the terrorist groups, who are well armed and increasingly fanatical, it is not exempt from risk in terms of getting bogged down and of instability throughout West Africa. Its difficult to avoid comparison with Somalia. Following the tragic events in Mogadishu at the beginning of the 90s, the violence in this country spread to the whole of the Horn of Africa and 20 years later stability has not returned there” (A Borgi, Le Monde, 15/1/13). This last point needs emphasis: the war in Somalia destabilised the whole of the Horn of Africa and “20 years later stability has not returned there”. This is what these ‘humanitarian’ and ‘anti-terrorist’ wars are really like. When the ‘great democracies’ brandish the flag of military intervention in defence of the ‘wellbeing’ of the population, of ‘morality’ and ‘peace’, they always leave ruin and the reek of death in their wake.
“It’s impossible not to notice that the recent coup in Mali was a collateral effect of the rebellions in the north of the country, which were in turn the consequence of the destabilisation of Libya by a western coalition which strangely enough has shown no remorse or sentiment of responsibility. It’s also difficult not to recognise that this khaki harmattan[1], which has swept through Mali, has also passed through its Ivorian, Guinean, Nigerian and Mauritanian neighbours” (Currier International, 11.4.12). Many of the armed groups who fought alongside Gaddafi are now in Mali and elsewhere, having stripped bare the arms caches in Libya.
In Libya too the ‘western coalition’ claimed that it was intervening for justice and for the good of the Libyan people. Today the same barbarism is being experienced by the oppressed of the Sahel and chaos is spreading. Alongside the war in Mali, it’s Algeria’s turn to be destabilised. On 17 January a battalion organised by an offshoot of Al Qaida in the Maghreb kidnapped hundreds of employees of the gas plant at In Amenas. The Algerian army’s reaction was to rain fire on both kidnappers and hostages, leaving dozens dead. After this butchery, Hollande spoke like any other warmonger in defence of ‘his’ side “a country like Algeria has responses which, it seems to be, are the most suitable because there could not be any negotiation”. This spectacular entry of Algeria into the war in the Sahel, saluted by a head of state caught up in the logic of imperialism, is an expression of the infernal cycle into which capitalism is falling. “For Algiers, this unprecedented action on its own territory has plunged the country a little deeper into a war which it wanted to avoid at all costs, out of fear of the consequences inside its own frontiers” (Le Monde, 18.1.130).
Since the beginning of the crisis in Mali, the Algerian regime has been playing a double game, as can be shown by two significant facts: on the one hand it is openly ‘negotiating’ with certain Islamist groups, even supplying them with a large amount of fuel during their offensive towards the conquest of Konna on the road to Bamako; on the other hand, Algiers has authorised French planes to fly over its air space to bomb the jihadist groups in the north of Mali. This contradictory position, and the ease with which the jihadists gained access to the most securitised industrial site in the country, shows just how much the Algerian state is succumbing to a process of decomposition. Like the states in the Sahel, Algeria’s entry into the war can only accelerate this process.
All these wars show that capitalism is descending into a very dangerous spiral which is a threat to the very survival of humanity. More and more zones are sinking into barbarism. We are witnessing a nightmarish brew made up of the savagery of the local torturers (warlords, clan chiefs, terrorist gangs...), the cruelty of the second string imperialist powers (small and medium sized states) and the devastating firepower of the big nations – all of them ready to get involved in any intrigue, any manipulation, any crime, any atrocity to defend their pathetic, squalid interests. The incessant changing of alliances gives the whole thing the look of a danse macabre, a dance of death.
This moribund system is going to sink deeper, these wars are going to spread to more and more regions of the globe. To choose one camp against the other, in the name of the lesser evil, is to participate in this dynamic which has no other outcome than the destruction of humanity. There is only one realistic alternative, one way to escape this hellish forced march: the massive, international struggle of the exploited for a new world without classes or exploitation, without poverty and war
Amina 19.1.13
In December 2012, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on a visit to Greece.
“In October 2012 the trauma therapist Georg Pier made the following observations in Greece: ‘Very pregnant women hurried desperately from one hospital to the next. But since they had neither any medical insurance nor sufficient money nobody wanted to help them give birth to their children. People, who until recently were part of the middle classes, were collecting residues of fruit and vegetables from the dustbins. (…) An old man told a journalist, that he could no longer afford the drugs for his heart problems. His pension was cut by 50% as was the case with many other pensioners. He had worked for more than 40 years, thinking that he had done everything right; now he no longer understands the world. If you are admitted to a hospital, you must bring your own bed-sheets as well as your own food. Since the cleaning staff were sacked, doctors and nurses, who have not received any wages for months, have started to clean the toilets. There is a lack of disposable gloves and catheters. In the face of disastrous hygienic conditions in some places the European Union warns of the danger of the spreading of infectious diseases.” (FAZ, 15/12/12).
The same conclusions were drawn by Marc Sprenger, head of the European Centre for the Prevention and Control of Diseases (ECDC). On 6 December, he warned of the collapse of the health system and of the most basic hygiene measures in Greece, and said that this could lead to pandemics in the whole of Europe. There is a lack of disposable gloves, aprons and disinfectant sheets, cotton balls, catheters and paper sheets for covering hospital examination beds. Patients with highly infectious diseases such as tuberculosis are not receiving the necessary treatment, so the risk of spreading resistant viruses in Europe is increasing.
In the 19th century many patients, sometimes up to a third, died due to lack of hygiene in hospitals, in particular women during childbirth. While in the 19th century these dangers could be explained to a large extent through ignorance, because many doctors did not clean their hands before a treatment or an operation and often went with dirty aprons from one patient to the next, the discoveries in hygiene for example by Semmelweis or Lister allowed for a real improvement. New hygiene measures and discoveries in the field of germ transmission allowed for a strong reduction in the danger of infection in hospitals. Today disposable gloves and disposable surgical instruments are current practice in modern medicine. But while in the 19th century ignorance was a plausible explanation for the high mortality in hospitals, the dangers which are becoming transparent in the hospitals in Greece today are not a manifestation of ignorance but an expression of the threat against the survival of humanity coming from a totally obsolete, bankrupt system of production.
If today the health of people in the former centre of antiquity is threatened by the lack of funds or insolvency of hospitals, which can no longer afford to buy disposable gloves, if pregnant women searching for assistance in hospitals are sent away because they have no money or no medical insurance, if people with heart disease can no longer pay for their drugs … this becomes a life-threatening attack. If, in a hospital, the cleaning staff who are crucial in the chain of hygiene are sacked and if doctors and nurses, who have not been receiving any wages for a long time, have to take over cleaning tasks, this casts a shocking light on the ‘regeneration’ of the economy, the term which the ruling class uses to justify its brutal attacks against us. ‘Regeneration’ of the economy turns out to be a threat to our life!
After 1989 in Russia life expectancy fell by five years because of the collapse of the health system, but also due to the rising alcohol and drug consumption. Today it’s not only in Greece that the health system is being dismantled step-by-step or is simply collapsing. In another bankrupt country, Spain, the health system is also being demolished. In the old industrial centre, Barcelona, as well as in other big cities, emergency wards are in some cases only kept open for a few hours in order to save costs. In Spain, Portugal and Greece many pharmacies no longer receive any vital drugs. The German pharmaceutical company Merck no longer delivers the anti-cancer drug Erbitux to Greek hospitals. Biotest, a company selling blood plasma for the treatment of haemophilia and tetanus, had already stopped delivering its product due to unpaid bills last June.
Until now such disastrous medical conditions were known mainly in African countries or in war-torn regions; but now the crisis in the old industrial countries has lead to a situation where vital areas such as health care are more and more sacrificed on the altar of profit. Thus medical treatment is no longer based on what is technically possible: you only get treatment if you are solvent![1]
This development shows that the gap between what is technically possible and the reality of this system is getting bigger and bigger. The more hygiene is under threat the bigger the danger of uncontrollable epidemics. We have to recall the epidemic of the Spanish flu, which spread across Europe after the end of WW1, when more than 20 million died. The war, with its attendant hunger and deprivation, had prepared all the conditions for this outbreak. In today’s Europe, the same role is being played by the economic crisis. In Greece, unemployment rose to 25% in the last quarter of 2012; youth unemployment of those aged under 25 reached 57%; 65% of young women are unemployed. The forecasts all point to a much bigger increase – up to 40% in 2015. The pauperisation which goes together with this has meant that “already entire residential areas and apartment blocs have been cut off from oil supplies because of lack of payment. To avoid people freezing in their homes during the winter, many have started to use small heaters, burning wood. People collect the wood illegally in nearby forests. In spring 2012 a 77 year old man shot himself in front of the parliament in Athens. Just before killing himself, he is reported to have shouted: ‘I do not want to leave any debts for my children’. The suicide rate in Greece has doubled during the past three years” (op cit)
Next to Spain with the Strait of Gibraltar, Italy with Lampedusa and Sicily, Greece is the main point of entrance for refugees from the war-torn and impoverished areas of Africa and the Middle East. The Greek government has installed a gigantic fence along the Turkish border and set up big refugee camps, in which more than 55,000 ‘illegals’ were interned in 2011. The right wing parties try to stir-up a pogrom atmosphere against these refugees, blaming them for importing ‘foreign diseases’ and for taking resources that rightfully belong to ‘native Greeks’. But the misery that drives millions to escape from their countries of origin and which can now be seen stalking the hospitals and streets of Europe stems from the same source: a social system which has become a barrier to all human progress.
Dionis 4/1/13
[1]. In ‘emerging’ countries like India more and more private hospitals are opening, which are only accessible to rich Indian patients and to more solvent patients from abroad. They offer treatment which are far too expensive for the majority of Indians. And many of the foreign patients who come as ‘medical tourists’ to the Indian private clinics cannot afford to pay for their treatment ‘at home’.
For a long time sport has represented a phenomenon that cannot be ignored from the fact of its cultural breadth and its place in society. A mass phenomenon, it's imposed on us through the tentacles of many institutions and results in a permanent hammering from the media. What significance can we give it from the point of view of a historical understanding and from the point of view of the working class?
In this first part we are going to try to give some responses by looking at the origins and function of sport in ascendant capitalist society.
The word "sport" is a term of English origin. Inherited from popular games and aristocratic entertainments, it was born in England with the beginnings of large capitalist industry.
Modern sport clearly distinguishes itself from the games, entertainments or physical activities of the past. If it inherited practices from them, it's because it oriented itself exclusively towards competition: "It was necessary that the development of the productive forces of capitalism were important enough for the abstract idea to make itself apparent to the masses from concrete works (...) similarly it was necessary for the long development of physically competitive practices so that little by little the idea of physical competition became generalised"[1]. The horsemanship of the aristocracy ended up with racecourses. It's around this that the stopwatch was invented, in 1831. From 1750, the English Jockey Club promoted numerous racecourses whose appearances continued apace. It was the same with running and other sports. Football came from the matches of Cambridge, 1848, and the Football Association appeared in 1863; tennis was transformed much later providing the first tournament in 1876. In brief, the new disciplines were all geared towards competition: "Little by little, sport broke free from the confused chaos and complexities of the time in order to form a coherent and codified body of highly specialised and rationalised techniques adapted to the mode of capitalist/industrial production"[2]. In the same way that wage labour is linked to production in capitalist society, sport incarnated "abstract materialisation made flesh"[3]. Very quickly the search for performance and records, along with bookmakers and betting, fed a diversity of sporting activity which became a real, popular infatuation, allowing the factory to be forgotten for the moment. This was the case for example with cycling and the Tour de France (a sort of a "free party") from 1903, boxing, football, etc. In line with the development of the capitalist system, transports and communications, sport took off in Europe as in the rest of the world. The extension and institutionalisation of sport, the birth and multiplication of national federations, harmonised with the heights of the capitalist system from the 1860s, but above all in the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the twentieth. It's a time when sport really internationalised itself. Football for example, was introduced into South America by European workers who were employed in the railway workshops. The first international sporting grouping was the International Union of Yacht Racing in 1875. Then others appeared: International Horse Show Club in 1878, International Gymnastic Federation in 1881, bodies for rowing and skating in 1882, etc. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894, FIFA (International Federation of Associated football) in 1904. Most of the international bodies were set up before 1914.
Contrary to accepted opinion, the capitalist version of sport doesn't represent a simple continuity with the ancient games. The Olympianism of the ancient Greeks was not at all based upon the idea of records or the obsession with performance against the clock. While confrontation with adversaries took place, it was connected with religious ceremonial and myth which had nothing to do with the material and mental universe of the contemporary games - even if the military aspect, the war between cities, and even the mercantile dimension. However, the modern Olympic Games, like those of Paris in 1900 or London in 1908, were already major commercial fairs. But, above all, these games took place in the context of the growth of imperialist tensions and thus helped to feed the ambient nationalism. The institution of the Olympic Games created in 1896, presented as a continuation of the tradition of the ancient Greeks, or corresponding to the democratic ideals displayed by Pierre de Coubertin and his celebrated saying, "the main thing is to participate", was just a con-trick. These modern games, reactivated in order to propagate chauvinist hysteria and militarism, are situated within the framework of capitalist alienation where everything rests on elitism and relations of domination linked to the production of commodities.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, sport is an almost exclusive practice reserved for the bourgeois elite, mainly around boarding school education. It's the occasion for the bourgeoisie to show-off, amuse itself and compete while allowing its ladies to ostentatiously exhibit their new outfits. It's the time of the big meetings at racecourses, aquatic sports. the first winter sports as at Chamonix and the proliferation of golf clubs. These creations are reserved for the bourgeoisie which then forbids access to them by the workers.[4]
From the very conditions of capitalist exploitation at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the workers had neither the means nor the time to engage in sport. The frantic exploitation of the factory or the mine and the miserable state of daily life hardly allowed the reconstitution of labour power. Even the workers' children, frequently struck by rickets, had to be sacrificed in the factories from the ages of 6 or 7. The ten-hour day was introduced only later, not before 1900, and a day of rest was only obtained in 1906.
Initially the workers' movement showed a distrust towards the sporting practices of the bourgeoisie and kept a certain distance from them. But in striving to constitute itself into an autonomous class and with the development of its struggles for improvements and social reforms, the working class succeeded in wresting from capitalism some sporting activities which had been forbidden or inaccessible to it up until then.
The sport of the workers was born somewhat tentatively before the workers' sporting federations and clubs obtained through large-scale struggles were constituted[5]. Originally any gathering outside the factory, even of small numbers, was illegal. Popular games that risked disorder, like football, were forbidden by the authorities on public roads (the British Highway Act of 1835). The least attempt to play games appeared suspect and dangerous in the eyes of the bosses. The police saw them as 'troubling public order'. Initially confined to closed and discreet spaces, the sport of the workers was really born in the trade union movement and only developed after the Victorian era. In the workers' districts, sport was part of a whole ambiance of culture and sociability, a sense of belonging to a class. Physical activity was connected to the need to feed social bonds.
In a certain way, the workers associated sporting activity with a fraternal spirit which gave birth to mutual aid. On these grounds, workers' clubs multiplied (football and cycling) from the 1890s, and developed later in the 'red districts'. For the workers who were constituting themselves into an autonomous class, it was all associated with the struggle against the brutalisation of work, with the need to come together to educate themselves and develop their consciousness through political activity and propaganda. Thus in France, from its creation in 1907, the Socialist Sporting Union affirmed the necessity to "lay claim to the (...) the party, by organising sporting festivals and taking part in athletic events...". The Socialist Athletic Sporting Federation said the following year: "we want to create for the working class centres of amusement which will develop alongside the Party, and which will also be (...) centres of propaganda and recruitment"[6]. Through these sporting activities, militants of the working class were at the same time conscious of conducting a preventative struggle against the damage of alcoholism and the ravages of delinquency. For example, in its platform, the USPS (Sporting Union of the Socialist Party) underlined the necessity "to develop the muscular strength and purify the lungs of proletarian youth and give to young people healthy and agreeable amusements which can be a palliative against alcoholism and the bad habits among a part of young comrades (...) and develop among the young socialists the spirit of association and organisation"[7] .
In Germany, these same preoccupations were shared in the years between 1890 and 1914 by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was very influential in the education of workers, supporting the setting-up of clubs and sporting federations as well as union structures and labour exchanges. In 1893, the Gymnastic Union of the Workers came into being and was a counterweight to the ambient nationalism. Within a concern for unity and internationalism, the workers were even led to create a Socialist International of Physical Culture in Belgium in 1913.
Faced with these initiatives of the workers the bourgeoisie didn't stand with folded arms and looked to draw the workers, notably the youngest, into its own structures. The workers' movement was perfectly conscious of this as we see in France in an article of Humanité published in 1908: "The other political parties, above all those of the reaction, try by all means to draw youth towards them by creating patronages where athletics has a large role"[8]. For bosses with a paternal attitude, recuperating the physical activity of the workers to turn it to its profit rapidly became a major concern, notably in big industry. The baron Pierre de Coubertin was maddened by the idea of a 'socialist sport'. From this, in order to re-establish submission to the established order, sport became one of the major tools to hand. Thus the bosses created clubs in which the workers were invited to get involved. The mining clubs in England, for example, allowed for the stimulation of a spirit of competition between workers, of preventing political discussion and contributing to breaking strikes in the making. With the same spirit, bosses in France developed clubs like the cycling club of the enterprises of Lyon (1886), the football team of Bon Marché (1887), the Omnisport club of the motor factories of Panhard-Levassor (1909). There's also the case of Peugeot at Sochaux, of the Stade Michelin at Clermont-Ferrand (1911), etc: clubs intended as a means of social control, a way of policing the workers. We can note for example the boss of the Saint-Gobain mines "who wrote in its company notebooks who was present, attitudes during gymnastic work and political opinions". In the same spirit, the founder of Paris Racing Club in 1897, Georges De Saint Clair, thought that it was important to occupy sporting youth rather than "leave them to the taverns where they occupy themselves with politics and foment strikes"[9].
Much more fundamentally, and in a codified framework, sport allowed a body of workers to much more easily become an appendage to the machine and its nascent technologies. The body of the sportsman, like that of the workers, was in some way mechanised, fragmented, as in the various training moves. It was the mirror image of the division of labour and the movements inside the factory. The energy of the sportsman was like labour power in the factory; divided by discipline, and submitted to the rhythm of industrial time: "competition...presupposes that labour as been equalized by the subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme division of labour that men are effaced by their labour; that the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at the most, time’s carcass."[10]. Modern sport fully participates in transforming man into a "carcass", into a record-breaking production machine. It allows the boss to exercise pressure over the worker which, at the same time, intensifies the discipline which tends to render the worker more docile and liable to forced labour. The workers' movement was capable of revealing and denouncing this capitalist reality of sport. It would do so for example regarding English football (professional since 1885) which was already becoming a form of commercial enterprise. The conditions of the players was seen as unacceptable and was compared to a kind of slavery[11].
Sport, as a cog of capitalist society, was also a privileged means of the dominant class in developing patriotism, nationalism and military discipline in the ranks of the workers. We already mentioned this with regard to the first Olympic games. If, on the margins, a public health current developed - under the impulsion for example of the Dr. Ph. Tissie (1852-1935) - concerned about the health of the population and more or less in line with eugenics, sport above all was used to strengthen the patriotic spirit and prepare for war. In Germany, 1811, Ludwig Jahn founded the Turplatz (gymnastic club) in a marked patriotic and military spirit. It succeeded in secretly creating a real reserve army, aiming to get around the lack of military manpower imposed by the French state. In the 1860's, the scholarly institutions militarised gymnastics and inculcated "order and discipline" (zucht und ordnung).
In France things went the same way with a chauvinist, military culture. L'Union des sociétés de gymnastique de France was created in 1873. And it's no accident that shooting developed as a complementary discipline at the same time (l'Union des sociétés de tir en France was founded in 1886). By June 26, 1871, Gambetta was already declaring that "We should have everywhere the gymnast and the soldier" in order to make "the work of patriots"[12].
After the defeat of Sedan and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the French bourgeoisie prepared its revenge. Gymnastics entered schools through a law of January 27 1880. The famous Jules Ferry went on to be a great promoter of military education for the young sons of workers. From July 1881, the Parisian authorities organised children of communal boy's schools into 'scholarly battalions'. Four 'battalions' equipped (with uniform, berets of the fleet and blue jumpers) and armed, manoeuvred on the boulevard Arago surrounded by "a battalion chief of the territorial army" and 4 gymnastics teachers. On July 6 1882, following a decree legalising these practices, Jules Ferry addressed these children with the following: "Under the appearance of a trifling thing you are fulfilling a profoundly serious role. You are working towards the military force of tomorrow"[13].
This "military force of tomorrow", with all sporting forms, is what was served up as cannon fodder in the butchery of 1914. This led Henri Desgranges, the director of l'Auto to declare, flippantly and cynically, on August 5 1914: "All our little troops who are at the frontier at this time in order to defend the soil of our country, are they not re-living the adversity of international competitions?"[14].
During the massacres, we can recall an episode long passed over in silence, but depicted in the film Joyeaux Noël: an improvised football match in no-man’s land, between German and English soldiers who were trying to fraternise. They were brutally deported and repressed: this sort of sport the bourgeoisie and its officers did not want! The sole sporting 'contribution' to this monstrous war was to be the import by American troops in 1917 of volleyball and basketball. A poor consolation for more than ten million dead.
WH, October 29, 2012
Coming Soon! "Sport in Decadent Capitalism (1914 to today)".
Notes
[1]J-M Brohm, Sociologie politique du sport, 1976, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N. 1992.
[2]Idem.
[3]Idem.
[4] There's a class cleavage then in the choice and practices of sport. Take cricket, we find within this discipline a similar cleavage in the choice of positions: thus the batsman came from a socially elevated class, whereas the bowlers and fielders are from the popular classes.
[5]Pierre Armand, les Origines du sport ouvrir en Europe, L'Harmattan 1994.
[6]The Socialist, no. 208, 9-16/5/1909.
[7]P. Clastres and P. Dietschy, Sport, societe et culture en France, Hachette Carre Histoire.
[8]Idem.
[9]Idem.
[10]Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy.
[11]Le Socialiste, 8-15/12/1907 (https://chrhc.revues.org/1592#tocto2nl [563]).
[13]P. Clastres and P. Dietschy Sport, societe et culture in France, Hachette Carre Histoire.
[14]J-M Brohm, Sociiologie politique du sport: Nancy, P.U.N., 1992.
In the first article we saw that sport was a pure product of capitalism and that it had a real weight in the class struggle. In this part we will see that in the period of the decadence of this capitalist system it is an instrument of the state which is used to repress and keep down the exploited.
At the time of World War I, sport already had a global dimension. In a few decades it became a real mass phenomenon.
From 1914, in a totalitarian fashion, the state took charge of the great sporting events in each nation while at the same time organising, under the flags of the time, the mobilisation for global conflict: "World sport as a whole has become a vast organisation and administrative structure, a national business taken in control by the states regarding their diplomatic interests"[1]. Thus the states constructed and financed massive structures: the sporting complexes, stadiums of 80 to 100 thousand places, the biggest of which reached 200,000 (Maracana in Brazil), gymnasiums, race tracks and circuits (as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway its 400,000 places), etc. Real giant parks, cathedrals of concrete and steel rising up, full of supporters or "fans", as at the Olympic Games, football World Cups, or automobile Grand Prix, etc., each time using military organisation and the logistics of a real army in order to produce the spectacle. Means of transport and communication under the control of the state are used to channel the crowds towards the new, modern temples. A specialised sporting press was developed on an industrial scale in the 20th century, covering even the most minor sporting events. Radio, then television, became the privileged tool of propaganda to popularise sporting practices, to better promote the spectacle/merchandise and betting games. One of the symptoms of this reality is also the bureaucratisation of widespread sporting institutions: "to the point that today one cannot at all talk of sport without talking about sporting organisations (federations, clubs, etc.)"[2].
The change of towards mass sport from the 1920s thus operates in a context where state capitalism "has become this monstrous machine, cold and impersonal, which ends up devouring the very substance of civil society"[3]. Events are real commercial fairs of the state which each time is covered by a near-hysterical media. This explains the explosion of sporting players and spectators over the last 30 years. In France for example, there were only a million sporting licences in 1914. Forty years later these figures had doubled. They reached 14 million in 2000, seven times more than in the 1950s![4]. Today, some spectacles such as the Olympic Games can mobilise and hypnotise more than 4 billion television viewers in the world!
The capitalist states are the high priests of this new, universal religion of sport; a real 'opium of the people', a drug brought in over several decades with higher doses. In antiquity, the ruling class affirmed itself through religion and 'bread and circuses'. In the period of capitalism's decadence and mass unemployment, sport and its merchandise is itself a real religion aiming to console, distract and control pauperised working class families. More games and less bread, that's contemporary capitalist reality! For the populations and the working masses who still have the chance of a job, submitting to the timetables of the office or the factory, to the hell of exploitation and the depersonalisation of the large urban centres, the spectacle of sport or the practice of sport becomes, thanks to propaganda and marketing, 'indispensable leisure time'. Sport constitutes one of the privileged means to abandon oneself to the 'invisible forces of capital'. Thus sports, assimilated to 'free time', is only finally limited to a narrow simple means of subsistence and physiological conservation: "by degrading to the average the creative free activity of man, alienated work makes of his generic life an instrument of his physical existence"[5]. Lived as a sort of 'necessary de-stressing' for workers, sporting activity is only in reality a means of reconstituting the force of labour, as is sleep, food and drink! Moreover sport allows the workers to physically better resist the infernal timetables of the job. It thus allows one to face up to the conditions of exploitation, to 'forget' in the space of a moment the torments of capitalist society. The real paradox is that sport itself appears as hard work, timed by a clock, voluntary suffering closely linked to industrial rhythms and performance. For a growing number of adepts it's becoming a real addiction. Some workers even dedicate part of their holidays to collective sporting activity the content of which is close to army-type training. One again, sport expresses one of the realities of alienation by becoming, through its massive scope, almost indispensable and ends up generating a greater submission to capital. It's recognised that sport permits the growth of productivity and encourages the spirit of competition. From the daily grind of working to schedules, repetitive labour where workers are tired right out there's a real enterprise of guilt-making which is further accompanied by a moral lecture on 'health' and the necessity to 'fight against obesity' through sport. One should be 'competitive', 'dynamic' and 'performing'. This lecture is perfectly in tune with the necessities of the competitiveness of industry, which sponsors sporting clubs while, at the same time, looking to sell their cheap slimming products or other merchandise glamorised through the image of sport. During the summer of 2012 for example, at the Olympic Games in London, the British capital was turned into a massive commercial fair, a real hypermarket drowning us with all sorts of products. Everywhere in the stadiums and other sports complexes, the remotest corners were lit up with placards and publicity screens. The sportsmen and women were the sponsored sandwiches covered with publicity slogans for the big names and posed to show them off in the best light to the photographers and TV cameras. This mercantile exhibition was an integral part of the preparation for the games, in the same way as physical exercises. Sport is a product at the service of the casino economy, with TV rights, derivative products, managers, clubs close to the market, betting, etc. The increase in the number of competitions corresponds to an arena where the states and groups confront one another directly on a saturated market. Sport is no more about men and women, these are performing commodities who flit between clubs or federations, sometimes for astronomical sums without having a say. This commercialisation of depersonalised sport, where individuals are turned into deified stars, strengthens the cult of celebrity and is one of the expressions of the fetishism of the market. Whether he’s treated as a god or a mere thing, an object to be exchanged or exploited as capital, the professional sports-person is drastically subjected to the law of the market and profitability with the obligation of getting results. They are pushed towards a permanent extreme exploitation, pressured and constrained towards doping and planned self-destruction (we will confront these issues in a third article).
These robotic sports machines, in a context where the state plans de-politicisation and subservience, feed the grandiose spectacles to the extreme, for a sort of glorification, an apology for the established order and the ruling class. In all the big sporting spectacles, the politicians and people of the state are in the front rows in order to reap the political fruits of these stupefying grand-scale programmes. From the grand Nazi spectacles to the Stalinist exhibitions of yesterday, going into the mega-shows of the democracies today, these sporting masses conjure up a dream, facilitate idolatry, by promoting the effort of muscle and sacrifice. They serve above all to fog the spirits, as does religion, and divert all reflection on the conditions of exploitation under capitalism. They're often aimed at obscuring truths which might result in criticism or class struggle, even to the point of acting as recruiting sergeant for war, as was the case in the 1930s.
Sport is clearly a counter to any form of subversion, aimed mainly at youth, notably in schools where it's used as a form of brain-washing. If this was done to the point of caricature in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, it is presented much more subtly in the democracies. After May 68 in France, "the short-lived Minister of Sport, M. Nungesser, explained (...) that it was necessary to make sport compulsory in schools" in order to maintain social peace. In the same sense, M. Cornec, president of the student parent federation, stated in 1969: "In just a year France has been overturned by the revolt of youth. All those looking for solutions to this complex problem should know that no equilibrium can be found without the preliminary solution of school sports"[6]. In the same vein, the journal explains that it's better "to be involved in sport" than "to physically confront the police and the CRS". Subduing youth, using sport through its symbols and its universe of superstitions - all that is very much in the optic of official democratic bourgeois ideology, with its myth of the "self-made man", of someone who can individually bring out his own qualities thanks to a military discipline. This egalitarian perspective, where 'everyone has a chance' conditional on their own work, can only dull the senses of those looking for a radical critique of society and those looking to develop a political critique of the established order.
At the same time as contributing to dulling the senses, sport prepares for a more direct repression. Sporting occasions have become pretexts for the deployment of imposing police forces in the name of the defence of public order and security. In the context of urban populations already submitting to a real police state, a total surveillance with the presence of armed police and soldiers regularly patrolling public places, stations for example, this strengthening of manpower around stadiums appears normal. Through the regular presence of cops and their vehicles, the state has gradually got people used to accepting the massive presence of the forces of repression of which it has the monopoly. We should remember that in the 1970's, the democratic states of western Europe didn't have words harsh enough to stigmatise the 'fascist regimes' and the 'dictatorships of Latin America' for organising the visible presence of the forces of order and the military in public places, notably around sports stadiums, as was the case in Argentina, Brazil or Chile at the time. In 1972, at the Winter Olympics of Sapporo in Japan, the presence of 4000 soldiers quartering the area was already noted. Today these same practices have not only been surpassed long ago in the lesson-giving democratic countries, but strengthened still more by much more draconian measures. It's no longer possible to go to a stadium without going through a real cordon sanitaire of cops, being hassled, body-searched and accompanied by security.
The Olympic Games of London in the summer of last year gave an illustration of this militarisation with the image of a real situation of war. Twelve thousand police and 13,500 military were active, that's to say more British troops than deployed in Afghanistan (9,500). More than the 20,000 soldiers of the Wehrmacht at Munich in 1936! To the British figures we can add another 13,300 private security agents. A ground-to-air missile was openly set up on top of a residential building in a densely populated zone for use as an armed air-shield. On the streets, special lanes were arranged for the official vehicles and forbidden to the hoi-polloi (with a fine of £135, 170 euros if you crossed the line). Finally, the security controls were worthy of the ordinary paranoia of all states: systematic body-searches on entering all sites, forbidden to bring water, drinks, etc., into the controlled zones, tweeting banned, sharing or posting photos of the event in whatever manner forbidden![7]
If one looks back, history shows that sporting complexes are real nerve centres allowing a part of the population to be penned in for repressive and even murderous ends. One of the most famous of these is the "Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv'" in France, a round up of Jews organised by French police and militias during summer 1942. This celebrated cycle-racing track thus served as a fortified camp where the Jews were penned in and held before their deportation to the extermination camp of Auschwitz where they were to meet the summits of horror. After the Second World War there are numerous examples of sporting enclosures at the service of death and state repression. In France, after the Vel' d'Hiv', other sporting installations were used for massacres of the Algerian opposition in October 1961. About 7000 of them were taken by force to the Palais des Sports de Versailles and the Pierre de Coubertin stadium in Paris, to be beaten up with a good number ending up as bodies thrown into the Seine! In June 1966 in Africa, opponents of the Mobutu regime were executed in front of a crowd in the stade des Martyrs in Kinshasa. In Latin America, stadiums weren’t only used as outlets for hungry populations. The Stadio nacional in Chile was also used a place for interrogations and a sorting-centre for the concentration camps after the coup of General Pinochet (September 1973). In Argentina at the time of the World Cup in 1978, with the military junta in power, the amplified noises of the terraced speakers covered up the screams of those being tortured. Still today a good number of stadiums have a macabre history. In 1994, the Amahoro stadium of Kingali was one of the theatres of the Rwandan genocide in which France was a big accomplice. This is shown in the witness of the commandant, R. Dallaire: "When the war began, the stadium was full and, at a given moment, there were up 12,000 people, 12,000 people trying to live. Everywhere you looked there were people and clothes, and the situation seemed to escape any control. It became like ... a concentration camp... We were there to protect them, but at this time they were dying in this great stadium of Rwanda"[8].
More recently still, the football stadium in Kabul has see numerous horrors: hangings from the crossbars, mutilations for those accused of thieving, women accused of adultery stoned on the ground, etc.[9] In South Africa, the new Cap stadium, inaugurated for the 2010 World Cup, includes cells to imprison 'agitated' supporters!
Even if sporting practice is not always directly implicated, there does exist some sort of link between control of the spirit by sport, the sporting infrastructures and the barbarity of decadent capitalism. The exacerbation of the contradictions between the classes means that the stadiums are more and more often places of confrontations and tensions, even during the course of sporting events. We've thus seen real killings, revolts break out in football stadiums. In Argentina, portraits of the disappeared have certainly been quietly brandished on the terraces at the time of matches. But as often, almost everywhere open tensions are expressed with violence, particularly at the stadium exits. Many are the situations where the worst ideologies, xenophobia and the most unbridled nationalism, have led to the real acts of barbarity..
In the next and last article in this series we will come back to these aspects in order to deepen the analysis.
WH (November 8 2012)
In this article, we said: “During the civil war in Spain, the Bernabeu stadium in Madrid served the Phalangists as a privileged arena in which to shoot Republican soldiers”. It seems that this information was doubly wrong. Firstly, the Bernabeu stadium wasn’t built and inaugurated until after 1945. Secondly, in order to instil a real terror in the population, planned executions generally took place in discrete locations: against the walls of cemeteries, near communal ditches, by the roadside, in the woods, etc. In short, anywhere where you could easily bury or ‘disappear’ opponents of the regime.
It was above all the arenas or the Plazas de Toros which were used for this kind of imprisonment. The most well known was the one in Badajoz where the Phalangists played at ‘bullfighting’ with the prisoners, sometimes giving them the ‘estocade’ with a sword. On a more secondary level the stadia made it possible to bring prisoners together when they were in transit. This was the case for example with the Metropolitano stadia (in 1939 in Madrid, this was the home of a rival to Réal), which served as an assembly point for those on the way to concentration camps. After the war, the function of the stadia was above all to provide circuses when there was not much in the way of bread.
Despite this factual error, we think that the overall sense of the article, which tries to show the link between the ‘practical’ side of the stadia in the work of repression and their symbolic dimension in the ideological subjugation of the masses, remains perfectly valid.
ICC 4.5.2013
[1]J-M Brohm, Sociologie politique du sport, 1976, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N., 1992.
[2].Idem.
[3]The Platform of the ICC.
[4]C. Sobry, Socio-economie du sport, coll. De Boek.
[5]K. Marx, 1844 Manuscripts.
[6]Quoted by J-M Brohm, Sociologie politque du sport, 1976, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N.
[7]See the article on the Olympic Games on our website: https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1301/olympic-games [456]
In the previous article in this series, we saw that sport concentrates nationalist ideology and that it is an instrument at the service of imperialism. It expresses all the monstrosity of decadent capitalism.
The "political neutrality" of sport is a myth! Along with the media, sport never ceases to cultivate the identification with chauvinism and nationalism. Sport is even a privileged means for distilling this noxious poison. After the trauma of the First World War, "the gap between the private and the public world was (...) filled in by sport. Between the two wars, sport as a mass spectacle was transformed into an interminable succession of gladiatorial combats between persons and teams symbolising the nation states"[1] .
Nationalism has thus been permanently maintained against the exploited by the rituals and symbolism which surround sporting encounters. Using sport for propaganda ends, contrary to what official history tells us, is not a particularity of Nazism or Stalinism, but a practice generalised throughout every country. To be convinced of it we only need to recall the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 or London 2012, or the entry of the national football teams at big matches. The grand sporting spectacles provoke strong, collective emotions that are easily manipulated towards the universal codes of national symbols: "Which gives to sport a unique effectiveness in inculcating nationalist sentiments (...) it is the facility with which individuals (...) can identify themselves with the nation being symbolised"[2]. International competitions are often accompanied by military music and are systematically preceded or closed by hymns: "These matches are confrontations where the national prestige is at stake"[3]. In brief moments of sacred unions social classes are 'dissolved', denied, as spectators openly called to stand up and sing with their eyes fixed on the national flag or on the team which embodies it through its colours.
In South Africa for example, in the name of the fight against Apartheid, the colours of the rugby team were thus used by Mandela's ANC to channel the class struggle towards the national mystification[4]. Great sporting victories can also prolong this principle of blind submission in a sort of collective hysteria (as was the case with the victory of the Spanish team during the football World Cup of 2010, that of Italy some years earlier, or those of the French team in 1998...). The celebrations of these occasions are infested by flags and prefabricated national myths[5]. Finally, the war of titles, medals, nation against nation, tries to maintain, as at the front during military conflicts, this mental dependence by sowing the seeds of xenophobia and nationalist violence. Sport embodies the spirit of the state and is accorded the same ritual as the army: decorations, citations, medals, march pasts... As Rosa Luxemburg said during World War I: "The national interests are only a mystification having the aim of putting the labouring masses at the service of their mortal enemy: imperialism"[6].
Sport has always been used in imperialist confrontations. The Olympic Games in Berlin 1936, for example, were the spearhead of the militarisation prefiguring the aggression of the Axis military bloc which fought for its 'vital space'. For the Nazis, the champions had to be "warriors for Germany, ambassadors of the 3rd Reich". According to Hitler, the sporting youth of Germany should be "as resistant as leather, as hard as Krupp steel"[7]. Sport prepared you for imperialist war and thus justified the "superiority of the Aryan race", despite the victories of the black American sprinter Jesse Owens, who made the Fuhrer explode with anger[8]. Every sporting meeting was a means for the Nazi regime to symbolically wave its flag over its coveted territories.
For the opposing military camp, sports meetings were also a way to physically and mentally prepare the resistance. Stalinist and social-patriotic organisations tried to organise a 'counter-Olympics' in Barcelona in July 1936, aiming to dragoon proletarians behind the flag of anti-fascism. If this sporting project didn't happen, due to the Francoist coup d'etat, it didn't stop the ideological adhesion to the future bloc of the Allies. Sport thus made its own small contribution, in one way and the other, to what was to become a new world butchery resulting in over 50 million deaths!
On the still-smoking ruins of this terrible conflict, the world sporting arena would then be dominated by the Cold War right up to the end of the 1990s. International competitions were now marked by the context of East-West opposition, the latter not that far from turning into a nuclear holocaust. During the whole phase of decadent capitalism, sports meetings had all been marked by tensions of an imperialist nature. The universality symbolised by the Olympics is a sinister piece of hypocrisy; these games represent a real basket case of divergent capitalist interests. In the 1920s for example, the vanquished, like Germany, were removed from the Games through revenge and reprisal. In 1948, Germany and Japan were excluded. At the Games of 1956 in Melbourne, the boycott by some countries (Holland, Spain, Switzerland...) was allowed, demonstrating a political reaction against Russian tanks in Budapest and feeding Cold War tensions. Let's note, on the other hand, that at Mexico in 1968, during the massacre of 300 students at the Place of Three Cultures, the great democracies were allowed to participate without any concern for the Games! In 1972, the Olympic Games in Munich were the theatre of acts of war. The Israeli team was taken hostage by Palestinian commandos: the outcome was a bloodbath, the massacre of 17 people! In the 1980's, the Moscow games, a real military hymn to the glory of the Stalinist regime, was boycotted by a good number of western allies of the rival American bloc, including China, this time in opposition to the Russian intervention in Afghanistan! Balanced on the side of American imperialism, China also made use of the political dimension of sport with its "Ping-Pong" diplomacy. Today, the growth of the power of China onto the world imperialist scene, especially faced with the United States, is accompanied by very aggressive sporting records, revealing its heightened ambitions.
Every time, the states engaged have always presented athletes doped to the eyebrows as if they were 'at war', with 'the enemy', whether in the framework of rival military blocs, within the same bloc or, after their disappearance, between nations. Football has largely illustrated these tensions, feeding the climates of hatred in the crowds. Among the plentiful examples we can take up is the tragic episode of the match between Salvador and Honduras in 1969 for the 1970 World Cup qualifiers. This match was the prelude to a war between the two countries which ended up with at least 4000 deaths!
Sport more and more clearly expresses the rottenness of a bourgeois society without a future. The absence of perspectives, unemployment and misery gave birth in the 1970's, and above all the beginning of the 80's, to hordes of xenophobic hooligans under the influence of alcohol, sowing terror and hatred, particularly in the stadiums of the big cities hit by the crisis. They have regularly infested football matches in Britain and elsewhere, as was the case for example in May 1990 with the match of Dynamo Zagreb against Red Star Belgrade which ended up with an arranged battle resulting in hundreds of injuries and several deaths. This in itself contributed to the aggravation of the already existing nationalist tensions which eventually unfolded in the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Among the most radical Serb supporters was their war boss Arkan, specialist of ethnic cleansing and the nationalist later looked for by the UN for crimes against humanity.
Outside of this episode, of which there are many more examples, popular bourgeois sense has it that this growing violence comes from the fact that sport is more and more "gangrened by money and mafias". This obscures the reality that sport is itself a mafia and a pure product of capitalism! Football receives massive investments from a financially hypertrophied sector, from billionaires and broadcasting companies, behind which, in the final analysis, is the state itself. In the context of a catastrophic economic crisis, sport becomes a real casino game, the very symbol of a bankrupt mode of production. The big international sporting authorities, as the IOC (International Olympic Committee) or FIFA (International Federation of Football Associations), the big clubs that feed the hooligans and gangsters, some of which play the role of eminent representatives, the politicians and shady speculators, are involved in one scandal after another where the embezzlement of funds is only the tip of the iceberg[9]. Some brutal financial operations for building sporting complexes, as in China and South Africa in these last years, also witness the widespread violent practice of the expropriation of people living in misery who are thrown out onto the street for the occasion.
Every state and every kind of mafia speculates in the economic sector of sport and gambling. Some even buy entire clubs, like Qatar’s purchase of Paris-Saint-Germain, putting a great deal of money into this unproductive sector. It's the same in Britain for the big clubs. During the transfer window, a real 'meat market' of footballers, the transactions regularly serve to launder 'dirty' money. According to Noel Pons (a specialist in criminality): "Football clubs are of a type CAC 40, the phenomenon of money laundering must thus be at the same level as it can be for these enterprises"[10].
The other side of this coin is super-exploitation: aside from the overpaid stars and the shady agents, thousands of young sportsmen find themselves without contracts and pauperised. This is notably the case with some very young Africans who have been enticed with wonderful promises of life in Europe, who are then unscrupulously thrown onto the streets and who sometimes become paperless. Then there are the fixed matches which have affected an incalculable number of European and world matches. Italian football, which has a lot to answer for, shows that numerous players and leading figures are clearly linked to the political world and organised crime. Even sports which are presented as clean by the media, such as handball in France, are subject to some fixing and corruption. It's more the case with tennis, where the players paid in the corridors do not hesitate to lose matches in order to get more money.
All these gangster practices, which in the last instance are those of the state, don't stop there. They sometimes even threaten the security of the spectators, as for example in 1985 tragedy of the Heysel Stadium in Belgium. Here, under the weight of excited supporters, barriers gave way killing 39 with more than 600 injured! These tragedies are not unique. Built at low cost, overcapacity and crowd movement lead to catastrophes such as at Hillsborough, Sheffield in April 1989: 96 dead and 766 injured. At the Furiani Stadium in Bastia on May 5 1992, down to a question of profitability, a temporary terrace suddenly collapsed just before kick-off leading to 18 deaths and 2300 injured.
We don't want to finish without raising the frantic and scandalous exploitation of the athletes themselves, in particular being doped to their physiological limits and even to death. At the beginning of the last century, doping substances such as strychnine was already commonplace. Very soon, for the state, "sport became the experimental science of body output which demanded the creation of laboratories of sporting medicine, perfecting experimental material and various tools and opening specialised sporting institutes"[11]. In 1967, everyone was shocked by the death of the British cyclist Tom Simpson on the slopes of Mount Ventoux, but doping had been institutionalised for a long time. As the old doctor of the Tour de France, Jean-Pierre Mondenard underlined: "At this high level sport is a school for cheating". Today the medical aspects and doping are intimately linked. Steroids, anabolics, EPO, blood-transfusions are used all the time in competitions, surrounded by the medical teams of all the big stables. It goes without saying that this phenomenon affects all sports at the highest levels. Rugby for example is concerned with the formation of young players. This is shown in the testimony of a young player of 24 years old, today sick, his career broken: "We arrive at the training centre. Here there's much talk about ‘real’ doping. Some of my team-mates are injecting themselves with substances, some veterinary products provided by a doctor who tours around the club. There's talk of clenbuterol and salbutamol, calf and bull anabolics. You don't buy anything on the internet but try to meet the right person. The doctor makes the first injections and you do the next". He adds precisely: "Omerta is already very strong in the sporting milieu and it's even more so when it concerns adolescents"[12]. Used up and prematurely ruined, sports people suffer from very serious troubles: cardiac and circulatory incidents, renal and hepatitis insufficiencies, cancers, impotence, sterility, problems for pregnant women, muscular-skeletal sicknesses, etc. A good number of athletes of the highest level die before forty! The example of the East German women swimmers, which already revealed all the brutality and capitalist horror of state planning, has since been largely surpassed. All the same, we can recall that like other athletes, these swimmers were doped by force, unknown to themselves. Watched by the special services (Stasi, KGB) in all their movements, these athletes could not communicate with people in the west on pain of reprisals against their families. Some became 'men' on the hormonal level (strong pilosity, libido trouble, hypertrophied clitoris...) thanks to pills and daily injections given by specialised doctors[13]. They were subjected to all sorts of blackmail and to silence by the state. One survey counted more than 10,000 victims! Today we have the very well known case of cycling, the Festina affair[14]. Here the deception of the riders is as much as victims and scapegoats, as the cyclist Lance Armstrong who has recently been stripped of his titles with the loss of 7 of them including the Tour de France and his yellow jerseys. This is witness to the fact that the laws of capital stop at nothing in front of profit.
The 'sporting ethic' is that of capitalism! It can be summed up in a few words: ambition, cheating, corruption, hypocrisy, fight to the death, violence and brutality! The paraplegic sports and games show the same logic of a sordid competition unfolding into a sort of 'war of the prostheses'.
Sport today reveals itself only a pure illusion. It is at best a reactionary utopia and at worst a real swindle.
The attempts to utilise sport in decadence to promote workers' struggle has only accentuated an opportunist gangrene and stimulated conservative forces. There can't be any 'proletarian sport'. At the time of the world revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the setback of the programme of the Red Sport International (founded in 1921) was linked to the historical and political conditions of the moment, those of decadent capitalism and the tragic isolation of the revolution in Russia. The sporting Central Asian Games, organised in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) by the Bolsheviks in 1920, aroused nationalist sentiments and strengthened the local states, a real mosaic of the ex-Russian empire, which only increased political confusion. Worse, it solidified the cordon sanitaire of the Entente troops around the besieged Russian soviets. The Spartakiades of Moscow in 1928, completed the defence of the 'socialist country' through sporting games which already embodied the counter-revolution. The only real 'triumph' was that of Stalinism, exhibiting with pride his 'Bolsheviks of Steel'! Marx underlined that communist society would make "the practical demonstration of the possibility of uniting learning and gymnastics with work and vice-versa". This in the perspective of realising "the complete man"[15] If Lenin and the Bolsheviks defended such a vision at the beginning, they didn't have the time or the possibility of seeing this work accomplished. Stalinism created the opposite: a medicalised caricature of monstrous robots! It's naturally difficult to glimpse the communist society of the future. But it is certain that sport, such as it exists now, will disappear in a society without social classes. It's much more difficult for an amateur to conceive of that today because it's dependent on seeing a world without addictions[16]. To all sorts of artificial separations between physical and intellectual activity, to forced opposition between players and spectators, must be substituted a human world, unitary, creative and free. Thus, "the complete man" dear to Marx, will find in communism his true social nature: “Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being…Just as through the movement of private property, of its wealth as well as its poverty – of its material and spiritual wealth and poverty – the budding society finds at hand all the material for this development, so established society produces man in this entire richness of his being produces the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses – as its enduring reality.”[17]. This 'rich' man will thus express his true individuality within a superior harmony, through the dialectical unity of body and mind.
WH (December 20, 2012)
[1]E. Hobsbawn, Nations and nationalism since 1780, History folio.
[2]Op. Cit.
[3]J-M Brohm, Sociologie politiqe du sport 1976, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N., 1992.
[4]Note that we are now seeing German national flags in the crowds at sporting occasions, conforming to new German imperialist ambitions; this after years of quiet imposed by an awkward past.
[5]As for example the "black-blanc-beur" ideology in France: an allusion to the tricolore "bleu-blanc-rouge" and national unity, beyond skin colour and origins, behind the Republican state in a type of sacred union.
[6]Junius Pamphlet, 1915.
[8]There wasn't much more enthusiasm for him from the American bourgeoisie which was then marked by divisive and bloody racial prejudices. In fact, black minorities were marginalised from the 1904 Olympic Games in Saint-Louis. Special competitions called "anthropological days" were even organised and reserved for those the "officials" considered as "sub-human". Victims of segregation and lynchings, black minorities later reacted by struggling on the basis of identity, including the famous "Black Panthers", embodied on the podium of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, by the raised fists and black gloves of the runners Smith and Carlos.
[9]One scandal among others was the candidatures of Salt Lake City to the Winter Games of 2002, where members of the IOC accepted bribes to influence the election.
[11]J-M Brohm, Sociologie politique du sport, 1979, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N., 1992.
[12]www.rue89.com [628]
[13]Note that the East German trainers even got their sports women pregnant; at three months, the women would have produced more testosterone and would have performed better!
[14]In order to give an idea of the phenomenon of doping today, an example: the record of the Australian Stephanie Rice (400 metres at Peking in 2008) is inferior by 7 seconds to that of the ex-champion of the east , Petra Schneider (1980 in Moscow), reputed to be loaded up with steroids!
[15]Marx quoted by J-M Brohm, Sociiologie politique du sport 1976, re-edition: Nancy, P.U.N., 1992.
[16]In July 1998, the boss of the cycling team Festina, Willy Voet, was arrested by customs. He was carrying ampoules of EPO, amphetamine capsules, solutions of hormone growth and flasks of testosterone.
[17] Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, ‘Private property and communism’
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne restarted an old ‘debate’ when he said that all those dependent on the welfare state for their existence were ‘scroungers’. The Labour party along with some of Osborne’s LibDem coalition partners, were astonished at the apparently provocative outburst, which relegated the greater part of the working population to the same status as the unemployed. For Osborne, the unemployed are shirkers by definition of course, and most of his critics have difficulty distinguishing their position from his. It has become fashionable to be tough on the unemployed, and the Labour party is making sure that it fits in with the fashion. This means that in contemporary public discourse everyone has to look as though they believe that unemployment is always a matter of choice.
Thus the Labour party has launched its latest idea of giving some of the longer-term unemployed 6 months of guaranteed work experience. This is not a fixed idea – they are just talking about it. And it only actually seems to apply to a little over 100,000 of the unemployed. But the basic idea is to show how hard they are being on the unemployed, by insisting that anyone offered the opportunity will have to take the job. All media presentation concerning this initiative made it very clear that the purpose was to present the Labour party as just as unyielding as the Tories in attacking the unemployed.
But the main thrust of Labour’s response to Osborne has been to say that the majority of recipients of benefit are not unemployed and not feckless shirkers. It might seem very reasonable and persuasive to argue that those who are working for a living are not shirking and so should not be denounced as scroungers. But we should note that this argument contains, albeit very quietly, the implication that there is indeed a fundamental difference between unemployed and employed workers, and carefully does not address the question of whether unemployment is voluntary. Otherwise they would have to address the issue of how unemployment actually does arise – which is a very awkward question, since it puts into question the very viability of capitalism.
We can note, in passing, that in the 1930s, when the crisis was much less developed than it is now, but when unemployment was at a much higher rate in terms of the working population, the bourgeoisie were braver than they are now. They actually did have a real, public discussion on this very question. Keynes took the view that massive, long term unemployment could not be put down to workers refusing to accept lower wages, pointing out that workers could not actually negotiate their wages individually with a prospective employer as was assumed in the economic models of the time. It was this insight that was the foundation of the Keynsian revolution in economics. In his general theory Keynes tried to show that a capitalist crisis such as the Great Depression of the 1930s was actually possible. This was ‘revolutionary’ from the bourgeoisie’s point of view, because the economic theory of the day said that such a crisis was impossible. Keynes thought the conventional view unsatisfactory given the empirical reality of the Great Depression.
The reason that the bourgeoisie have to avoid the question today, as far as possible, as to whether unemployment is voluntary or not, is that they no longer have a perspective of doing anything about the gradually unfolding drama of mass unemployment (as to whether the unfolding is indeed ‘gradual’, it rather depends on which country one is living in – Greek, Spanish or Irish workers, for example, might not see matters that way). Keynes proposed a series of remedies to try and avoid a repetition of the nightmare of the 1930s. For several decades it looked as if unemployment had been dealt with in the major countries. It was certainly reduced to lower levels after the Second World War, whether due to Keynsian policies of ‘full employment’ or to other factors.
The re-emergence of the open crisis in the late 60s and early 70s saw the re-emergence of long-term mass unemployment and an explicit abandonment by the bourgeoisie of the perspective of full employment. Once it arrived at that point it paid the bourgeoisie, obviously, to be as evasive about the issue as possible. Since they cannot avoid referring to the problem of unemployment altogether, the only remaining option is to blame the phenomenon on its victims. Hence the pervasive implication in the pronouncements of the bourgeoisie, without being too explicit, that unemployment is indeed voluntary.
This takes us back to the situation before Keynes, except that there is no question now that the bourgeoisie knows that it is trapped by the crisis and it just has to make the best of it as far as ‘explaining’ what is going on. The British bourgeoisie can see that the early promises of the current government about a ‘recovery’, following stern measures to get the state’s deficit under control, have been swept away by the reality of the crisis, so that entire line of argument is dead in the water. The Labour party might like to say ‘we told you so’, but they dare not do this seriously because they may actually have to take over the responsibility of managing the crisis again quite soon. There is no point building up expectations that they could do better in terms of running the economy. There is so little room for manoeuvre, whoever is in charge. The bourgeoisie is already muttering about the possibility of a ‘triple dip recession’.
Having said all this about the bourgeoisie’s evasions, there is one true point in what Osborne said that we should note. All workers are indeed in the same boat. If the unemployed are scroungers then so are the working population. Destitution, in other words, is completely general. It affects all workers to more or less an extent, and it affects a great many employed workers profoundly as well as the unemployed. Many employed workers – especially in London where the price of accommodation is exceptionally high and getting higher – are completely dependent on state hand-outs to live at all. The rent for a modest flat for a family in London, even in the less expensive parts, is as much as two thirds or even the whole of the wages of many workers.
Even Labour leader Ed Miliband, despite his efforts to divide the working class into the deserving and undeserving poor, is right to point out that the majority of benefits go to those in work. We should follow Marx and always note when the bourgeoisie speaks the truth – they cannot always avoid it. The reason that workers are reduced to living on benefits is because their wages are below the level required to maintain the reproduction of labour power. In other words wages are not enough to live on. It is really as simple as that, and this is not an exaggeration. The London Evening Standard was shocked to discover that there are children in London who are actually starving. The dozens of soup kitchens set up across London don’t only feed those sleeping rough or in hostels for the homeless.
Marx, let us note, was well aware of these issues and how they affected the working class. In Capital Marx deals with employers who rely on the workers subsisting on ‘relief’ as it was then called, provided by the local councils, to be able to afford the required amount of bread for their families that was regarded as the subsistence level. Similarly Trotsky in the 1930s denounced the situation where workers in the US who were actually employed nonetheless had to live on charitable hand-outs because their wages were insufficient to maintain life. Neither Marx nor Trotsky deal with such employers kindly. But both these marxists were realistic – they knew that the first response of the bourgeoisie to a crisis is to try and reduce the wages of the workers below the level required to reproduce labour power – at least below the currently accepted level.
It is a pity that Marx did not live to pronounce on a state controlled system which, in a period of almost permanent crisis, has more and more been given the task of maintaining wages permanently below the basic requirement to maintain life for a great part of the working class. This is the system we now refer to as the ‘welfare state’. The product of the period of expansion after the Second World War, the welfare state was initially a vehicle for some significant improvements in working class living standards. But it was established at a considerable price: not only the horrors of the war itself, but a considerable increase in social control, since the mechanisms of welfare aim to reduce the working class to a mass of individuals whose well-being is confided to the paternalism of the state.
It is reasonable to think that Marx’s polemics against such a system, whereby the bourgeoisie foist their welfare and dependency culture on the working class, would be something to read – and no doubt he would be particularly scathing about those ‘radicals’ and leftists who never tire of telling us that the welfare state is a gain won by the workers in struggle and even a ‘socialist’ sector of the economy. The bourgeoisie’s supposed ‘denunciations’ of the welfare state – of their own monstrous system that reduces the workers to the status of permanent beggars – would pale beside the denunciations of the workers’ movement if the workers were better able to affirm themselves politically than they are at present. It is only the working class, after all, that contains within itself the historical perspective of ridding us of the capitalist state altogether.
Hardin 11/1/13
After the ill-treatment of people with learning disabilities was filmed by Panorama, Winterbourne View has been closed, more inspections have taken place, and 11 care workers have been convicted. Between 400 and 1200 ‘excess’ and ‘unnecessary’ deaths between 2005 and 2008 at Mid Staffordshire Hospital Trust have been investigated and reported on. Health minister Jeremy Hunt and the Chief Nursing Officer for England have emphasised the need for “care” and “compassion”.
The scandals have been exposed and investigated, scapegoats tried and convicted, platitudes uttered, and future inspections will be carried out by a new body with a new name, the Care Quality Commission. So we can all sleep confident in the safety and compassion of our health and care services … except for the small detail that the whole process takes us no closer to understanding why such things happen.
When things go wrong the ruling class are always quick to blame workers, whether they are nurses and care workers, as in these scandals, or train or coach drivers following an accident. This hypocrisy is truly nauseating.
When NHS services are shut down months before the end of the financial year (such as i-Health in East London) because there is no more money, leaving patients suffering from their illnesses for longer, where is the ‘compassion’ in that? When new treatments – that can protect sight in macular degeneration, or give a cancer sufferer a little longer – are judged on cost through the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, where is the ‘compassion’ in that?
Then there is the effect of all the targets that have to be achieved in the NHS: “For every condition there is a guideline to follow, a reward for doing so scrupulously, and a penalty for falling short. Patients matter less as individuals than they do as units in a scheme with a public health objective in mind.” (BMJ 18/12/12).
There was no golden age in the NHS. The British state only became interested in the health of the working class when it discovered they were unfit to fight in the Boer War. The NHS grew out of the Beveridge Report in World War II, and the need for labour in the years that followed. It was always limited by delays and underfunding. Now it is no longer in their interests to spend so much money on it.
Jeremy Hunt wants a special sort of compassion from nurses and doctors in order to be able to live within the limits on the NHS, and deny services that are not funded, in a kindly and considerate way. No wonder communication skills are now taught and examined – including, for GPs, the skill of saying “no”.
And no wonder burnout is such an important problem. This is not just a question of overwork but above all stress, which includes the stress of feeling unable to do the job as it should be done. Burnout makes it much more difficult to feel compassion, even if a professional is expected to behave in a proper professional manner regardless of how they feel at the time.
When doctors, nurses and care workers are unable to show appropriate compassion this is most often the result of the conditions they are working in, whether through lack of resources to make their compassion count, or the destruction of their normal compassion by years of working in a system characterised by daily banal and bureaucratic inhumanity.
As for resigning due to lack of compassion – just imagine trying to get Job Seekers Allowance after leaving, or refusing to take, a job on such grounds.
“Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation have just published a report ‘Out of Sight’ which details a number of serious incidents of abuse at other private hospitals including physical assault, sexual abuse and over medication. The report calls for the government to close these large institutions which are mostly operated by the private and not for profit sector”[2]. In other words the same lesson about care of people with learning disabilities and large impersonal institutions as was drawn from similar problems 30 years ago. The difference is that the institutions today tend to be privately run, with only 10% of those in residential care run by social services. Today it is all too easy to equate economy with private profit: “The private sector in particular recognised there was money to be made if you set up nice looking purpose-built homes for some of the most dependant and challenging people. The care could be provided more efficiently (cheaper) in large institutions. A simple case of the economies of scale that could be achieved in catering, care and management costs by replacing a dozen small homes each providing care for four or five people with a ‘hospital’ providing beds for 60 or more residents.” The use of such facilities, with their economies of scale, results from the need for social services departments to keep costs down in line with stretched budgets.
With the British economy, being much stronger than the Greek, we do not face the same level of cuts (see Curing the economy kills the sick [644]). Nevertheless, if we look at the plans to save money in the NHS being rolled out at the moment, we can see that the difference is one of degree and not principle. The plan is to make £20 billion in savings in the 4 years to 2014/15, with an estimated £5.8 bn saved in 2011/12. However despite freezing pay, freezing what Primary Care Trusts pay for healthcare and cutting back office costs (i.e. administration jobs), the National Audit Office has estimated that the real saving is more like £3.4 bn. Because of this shortfall, the cuts to come, we can be certain, will hit both patient care and healthworkers’ pay, conditions and jobs. It will also involve the regulation of health care assistants – people employed to take on aspects of the nursing role that used to be the province of more qualified staff. It used to be called ‘dilution’, now it’s called ‘skill mix’. All this will come in whatever compassion nurses and doctors have for their patients, or indeed the compassion the sick may feel for their carers.
Nurses compassion will be measured, according to Jane Cummings, chief nurse for England! As if you could trust the capitalist state to measure such things in a meaningful way! The Prime Minister wants patients in hospital to use the “friends and family test”. “Mark Porter, chairman of council of the BMA, said, ‘Doctors and the NHS, generally, welcome feedback from patients and their families. However, the friends and family test that has been piloted so far is based on a model developed to test satisfaction with consumer products. We would like to see a full evaluation of the pilot before it is rolled out more widely, as there may be better ways of getting useful information from patients in a form that allows the NHS to improve services’.” (BMJ 7/1/13).
These ‘reforms’ will do little if anything to improve care. They certainly won’t overcome the effects of the planned ‘efficiency savings’. But the media concentration on these scandals, and the campaign about ‘care’ and ‘compassion’, can undermine the confidence we feel in our doctors and nurses in the NHS, and create a climate in which they can be blamed for the inevitable failings that will happen as cuts in the health budget are rolled out.
Alex 12/1/13
[1]. Lorraine Morgan, president of the Welsh Nursing Academy, https://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=21708&utm_source=Maili... [645]
The 1980s was a period of important working class struggles in Britain as well as in the rest of Europe and the world. The ‘Thatcherite revolution’, capitalism’s response to the inability of Keynesian economics to deal with the economic crisis, was a means of ruthlessly culling unprofitable industrial sectors and involved a brutal assault on workers’ jobs and living conditions. The classic expression of this policy was the decision to decimate the UK mining industry, which provoked the year-long Miners’ Strike of 1984-5. This struggle was a focus for the whole working class in Britain, but although its defeat came as a bitter blow, the effects of which would make themselves felt even more strongly in the longer term, it did not bring an end to the wave of struggles in Britain. Between 1986 and 1988 there were widespread movements involving printers, BT workers, teachers, health workers, postal workers and others.
Given the historic strength of the trade unions in Britain, none of these struggles gave rise to independent forms of working class self-organisation on the scale of the movements of education workers in Italy or rail and health workers in France during the same period[1]. But even so, just as in other parts of Europe, these movements played a part in stimulating small groups of militant workers to get together outside of the union framework. As in Italy, France and elsewhere, communists often played a significant role in these groups, even if they were expressions of a wider process. But inevitably it is the communist minority – since it tends to have a more permanent existence than workers’ groups produced by the immediate struggle - which has taken on the task of preserving the memory of these experiences and drawing out their principal lessons.
What follows does not in any way claim to be a complete reconstruction of the experience of workers’ groups in the UK during the 80s. It is based mainly on articles published in World Revolution at the time, although the libcom library also contains articles written by other participants in the process and copies of bulletins and leaflets produced by these groups. Obviously we are writing it from our own political viewpoint, but we welcome further contributions, especially by others who can bring first hand knowledge from the time, in order to develop a broader discussion at a time when the formation of similar groupings is once again on the agenda.
Coming in the wake of the defeat of the miners, the 1986 Fleet Street printers’ strike was another major test in the battle between the classes. It was provoked by the attempts of Murdoch’s News International group to introduce new technology and working practices which meant job-losses and tighter work discipline. As in the miners’ strike, when the NUM concentrated the workers’ energies on achieving a total shut-down of the mining sector rather than going directly to other workers who were also on the verge of struggle (dockers, steel workers, car workers), the print unions kept the struggle locked up in one part of the newspaper industry by insisting on the tactic of closing down NI’s Wapping plant. But whereas in the miners’ strike there was little overt criticism of the NUM by the workers involved in the strike, the effective sabotage of the strike by the print unions was rather easier to see, especially their specious argument that the strike should not be spread to the rest of Fleet Street because by allowing the other newspapers to carry on and capture NI’s sales, the blockade of Wapping would force Murdoch to his knees.
It was in this atmosphere that the unofficial strike bulletin Picket appeared. Compiled by both printers and others, it provided regular updates on the progress of the strike and ran to 43 issues, all of which can be found in the libcom library[2]. It was very quickly condemned by the union officials, prompting the ICC (WR 95, June 1986) to publish an article expressing its solidarity with the bulletin:
At a time when the police and the print unions are trying to ram home the isolation of militant printworkers and complete their defeat, it’s no accident that they should create a minor witch-hunt against the comrades who produce Picket, a bulletin that’s a direct product of the printers’ strike. For months the TUC, the NGA and SOGAT[3] have tried to blame violence at the Wapping demonstrations on outside agitators (ie revolutionaries, workers, the unemployed expressing their solidarity). Now they have discovered an “enemy within”.
Bill Freeman, the print unions’ ‘national picket co-ordinator’ has said he “deplored its contents” and that “steps were being taken to locate its authors and prevent its publication” (Guardian 12/5/86). With the print unions more and more in collaboration with the police, militant pickets had better watch out for repression from the unions who won’t hesitate to finger them to the cops. We solidarise with Picket against any attempts by the unions or the police to silence it.
The hostility of the union leadership to Picket is a class hostility to any attempt by the workers to break from the hegemony of the left and the trade unions. That the leftist press has totally ignored Picket is characteristic, as it is not an ‘official’ trade union organ, nor the product of a leftist sect, nor a rank and file front group.
As they say themselves, Picket is produced by “printworkers”, “SOGAT/NGA pickets” and is “not connected to any group or party”. It is a workers’ bulletin which expresses criticisms of the TUC and the print union leadership at a national and branch level. It contains descriptions of the activities of the pickets in the print strike, letters from supporters and critics, tenants in Wapping and other practical information. While this kind of information is a vital component of any strike bulletin, this emphasis is at the expense of any analysis or attempt to use the bulletin as a focus for the organisation of militant printworkers.
Picket is not a political group with political positions and an orientation for the struggle, but an expression of militants who are trying to fight back against the capitalist offensive. However, hostility to the TUC, the police, the print unions and the bosses is not enough, nor is combativity on its own. But Picket refuses to offer any slogans, “which have come to be the method of hypocrisy”. This comes from a fear of being like the unions or the left whose slogans are not hypocrisy but lies to disorientate the working class. In fact Picket do have a perspective, that “the strike will be won by picketing”. This fixation on one form of action ignores the need to extend the struggle to workers in other sectors.
They criticise the TUC for having “worked overtime to contain the strike, stop it and then sink it. They want to get control over the growing picketing movement in order to demobilise it”. But there is no criticism that could not be found in the more extreme leftist press. In the end the touchstone of a working class orientation is the push for extension and self-organisation, which inevitably means outright opposition to the whole union apparatus. Picket says “the sacked printworkers need to build on their own organising abilities to picket. It remains for ordinary pickets to take complete control of the strike”. We agree with this, but Picket undermine their position by putting self-organisation as only rank and file action against union “sell-outs”. Today the production of Picket is a thorn in the side of the union leaders, but without an attempt to go beyond being just an information sheet with militant comments, tomorrow it could well end up as just another voice for rank and file unionism. RJ (address for contact with Picket supplied).
In World Revolution 103, April 1987, with the definitive defeat of the printer’s strike we published a balance sheet of Picket’s activities:
One of the most significant expressions of the maturation of the present international wave of workers’ struggles is the appearance of small groups of militant workers organising outside the unions in order to push forward the extension and self-organisation of the struggle. With the official winding down of the printers’ strike in Britain, it is an appropriate time to draw a balance sheet of the group Picket which emerged from this struggle.
The appearance of struggle groups is intimately bound up with workers’ growing distrust for the trade unions. After the railway strikes in France, for example, a group of workers from the electricity industry produced a leaflet ‘To all electricians and gas workers, to all workers and unemployed’ in which they showed how the railworkers’ general assemblies had functioned, and how the unions kept the strike isolated in one sector.
The ICC’s section in France pushed for the formation of such groups. In particular our militants in the post office participated in a group which put out a leaflet showing “it is necessary to prepare the struggle:
- by establishing contacts and information between different centres
- by preparing the largest possible unification at the base, between unionised and non-unionised
- by proposing the most unifying demands for all workers”
Membership of the group was open to all who agreed on the main lessons of the rail strike:
- that general assemblies take the decisions, elect the strike committees and the revocable delegates
- that it’s the general assemblies which are charged with extension to other sectors
These struggle groups are not new unions. They aren’t nor can they be the embryo of future general assemblies or strike committees.
However, such groups can play a very important role:
- making contact and forging links between different sectors during and even before struggles;
- drawing lessons from previous struggles;
- defending the need for all to struggle and not to stay isolated in one sector;
- not leaving the unions the monopoly of information.
The group Picket formed by printworkers and others around the struggle at Wapping was an expression of the same process within the class. It was by no means as clear about the anti-working class role of the unions as the groups in France, But precisely because of the strength of trade unionism in Britain it was of considerable significance that such a group should appear outside the structure of the unions, and that so many of the printworkers involved in the struggle should look to it as a valuable source of information and encouragement to their fight.
Picket above all reflected the workers’ distrust in the official structures of the unions. In contrast to the miners’ strike, which was characterised by a loyalty to the NUM, the print strike ended with the workers expressing a strong feeling of having been ‘sold out’ by the print unions, even if this was largely put in terms of criticisms of the Dean-Dubbins leadership of SOGAT and the NGA. The pages of Picket were thus frequently given over to bitter criticisms of the print union hierarchy and the TUC and other unions for sabotaging any solidarity with the printers.
In the same way, just as the printers’ strike in its most dynamic phase contained a real push towards solidarity and unity with other workers, so Picket expressed a certain understanding of the necessity for the extension of the struggle. In one issue, for example, they recognise that a weakness of the miners’ strike was that “most activists were sucked into the fund-raising circuit”; in another they insist, in response to a letter advising the printers to rely on the leadership of the London branch representatives, that “the pickets are the leadership of the strike...Extending the strike will be done by picketing, not as you outline it. And it is necessary to link the strike to other workers. Ours in a common struggle”.
It cannot be said, however, that this call for extension was central to Picket’s activities. On the contrary, the fundamental weakness of Picket was that it never seriously challenged the printers’ illusions that their demands could be won if only they could mount a really effective blockade of News International.
Unlike the leftists, Picket did not ask the workers to put their trust in union officials even at the most ‘rank and file’ level. But publishing page after page celebrating the initiative and self-activity of the pickets was completely inadequate when that activity was caught up in dead-end strategy. In fact, it could only mean tail-ending the most radical postures of the unions.
As one unattributed letter Picket received rightly said: “the organisation and activity of the strikers has contained elements both of autonomy from the structures and processes of capital, and of dependence on them”.
This equally applies to Picket itself, which on one page could attack ‘the unions’, on another criticise only ‘the leadership’ and very uncritically advertise the activities of rank and file union bodies; which could talk about extending the struggle while at the same time tirelessly propagating all the fixations on blockading Murdoch’s publications, on the battles with the police at Wapping, on abusing scabs – all of which became part of the union trap to prevent the extension of the struggle.
Such ambiguities are inevitable in a grouping thrown up by the immediate struggle. They can only be overcome through a continuous process of discussion and confrontation of ideas within the class. The last words of the last known issue of Picket (no 43) seem to indicate the beginning of an attempt to draw some lessons after the set-piece confrontations at the ‘anniversary’ celebrations: “But the real cause of it all, Murdoch’s production and distribution, continued totally unhindered, certainly making more than a few pickets go away thinking that they should have a rethink of strategy”.
Unfortunately, Picket itself does not seek to stimulate any such a rethink. In the previous number, months after the struggle has been effectively defeated, and two weeks before it was officially called off, Picket continues with its usual triumphalist proclamations: “we raised the stakes” and “if NI think they can beat is , they take on not just us, but our history”. Workers can hardly draw lessons from their defeats if they can’t recognise defeat when it’s staring them in the face! In fact this blindness was conditioned by Picket’s unwillingness to raise a discussion about the real needs of the struggle.
Symptomatic of this was that Picket never called for the holding of general assemblies to discuss the aims and methods of the strike. Equally significant was Picket’s extreme reluctance to engage in discussion with proletarian political organisations – those who most unambiguously defended the necessity for the struggle to break out of the Wapping trap. It is positive that Picket reprinted articles on the print strike or on Picket itself from World Revolution, Workers Voice and Wildcat. But these were printed without comment and without any attempt to distinguish them from similar reprints of articles from the leftist press.
In a previous article on Picket (WR 95) we said that if it did not seek to provide a focus for discussing and analysing the printers’ struggle, it could end up as another voice for rank and file unionism. Picket was indeed drawn deeper and deeper into this trap. But, at the time of writing, the main danger of this inability to draw out the lessons of the struggle seems to be that Picket will simply vanish without trace – precisely at the time when the most militant workers need to reflect on the causes of the defeat at Wapping and the perspective for participating in future struggles. This need exists not only in the print, but at British Telecom, among the miners, the teachers and throughout the class. Picket itself may not be equal to the task. But its very appearance shows that the development of other workers’ groups and struggle committees is now definitely on the horizon in Britain as elsewhere. L’A
In the second part of this article we will look at initiatives to form workers’ groups in others sectors during this period: health, post, and education.
[2]. https://libcom.org/history/picket-bulletin-wapping-printers-strike-1986-... [648]. For a discussion and recollections about some of the people involved in the group, see also: https://libcom.org/forums/history/anarchistscommunists-wapping-dispute-2... [649]
[3]. Society of Graphical and Allied Trades and the National Graphical Association – the two main print unions at the time
It’s always difficult - and unwise - to make precise predictions about the international situation, particularly as imperialist tensions and conflicts take on a more irrational and chaotic character. However, we can say with some certainty that, whatever the specifics of events in Syria, whether the regime falls or not, there will be more fighting, more bloodshed and the greater likelihood of the war worsening in Syria itself and extending beyond its borders. To a large extent outside forces are already involved in the dynamic towards greater bloodshed and instability: Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah on one hand backing the regime, and on the other a whole basket case of interests, rivalries and potential conflicts: Turkey, the Gulf states, France, Britain, the USA, Germany, Jordan, Egypt, to name the major players, alongside, and often manipulating, the various rebel forces and factions, and then throw in al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Kurds and the Palestinian factions. The intervention of all these imperialist gangsters, big and small, augurs badly for the populations and stability of this region.
Various countries and bodies have been predicting the fall of the Assad regime for many months now. We are not military experts and we cannot draw on first-hand information from within the country, but the fall of Assad still doesn’t look imminent. On 6 January, in a Damascus opera house, Assad put forward what was billed as a ‘peace plan’ that was really a call to his military, which his clique is totally identified with, to deepen the war. He looks set to stay on whatever, to the point of implementing a scorched-earth policy, which would only be an extension of what’s already really happening. While his regime has been increasingly threatened and undermined by the rebels’ offensives against its positions, so far this has led to a contradictory situation. On the one hand Assad is more and more under pressure; at the same time, the more his falls seems likely those forces and groups (the Alawite, Christian, Druze and Shia elements) who fear that a take-over by the rebels – among whom the Sunni fundamentalist element has gained considerably in strength - will result in pogroms against them have been driven into a desperate attempt to cohere behind Assad.
What remained of the protests of 18 months ago has been broken. His military seems to be generally in control of the densely populated south-west, the main north/south highway and the Mediterranean coast. Although the opposition have taken some, the Syrian military hold bases throughout the country from which its helicopters and jets can destabilise rebel-held areas at will, making territorial gains for the latter tenuous. Another aspect of Assad’s speech that wasn’t directed solely towards his army was the overtures made towards the Syrian Kurds in order to strengthen their position, if not their full allegiance, against his own enemies. But the major backer of the regime is Russia and despite some diplomatic noises against their man (played up by the west), the Russians remain fully behind the regime for the foreseeable future. They, like the Iranians, have to cling to him desperately, and do so with some very heavy ordnance. The Guardian, 24/12/12, reported that Russian military advisers and crews are manning a sophisticated missile defence system, making a western ‘no-fly zone’ and the general situation even more problematic. These defences have been strengthened since the Israeli strike on the nuclear site of al-Kibar in 2007 and again at the start of the genuinely popular Syrian uprising in March 2011: “... the air defence command comprises two divisions and an estimated 50,000 troops - twice the size of Gaddafi’s force - with thousands of anti-aircraft guns and more than 130 anti-aircraft missile batteries”. The placement of long-range S-300 Russian missiles is a possibility but not confirmed. For the Russians, Syria also holds their largest electronic eavesdropping base outside its territory in Latakia and it has a naval base on the Mediterranean at Tartus. The Russians will not give up easily on the present Syrian regime and the assets it provides .
Unlike Libya, Germany was quick to become involved here, placing Patriot missiles and its troops on the Turkish border. These were followed by the USA, Dutch and Norwegians under the NATO umbrella. NATO is is hiding behind the defence of its member Turkey which itself is becoming more aggressive. American and European forces are thus getting directly involved, with differences amongst themselves, in a confrontation with not just Syrian forces but Iranian and Russian interests which have formidable military force to back them up. Germany increasingly has its own imperialist ambitions to put forward, even though it may antagonise Russia, and Britain and France have been at the forefront of promoting the opposition forces, including, along with the CIA, the use of their special forces and intelligence services. Again there seem to be rivalries here, expressed in diplomatic circles, between France, Britain and the USA - with the latter getting a freer hand now that the ‘fiscal cliff’ problem has been temporarily shelved and new foreign and security bosses have been put in place by the Obama clique. The appointment of Chuck Hagel to head the Pentagon and ‘terrorism adviser’ John Brennan to lead the CIA not only reinforces clandestine operations, special forces work, drone attacks against army ‘boots on the ground’; it also seems to be more bad news for Israel. Hagel has been accused by Republicans of being soft on Iran and weak defending Israel. This comes on top of the destabilisation of Syria, which is the last thing that Israel wanted to see; and now the latter is planning a wall on its borders along the Golan Heights to keep out the jihadists who are swarming into Syria. The recent Egyptian/Iranian intelligence services rapprochement must also be a worry to Israel and the United States.
Along with France, Britain has played a leading role in the anti-Assad front. In order to help reconstruct the discredited opposition forces of the Syrian National Council, and quickly following a conference in Doha, Qatar, meetings across several government departments were held in London in late November, including representatives from France, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and US military personnel, with the aim of forming a general strategy and helping to reorganise the Syrian ‘revolutionaries’[1]. According to official accounts alone Britain has provided aid amounting to £57 million to the rebels up to October last year. This obviously doesn’t include the vast amounts spent on undercover activity, logistics and surreptitious provisions. The British army, under its chief of defence, General David Richards, is or has drawn up contingency plans to provide Syrian rebels with maritime and air support (Guardian, 12/1212), but given the obstacles outlined above this would be a major escalation of danger. One thing for sure though is that as British troops are being ‘drawn-down’ in Afghanistan, many are going to the Gulf, reinforcing British land and naval bases in Bahrain, strengthening forces in Qatar and the UAE and “forming close tactical-level relationships” in Jordan. And although there’s a great deal of state secrecy around the issue, there’s no doubting growing British support for the Muslim Brotherhood which is very active in the Syrian opposition and across the wider region (not least Egypt). Britain, along with the other western protagonists, has raised and kept the issue of Syrian chemical weapons alive in order to provide a possible motive for direct intervention. But even if intervention happens this can only lead to a further bloody fiasco.
The old Syrian opposition of the Syrian National Council, with its long-term exiles and links to the CIA and the US State Department, was totally discredited. The new opposition, to give it its full title, the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, is now recognised as ‘the legitimate representative of the Syrian people’. This new bunch of gangsters, formed in late November in a conference at Doha and consolidated at a meeting in Morocco on 12 December, from which the Free Syrian Army network was sidelined, and which was recognised by more than a hundred countries, reflects many of the problems of the current situation, including faction fights between the major powers of France, Britain, the USA and Germany, and the fact that Syria is a prized strategic crossroads. The most controversial aspect of the new opposition is its fundamentalist leanings, which shows the west, once again, playing with the fire of ‘holy war’. The nature of the opposition more closely reflects its masters in Saudi, Qatar and the other Gulf states where these Sunni leaders promote radical, religious-based ideologies that have fuelled anti-western sentiments for some time now. These regimes, as autocratic and vicious as Assad’s, have no time for the ‘democratisation’ process that the USA is attempting to foist on them and this represents a further division among the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’.
In Syria, jihadists are pouring in from everywhere, different poisonous fractions representing the interests of different countries; some brought in by the intelligence services of the US and Britain, some from the Gulf states, and a multitude of ‘freelancers’ from countries including Libya, Tunisia, the Balkans, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq. The most ruthless, organised and efficient of these groups has been Jahbat al-Nusra. These fighters were declared a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’ by the US State Department on 10 December. Despite promises made to the US by the opposition to break with them, “...coordination continued on the ground. This is why the US deputy secretary of state found himself isolated in Marrakech when he classified al-Nusra a terrorist organisation. The British and French remained silent, as did the EU” (The Guardian, 18/12/12) . We’ve underlined this last bit because of the clear divisions it shows between these countries and the USA. The leader of the new Syrian opposition, Mouaz al-Khatib, has even lectured the US on the merits of al-Nusra and the virtues of martyrdom. The Muslim Brotherhood also condemned the US decision as “wrong and hasty”. Al-Nusra, which has led the fighting in Aleppo and in the suburbs of Damascus, the overrunning of the Sheik Suleiman base in the north while spearheading gains elsewhere, is an al-Qaeda front. It has indiscriminately targeted all non-Sunnis, military or not, and in Syria we see a sort of Sunni accord with them, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists for the time being. The Gulf states are supporting all three with the British and French their silent partners. It’s long been thought that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the expanding Sunni terrorist organisation, would get involved in Syria and now they have and are in the forefront of it. The leader of al-Nusra is Abu Du’a who is also the emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
We haven’t even begun to mention the Kurds who also play a major part on the imperialist chessboard in and around Syria. Just like al-Qaeda coming from Iraq to Syria, so too are Iraqi Kurds training Syrian Kurds to fight (New York Times, 7/12/12). This itself presents the prospects of a wider conflict with sectarian strife, pogroms and ethnic conflict among people who previously lived side by side. The working class exists in numbers in this region but it is weak and has been further weakened by this conflict which, far from being a ‘revolution’, is a bloody imperialist war. Tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands wounded and traumatised, possibly millions displaced and people in Syria starving to death or dying for lack of care. The more immediate successes that there are for the ‘rebels’, the more they are falling out amongst themselves: looting in Aleppo for example, assassinating and killing each other over the spoils. While the regime deals out its own form of death and destruction, the opposition have been engaged in their own atrocities, beheading and massacres. To call this inter-imperialist nightmare a ‘revolution’, as groups like the Socialist Workers Party have done, is obscene but this is not the first time that such groups have supported Islamic fundamentalism for their own sordid ends - just like the British government.
Baboon 9/1/13
(This article was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC.)
[1]. Foreign Secretary William Hague and the Socialist Workers Party are as one in supporting the imperialist butchery that they call the “Syrian Revolution”. See Socialist Worker 20/9/12 and the UK Mission to the United Nations statement, 11/11/12.
There is much talk now in all sorts of bourgeois media all over the world about the glory and resurgence of the ‘emerging’ countries and their economy. The media is never tired of highlighting that these countries are turning out to be the new locomotive of the global capitalist economy. The significance of their role in resolving the intensifying crisis of world capitalism is also being asserted ceaselessly. There is also talk of the shifting of the balance of economic power and importance towards the emerging countries such as China, India, Brazil etc. These countries are becoming more and more important to world capital.
But it is becoming more and more impossible for the bourgeoisie to keep intact the mask over its inherent hypocrisy. The material conditions of world capital are forcefully tearing asunder this mask more and more each passing day. Its inhuman inner reality is being more and more exposed. The bourgeoisie, its scholars and apologists, never tire of boasting about its commitment to humanitarianism and its achievements in ensuring human rights and values everywhere in the world. Perhaps these human rights and values are not meant for the working class! To the bourgeoisie they seem to be nothing but parts in the machinery for commodity production for more profit!
Not caring a straw for all this bourgeois propaganda, boasting and tall claims, a devastating fire broke out in Tazreen Fashions, the biggest garment factory in Bangladesh on 24th November, 2012. This factory is situated in a place very near to the capital of the country. According to official reports 112 workers were burnt to death in this inferno. But this crime of Bangladeshi capitalism was aided and abetted in every way by the so called ‘civilized’ and developed fractions of world capital. The reality of the actual fatality and the casualty figures is very likely to be much higher and different from the official estimates, figures and reports. Fire service officials have found that the nine storey factory building had no valid safety license and it had permission only for three floors.
A high-power government investigation committee has concluded that it was a case of sabotage. The chief of this committee has told PTI ( Press Trust of India) that the workers were told to stay inside for a “fire drill” and were killed in the horrific blaze. According to him “it appeared a case of arson. It was a case of sabotage when the victims were forced to stay inside to be burnt to death"*.According to Mr. Khandker, an additional secretary of the home ministry, “The iron gates were closed immediately (after the fire broke out) so the workers could not run out to safety and they (culprits) asked workers to stay inside for ‘fire drill’ …..if it was really a fire drill, it would have required the workers to evacuate the scene in quickest possible time”*. Mr. Khandker did not suggest the motive behind it despite speculation that the country’s fast growing crucial garments sector was exposed to an international conspiracy.
According to international labour activists the garment factories in Bangladesh produce clothes and garments for global clothing brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Gap and those sold by Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco. This fatal accident in the workplace by the breaking out of a devastating fire is no exception. Such fatal accidents in workplaces are quite common not only in Bangladesh but in most of the ‘emerging countries’ and rising economic powers such as India, China etc. The worsening working and living conditions of the overwhelming majority of working class people, and decreasing expenditure for adequate safety measures, are the most important conditions for their emergence as rising economic and military powers.
As these emerging bourgeoisie are rising, working class people in the ‘emerging countries’ are suffering and dying more and more due to increasing poverty, misery, starvation, worsening living and working conditions and increasing indifference to adequate safety measures. The developed parts of the world bourgeoisie and their scholars very often pretend to be sharply critical about the ‘inhuman’ conditions of the work place in the ‘emerging’ countries and blame the bourgeoisie of those countries. But the more ‘civilized’, developed, ‘humanitarian’ and democratic parts of the world bourgeoisie are gleefully utilizing this precarious, pathetic situation of the working class in the emerging countries to maintain the rate of profit and the share of the world market! What a height of hypocrisy!
World capital has been passing through its phase of permanent crisis since the early thirties. The definitive proof of this phase was forcefully announced by the great depression of 1929. The relative saturation of the world market is at the root of this. Capitalist production can be increased in geometric progression but the indispensable market can expand only in arithmetic progression. So there is every possibility of a gap between the total amount produced and the total amount the market can absorb. This situation is worsened further when the capitalist production and market has established itself and become more predominant in each and every part of the world, pushing the pre-capitalist sector of commodity production and exchange to a more and more insignificant position. This worsening of the situation was suppressed to some extent in the wake of the second world war, the great devastation that it caused and the increasing state intervention in the economic life of society. But the permanent crisis raised its ugly head again towards the end of the sixties. Since then it has been continuing almost unabated with temporary recovery through the policy of debt and the artificial creation of markets. Continuation of this policy has landed capitalism in an even more precarious situation. It has been able to find no real solution but only two actually ineffective solutions which are being implemented alternatively or both at the same time in different degrees. These are the polices of more debt and more printing of paper money on the one hand and the policy of austerity and curtailment of expenditure in the social sector on the other. Various capitalist factions are also intent on the curtailment of expenditure for the necessary safety measures in the workplace. Capital can not do otherwise in today’s situation.
As we said above capital cannot but spend less and less for safety measures and resort to further worsening of living and working conditions. This is one of the most important conditions of its continued existence in this advanced phase of decadence. Running after and maintaining the rate of profit and capturing an adequate portion of the relatively saturated world market by lowering the cost of production and increasing further the intensity of exploitation and work load can only lead to increasing numbers of fatal accidents in the workplace including the transport sector. So what has happened to the hapless workers in the garment industry in Bangladesh can very likely befall working class people in other parts of the world sooner or later. Such accidents and killing of workers are likely to increase in the coming period everywhere in the world. So there is every possibility of the increasing number of fatal accidents both in the productive sector and transport sector which is mostly used by working class people. Accidents in the transport sector are on the increase in the European countries also.
Effective foolproof measures for the prevention of accidents or putting an end to their fatality do not at all depend on the good will or responsibility of this or that faction of capital or this or that capitalist state. It is the inevitable consequence of the compulsion of the material conditions of capitalism in this phase of its life. Not only that, diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, plague etc., which were thought to have been banished from society in the European countries, are returning again.
Resorting to increasing attacks on the living and working conditions in such a fully fledged, unhampered way is a little bit difficult to practice immediately in the heartland of capital. The advanced fractions of capital need to do this for their survival. But they also need to do it in a very sophisticated, selective way with high doses of mystification. With this end in view they are shifting more and more of the productive apparatus, particularly the manufacturing sector, to the backward areas of capital. The availability of cheap labor power and worse working conditions in abundance in the emerging economies is pushing them towards the emerging countries. Thus not only the Bangladeshi fraction of capital but the fractions of developed western capital are equally responsible for this workplace massacre of the hapless workers. Thus they are all most ferocious hypocrites, culprits and murderers.
The government, media and various sectors of the state apparatus are all busy finding out some scapegoats responsible for this most barbarous burning and killing of such a large number of workers in the garment factory. They are also floating various conspiracy theories against various fractions of native or international capital. All these may be there in one form or another. But indifference to the safety and wellbeing of working class people, and conspiracy and scapegoating are inseparably linked with capital, particularly in this advanced phase of its decadence. All of them are trying their best to hide the truth from the working class people that the world capitalist system today is the real killer. It is everyday killing thousands of people in all parts of the world through poverty, misery, starvation, famine, unemployment, homelessness, exposure to extreme vagaries of weather conditions, intensifying pollution of air, water, environment, disease, pestilence, suicides, drug addictions, drunkenness, terrorism and war. It is also killing hundreds and thousands of people through frequently occurring apparently natural disasters in the root of which is in reality the intensifying greed and competition for more profit of all fractions of international capital.
The sole task of each and every capitalist state today in each and every part of the world is to defend the interest of national or native capital in whatever way possible. The state controls the management of the national economy not only politically but also economically today. State intervention and interference in the economy is indispensable for the survival of each and every national fraction of global capital now. Further intensification of exploitation and worsening of living and working conditions is part and parcel of state policy today. But the state feigns ignorance and resorts to scapegoating of this or that faction of capital or concocts various conspiracy theories.
Did the state of Bangladesh not know that the factory in question produced garments for the renowned multinational brands mentioned above and resorted to super exploitation for more profit and violated the safety rules? It must have known. But ironically this very capitalist state has declared a national day of mourning for the workers burnt to death solely for keeping the rate of profit high. Does this not very vividly reflect the height of hypocrisy of the capitalist governments whose raison d’être is nothing but the defense of the interest of capital?
Are these steps not being resorted to with the sole purpose of mystifying the struggling masses of workers and derailing the process of coming to consciousness?
There have been reports of vigorous and violent protest movements of the working class people that have taken place in Bangladesh against this enormous death and devastation inflicted on the working class people quite often. They have raised their voice against the extreme negligence of the authority, lack of proper safety measures, lack of concern for the life of the workers and worsening living and working conditions. They seem to have realized that the sole concern of capital today is nothing but more profit and an increased share of the world market through the intensification of their exploitation.
Working class people should seriously reflect on all these events, in order to clarify about what is really responsible for the frequent recurrence of workplace accidents resulting in the death and maiming of increasing numbers of workers in all parts of the world particularly in the areas of historically backward capital. This reflection will push them towards the conclusion that there is no solution to the frequent recurrence of workplace accidents and massacres within the confines of the present day world capitalist system. The only solution lies in the ability of the international working class to rise in struggle against the real monstrous enemy and killer, the global capitalist system. The immediate struggles against the increasing attacks of capital on living and working conditions all over the world have to be internationally united. These immediate struggles have to be developed into conscious political struggles against the capitalist states. These political struggles have to be further developed to confront and oust the capitalist states in each and every part of the world. There is no other way.
S
This article was written by the ICC's section in India.
* Quotes from The Statesman of 26th December, 2012 from the news report titled ‘Bangla factory fire victims locked inside’.
We are publishing below an article by a close sympathiser of the ICC in India, responding to the notorious rape and murder of a young student in Delhi. It is followed by comments by two other women.
They decided to marry in February, 13. They were returning after enjoying a cinema show. They were waiting for transport on a city highway in Delhi. It was not dead of night. It was only 9.30 p.m. at that time. But just at that evening hour for metropolitan Delhi that heart rending, most pathetic, painful incident took place. They boarded an empty bus; just after getting on it they realized their mistake. But they had already been entrapped by the miscreants. There was no other way out. Six young miscreants got on the bus, beat the partner of the unfortunate girl severely and made him unconscious. Then all those beasts jumped on the helpless girl and sexually assaulted her one after another. Not only that. They struck forcefully the lower abdomen portion of her body with a heavy rod. This damaged seriously many organs in that portion. The inhuman activity did not stop there. The miscreants made her unconscious and tried to throw her out and kill her by running her over. However she was still alive, somehow enduring all such severe sexual and physical assaults. She was taken to a city hospital in a seriously injured and traumatized condition. After several days spent in the most advanced AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) and several surgical operations she was transferred to a hospital in Singapore in a most unstable condition. There the hapless girl passed away on 26th December, 2012.
Perhaps that extremely barbarous incident has violently upset the human essence of the inner world of everyone. As a member of the species Homo Sapiens I am also extremely pained, perturbed and saddened. As a woman I am being obsessed with a sense of tremendous helplessness and lack of security. Since 16th December for quite a number of days I turned my eyes willingly away from the TV set or the newspapers. As if I was trying to flee away from all this. Tears are welling up in the eyes while I am trying to write this. Again and again I am automatically seeing myself in the pathetic condition of that hapless medical student of 23 years. Her unarticulated messages of unlimited mental pain and trauma and protest against the assault seem to appear before me in the form of clearly visible material forms. I am trying to realize the depth of her pain and trauma. Many people are eager to see the photograph of that unfortunate victim of unlimited barbarism. I think of telling them to hold the mirror in front of their own faces. This will enable them to see her photograph.
Every moment our feeling, emotion and creativity is being raped. We cannot transmit the experience and education that we want to the students. We cannot build our life in the way we like. We cannot see the world with the form and content in which we want to see it. This constant suppression of feeling, desire and dream is nothing but another name of rape to me. After struggling against death for ten days the girl passed away. The central government adorned her posthumously with some well chosen and calculated adjectives to show its ‘humanitarian’ concern.
In the heart of Delhi, the Indian capital, hundreds of thousands of aggrieved people, particularly the youth, assembled in the streets spontaneously and demonstrated against this act of unimaginable barbarism. The demand for exemplary punishment for the culprits has been raised from all quarters. Maybe they will be punished very severely. A media hype will be launched by the government, its ‘scholars’ and ‘experts’. TV channels will be involved in competition in holding talk shows, delivering some nice ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’. All this will come to an end sooner or later. This heinous act of barbarism will culminate in ‘history’ one day. And that history will again be repeated, I believe.
Long accumulated anger and grievances burst out in the form of spontaneous, massive demonstrations in response to this incident. Lots of people participated in the silent candle light march and thus articulated their helplessness. Different types of reactions have also been expressed from various other quarters. The leader of the RSS (Rastriya Swayam Sevak Sangha), an ultra rightist militia organization, has said that the western lifestyle of women is responsible for such incidents. A spiritual guru, Asharam Bapu said “she could have stopped the attack if she had chanted God’s name and fallen on the feet of the attackers”. Last year an incident of rape took place in the Park Street area of Calcutta. At that time the government in West Bengal run by a woman chief minister remarked that the character of the woman who went out alone to celebrate the New Year at dead of night was bad.
But in any case there is no doubt that the incident is most contemptible and we cannot but denounce it thoroughly and as strongly as possible. But is it the first? Can we classify the incidents of rape into more or less important? All incidents of rape are equally contemptible and have to be equally condemned. According to the 2007 report of NCRB (National Crime Record Board) the number of incidents of rape in India is 21,397 whereas that for the USA is 89,241. But a correct assessment and comparison is not possible on the basis of numbers alone. In a country like India where women are held responsible for being raped, many women prefer not reporting the incidents of sexual assault. On the other hand such complaints from those raped women who dare to go the police station are not very often duly recorded by the police officers. In the last month a 17 year old girl from a remote village in Punjab went to the police station to lodge a complaint after being raped. The police refused to record that complaint. After this the girl committed suicide. So we can easily understand that the number of incidents of rape in India will be much more. On the average an incident of rape takes place every 20 minutes in this country. In 2011 numbers of brutal assaults on women were reported in Uttar Pradesh, and according to the report of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) the majority of those assaulted were poor women from remote areas, many of them Dalits (“untouchables”). Political leaders and parties use these incidents solely for political gain.
In spite of all this it seems from the reaction of the government and the political spectrum as if this incident of rape in Delhi has taken place for the first time in India. All leaders and ministers have at present articulated apparently very humanitarian reactions. They have all demanded punishment for the culprits. Chief minister Shila Dikshit of the ruling Congress party has said that she did not have the courage to meet the victim. Sushama Swaraj, a BJP leader, has asserted that the rapists should be hanged. As if hanging the rapists will put an end to the incidents of rape in the future. I am confused. I am not clear about what sort of punishment should be demanded for the culprits. Moreover to whom should we demand this punishment? Can those people who are themselves drowned in the sea of corruption, crime and falsehood give any justice?
In December 2009 a Russian woman was raped by a state politician, and Santaram Naik, a Congress M.P. from Goa made a vigorous defence of the rape, blaming the victim. In 2011 Bikram Singh Brahma, a Congress M.P. from Assam was accused of rape in the Chirang District. In 2004 in the Manipur region in the north east of India, Indian soldiers picked up Manorama, a thirty two year old woman from home at dead of night, took her forcibly to the nearby military camp, raped her and then killed her. Later on it was reported by the military authority that she was killed in a military ‘encounter’. She was alleged to have been associated with an armed extremist group. The state and government authority is never tired of singing hymns of praise for its military as it is said to be engaged in the defense of the country and security of the people. The military is depicted to be patriotism incarnate by the authorities and the media! This patriotism is nothing but a powerful weapon of the capitalist ruling class to keep the capitalist system intact. That is why this very military is raping and killing innocent women in the name of ‘encounters’ in various parts of India wherever there is a strong protest movement against the exploitation and repression of the authority. Is there anybody who can be in the seat of judgement in these cases of rape and murder by the state’s armed forces? Is it possible that the culprits will punish themselves? Is any true justice for the exploited and oppressed people possible in this social system? If a decision to punish the culprits is taken at all that will solely depend on the calculation of political gain or loss and the social status of the culprits. There will never be any punishment solely for the tremendous humiliation and mental pain caused to the raped women! The key to the continued existence of the system is the destruction of all human feelings, sentiments, social solidarity and confidence. So is it possible for persons in the top positions of authority to bother about such ‘insignificant’ incidents of rape of unknown, innocent helpless women by its own beloved military personnel?
This extreme degradation of human values is nothing but the manifestation of the advanced phase of decadence of the present day world capitalist system. We can not keep the greenery of the tree intact for any length of time, a tree whose roots have rotted, simply by sprinkling water on the leaves. In the same way it is not possible for the social system and its different parts, whose roots are also rotten, to do anything correct and justified. Human values are always being raped by this system. So the roots of the various problems such as rape, barbarous torture in police custody, custodial or ‘encounter’ death, or terrorist attacks very often lie deep inside the whole socio-economic, political, cultural structure and the dynamics of this society passing through its advanced phase of decadence. This started in the beginning of the twentieth century. This system is absolutely unable to provide the young generation with any positive orientation and perspective. So in the midst of their increasing unemployment, poverty, misery and mental agony sexual perversion turns out to be the only orientation. The very media, print as well as electronic, which is highlighting this incident of gang rape so much, organizing protest meetings against it and delivering high sounding sermons for respecting human values and rights of women, doesn’t hesitate to make the physical features and postures of women attractive commodities for more profit in their pages for advertisement. These contradictory roles prove in reality that they are solely concerned with their sordid self interest and nothing else. This may be called ‘media prostitution’.
These incidents manifest nothing but the decomposition of the whole system. We say very often that there are two alternatives in the world today: socialism or barbarism. We are drowning more and more deeply in the expanding ocean of barbarism. Is that not enough for us still now? So now the only remaining alternative is socialism. We have no other way but to fight for the achievement of the goal of socialism with all our physical and mental capability, time and energy. This is the only way to save humanity from total destruction and put an end to all sorts of exploitation, repression, sexual assaults and violence, not only against women but all human beings.
PB, 29.01.13
K: Was there any necessity for sending the gang raped and seriously injured girl to a Singapore hospital in the most unstable condition? Some doctors of AIIMS have pointed out that the arrangements for adequate and effective medical treatment are equally good or better in AIIMS. Is it not a cruel mystification of the Indian government and ruling class to show that they are very concerned and worried about the worsening health condition of the hapless rape victim and arranging for better foreign treatment? This shifting of the girl in the much worsened condition of her health might have contributed to her death. Why was she not transferred to a much better hospital in Europe or USA in the very beginning? It cannot be anything but a mystification. Everything is being done for the political gain of the ruling class. It is a very traumatic and tragic situation. Not only are the women being victimized but those socially related with the women such as father, husband, brothers are also being victimized and seriously injured or murdered by the miscreants.
The ruling class needs to maintain a very close relation with antisocial elements. Political parties, police and anti-social elements are in a close alliance. There is a crisis of the heart everywhere and it is deteriorating each passing day. Lack of security of not only women and young girls but all working class people is increasing. This insecurity has intensified so much that women do not want to have girl child. The ruling class cannot serve humanity in any way today. They cease to remain human beings once they are in power and authority. So it makes no difference whether the ruling person is a man or a woman.
R (daughter of K): Being a girl I am always worried about the situation of insecurity. Once I thought that if there is some companion with me when I go out for study this can save me but the reality is that our companion is also being attacked by criminals and they are being attacked first and seriously injured, made unconscious or murdered before attacking the real target, the helpless girl.
At the beginning of the year the scandal of beef products adulterated with horse meat broke, leading supermarkets across Europe to withdraw affected products, particularly processed and ready meals, some of which contained up to 100% horse instead of beef. Horse is of course much cheaper.
For the ruling class the duty to maximise profit and grow capital is a far higher ethic than the health of workers or anyone else who doesn’t own anything – or even simple honesty. In any case, we have been reminded that horse is safe to eat and this is an issue of fraud rather than public health – which ignores the fact that the suppliers have not taken the necessary care to avoid carcasses contaminated by veterinary medicines such as ‘bute’ (phenylbutazone, which was banned from human use due to a fairly rare but very dangerous side effect). If the risk to anyone who has consumed this horse meat is extremely small this is not due to any particular care on the part of the ruling class. Toxic oil syndrome which killed 600 people in 1981 in Spain was due to colza oil intended for industrial use being sold as olive oil. A recent US study[1] showed 69% of imported olive oils were not what they purported to be.
Adulteration of food is nothing new in capitalism and became a particular problem with industrialisation and the growth of towns which needed to be supplied with food. In the 19th Century many substances, including poisons, were added to bread or beer, including alum, plaster of Paris, sawdust, and strychnine. Decades passed, long after the danger of these substances was shown, before legislation was enacted against this practice in the UK in 1860.
Today we have reason to be even more worried about pollution of our food, whether from normal waste or accidents such as Fukushima. Studies have shown high levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, zinc, lead and copper, in water and vegetables due to pollution from mining, smelting and other industrial processes in Turkey, Greece, Nigeria, Egypt and New South Wales in Australia. Whether the ruling class have had any interest in studying it or not we have no doubt that there is even worse industrial pollution in India, China and other ‘developing’ countries. In the 1950s up to 50,000 people were poisoned by mercury in fish at Minamata in Japan, and 5,000 died. There continue to be warnings by the US Food and Drug Administration to avoid eating fish with the highest levels of mercury such as shark and swordfish.
Whatever prompted the media and politicians to get so excited about horse meat labelled as beef – whether to get the consumer to buy one brand rather than a competitor’s, or for political advantage – it gives us a glimpse of a far wider problem: how the search for profit damages our food.
Alex 28.2.13
A leading figure in a nationwide institution has been accused of rape and sexual harassment. This has shaken many of those who had confidence in the organisation, although others have rallied round to defend him.
This is not a reference to a Scottish Cardinal and the Roman Catholic Church, nor to a Liberal Democrat peer, nor to a dead DJ and the BBC. The latest scandal concerns the ex-National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.
A Disputes Committee of the SWP (made up mostly of those who knew the accused, but not the victims) decided that no offences had been committed and this decision was ratified by a National Conference of the SWP.
The different institutions have different functions, but they have bred creatures who seem to behave in very similar ways. As a DJ Jimmy Savile seemed to assume that constant access to young girls meant they were available for sexual abuse. Lord Rennard, a Liberal activist since the age of 12, credited with his ability to manipulate the electoral game over a period of thirty years, was accused of “inappropriate behaviour” with at least ten women. He was defended by some LibDems out of loyalty to a man who helped them gain prized parliamentary seats. There was also relief when Eastleigh was retained. Cardinal O’Brien, a vociferous opponent of gay marriage, has been accused of “inappropriate acts” towards fellow priests, an interesting variation of the usual accusations against Catholic clerics. Although nothing has been proved the Church thought it best for the Cardinal not to play a role in the election of a new pope.
While some have resigned from the SWP, Martin Smith continues to function as a leading figure in organisations such as Love Music Hate Racism and Unite Against Fascism. Critics have used the accusations to renew the usual criticisms of the SWP – it’s a cult, they’re Leninists, they oppose feminism. But this is not something new to this political milieu, or specific to the SWP. Back in the 1980s there were all the accusations against Gerry Healy of the WRP - twenty years of gross sexual abuse of women members.
What is significant is how those with power and influence appear to have been able to get away with ‘inappropriate’ behaviour for so long. In reality there’s not a contradiction between the roles of entertainer, spiritual leader, political strategist, leftist functionary, and the behaviour which the bourgeois media currently chooses to vilify. At other moments, in other situations, a blind eye is turned. The leering figure of Silvio Berlusconi is an easy target for ridicule, but variations on his behaviour permeate the corners of all manner of organisations of the capitalist status quo. Ultimately, organisations that have no quibbles with the barbarities of imperialist war are likely to be at ease with their leaders taking personal advantage of their position. In this the SWP (advocates most recently of war in Libya and Syria, as they have been over the decades elsewhere in the Middle East and internationally) are natural bedfellows with parliamentarians, the church and salacious entertainers.
Car 2.3.13
A billion human beings suffer from malnutrition[1]. To that we must add the increasing misery of a growing mass of impoverished people, a majority of the world population. In spite of technical progress and unprecedented productive capacity a large number of people are still dying of hunger!
How can we explain this paradox? The ruling class has its answers. This tragedy is linked to “running out of resources”[2] and the “population explosion”[3].
In reality the chronic shortage of food spreading like a plague is the product of the capitalist system, of its law of profit. This law leads to an absurdity in the market itself and for humanity: the overproduction of goods. This is the basis of an irrational and scandalous phenomenon that the bourgeoisie largely passes over in silence: waste.
The report of a recent study reveals that “it is estimated that 30-50% (or 1.2-2 billion tons of all food produced) never reaches a human stomach”[4]. Since the study cannot bring to light the profound causes of waste without putting the capitalist system in question, it stays on the surface of the phenomenon, explaining that in Europe and the USA consumers themselves throw food into the bin as a result of product packaging and marketing (such as ‘buy one get one free’ promotions). The study does not dare to reveal that waste is above all generated by overproduction and the search for short term profit, leading the industry to make increasing use of inadequate infrastructure and inefficient storage areas with the most significant failures downstream of the production chain. This study forgets to mention that products of poorer and poorer quality cannot be sold for lack of buyers and are piled up in places that are happily neglected if it costs too much to shift them. In order to make economies, and profit, speculative capitalists often end up deliberately destroying goods, particularly foodstuffs. For the same motives “up to 30% of the UK’s vegetable crop is never harvested”. So products are often destroyed in order to prevent the market price falling. For example, some producers who cannot sell their fruit or vegetables, even at a loss, use petrol to burn them to artificially maintain their price.
The same phenomenon exists in the so-called ‘developing’ countries, amplified and even aggravated from the start of the production chain. Here “wastage tends to occur at the farmer-producer end of the supply chain” due to “Inefficient harvesting, inadequate local transportation and poor infrastructure”, leading to colossal losses. The “deficiencies” can be such that “In South East Asian countries for example losses of rice can range from 37% to 80% of total production depending on development stage,…In China, a country experiencing rapid development, the rice loss figure is about 45%, whereas in less developed Vietnam, rice losses between the field and the table can amount to 80% of production”.
The report underlines the sombre reality: “Cumulatively this loss represents not only the removal of food that could otherwise feed the growing population, but also a waste of valuable land, energy and water resources. In the case of water for example, about 550 billion cubic metres is wasted globally in the growing of crops that never reach the consumer…”
According to the engineers writing this report, a simple rational exploitation of existing resources would create “the potential to provide 60-100% more food for consumption … Furthermore, due to the large demand that food production puts on other natural resources including land, water and energy, such an approach offers significant benefits in terms of sustainability and reduced environmental risk.” This ‘common sense’ perspective is impossible to realise within the capitalist system. The problem does not lie in a lack of competence or of will: it lies above all in the contradictions of an economic system which does not produce to satisfy human needs, for which it doesn’t give a fig, but for the market, to realise a profit. This rolls out the worst absurdities, complete anarchy and irrationality.
One of the most scandalous examples is that of children suffering severe malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa, while milk quotas and farm set-aside are imposed in Europe. Meanwhile charities and NGOs are mounting costly advertising campaigns, based on feelings of guilt, to raise funds for milk powder for the starving children who are also without … water! If this were not so tragic it could almost be a joke in very bad taste.
Capitalism is an obsolete mode of production which has become a destructive force menacing civilisation. It generates and activates all the deadly drives and passions. Faced with the growing tragedies which it engenders, its contradictions exacerbate the most irrational and antisocial behaviours. Famine and waste, poverty and unemployment, like wars, are its offspring. But within it grows it negation, its gravedigger, the working class, the exploited class which alone has a perspective for the future. Only the working class can put an end to this rotten system. More than ever the alternative is “socialism or barbarism”.
WH January 2013
[1] This means daily nutrition insufficient in quantity for the physical needs of a person (2,500 calories a day).
[2] All lies have a basis of truth. It is not, in itself, due to a lack of resources. On the contrary, the capitalist system leads to their massive destruction.
[3] It is predicted there will be 9 billion of us in 2050.
[4] Global Food Waste Not, Want Not, published 10 January 2013 by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME). All quotations from this report, see https://www.imeche.org/news/archives/13-01-10/New_report_as_much_as_2_bi... [713]
Explaining why it decided to downgrade Britain’s AAA credit rating, the credit agency Moody’s tells us that Britain’s “sluggish growth” will in all probability “extend into the second half of the decade”, resulting in a “high and rising debt burden”. And indeed, Britain’s borrowing is already forecast to be £212 billion higher than planned over this parliament.
Britain is therefore facing not just a triple-dip recession, with the economy shrinking in five out of 10 quarters since the summer of 2010 but an out-and-out depression. Britain’s poor performance is second only to Italy’s among the countries of the G7. Investment in the UK economy is 15% below what it was before the open financial crash of 2007.
The human cost of these dry figures? A fall in living standards unprecedented since the 1920s. The average worker has lost around £4,000 in real wages over the past three years. In 2017, real wages are predicted to be no higher than their 1999 level. And although there has recently been a 7.8% fall in official unemployment figures, there has been an increase in involuntary part-time working and a sharp drop in productivity.
The government’s response to this disaster? That the loss of the AAA rating, maintaining which was a central justification for the Coalition’s austerity programme, only goes to show that we must press on regardless. The Tory-LibDem medicine is accelerating the patient’s decline into depression and failing to shrink the UK’s gigantic tumour of debt. And these wise doctors reply: ‘more of the same’.
So the economic policies of the right are proving their utter worthlessness. And less and less people are fooled by the excuse that ‘we are only making up for the 13 years of Labour misrule’ which preceded the present Coalition.
All these points are taken from the article ‘Osborne hasn’t just failed – this is an economic disaster’ by Seamus Milne, published in the Comment pages of The Guardian on 27 February. Milne is one of the most left-wing of The Guardian’s regular commentators. His article demonstrates very clearly the bankruptcy of the government’s economic solutions. But his ‘alternative’ programme no less clearly demonstrates the bankruptcy of capitalism’s left wing.
“The shape of that alternative is clear enough: a large-scale public investment programme in housing, transport, education and green technology to drive recovery and fill the gap left by the private sector, underpinned by a boost to demand and financed through publicly-owned banks at the lowest interest rates for hundreds of years”.
These apparently radical measures go hand in hand with a criticism of the hesitations of the Labour Party. For Milne, Ed Miliband is faced with a “crucial choice”, since the fall in living standards is greatly increasing Labour’s chances of re-election: “So far Miliband has backed a limited stimulus, slower cuts and wider, if still hazy, economic reform. Given the Cameron Coalition’s legacy and the cuts and tax rises it’s planning well into the next parliament, the danger is that Labour could lock itself into continuing austerity in a bid for credibility. As the experience of its sister parties in Europe has shown, that would be a calamity for Labour – but also for Britain”.
It is arguments like these which show that Milne’s starting point is a fundamental premise of bourgeois ideology: that capitalist social relations, and the political state which maintains them, are eternal, the only possible basis for organising human society.
This is clear at the ‘political’ level: a solution to the economic disaster can be found by pushing the Labour Party further left and engaging in the alleged choice offered by parliamentary elections. The existing system of bourgeois democracy is not to be questioned.
And the state system which was born and has its being in the needs of the exploiting capitalist class is also proclaimed as the instrument which will defend the needs of the vast majority: public investment, public banks, Keynesian policies of stimulating demand. And all within the framework of ‘Britain’, of the nation state. These policies can all be summed up in the phrase: state capitalism.
So just as Cameron, faced with the slide into depression, advocates policies that can only make it slide faster, so Milne, like the TUC in its ‘Alternative for Growth’, advocate the same measures which provoked the ‘debt crisis’ in the first place: economic growth fuelled by vast injections of fictitious capital.
Neither the right or left wings of the official political spectrum are capable of admitting that today’s economic depression is, just like the depression of the 1930s and the world wars that preceded and followed it, confirmation that capitalist social relation as such – the exploitation of wage labour, production for sale and profit, the division of the world into competing nation states armed to the teeth – have become an obstacle to human progress. Neither the right nor the left will admit that we are witnessing the bankruptcy not just of this government or that country, but of the capitalist phase of human civilisation, and on a worldwide scale; that this civilisation has outlived its usefulness and its capacity to be reformed. This is why the only genuine ‘alternative’ is for the exploited of the world to struggle together against all attacks on their living standards, preparing the ground for a social revolution that will halt the accumulation of capital and replace it with a real human community – with communism.
Amos 2/3/13
“The discovery of gold and silver in America; the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in the mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production.”[1]
In bourgeois mythology the first settlers to America were free men and women who built a democratic and egalitarian society from scratch in the New World.
The reality is that the American proletariat was born into bondage and slave labour, faced barbaric punishment if it resisted, and was forced to struggle for its basic rights against a brutal capitalist regime that most resembled a prison without walls.
Eager for their share of the spoils, at the end of the 16th century the mercantile capitalists of the City of London set out to plunder the natural resources of the New World. The first English colonies in North America were capitalist enterprises from the start, where even the Puritan pilgrims who embarked on the Mayflower were expected to turn a profit for their wealthy backers. But to exploit this New World capital needed labour.
In Central and South America the Spanish enslaved millions in their thirst for gold. Not finding the expected mineral riches, English capital was forced to turn to the cultivation of the tobacco plant, and for this it needed a huge regimented workforce. The local indigenous people proved too difficult to enslave in sufficient numbers and resisted the violent invasion of their homeland, but fortunately for England’s merchant adventurers a supply of labour existed much closer to home; over the preceding centuries the English peasantry had been driven off its land and, in Marx’s description, “turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage labour.”[2]
These terroristic laws were used to banish so-called “persistent rogues” to “parts beyond the seas”, which meant that tens of thousands of men, women and children deemed a threat to social order and surplus to domestic capital’s needs were simply rounded up and shipped off to work in the tobacco fields of Virginia, where many were worked to death or tortured if they tried to escape. Among the first to be sent were children, half of whom were dead within a year. The largest single group were convicts; and since hanging was the standard punishment for the most trivial offences there was no shortage of ‘criminals’ who could be granted royal mercy in exchange for transportation to the colonies – although death rates were so high that some pleaded to be hanged instead. Others were in effect political prisoners of the English bourgeoisie in its ruthless struggle for domination of the British Isles. In an operation that bears striking similarities to the 20th century Stalinist gulag, royalist prisoners of war, Quakers, English rebels, Scottish Covenanters, Irish Catholics, Jacobites and dissidents of all kinds were disposed of by being forcibly transported to America to be worked to death as slave labour. Ireland had long been singled out by the English ruling class for this kind of treatment and unknown numbers of Irish men, women and children were sold into slavery before and after Cromwell’s bloody conquest and ethnic cleansing.
Nearly two-thirds of all white immigrants to England’s American colonies – some 350-375,000 people – arrived as indentured servants, required to work for anything from three up to eleven years or more in return for their passage and basic needs. Indenture is often presented as a benign contractual system. In reality it was a form of time-limited slavery, as well as a highly profitable business for the merchants involved, who employed recruiting agents to waylay, kidnap or lure the unsuspecting into boarding ship for America, where they became the personal property of their owners and could be bought and sold, punished for any disobedience, whipped and branded if they ran away. Many were children. Even if they survived to the end of their bondage they were far more likely to join the ranks of the proletariat than to own one square inch of the New World. [3]
In its insatiable appetite for profit, capital enslaved anyone it could get hold of without discrimination: Africans, Native Americans, English, Scots, Irish, French, Germans, Swiss... The first African slaves arrived in 1619 but until the end of the 18th century the majority of slaves in America were European.
At first, African slaves were treated more like indentured servants and black and white worked side by side in similar conditions. That fraternization between the two was a real tendency is shown by the early laws passed to expressly forbid it, and the ruling class lived in constant fear of a collective uprising of its slave army, especially on the plantations of Virginia.
Despite the harshness of the punishments they faced, black and white slaves showed their refusal to submit by running away together, engaging in acts of sabotage, strikes, slowdowns and other forms of resistance, including attacks on their oppressors. Discontent grew. In 1663 white servants and black slaves in Virginia plotted an insurrection with the aim of overthrowing the governor and setting up an independent republic.[4] This ended in betrayal and the execution of the leaders, who were ex-Cromwellian soldiers sold into servitude.
Veterans of Cromwell’s New Model Army were said to be involved in all of the servant uprisings in Virginia,[5] and the persistence of radical ideas from the English revolution was an important influence on the early class struggle in America. “Levelling [that is, attacks on the property of the rich with the aim of equalizing wealth] was to be behind countless actions of poor whites against the rich in all the English colonies, in the century and a half before the Revolution.”[6] In 1644, for example, during a Puritan-led coup in Catholic Maryland, tenants and servants, both Protestant and Catholic, took the opportunity to expropriate the landlords and divide their property for their own use.[7]
The influence of the English revolution was clearly shown in the 1676 insurrection in Virginia known as ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’. About a thousand poor white frontiersman, joined by white and black slaves and servants, marched on the capital Jamestown, torched it, and overthrew the colonial government, denouncing its former leaders as “Traytors to the People” and seizing their property. This was by far the largest and most significant struggle in colonial America before the 1776 Revolution, at its height threatening to become a full-blown civil war and spread across the entire Chesapeake region. England almost lost control of its colony and had to send ships and 1000 troops to re-impose imperial rule. In a show of force 23 rebel leaders were hanged.
The immediate cause was the refusal of the colonial governor to retaliate against Indian attacks on frontier settlements, and the insurgents launched their own violent attacks on even friendly Indian tribes. Bacon himself was a landowner and member of the governor’s council, and the rebellion was led by planters who found their advancement blocked by the more than usually incompetent and corrupt clique of landed interests around the royalist governor. Other grievances included heavy and misappropriated taxes, low tobacco prices and English restrictions on colonial trade (the Navigation Acts).
But the rebellion also expressed the resentment of poor white frontiersmen, many of them former servants, who had been excluded from lucrative land grants by the greed of the big landowners and gone west, where they inevitably encountered the Indians. The deep (and justified) fear of the ruling faction was that any attempt at retaliation would instead provoke an armed uprising by the labouring classes who, due to a deepening economic crisis, were facing dire poverty and hunger. According to one member of the ruling class at the time the “zealous inclination of the multitude” to support Bacon was due to “hopes of levelling”.[8]
White and black slaves and servants also joined the insurrection and were among the last to hold out against English forces; the final surrender of the rebels was by “four hundred English and Negroes in Armes” at one garrison, and three hundred “freemen and African and English bondservants” in another. About 80 black and 20 white slaves refused to give up their weapons.[9] But there were also mass desertions by the rank and file of both opposing armies, suggesting the proletariat did not unambiguously support either side in this struggle.
As far as it had any coherent ideology or programme, the leadership of ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’ was closest politically to the Independents, the left wing of the bourgeoisie in the ‘English Civil War’,[10] and saw the insurrection as part of a wider attack on monarchy. Bacon himself appears to have argued for the expulsion of English troops, the overthrow of royal government and the founding of an independent republic with help from England’s Dutch and French rivals.
Not surprisingly the insurrection has been seen as a precursor of the American Revolution and we will return to this in the next article. At the time its real significance was as a warning to whole ruling class about the need to deal with the growing threat from the American proletariat. To this end the ruling faction was first allowed to wreak its revenge on the insurgents and indulge in an orgy of executions. Then, with bourgeois order safely restored and the proletariat re-enslaved, the English state removed it from power, curbed the colony’s political autonomy and imposed a military-backed government directly controlled by London.
The ruling class was forced to recognise that its dependence on indentured labour, combined with the greed of the local ‘plantocracy’ for the best land, was creating a dangerous and ever-expanding class of armed, discontented landless labourers in America. Its longer-term response was therefore to drive a wedge between white and black workers by re-defining slavery in purely racial terms, deeming that black slaves were the property of their masters for life, sanctioning a whole array of barbaric punishments for resistance or escape, including whipping, burning, mutilation and dismemberment. Having institutionalised the racist idea that whites were superior to blacks, it placed white workers in positions of power over black slaves and passed laws to provide white indentured servants who had served their time with supplies and land, in this way hoping to encourage the growth of a new middle class of small planters and independent farmers who would identify on racial grounds with their exploiters and provide a vital buffer against the struggles of black slaves, frontier Indians, and very poor whites.
Thus, racial divisions between black and white were not based on any supposed natural differences but part of a deliberate strategy by the ruling class to prevent the very real threat of black and white workers fighting side by side against their exploiters.
The numbers of African slaves grew rapidly after 1680, spurred by the enormous profits to be made from the Atlantic slave trade, the lower cost to planters of using black slaves, and the dwindling supply of indentured labour as the industrial revolution finally began to absorb landless labourers into domestic capitalist production. By 1750, African slaves had almost entirely replaced European slaves. In fact in some colonies like South Carolina they outnumbered the white population and the ruling class was acutely aware of its precarious position, which demanded not only ruthless suppression of any sign of resistance but also high levels of surveillance and control, together with policies designed to keep its enemies permanently divided.
The methods the bourgeoisie used to control its growing black slave army built on all the lessons it had learned from the previous wave of struggles of servants and slaves, but refined into a system of much greater and more sophisticated barbarity, specifically designed to ensure the slaves’ psychological destruction, demeaning, degrading and humiliating them in every way to prevent them from identifying with their own interests against their exploiters:
“The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the idea of their own inferiority to ‘know their place,’ to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interest with the master’s, destroying their own individual needs. To accomplish this there was the discipline of hard labor, the breakup of the slave family, the lulling effects of religion (which sometimes led to ‘great mischief,’ as one slaveholder reported), the creation of disunity among slaves by separating them into field slaves and more privileged house slaves, and finally the power of law and the immediate power of the overseer to invoke whipping, burning, mutilation, and death.”[11]
Despite all these obstacles to organising resistance, however, there were around 250 uprisings or plots involving a minimum of ten African slaves before the American Revolution. These were not all simply desperate bids for freedom; some involved white workers as well and were reported as having conscious political aims such as the levelling of property and the overthrow of the master class.[12]
But the efforts of the ruling class to divide the American working class along racial lines ensured that when a wave of black slave uprisings began in the first half of the 18th century it was effectively isolated from the struggles of the rest of the proletariat and white colonists themselves were now targets of black anger.
In the first large-scale revolt in New York in 1712, about 25 to 30 armed slaves set fire to a building and killed nine whites who came on the scene. Most were captured by troops after 24 hours and 21 were executed by being burnt, hanged, or broken on the wheel, with one hung alive in chains as an ‘exemplary punishment’.[13]
Further planned or actual uprisings followed, particularly in South Carolina and Virginia, fuelled by famine and economic depression. There are also reports of communities set up by escaped African and Native American slaves in remote areas, such as the settlement in the Blue Ridge Mountains crushed by militia in 1729.
The largest black slave uprising in America before the 1776 revolution was at Stono in South Carolina in 1739. About 20 armed slaves, possibly former soldiers, joined by others until there were perhaps 100 in all, “called out Liberty, marched on with Colours displayed, and two Drums beating” heading for Spanish Florida until they were intercepted by the militia. About 25 whites and 50 slaves were killed and the decapitated heads of the rebels were mounted on stakes along the roads to serve as a warning.[14]
The ruling class deliberately provoked such an atmosphere of suspicion and fear in order to keep black and white proletarians at each others’ throats, so that even today it isn’t clear whether some slave ‘conspiracies’ were real or not. But the repression was real enough:
“In New York in 1741, there were ten thousand whites in the city and two thousand black slaves. It had been a hard winter and the poor – slave and free – had suffered greatly. When mysterious fires broke out, blacks and whites were accused of conspiring together. Mass hysteria developed against the accused. After a trial full of lurid accusations by informers, and forced confessions, two white men and two white women were executed, eighteen slaves were hanged, and thirteen slaves were burned alive.”[15]
There were further organised slave rebellions during the 1740s but then a marked decline, probably due to a combination of exhaustion after the failure of earlier struggles and the ruthlessness and efficiency of the ruling class in suppressing and controlling its ever growing army of African slaves.
Of course, some did go to America of their own free will. Due to the scarcity of labour, particularly skilled labour, workers could command wages 30 to 100 percent higher than in England. This meant it was often possible for them to win demands for higher pay and better conditions, or, if not, to simply ‘desert’ and find work elsewhere. But the fear of revolt, and the attempts of the bourgeoisie to control the working class and keep wages low, meant that struggling workers, especially in the cities, quickly came up against the force of the state:
“As early as 1636, an employer off the coast of Maine reported that his workmen and fishermen ‘fell into a mutiny’ because he had withheld their wages. They deserted en masse. Five years later, carpenters in Maine, protesting against inadequate food, engaged in a slowdown. At the Gloucester shipyards in the 1640s (...) the ‘first lockout in American labor history’ took place when the authorities told a group of troublesome shipwrights they could not ‘worke a stroke of worke more.’”
“There were early strikes of coopers, butchers, bakers, protesting against government control of the fees they charged. Porters in the 1650s in New York refused to carry salt, and carters (truckers, teamsters, carriers) who went out on strike were prosecuted in New York City ‘for not obeying the Command and Doing their Dutyes as becomes them in their Places.’”[16]
The only attempts at permanent organisations in this period were ‘friendly societies’ along craft lines which often included employers as well as workers. Nevertheless the ruling class viewed these with extreme suspicion and as early as 1680 a combination of coopers in New York City was prosecuted as a criminal enterprise.[17]
With the emergence of the urban working class in the rapidly growing cities, the bourgeoisie increasingly deployed its strategy to reinforce divisions between white and black workers, cultivating the support of white skilled workers by protecting them against competition:
“As early as 1686, the council in New York ordered that ‘noe Negro or Slave be suffered to work on the bridge as a Porter about any goods either imported or Exported from or into this City.’ In the southern towns too, white craftsmen and traders were protected from Negro competition. In 1764 the South Carolina legislature prohibited Charleston masters from employing Negroes or other slaves as mechanics or in handicraft trades.”[18]
In this way the bourgeoisie hoped to recruit skilled workers into a new white middle class along with small planters and independent farmers in order to prevent a generalised struggle across racial barriers.
England’s first American colonies were clearly established on a capitalist basis; indeed, in Marx’s view, societies like North America began at a higher level and developed more rapidly than in Europe, where the rise of capitalism was more encumbered by the social relations of decaying feudal society.[19] If the American proletariat was born into bondage and subjected to forced labour and barbarous treatment, this was nothing exceptional at the rosy dawn of the capitalist mode of production described so vividly by Marx. Early capitalism in North America was based firmly on the regime to control the emerging proletariat already existing in Tudor England, and if Marx spent so much time in Volume 1 of Capital cataloguing the ‘terroristic laws’ that accompanied the expropriation of the English peasantry and its preparation for the world of wage labour, this is because England offered the first and best example of the genesis of industrial capitalism. For capital, the systematic use of the most barbarous methods was absolutely essential to its survival in America given the harshness of conditions, the chronic shortage of labour and the external threats to its existence.
What is distinctive about the early class struggle in America, although not unique, is the institutionalisation of black African slavery that led to the division of the early working class along racial lines and the consequent isolation of its struggles. This racial division remained as a hugely significant barrier to the unification of the American proletariat and to its ability to assert its own common interests as a class in capitalist society.
Nevertheless, from its birth the American proletariat showed its willingness to fight back against this terroristic capitalist regime, displaying not only an often desperate courage against all the odds, but also a real capacity for solidarity across racial barriers in the face of common exploitation and oppression, and a developing political consciousness of itself and the ultimate aims of its struggle – which is precisely why the ruling class was forced to adopt such sophisticated strategies and tactics of divide and rule.
The next article will examine the class struggle in America in the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the United States of America.
MH (14/1/2013)
(This article was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC)
[1] Marx, Capital vol. 1, Chapter 31, Penguin, 1976, p.915.
[2] Op. Cit., Chapter 28, p.897.
[3] See D. Jordan & M. Walsh, White Cargo. The forgotten history of Britain’s white slaves in America, Mainstream, 2007.
[4] Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, Harper Torchbook edition, 1965, p.173.
[5] Ibid., p.206.
[6] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial edition, 2005, p.42.
[7] Edward Toby Terrar, “Gentry Royalists or Independent Diggers? The Nature of the English and Maryland Catholic Community in the Civil War Period of the 1640s,” Science and Society (New York), vol. 57, no. 3 (1993), pp. 313-348, https://www.angelfire.com/un/tob-art/art-html/18c-ar10.html [786].
[8] Quoted in Zinn, Op. Cit., p.42.
[9] Ibid., p.55.
[10] See the articles on the “Lessons of the English revolution” in World Revolution nos. 325 and 329.
[11] Zinn, Op. Cit., p.35.
[12] Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, International Publishers edition, 1993, pp.162-163.
[13] Ibid., pp.172-173.
[14] Ibid., pp.187-189.
[15] Zinn, Op. Cit., p.37.
[16] Ibid., p.50.
[17] Morris, Op. Cit., p.159.
[18] Zinn, Op. Cit., p.57.
[19] The German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook. D. Proletarians and Communism, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm [787]).
David Cameron has had a busy start to the year. In early February he visited Libya and Algeria. A couple of weeks later he was in India with the largest trade delegation ever assembled by a British Prime Minister. Before that he had given the long-awaited speech on Europe in which he finally promised a referendum after the next election. What does all this tell us about British foreign policy?
Following the last election, in the resolution on the British Situation adopted by the Congress of World Revolution in the autumn of 2010,[1] we noted that the coalition government had already begun to explore how to escape from the impasse in foreign relations that was the result of the adventures of Blair. We identified two strands to this, firstly, an attempt to cultivate new relationships with countries such as Turkey and India, while still trying to balance between the US and Germany and, secondly, a more vigorous effort to build up trade to help the recovery from the economic crisis. In April last year, we noted that Britain had notched up a success with its intervention in Libya and that Cameron had effectively managed the European situation, both in terms of resisting proposals that would have affected the financial sector in Britain and in terms of keeping the Euro-sceptics in his party more or less in line.[2]
The starting point for an understanding of British policy is the material interests of the ruling class. At the economic level, as we showed in World Revolution no. 353, Britain has strong trade links with Europe (its main partner) and the US (its most profitable partner) but also important links to the rest of the world. The present situation is one where there continue to be significant shifts, with Europe’s share of global production (currently 25% according to Cameron’s speech on Europe) set to decline significantly. China is continuing to increase its share as part of the wider shift of production from the old centres of production in Europe and the US and is likely to become the biggest producer in the world in the near future while India is predicted to move into third position. These developments have been underlined by the latest report on Britain’s trade by the Office for National Statistics: “By area, there has been a shift in the pattern of the UK’s trade over the past 10 years. In 2002, around 62% of the UK’s exports went to the rest of the EU… 59% of our imports came from the EU. In 2012, those proportions had been reduced to 51% and 50% respectively… Trade with France also grew modestly over this period; at around one-quarter the rate of growth of trade with Germany, which became our largest trading partner (taking exports and imports together) in 2012, supplanting the United States.”[3]
Within this shift the group of countries known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have a particular significance, with exports to the whole group increasing by 37.6% since 2008. This is led by exports to China, which have grown more than fivefold between 2001 and 2011,[4] while exports to India have also risen significantly.
The question of Europe also has a weight. While the danger of an immediate collapse of the Eurozone seems to be passing, the longer-term and more significant legacy is what the crisis reveals about the historic decline in Europe’s status within the global economy.
Such economic factors do not translate in a straightforward manner into foreign policy. Rather, they help to shape the context within which that policy is developed.
At the imperialist level, some of the members of the BRICS have also assumed a greater significance. Again, this is first and foremost the case with China, which is using its economic power to build up its global strategic weight and is aspiring to become a global power capable of challenging the US. The British ruling class is alive to these real and potential shifts in the global balance of power, while remaining pragmatic enough to know that it still has to take account of the US and Europe.
The consequence of these economic and geo-political developments, which contribute to the uncertainty and complexity of the international situation that has developed since 1989, is that the interests of the British bourgeoisie currently seem to be best met by a policy of flexibility. The changing global situation offers the British bourgeoisie scope for action beyond the confines of recent years, although this in no way implies that it can escape its past and the historic decline of its power and status on the world stage.
The changing global economic context referred to above was at the heart of Cameron’s speech on Europe: “The challenges come not from within the continent but outside it. From the surging economies in the east and south”; “The map of global influence is changing before our eyes”; “Taken as a whole, Europe’s share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades.”[5] It is important to acknowledge this reality. The shift in the global economy encapsulated in the term globalisation is real, albeit that it takes place in the period of decadence, which means that it unfolds in a different manner to capitalism in its period of ascendancy. In particular, the changes of recent years do not mean that capitalism has overcome its structural crisis or that it can do so. Indeed, it is the crisis that drives forward the global changes as capital moves restlessly around the world in the search for profit and as nations jostle for position in a world unbound from the ties of the old blocs.
In his speech Cameron put forward five principles “for a new European Union, fit for the 21st century”. The first two of these were competitiveness and flexibility: “Competitiveness demands flexibility, choice and openness – or Europe will fetch up in a no-man’s land between the rising economies of Asia and market-driven North America.”[6] What Cameron means by such ‘competitiveness’ and ‘flexibility’ can be seen in the changes in the labour market where significant steps have been taken over the last 30 or more years to reduce the cost of labour and make it fit in with the needs of capital. The result has been the increase in part time and temporary working, the replacement of higher paid jobs with lower paid ones, the changes in pensions, sick pay and other benefits that most of us have experienced in one form or another. It can also be seen in the relative freedom given to the financial sector with the easing of old regulations and the protection given to the largest institutions.
This is why Britain is unwilling to accept the constraints of the EU, in particular in relation to financial matters given the importance of this sector in generating profits (these may be fictitious at the level of the global economy, but they are fairly real for British capitalism – the price is paid elsewhere). It also makes Britain resistant to the social aspects of Europe that regulate labour and seem to reflect the dominance of the German economy, which has managed to retain a strong and productive manufacturing base in contrast to many other of the advanced economies. This makes it clear that Cameron’s efforts to reshape Britain’s relationship with Europe is not simply an expression of the weight of the Euro-sceptics in the Tory party but is part of the effort to maintain the freedom of action of British capital.
Cameron’s call for greater flexibility also reflects the effort to build up links beyond Europe, which at the economic level means developing relationships with those countries that are gaining economic significance. As we noted above, Cameron marked the start of his premiership with efforts not just to drum up trade, something all Prime Ministers do, but also to build links with the rising economies in the East: “This was evident in the trip to India in July 2010 when a deal to sell military equipment was signed, and has been confirmed in the visit to China in November 2010 with the proposed signing of deals to supply the Chinese market, reportedly worth several billion pounds.”[7]
Cameron has continued this effort with a significant number of trade missions around the world over the last two and a half years. In 2011 he visited Egypt and Kuwait and in 2012 Saudi Arabia (twice), Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman. Much of this activity was directed towards selling arms, an area where Britain really does still play a global role. In 2011 Britain had 15% of the world export market for arms second only to the US. It is reported that the arms industry supports 300,000 jobs, but other estimates are much lower and the government has now stopped recording these statistics.
The visit to India in mid-February was just the latest of these missions, albeit the largest with over one hundred companies and other organisations accompanying Cameron. On arriving in India, he declared that he wanted Britain to be India’s “partner of choice” and for the two countries to develop a “special relationship”. He has set a target of doubling Britain’s trade with India between 2010 and 2015 and seems on course to achieve this. According to the Export-Import Bank of India,[8] between 2006 and 2012 India’s merchandise trade increased threefold, from $252bn to $794bn. Britain is the eighth most important destination for Indian exports, accounting for 2.89% of exports in April to September this year and the 21st largest source of imports. British statistics show exports and imports of both goods and service rising three or four fold over the last decade and roughly balancing each other. In 2011 exports of goods totalled £5.69bn and imports £6.09bn with the same figures for trade in services being £2.63bn and £2.45bn. To put this in context, exports of goods to India accounted for just 1.9% of total British exports and exports of services just 1.4% of the total.
One area where Britain hopes to do well is arms sales So important is this that Cameron has had no qualms about announcing that part of the aid budget can be used to fund the military, with the usual hypocritical caveat that it would not be used to funding combat operations or equipment. India is a very tempting market and has been significantly increasing the amount it spends on armaments. A dozen firms linked to arms production were part of the trade mission that accompanied Cameron, including Rolls-Royce and BAE. Britain is not alone in these efforts. The week before Cameron’s visit, President François Hollande of France had spent two days in India failing to finalise a deal worth $14bn to sell French fighters. Cameron made no secret of his intention to persuade India to buy the Eurofighter Typhoon instead, commenting “I think the Typhoon is a superior aircraft”.[9] However, India is aware of the strength of its position and had no hesitation in threatening to cancel a deal to sell helicopters agreed in 2010 because of allegations that bribes were paid to Indian government officials, or in applying pressure for Britain to relax its visa system.
Britain has experienced considerable difficulty in pursuing its strategic interests. There is no simple overlap between strategic and economic interests. For example, as we have just seen, Britain will not hesitate to snatch an arms deal with India from under the noses of the French despite the closer military co-operation since the last defence review.
As we mentioned at the start of this article, since coming to office Cameron has looked for ways to escape from the impasse that was the legacy of New Labour’s more grandiose imperialist efforts. One aspect of this has been the closer military co-operation with France, which also has the effect of counter-balancing Germany’s dominance in Europe (a dominance it has sought to advance on the back of the economic crisis, albeit with some genuine reservations about the cost of doing so). The successful intervention in Libya was the first fruit of this approach, although the increasing violence and factionalism has tarnished this somewhat. The recent intervention in Mali to support the French military action, and the visit to Algeria in the aftermath of the hostage crisis in January, were both opportunities seized to continue this effort. The intervention in Mali was obviously the more carefully planned of the two and, in addition to the logistical and training help that has been announced, it is quite possible that British special forces are on the ground. While Britain does not have the same historic interests in the region as France it certainly has some current economic interests in the Algerian energy resources, as well as a more general strategic interest in having a presence in a continent that is gaining in strategic importance. These are steps to help Britain reassert its claim to be a global player and this may explain why Cameron chose to echo Blair with talk of a generational struggle against terrorism, despite the evidence that the groups in Algeria and Mali have only limited links to al-Qaida and far more local aspirations.[10]
The visit to India was also about more than trade, since India has regional aspirations of its own and is part of the increasing imperialist tensions across Asia that are driven in particular by the growing international assertiveness of China.
This is not a break from the idea of the independent course which in our analysis has been defended by the majority of the British bourgeoisie over the last two or more decades. Rather it represents its adaptation and continuation within the current international situation. This situation has become more complex and more uncertain in recent years as a result of the economic crisis, the growth of imperialist rivalries and changes within the ruling class of some countries, notably those affected by the ‘Arab spring’ but also those, such as Mali, where the ruling faction is losing its grip. This complexity, while challenging and dangerous, also offers opportunities for a secondary power like Britain which, while it can no longer aspire to dominate any significant geographical area, can still draw on the strength of its military forces and the depth of its historical experience to try and carve out a niche for itself. There is nothing certain about this and Afghanistan and Iraq stand as warnings about having pretensions that no longer match reality. The British ruling class is still struggling to come to terms with these facts, even if Cameron has so far appeared more realistic than Blair. But then Blair also seemed quite realistic until 9/11.
The flexibility of Britain’s imperialist and global economic policy is an intelligent and pragmatic response to its situation, which, despite Cameron’s successes, remains very difficult. But it also underlines the fact that there is significant scope for differences within the British bourgeoisie. In the 1990s we noted the existence of a pro-US faction within the British ruling class at the imperialist level and contrasted it with the independent line favoured by the majority. In hindsight, this was probably too simplistic an analysis, since the differences were probably more nuanced than being simply pro-US and anti-US and the factions more balanced that we assumed at the time. Today, it is clear that this debate continues and has been reinforced both by the failures under Blair and the changes in the international situation.
A division has now opened up over economic policy that did not seem to be there yesterday, with the Tory party largely dominated by the Euro-sceptics and a minority more and more openly calling for Britain to leave the EU. However, on the whole this is not an outright rejection of all things European but an expression of genuine differences of view about how Britain’s economic interests can best be served. Even those who want to leave the EU still want to maintain strong trade and financial links, but they also want to be free to reinforce links elsewhere in the world. Cameron shares some of these aims but not the approach to realising them, possibly because he sees the risks in doing this: for all the changes referred to the current reality is that Europe is Britain’s largest trade partner and is likely to remain so for some time. Thus, leaving the EU could have serious consequences.
In this light the promise, or threat, of a referendum on the EU is a way through the current pressures. On the one hand, it is a bargaining chip in negotiations with Europe, on the other, it is a bargaining chip to maintain the unity of the Tory party. Cameron was also quite explicit in his speech on Europe that he wants to delay the referendum to see how the crisis in the Eurozone is resolved: “A vote today between the status quo and leaving would be an entirely false choice. Now – while the EU is in flux, and when we don’t know what the future holds and what sort of EU will emerge from the crisis – is not the right time to make such a momentous decision about the future of our country.”
Nonetheless, the promise to hold a referendum has prompted a response from pro-Europeans, both from within the Tory party and from within big business, for whom the single market and the single currency is seen to be in their interests. There has also been a response from the US for whom the British presence within Europe acts as a counterweight to Germany. In short the question of Europe, like the wider questions of Britain’s economic and imperialist future is not settled.
North, 28/02/13
[1]. See “Britain: economic crisis and imperialist dead-ends” in World Revolution no. 340.
[2]. See “Why British capitalism needs the EU” in World Revolution no. 353.
[3]. ONS, “UK Trade, December 2012”
[4]. ONS United Kingdom Balance of Payments (the “Pink Book”) 2012. That said, the balance of trade in goods has been negative throughout this period and is only minimally reduced by the positive balance of the trade in services
[5]. Taken from the text of Cameron’s speech published on the Guardian website, 23/01/13
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. “Britain: economic crisis and imperialist dead-ends” in World Revolution no. 340.
[8]. Cited in a report on the Guardian website.
[9]. Quoted in “David Cameron seeks to recast ‘special relationship’ with India”, Guardian, 19/02/13
[10]. See “Al-Qaida: how great is the terrorism threat to the west now?”, Guardian, 29/01/13.
With the so-called ‘Arab revolutions’ celebrating their second anniversary, the riots and mass demonstrations of the last few months and weeks in Egypt and Tunisia are a reminder that despite the departure of the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak, nothing has been resolved. On the contrary, the economic situation has got worse, bringing growing unemployment, poverty and attacks on the working class. Meanwhile the reigning authoritarianism, the violence and repression being handed out to the demonstrators, is no different from what went on before.
Tunisia, where the young Mohammed Bouazizi’s suicide unleashed the ‘Arab spring’ in 2011, is going through a deep social, economic and political crisis. The official unemployment rate is 17% and for months now there have been strikes in many sectors. The anger which has been expressed openly and massively on the streets of a number of towns in the last few weeks didn’t come from nowhere. Back in December, unemployed youth clashed violently with the police in the town of Siliana, protesting against the austerity programme announced by president Moncel Marzouki. The repression and the wounding of 300 demonstrators, some of them by buck-shot, led to solidarity demonstrations in several other cities including the capital. The Tunisian president declared that “we don’t just have one Siliana. I am afraid that this will be repeated in a number of regions”.
More recently it was the murder of the secular opposition figure Chokri Belaïd which pushed the population into the street, while at his funeral 50,000 people called for “a new revolution” and demanded “bread, freedom and social justice”, the main slogan of 2011. In a dozen towns there were attacks on the local police stations and the HQs of the Islamist party in power, Ennahda. The army was called in to control the mass demonstrations in Sidi Bouzid where the ‘jasmine revolution’ began two years ago.
To calm the situation and recuperate the movement, the UGTT, the national union confederation, called a general strike, the first for 35 years in Tunisia, while the government put on a show of changes at the top in anticipation of the legislative elections in June. At the moment, the tension seems to have died down but it is clear that the anger is not going away, especially since a promised loan from the IMF will involve new, drastic austerity measures.
In Egypt the situation is no better. The country has defaulted on its payments. Last October, the World Bank published a report which expressed its “disquiet” about the proliferation of strikes, with a record 300 in the first half of September. At the end of the year there were many anti-government demonstrations, in particular around the referendum organised by the Muslim Brotherhood to legitimate their hold on power. Since 25 January, the day of the second anniversary of the ‘Egyptian revolution’, the protests have widened. Day after day, thousands of demonstrators have denounced the living conditions imposed by the new government and called for Morsi to get out.
But once again it has been anger over repression which has lit the fuse. The announcement on 26 January of the death sentence against 21 supporters of the al-Masry football club in Port Saïd because of their involvement in the drama at the end of the match on 1 February 2012, where 77 people were killed[1], sparked off a new wave of violence. The peaceful demonstrations called by the National Salvation Front, the main opposition force, resulted in scenes of urban guerrilla warfare. On the evening of 1st February, at Tahrir Square and in front of the presidential palace, thousands of demonstrators took part in a pitched battle with the forces of order. On 2nd February there were still thousands throwing stones and molotovs at the forces protecting the building. In one week, the violent repression of the demonstrations resulted in 60 deaths, 40 of them in Port Saïd. A video showing a man whose clothes had been torn off him and was being beaten by the police further inflamed the demonstrators. Despite the curfews imposed by the regime, demonstrations took place in three towns along the Suez Canal. One demonstrator declared: “We are on the streets now because no one can force his words on us...we will not submit to the government”.
In the town of Ismaïlia, apart from the marches, football matches were organised to defy the curfew, and the HQ of the Muslim Brotherhood was torched.
Faced with the extent of the anger, the police, fearing for their own safety, demonstrated in 10 provinces on 12 February, demanding that the government stop using them as instruments of repression in the troubles sweeping the country! In December, a number of them had already refused to confront the demonstrators in Cairo and had declared their solidarity with the protests.
The themes which can be heard in all these demonstrations are “Ennahda, out!” and “Morsi, out!”, just as, two years ago, it was “Ben Ali, out” and “Mubarak, out!”. But while at the beginning of 2011 there was great hope for change, in a royal road to ‘democratic’ freedom, in 2013 the mood is of disenchantment and anger. However, at root, the same democratic illusions remain because they are strongly anchored in people’s minds. This is maintained by a powerful ideological barrage which now points the finger at religious fanaticism as being the cause of the repression and the assassinations, when in fact this hides the continuity in the repressive apparatus of the bourgeoisie. We have seen this strikingly both in Tunisia and Egypt, where the regime has not hesitated to use repression against the popular demonstrations when it was powerless in the face of workers’ strikes. Illusions will always be paid for in blood. After the departure of the ‘secular’ dictators’, we’ve had religious leaders, ‘democratically’ imposing another dictatorship, this time justified by Sharia law. All the focus has been on this but it’s the same old dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and its state, the same oppression of the population, the same exploitation of the working class.
The belief that you can change life by choosing this or that clique of the bourgeoisie is an illusion, and it paves the way for repression and state violence. This is particularly true in countries which for decades have been run by backward bourgeois factions, propped up by the developed countries. None of these factions have any viable perspective or any credible economic programme to offer, as we have seen from the coalitions that have come and gone in these two countries. Poverty has accelerated and generalised, with the agrarian crisis – and thus the food crisis – reaching unprecedented levels. It’s not that these leaders are especially stupid, but the countries they run are in an impasse and this is a reflection of the dead-end reached by the whole world capitalist system.
“The people want another revolution” cried the young unemployed in Siliana. But if by ‘revolution’ you mean just changing the government or the regime, while waiting to be devoured alive by the next bunch in power, or if you focus merely on street battles against this or that bourgeois faction, when you are disorganised in the face of professional killers armed by the big powers, you are only preparing your own suicide.
That the populations of Tunisia and Egypt have raised their heads again is a result of the fact that there is a strong working class composition in both countries. We saw this clearly with the multiplication of strikes in 2011. But this is why it’s all the more important for the working class not to get dragged into the clash between pro- and anti-Islamists, pro- and anti-liberals. The continuation of the strikes shows the potential strength of the proletariat, its capacity to defend its living and working conditions, and we should welcome its enormous courage.
But these struggles can’t offer a real way forward if they remain isolated. In 1979 in Iran we saw a series of workers’ strikes and revolts which also showed the strength of the proletarian reaction. But cooped up in the national context, and with an insufficient maturation of workers’ struggles on a world scale, these movements succumbed to democratic illusions and got caught up in conflicts between bourgeois gangs. It is above all the proletariat in the west, because of its experience, its concentrated nature, which bears the responsibility for putting forward a real revolutionary perspective. The movements of the Indignados in Spain and Occupy in the US and Britain explicitly claimed continuity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, with their courage and determination. The slogan of the ‘Arab spring’, “we are not afraid”, must indeed be a source of inspiration for the world proletariat. But it is the beacon of workers’ assemblies in the heart of capitalism, responding to the attacks of capitalism in crisis, which can offer an alternative that aims at the radical overthrow of this system of exploitation which holds nothing in store for us but poverty and barbarity.
The working class should not minimise the real weight it has in society, both because of its place in production but also and above all because of what it represents for the future of the world. So while the workers of Egypt and Tunisia need to avoid being misled by the mirage of bourgeois democracy, the workers in the central countries can play a crucial role in showing the path through the desert. The proletarians of Europe have the longest experience of confronting the most sophisticated traps of bourgeois democracy. They have to gather the fruits of this historic experience and take their consciousness to a higher level. By developing their own struggles, by affirming themselves as a revolutionary class, they can break the isolation facing the desperate battles taking place across the planet and renew hope in a new world for the whole of humanity.
Wilma 15.2.13
The defeat of the miners and printers in Britain did not bring the wave of class struggles of that decade to a close. 1987 saw a nationwide strike of British Telecom workers. In February 1988, there was a real wave of struggles involving car workers, health workers, postal workers, seafarers, and others. Internationally the movement also continued, with important struggles in the education sector in Italy and among healthworkers in France.
These movements showed a number of signs of a process of maturation in the working class. The struggles in Italy and France, for example, saw the emergence of general assemblies and revocable committees to coordinate the struggle, and in several cases members of revolutionary organisations (the ICC and others) were elected as delegates.
There was also a small but potentially important development of organisation among unemployed workers. WR 92 (March 1986) contained reports of our participation in meetings of unemployed committees in France Germany, and the UK.
In the strikes in Britain, there was less direct evidence of independent self-organisation, but there was certainly a growing distrust of the unions, and we saw some encouraging signs of workers taking charge of the extension of the struggle. For example, the nurses who sent large delegations to the car factories and bus garages and asked them to come out in solidarity.
A further expression of this process was the attempts by a minority of workers to form workplace-based struggle groups. In the last issue of WR we looked at the Picket group which appeared during the printers’ strike, but the groups which emerged after 1987 went further than Picket in their attempts to break from the unions. In this issue we will return to the pages of our paper in the late 1980s to look at some examples of how we covered this phenomenon at the time
This issue of the paper contained articles on the February strike wave, but it also pointed to evidence of independent organising among a militant minority. WR 110 had already published a letter from a postal worker in London on how the Union of Communication Workers collaborated with management in the imposition of ‘Improved Working Methods’. This comrade was a sympathiser of the ICC and became involved in both the Communication Workers’ Group and the Action Group for Workers’ Unity. WR 112 contained a letter from a Bristol postal worker who was also a member of the CWG. This letter, as we said at the time, showed “how the UCW attempts to deal with unofficial actions. Although this is a particular local example of what a union has done in a specific industry, it is typical of what workers experience in an epoch when unions can do nothing but serve the interests of capital. The issue of casual workers was brought up in the letter in WR 110 and this is a classic example of the unions’ attempt to sow divisions in the working class.....”
Dear comrades
As a postal worker in Bristol, I thought it might be of interest to outline our recent experience with the UCW.
The recent wave of wildcat strikes over the ‘Xmas’ bonus hit the main Bristol office on the 14th. It started with a 24 hour stoppage, and even as this local area union man was pleading to the press that it would go no further than the sorters at the main office, and not “spread” to people not “involved”, it did.
Basically, by the mass meeting three days later, the dispute involved most grades – sorting, driving, part-time, catering etc, many of which had ‘different’ bonus schemes, or, like the part-time workers, none at all. Of course this wasn’t about to lead to a more generalised struggle, but the UCW were going to make damn sure that it didn’t! The fact that the strike was ‘unofficial’ forced the union to reveal its true nature – after all it was they who negotiated the bloody deal in the first place! So, the man from the UCW picks up the megaphone and his first words were “there will be no debate on this, I’ll give you the facts, and then you will vote on them”. The following lack of ‘debate’, despite interventions to the contrary, included the method by which we were to return to work – so the vote was for a return to work. It then emerged that the trade union ‘solidarity’ that we had been thanked for had been very selective indeed! The union was in fact only interested in pickets stopping full UCW members from crossing the lines – temporary workers (after all only associate members of the union) were told to cross the line, to work twelve hour shifts (nice one!). This is the nub of the whole problem. The Bristol Area, unlike others, has reached a series of agreements with the bosses to use part-time workers, casuals and temporary workers. Then adding all this to the differences between the eleven different grades in the UCW, the idea of ‘divide and rule’ has been introduced by the union and now they can try and apply these differences to control discontent.
Anyhow, this sort of action by the UCW has opened up the eyes of many workers to the role of ‘our union’
Yours
Bristol Postal Worker
On the same page of WR 112 we also published the founding statement of a ‘Workers’ Action Group’ formed in a school in east London (the WAG later changed its name to Action Group for Workers’ Unity).
We have decided to form a Workers’ Action Group because we recognise that
- faced with the growing attack on all workers being launched by the state (whether through central government, local councils or private employers)
- faced with a widening response to these attacks (Fords, NHS, ferries, mines, ILEA, etc) there is an increasing necessity for all workers to fight together, to forge a common front against this erosion of our living standards.
But in this school, as throughout the working class, workers are divided by job categories and union affiliations. These divisions can only undermine our collective strength, especially at a time when all of us – teachers, canteen workers, caretakers, technicians – are equally threatened by council job-cuts.
The two general meetings, open to all workers, that have been held in this school to discuss these cuts show that there is a real will amongst us to get together to discuss our common concerns. But such meetings can’t confine themselves to discussion alone. They must be able to make decisions and to organise effective actions in defence of our class interests.
The Workers’ Action Group does not intend to take the place of such meetings or to try to become the ‘representative’ of the workers. Its aims will be:
- to regroup all those who see the need for workers’ unity across the division of category, workplace or union
- to call for general meetings whenever there is a need for us to gather together
- to intervene on all the basic issues facing us, always insisting on the unity of workers’ interests and the need for workers to organise themselves to defend them
- to form direct links with workers in other schools and workplaces in the area
- to provide a forum for discussion on the lessons and perspectives of the class struggle
(There follows an advertisement for a workplace meeting to discuss the strikes that were going on at the time this statement was put out)
WR 113, April 88, contained a more general assessment of this phenomenon:
One of the fruits of the recent outburst of workers’ struggles in Britain has been a small but significant development of efforts by militant minorities of workers to regroup outside of the unions or across union divisions in order to act on the wider struggle.
In WR 112 we published the statement of a ‘Workers’ Action Group’ formed by education workers in London’s Waltham Forest. Subsequently this group, in which an ICC member participates, produced a leaflet in response to the various ‘days of action’ called by the unions last month around the question of the NHS. Having pointed out that the attack on health services wasn’t the only attack workers faced, and that in February we saw “thousands and thousands of workers – healthworkers, car workers, seamen and others – entering directly into the struggle without any prearranged ‘plan’ by the trade union bureaucracy”, the leaflet warns workers against the unions’ attempts to create confusion and demoralisation in the class through a series of disorganised, symbolic marches and 24-hour strikes. It concludes by saying that “what workers really need to do at this time is to meet together across the boundaries of sector and union and discuss the real lessons of the February strikes and how to take them further next time”. The leaflet was distributed to education and health workers in London[1].
The last two issues of WR also contain letters from postal workers, one in London and one in Bristol, describing the discontent in that sector and the efforts of the Union of Communication Workers to head it off. More recently the following letter was sent via WR to the London postal worker:
“Dear Bro/Sis, thanks for your letter, I am writing to you as a sympathiser of Wildcat and member of ‘Communication Workers’ Group’. The CWG is a group which has/is moved/moving away from rank-and-filism towards a more revolutionary perspective. In the most recent meeting it made clear its position on the unions (against them) and also its position on making economic demands (that it is not for a small group of people to do what must be done by the workers through their own organs of struggle). Does this make us a struggle group? I don’t know. I have enclosed our last four bulletins as an example, none of them are politically perfect (example ‘Why the rank-and-file’ in no 4 with its talk of sell-outs etc or the article on the pay deal in no.7 which only calls for a rejection of any offer that comes up). However it does contain some strong political articles (see ‘What the bosses are up to’ in no 4 and ‘The British disease is back, let’s make it fatal’ in no. 7, for example). I think that these articles show the way in which the group could move...
If you are interested in discussion/working with us, then write back or ring me...and come to our next meeting on March 14th.
Lastly, if you don’t decide that we’re worth it, write to me and tell me why. I’ll be interested in your reason. In solidarity, MP”
The articles referred to in the letter, particularly the one in CW 7 which talks about the struggles gong on throughout Britain, certainly do seem to represent an attempt to break away from rank and filism, with its emphasis on attacking union leaders and on militancy in the context of one corporation, and to adopt a real class position criticising the unions as a whole and insisting on the need for all workers to fight together. Whether these developments are restricted to particular individuals or express a more collective evolution remains to be seen. A rank and file union group as such can’t turn into a workers’ struggle group, but its structures may be loose enough to permit a significant number of its participants to find the workers’ terrain.
Clearly there is a process of maturation going on here, and as well as seeking to push it forward ourselves, we can only encourage other militant workers to intervene in the process. Genuine workers’ struggle groups have no interest in being bottled up in one sector: on the contrary, one of their main tasks is to provide workers from all sectors with a focus for contact, discussion and intervention
MU (addresses for WAG and CWG included)
As can be seen from the article in WR 113, our initial reaction to the CWG was positive. However, subsequent articles showed that we were not very clear about its basic nature: WR 118 announced that the CWG had been recuperated by the rank-and-filists, then in WR 119 we said that “recent meetings of this group and the latest issue of their bulletin have shown that this is not the case. While there are still those who want to create a rank and file union group (to work within the existing unions, or to create new ones, but ‘not for the moment’), the life of the working class is still very much present in the group”. Finally, in WR 121 (February 1989), following the dissolution of the CWG, we changed position again and concluded that the CWG had been an expression of rank and file unionism from the beginning, although we saw the formation of a new group by the ‘anti-union’ comrades as a positive development.
To some extent these uncertainties reflected the real evolution of the CWG, which appeared to be breaking from trade unionism but foundered on the anarcho-syndicalism of the Direct Action Movement, resulting in a split, with the DAM and the anti-union tendency proving unable to work together, as can be seen from ‘A brief history of the Communication Workers’ Group’ written by one of the ‘anti-union’ tendency and published below.
But there was also a problem with our view of anarcho-syndicalism, which, we argued, had in its entirety been in the camp of the bourgeoisie since the civil war in Spain. In particular, we saw the anarcho-syndicalists as no more than an ‘extreme’ expression of the rank-and file trade unionism which was developing as a response to the workers’ growing distrust of the official unions[2]. And there is no doubt that the Direct Action Movement was indeed unclear about the danger of radical trade unionism and leftism in general. We had already come against both its ideology and its methods of debate in the Health Workers Action Group (see article below), while in another article we showed how the DAM had formed a united front with the Trotskyists at the Conference of Support Groups[3]. But we were also ignorant of the historical origins of the DAM, which, as we show in our more recent article ‘Internationalist anarchism in the UK’[4], came from a tendency which had taken an internationalist position against the Second World War; and although an understanding of this issue would not have altered our opposition to the DAM’s trade unionist conceptions, it would certainly have led us to be more cautious about dismissing the group out of hand[5].
In another history of this period, ‘Death to Rank and filism!’[6] written in 1990 and republished on libcom, another member of the ‘anti-union’ tendency in CWG (the comrade from Bristol whose letter we published) argues that
- AGWU (which was the name later adopted by the WAG) was an ICC front
- that it (or the ICC) argued that it was counterrevolutionary to organise in one sector
- that both CWG and AGWU were in fact reformist/rank-and filist and would have ended up as alternate unions if they had been successful.
We think it’s worthwhile responding to these accusations. First of all, the AGWU was not an ICC front. Formed in one workplace it was made up of one ICC member and three other employees who were very distant politically from the ICC. The group tried to expand to other elements in London workplaces and it’s true that most of its participants – a postal worker, a bus worker, an unemployed comrade etc – were politically close to the ICC or were members, and we were unable to expand beyond that base. It’s also true that we had very little prior experience of this kind of activity, and in our work towards the AGWU we made some errors based on the ‘routines’ of involvement in a communist political organisation (for example, we convinced the group that it should call a local meeting and argued that specific invitations be sent to other proletarian political groups, rather as if AGWU was itself a political organisation). This problem was not limited to the ICC however: the letter from the CWG comrade in WR 113 also tends to see the group as something that can base itself on a “revolutionary perspective”.
Second, it has never been the ICC’s position that organising in one sector is counter-revolutionary. The workplace is the natural starting point for workers to organise and this applies as much to general struggles as to groups of militants. But we certainly argued that it was necessary to go beyond the workplace or sector. Our view was that struggle groups should as much as possible organise on a local basis, establishing links between militants in different workplaces, rather than organising ‘nationally’ sector by sector, which seems to us to be the anarcho-syndicalist view.
Third, groups that organise to defend workers’ interests in the defensive struggle are not ‘reformist’. They correspond to the fact that the trade unions not only don’t defend the revolutionary programme, they no longer even defend the immediate needs of the class. The author talks about forming workplace groups composed only of revolutionaries, and defending the revolutionary programme as the only guarantee against reformism, but there is no reason why communist groups of this kind should be based specifically on the workplace, since by their very nature they are obliged to analyse and respond to developments in the whole of social reality. Workplace struggle groups (or committees, as our French comrades prefer to call them) obey a different dynamic from the political organisation properly speaking.
Despite the advances made in the late 80s, the class struggle came to a rather abrupt halt at the end of the decade and were followed by a long period of retreat during the 90s. In our view, a key element in this retreat was the spectacular collapse of the eastern bloc and the vast ideological campaigns which the ruling class unleashed around this historic turning point. Faced with these bourgeois political campaigns, the political gains made by the working class in the previous twenty years proved to be insufficient and it has taken a long time for new politicised minorities of the working class to emerge.
It was inevitable that during this phase of retreat, the development of struggle groups and committees also came to a halt. Such groups do not have the programmatic and organisational solidity which can enable them to maintain their activities through periods of class quiescence, although they can in some cases transform themselves into discussion circles with a longer term view of their activity.
In the last few years, however, as the class struggle has slowly regained its lost impetus, we have also seen the re-appearance of the phenomenon of struggle groups, and new debates among revolutionaries about how they should relate to such formations and more generally about the problem of intervention at the workplace and in the immediate struggles of the class. We will look at some of these experiences and debates in future articles.
Amos 28.2.13
This article, written by one of the CWG’s members, Devrim, was first published on libcom. If you go to https://libcom.org/tags/communication-workers-group [815] you will also find a partial archive of the group’s bulletins. Devrim was very active in the postal strikes of this period. He has remained a left communist ever since, and was for a while a militant of the ICC, playing a central role in the formation of our section in Turkey.
The CWG group was formed in early 1987 by three members of DAM (Direct Action Movement- now SolFed) working in the London Post Office. It was in existence for over two years, and issued fifteen national bulletins, by the end publishing 8,000 an issue, and was involved in various strikes in the Post Office including the 1989 national strike.
Its formation was influenced by DAM’s adoption of a ‘Rank and File’ strategy, by the number of young enthusiastic workers coming into DAM at the time (possibly as a result of the miners, and Wapping strikes), and to a certain extent through contacts with the remnants of what was left of what had been the SWP’s rank and file movement (e.g. the Building Worker Group). At the time DAM launched groups in a few different industries, but I think that Communication Worker was the only one that actually took off. It adopted a set of aims, and principles, very much influenced by the previous ‘Rank and File’ groups, but against the electoralism of the Broad Left (BLOC).
Its first publication was a 12 page A5 bulletin published in April 1987 during the Post Office-UCW (Union of Communication Workers, now CWU) pay talks. This was distributed within the Post Offices in London and nationally by DAM groups dropping them into postboxes. This was actually a very successful tactic, and got us quite a large number of contacts.
In one sense although it had contacts nationally, and the magazine was distributed across the country, CWG was never a national group. It was a magazine produced by a group in London, and with sympathisers in different cities, most of whom we never actually met, and a group in the Midlands. We did however travel to Bristol and the Midlands to hold meetings with sympathisers in those areas.
The group had lots of contacts in London especially amongst ‘branch reps,’ union officials who still worked, but did have some facility time, and attracted some new members, people’s workmates as well as members of the ACF (Anarchist Communist Federation, now AF, who at the time had a very strong anti-union position, especially the members of CWG), and even a sympathiser of the ICC (International Communist Current).
As time went on, and the group became more prominent, people’s positions began to diverge. Of the three original members, one remained with DAM, and was a traditional anarcho-syndicalist, one moved towards a group called ‘Workers Power’ (a Trotskyist grouping), and one joined ‘Wildcat’ (a left communist group, which has since plunged into ‘primitivism’). Of course this gave rise to political disagreements especially within a very small core group.
The first of these was around the group’s orientation towards the union with the member of ‘Workers Power’ insisting that we ‘put pressure on the union leadership.’ The left communists, the ACF, and the DAM people were all united against this so this led to the first resignation from the group. I think that the comrade went on to join the ‘broad left’.
As the struggle in the Post Office developed in the run up to the national strike, the divergence between the anarcho-syndicalists and the ACF/left communists became greater. As the union constantly sabotaged the attempts by the workers to defend their living standards, the ‘lefts’ became more and more anti-union, and began to criticise the whole nature of trade unions whilst the anarcho-syndicalists continued to put forward their line of why we need a democratic union.
This tension finally came to a head after the 1989 national strike when the ‘lefts’ split from the anarcho-syndicalists and formed a new grouping, rather than haggle over the name, the Postal Workers Liaison Committee (PLC).
The anarcho-syndicalists did not continue to function as CWG, and the PLC, reduced to an even smaller group by people leaving the Post Office after the defeat of the strike, published three issues of its bulletin before dissolving itself over arguments over whether ‘branch reps’ should be allowed to join, and whether they should ‘put pressure on the union leadership’, both of these positions supported by an ex-member of Solidarity from the Midlands, who hadn’t been in the original core (London) group. Devrim, January 2007
This article was the third and final article published in WR on the subject of the Health Workers Action Group[7]. Several members of WR who worked in the health sector took part in its meetings. It gives a clear account of the way that the DAM members within the group prevented any serious discussion of the trade union question. However, as we have already said, it suffers from the rather black and white approach encapsulated in the notion that the only two views contained within the group were the ‘bourgeois’ one and the ‘ICC’ one. In reality any workers’ group will contain a variety of views on the trade union question. The clarity of the communist left and the bourgeois views of the Trotskyists and other leftists may constitute its two diametrically opposed poles, but between these two there may well be a number of ideas which express at worst confusion and, more positively, an effort to develop towards proletarian positions.
On Tuesday 29 September the Health Workers’ Action Group excluded militants defending ICC positions, with great ‘concern’ expressed that we might be wasting our time and theirs. The rank and filists in the majority were not prepared to publish articles taking a clear anti-union position, or even worse, from their point of view, putting forward alternative forms of organisation. In this they made clear they had no intention of participating in an open forum of discussion for workers, particularly those who are grappling with the problem of how to struggle despite union sabotage and isolation.
The HWAG was started at a meeting called by health workers in or around the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement with the aim of forging a “rank and file (ie trade unionist – WR note) organisation to fight for healthworkers’ interests”. However, the advert also said “Labour governments close as many hospitals as the Tories and both keep healthworkers’ pay down. NUPE and COHSE don’t oppose the exploitation but participate in it”. All those who responded to this call expressed suspicion of the unions, but with two distinct views on how to approach the problem:
- the bourgeois view that workers cannot struggle without unions, and therefore that struggle and extension of struggle can only be organised through rank-and-file union groups;
- the ICC position that the immediate need of all struggles is to extend and unify and that the first obstacle to this is the trade unions.
At the first meeting militants from the ICC argued for the formation of a struggle group to discuss past and present struggles, particularly the issue of the unions and to intervene within them. At this meeting we successfully prevented the formation of a rank and file unionist group (see WR106), a leaflet was produced calling workers to another meeting:
“Some workers have been fighting back but their struggles remain isolated. The unions aren’t defending us. We all need to get together to organise how best to win the struggle”.
At the second meeting, however, a rank-and-filist platform ‘Where we Stand’ was adopted and was published in issue number one of the group’s bulletin. A struggle group can certainly put forward demands rooted in the struggle – in response to a particular attack, or expressing a genuine discontent among the workers. But the HWAG demands were not rooted in a developing struggle: they were purely abstract, and included the leftist demand ‘against privatisation’. Worst of all, ‘Where we Stand’ said nothing about the need for the extension and unification of struggles. At this stage we were told by the convinced rank and filists that we must put disagreements in the bulletin and not waste the time of the meeting in such discussion.
The bulletin produced was criticised by the HWAG (see WR 108) because of its lack of contact with the class struggle, and a decision was taken that in future it should contain an account of the discussion in the group itself.
When we wrote articles proposing ways of organising outside and against the unions and criticising the demands in ‘Where we Stand’, we were excluded. At this meeting the rank-and-file unionists of the DAM, who make much noise about their opposition to the bureaucratic methods of Trotskyism, et al, conducted their manoeuvres with all the astuteness of experienced leftists. Their number one concern was to censor discussion, to prevent any expression of debate in the bulletin which they said must put forward a ‘line’ or look ridiculous.
Discussion of the real issues facing the class is indeed a danger to the rank-and-filists. Their task is to attract the growing numbers of workers who are disaffected with the unions, in order to win them back to left-wing opposition within the unions. But determined discussion of the role of unions in sabotaging struggles and of ways to extend them outside the unions will totally undermine the rank-and-filists’ role.
A struggle group, on the other hand, must be open to all workers who want to draw lessons from past and present working class struggles in order to strengthen the movement of the future. And, as the experience of the HWAG shows, it is essential that such groups confront the ruling ideology in its extreme forms (leftism, rank-and-file unionism) in drawing these lessons.
Throughout the existence of the HWAG there has been a constant tension between the aim for a ran-and-filist group, and an attempt to keep the group alive as an open forum of discussion for the working class. In this case the group has become a rank-and-file organ, dead to the working class. But the experience of resisting rank-and-file unionist manoeuvres within it can and must become part of the raw material for the constitution of genuine struggle groups in the future.
AF (Nov 1987)
[1]. Subsequently WR 119 published a second leaflet by WAG ‘For a common fight against attacks in the public sector’ and WR 122 contained a review of the AGWU pamphlet Sorting out the postal strike, a balance sheet of the struggles in the post office written by the London postal worker who participated in the group.
[2]. WR 109, ‘DAM: radical appendage of leftism’.
[3]. WR 108, ‘National Conference of Support Groups: For workers’ struggle groups against rank and file unionist recuperation’.
[5]. The DAM is the ‘ancestor’ of today’s Solidarity Federation, which is in general more open to the influences of council communism and other radical critiques of the trade unions. And yet a reading of the DAM’s pamphlet DAM and the trade unions (https://www.libcom.org/tags/communication-workers-group [817]) confirms that the group was not 100% ‘trade unionist’, since it could argue that the official unions had become part of the state, a conclusion that even some of the most radical members of Solfed shy away from.
[7]. The two previous articles were ‘For a health workers’ struggle group’ in WR 106 and ‘Health Workers’ Action Group’ in WR 108.
By announcing the forthcoming adoption of a law authorising gay marriage, the French government has provoked a series of mobilisations and media debates where everyone is asked to choose their camp : ‘for’ or ‘against’ gay marriage. The same thing has happened in other countries: in Britain David Cameron’s proposal to legalise gay marriage has created deep divisions in both the Tory party and the Anglican Church (which had already been convulsed by the scandalously radical idea of allowing gay priests and women bishops).
The repulsive demonstrations organised by various homophobic organisations like ‘Civitas’ or ‘Famille de France’ were shockingly large. If the fundamentalist Catholics, with their monkish garb and massive crucifixes were the main troops, the breadth of these mobilisations shows how far decaying capitalism is spreading irrationality, dehumanisation and the hatred of the ‘other’. Under the cover of slogans about ‘defending the family’, the demonstrators hardly hid their racist and homophobic prejudices.
In the face of these manifestations of hatred and collective delirium, organised in the name of an inhuman ‘normality’, the proletariat must affirm its attachment to sexual freedom, the respect for differences, but from the starting point of its own class struggle. Because the struggle for communism is not just a combat for bread to eat and for a roof over our heads. It is above all a combat for the emancipation of human beings, for “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Communist Manifesto).
A question remains however: will the legalisation of homosexual marriage take society towards greater sexual freedom? Leaving aside the idea that ‘marriage for everyone’ is a way of fighting against discrimination – insults, aggression, homophobic bosses won’t unfortunately disappear with the wave of a magic wand – and all the waffle about ‘human rights’ and ‘equality before the law’ – the arguments used in favour of gay marriage reveal the reactionary nature of this new contract: the bourgeoisie, and especially its left parties, present gay marriage as a social advance which will allow people to benefit from the ‘financial advantages’ and ‘rights of inheritance’ enjoyed by heterosexual couples, in particular with regard to children who can only inherit from one of their parents. These arguments are a perfect illustration of the fact that marriage is nothing but a money relation. As Marx put it in the Communist Manifesto: “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie”.
Of course many workers get married to sincerely express their love and to benefit from the meagre financial and administrative advantages that go with it. But marriage is an institution which is fundamentally linked to class societies. For the bourgeoisie, marriage has little to do with love. It is above all a contract for the conservation and transmission of private property: “this marriage of convenience turns often enough into crassest prostitution-sometimes of both partners, but far more commonly of the woman, who only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let out her body on piece-work as a wage-worker, but sells it once and for all into slavery”[1]
This is the nature of the ‘social progress’ promised by the left: a reform based on the commodification of human beings and on capitalist production, a system which lies at the root of all the discriminations and all the harassment and pogrom-type behaviour towards gay people.
El Generico 24/1/13
[1]. Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. In his work Engels makes a thorough historical critique of the family, and especially of the role of marriage in class societies.
During the past months tensions between North and South Korea and the USA have once again been on the rise. Repeated missile tests, threats of missiles, artillery and even nuclear attacks against South Korea as well as targets in Japan, Hawaii or Guam have been in the centre of the North Korean war rhetoric. South Korea, the USA and Japan have in turn declared their determination to strike back militarily against North Korea. Once again the ruling class of these countries is ready to threaten the life of millions of people in order to defend their sordid national interests.
Faced with the threat of war it is the fundamental responsibility of those who fight for the interests of the exploited and the working class:
In October 2006, following a nuclear test by North Korea, a meeting of internationalists from South Korea and other countries adopted the following statement:
Following the news of the nuclear tests in North Korea, we, the communist internationalists meeting in Seoul and Ulsan:
Denounce the development of a new nuclear weapons capability in the hands of another capitalist state: the nuclear bomb is the ultimate weapon of inter-imperialist warfare, its only function being the mass extermination of the civilian population in general and the working class in particular.
Denounce unreservedly this new step towards war taken by the capitalist North Korean state which has thereby demonstrated once again (if that were necessary) that it has absolutely nothing to do with the working class or communism, and is nothing but a most extreme and grotesque version of decadent capitalism's general tendency towards militaristic barbarism.
Denounce unreservedly the hypocritical campaign by the United States and its allies against its North Korean enemy which is nothing but an ideological preparation for unleashing – when they have the capacity to do so – their own pre-emptive strikes of which the working population would be the principal victim, as it is today in Iraq. We have not forgotten that the United States is the only power to have used nuclear weapons in war, when it annihilated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Denounce unreservedly the so-called "peace initiatives" which are bound to appear under the aegis of other imperialist gangsters such as China. These will be concerned not with peace, but with the protection of their own capitalist interests in the region. The workers can have no confidence whatever in the "peaceful intentions" of any capitalist state.
Denounce unreservedly any attempt by the South Korean bourgeoisie to take repressive measures against the working class or against activists in their defence of internationalist principles under the pretext of protecting national freedom or democracy.
Declare our complete solidarity with the workers of North and South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia who will be the first to suffer in the event of military action breaking out.
Declare that only the world wide workers' struggle can put an end for ever to the constant threat of barbarism, imperialist war, and nuclear destruction that hangs over humanity under capitalism.
The workers have no country to defend!
Workers of all lands, unite!
https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2006-north-korea-nuclear-bomb [199]
In the face of the present situation the declaration of October 2006 remains totally valid.
In order to analyse the recent escalation between North Korea and its rivals, and the perspectives which flow from this, we must place this conflict into the broader historical and international context.
The sharpening of tensions between North Korea and its rivals is part of a more general sharpening of tensions in the Far East. During the past months the two major rivals of the region, China and Japan, have repeatedly claimed control over the Senkaku/Diayo islands and whipped up patriotic campaigns (URLlink to statement). During the past years China and several states surrounding the South Chinese Sea have been colliding over territorial claims in the South China Sea. South Korea and Japan regularly quarrel over Takeshima/Dokdo island. The recent escalation crystallises a global trend of sharpening imperialist tensions in the region. At the same time, the conflict between North and South Korea is also one of the longest standing conflicts in East Asia[1]
In World War 1 East Asia was basically spared from the atrocities of the war. However, in World War 2 East Asia became one of the major battlefields between all imperialist powers (more than 20 million people lost their lives). As soon as the Nazi regime in Germany was defeated and Europe divided up amongst the winners of the war in May 1945, the Soviet Union and the USA clashed with each other over the control of Asia in several zones. Fiercely determined to prevent Russia from grabbing parts of Japan, the USA dropped the first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after having flattened Tokyo with fire-bombs in the winter of 1944/1945. In China, Russia supported Mao’s Red Army and the USA Chiang Kai-shek. China was the first country to be divided between a pro-Russian (People’s Republic of China) and a pro-American part (Taiwan), leaving behind a deadly division which still exists today, with the two sides pointing a heavy arsenal of weapons at each other. And in 1945, after the defeat of the Japanese occupiers, while Russian troops prepared to take over the entire Korean peninsula, the USA forced Russia to accept a joint occupation of Korea, which led to the division of Korea along the 38th parallel in 1945. Thus since 1945 East Asia has constantly been marked by a confrontation between the USA and its allies on the one hand, and China and Russia and other allies on the other. It is no coincidence that the Korean war 1950-1953 was the first and one of the bloodiest phases in the Cold War between the two blocs, pitting a coalition of US-led forces against North-Korean forces supported by Chinese and Russian troops. During the Korean war, more than 3 million people died. Many got killed in massacres perpetrated by both sides. The war itself left behind a destroyed country, with Seoul and Pyongyang heavily bombed on a number of occasions. The country remained divided, with a very high level of militarization: it was one of the “best defended” military zones in the world and the armies have been pointing their weapons at each other for more than 60 years.
The present escalation is thus an expression of this continuity and an intensification of the series of conflicts which have gripped East Asia since the end of WW2. Its roots lie in the imperialist carve-up, the fragmentation of the world into nations, which are engaged in deadly struggles for survival, threatening each other with annihilation. Korea is no exception. The whole of Europe was divided after 1945 between two blocs, Germany remained divided until 1989, the entire Indian subcontinent was carved up between Pakistan/Bangladesh and India, Vietnam was divided, in the 1990s, former Yugoslavia torn apart by a number of secessionist wars. The territories of the former Ottoman Empire in the Middle East were broken up into a number of small and constantly warring nations, with the additional factor of the foundation of Israel in the midst of this landscape, leaving behind another permanent war zone. All this shows that the formation of new nations no longer offers any progress for humanity. They are a deadly trap, a cemetery for the working class.
In the same way as the Korean war in the early 1950s was already a direct confrontation between the USA and China, the present escalation also opposes the same “staunch defenders” of their allies.
The North Korean regime has been supported to the hilt by China from its first day of existence. The geographic-strategic position of Korea means that the country is both a target for all neighbouring rivals, as well into a precious buffer. In particular China sees North Korea as a buffer between itself and Japan and the USA.
Thus almost exactly 60 years after the end of the Korean war in 1953, not only are the same forces opposing each other, but now we are seeing nuclear, conventional missile or artillery threats from North Korea and vice versa against some of the biggest metropoles of the world (Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang). With the growing polarisation between China and the USA, the two biggest economic nations, East Asia has become another permanent zone of conflict, with consequences for the whole world.
The North Korean regime, which claims to be socialist, came to power not through a workers’ uprising, but thanks to the military help of Russia and China. Entirely dependent on its Stalinist patrons, the regime has been focussing its resources on maintaining and expanding the military apparatus. As a result of the gigantic militarisation, out of a population of 24.5 million, the country claims to have a standing army of 1.1 million plus a reserve of up to 4.7 million men and women. Similar to all the former Stalinist ruled countries of Eastern Europe, the North Korean economy has no competitive civilian products to offer on the world market. The hypertrophy of the military has meant that during the past 6 decades there has been frequent if not permanent rationing of food and other consumer goods. Since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 industrial production has fallen by more than 50%. The population was decimated by a famine in the mid 1990s, which apparently was only halted after delivery of food supplies from China. Even today North Korea imports 90% of its energy, 80% of its consumer goods and some 45% of its food from China.
If a ruling class has nothing to offer its population but scarcity, hunger, repression, and permanent militarisation, and if its companies cannot compete on the world market with any product, the regime can only try to gain “recognition” through its military capacity to threaten and blackmail. Such behaviour is a typical expression of a ruined class, which has nothing to offer humanity but violence, extortion and terror. The posture of threatening its rivals with all kind of military attacks shows how unpredictable and lunatic the situation has become. Faced with a growing economic impasse, the regime for some years has been trying to introduce limited economic measures of “liberalisation”, hoping to improve the supply situation. Some believe that the present sabre rattling is a mere diversion from economic problems and a manoeuvre of the young successor Kim Jong-un to impress the army. While we cannot speculate about the political stability of the regime, we think it would be mistaken to underestimate the real dangers of escalation of the situation. The rise of imperialist tensions is never just “bluff” or “bluster” or a mere diversion and political theatre. All governments in the world are forced to intensify the spiral of militarism – even if this may appear to be working against their own interests. The ruling class has no real control over the cancer of militarism. Even though it is obvious that in the case of a North Korean attack against South Korea or the USA, this would lead to a considerable weakening if not even collapse of a whole regime and state, we must know that the ruling class knows no limits to the policy of scorched earth. In many places of the world, people commit suicide attacks, killing and wounding an endless number of people and sacrificing their own life. The case of North Korea shows that an entire state is threatening to commit massacres and is ready for “suicide”. And even though North Korea is extremely dependent on China, China cannot be sure of being able to “rein” in the regime in Pyongyang, which has shown a new dimension of insanity. During the Korean war both China as well as North Korea were ready to sacrifice millions of soldiers as cannon-fodder. The present North Korean regime is no less ready to sacrifice its “own” cannon-fodder and annihilate as many lives on the enemy side as possible. The North Korean regime thus illustrates the what fighting for your own national interests really implies. As a result this leads to more chaos on the imperialist chess-board. The policy of threats and blackmails by the North Korean regime is no exception but a caricature of the perspectives of the capitalism system as a whole, which is pushing humanity into an ever growing barbarism.
With a regime in the North so openly threatening South Korea, Japan and the USA, South Korea can present itself as “victim” and “innocent”. But the South Korean ruling class is no better and not less ferocious than its counter-part in North-Korea.
In May 1948 in the South the US-supported Rhee government organised a massacre of some 60.000 people in Cheju (a fifth of the island’s residents). During the war the South Korean government massacred with the same intensity as Northern troops. During the reconstruction period, the country was run by governments which exercised dictatorial rights either indirectly as under Rhee or directly under Park Chung-Hee for more than 4 decades. Whenever workers’ or students’ protests flared up, the regime used repression. In 1980 a popular rising with a strong working class participation in Kwangju was crushed in blood. However, in the reconstruction period after the Korean war, above all since the 1960s thanks to a harsh exploitation of its workforce, South Korean capital managed to get access to the world market through the low price of its goods. South Korea boasts one of the world’s highest percentages of precarious, temporary contract labour[2]. However, with or without a “dictator” as president, all the governments have maintained their policy of repression. The National Security Law gives the government the authority to hunt down any voices critical of the South Korean regime, accusing anybody of being an agent for North Korea. And in so many strikes and protests by workers or students or even “ordinary citizens” (see for example Sangyong or the “candle light protests”), the South Korean State constantly uses repression against the working class in particular. While the media ridicule the way the different generations of the Kim dynasty in North Korea pass on power, the recent election of Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the former dictator Park Chung-Hee shows a remarkable continuity of power transmission under “democracy”. Moreover, the common exploitation of the North Korean work force in the industrial zone of Kaesong shows that the South Korean capitalists are perfectly able to cooperate with any North Korean clique. And the South Korean ruling clique is as determined to use any military means against its Northern rival. Recently Seoul has been aiming at developing nuclear weapons itself.
History has shown: the two types of regime are basically the same: arch enemies of the workers. The workers cannot take sides with either of them. The recent sharpening of tensions in East Asia crystallises the destructive tendency of capitalism. But the recent conflict is not just a repetition: the dangers have become much bigger for humanity. This time the most powerful rivals are clashing with each other, the USA and China, China and Japan, all heavily armed and committed to speeding up the arms race. During the time of the Korean and Cold War the working class was defeated and unable to raise its head. Only a very small number of revolutionaries of the communist left defended an internationalist position at the time of the Korean war. Today, the proletariat in East Asia is not willing to sacrifice its life in the deadly spiral of capitalism. Only the working class can save humanity from sinking into an ever deeper barbarism. In order to do so the working class must reject patriotism and the spiral of militarism.
No to a “united front with the government”! The only solution for the working class is to resolutely fight against their own bourgeoisies – in the North as well as in the South. For revolutionaries today this means we must continue to defend the internationalist tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht during World War 1, of the Communist Left during World War 2 and during the Korean War –a tradition that was defended again in the 2006 internationalist statement on the threat of war in 2006.
ICC, 8.4.2013
[1] see also Imperialism in the Far East, past and present [912]
[2] see also The "Asian Dragons" run out of steam [913]
It is now one week since two crudely made “improvised explosive devices” tore through the crowd near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring dozens of others, many suffering severe and traumatic injuries including the loss of multiple limbs. What was supposed to be a day of celebration of one of the oldest sporting events in the country had become the backdrop for one of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. The bomb remnants investigators discovered in the aftermath of the blast appeared to have been made from pressure cookers and stuffed with nails and ball bearings so as to maximize casualties from shrapnel. Inspired by similar devices used by insurgents to wreak havoc on American and allied troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appeared that the chickens from US imperialism’s adventures abroad might have once again come home to roost. Trauma surgeons who treated the wounded at local hospitals described the injuries as “combat like,” just as images of the blast sight showing sidewalks stained with blood filled the airwaves and streamed across WiFi connections. America, and especially the city of Boston, appeared to be in a state of disbelief and shock.
Nevertheless, only days later the FBI was able to identify two suspects using footage from the now ubiquitous surveillance cameras that look down on pedestrians and vehicles from the rooftops and traffic signals of just about every major city in the world. And, as the FBI, Governor Patrick and President Obama all boldly promised in the aftermath of the attacks, the state was quickly able to put the pieces of the investigative puzzle together and identify the supposed culprits. By the end of the night on Friday, April 20th,, 26 year old Tamerlan Tsarneaev, a resident of a Boston suburb with a passion for boxing, was dead, killed in a violent shoot-out with police. His badly wounded 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar would be captured, weakened and incoherent from blood loss caused by a hail of police bullets. As this is written, the younger Nasaraev remains in serious condition in a Boston hospital, unable to communicate we are told. Still, the US federal state proudly proclaims, in a tone that appears designed to reassure us of something, that once he comes to they won’t even bother to read him his Miranda rights before the federal government’s “high value interrogation team”1 goes to work.
In the interim period between the attacks and the dramatic events of Friday night, the US state and its media apparatus went into full propaganda mode, exploiting the attacks for all they were worth. On Thursday, President Obama travelled to Boston to speak to an “interfaith service,” loudly stating his resolve that the perpetrators would face the “full weight of American justice.”2 Although, the scale of destruction in Boston was nowhere near as severe as what occurred on September 11th, 2001(nor as grave as that which US imperialism continues to visit upon civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere), the U.S. state wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to once again beat the drums about the need for national unity in the face of terrorism and run a massive media campaign trotting out all kinds of talking heads from “terrorism experts” to criminal profilers, various psychologists and beyond; all designed, they said, to help an anxious public understand what had happened and reassure them that in the end justice would be done American style.
In Boston itself, the city was kept on high alert for the entire period. Just as the media spouted their drivel about how the city would refuse to be terrorized, Governor Patrick pleaded with residents to stay in their homes, revealing the ease with which the bourgeoisie talks out of both sides of its mouth in the pursuit of a patriotic narrative. On Friday, with Dzhokhar still on the loose, the state put the city on “total lock down” reducing much of the Boston area to a ghost town. The media announced that police were performing door-to-door searches; the city had been divided up into “zones”; Blackhawk helicopters were flying overhead and high tech military equipment would be deployed. The language of military occupation and prison discipline was now flippantly applied to the very American city in which the struggle against British military occupation had been launched two and a half centuries before—all in the pursuit of a wounded and almost certainly terrified 19-year-old kid who appeared to have no real plan for how to elude authorities other than to conceal himself under a boat tarp.
All of this should make it abundantly clear that terrorism, in whatever form, can only ever serve the interests of the bourgeois state—whether this takes the form of giving the state the opportunity to practice the militarization of a city, allowing the media to beat the drums of patriotism, or creating the excuse for the politicians to propose legislation to “beef up security.” This was made evident in the aftermath of the arrest of Dzhokhar when local residents spontaneously assembled on neighborhood sidewalks to cheer the police as a parade of squad cars left the scene. Later that night, in the heart of the city a “celebration” broke out that witnessed ordinary working people spontaneously hugging and shaking the hands of the cops sent there to keep order. One is tempted to compare the spectacle of Friday night to Eastern European civilians cheering the arrival of the Soviet army in 1945 – but how quickly do tonight’s liberators become tomorrow’s jack booted thugs? If there is one thing terrorism generally accomplishes, it is to drive the population into the hands of the state, goading them to identify with its repressive forces as their only protection against the irrational violence of terrorism unleashed in their communities.
Of course, the sense of relief that Bostonians felt once it was clear that the alleged perpetrators had been rendered incapable of causing further damage to their city is understandable; it is a genuine tragedy when working people come to identify with the state, rather than their own struggles, as their best protection against the growing decomposition of society. It is for this reason that anyone concerned with creating a better world—a world beyond the exploitation and violence of capitalism—must categorically reject terrorism as a tactic for pursing that goal. It accomplishes nothing other than to drive the working class—the only social force capable of offering humanity a real future—into the hands of the very state that represses it.
Nevertheless, the Boston events simply do not have the same scale that the 9/11 attacks did, so it seems likely that the celebratory fervor whipped up by the media will eventually fade. However, the state did manage to take one of the alleged perpetrators into custody, so we can certainly expect quite the media circus surrounding his trial (if he survives his police perpetrated injuries). Where will he be prosecuted? Will he be treated as an “enemy combatant” or will he be given a civilian trial? Will the federal government go for the death penalty, even though there is no death penalty under Massachusetts state law? How much was the young Dzhokhar under the influence of his older brother? To what extent was he really a hardened terrorist? Will he ask for forgiveness or will he mock the victims? All of this will keep the media buzzing for quite some time.
But underneath all these surface questions lies a more fundamental one: what would drive two young men who had lived most of their lives in the United States towards such violence against their neighbors? There will, of course, be a temptation by some of the cruder elements in the media to blame it all on the brothers’ Chechen background and Muslim heritage. “Muslims simply can’t be trusted,” they will say; “We should be much more circumspect about who we let into the country.” International terrorism experts might even tell us that Putin is right to take a hard line with such ruthless and unscrupulous people.
Others will blame the Internet as an “ungoverned” space that allows foreign terrorist organizations to “radicalize” vulnerable youth across national and continental borders. Undoubtedly, the media’s hired shrinks, in violation of just about every canon of their profession, will probe deep into the psyches of these two young men they have never met and tell us all about how their inability to fully integrate into American society left them isolated and in search of a purpose beyond themselves,3 which they found in radical Islam or Chechen nationalism or some such archaic ideology. Perhaps the more farsighted elements in the US bourgeoisie will come to recognize that, like most of the Western European countries, they now have their own problem with “home grown” Islamic terrorism that cannot be solved with repression alone and which demands serious sociological and psychological research to address.
But whatever “answers” the bourgeois commissions and academic investigations will come up with, it is highly unlikely they will be able to hit on the real answer as to what fuels such violence and destruction: the decomposition of capitalist society itself, which more and more pushes some young people into a state of desperation and alienation so painful that lashing out at society in one last blaze of violence seems the only answer to their profound existential crises.
The bourgeois experts probably won’t see any connection between the violent, but calculated, actions of the Tsarnaevs and the less political, more desperate, but just as nihilistic outbursts of an Adam Lanza, James Holmes, or Jared Lee Loughner. Islamic terrorism is fundamentally different from these kinds of mass shooting they will tell us. One is fueled by a foreign political ideology that exploits vulnerable young people, the other by “mental illness” or the easy availability of guns. But is there any really tangible difference between the Tsarnaev’s case and the violent outbursts perpetrated by these young, white, “American” men? Is it not the case that the only difference is that the Tsarneaevs—perhaps as a tangential result of their Chechen heritage or Muslim background—fell under the influence of a sick ideology (itself the product of social decomposition) and thus were able to, in their own minds, rationalize their homicidal rampage as politically necessary? But this does not explain why two young men, in the supposed prime of their lives, supposedly living the American dream, would be in such a state of mind to begin with where such ideologies could even appeal to them. How can such ideologies come to speak to young men growing up in the heart of a supposed capitalist “democracy”?
What are the underlying social, economic and psychological injuries that drive such young men to identify with a suicidal ideology that grows out of political struggle thousands of miles away from them and that has no direct affect on their daily lives and which they can only experience as an abstract fantasy?4 Could it be that the political extremism of the type that appears to have subsumed at least the older Tsarnaev is only the last exit off the highway before one’s desperation arrives at the kind of nihilist insanity that engulfed Lanza, Holmes and Loughner? Maybe the Tsarnaev’s route to political extremism was not so different from these three white “American” young men’s route to violent insanity?5 If this is the case, we must look beyond simplistic explanations that would understand these attacks as a result of the young brother’s ethnicity and religion and look instead to the social decomposition of capitalist society in the United States itself and the accompanying ethos of “no future” that increases many in the younger generations (in particular young men) today.
What, then, are some of the features of the objective social and economic situation facing the younger generations today that underlie the repeated violent outbursts we have witnessed? First, it should be acknowledged that the effects of capitalism’s economic crisis that accelerated in dramatic fashion in 2008 have so far fallen disproportionately on the younger generation. To begin with, unemployment is much higher among younger workers today than their older class peers.6 Many younger workers are simply unable to find a job that would pay them enough to live an “adult lifestyle” and thus complete the psychological transition from adolescence to adulthood in a more or less healthy way. The percentage of college educated young people who continue to live with their parents has increased dramatically as a result of the crisis.7 Moreover, as the job market continues to stagnate, many younger people find that they can only survive the crisis by prolonging their post-secondary educations and thus get sucked deep into the educational debt trap. Many young people are leaving college (with or without a degree) with staggering debt loads, fueling a sense of not being to get ahead or to even establish oneself as an independent and autonomous person in this world.
It is not a long jump from understanding these objective phenomena to appreciating the psychological toll this can take on young people, many of whom are increasingly thrown into a deep identity crisis. The burden can be particularly hard on young men, who still tend to be socialized in the model of the bourgeois “bread winner.” The frustration from the inability to find a meaningful and sufficiently remunerative job, the sense of uselessness that comes from prolonged periods of unemployment, the embarrassment of having to move back home with one’s parents, the reversal of standard gender roles that often occurs when a female partner works, but the male is stuck at home, is often an “emasculating” experience that fuels a profound identity crisis, which can cause some young men to lash out at the women in their lives and the broader society that appears to send mixed messages about masculine identity.
The older Tsarneaev is reported to have been charged with domestic violence in the past—a fact that may have caused the immigration authorities to deny his application for US citizenship.8 It has also been reported that his partner worked, while he was staying home and caring for their child. While it would be extrapolating too much at this stage to say we know the precise role these factors played in his “radicalization,” it seems reasonable to consider whether Tamerlan’s strained relationship with his partner was one of the factors which made radical Islam, a philosophy in which gender roles are not so ambiguous and women are supposed to know their place, attractive to him. Can the attraction of these kinds of ideologies, in part, be the sense of male empowerment they can give to young men struggling with their inability to live up to traditional notions of masculinity?
But, even if this is the case, it should be clear that this does not so much represent the penetration of some archaic foreign way of thought into American society, as much as it expresses the breakdown of traditional bourgeois family and social roles and the resultant crisis in male socialization that is a function of capitalist decomposition. While as communists we do not lament the decline of traditional bourgeois gender values, we can still recognize the part this might play in fueling the social crisis before us and how it could contribute to the repeated outbursts of irrational violence that continue to dominate news reports on what seems like a regular basis.
Undoubtedly, some critics will not find our attempt to understand the roots of these violent outbursts convincing. The less forgiving of them will tell us these kinds of attacks can only be condemned, not “understood.” We won’t spend much time responding to this line of argument, as it is not very serious. However, a more sophisticated challenge might say that not all unemployed or debt ridden young people resort to this kind of violence—so we cannot use such objective social conditions to explain these attacks. While it is indeed true that the vast majority of young people will never even consider engaging in this kind of violence, this kind of criticism rather misses the point. Pushed to the edge inevitably some people are bound to go over it and lash out at society in a violent way; and as recent events have shown, it only takes a handful to cause carnage and heartache on a massive scale.
Nevertheless, the critics may have a point in that there are alternatives to such a violent response to alienation and economic stress. Pointless violence is not the only option. Just within the last several years, we have seen several examples of young people coming together in solidarity to discuss an alternative to this society. For all their warts, movements like Occupy and the Indignados in Spain are powerful evidence that there is another way to express frustration and anger at this society that is far more powerful than any individualized violence. It is the collective solidarity forged in struggle that shows us the way forward and demonstrates to us how a world beyond the pain and suffering of the damaged individual ego is possible. Still, these movements cannot be willed into existence. They are themselves products of deep social and historical forces that are thus beyond the power of isolated individuals, or small groups, to create ex nihilio. The burning question thus becomes: how to we channel our frustrations in the meantime?
As far as US internal politics go, it is likely that, whatever their initial propaganda value, these bombings will not work in favor of the Obama administration. With reports surfacing that the FBI interviewed the older Tsarnaev brother two years ago at the bequest of Russian intelligence and concluded he was not a threat, it seems inevitable that this will fuel Republican-led investigations on Capitol Hill and accusations that the Obama administration simply cannot keep us safe from terror. With Senators McCain and Graham already calling on Obama to declare the younger Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant” and forego any of the legal niceties supposedly afforded by the US Constitution,9 there promises to be another round of heated disputes ahead. The only real question seems to be whether or not the Republicans will overplay their hand.
Moreover, although the Boston bombings momentarily distracted the media’s attention, away from the defeat of gun control legislation backed by President Obama, this defeat only seems to have emboldened the President’s opponents. Already, despite the apparent willingness of many Republicans to relent to comprehensive immigration reform, there is talk of strengthening right-wing resistance to any bill that would grant anything remotely resembling “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Clearly, the rancor and furor that has characterized the internal life of the US bourgeoisie over the last several years has not subsided as much as the media would have had us believe the last three months. In line with the nature of the period, it seems likely that these bombings will only become more fodder in what seems like inexhaustible infighting among the various factions that comprise the bourgeois state. What a reversal of fortune for the US bourgeoisie from 2001, when it was able to utilize the 9/11 attacks to forge a national consensus for war.
In the end, even if we have the ability through the Marxist method to begin to understand the underlying social and economic factors that can drive some alienated youth towards acts of terrorism, or other acts of desperate violence, we have to be clear that these can never be a tactic for the emancipation of the proletariat. Terrorism and irrational violence only end up serving the interests of the state, and thus the entire capitalist system, as they are exploited to drum up propaganda and fear campaigns that push significant parts of the working class, even if only temporarily, into the arms of the state. Still, in the context of capitalist decomposition, in which the system is increasingly unable to offer the younger generation any real perspective for their future, regardless of what country they come from, what ethnicity they are or what religion, creed or ideology they are influenced by, we can likely only expect more of these outbursts of irrational violence in the future.
The only hope humanity has to avoid the twin pillars of senseless violence and state repression lies in the independent and autonomous struggle of the working class to defend its standard of living against capital’s attacks. Only this struggle can render the communist perspective visible and offer the younger generations hope for an alternative to the life of frustration, despair and seeming randomness that characterizes capitalism in decomposition.
Henk
1 Just what this means is unclear, but one wonders what tactics will be employed and what the Obama administration will admit to using?
2 Somewhat oddly, despite repeated warnings that dangerous terrorists were probably on the loose in the city, the US state seemed to have little concern about President Obama travelling to Boston and making a public address, something that is sure to fuel the grist of the conspiracy theory mills. In fact, at a Monday night press conference a “reporter” asked the Governor Patrick, before a national audience, if this was yet another “false flag” attack. Whatever success the US state had in exploiting this bombing for its own interests, it seems unable to achieve the level of national integration it did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
3 A version of this kind of “explanation” was immediately proffered up by the Tsarneaevs’ uncle [915]—a seemingly successful Washington, DC area lawyer – who proclaimed in front of media cameras that his nephews were “losers” who could not integrate themselves into American society and who probably perpetrated these acts out of jealously against those who were able to “settle themselves.”. Of course, what the bombastic uncle completely failed to explain was why exactly the brothers had failed to “settle themselves.”
4 Of course, in recent memory it was not uncommon for many young men of Irish descent in the Boston area (many of whom had likely never been there or even knew someone from Ireland) to develop an interest in the IRA and the “Irish liberation struggle.” The irony of this never seemed to occur to the bourgeois media.
5 While we do not deny the possibility that some form of “mental illness” suffered by the various perpetrators of the recent shooting incidents may have played a role in motivating the attacks, as Marxists we don't think it is possible to stop our inquiry here. It is necessary to probe deeper and ask what is the cause of mental illness itself? Is it always an “organic brain disease” or is it possible that social, economic and political alienation can also play a role in causing some people to lose their moorings in reality and retreat into a fantasy world of violent wish fulfillment?
6 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the official unemployment rate for workers aged 20-24 was 13.3 percent for March 2013. The rate among workers aged 16-19 was even higher at 24.2 percent. This compares to a rate of 6.2 percent for those 25 and over. See https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm [916]
7 “(According to a 2011 report from the BLS), the percentage of men age 25 to 34 living in the home of their parents rose from 14 percent in 2005 to 19 percent in 2011 and from eight percent to 10 percent over the period for women.” See: https://www.parjustlisted.com/archives/10675 [917]
9 McCain and Graham’s request was loudly ridiculed by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz who mocked the idea that a U.S. citizen could legally be declared an enemy combatant for a crime that occurred on US soil as expressing a gross ignorance of the law. Nevertheless, this hasn’t prevented the US state from publicly invoking the so-called “Public Safety Exception” to the Miranda requirement in Dzhokhar’s case. One wonders if the authorities recognize how blatantly fascistic the idea of a public safety exception to a supposedly fundamental constitutional right sounds? When asked about why the government simply wouldn’t read Dzhokhar his rights, one legal reporter from National Public Radio, in an increasingly common expression of Orwellian Kafkaism, flippantly remarked that, “They are concerned he might actually exercise them.”
Following the successful meeting we had last year, the ICC invites you to another day of discussion in London, on 22 June 2013.
The main focus of the day will be a discussion around the theme:
Capitalism is in deep trouble – why is it so hard to fight against it?
In this session, we will consider questions such as: is it accurate to say that capitalism is in terminal decline? What is really at stake in the struggle of the working class to defend itself? What are the main obstacles to the development of the struggle?
We have published a great deal about the crisis in our press but we recommend the following one to give a general overview of the situation confronting capitalism:
Regarding the problem of responding to the crisis, we think the following article, and the discussion on our internet forum that it stimulated, provide a good starting point:
/forum/5293/why-it-so-difficult-struggle-and-how-can-we-overcome-these-difficulties [926]
In the afternoon we are planning to organise a discussion around the theme:
How do we get from capitalism to communism?
What does a revolution look like? What is the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’? How can capitalist relations of production be overturned? How will the working class deal with the huge problems posed by capitalism’s destruction of the environment?
As with last year’s meeting, we hope that the presentations will be given by comrades who are not ICC members.
We think that these discussions will be of interest to comrades in or around revolutionary political organisations, to people who have been actively involved in the class struggle, and to anyone asking questions about the nature and future of present-day society – and about the feasibility of getting rid of it.
If you are interested in attending, please let us know in advance, especially if you have any accommodation, transport or other problems that might make it difficult for you to come along.
The venue is upstairs at the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. The first session will go from 11-2 and the afternoon session from 3-6. We will arrange for food at lunch time but we are also planning to go to a nearby restaurant after the meeting. The meeting is free but we will ask for contributions for the food and the room.
Contact us at [email protected] [413] or at BM Box 869, London, WC1N 3XX
Recent clashes in 2012 and 2013 over the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Tiaoyus islands (the archipelago is located roughly 200 km northeast of Taiwan, 400 km southwest of the Japanese Okinawa island, and almost 400 km east of China) have brutally brought to the fore the ambitions and tensions of the two biggest regional rivals in the Far East. Both China, the most populated country and second most important economic power in the world, and Japan, the third biggest economic power, have escalated tensions around the islands and regularly mobilise troops which have been engaged in shows of force. Taiwan has also clashed with Japan over the island. This must be of great concern not only to the population in Japan and China and the region, but the whole world.
The two big sharks as well as Taiwan claim ownership over these islands. Although the islands are mere rocks and uninhabited, their strategic position as well as possible oil and gas fields and rich fishery grounds in the area have increased the determination of these countries to claim possession of the islands.
While China claims control over these islands and clashes with Japan, this is not the only hotspot where China has run into conflict with its neighbours. During the past years, since its economic ascension, China has become increasingly vulnerable because of its high dependency on raw materials. Up to 80% of its maritime goods pass along the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Any blockage of a maritime strait in Asia would seriously disturb China. Moreover, China has increasingly tried to expand its presence beyond the coastal areas of China itself, in particular in the South-China-Sea[1]. In the face of its major rival, India, China has been trying to develop a “string of pearls”- i.e. a series of military outposts in strategically important locations. China has been supporting Iran and Syria against any possible military strike by the USA and other countries. Although the Chinese leadership wants to present the economic rise of the country as peaceful, the ruling clique has been investing heavily in its military capabilities. The USA, the only existing superpower, already perceives China as its main rival in the region and has decided to shift its military focus towards East Asia. The USA plan to position 60% of its navy in the region by 2020.
On top of this, the increasing need for raw materials, in particular energy resources, has driven China to explore and claim exploitation rights in the South China Sea. If the country has been involved in conflict over the South China Sea, and now with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, it shows that the country is not only hungry for raw materials but claims a new position in the imperialist hierarchy of the world. It no longer wants to leave the USA and its allies the dominant role but aims to be a regional power, capable of defending its interests far away from Chinese territories. Thus the conflict between China and Japan is only the tip of the iceberg of growing imperialist tensions in the Far East.
Japan in turn has been claiming ownership of the islands, renewing its pride in its imperialist history. Already at the end of the 19th century Japanese capital was directing its ambitions towards Taiwan, the islands of the East China Sea and Korea. Today the regime in Tokyo puts forward its occupation of the islands in 1894 as a justification for its claims of historic ownership. When Japan was defeated by US imperialism in 1945, the USA took control over the islands, but handed them back to Japanese control in 1972. Of course Japan does not want to leave possible energy resources to its Chinese rival. But Japan also wants to defend its position on the imperialist pecking order. The country must try to leave behind the chains of the past. After its defeat in WW2 Japan was pulled under the wing of the USA. After intensive bombing raids (nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and fire bombings of Tokyo and other cities) the US took control of the country. Japan was forced to write in its constitution that its armed forces were not allowed to intervene in conflicts abroad. But already in the Korean war of the early 1950s, in the context of the cold war, the USA had to rearm its former enemy to draw on Japanese support to fight against Russia and China. With North Korea regularly threatening to use its arsenal of weapons against Japan, the USA or South Korea, and with the increasing might of China, Japan finds itself in a contradictory situation. On the one hand it wants to loosen its dependence on the USA; on the other hand, given the many military threats from North Korea and China, the country has to remain under the US weapons shield. Since 1989 the country has made small steps towards expanding its presence. The Japanese army gained first experience of “out-of-area-operations” in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, providing logistic support to the US-led war coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Japan has participated in military manoeuvres with India and Vietnam in the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. Recently Japan succeeded in establishing its first military basis in Djiibuti. Its military can count on the most modern weapons. And the modernisation and expansion of the Chinese army has made Tokyo more determined to invest more money into its armed forces. However, Japan is not only at odds with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: Japan is also quarrelling with South-Korea over the small Dokdo/Takeshima island, which Japan snatched from South Korea in 1905. Japan fears military provocations by North Korea and would perceive a possible unification of the divided Korea as a further threat to its position. However, the ascent of Chinese imperialism is perceived by Japan as the biggest danger. Historically Japan and China have been the two main imperialist rivals in the region. With Japan having occupied large parts of China for years and waging a terrible war with many massacres of the Chinese population, the Chinese ruling class constantly uses chauvinist feelings of revenge against Nippon. In turn, the new Japanese Abe government has announced a more aggressive stance against China.
Any escalation of tensions between Japan and China will pour oil on the conflict between the USA and China and contribute to sharpening tensions in other zones of conflict where the USA and China and their allies clash. The rivalries between the two biggest Asian competitors are full of consequences for the entire planet!
On several occasions, in particular in autumn 2012, there were protests in several Chinese cities against Japanese military presence around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands with demonstrators burning Japanese shops or attacking Japanese owned factories. These protests are obviously welcomed by the Chinese State and probably directly organised by it. Like any other regime, the government in Beijing is most eager to sidetrack from burning social issues – growing economic problems, pollution, anger about the corrupt ruling clique etc. As even official Chinese institutions have to admit the number of “mass incidents” has been growing steadily over the past few years. The Chinese government wants these protests to be pulled onto a nationalist, patriotic terrain. The clashes with Japan can easily be used as a tool to try to rally the population behind the Chinese state. And the Chinese state has been hammering a sophisticated chauvinist propaganda into the heads of the young generation for years. Likewise, the Japanese government, which has been struggling against the ongoing descent into economic depression for years and is also faced with the disaster of Fukushima and the effects of the Tsunami, also wants the population to run into the nationalist trap and gang up behind the state. But while the ruling cliques certainly manipulate these protests as best they can, it would be dangerous to reduce these clashes to a mere nationalist trick to divert from economic, social or ecological issues. If the two most powerful countries of the Asia-Pacific region clash over these islands, and the USA as well as the other countries of the region are pulled into a process of alignments for or against the contenders, this reveals a sharpening of imperialist tensions in the entire Asia-Pacific region.
Because the two countries are heavily dependent on each other for their exports, and trade between the two countries has fallen considerably because of the recent clashes, one might ask: could the rulers not become “reasonable” and keep a lid on their nationalistic tendencies? But are our rulers “reasonable”? In reality, militarism is an incurable disease of the capitalist system; it is stronger than any single government. The capitalist system does not allow for a peaceful development of economic rivalries. For more than one century the whole system has been pulling humanity deeper and deeper into barbaric wars. In WW1 the main carnage took place in Europe, and Asia was still relatively spared from the battles. But in WW2 large areas of Asia became a major theatre of war where dozens of millions lost their lives. And the Korean war was one of the deadliest confrontations in the 1950s, before years of imperialist war ravaged Vietnam. Following the collapse of the Russian bloc and the weakening of US imperialism, Chinese imperialism has been able to gain weight and is determined to challenge the imperialist constellation in Asia. All its regional rivals (Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, India etc.) want to prevent a further strengthening of China and look for US military support. The recent confrontation between China and Japan is just one in a series of increased tensions in the entire region.
Should we follow the nationalist orientation of our governments and be ready to massacre each other? No, nationalism, chauvinism, patriotism have been the gravediggers of the proletariat. The problems humanity is facing – an insurmountable economic crisis, permanent war drive, xenophobia, pauperisation of the working class, ecological destruction of the planet – cannot be solved by nationalism. If we run into the nationalist trap, the whole of humanity will be annihilated. In the 20th century alone, some 200 million people have been killed in endless wars. We can only overcome this barbarism and the dead-end that this society drives us into by overcoming this mode of production.
This is the message which the working class, the young generations in particular, have to send to the social movements in other countries. In Japan there have been a number of protests against the effects of Fukushima, and there is growing anger about the effects of the economic crisis.[2] In China there have been a series of workers strikes against their incredible exploitation, and against the horrible ecological pollution[3]. And in so many other countries – we can just mention the Arab Spring, Spain, the USA, Greece, Bangladesh etc. – where the working class population has been suffering from the effects of mass unemployment, pauperisation and the increased pressure at work, the solution is not nationalism, ganging up behind the state, but class confrontation. We cannot overcome the crisis and barbarism if we burn shops and production sites which belong to a “foreign competitor”, call for the boycott of the commodities of the foreign rival or sanctions against them. We need to unite on a working class terrain, the terrain of class against class, and not nation against nation. Our slogan remains: workers have no fatherland!
It was this standpoint which allowed the working class to bring the carnage of the First World War to an end. Revolutionaries around Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and others defended an internationalist position – calling for the unification of all the workers across national boundaries. It was this firm internationalist stance which served as an inspiration to the workers in the factories and fronts, finally encouraging them to end WW1 through revolutionary uprisings. In the war between Japan and China in 1937 the internationalists of the small Left Communist group Bilan defended the same position: “On both sides of the fronts there is a rapacious, dominant bourgeoisie, which only aims at massacring workers. On both sides of the fronts there are workers led to the slaughter. It is wrong, absolutely wrong to believe that there is a bourgeoisie which the Chinese workers could – even temporarily – side with to 'struggle together even for only a short time', with the idea that first Japanese imperialism must be defeated in order to allow the Chinese workers to struggle victoriously for the revolution. Everywhere imperialism sets the pace, and China is only the puppet of the other imperialisms. To find their way to revolutionary battles, the Chinese and Japanese workers must return to the class struggle which will lead to their unification. Their fraternisation should cement their simultaneous assault against their own exploiters (…).” (journal of the Italian Left, Bilan, n°44, October 1937, p1415)
We must take up this internationalist tradition and break out of the nationalist prison. Today, conditions exist for workers to take up contact, to establish links amongst internationalists, to defend a common internationalist position everywhere. Even if our rulers use all means – censorship, control of the internet, repression, closing off borders etc., - we must work towards the unification of the working class.
While the rulers in China and Japan want the young generation in particular to swallow the nationalist pill, we must firmly put forward our alternative – the class struggle. Such an attitude would be an important message to the workers in North and South Korea, where the rulers threaten each other every day and whip up the same war propaganda, and to the working class of the whole world.
The ICC (February, 2013)
See our pamphlet Imperialism in the Far East, past and present [912]
[3]For example in January/February 2013, when record levels of pollution in Beijing posed a threat to the health of millions of people in the Chinese capital, and a short time later the smog was driven to Japan where similar record levels of pollution were measured, the governments of the two countries were engaged in military adventures over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands instead of protecting the health of their population.
In early August 2012, an international anarchist meeting was held in the commune of St Imier (Swiss Jura). One of the speakers was the spokesperson of Fekar[1]. The initiative to let this person speak at the meeting was taken by the Swiss group of the Forum of German-speaking Anarchists, which aims to bring together Turkish/Kurdish anarchists in a single federation.
According to the speaker, the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party, a party with Stalinist origins, in Kurdish: Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan) “concluded, in the late ‘eighties, that even if the Kurds did not yet have their own state, they already presented problems with authority in their own movement that correspond to those within a state. The PKK has therefore moved far from a ‘proletarian orientation’ and from a model of an independent national state with its own government, and therefore from an authoritarian state form. It is now a model for forms of ‘communal’ social life iin which the freedom of women, but also of ‘transsexuals’ and basically every individual is paramount, in which there is respect for differences and where the aim is to achieve a good ecological balance in nature.” It is this which is reproduced synthetically in the report of one of the participants[2]. Jan Bervoets, a member of the editorial board of the Netherlands anarchist journal Buiten de Orde (Out of Order), expressed his reservations about the Fekar spokesperson’s statement. He questioned whether "Őcalan has been illuminated, or if it is rather the adage 'when the fox preaches passion, farmer, watch the geese' that applies here”. But at the same time, he suggested that it is not entirely impossible that the PKK is actually developing in the direction of an organisation with anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles, in which the individual is paramount: “Have we all witnessed a historic moment, or an illusionist trick? History itself will tell.” Despite the reservations expressed here, this is once again the height of political naivety which so often characterises anarchism. The desire among anarchists to see in some way expressions of anarchist principles is so great, that a mere ghostly outline of anarchist principles (anti-authoritarian, communitarian, federalist, the primacy of the individual) is sufficient to create an atmosphere of jubilation among many (ibid.). On the occasion of this discussion in the anarchist milieu, a participant in the 'summer day' of the ICC in Belgium asked us: what is the position of the ICC in relation to recent developments in the PKK? It is clear from the contribution below that the PKK, whatever the positive image drawn by the conference speaker, still has nothing to do with the struggle for the emancipation of humanity and its liberation from the yoke of class society.[3]
The PKK was founded on 27 November 1978 in the village of Fis (Diyarbakir) by Abdullah Öcalan, Mazlum Dogan and 21 disciples. His goal was to put an end to Turkish 'colonialism' in Turkish Kurdistan and the realisation of an independent and united Kurdish state.[4] Since its inception, Öcalan (Apo) has been the undisputed leader of the PKK.
At the ideological level, the PKK was inspired by Stalinism (what the guest speaker at St Imier calls “a proletarian orientation”). Arguing for reconciliation between the so-called socialist countries, mainly Russia and China, while being materially much more tied to Russian interests, they were closer to the position of the North Korean and Cuban Stalinist than any of the others. On the one hand, power could be conquered through a popular guerrilla army; on the other, allies should be sought on the imperialist chessboard of the Eastern bloc against the Western bloc as well as among the Kurdish landowners against their Kurdish rivals. To achieve this goal, the PKK declared itself willing to use any means, however terrible certain acts may be. It launched an armed struggle with numerous attacks, including against other Kurdish political fractions. Some insist, however, that the PKK has given Turkish Kurds their self-esteem and made them aware of their Kurdish identity. For its part, Turkey, where most Kurds in the region live, has always been opposed to any form of autonomy and has practiced the policy of assimilation as well as more open forms of repression such as police violence, torture, forced immigration and open massacres. The strategic importance of the region, much more than its economic importance, has been crucial here. The Kurds were officially called 'mountain Turks' and their language was considered a Turkish dialect. They were kept in poverty and had to stay in line.
On 15 August 1984, the PKK attacked police stations in the villages of Eruh (Siirt) and Şemdinli (Hakkari), actions in which two Turkish officers were killed. This was the beginning of a whole series of paramilitary actions. As a counter-measure, the Turkish authorities decided to recruit thousands of Kurds who, in exchange for money and weapons, were stationed as village guards against the PKK.
The PKK was initially ruthless towards the village guards, and towards all Kurds who showed any sympathy with the Turkish central authority, in addition to their attacks against certain landowners. So the PKK lost the sympathy of a part of the Kurdish population. Relations were generally quite intense with other Kurdish fractions as well, such as that of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. The population of Kurdistan was thus squeezed by PKK guerrillas on the one hand and the Turkish army on the other. The nationalist party, organised on a Stalinist basis, was also supported strategically in this conflict by other imperialist forces in the region, who used it as leverage against Turkey.
Just like other bourgeois parties of the left, the PKK presented itself as the defender of 'socialism'. Through the armed struggle against the cruel Turkish government at the time, the PKK could attract some of the workers and poor masses who were desperate or had illusions, to drag them into a nationalist and imperialist struggle. In March 1990, at Kurdish New Year, funerals of PKK members killed in the struggle resulted in massive demonstrations. But after the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 and the disintegration of its Western bloc rival, the pieces on the imperialist chessboard were shaken up and the PKK lost some of its former allies. The Gulf War in 1991 in Iraq opened the door to a 'new world (dis)order’, in which Kurdish nationalism was used for the umpteenth time as bait to recruit cannon fodder. In the growing chaos, with the development of 'every man for himself', where all the imperialist powers, large and small, want to increase their influence in the Middle East, whose importance is strategic as much as economic, the PKK continues to play on the imperialist contradictions in the region, having received support from governments such as those of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Greece and other imperialist countries, including Russia.
To survive, the PKK had to change its tune; it could no longer present itself as a purely Stalinist formation. And while, in the early 90s, some three thousand PKK guerrillas had captured de facto power in parts of Turkish Kurdistan, at the same time Öcalan sought other political opportunities to be able to maintain it. From then, military confrontations have alternated with periods of cease-fire and negotiations. A first round occurred in the early 90s, when the Turkish President Turgut Ozal agreed to negotiations. Apart from Özal, himself half-Kurdish, few Turkish politicians were interested, nor was more than a part of the PKK itself, and after the president’s death on 17 April 1993, in suspicious circumstances, the hope of reconciliation evaporated. In June 1993, Öcalan called again for 'total war'. Other episodes followed in 1995 and 1998 ending each time in failure. When the armed struggle took a more and more intense form, Turkey forced Syria to expel Öcalan. He ran away, but was eventually arrested by Turkish agents on 15 February 1999. He was sentenced to death for treason but this was commuted to life imprisonment under pressure from the European Union. Turkey had in fact applied for accession to the EU and had to promise to improve the situation of Kurds at the level of humanitarian rights. Since then, Öcalan has tried to lead his party from prison, through his lawyers. From August 1999, PKK guerrillas withdrew from the region and a series of initiatives was taken to develop the so-called ‘process of peace and democracy'.
The strategy to conquer their place within the dominant bourgeoisie had to be changed, and after much (bloody) struggle between fractions within the movement, the card of autonomy and federalism was played to get out of the political impasse. The eighth party congress of the PKK approved on 16 April 2002 the so-called 'democratic' transformation. Hence, the party would seek 'liberation' through political rights for Kurds in Turkey and renounce violence, even though the current leader of the PKK, Murat Karayilan, still declared in 2007 that an independent state remains the principal objective of the organisation. At this congress, the PKK transformed itself and a new political branch was created, even if this was a purely tactical act: it was baptised the Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK). The PKK reported at the time that it would continue the fight with democratic means alone. A spokesman for the PKK/KADEK said, however, that it would not dissolve its armed wing, the People's Defence Forces (HPG) or surrender its weapons, for reasons of 'self-defence'. The organisation wanted to maintain its ability to conduct military operations in order to establish itself as a full partner in the negotiations. In April, KADEK elected a governing council, but the members were almost identical to those of the presidential council of the PKK. On November 15 2003, KADEK was in turn transformed into a more 'moderate' fraction, the People's Congress of Kurdistan (KONGRA-GEL), in an attempt to make it more acceptable at the negotiating table and for a parliamentary mandate. Eventually, the name PKK reappeared as the 'ideological guiding light' of the general movement, which took the form of KCK, the Confederation of Kurdish Communities (Koma Civakên Kurdistan). Being the proto-state of the Kurdish nationalist movement, technically speaking, this formation serves as the umbrella body for every organ of the movement, such as the politico-parliamentary formation Kongra-Gel (Congress of the People), the PKK as its ruling party, the military wing HPG (People's Defence Forces, Hezen Parastina Gel); The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iranian Kurdistan, the Party for a Democratic Solution to Kurdistan (PÇDK) in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan, in addition to all sorts of other bodies and organisations which perform various functions of a state.
Negotiations with the Turkish government did not have the expected results, and in June 2004 Öcalan made a call through his lawyers to take up arms again; but to maintain the democratic image he hastened to add that this was not a declaration of war but of 'self-defence'. Between 2004 and 2009, the PKK carried out regular attacks and the Turkish army repeatedly attacked PKK fighters in northern Iraq. Thus, both sides kept up the pressure.
Since 1990, the Kurdish nationalists had been trying legal means to participate in Turkish parliamentary politics, a process in which six Kurdish legal political parties, nominally independent while maintaining ties with the PKK, were formed and banned one after another. A highlight of this process was the electoral alliance of the first of these parties, the Popular Labor Party (HEP) with the left-Kemalist Social Democratic People's Party (SHP) and the arrest of the deputies from the former Popular Labor Party (they had to join a back-up Kurdish nationalist party called the Democratic Party – DEP – by then, since the original party had been banned). In 1999, the Kurdish nationalists participated for the first time in the municipal elections with their own party and won a large majority in Turkish Kurdistan and they've been maintaining this status in the region ever since. In 2005, the Kurdish nationalists re-launched their efforts to obtain a place in the Turkish parliament by legal means. To this end, a large and nominally renewed pro-Kurdish party called the Democratic Society Party (DTP) was founded to replace the recently banned party of the same affiliation, the Democratic Popular Party (DEHAP). This party, affiliated to the PKK like all the others before it, managed to send several deputies to parliament, elected as independents due to the unusually high election threshold of 10% in Turkey, installed by the junta following the 1980 coup d'etat to prevent the entry of any undesirable elements into the parliament. This party too was in turn banned by the Turkish authorities because of its close links with the PKK and was replaced in 2009 by the Party for Peace and Democracy (BDP) (in Turkish: Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, in Kurdish: Partiya Aştî û Demokrasiyê), itself created somewhat before the DTP was banned, just in case. This is now officially recognised as a social democratic party by the Socialist International as DTP was before. 36 delegates supported by them have sat since the last election, elected as independents again in the Turkish parliament. Many prisoners arrested due to the KCK operations are members of this party as well.
To cut the feet from under the PKK, in July 2009 the Turkish government began a new counter-offensive, this time presented as 'democratic': the Kurdish Reform Plan. The Kurds would get their own public broadcasting, new rights such as the right to take Kurdish lessons, Kurdish political parties would participate in trips abroad. As a recent example, we can mention the attempt to win the sympathy of the Kurdish masses by charitable distributions of food, fridges, ovens etc.
The PKK leader, Öcalan, responded from his prison cell with a new version of his 'Road Map to Peace' in 2003 (the publication of which is not authorised by the Turkish authorities)[5]. The PKK announced that it would abandon the armed struggle and send ‘peace brigades’ across the border to support the 'democratic' solution of the conflict that the Turkish government had begun. The first brigade, composed of 8 PKK fighters and 26 Turkish Kurdish citizens who had fled to Iraq in the 90s, crossed the border from Iraq on 19 October and were met with Kurdish flags by thousands of Turkish Kurds.
Now, both sides hide their true intentions. Their capitalist, nationalist and imperialist interests are disguised by a pacifist and democratic discourse that fits better in the new world view. Both sides also seek to introduce religious motives and thus respond to emerging political Islamism.
But it is in the context of the many tensions in the Middle East and the ravages of the global economic crisis that we need to understand the efforts of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie, who use the 'freedom' of the Kurds as a negotiating card.
While the strategy of the AKP (Party of Justice and Development) government remained basically the same as that of previous governments, its tactics were markedly different. Representatives of the Kurdish movement in Turkish politics were full of intrigues and false gestures, while in the background lay the three years of negotiations with representatives of the PKK in Europe in the Norwegian capital Oslo, while the government continued its repression. Thousands were arrested during this process in the action against the KCK, hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas were killed as they retreated during the 'cease-fire', demonstrations were severely repressed with many injured and dead, social repression was encouraged in Turkish cities against the Kurds who lived there, with attempted lynching as a result.
The nationalists of the PKK responded to the tactics of the AKP government with their plan for democratic autonomy for the region. At the fourth DTK congress[6] in August 2010 in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Kurdistan, the co-president Ahmet Turk presented a project for a free and autonomous Kurdistan through the creation and definition of autonomy at the juridical level within the Turkish Constitution. No separatism therefore. With regard to the historical question of the use of the Kurdish language, it would be taught to all age groups, from primary school to university locally and in all Kurdish cities. In a free and autonomous Kurdistan, Kurdish would be the official language, alongside Turkish and local dialects. The economic exploitation of resources in the Kurdish regions would be in the hands of the Kurdish leaders of free and autonomous Kurdistan. There would also be representatives of free and autonomous Kurdistan in the Turkish parliament to discuss issues of equal rights and related discussions. Finally, the free and autonomous Kurdistan would have a flag that differed from the flag of the Turkish Republic, namely a Kurdish flag with its own logos and symbols based on the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan. The debate evolved in the direction of a confederation of the different Kurdish regions in the area. According to the convention, the people and the Kurdish regions in countries such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran undoubtedly belonged to the fabric of Kurdistan.
“The model of democratic self-government is the most reasonable solution, because it corresponds to the history and political circumstances in which Turkey finds itself. In fact, the Kurds enjoyed an autonomous status within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Hence this proposal is not based on separatism. Instead, our people will determine their reciprocal relationship based on free will and voluntary union in a common homeland. The model does not envisage the abolition of the state, nor a change of borders. Democratic Turkey and democratic autonomous Kurdistan are a concrete formula for our peoples to govern themselves with their own culture and identity and their right to live freely." (PKK Press Statement 13-08-2010)[7]
But faced with continuing repression, it was trumped again, and on 14 July 2011 the 5th Kurdish DTK congress approved a declaration in which it audaciously and unilaterally declared ‘democratic autonomy’ for the Kurds in Turkey, and called for this to be recognised internationally. Pressure from Ankara was intensified and on July 24 the DTK unilaterally announced elections in 43 provinces. The mayor of Diyarbakir saw these elections as an important step towards autonomy. Bengi Yildiz, parliamentary deputy and delegate of the BDP in the DTK, declared that the autonomous region would no longer pay taxes to Ankara.
The recent Sixth DTK Congress, on 15 and 16 September 2012 in Diyarbakir, was held under the slogan “democratic autonomy towards national unity". The main task was to strengthen the bases of the PKK against the Turkish authorities' attempts to isolate and weaken it. The DTK was to become the parliament of all those who live in Kurdistan, Kurds or not Kurds. The situation in Syria was also an important point on the agenda. It should indeed not be forgotten that the PKK is part of the Confederation of Kurdish Communities (KCK) with four major military sister organisations in the region: the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iranian Kurdistan, the Party for a Democratic Solution in Iraqi Kurdistan (PÇDK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan, which had taken control of this region with the tacit approval of Assad.[8]
Neither the ten principles of the PKK roadmap in 2003 or 2009, nor the declaration of the PKK in 2010, nor the practice of 'free and autonomous' Kurdistan up to the present, prove that “the PKK is actually developing in the direction of an organisation with anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles where the individual is paramount.” No illusions, comrades, the strategy of the Kurdish bourgeoisie, of the PKK which is a major representative, consists of integrating into the Turkish state to govern Turkish Kurdistan as a local apparatus of the Turkish state. This strategy has forced it to follow blow by blow the many dirty manoeuvres of its rival, as the only way to be able to stay at the negotiating table. The peace negotiations that the AKP government will begin directly with Öcalan in January 2013 are only a logical step in this process, which does not prevent military clashes between the two parties continuing.
In fact, “The PKK, although it hasn't succeeded in becoming an actual state, is acting as the main apparatus of the nationalist Kurdish bourgeoisie in Turkey; it attempts to realise its interests in its area of activity as if it is an actual state and it is bound to rely on the direct or indirect support of this or that imperialist state, the interests of which rival those of Turkish imperialism at this or that point. As such, although its forces are weaker compared to those of the imperialist Turkish state and its interests narrower, the PKK is as much a part of world imperialism as the Turkish state.” (Paragraph 1 of the resolution adopted by our section in Turkey about developments in Kurdistan, in February 2012, cf. Footnote 3)
The Kurdish bourgeoisie wants to survive and increase its power and influence, and to do this capital must be attracted to the region. On this basis, the Kurdish bourgeoisie and the Turkish bourgeoisie have mutual interests. This also includes the transformation of Turkey into a paradise for cheap labour. Needless to say a good part of this will consist of Kurdish workers. They are already working for very low wages in many sectors. The implementation of this policy is already in full preparation in Kurdistan with the new regional policy of minimal wages. The two bourgeoisies have an interest in the normalisation of the situation to ensure stability, in particular not to endanger the important strategic-economic Nabucco project[9]. But the game to advance their interests between them is played very hard, in the image of ruthless capitalism.
The PKK says that within the organization men and women are treated equally and that women adhere to the PKK on a voluntary basis. The question is to know whether this is a desirable principle, inherited from its ‘proletarian orientation', or a deceptive illusion.
Numerous accounts mention that many women members of the PKK were fleeing oppression by the family, especially the risk of forced marriage and honor killings in the traditional Kurdish territories and in Turkish society. But contrary to what our speaker from Fekar stated, these women were also victims of male violence in PKK camps and by none other than the great leader himself.
The source of such information is not the propagandists of the Turkish state but several founding members of the PKK itself who left the organization in disgust over the years. Mehmet Cahit Sener, one of the founders of the PKK who led an early and short-lived split called PKK – Vejin[10] wrote in 1991, a year before being killed on a joint operation of the Syrian intelligence and the PKK[11]: “Apo has forced dozens of our female comrades to immoral relations with him, defiled most and declared the ones who insisted on refusing to be people 'who haven't understood the party, who haven't understood us' and has heavily repressed them, and even order the murder of some claiming they are agents. Some of our female comrades who are in this situation are still under arrest and under torture, being forced to make confessions appropriate to the scenarios that they are agents (…) The relations between men and women within the party have turned into a harem in Apo's palace and many female comrades were treated as concubines by this individual.”[12]
Another founding leader of the PKK, Selim Curukkaya, who did actually manage to escape from Apo's grasp to Europe a few years later, wrote in his memoirs of countless incidents supporting Sener's general statements, further elaborating the repressive measures towards women in particular and in regards to the relations between men and women in general. According to Curukkaya's memoirs sexual relations were banned for the entire membership, and those caught were severely punished – tortured, imprisoned and even declared traitors in some cases which led to their executions – male and female alike. One striking example in Curukkaya's memoirs was the imprisonment of a couple of young guerrillas for no reason other than practicing ‘adultery of the eye’, in other words looking at each other. In contrast, the great leader of the PKK had the right to any women in the organization, and the rest of the leadership were rewarded if they proved obedient and useful[13]. Other founding leaders who have left since have admitted that these testimonies were indeed correct.
Not that Ocalan himself hasn't been as open as he could've been in his own speeches, texts, books, declarations and so on and so forth over the years. In a book written by him in 1992 titled Cozumleme, Talimat ve Perspektifler (Analyses, Orders and Perspectives), he stated: “These girls mentioned. I don't know, I have relations with thousands of them. I don't care how anyone understands it. If I've gotten close with some of them, how should this have been? (…) On these subjects, they leave aside all the real measurements and find someone and gossip, say 'this was attempted to be done to me here' or 'this was done to me there'! These shameless women both want to give too much and then develop such things. Some of the people mentioned. Good grace! They say 'we need it so, it would be very good' and then this gossip is developed (…) I'm saying it openly again. This is the sort of warrior I am. I love girls a lot, I value them a lot. I love all of them. I try to turn every girl into a lover, in an unbelievable level, to the point of passion. I try to shape them from their physique to their soul, to their thoughts. I see it in myself to fulfill this task. I define myself openly. If you find me dangerous, don't get close!” [14]
In a pamphlet he wrote more recently, Ocalan called Toplumsal Cinsiyetciligin Ozgurlestirilmesi (The Liberation of Social Sexism), he says: “In the ranks of the PKK, a true love is possible by a heroism proving itself with success. And what can we call the many female-male runaways? Frankly, we can call them the lapsed Kurdish identity proving itself (…) Besides myself and our martyred comrades have heroically been workers for the road to love. If those who supposedly fell like experiencing love haven't understood the value of such efforts, they are either blind, or evil, or scum or traitors. What else can be expected of us for love? You won't run to any successes in your revolutionary duties, and then you'll say you feel like having a relationship! It is clear that this is a shameless approach (…) Even birds make their nests in places untouched by foreigners. Can love build homes in lands and hearts occupied till the throat? Any force you'll take shelter in will do who knows what to the lovers. My experience has showed this: Living with a woman of the order isn't possible without betraying revolutionary duties.”[15]
The talk of freedom of women advocated by the PKK today is rather a cruel irony.
This text aims to expose the hypocrisy and bourgeois practice of the nationalist PKK. And it is illusory to think that such an organization, which since its foundation has simply posed strategic and tactical questions in order to conquer its place among other nation-states, and which to gain this place has used a ruthless terror towards everyone (including against the Kurds themselves in their own country and in neighboring countries), could be transformed into an internationalist organization.
In the current era of capitalism, all ethnic movements fighting for self-determination or national liberation, are reactionary movements. Participation in or support for such movements amounts to approving the actions and goals of capitalism, sometimes in open collaboration with different imperialist forces, if not in a disguised way. As Rosa Luxemburg said clearly in the early 20th century, the idea of an abstract 'right' to national self-determination has nothing to do with marxism, because it obscures the fact that each nation is divided into antagonistic social classes. If the formation of some independent nation states could be supported by the labor movement at a time when capitalism still had a progressive role to play, this period ended definitively - as Luxemburg also showed - with the First World War. The working class today has no more 'democratic' or 'national' tasks to complete. Its only future lies in the international class struggle, not only against existing national states, but for their revolutionary destruction.
“In a world divided up by the imperialist blocs every ‘national liberation’ struggle, far from representing something progressive, can only be a moment in the continuous conflict between rival imperialist blocs in which the workers and peasants, whether voluntarily or forcibly enlisted, only participate as cannon fodder.”(Platform of the ICC, ‘The counter-revolutionary myth of national liberation’)
“This point reached as a result of all these reforms and negotiations has demonstrated once again that only war can come of the bourgeoisie's peace, that the solution of the Kurdish question can't be the result of any compromise with the Turkish imperialist state, and that the PKK is in no way a structure even remotely capable of offering any sort of solution whatsoever. The Kurdish question can't be solved in Turkey alone. The Kurdish question can't be solved with a war between nations. The Kurdish question can't be solved with democracy. The only solution of this question lies in the united struggle of the Kurdish and Turkish workers with the workers of the Middle East and the whole world. The only solution of the Kurdish question is the internationalist solution. Only the working class can raise the banner of internationalism against the barbarism of nationalist war by refusing to die for the bourgeoisie."(Paragraph 8 of the resolution adopted by our section in Turkey about developments in Kurdistan in February 2012 - see note 3)
Rosa / Felix / Lake - 03-01-2013
[2] https://www.solidariteit.nl/extra/2012/een_blik_in_de_toekomst.html [934] in https://www.vrijebond.nl/internationale-anarchistische-bijeenkomst-st-imier-2012-enkele-verslagen/ [935]
[3]See also the resolution of the ICC section in Turkey adopted at its last conference about developments in Kurdistan: “Internationalism is the only solution to the Kurdish question!”. FFor other sources for this article see also:
- Le Monde Diplomatique, November 1, 2007
- https://www.lenziran.com/2011/08/pkk-leader-murat-karayilan-exclusive-interview-with-bbc-persian-tv/ [936]
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10707935 [937]
- www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=dtk-declares-democra... [938]
www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=79FFF831021... [939]
- https://www.urmiyenews.com/2011/01/blog-post_03.html [940]
- https://nos.nl/artikel/447331-pkk-rekruteert-ook-in-nederland.html [941]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgMkrtDV9Kg [942]
- and the site of HPG https://nos.nl/artikel/447331-pkk-rekruteert-ook-in-nederland.html [941]
[4] In recent centuries, the historical descendants of the Kurdish people were scattered in various states in the region: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Many of them have migrated to dozens of countries around the world.
[5] The Road Map to Peace is a document which makes detailed proposals on the different aspects of the new state to be created:
www.fekar.ch/index.php/en/english/88-abdullah-ocalans-three-phases-road-map [943]
[6] To complete the tangle of organisations, clandestine, semi-legal, legal and umbrella, related to or under the direct control of the nationalist ideologues of the PKK, it must also be noted that the DTK (Democratic People's Congress, Turkish DemokratikToplumKongresi), a pro-Kurdish umbrella organisation with about 850 delegates from political, religious, cultural, social and NGOs, plays an important role in the activities of the PKK.
[8] The Syrian wing of the party, through an unofficial agreement with the government of Bashar Assad, recently gained control of four cities in northern Syria (pictures of Öcalan and Bashar Assad have been hung in various locations), while other fractions of Kurds in Syria are well-intentioned towards the opposition. The 'independent' Iraqi Kurds of Barzani have also tried to break the power of the PKK-PYD. “At the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the PKK advised its Syrian ally, the Kurdish PYD Party, to ensure that the rights of Kurds were extended if possible under a new government. Now, however, it seems that the Assad government, which finds itself stuck, has withdrawn its troops from Kurdish areas. ‘Since then the PYD controls the region and guarantees a minimum public order'. Simultaneously, the PKK sent 1500 fighters from northern Iraq into the Kurdish region in Syria.”(https://ejbron.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/koerden-starten-groot-offensief-in-syrie-en-turkije/ [945])
“The PYD however uses a double language. The party owes its current authority to Bashar al-Assad, who ceded military positions to PYD fighters. It is generally accepted that Assad decided to cooperate because of the common enemy, Turkey. He could be sure that the PYD would defend the Turkish border, and thus also send a signal to Ankara not to venture into an intervention in Syria. The most important thing was that cooperation gave him the opportunity to focus militarily on the most important cities. (...) The rise to power of the sister of the PKK in Syria, the PYD, is followed with suspicion, both in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Ankara fears that Syrian Kurdistan could become the springboard for the PKK, which currently operates mainly from Iraqi Kurdistan, and has threatened a military intervention. The Iraqi-Kurdish president Barzani has ensured that the PYD was forced to cooperate with other Kurdish parties, including the military training of young Syrian Kurds in Iraq. To keep up the pressure, some six hundred of them were then confined to the border river between the two Kurdish regions, and Iraqi-Kurdish MPs have already suggested that the peshmergas, the Iraqi-Kurdish army, could intervene in Syria if necessary. To counter the power of the PYD, Barzani held a meeting between the Kurdish blocs and the Syrian opposition organised by Turkey. The meeting aimed to unify the Syrian opposition into a single front for the future of Syria.” www.trouw.nl/nieuws/vrijheid-verdeelt-syrische-koerden~bf288791 [946]
Concerning Syria see also: blogs.mediapart.fr/maxime-azadi/blog/190712/syrie-les-kurdes-ont-pris-le-controle-d-une-ville [947]
This shows once again how such nationalist movements are not only the victim of imperialist powers, as the left would often have us believe, but also play an active part in this game.
[10] Short lived not due to political reasons, but because the PKK murdered almost all of their leading members
[11] Hundreds of PKK members are said to have celebrated the "traitor's" death, firing guns in the air upon learning that he was murdered
We are publishing a contribution to the discussion about the development of class consciousness by comrade mhou who regularly contributes to our internet forum. We agree with its approach but welcome further contributions, either as articles or on the forum. The comrade also has a blog where he further develops his ideas: occupythecpusa.com.
"At all times the economic and social relationships in capitalist society are unbearable for the proletarians, who consequently are driven to try to overcome them. Through complex developments the victims of these relationships are brought to realize that, in their instinctive struggle against sufferings and hardships which are common to a multitude of people, individual resources are not enough. Hence they are led to experiment with collective forms of action in order to increase, through their association, the extent of their influence on the social conditions imposed upon them. But the succession of these experiences all along the path of the development of the present capitalist social form leads to the inevitable conclusion that the workers will achieve no real influence on their own destinies until they have united their efforts beyond the limits of local, national and trade interests and until they have concentrated these efforts on a far-reaching and integral objective which is realized in the overthrow of bourgeois political power. This is so because as long as the present political apparatus remains in force, its function will be to annihilate all the efforts of the proletarian class to escape from capitalist exploitation.
The first groups of proletarians to attain this consciousness are those who take part in the movements of their class comrades and who, through a critical analysis of their efforts, of the results which follow, and of their mistakes and disillusions, bring an ever-growing number of proletarians onto the field of the common and final struggle which is a struggle for power, a political struggle, a revolutionary struggle." - Amadeo Bordiga, Party and Class Action, 1921
A number of views have been put forward in recent discussions about consciousness in the ICC’s internet discussion forum1. From the common starting point of the necessity of communism, of the proletariat's agency, it was agreed that there is such a thing as class consciousness, and that this consciousness is necessary for the transformation of existing social relations and the capitalist mode of production. One aspect of the theory of class consciousness which brought a lot of disagreement in the course of discussions on the ICC's forum was the theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. This theory was developed by the ICC in the wake of the mass strikes in Poland in 1980-1981. The crux of the theory is that the working class develops class consciousness in its struggles with capital, and that the collective experience and memories of these struggles inform the thoughts and actions of workers in their future struggles. With this theory, it is possible to analyze and understand the appearance of seemingly spontaneous yet advanced and militant forms of struggle containing class conscious content. The example of the time it was developed was the appearance of the mass strike in Poland, which shook the geopolitical world, the opposing imperialist blocs, and the international working class at the time. Polish workers developed a system of revocable worker-delegates, workplace committees, and inter-profession assemblies, encompassing workers from a variety of industries and geographic locations into one unified struggle. To understand this phenomenon, the history of the Polish working class in the years leading up to the outbreak of advanced forms and content of struggle were analyzed; the forms and content of struggles in 1956, 1970 and 1976 were viewed as stepping-stones or building blocks for the upheaval of 1980. French and English workers in similar industries (such as steel, on the docks, rail) had also been engaging in similarly militant and advanced struggles throughout the 1970's, informing the thoughts and actions of the workers in Poland- giving the struggles of the proletariat an international dimension (and the communist minority a reference point for being in advance of generalized international struggle). The emergence of pro-revolutionary minorities is another facet of the subterranean maturation of consciousness.
"The misery of the miners, with its eruptive soil which even in ‘normal’ times is a storm centre of the greatest violence, must immediately explode, in a violent economic socialist struggle, with every great political mass action of the working class, with every violent sudden jerk which disturbs the momentary equilibrium of everyday social life." - Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, 1906
In the accelerating centralization and globalization of capital since the late 1960's, the echoes of forms and content of struggles appears to be informing workers all over the world at a faster rate than ever before- such as the outburst of struggle in Northern Africa during the Arab Spring, where workers struck and swarmed the public squares in constant protest. This form of struggle was picked up by American workers in Wisconsin when teaching assistants occupied the capital building and inter-profession crowds of public sector workers occupied the public square around the capital building in constant protest- in short order, signs began showing up in Tahrir Square with slogans like, "Solidarity with Wisconsin Workers". In this instance, the history of struggle informed future praxis, which also informed the thoughts and actions of workers internationally, while also being recognized by the initiators of the forms and content of struggle in that period. All of which is indicative of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. Leading up to the Arab Spring, the most advanced section of the Egyptian proletariat had been the public sector textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla. Their cycle of struggles began in 2006 during the anti-Dutch cartoon Islamist protests, with reactionary strikes based on religious dogma and sectarian rage. However, from this ideological and reactionary starting point, the textile workers of Mahalla began combining in struggle across public and private sector divisions, winning demands repeatedly as the state thought the textile workers could be appeased with mild reform and increased wages.
"Faisal Naousha, one of the leaders of the walkout at Misr Spinning and Weaving, said the factory was running again after the strikers’ main demands were met.
Around 15,000 workers from the plant which employs 24,000 people in the Nile Delta city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Cairo went on strike last week.
‘We ended the strike, the factory is working. Our demands were met,’ including a 25 per cent increase in wages and the dismissal of a manager involved in corruption, Naousha said.
Misr Spinning and Weaving is the largest plant in the Egyptian textile industry, which employs 48 per cent of the nation’s total workforce, according to the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services."2
Over the course of the next 6 years, both public and private sector textile workers engaged in escalating mass strike tactics, forming workplace committees, refusing the promises of concessions from the state and disregarding the advice of union leaders (when the workers weren’t physically ejecting them from the factory):
"Al-Mahalla witnessed a successful strike in September 2007, with workers demanding a greater share of the company’s annual profits and removal of company management. The strike ended in victory, with the government succumbing to the workers’ demands after six days.
The head of the local union resigned after he was hospitalized by the strikers while trying to persuade them to disband the strike. The CEO was removed a month later." (ibid)
The public sector textile workers at Misr Spinning & Weaving led the struggle against the state, realizing that as its employer they were in direct conflict with the state (which would sporadically send security forces to clash with striking workers) rather than individual managers and executives. By 2011, the Arab Spring movement which would topple authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East (including and especially in Egypt) was incubated in Mahalla, where the textile workers acted as the advanced section of the reaction against the Mubarak regime. Yet even after the de-legitimization of the Mubarak government and the spectacle of a new ‘democratic’ state, they renewed their struggles against the state for its inability to provide promised reforms and against the bourgeois apologists of the ‘official Opposition’ parties and trade union apparatchiks telling them to give the state more time to meet their demands. In the latest round of mass action, the Mahalla workers declared their forms of self-organization (encompassing the geographic area of the city) independent of the Morsi state, while at the same time chasing political representatives of the opposition and Muslim Brotherhood out of the city and taking over the offices of the city council.
". . . thousands of protestors in the industrial city of Mahalla al-Kubra were reported to have announced the city 'independent', and planned a revolutionary council. "We no longer belong to the Ikhwani [Brotherhood] state." The protestors or insurgents seized the City Council building and blocked roads into and out of the city." 3
This escalation of struggle, development of the forms and content indicative of growing class consciousness, and learning from the events during struggles, is a perfect example of the subterranean maturation of consciousness. However, there are many communists who do not consider such phenomena to be indicative of growing class consciousness. Some argue that it is simple mysticism to theorize the existence of something that cannot be empirically observed and documented; that it relies entirely on subjective interpretation of events and actions. That if we can't measure it, it cannot be considered part of the science of Marxism ('Scientific Socialism'). While demanding verifiable proof before accepting the possibility that a theory may be valid may seem reasonable, in practice it would paralyze the creative energies and capacities of the communist minority to act in the class struggle or (more importantly) when the proletariat turns the capitalist crisis into a revolutionary crisis - the time when the historic role of the communist minority becomes necessary. The methodological tools of Marxism enable us to better understand the world around us, with a conscious understanding of history and a vision for the future. When the objective situation changes in favor of proletarian offensive, our ability to interpret events becomes paramount; without such an understanding of what is happening around us, we would be unable to understand the changes in the balance of class forces and to act in accordance with the movement of the class- in short, unable to be in advance of this movement of the class. Demanding a high threshold of hard facts before accepting any changes in the objective socio-political conditions of the classes would lead to simply tail-ending the real movement of the proletariat; the history of proletarian offensives and revolutionary attempts, even in the time of Marx and the Paris Commune, shows us that events move quickly, as do changes in the trajectory of revolutions and offensives. The actions of the ‘center’ of the Bolshevik Party of 1917 (embodied in members like Kamenev) show us what happens when sections of the communist minority hesitate and doubt the advance of the proletariat; putting forward (now outdated) theories and tactics and not up to the tasks of the hour (it is the difference between ‘The Democratic Republic’ and ‘All Power To The Soviets!’).
Our analysis of class consciousness and use of theories related to it is to advance our understanding of the real movement of the proletariat in its mission to carry out the historic task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and abolishing all classes. Either a theory can aid our understanding and allow us to be in advance of events, or it cannot. The subterranean maturation of consciousness is a useful tool, the way many psychologists believe psychoanalysis is a useful tool, for accomplishing specific ends.
"In a revolution we look first of all at the direct interference of the masses in the destinies of society. We seek to uncover behind the events changes in the collective consciousness...This can seem puzzling only to one who looks upon the insurrection of the masses as ‘spontaneous' - that is, as a herd-mutiny artificially made use of by leaders. In reality the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection, if it were, the masses would always be in revolt...The immediate causes of the events of a revolution are changes in the state of mind of the conflicting classes... Changes in the collective consciousness have naturally a semi-concealed character. Only when they have attained a certain degree of intensity do the new moods and ideas break to the surface in the form of mass activities." Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution
Utilizing the theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness allows the communist minority to clearly analyze and understand the state of the class struggle at a given time. Since the latest manifestation of the crisis of capital in late 2007, the working class response has taken similar forms internationally: of which the Arab Spring and the struggles in Mahalla are but one facet. The emergence of the General Assembly form has been seen in diverse regions of the world, applied in workplaces, in the streets, in occupied buildings and spaces, all in a specific time frame. The assembly, whether general or specific to a group of workers (of one workplace, one company, one industry), is one of the most basic forms of proletarian self-organization. Doubt has been brought up as to whether we are still living through the downward spiral of retreat and defeat for the working-class; despite the explosion of large strikes, extra-parliamentary activity, and the wave of struggles during the Arab Spring-Occupy-Indignados troika.
"If, in a single large factory, between May 16 and May 30, a general assembly had constituted itself as a council holding all powers of decision and execution, expelling the bureaucrats, organizing its self-defense and calling on the strikers of all the enterprises to link up with it, this qualitative step could have immediately brought the movement to the ultimate showdown, to the final struggle whose general outlines have all been historically traced by this movement. A very large number of enterprises would have followed the course thus discovered. This factory could immediately have taken the place of the dubious and in every sense eccentric Sorbonne of the first days and have become the real center of the occupations movement: genuine delegates from the numerous councils that already virtually existed in some of the occupied buildings, and from all the councils that could have imposed themselves in all the branches of industry, would have rallied around this base." - The Beginning of an Era, Internationale Situationniste #12, 1969
This is where the distinction between the subterranean maturation of consciousness and the spontaneism of councilism becomes most apparent. When the view of class consciousness is that it is the immediate product of escalating struggles, a linear advance (and if mass action is defeated, a linear reflux), the perspective of the trajectory of the struggle, the existing conditions, leads to tunnel-vision. If there are mass struggles of the working-class, they think there is always a chance at the movement for communism and turning the capitalist crisis into a revolutionary crisis of capitalism. In May 1968, the Situationists clearly defended the councilist position, succinctly captured in the passage quoted above. While the mass action of May 1968 was an historic series of struggles of the proletariat, the potential of the struggle was vastly overestimated. A new generation of young workers had entered the factories during the 1960's, who were critical of the Machiavellian hold the Stalinist parties and Stalinist unions held over the central working-class. Just prior to this return of the proletarian offensive, ushered into history in May 1968, the deepest depths of the counter-revolution still prevailed, where the 'official Opposition' to capitalism, recognized by the Situationists as the 'pseudo-Communist parties of the spectacle-commodity society', continued to mystify the proletariat from Moscow (and later Peking). This was a working class without a connection to the revolutionary principles and positions of the communist wing of the worker's movement; a link broken by the failure of the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 and the victory of the counter-revolution for over 40 years. The connection between the communist minority and the working class is organic, the former developing from the class consciousness of the latter within the class. The subterranean maturation of consciousness allows us to understand the events of May 1968 (the return of the economic crisis after the post-war boom, the experience of the post-war escalation of struggles in Western Europe- such as major strikes at Renault and Fiat in the 1950's), as well as the context of the struggle- which did suggest further escalation of struggles of a young proletariat, and the creation of a new revolutionary minority in the midst and as a result of these struggles (evident in organizations born after the ferment of 1968- such as the ICC and other organizations of the communist milieu). However, for the councilists of the Situationist International, the May movement had as much a chance at the transformation of all things in the movement for communism as the revolutionary wave 50 years earlier; and afterward, saw in it only a failed revolutionary attempt, rather than an important moment in the resurgence of the working-class, a change in the balance of class forces. So for the councilists, any large struggle has the potential to 'boil over' into proletarian revolution, if only the workers form councils. The form of the soviet becomes more important than the actual content of the struggle or its context and trajectory- leading to confused intervention and an inability to absorb the lessons if struggles are defeated and consciousness goes into reflux (which happened to the Situationists in 1972 with their organizational implosion and dissolution). Such a conception of class consciousness loses perspective and obstructs the communist minority's ability to properly interpret, theorize and intervene in the struggle. Without such an understanding and ability to draw the appropriate lessons, we are less capable. The theory of the subterranean maturation of consciousness improves our capabilities, which is the necessity of any theoretical or methodological tool in the arsenal of the working class and its most advanced fraction.
M.Lida
1 See in particular the discussions on "Why is it so difficult to struggle? [925]" and " "The maturation of consciousness [955]".
2 Egypt Workers' Solidarity
3 See this article on the "Mahalla soviet" [956]
When Margaret Thatcher died we were told that, as in life, her death had polarised and divided Britain. On the one hand there were the parliamentary tributes, the claims for her greatness as a woman and principles as a politician, and a funeral with dignitaries arriving from all over the world. Against this there were the street parties celebrating her death, the singing of “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”, and the outpouring of vitriol against ‘Britain’s most-hated Prime Minister’. More than twenty years after she left power Thatcher was still able to play a role in the false ideological alternatives of different factions of the ruling class.
For a start, US President Obama called Thatcher “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty”. This curious description involves a revival of the language of the Cold War. Margaret Thatcher had as much to do with ‘freedom’ as the Stalinist leaders of the USSR had to do with communism. What she did do during her time in office was ensure that British imperialism sustained its role as a loyal lieutenant to the US leader of the western bloc. And when the Russian bloc fell apart, and the British bourgeoisie wanted British imperialism to pursue a more independent orientation, the ‘men in grey suits’ arranged for her replacement. There was no longer a place for the hard-line Cold War rhetoric. Thatcher was clearly dispensable.
On the level of the economy, the denigrators of Thatcher blame her for the increase in unemployment in the early 80s, the decline in the steel, car and shipbuilding industries, and the attack on coal mining. These were not the individual responsibility of one person. The decline in many major industries was felt internationally, not because of the whim or personality of individual politicans but because of the deepening economic crisis of capitalism. In that context, British capitalism was particularly burdened by outdated and uncompetitive industries. The laws of profit demanded the vicious pruning pushed through under Thatcher’s government.
In terms of the specific role of government, the attacks that characterised the 1980s did not start with the Conservative government but with the preceding Labour government of Callaghan and Healey. After all, the working class struggles, the strikes and massive demonstrations of 1978-79 that became known as the ‘winter of discontent’ were against the cuts imposed by Labour. And when John Major left office in 1997 the incoming Labour government explicitly committed itself to the Tory spending plans. And when Gordon Brown’s Labour government was replaced by the Cameron-led Coalition the same basic regime continued.
Under Thatcher and Major the Left denounced the way that the unemployment statistics were continually being manipulated. Yet, apart from a couple of tweaks, the unemployment figures have never been recalculated so that accurate comparisons over recent decades can be made. There are in the UK officially nearly 9 million people of working age that are described as ‘economically inactive.’ Whatever numbers you subtract from this figure mass unemployment in the UK didn’t go away in the thirteen years of Labour rule. It’s been with us, without interruption, for thirty years. This is not the fault of any individual, nor any government or government policy. It’s an expression of the depth of the crisis of capitalism.
Back in the 1980s there were Tories who thought that more government investment could change things, as well as the whole of the Left who proposed different degrees of state intervention. None of these amounted to an ‘alternative’. In that sense, when Thatcher said ‘There is no alternative’ she was right. The economic crisis was a crisis of state capitalism, something that no amount of resort to debt could do anything other than worsen.
But what of the class struggle of the 80s in Britain? Surely it’s clear that Thatcher and the hated Tories were the sworn enemies of the working class, and showed this blatantly during the miners’ strike of 1984-85? Yes, the state was prepared for the miners’ strike and used repression and propaganda against the year-long strike. But that’s only part of the equation. The job of ensuring that the miners remained isolated was the responsibility of the unions. The potential was there for the struggle to extend to dockers and to car workers, but the unions kept the workers divided. Throughout the 80s the Left and the unions played their role, as part of the political apparatus of capitalism, in putting forward false alternatives. This involved not only ‘alternative’ economic policies but also campaigns around issues such as the threats to local government or the presence of American weapons on British soil. Ultimately, during the 80s, workers in Britain came up against not just the material attacks backed up by the state, but the whole range of lies put out by the Left. Tony Blair has recently said that Labour must not return to being a ‘party of protest’. In fact, under Thatcher, Labour played an absolutely crucial role by being just that. You might have hated the Tories, but Labour, the Left and the unions were ready and waiting to embrace you … and undermine any developing militancy.
One of the things that Thatcher will be remembered for is the Falklands war against Argentina in 1982. To this day it remains a focus for propaganda campaigns. Some say that the Falkland Islanders’ wishes should be considered first, for others, it’s a typical episode in the history of British imperialism. Looked at in the context of the time you see something different. The Falklands were, and remain, of no strategic or material importance. In the early 1980s Argentina was an ally of the UK in the US bloc. Moves were already underway to change the status of the Falklands. The war over the Falklands can not be understood as a military matter, it can only be understood at the social level. The stimulation of such a nationalist campaign (with Labour leader Michael Foot prominent in the chorus) was a massive diversion at a time the different class interests within the British population were becoming so sharply posed.
Thatcher, because of her constant invective against the Russian bloc, became known as the Iron Lady. Her reputation as a warmonger is undisputed. Yet, if you look at the deployments of British armed forces during her period of office (Falklands, Northern Ireland etc) it’s on nothing like the scale of the operations carried out by Labour under Blair and Brown with Afghanistan, Iraq etc.
In parliament Glenda Jackson criticised the “social, economic and spiritual damage” inflicted by Thatcher. Lives that were devastated during the 1980s suffered the impact of the capitalist economic crisis. In opposition to Margaret Thatcher, marxists say that there is such a thing as society. And the capitalist society in which we live is not just economically destitute; it has developed a culture of each against all, of atomised, alienated individuals, of emotional impoverishment. Throughout her adult life Thatcher certainly played her role for the ruling class, but she was only one, admittedly important, cog in the whole capitalist state machine.
Car 12/4/13
For over a year now the ‘Aufhebengate’ affair has been causing major divisions in the libertarian communist wing of the proletarian political movement. The affair raises a number of important issues for revolutionaries, and although we have held back up till now (for reasons we will explain below) from saying anything about it as an organisation we feel it is necessary for us to make this statement on how we see it.
Aufheben is an annual journal produced by a group based mainly in Brighton in the UK. Its politics are a fusion of anarchist, autonomist, left communist and other political traditions. An archive of its publications, going back to 1992, can be found on libcom1. Aufheben has for some time played the role of a kind of theoretical vanguard of a wider libertarian communist movement, its journal eagerly awaited to provide analysis of contemporary events and more general or historical political questions. The ICC has never shared this admiration and has written some sharp polemics against the group’s most defining notions, in particular its series on the theory of capitalist decadence which many in the libertarian milieu have seen as the definitive critique of this theory, but which we saw as a sophisticated way of rejecting the foundations of marxism2. 3But despite these criticisms, we have not considered the Aufheben group to be outside the frontiers of the proletarian movement.
The Aufhebengate affair began in October 2011 when the Greek group Ta Paidia Tis Galaria (‘Children of the Gallery’, but more generally known as the TPTG) published an ‘Open letter to the British internationalist/antiauthoritarian activist/protests/street scenes (and all those concerned with the progress of our enemies)’.4
Whereas we have seen Aufheben as essentially a magazine circle strongly marked by academicism (although this has not prevented its individual members participating in a number of activist campaigns), we regard the TPTG as a serious communist group, one which has consistently tried to defend revolutionary positions in the social movements that have convulsed Greece in the last few years. This is why we have published contributions by or about them on our website5. Although the TPTG defines itself as the communist wing of the anti-authoritarian movement in Greece, their activity corresponds much more closely than that of Aufheben – which to our knowledge has never engaged in any specific group intervention in the class struggle apart from its journal - to our conception of what a militant communist organisation exists to do: participate as a distinct and organised tendency in the movements of the working class.
In its open letter of October 2011 the TPTG announced that one of the members of Aufheben, JD, a social psychology lecturer at Sussex University, had written and/or co-written a number of articles, in particular ‘Knowledge-Based Public Order Policing: Principles and Practice’, which was featured in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, analysing police tactics at demonstrations and other manifestations of public ‘disorder’. He had also participated in conferences and ‘professional development’ training programmes dealing with the same or similar issues (such as the response of ‘emergency services’ to public disasters). This body of ‘academic work’ has often been carried out by a team composed of academics such as C Stott and S Reicher who have made no secret of the fact that their work has been aimed at, and certainly used for, assisting the police to develop more ‘friendly’ and intelligent tactics for containing social protests. These academics have on several occasions referred to JD as part of the team or have acknowledged the contribution made by his research.
The TPTG were deeply alarmed by this discovery – they had hitherto taken Aufheben seriously as a group and been influenced by some of its output. More to the point, directly facing police repression at public demonstrations in Greece, and aiming to participate in social movements on an international level, the question of how the police deal with popular protest is for them one of very immediate as well as more theoretical concern. The idea that a member of a group which they had always seen as part of the internationalist movement might be implicated in improving police tactics was seen as a betrayal of basic principles.
The response of Aufheben was published on the internet forum www.libcom.org [968] shortly after the Open Letter6: it strongly criticised the TPTG for ‘outing’ one of their members without asking them for their version of the facts and described the Open Letter as a smear. Aufheben acknowledged that JD is required by his university job to share platforms with police sometimes but these events have been essentially focused on emergency situations rather than social protests or revolts. Regarding the particular article on the containment of political demonstrations and social movements, JD didn’t write the article in question. His name was simply added by Stott and Reicher as a favour. Aufheben accept that it was an error on JD’s part to allow this, but insist that he entirely rejects the content of this text. Furthermore, the aims of Stott and Reicher were essentially “liberal reformist” and largely harmless, based as they were on the illusion of reducing police violence against demonstrators. Furthermore, the recommendations of these liberals were of limited usefulness to the police.
This text provoked a second open letter by the TPTG7, which subjects Aufheben’s response to a scathing and in our view justified criticism.
In this text, the TPTG recount how their efforts to get in touch with Aufheben prior to publishing their first open letter had been thwarted by the fact that the group’s official email address had in the past always been answered by JD himself, and pointed out that they had been unable to obtain the email addresses of other members of the group.
They then attack the idea that Stott and Reicher are harmless reformists and show how pernicious their approach is. Not only does it offer advice to police on how to make best use of divisions among the ranks of protesters, but clearly puts forward targeted repression as a last resort if all other methods of containment fail. They also reject the argument that it was merely a question of academic politeness to include JD’s name at the end of the text, since Stott and Reicher had plenty of reason for considering that JD was indeed part of their team, and provide a number of other examples of JD’s work which have similar implications to the ‘Knowledge-based public order policing’ article, much of which has now disappeared from JD’s online profile8. Far from these studies being of little use to the police, the TPTG see the research carried out by these academics as being of real interest to a repressive apparatus which, confronted with growing social rebellion, cannot afford to use outright violence as a first response – and this is precisely why research into more ‘knowledge based’ methods of police control is generously funded by the state.
Finally, the second letter challenges Aufheben’s claim that there can be any hard and fast separation between emergency situations and the problem of social control, since the ‘team’ itself argues that lessons drawn from one area can easily be applied to another, as stated in the 2009 article ‘Chaos Theory’ published in Jane’s Police Review.
The TPTG succinctly summarise Aufheben’s argument: “while we prove that one of their members has been heavily involved in consulting the police how to repress struggles ‘correctly’, instead of just refuting this, they also feel obliged to both present such expert intervention as harmless and to relativise police repression (soft or hard) as if it had no importance at all”.
The TPTG’s initiative provoked a veritable storm of accusations and counter-accusations on various threads on libcom in 20119 and resurfaced recently, as well as being raised on other forums such as red-marx10.
The ‘defence’ of Aufheben was taken up by the libcom collective and in particular by JK, a former member of Aufheben.
Initially the libcom collective accused the TPTG of engaging in smears and lies and then, after consulting Aufheben, offered some very unconvincing arguments, essentially repeating the weirdly contradictory points made in Aufheben’s reply (JD didn’t write the articles, and in any case these people are indeed ineffectual liberals, etc). The TPTG’s second open letter responds to a number of libcom’s arguments.
Libcom’s defence of JD looks much more like a response of ‘standing by my mate’ than one of defending political principles. This is not altogether surprising given that membership of the libcom collective seems to be based much more on friendship links than on an agreed political perspective.
However, one point they made does need careful consideration and we will return to it: the way the TPTG brought up this matter broke libcom’s rules about naming individuals; and JK in particular insisted on the seriousness of making public accusations against an individual in the movement for collaborating with the police
The libcom collective’s arguments were answered in some detail by other contributors: Samotnaf (who had played a central role in bringing up this issue in the UK11) ocelot, blasto, avantiultras etc. There were some posts by our comrade Leo on libcom and revleft which expressed basic agreement with the TPTG’s position Eventually threads were locked, and after most of those criticising the libcom collective quit the site the issue died down. It flared up again briefly in January 2013, but the debate was at a very low level12: for example, with numerous posters assuming false or spoof identities to ridicule others’ points of view, making it impossible for others to even follow the disagreements being expressed. The issue was also raised on red-marx by a member of the Internationalist Communist Tendency in Italy and the response by Alf of the ICC was discussed collectively before being posted.
The affair is therefore not likely to go away and it has created a very toxic legacy in this milieu. An example: in February 2013 the anarchist Freedom bookshop in Whitechapel, London, was firebombed. This was probably the work of fascists or Islamists but a poster on indymedia had this to say:
“Cop collaborators 01.02.2013 17:01
Freedom is the headquarter of cop-collaborator libcom. If they work with police they deserve all the fire”
Obviously Freedom has never been the HQ of libcom and there are two long leaps from criticising libcom’s evasions regarding JD to first branding the entire site as “cop collaborationist” and then advocating terrorism against them...We refer to this incident not because we want to get drawn into speculation about the motives of the indymedia poster but because it is an illustration of the kind of atmosphere Aufhebengate has produced. The charge of cop collaborators (though not the call for violence) is more widespread and is irresponsible. Whatever criticisms we have of its politics and its attitude to debate, libcom is an important resource for the proletarian movement, both as a discussion forum and as a library of material; and for that very reason the serious mistakes it has made in this affair need to be discussed in a calm manner, as part of a more general debate about the issues of ethics and principle which this business has posed.
Given this atmosphere, it has been difficult for ICC comrades say anything about this issue on libcom itself, especially given the hostility towards us that can be expressed by some of the participants on both sides of the debate. At that stage we felt that anything posted ‘officially’ by the ICC would merely pour oil on the fire. But both because we feel the issues are as relevant as ever and because there is perhaps a greater possibility for considered reflection, we feel the need to elaborate our point of view in this statement.
It is not possible to go into the various arguments and counter-arguments that have been aired, especially on libcom, in any depth or detail, not least because a lot of the incriminating articles linked to JD can no longer be found on the web. Nevertheless we think we have understood the issues sufficiently to conclude that the TPTG were quite right to raise this issue. The involvement of the police in the revolutionary movement is not at all a product of fantasy, as recent revelations about the British state’s infiltration of ‘activist anti-capitalist groups’ confirm (see for example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21316768 [969]). By the same token, any concession to collaboration with the police by elements within the movement means the flouting of a class line, a point that we ourselves have been obliged to make in previous crises in our organisation13. And in this case, it seems to us that there is substantial evidence that JD has crossed the line between the inevitable compromises forced on any worker by his job, and a real collaboration with the forces of repression.
At the same time, the libcom collective, which has strict rules about using people’s real names on their forum, were right to point out that accusing someone within the movement of collaborating with the police is a very serious matter and should not in the first place be done in public. But aside from their contingent difficulties in contacting Aufheben as a group, the TPTG were faced with the fact that, in contrast to the past workers’ movement, solidarity between its different components has become extremely tenuous, and there are certainly no structures which might allow the question of police involvement or unacceptable behaviour by revolutionaries to be discussed and resolved in a more discrete and responsible manner. The TPTG did propose in their first open letter a ‘proletarian counter-inquiry’ into this matter and to this extent they were reviving a rather buried tradition of the movement. However, the aim of this proposed inquiry was largely one of researching the general problem of police reactions to social unrest rather than examining the specifics of the JD case.
During the course of the exchange on libcom14, the poster ‘proletarian’ made a rather interesting point:
“I can't see what actually can be done to rectify the situation. I would argue he should be 'disassociated from revolutionary circles' - you know what I mean. But I'm not sure there is the organisation or structure to do this. And there certainly doesn't appear to be the will. I don't really want to bring this up (but I will) because it looks like I'm antagonizing people but the ICC and their calls for a Jury of Honour or whatever were ruthlessly taken the piss out of but wasn't there some 'method in the madness'? There needs to be some kind of way of dealing with these and similar incidents. And I think it's worth looking at how previous workers struggled with difficult questions like this. (I obviously think the guy has crossed a class line)”
We obviously agree with the comrade that there was “method in our madness” when, during some painful crises in our organisation, we called for the establishment of ‘juries of honour’ to look into some of the serious accusations that we ourselves had felt compelled to make against former members of the ICC whose behaviour we found unacceptable. And we did so precisely because these proletarian courts or juries were the method used by the past workers’ movement to investigate such issues.
In an article entitled ‘Revolutionary organisations struggle against provocation and slander’15 we pointed out how dangerous the spreading of suspicion about individual comrades can be, not just for the individual concerned, but for the whole fabric of the organisation and the workers’ movement as a whole. The article cites Victor Serge in his book What everyone should know about state repression, published in 1926:
“Accusations are murmured about, then said out loud, and usually they cannot be checked out. This causes enormous damage, worse in some ways than that caused by provocation itself (...)This evil of suspicion and mistrust among us can only be reduced and isolated by a great effort of will. It is necessary, as the condition of any real struggle against provocation - and slanderous accusation of members is playing the game of provocation - that no-one should be accused lightly, and it should also be impossible for an accusation against a revolutionary to be accepted without being investigated. Every time anyone is touched by suspicion, a jury formed of comrades should determine whether it is a well-founded accusation or a slander. These are simple rules which should be observed with inflexible rigour if one wishes to preserve the moral health of revolutionary organisations”.
However, what was common practice in the past workers’ movement has been all but forgotten in the movement today, which has on its shoulders the trauma of decades of counter-revolution, the weight of sectarianism and the spirit of the circle, a series of divisions which affect the whole internationalist movement – divisions not just between the libertarian/anarchist wing and the communist left, but among the groups of the communist left itself. The ICC’s own experience in this regard has also not been particularly fruitful: in 1995, when we pressed for a jury of honour to look into the ‘Simon affair’ (a militant expelled for engaging in secretive and manipulative practices inside the organsiation), the only organisation of the communist left that was prepared to take part was the IBRP( now the ICT); a few years later, following the 2001 crisis which gave rise to the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’, whose members we had expelled for theft and informer-like activities, there was virtually no response at all to our appeal for a new ‘jury of honour’, with relations between the ICC and the IBRP being progressively soured by the latter’s own relationship with the IFICC. Given the difficulties of the communist left to renew its links with the past movement in this area, we don’t have any illusions in the capacity of the libertarian milieu to deal with the ‘Aufhebengate’ affair. Nevertheless these questions will become more acute if revolutionary movement grows and is seen as more as a threat. A wide-ranging and inclusive discussion on the question of solidarity between revolutionary organisations, both at the theoretical/historical level, and at the level of its more immediate and practical implications, is clearly long overdue.
‘Proletarian’ also raises the question of the immediate implications of this matter: he argues that JD should be 'disassociated from revolutionary circles', but doubts whether there is the organisation, structure, or the will to do this. We could raise a further question: should Aufheben itself be ‘disassociated from revolutionary circles’ until this issue is clarified? But again the problem is the lack of any collective structure capable of making such decisions, or even of any shared agreement about what the diameter and circumference of the ‘revolutionary circles’ might be. This is why for us the prerequisite for any such common structures emerging is the beginning of a serious debate about the basic principles of the internationalist camp: not only at the level of general programmatic positions, but also at the level of behaviour and ethics. This debate, which already exists in a very tentative form through various internet forums, would need to incorporate face to face meetings and conferences at various levels and in different areas of the world. The Aufhebengate affair has highlighted the degree to which today’s internationalist milieu is immature, divided and cut off from the traditions of the past. But perhaps some serious reflection on its implications can constitute a first step towards moving beyond this state of dispersal, which in the end can only help “the progress of our enemies”.
ICC, April 2013
7 ‘Second open letter to those concerned with the progress of our enemies (including some necessary clarifications and refutations of the cop consultant’s defence team’s claims’: https://www.tapaidiatisgalarias.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OPEN_LETT... [977]
8 In particular: JD’s involvement in the article ‘Chaos Theory’, published in Janes Police Review 117 in April 2009, two years after the policing article; in the HMIC (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary) report into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London; and JD’s original academic profile on the Sussex University website, which (prior to being quite substantially changed in the period after January 2011) stated that “[My] consultancies include the National Police CBRN Centre, NATO/the Department of Health Emergency Planning Division, Birmingham Resilience, and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. I run a Continued Professional Development (CPD) course on the Psychology of Crowd
Management for relevant professionals, and I teach on the CPD course on Policing Major Incidents at the University of Liverpool”
9 For example: libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/why-article-has-been-removed-07102011 [978]
11 See in particular libcom.org/forums/general/aufhebens-crowd-controlling-cop-consultant-strange-case-dr-who-mr-bowdler-1610201 [980]
12 libcom.org/forums/general/anarcho-leftism-politics-libcom-13012013
13 For example, in 1981 when the ICC’s former Aberdeen section (later the Communist Bulletin Group) threatened to call the police to intervene against the ICC in response to our efforts to recuperate material stolen by the tendency which they supported.
14 Nov 5 2011, libcom.org/forums/general/aufhebens-crowd-controlling-cop-consultant-strange-case-dr-who-mr-bowdler-1610201?page=2 [981]...
15 "Revolutionary organisations struggle against provocation and slander [982]"; see also "The Jury of Honour: a weapon for the defence of revolutionary organisations (Part 1) [983]"
The verbals around the question of the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the Assad regime and its possible consequences have been wound up by the western wing of the 'international community', i.e., Britain, America, France, followed by some of the Gulf States, Israel and the wings of the Syrian opposition. Last week, US Secretary for Defence, Chuck Hagel, said that Sarin had been used in some attacks in Syria by the regime. Without at all underestimating the brutality of this regime, why would they use chemical weapons when their positions are consolidating and they are on the offensive? Maybe that's why the west is raising the stakes. Dr. Sally Leivesley, a chemical and biological analyst who has worked for western governments said, in The Independent, 27.4.13: "There are things here which do not add up. A chemical attack using Sarin as a battlefield weapon would leave mass fatalities and very few people alive". But, as our leaders insist 'with caution', some elements of some chemical and biological agents have been found. In the southern town of Daraya on April 25, two rockets released a gas that affected about a hundred people, according to the opposition, and there were reported attacks in other areas. There was a report from Alex Thomson on Channel 4 from the Al-Bab district close to Aleppo, where the al-Nusra Front is in control, that Syrian soldiers were among the 26 killed from a chemical attack. There are a number of secret services and special forces here with all their various agendas, including the Qataris who were particularly ruthless in Libya. It's possible that some elements of the regime have used chemical weapons, as have the rebels.
Overall, this current farce echoes the tragedy of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction and the blatant lies of the British government and US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN just over 10 years ago about the 'evidence' thereof in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Great parts of Syria are now being destroyed in an imperialist war. Bombs are falling on factories, rockets fired at utilities and all sorts of toxic combinations are brewed up by the explosives, which people have no choice but to breathe in. Building material dust can be toxic in the atmosphere and there's plenty of that about. And this is quite apart from the destructive power of the explosives themselves - the chemical fall-out is a sort of imperialist bonus.
There's no doubt that the Syrian regime has one of the largest, if not the largest arsenal of chemical weapons in the Middle East. The town of al-Safira, close to Aleppo, holds one of Syria's main facilities for the production of chemical weapons, including the nerve gas Sarin. Commentators in the west say that there is a concern that these will fall into the wrong hands, that is into the hands of rebels who are being directly or indirectly supported by the west and the Gulf States. Weapons falling into the 'wrong hands' has been one of the consequences of the actions of western imperialism from Afghanistan in the 1980's to the spread of decomposition in Mali this year. Prime Minister Cameron, despite his 'caution', has already decided that Assad has committed a 'war crime' (Telegraph, 26.4.13). The Obama administration has been more circumspect but says it "retains the ability to act unilaterally" and talks about 'red lines' and 'game changers'. The Israeli government has said that Assad has used chemical weapons and a 'red line' has been crossed. Israel has an interest in US imperialism adhering to 'red lines' in relation to the war it's building up for against Iran. The US and Britain are demanding, through their spokesmen in the UN, that the Assad regime grant "unconditional and unfettered access" to test for WMD in Syria. Such an inspection would be nothing less than an American and British spying mission, which is exactly what it was in Iraq with its cover of lies and misinformation.
And there's the hypocrisy of it all: Israel with its use of phosphorous against the tightly-packed civilians of Gaza. Witness the use of the same chemical weapons by the US in Fallujah, Iraq, where birth defects are still on the rise. Another example is Desert Storm in 1991, where napalm, fuel-air explosives, cluster bombs and uranium-tipped shells were used by the British and Americans. And before that, when Britain and the US were supporting Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran in the 1980s (and he was a "good friend" of France), they looked the other way when he used chemical weapons (most of them provided by the west) against the Kurds, killing at least five thousand in Hallabjah alone. But Britain had already found that dropping chemical weapons from warplanes on the Kurds was very useful in the 1920s.
The western bourgeoisies are banging the war drums and feel that they have a free hand to up the ante around the question of chemical weapons. What their precise reaction will be can take a number of escalating forms through the already existing military/intelligence set ups that they have in place both within Syria and in the wider region. We can be certain though whatever course is taken it will further exacerbate the immediate and potential instability, just as the misery imposed on the working class and the masses is increasing. The destruction of Syria, as an expression of militarism in decomposition, apart from the immediate death and devastation, is a further attack on the whole working class.
Baboon. 29.4.13 (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
It’s not only the hierarchy of the Venezuelan state that lamented Chávez’s demise, but also in many Latin American governments and others around the world, who have said their ‘last farewells’ to the leader of the “Bolivarian revolution”. Several of those attending the funeral did so because of commercial and political agreements, such as the members of ALBA1, along with those benefiting from oil agreements. But they were all united in their grief at the loss of the state boss in whose name a ‘struggle against poverty’ and for ‘social justice’ took place, who, over the course of 14 years, carried out a project in the interests of a good part of the bourgeoisie, aimed at attacking the proletariat's living conditions and consciousness. They, along with the leading representatives of the national capital, whether officials or ‘opposition’, recognised that this was an excellent opportunity to make propaganda about ‘the world's solidarity with the Venezuelan people’ and to puff themselves up by exalting the international significance of their ‘great leader’.
The proletariat has its own historical experience to draw on in order to reject and unmask this torrent of bourgeois and petty bourgeois sentimentality and hypocrisy. Chávez is a myth created by capitalism, nurtured and strengthened by the national and international bourgeoisie, a figure who came to their rescue with the bourgeois hoax called “21st Socialism”. The international bourgeoisie, principally its left tendencies, want to keep this myth alive. The proletariat however needs to develop its means of struggle against Chávist ideology in order to show the most impoverished layers of society the real road to socialism.
Chávez first came to public notice when he led the attempted military coup against the Social Democrat Carlos Andrés Péres in 1992. From then on his popularity underwent a spectacular growth until he was elected President of the Republic in 1999. During this period he capitalised on the discontent and lack of trust across broad sectors of the population towards the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic Parties who had alternated power between themselves since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1958. This discontent was particularly marked amongst the most impoverished masses affected by the economic crisis of the 80s, who were the main protagonists of the 1989 revolt. The two main political parties were undergoing a process of disintegration, characterised by corruption at the highest levels and the neglect of government tasks. This was an expression of the decomposition that had engulfed the whole of society, principally the ruling class, which had reached such levels that it was impossible to cohere its forces in order to guarantee reliable governance and ‘social peace’.
Chávez's charisma and his ascendancy amongst the most impoverished masses, his ability to convince them that the state was there to help them, enabled him to strengthen his hold on various sectors of the national capitalism: the armed forces and above all the parties of the left and the extreme left. The latter in particular changed their political programme from one based on 60's ‘national liberation’ struggles against ‘Yanqui imperialism’, to one in favour of the creation of a real national bourgeoisie, ideologically supported by the Bolivarian myth of the ‘great South American fatherland’, and materially sustaining its aims with the important income from the export of oil. To this end various leaders and theoreticians of the Venezuelan left and extreme left (amongst them ex-guerrilla fighters and members of the Venezuelan Communist Party) set about the task of visiting various ‘Socialist’ and ‘progressive’ countries in order to understand which model to implement in Venezuela when Chávez came to power: China, North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Cuba etc...There is no doubt that from the very beginning the Chávist project was understood as a bourgeois project by the nationalists of the left, based on civil-military unity, taking as its reference points the most despotic regimes in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, many of them allies from the old imperialist Russian bloc.
Throughout his 14 years in government, Chávez was developing his government project that came to be known as “21st century Socialism”, based on the exclusion of and confrontation with those sectors of national capital that had held power until 1998, and sectors of private capital who opposed him; this went together with an aggressive regional and world geopolitics based on radical anti-Americanism. His great secret, recognised by a good part of the world bourgeoisie, was that he was able to renew the hopes of the immense masses of the abandoned poor in Venezuela, bring them in from the cold, making them believe that one day they would be able to get away from their poverty. In reality, what has happened is that the whole population has become impoverished, the workers above all, through the application of the left's principal of ‘levelling from below’. In this way Chávismo managed to contain the social unrest of the mass of the poor, a social layer produced by the course of decadent capitalism throughout the 20th century, when it has been increasingly impossible to incorporate them into productive work. But he also achieved an aim that was the envy of other bourgeoisies: he gained the support of an electoral mass which allowed the new civil and military elites of the ruling class to perpetuate themselves in power. It is not by accident that during 14 years in power the Chávists won 13 of the 15 national elections that took place.
Chavismo's rise was not due to the failures of the preceding governments, nor to Chávez's charisma (an idea typical of the bourgeoisie which sees personalities as the motor force of history). Rather it was the expression of the decomposition of the whole capitalist system. The collapse of the Russian bloc at the end of the 80s marked capitalism's entry into this new phase in its decline, the phase of decomposition2. The events which broke up the imperialist blocs that had been in existence until then had two main consequences: the progressive weakening of US imperialism at a world level and an attack on the proletariat's class consciousness, around the campaign developed by the international bourgeoisie identifying the collapse of the Stalinist bloc with the ‘death of communism’. The left wing of capital, in order to be able to carry on their task of containing the working class and the impoverished masses, had to generate ‘new’ ideologies. This led to the emergence in the 90s of the “third way” in Europe, and left wing movements in the countries of the periphery. It was from this seedbed, the product of the decomposition of the capitalist system, that Chávez and his project emerged, along with other leaders and left movements in different Latin American countries. There was Lula with the support of the Workers' Party, the MST and the Social Forums in Brazil; Evo Morales in Bolivia with the indigenous movement; the Zapatistas in Mexico with the support of indigenous and peasants movements, etc.
The significance of Chávez from the beginning was that his project was seen as a movement for Latin American integration (sustained by Bolivarian thinking) founded upon radical anti-Americanism. From this point of view, he was seen as a second Fidel Castro, but who substituted the ‘social movements’ of the workers and socially excluded masses of the region for the 60s ideology of ‘national liberation’. Chávez's Venezuela of the 2000s was transformed into the shop window for the benefits of ‘real Socialism’ that Cuba had been in the previous century. With the importance difference that Chávism was able to finance the franchise of “21st century Socialism” through the large incomes from oil exports.
The Chávez regime however could not stop the overwhelming advance of social decomposition in Venezuela; rather it was turned into an accelerating factor at the internal and regional level. It replaced the old business and state bureaucrats with a new civil and military bureaucracy who have amassed great fortunes and properties inside and outside the country, who have superseded their predecessors in government in the levels of corruption. Chávism has bought loyalty for its ‘revolutionary project’ by sharing out the oil incomes. This method was used to replace the old military High Command and to buy the necessary loyalty of the Armed Forces, principally after the 2002 coup which removed Chávez from power for a few hours. In fact the Armed Forces have been transformed into the regime's ‘Praetorian Guard’, and it carries a lot of weight in the regime.
The hegemony of the Chávista bourgeoisie is based on the reinforcing of the state at all its levels and through a permanent confrontation with the sections of the national capital that are opposed to the regime, principally against the emblematic representatives of private capital, who have been subject to expropriations and controls. A form of government justified to its followers as a struggle against the ‘bourgeoisie’, when in reality many of the Chávistas used to be ‘leading members’ of private capital. Thus the confrontation between fractions of the national capital has dominated national politics throughout Chávez’s time in power. In this struggle each fraction tries to impose its own interests, thus dragging down the whole of society and affecting every level of society. At the economic level, the general crisis of the system has inevitably evolved and a high price has been paid for making Venezuela a ‘regional economic power’. This can be seen in the abandoning of the industrial infrastructure of the country (even affecting the ‘the goose that lays the golden egg’, the oil industry); the roads infrastructure and power services (one of the best in Latin America only two decades ago) are practically on their last legs; at the level of telecommunications Venezuela is technologically lagging behind the rest of the countries in the region. The main drama has been at the social level: the deterioration of public health and education services (which Chávez has sold as one of the great ‘gains’ of the revolution) is much worse than a decade ago; public safety has been practically abandoned (although this has not stopped the police repression of protests by workers and the population); in the 14 years of ‘Socialist’ government more than 150,000 people have been murdered, which has given Venezuela (above all Caracas, the capital) one of the highest crime rates in the world per 100.000 inhabitants, surpassing Mexico and Colombia3.
At the time of the death of the great leader of the “Bolivarian revolution”, the homeland of “21st century Socialism” found itself in a serious economic crisis. In 2012 all the indices showed that the economy was as ill as the President: high fiscal deficit (18% of GDP, the highest in the region), the result of public spending reaching 51% of GDP; imports were the highest in 16 years, at $56 billion, equal to 59% of exports; 22% inflation, the highest in the region. State spending which up until now has been covered by internal and external debt, which have grown steeply in the last years, has reached 50% of GDP; the printing of money has led to the highest inflation rates in the region, seriously undermining workers' wages, pensions and the crumbs distributed by the state. The economic crisis can no longer be hidden and cheated by the state's control of the economy: 2012 began with the devaluation of the Bolivar by 46%in order to try and cover part of the immense public spending and shortage of products (of the order of 22% according to the Central Bank of Venezuela), mainly food items; inflation is estimated to be going to increase to 30%. China, an important lender to the Venezuelan state in recent years, is now making matters worse by refusing to give more resources to an economy that looks like a bottomless pit. Doubts about the health of the economy have made the issuing and realisation of shares more difficult, and the activity that does take place is done at a high price, a premium of 13.6%.
The Chávist project of “21st century Socialism” is another bourgeois failure: a version of state capitalism in the 21st century that engulfs workers and society in poverty whilst enriching the bourgeoisie, which includes the Chávist elites. It shows that neither right nor left, nor the leftists represent a way out of the poverty and barbarity that capitalism subjects us to.
One of the things that the top representatives of organisations such as the UN or the World Bank have stressed since Chávez’s death has been his concern for the cause of the poor, which according to them allowed the reduction of levels of poverty in Venezuela. The representatives of the left parties, the leftist groups and social movements, have acted as the mouthpieces for the manipulation of statistics and the well-thought out propaganda of Chávism in order to show the world the great gains made through a ‘redistribution of riches’ by orientating the state’s food, health, and education resources towards the parts of the population most in need. According to the figures of the INE, the organisation charged with collecting the statistics to show the ‘gains of the revolution’, the number of households living in poverty in Venezuela was reduced from 47% to 27.4% between 1998 and 2011 (about 4 million people). This in turn is part of the 37 million people who have been lifted out of poverty over the past decade in Latin America, according to the World Bank. The international bourgeoisie need to exalt any countries under the capitalist regime that have been able to ‘overcome poverty’ and are near to achieving the “Millennium Goals” proclaimed by the UN.
The reality is that the Chávez regime widened poverty, maintaining the poor in poverty, worsening the living conditions of employed workers and the lower layers of the middle class. Chávism carried out a programme of social engineering, taking part of the mass of surplus value produced by the workers to provide social benefits and directing it towards the most desperate sections of society. What this did was to worsen the precariousness of work that already existed before Chávez came to power: non-official studies from 2011 show that 82% of the employed population are in precarious jobs4. The government claims to have increased employment (an increase of 1 million jobs in the public sector) while the official propaganda show how unemployment has grown in the US and Europe. Employment has certainly grown in Venezuela, along with other countries in the region; but it is a question of precarious work, without fixed contracts or only part time, violating the state’s own employment laws and depriving workers of basic social benefits (health, help with education for workers and their children, etc). The state has created parallel health, education and other services, whilst worsening workers’ living conditions in these sectors and throughout the public sector, to the point where they accumulated vast debts, to the sum of thousands of millions of dollars. This social engineering has been a real bloodletting for workers in the productive sectors, driving down wages to around the minimum wage ($300 if the official amount is applied or $100 in the informal sector).
Chávism has rejected workers' demands, saying that they will worsen the ‘people’s’ living conditions. But this is the great lie: through states social plans (which to a greater or lesser extent each national bourgeoisie tries to implement in order to maintain ‘social peace’) the bourgeoisie has tried to redistribute some of the crumbs from oil profits to a limited part of the poor, whilst the majority are left to hope that one day that they too will also benefit from this or that plan for social assistance. The reality of this can be seen with the distribution of price-regulated food, which can only be obtained after long queuing and only in limited quantities; or the limited amount of housing built by the state (constructed in high visibility areas in order to show off the ‘gains of the revolution’), which are given to a few government supporters and without any deeds. Others receive money benefits, pensions, scholarships etc from the state but this money does not cover the cost of food. On the other hand, inflation (the highest in the region) generated by the incessant costs of the state, make these hand-outs worthless overnight, whilst further undermining workers’ wages. According to official figures over the last 14 years of the Chávez government there has been an accumulated inflation of 1500%, which has meant a real cut in wages over this period.
The franchise of “21st century Socialism” which is sold by the left, the leftists and leaders of ‘social movements’ in the region, has fed the illusions of the weakest parts of the proletariat about the creation of a model of the capitalist state – one that in reality is just as savage as the state in other countries.
Chávez gave a new life to the democratic mystification with the idea of ‘participatory democracy’. This has allowed the state to penetrate and place under its control the poorest sections of the population and their social movements, through the use of such organisations as the Bolivarian Circles and more recently the Communal Councils. In this way Chávism appeared to carry out the egalitarianism promoted by the left as ‘levelling from below’, which means the spreading of poverty to the whole population, above all the working class.
Chávez's government has also brought about a major strengthening of the state against society, which corresponds to the left's vision that ‘Socialism’ means more state. The state has not only been reinforced at the economic level through the expropriation of businesses and land from sections of private capital opposed to the regime, but it has also fortified the totalitarian state: making it all pervasive in society. Chávez has militarised society and expanded the political character of the state in order to control and repress the population, principally the working class.
At the internal and external level, Chávism, like the Cuban and other bourgeoisies in the region, has used the scapegoat of ‘North American imperialism’ to justify its own imperialist policies. Historically the Venezuelan bourgeoisie has not hidden its intention to be a great regional power, an orientation intensified by Chávism with the weakening of the USA in the world and in its own backyard. With the excuse of the ‘threat of the Empire’ Chávism has justified increased arms spending, to such a point that according to the Report on the Tendencies in the Arms Sales 2012 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Venezuela is the main importer of conventional arms in South America, despite its constant talk about peace and unity. This swelling of the arms sector is part of the growth of militarisation of the bourgeoisies in the region and contributes to regional destabilisation. This arms spending represents greater indebtedness and directs of society's riches against society itself. It is more likely to be used for controlling social discontent than for confronting the ‘Empire’.
The Chávez regime has carried out a more aggressive geo-political policy than any of its predecessors. With the end of the construction of ‘Bolivar's great fatherland’ and using oil incomes as the means of penetration, it has become a factor of destablisation due to its competition with the other aspiring regional ‘little’ imperialists, principally Brazil and Colombia. With Cuba it has formed the ALBA, which brings together countries who have bought into the “21st century Socialism” franchise; it has set up “Petrocaribe” in order to penetrate the Caribbean and made agreements with the countries of Mercosur, principally with Argentina. These countries receive benefits in the form of oil exports and ‘aid’ from the Venezuelan state. In this manner Chávism has bought loyalty at a regional level through investing a good part of oil profits – and this policy has further worsened the living conditions of the proletariat in Venezuela.
For over two decades the international bourgeoisie has proclaimed the ‘death of Communism’ following the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in 1989, with the aim of trying to weaken class consciousness and the proletariat's struggle for a new society. Chávism has reinforced this campaign by trivialising and undermining of the idea of socialism, with the aim of destroying its real proletarian essence. The sections of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie who are opposed to the regime have also have contributed to this, calling the regime ‘Communist’ or ‘CastroCommunist’. This is one of the major contributions of the Chávist bourgeoisie and its counter parts in the rest of the bourgeoisie, since it represents a direct attack on the proletariat's class consciousness, not only in Venezuela but at the regional and international level.
This was not the development of a ‘revolution’, but the implementation of ‘Socialism in one country’ by a handful of military and leftist adventurers taking control of the capitalist state and strengthening it. The ‘overcoming of poverty’ was by achieved through state hand-outs, which has been presented as being against capitalism and imperialism because of the regime’s diatribes against the US. To present it as a ‘revolution’ is to repeat in the 21st century the tragedy that was the so-called ‘Cuban revolution’ and its impact upon the development of class consciousness amongst the proletariat in Cuba, Latin America and the world. Thus it is no surprise that Chávism has close links with the Castro brothers and their clique. The Chávist regime has been maintaining them in their 50 year rule through paying for their ‘advice’ in oil.
The so-called “Bolivarian revolution” has nothing to do with socialism. The Communist Manifesto, the first political programme of the proletariat, in 1848 proclaimed “the proletariat has no homeland or national interests to defend”, whereas Chávism is a patriotic and nationalist movement. The Chávist ‘revolution’ dreams of going back to pre-Colombian society and is based on the thinking of Bolivar, which was already reactionary at the time since his struggle against Spanish rule could only replace it with a creole oligarchy. It is a bourgeoisie project that has nothing to do with the workers' struggles, but everything to do with sections of the leftist, civil, military and petty bourgeoisie, who are full of social resentment for having been excluded from power following the fall of the dictatorship in 1958. It has also been sustained by the impoverished masses and the weakest sections of the proletariat who the Venezuelan bourgeoisie have manipulated for decades through a policy of hand-outs and cronyism, since they are vulnerable to the crumbs thrown to them by the state and the illusions that go along with this. The organisation of the Bolivarian Circles and the Communal Councils, which can be mobilised against the employed working class worse (whom they accuse of being the ‘aristocracy of labour’), and even confront them with armed gangs, are the continuation of this policy. The Chávist project is an integral partof the ‘social movements’ promoted by the left and leftism which use the most impoverished masses, those who are accustomed to living in poverty and precariousness, and who are not united with the struggles of the proletariat – a class which produces in an associated way, which uses strikes as the means for confronting capital, which can become conscious of the social force it represents and which is capable of struggling to overcome the poverty that capitalism subjects it to.
Chávism has used the full strength of the state in order to confront the workers' struggles, which have been obscured by the intense political polarisation introduced by the bourgeoisie. It has had recourse to the most barbaric means to attack the proletariat: in 2003, following the strike in the oil industry promoted by bourgeois fractions opposed to Chávez, a veritable pogrom was unleashed against the workers, using unemployed workers and supporters of the government. Not content with laying off 20,000 oil workers, the government made it impossible for them to find work inside or outside the state enterprises and subjected them to permanent harassment. This has been an important attack on class solidarity amongst the proletariat in Venezuela, which has accentuated divisions and polarised politics within the working class. Chávism has weakened class solidarity and consciousness.
Chávist ideology seeks to trivialise the class struggle, presenting it as a struggle of the ‘poor against the rich’. In his frequent speeches on TV and radio Chávez constantly repeated that “to be rich is bad”, with the intention that workers should passively accept a precarious life, whilst at the same time the hierarchy and the state bureaucrats, along with their families, disport themselves as the new rich . Chávez constantly went on about how he was struggling against ‘the bourgeoisie’, presenting his government as being the government of the poor, because he came from a poor background. In this way he tried to hide from the workers that the capitalist system is based on antagonistic social relations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and that those who govern the state are part of the bourgeois class.
Chávez's death does not mean the end of Chávism. Chávez has not been nor will he be the only populist leader in Latin America. The 20th century gave birth to various leaders with a similar profile, which were thought to now be an extinct species. The bourgeoisie needed Chávez in order to maintain control of and spread illusions amongst the most impoverished masses, including the weakest and most atomised sectors of the proletariat, sectors which will inevitably continue to grow as long as the capitalist system sinks into decadence and decomposition.
This drama poses a historic challenge to the proletariat, to develop its struggles and transform them into a reference point for the masses that have placed their hopes in the state and the Messiah Chávez. The proletariat in Venezuela has struggled, despite the weight of ideological poison and state repression, and the political polarisation created by the different factions of capital. Workers in the industrial and public sectors have used the strike weapon and protests in order to confront the state; despite many of them being sympathetic to Chávism, they have thus shown a lack of trust in the State-boss. The constant attacks by the ‘Socialist’ state have obliged them to resist, and they have had no other road5. This has also happened in sections of the most impoverished where the proletariat is weakest, although to a much more limited extend due to their atomisation and not being integrated into the productive apparatus.
Faced with the Leftist ideology of Chavism and the other ideologies that are generated and will be generated in order to preserve the system, the proletariat in Venezuela and internationally need to develop their struggle against capital, going beyond immediate demands, developing their consciousness and organisation as an autonomous class, which also means a development on the theoretical level, based on historical materialism. This task places a great weight on the most politicised minorities of the class – those who have already recognised that our struggle is for communism on a world wide scale.
Internacionalismo (Venezuela) 24/03/2013
1 Alternativa Bolivariana para las América, which is formed by Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and other countries
2 See Theses on Decomposition. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410].
3 See the article. Incremento de la violencia delictiva en Venezuela: Expresión del drama de la descomposición del capitalismo
On the morning of Saturday 16 March, the radio informed the million inhabitants of the island of Cyprus that a European aid plan had been agreed for the country that included the introduction of a tax of 6.75% on bank deposits up to €100,000 and 9.9% for deposits above that amount. Obviously, everyone rushed to the banks to withdraw their money. In vain! Banks and markets were closed, withdrawals from ATMs were limited. For more than a week, the country was at a standstill, with the population not knowing what tomorrow would bring. Finally, after many twists and turns (a rejection of the European plan in the Cypriot parliament, many official, behind-the-scenes negotiations...), the tax targeting the small investors was cancelled, but instead, accounts of more than €100,000 were hit harder (eg those of the Bank of Cyprus - the first bank in the country – would lose amounts between 30 and 40%) and the second largest bank, Laiki Bank, was declared bankrupt.
We have had no end of explanations to explain this disaster. ‘It’s Merkel’s fault!’ ‘It’s the fault of the European Union!’ ‘It’s the fault of the IMF!’ That’s what the victims (and those who showed solidarity with the families of workers affected) were told. And ‘It is the fault of irresponsible Cypriots!’ ‘It is the fault of international capital laundering its money!’ ‘It’s a healthy and necessary fight against harmful excesses of the financial world!’ These explanations for the catastrophic state of the Cypriot economy were offered elsewhere.
In reality, all these explanations are not only crude and pathetic lies, they are particularly poisonous for working class consciousness and struggles because accepting them would imply that:
In either case, the anger and reflection are deflected away from what is the real root of the current dramatic situation: capitalism. And worse! By blaming only certain parties (this individual, that government or that institution), by making believe that a more humane form of capitalism is possible, the bourgeoisie ultimately leads the exploited into defending the system that is attacking it!
To support its propaganda, the bourgeoisie draws on the appearance of things, on what seems obvious, on basic common sense. Or, in the words of Albert Einstein, “What we call common sense is actually all the ideas we have been taught up to the age of 18” (and even later, we should add). So, we must make a real effort theoretically to go beyond appearances to discover the real cause of the current downturn that’s not just in Cyprus but all over the world.
Owing to its geographical position, Cyprus has always been a highly coveted and fought over transit point1. So the island was one of the first points of contact between East and West in prehistoric times. It was independent in the Middle Ages and it became successively the flagship for the republics of Genoa and Venice. In 1571, Cyprus came under Ottoman domination.
There then followed a long period of decline until, in the nineteenth century, a new master, Great Britain, arrived. Cyprus was added to Gibraltar and Malta on the maritime route leading to Egypt and the Levant. It took advantage of this, waking from its torpor, but without really making a big leap forward. It gained its ‘independence’ in 1960.
In 1963 and 1964, the Turkish community was the victim of atrocities. On 6 August 1964 the Turkish air force bombed Tillyria. In the context of the Cold War when Americans forces were based in the area of their Turkish and Iranian or Iraqi allies, there could be no question of letting Cyprus become the Cuba of the Mediterranean.
Washington and Ankara, fearing a Soviet intervention on the island, agreed to the unification of Cyprus with Greece, provided that the Turkish army had a base there the same size as the English bases. But against all odds, President Makarios, who had, in the 1950s, defended the idea of enosis, the union of Greece and Cyprus, but had become a staunch defender of the independence of his country, refused to play ball. The Turkish army intervened, communities were uprooted and populations relocated. Shortly afterwards, the United States, worried about the weakness of Greece and always fearing a Russian intervention, colluded in deposing the monarchy, establishing a military dictatorship on 21 April 1967.
However, these same generals, supporters of a Cyprus united with Greece, did not go along with Makarios’s desire for independence and, moreover, the Americans didn’t trust him, fearing that he took his reputation as the ‘Castro of the Mediterranean’ too seriously. On 15 July 1974, the ‘colonels’, with no opposition from Makarios, launched a coup d’etat. Then, fearing Cyprus’s integration with Greece, Turkey landed 7,000 soldiers on the island on 20 July to ‘protect’ the Muslim community. The Turks wanted to have two geographically and ethnically distinct states, united under the authority of a federal government with limited powers, and organised the removal of the Christians to the south and the Muslims to the north. The southern Christian part claimed to represent the whole of Cyprus and was recognised by the international community. The northern Muslim part, took the step, in 1983, of declaring itself independent, but the international authorities consistently ignored this decision.
Thus, since 1989, Cyprus is the last European country with a dividing line and a capital divided by a wall. Cyprus would ‘benefit’ from another regional conflict, the Lebanon war. Lebanese capital, fleeing the war-torn country, invested in and dramatically transformed the southern region for a decade. When peace returned to Lebanon, Cyprus was fearful of a decline in foreign investment, but Soviet Perestroika and the revival of the Russian economy would provide new financial support.
According to some journalists and PhDs in economics, Cyprus’s ‘delicate’ position is due to the irresponsibility of its leaders (and therefore ‘the people who elected them’) that have transformed the island, out of pure greed, into a place for massive speculation and even into a giant laundry room for dubious capital, especially that from Russia. In fact, the brief history of this country shows the extent to which the current situation is the product of the history of world trade and imperialism.
With the Turkish invasion of 1974, some sectors and whole parts of the national economy were lost. With no agriculture, with no heavy industry, the Cypriot bourgeoisie had to find a new sector for capital accumulation, or perish. But which one? As a former colony, Cyprus had had a close historical relationship with Britain for over a century: English, for Cyprus, is still the lingua franca and the language used in education. It is used within and between its major institutions. This British culture is surely what explains why Cyprus spends 7% of its productive capacity on education, putting the country in the top three of the European Union. Lots of Cypriots go to study in universities in the UK or North America: nearly 4 out of 5 Cypriots study outside their island. And 47% have a graduate degree, the highest rate in the EU. Cypriots are an educated and mobile people. This is why they are uniquely positioned to provide accounting, banking and legal services of a high quality. In addition, they are members of the EU with all the benefits that come with the free flow of payments, capital and services, and have an exchange taxation treaty with Russia and low taxes.
Adding all this together, it explains its success hitherto as a European centre for trade and services. ‘Yes, but to then become a tax haven!’ exclaim all those who refuse to see that it’s not this or that leader, this or that financier who is in the dock but the world capitalist system as a whole. If tourism, chartering sea vessels and banking have gained an excessive weight in relation to the real economy of this small island, if all the banking facilities and charges have been introduced to encourage the development of foreign financial investments, the economy would no doubt have collapsed without it. If this tax haven had not been created, its current bankruptcy would have been avoided because ... it would have occurred much earlier!
Moreover, the entire global economy actually needs this ‘haven’. Since 1967, capitalism has suffered recession after recession, crisis after crisis. The real economy, industry, has become more and more lethargic. Investing in new plant is more and more risky; investments can be lost. That is why today, many investors are putting their money into loans to states at rates that are zero or negative. In other words, they have nothing to gain! Why? Because by investing elsewhere, they risk losing everything. This means that finding a profitable investment has now become incredibly difficult. Speculative bubbles (property, stock exchanges …), like sifting money away into the countless tax havens, are a necessary product of the global economic crisis of capitalism. Otherwise, the Cypriot bourgeoisie, like all others, would be unable to make a profit from its capital. This explains the existence of speculation.
But why is the world dotted with major financial centres which respect no law other than the lack of transparency? Is this not, on this occasion, the product of the immorality of the investors and their insatiable greed for money? Well no! Again, this is only how it looks on the surface. So let’s dig down a little.
With the real and legal economy being less and less profitable and more and more risky because of the severity of the global economic crisis, financial profits in capitalism tend to come increasingly from illegal activities. Drugs, arms trafficking, prostitution, trafficking in women and even children are all now an important part of the global economy. All funds invested in these obnoxious and inhuman activities must seem to come from out of nowhere and the mass of profits that they bring must be ‘laundered’ before being put back, when needed, into circulation. But capitalism’s greed doesn’t end there. All over the planet there are millions of human beings labouring in workshops manufacturing flasks or shoes; a whole multitude of workers reduced to slavery with no ‘legal’ sanction.
This shameful economy, this hidden economy, is a source of huge profits that get channelled via thousands of invisible links to the largest banks and financial institutions in the world. All the profits from the blood of the exploited must be first of all be carefully hidden and after long cycles of ‘cleansing’ in laundries like Cyprus, then brought back into general circulation, in the banks on the high streets or in the official stock markets. At this level, the ‘skulduggery’ of capital holds no bounds. A very large part of global speculation is therefore placed out of view, outside of any regulation, any law, or any control. This hidden and illegal ‘black’ economy has spread throughout the capitalist economy.
Today, leaders complain when states are facing bankruptcy; because all of the money that is going untaxed. But this also plays a particularly important role in bolstering profits, in the way a drug addict needs a regular supply of drugs. This is why all the slogans such as ‘Clean up capitalism!’ ‘Close the tax havens!’ ‘Impose stringent regulation!’... are nothing but expressions of outrage! Capitalism is sick, its real economy is not running smoothly; to survive, it is forced to more openly cheat its own laws. The rhetoric of the political leaders on the need for ‘economic morality’ is therefore a bluff! Neither Cyprus, nor Luxembourg, and even less the City of London is actually going to be forced to stop their speculative activity
The endless negotiations between Cyprus, the EU and Russia over an aid package can only be understood through the prism of the imperialist tensions that have shaped this small island. First, its military geo-strategic position is of the highest importance. NATO has a base there as well as Britain. Moreover, Cyprus is recognised as Europe’s Mediterranean aircraft carrier. The only Russian naval base is located in a country which, to say the least, is unstable and looks out towards Cyprus ... Syria! The problem here is that Russia, which supports Bashar Assad, is in danger of having to leave Syria in the event that the current regime is defeated. If the Russians were to leave Syria, Cyprus, located a hundred kilometres away, could make the ‘move’ much easier by letting Moscow retain a base in the Mediterranean. Europe, dependent to a large extent on Russian gas, would then, in exchange for financial support, be eager to partake (out of necessity) in the exploitation of Cypriot gas resources estimated to be several hundred billion cubic metres. Obviously, the Russian leaders would see this as a threat to their capacity to negotiate with Europe since Cypriot gas would allow Europe to counter any Russian ‘blackmail’ with regard to gas supplies. Finally, Cyprus has become a haven for twenty years for the more or less secret funds of the Russian oligarchs and manages tens of billions of Russian euros! Russia also has, in this respect, every reason to support Cyprus or to ‘buy’ Cyprus. Obviously, there is no clear agreed approach within Europe. The Cypriot economy will be ‘rolled over’ if necessary but Europe will not lose Cyprus or only at the cost of a bitter struggle.
It’s always the working class that pays the price. Taxing accounts of more than €100,000 is only one of the consequence of Cyprus’s bankruptcy. Taxes and charges of every kind will rise dramatically, austerity will increase sharply, and recession will worsen the economy, unemployment and poverty will spread like the plague. In fact, like those living in Greece or Spain before them, the workers in Cyprus are today suffering the fate that capitalism has in store for the world’s working class. One myth, the belief, deliberately cultivated by leaders across the world, has just been toppled: ‘Do not worry, whatever happens, the money in your bank is safe!’
The initial proposal to tax all Cypriot accounts has destroyed this illusion. The idea of the EU agreeing to this measure of direct theft was that it was the peculiar product of a tax haven that for years was granting dividends on savings that had been excessive, immoral and unbearable for economy. Cypriots had thus benefited unfairly from the system, and as a result they had to accept responsibility for the ‘repairs.’ But you can see right through this! Especially in Europe, the dominant idea was not ‘Cyprus is an exception’ but rather ‘It can happen to us too tomorrow,’ ‘They are thieves’, ‘They have no right to interfere in our economies’. It was necessary to stem a possible run on the banks on the island and also possible contagion: the EU backtracked and spared the ‘small fries’. But the out and out guarantee for the bank accounts has to be taken for what it is: an illusion. This is what is in store for the entire working class tomorrow: in order to replenish the coffers, States, regardless of the colour of the governments in place, in every country, will not hesitate to take money from us, to reduce us to poverty, to throw us into the street. Cyprus is not an exception! If it isn’t seizing hold of our bank accounts, we’ll be robbed with higher taxes and larger bills, or by soaring prices due to rampant inflation. Under capitalism, all roads lead to poverty. Our trust in the future remains firmly with the struggles of the working class and their increased unity and solidarity in confronting the capitalist state in all the countries of the world.
T and P (20/4/13)
1. This part is based to a large degree on the work of Alain Blondy, Cyprus or Europe, at the gateway to the Orient.
The justification declared by one of the Woolwich “jihadis”, David Adebolajo, was anger at what the British state is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Carnage on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul doesn’t make the headlines, even though its toll is far worse than what has just happened in London, or even what happened on 7/7/2005. And the USA and Britain have played a central role in all this. Their intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan has brought chaos and bloodshed on a huge scale. Both states are responsible for massacres and torture, like the decimation of Fallujah, or the atrocities in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Camp Nama.
But the methods of al-Qaida and other jihadis are not in any way a barrier to the killing. On the contrary: with their indiscriminate suicide bombings in market places and Shia mosques, the majority of al-Qaida’s victims are Muslims, which makes a mockery of their claim to be defending Islam against the western invaders.
Adebolajo also wanted to tell passers -by that the British government “doesn’t care about you”, that we should “remove them”. The British government certainly doesn’t care about the majority of its citizens, nor does it care about the soldiers it sends to their graves in endless wars. But murdering individual soldiers, who are not the architects of these wars and are also its victims, does anything but inspire the population to overthrow their government. On the contrary, it drives people to look for the state to protect them and fuels the worst kind of nationalism. Already there has been a spate of attacks on mosques and Muslims and new life has been breathed into the ultra-patriots of the EDL and BNP.
The respectable Muslim institutions have condemned the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and insist that Islam is a religion of peace. For the EDL and BNP, on the other hand, what happened in Woolwich is indeed Islam, a religion based on violence and hatred.
Both views are entirely misleading. Islam was born out of rebellion and war in the 6th century. But in those days, there was something revolutionary in Islam: it stood against the old pagan despotism of Mecca, it wanted an “umma” or community of believers that would cross racial boundaries, it significantly improved the status of women. Even when it became a state power and an empire, it had its epoch of progress, where science and philosophy were held in respect and which served as a bridge to the Renaissance in Europe. But that was a long time ago. Today, when the time has come for humanity to finally free itself from the old mythologies, all the world’s religions can only pull us backwards. In its moderate forms, Islam, like Christianity, teaches submission to the state and thus participation in the wars of the state. In its “radical” forms, like all the Christian end-of- the- world sects, it has become a true cult of death, an expression of the growing tide of nihilism and despair which has affected the younger generation in particular. This sense of hopelessness is the reflection of a social system which has reached a total dead-end. The Woolwich jihadis embodied this very clearly: after the murder, they waited for the police to arrive and when the armed units came, they rushed forward to embrace death.
It’s pretty obvious that the Islamists and the EDL/BNP are mutually interdependent. They feed each other’s rage and their ideologies mirror each other perfectly. The EDL/BNP worship the sacred ground of Britain, as though it truly belonged to the people and not the tiny minority of exploiters who actually run the country. For them, this sacred land has been polluted by the invasion of foreigners, a position crudely disguised as opposition to militant Islam. But when the militant Islamists talk about the invasion of “Muslim lands” by the “Jews and crusaders” they reveal that their vision of the world is as racist and as nationalistic as that of the far right.
Those who defend the democratic centre ground, the main political parties and the dominant media, can’t find enough words to denounce the action of the Woolwich murderers, while distancing themselves from the likes of the EDL/BNP. They love to talk about the liberal, tolerant traditions that supposedly characterise the “British way of life”. But those who manufacture mainstream democratic opinion are by far the most adept at using the actions of the “extremists” to justify the nation’s imperialist wars and to strengthen state repression. The horror of 9/11 gave the US state the excuse it needed to invade Afghanistan and crack down on domestic dissent. The activity of the 7/7 bombers or the Woolwich duo enables the government to whip up support for the “mission” in Afghanistan or Iraq. At the same time it enables them to bring in draconian anti-terrorist laws and to send police and security agents into colleges and universities to sniff out signs of “radicalisation” among students. This kind of snooping can be used not only against potential Islamists, but against those who really do make a “radical” critique of society – one that goes to the root, which is the total obsolescence of capitalist social relations.
The political and social atmosphere created by the Woolwich killings is putrid through and through. We are asked to take sides for one form of nationalism against another, one justification for war and murder against another. Even acts of genuine humanity, like that of Ingrid Loyau-Kennet who approached the knife-wielding Adebolajo to try to help the victim and avert further violence, have been taken up by the politicians for their own ends.
In the cacophonous ranting of the dominant ideology, one voice is rarely heard: the voice of the working class, of its movement for emancipation.
Some of course claim that right wing groups like the EDL and the BNP are the voice of the “white working class”. But the working class has no colour and no country, because it is everywhere subject to the same system of wage slavery. Those who stand on the “left” of the political machinery, like the SWP or George Galloway, also pretend to speak for the working class, for socialism and internationalism. But their “socialism” means giving more power to the state, and their “internationalism” means supporting the smaller imperialist state or armed gang against the bigger: Saddam against Bush, Hezbollah against Israel (although now they have to choose between Hezbollah and the Syrian opposition), Russia or China against the US.....
The real tradition of the working class is internationalism, based on the simple premise of the Communist Manifesto: the workers have no country, because they own nothing but their labour power. The interests of the workers, whether employed or unemployed, “native” or immigrant, black, white, yellow or brown, are the same in all countries. They are directly opposed to the interests, and policies of all states, all governments, all bosses, all capitalist parties, all popes, bishops and ayatollahs. And against the methods of bourgeois violence and warfare – indiscriminate massacre, state terror, or the terrorism of small gangs – the working class has its own methods of struggle. And they are genuinely radical because they point towards a profound re-organisation of human society based on solidarity rather than division: such methods as wildcat strikes, general assemblies, mass pickets and demonstrations calling on other workers to join the movement. And at a higher stage: councils of delegates, fraternisation with the troops of “enemy” armies, mutiny against military commands, armed insurrection organised by the workers’ councils: in sum, the proletarian revolution.
Amos 25.05.13
Just how quickly a modern capitalist state can descend into a devastating imperialist hell-hole is demonstrated by the war in Syria. We horror we view the growing death and mutilation of men, women, children, endless atrocities and the destruction of whole areas on televised reports; these are followed by the thoughts of 'experts', the think-tanks that inform the governments, then the nauseating speeches and policy decisions of politicians; and not only is there no end to all this carnage and the hypocrisy surrounding it, but it threatens to get worse. The social revolt in Syria of March 2011 is buried under the debris and devastation of this country and the present bloody stalemate of the military forces involved, as well as their different imperialist backers, threatens not just more of the same but increases the dangers of this war spreading - an extension of war and instability that is already underway.
One of the factors explaining this stalemate is, against all the propaganda to the contrary, the cohesiveness of the Syrian military, fear-driven support from large elements of the population for the Assad regime, and the military support to the latter from Russia and Iran. On the other side, the Free Syrian Army and the jihadists have been strengthened by the military support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France, Britain, the USA, Jordan and Turkey. Britain and France have been particularly active in stepping up economic, military and diplomatic support recently, with both looking to alter the terms of the UN arms embargo, and Foreign Secretary Hague saying at the beginning of March that Britain was considering arming the rebels in order to 'save lives'. In a sign of its growing weight Germany has, for the moment, firmly blocked any attempt to ease any restrictions of arms to the rebels wanted by France and the UK. In fact Britain, along with France, the USA, Turkey, via Jordan, as well as the arms deliveries by Qatari and Saudi forces, are already providing lethal assistance to opposition forces along with direct military training. Britain has also shown a propensity to support the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab countries in the past and throughout the "Arab Spring" and we should assume that the same is happening here as they are a significant element in the Syrian opposition forces.
On April 10, a BBC report stated that the Syrian al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) has been confirmed from Iraq to be part of al-Qaida in Iraq[1]. Somewhat embarrassingly for the freedom-loving west this has been a fact on the ground for the last six months or more; but backing elements of Islamic fundamentalism has a long tradition from British imperialism, imperialism in general in fact. There's no doubt that al-Nusra is a well-armed and cohesive fighting force. It has had major successes around Aleppo and is reportedly instrumental in the constant fighting in and around Damascus where it's used car bombs and rockets against civilian targets. It looks like that it's also used chemical weapons with devices improvised from chlorine used for water disinfection[2]. Not that there's any moral high ground in this war which, from the most rabid fundamentalist to the most well-spoken democratic politician, shows their dedication to defending their own sordid and bloody imperialist interests. The external opposition forces, the "government-in-waiting", conjured up by the US, France and Britain, and largely based in Turkey, has undergone change to yet another "legitimate representative of the Syrian people". First it was old, long-term Syrian exiles from the US with links to the CIA and various US state organisations, then the President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the preacher Moaz al-Khatib, who lectured the US on the merits of martyrdom (he's gone) and now Ghassan Hillo, another long-term US exile. Hague met Hillo and this new "interim government" on April 10 at the Foreign Office, where he once again talked about what help Britain could give them in order to "save lives" (gov.uk, April 10). Increasing killing to "save lives" is part of the normal doublespeak of politicians.
The regime itself has been strengthened by the interests of Russian imperialism which has provided it with diplomatic and military support as well as the diplomatic and economic support that it gets from China. In some sense this echoes the old Cold War proxy wars but it's much more unstable and chaotic than that, given that we are living in a period of decomposing entities, the weakening of the US and tendencies to everyman for himself. An example of this is the pro-opposition "allies" of Turkey and Saudi Arabia having diverging and opposing interests in the war and their own role as aspiring regional powers. The Syrian ally Iran has recently (Press TV, 16.4.13) reaffirmed its long-term support for Syria and calls for the deepening of "cooperation between the two countries to boost the resistance front against the Zionist regime of Israel". And here Iran is asserting itself, via its Sh'ite identity with Iraq, Hezbollah and the Syrian Baathist Party, against Turkey, Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, the leading military power in the region, Israel.
The potential for escalation is clear. In early April Syrian jets fired rockets 3 miles into Lebanese territory, the first direct attack since the war began. This has further destabilised the fragile state of Lebanon as Sunni-Shia tensions are on the rise and there's a wider destabilisation in relation to Israel. Israeli territory has been fired on from the increasingly "hot" area of the Golan Heights, and Israel as returned fire into Syria. Israel was also involved in the bombing of a suspected Hezbollah-bound arms convoy near Damascus on January 30. The Israeli resort of Eilat was also hit by rockets from jihadists active in the similarly unstable region of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula this week where, worryingly for the Israelis, their "Iron Dome" missile protection system failed to respond. And the background to all this is the continuing Iranian-Israeli tensions which this week were expressed in threats of the latter to invade the former with Israeli Chief of Staff, Lt. General Gartz saying "we have our plans and forecasts... if the time comes we will decide" (on military action) (AFP, 16.4.13). Israel is concerned about weapons going into and coming out of Syria, about threats against it from all sides; and a further concern must be, if it needed any, the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood from elements such as Britain.
The US is "leading from behind" in this war and just to make its position clear NATO's top commander, US Admiral James Stavridis, on a visit to Turkey this month, described Turkey as "Nato's border with Syria" (Reuters, 17.4.13). On the same day, the Los Angeles Times reported that 200 US military officials would be going to Jordan, where the British army has a presence, and adds that plans have been made for the extension of this force. In the meantime Assad's artillery and jet bombers are pounding civilian areas, often populated by refugees who are fleeing previous attacks (when the war started there were already two million Palestinian and Iraqi refugees living in Syria). Similarly, when they are not carrying out direct massacres of civilians as al-Nusra have done, the rebels have ensconced themselves in civilian areas from which they launch attacks, inviting retribution from the regime's forces. And for these civilians there is no end to their misery, hunger and terror which, if anything, threatens to spread beyond the borders of Syria with the complicity of the local, regional and global imperialist powers, all of which contains no perspective whatsoever for the working class.
Baboon. 19.4.13 (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1]It deserves more than a footnote but we must mention the situation of "liberated" Iraq, which remains an imperialist battleground particularly between the USA and Iran: according to Islamic Relief, facts which have been generally verified, one quarter of Iraqis are living in poverty. The unemployment rate is over 50% and one million children under 5 are suffering from malnutrition; there are at least 2.6 million displaced persons in the country and most of the country is dependent on UN aid. Poverty, disease, rising prices and lack of health facilities, electricity and clean water are rife. Amidst all this misery flourishes the most blatant corruption with billions of dollars disappearing into bank accounts with little or no work being done for it. And the bombs and terror, from the local Sunni and Shia gangs and their political masters, continue to kill on an almost daily basis. Iraq continues to show all the weaknesses and divisions imposed by various factions of the regime's own making which themselves have emanated from the "regime changers". Rather than the reconstructed Iraq that was promised us the country is being pulled apart, threatening further instability through the region.
[2]The US and it British and French allies here are holding the card of "chemical weapons" in order to intervene. It was one that they used during the first Gulf War in the early 90's where a single chlorine drum used in water treatment was designated as evidence of large-scale "weapons of mass destruction".
The death toll from the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in Dhaka has gone past 1000. Another 8 people have been killed in a fire in the Mirpur area of the same city – the death toll would certainly have been higher if the fire had broken out during the day, as it did last November at the Tazreen garment factory where 112 workers died1.
These ‘accidents’ are nothing short of industrial murder. There is no hiding the fact that there is a total disregard for the safety for the Bangladeshi garment workers who toil in appalling conditions for miserable wages. But this is not a regrettable excess to be blamed on a few rogue employers. It is inscribed into the very structure of the world economy. Cheapening the costs of labour power benefits not only the local gangsters who own the factories, but also the big international clothing companies like Primark who have swelled their profits on the cut-price labour they can find in the ‘third world’.
Furthermore, despite all the alleged reforms and advances of industrial production in the ‘west’, capital everywhere puts profit high above human life. Almost simultaneously with the terrorist attack on the crowds attending the Boston marathon, a fertiliser plant in West, near Waco in Texas, was destroyed in a huge explosion which left 14 dead and 200 wounded and levelled five city blocks. At the time, this was described as an accident. More recently, a paramedic who went to the scene has been arrested on suspicion of causing the explosion. But whatever the truth, the West explosion reveals the profound irresponsibility of capitalist production, since this plant containing such highly volatile materials was situated close to a nursing home, a school and a number of residential buildings. It brings to mind the Toulouse fertilizer factory explosion in early 2000 where 28 workers were killed plus one child. Ten thousand five hundred were injured, a quarter of them seriously. Total, who ran the plant, was cleared of all responsibility in subsequent proceedings. We could equally point to the siting of the Fukushima nuclear plant in an area highly vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis and again situated far too close to residential areas……
Sickened by the latest reports from Bangladesh, a sympathiser posted these observations on our discussion forum. We can only say that his anger is totally justified:
“the Bangladesh situation is reaching grotesque proportions, with horrific disasters - industrial murder - happening with sickening regularity. Why does anybody still bother to go to work in Bangladesh at all? God knows they barely even get paid! So why go? The answer of course is that under capitalism we all need even the most ridiculous and tiny amount of money the bourgeoisie can spare - wages: “a just wage for a just day’s work” or some such crap - just to keep going from day to day. We live on pittances squeezed out of the capitalists in circumstances that often threaten our very lives. And the threats don’t all have to be physical (fires and building collapses, or poisoned polluted surroundings) they can be psychological too, producing appalling miseries and unhappiness. Oh! How grateful we all should be, to the bourgeoisie; its generosity and love of humanity; its endless concern for the planet and the reign of peace world-wide! Where would we be without them? How could we manage without them, enforcing their extortionate mode of life on our existence, just so they can make their profit? And fight their vicious wars! If you don’t get crushed in a collapsing badly built factory, or burned to death locked inside one, there’s always the possibility of slow death at the hands of radioactive tsunamis, sudden extinction by remote bombings, rockets or drones, distasteful and agonizing elimination via chemical weaponry, or sudden erasure at the hands of sharp shooters from one side or another of their perpetually warring gangs: official or otherwise.
It isn’t just ‘industrial murder’ the bourgeoisie have invented, they have turned mass murder into an industry. It’s the only thing they’re good at now”. Amos 11.5.13
1 See the article written by our comrades in India: Workers burn to death in Bangladesh [994]. See also also this article the Rana Plaza collapse by Red Marriot [995].
One of our sympathisers - who posts as "Fred" on the ICC forum - sent us this article, exposing the British bourgeoisie’s cynical response to the “bee crisis”. But as Fred would certainly agree, the issue of “bee die off” is a global problem and not just a British one, and is yet another sign that capitalist production is incompatible with the health of the planet.
It isn't only proletarian workers under attack from a greedy bourgeoisie. Our friends and comrades, the hard working bees. are also under attack and in danger of extinction in the UK. This as a result of the bourgeoisie's love of insecticide as a means of upping food and flower production. It is thought - mainly on the continent of course, that great centre of crackpot and "foreign" ideas - that the spraying of gallons and litres of poisonous insecticides, meant to ensure the improved growth of food products for sale, could be hazardous to the bees. But what about the profits which accrue from the production and sale of these agricultural products? How would "no spraying" interfere with this? Never mind the bees! Not that the food and flowers are intended for those our rulers exploit. The working class wouldn't know what to do with flowers even it got some. But in the EU the idea has spread that the mass spraying of insecticides is dangerous. Does this mean that those of us with shares in the chemical producing industry are suddenly at risk?
Though reliant on the exploitation of workers including bees for their profit, the bourgeoisie also resent and "have it in" for those who produce their life of leisure; and seek to make all workers' lives as hard and as miserable as possible while retaining them in exploitable chains. This tendency may stem from guilt feelings hidden somewhere in the bourgeoisie's consciousness, whereby they angrily dislike that on which they depend. So our UK ruling class displays little in the way of affection for either the human working class, or our hard working bees, without whose effort we would soon be in material difficulties, particularly in regard to food.
Recently The Independent newspaper commented on the bee crisis as follows:
"'Victory for bees’ as European Union bans neonicotinoid pesticides blamed for destroying bee population ... 15 of the 27 member states voted for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoids despite opposition by countries including Britain"
So plucky little UK, always ready to tweak the EU's tale, stands alone, so to speak. It's just like 1940 again. Remember those hellish days? Well...probably not. But the right wing of the Tory Party certainly does, and a challenge to 'socialist' Europe, especially as it goes to the defence of worker bees, is just the ticket. Win this one, these Tories think, and we'll have fox hunting back in no time; for no one loves the countryside and its furry creatures more than the British ruling class.
So while Europe bans the sprays, Britain goes it alone. Spraying will continue. Elimination of pests that eat or destroy our rulers' profits before the goods even hit the market will not be tolerated, even if it threatens the existence of a few measly bees. And of course, good old bourgeois science hasn't actually proved that insecticides kill the bees, anymore than it's proved that global warming (a) is a reality and (b) is caused by capitalism anyway. If we all succumb to glacial entombment, or disappear under encroaching oceans, well isn't this the Deity's, or Mother Nature's fault; nothing to do with the bourgeoisie and their maniacal economic system, whereby they are privileged now to enjoy almost permanent wars of one kind or another, and impose the most appalling way of life on the majority of the planet's human population, and all the animals too, including bees.
By the way, thinking again of the bees, it is to be noticed that the inner cities of London and Paris are centers of flourishing bee life. The roof of the Chamber of Deputies in Paris is a veritable bee keeper’s paradise. The Parisian surroundings of parks and avenues, glowing bright with a flowering display, are absolute heaven for our bee friends, and they love it. The happy contented buzzing on the roof of the Parisian parliament, as the bees do their work, is in sharp contrast to the loud mouthed bellowing and cacophony of the elected deputies below, as bourgeois democracy plays out its useless role.
So the EU takes on an experimental period of "no spraying" and hopes to save its bees. The UK, however, is inclined to think of bees in the same way it thinks of all outsiders; immigrants legal or otherwise; and essentially anyone who missed the blessing of being born in the UK, and born white, and, if working class, born permanently submissive. It's hard to say where bees fit in. Are they sufficiently submissive? They're all very well as long as they stick to the job, don't cause trouble, and don't complain. That they are interfering in matters that don't concern them, like the profits that appear to accrue from a good spraying campaign in the countryside, is inconvenient. That they are now dying off is inconsiderate and tantamount to treasonable activity.
Fred 22/6/2013
A wave of protests against the increase in public transport fares is currently unfolding in the big cities of Brazil, particularly in the Sāo Paulo, but it’s also been happening in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Goiânia, Aracaju and Natal. This mobilisation has brought together young people in particular, students and school pupils, and to a lesser extent but still very significantly, wage workers and people on benefits, all fighting against the increases in what is already a poor quality and overpriced service, and which will add to the decline in living standards for huge layers of the population.
The Brazilian bourgeoisie, headed by the Workers’ Party (PT) and its allies, have been insisting that everything is fine in Brazil, despite the evidence of mounting difficulties in controlling inflation, which has been brought about by the measures of boosting consumption in order to avoid the country going into recession. Lacking any margin of manoeuvre, the only way the bourgeoisie can try to limit inflation is to increase interest rates while at the same time reducing expenditure on public services: education, health and social security, all of which can only lead to a further deterioration in the living conditions of those who depend on these services.
In the last few years, there have been many strikes against falling wages, increasingly insecure employment and cuts in education and social benefits. However in the majority of cases the strikes have been isolated behind a cordon sanitaire set up by unions linked to the PT government, and the discontent has been contained so that it doesn’t challenge social peace at the expense of the national economy. This is the context for the transport price increases in Sao Paulo and the rest of Brazil: the demand for more and more sacrifices in favour of the national economy, i.e. national capital.
Without any doubt the movements which have exploded around the world in the last few years, with the strong participation of young people, are proof that capitalism has no future to offer humanity other than inhumanity. This is why the recent mobilisation in Turkey had such a strong echo in the protests against fare increases. The young people of Brazil have shown that they are not willing to accept the logic of sacrifices imposed by the bourgeoisie and have joined in with the struggles that have shaken the world recently, like the struggle of the children of the working class in France (the struggle against the CPE in 2006), of youth and workers in Greece, Egypt and North Africa, the Indignados in Spain and Occupy in Britain and the US.
Encouraged by the success of the demonstrations in the towns of Porto Alegre and Goiânia, which had to face up to harsh repression and which, despite that, managed to obtain a suspension of the fare increases, the demonstrations in Sāo Paulo began on 6 June. They were called by the Movement for Free Access to Transport (MPL, Movimeto Passe Livre), a group formed mainly by young students influenced by the positions of the left, and also by anarchism. The MPL saw a surprising increase in the number of adherents, between 2 and 5 thousand people. There were other mobilisations on the 7th, 11th and 13th of June. From the start, the repression was brutal and resulted in numerous arrests and injuries. Here we must stress the courage and fighting spirit of the demonstrators and the sympathy they rapidly inspired in the population, something which took the organisers themselves by surprise.
Faced with these demonstrations, the bourgeoisie unleashed a level of violence unprecedented in the history of these kinds of movements, with the total complicity of the media who rushed to describe the demonstrators as vandals and irresponsible people. A high ranking spokesman of the state, the Public Prosecutor, advised the police to club and even kill protestors:
“I’ve been trying for two hours to get back to my home but there is a band of rebellious apes blocking the stations of Faria Lima and Marginal Pinheiros. Someone should inform the Tropa de Choque (an elite unit of military police) that this zone is part of my jurisdiction and they should come and kill these sons of whores and I will instruct the police inquiries… I feel nostalgic for the time when these sorts of things would be resolved by a rubber bullet in the backs of these shits”
On top of this, there has been a succession of speeches by public figures belonging to the rival parties, like the state governor Geraldo Alckmin from the PSDB (the Brazilian social democratic party) and the mayor of Sāo Paulo, from the PT, both of them equally vociferous in their defence of police repression and in condemning the movement. Such harmony is not very common, given that the political game of the bourgeoisie typically consists of attributing responsibility to the party in power for whatever problems come up.
In response to the growing repression and the smokescreen created by the main newspapers, TV and radio channels, which resulted in more and more people taking part in the demonstrations (20,000 on 13 June, a figure that has now been far surpassed, translator’s note). The repression was even more ferocious and led to 232 arrests and numerous injuries.
It’s worth underlining the appearance of a new generation of journalists. Although a minority, they have clearly shown solidarity with the movement by exposing police violence, many of them falling victim to it themselves. Conscious of the manipulative methods of the big media, these journalists have to some extent managed to recognise that the acts of violence by the young are a reaction of self-defence and that the depredations inflicted on government and judicial buildings are uncontained expressions of indignation against the state. What’s more, acts carried out by provocateurs, which the police use in demonstrations as a matter of course, have also been reported.
The exposure of a whole series of manipulations and lies by official state sources, the media and the police, aimed at demoralising and criminalising a legitimate movement, has had the effect of increasing the level of participation in the demonstrations and the support of the population. Here it’s important to highlight the major contribution made on the social media by elements active in the movement or sympathetic to it. Fearing that the situation could get out of control, certain sectors of the bourgeoisie have begun to change their tune. The big communication companies that own newspapers and TV channels, after a week of silence on the police repression, finally began to talk about the ‘excesses’ of the police action. Certain politicians have also criticised such ‘excesses’ and said they are going to investigate them.
The violence of the bourgeoisie through its state, whatever face it wears, ‘democratic’ or ‘radical’, is based on totalitarian terror against the classes it exploits or oppresses. With the ‘democratic’ state this violence is not so open as it is in naked dictatorships; it’s more hidden, so that the exploited accept their condition of exploitation by identifying with the state. But this does not mean that the democratic state will renounce the most varied and modern methods of repression when the situation demands it. It’s therefore no surprise that the police should launch this kind of violence against the movement. However, as in the case of the biter bit, we have seen that stepping up repression has only provoked growing solidarity in Brazil and even elsewhere in the world, even if he latter has only been among a small minority. There have been a number of solidarity demonstrations outside Brazil, animated mainly by Brazilians living abroad. It has to be clear that police violence is part of the nature of the state and is not an isolated case or an ‘excess’ as the bourgeois media and authorities claim. It’s not due to a failure on the part of the leaders and we will get nowhere by demanding ‘justice’ or more polite behaviour by the police: to face up to repression and impose a balance of forces in our favour, there is no other method than the extension of the movement to wider layers of workers. To do this, we can’t address ourselves to the state and ask for charity. The denunciation of repression and of the fare increases has to be taken in hand by the working class as a whole, by calling for an increase in the protest actions and a common struggle against repression and precarious living conditions.
The demonstrations are far from over. They have extended to the whole of Brazil and they were protests at the beginning of the 2013 Confederations Cup: the state president Dilma Rousseff was booed as well as the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, before the opening match between Brazil and Japan. Both of them were unable to hide how uncomfortable they felt with this display of hostility and cut short their speeches in order to limit the damage. Around the stadium there was a demonstration of 1200 people in solidarity with the movement against fare increases. They too were vigorously repressed by the police who injured 27 people and jailed 16. In order to further reinforce the repression, the state declared that any demonstration near the stadiums during the Confederations Cup was forbidden, on the pretext of preventing any disruption to the tournament, to traffic and the functioning of the public services.
As we know, this movement has attained a national scale because of the capacity for students and high school pupils to mobilise against the fare increases. However, it is important to bear in mind that the medium and long term aim of the mobilisation was to negotiate free transport for the whole population, to be provided by the state.
And this is exactly where we see the limits of the main demand, since universal free transport cannot exist in capitalist society. To provide it the bourgeoisie and its state would have to further accentuate the exploitation of the working class by increasing taxes on their wages. We have to recognise that the struggle can’t be one for an impossible reform, but should rather be aimed at forcing the state to back down.
Right now, the perspectives for the movement seems to be going beyond simple demands against the fare increases. Already demonstrations have been called for next week in dozens of large and medium sized towns.
The movement has to be vigilant towards the left of capital, which specialises in recuperating demonstrations and leading them into a dead end, as for example with the call for the laws courts to resolve the problem so the demonstrators can go back home.
For the movement to develop, we have to create spaces where we can collectively listen to and discuss different points of view. This can only be done through general assemblies open to all, where the right to speak is guaranteed to all demonstrators. In addition, it is vital to call on the employed workers to join the assemblies and protests because they and their families are equally affected by the price increases.
The protest movement developing in Brazil is a clear answer to the campaign of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, backed up by the world bourgeoisie, according to which Brazil is an ‘emerging country’ on the way to overcoming poverty. This campaign was promoted in particular by Lula, who is known around the world for supposedly having succeeded in pulling millions of Brazilians out of poverty, when in reality his big service to capital was to have shared the crumbs among the poorest masses in order to maintain their illusions and further accentuate the precarious situation of the Brazilian proletariat as a whole.
Faced with the worsening of the world crisis, and capital’s attacks on proletarian living conditions, there is no way out except to struggle against the whole capitalist system.
Revoluçāo Internacional (ICC in Brazil) 16.6.13
2011 was marked by a huge wave of social revolts which spread from Tunisia and Egypt to other countries of the Middle East – including Israel – and to mainland Europe, in particular Greece and Spain, and the US with the ‘Occupy’ movement. These movements all had their own particular features depending on local conditions, and all of them suffered from strong illusions in ‘democracy’ as the answer to all social ills. But what was most important about them was what they expressed at the most profound level: the response of a new generation of proletarians to the deepening world crisis of the capitalist system; and for all their illusions, all their difficulties in understanding their own origins and nature, they belong to the working class and its halting, painful effort to recover an awareness of its real methods and goals.
The revolts in Turkey and Brazil in 2013 are proof that the dynamic created by these movements has not exhausted itself. Although the media puzzle over the fact that these rebellions have broken out in countries which have been through a phase of ‘growth’ in recent years, they have given vent to the same ‘indignation’ of the mass of the population against the way this system operates: growing social inequality, the greed and corruption of the ruling class, the brutality of state repression, a collapsing infrastructure, environmental destruction. And above all, the inability of the system to offer the younger generation a future.
A particular significance of the revolt in Turkey is its proximity with the murderous war in Syria. The war in Syria was also presaged by popular demonstrations against the regime in place, but the weakness of the proletariat in that country, the existence of deep ethnic and religious divisions within the population, enabled the regime to respond with the most ruthless violence. Fissures within the bourgeoisie widened and the popular revolt was – as in Libya in 2011 – drowned in a ‘civil’ war which has in fact become a proxy war between rival imperialist powers. Syria today has become a showcase of barbarism, a chilling reminder of the ‘alternative’ capitalism holds in store for the whole of humanity. Turkey on the other hand, like Brazil and the other social revolts, points to the other road opening up in front of humanity: the road towards the refusal of capitalism, towards the proletarian revolution and the construction of a new society based on solidarity and human need.
The article that follows was written by the comrades of our section in Turkey – a young section, both in the history of the ICC and in the age of its members. Both as revolutionaries and as part of the generation that has led the revolt, these comrades have been actively involved in the movement on the streets and this represents a first report ‘on the spot’ and a first attempt to analyse the significance of the movement.
On the “Chapullers”1 movement: The cure for state terror isn't democracy
“We made a general strike out of our tears to a friend today,
We took down his smiling corpse from a tree
How hard he'd hugged it, how he'd know his duty, how he'd given branches...”2
The movement that began against the cutting of the trees as a part of the plans to tear down Gezi Park in Taksim, Istanbul, and assumed a massiveness unseen in the history of Turkey so far, is still ongoing. Analyzing this movement is of vital importance for class struggle. For this reason, it is necessary for us to base ourselves on a class perspective while defining and politically understanding this movement. Also, there is a need to draw the balance sheet of the process so far. When analyzing the movement and drawing its balance sheet, despite the indignation we feel against the state terror applied against it, and the massacre of three demonstrators, we do not have the luxury to let go of caution and cool-headedness. For getting too caught up in the atmosphere created by the movement and making hasty analyses would risk making serious mistakes in regards to the positions of the class struggle.
Without doubt, since this is an ongoing movement, what we are doing is, in essence, a primary evaluation. Besides, we have to point out that we are continuing our discussions on the movement among ourselves.
The ruling AKP party and its government had been preventing demonstrations from taking place in Taksim Square, using the urban development projects launched in this area as an excuse. Another intense discussion which occurred on these projects was on the demolition of the Labour Movie Theater, also in the Taksim area. During this process, the police had provoked reactions from popular cultural icons as a result of the attacks made on the protesters who were trying to prevent the demolition of the movie theater. The rearrangement of Gezi Park as a shopping mall, the rebuilding of the historic Gunner Barracks demolished decades ago and the cutting down of the trees was also on the agenda during this process. On these grounds, certain dissident neighborhood associations, non-government organizations, trade-unions and leftist parties had formed the Taksim Solidarity Platform with the slogan “Taksim is Ours”. The desire to hold May Day demonstrations in Taksim was also to start a discussion focused on Taksim.
In this framework, the officials of the bourgeois state were to declare that Taksim wasn't suited for May Day demonstrations and they would not allow such demonstrators to take place in there, claiming that the excavation works in the area would risk the safety of the people who would participate. The May Day demonstration in Taksim was prevented with the state terror used by the riot police. The 'area and demonstration' problem used by the bourgeois left as a policy of finding a way out of its political dead-end once again dominated the agenda after 2007. The insistence on holding May Day demonstrations in Taksim instead of any other area had assumed a highly symbolic character, given the memory of the famous May Day demonstration held in this square in 1977 where 34 people were massacred. Additionally, new regulations introduced by the AKP against abortion legislation and the ban on alcohol sales between 10pm and 6pm also continued to provoke reactions. Also the approach of the current government on art and history followed a similar course, with the demolition of the 'freakish statue' in Kars, the opening of Hagia Sophia to services and similar policies dominating the public mind. Especially in Istanbul, the construction plans made as a part of urban transformation policies, demolitions and the intent to name the Third Bridge planned to be built on the Bosphorus after Yavuz Sultan Selim, an Ottoman Sultan notorious for the massacres of the members of the Alevi sect in Turkey, caused a lot of anger. Additionally, the anti-war feeling against the Syria policies of Erdogan and his government had become increasingly wide-spread, especially after the bombings in Reyhanli and the collapse of the AKP government’s line of blaming the Syrian government about it. And lastly, the 'disproportionality', as the common saying in Turkey goes, of state terror and police violence had started to cause enormous indignation. Furthermore, the youth described as the 90's generation, as apolitical and not wanting to get involved in anything until these demonstrations, had started feeling they didn't have a future as the part of society most affected by the impact of the international economic crisis in Turkey.
On May 28th, a group of about fifty environmentalists started demonstrating in order to prevent earth movers from entering Gezi Park to cut down trees. The response of the police to the demonstrators was violent from the beginning. Especially after the police burnt down the tents of the demonstrators on the morning of May 30th, a serious reaction started to develop. By May 31st, the demonstrations organized against the violent police terror using social media had assumed a generally anti-government quality transcending the question of trees. It had spread out to virtually all the large cities in the country and was getting more and more massive. With the protests in many cities involving large scale clashes with state forces, the slogan “Everywhere is Taksim, resistance everywhere” assumed a real meaning for the first time. When Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “Where the opposition gather a hundred thousand, we can gather a million people” on June 1st, a mass of two million people was to take over Taksim Square, forcing the police to back off. Aside from state terror, the arrogant attitude of Prime Minister Erdogan and the censorship of bourgeois media also caused serious indignation among the masses. In the following days, demonstrations were to take place in 78 of 81 Turkish provinces and solidarity demonstrations were to be organized in every corner of the world. Furthermore, soon the movement which emerged in Brazil against the increase in transportation prices and also assumed an anti-government character was to express the inspiration it took from the demonstrators in Turkey with the slogan “Love is over, Turkey has arrived”. The movement in Turkey was not to remain limited to the squares and demonstrations, with demonstrations of thousands, even tens of thousands and people supporting them making a noise by hitting pots and pans. The movement that begun in Istanbul was to express itself as a reaction against the massacre following the bombings in Reyhanli in Antakya. In Izmir the demonstrations took place under the domination of a nationalist tendency. In Ankara, due to the fact that this city is the bureaucratic and administrative center of the bourgeois state, militant clashes of the masses subjected to intense state terror took place. The expression, “chapullers” used by Erdogan to describe the demonstrators was widely welcomed by them. Without a doubt, one of the most colorful scenes of the clashes throughout the country took place when football fans demonstrating took over a bulldozer and for hours chased the police IVSEs (Intervention Vehicles to Social Events) which had been terrorizing the masses. The demonstrators meaningfully gave the bulldozer they had captured the name IVPE (Intervention Vehicle to Police Events).
Another important factor which influenced the course and slogans of the movement was the fact that police and state terror claimed the lives of three demonstrators. On June 1st, Ethem Sarisuluk, an industrial worker, was shot in the head by the police with a real bullet in Ankara. Ethem was to pass away in the hospital he was taken to in the following days. On June 3rd, in the May Day neighborhood in Istanbul, a young worker called Mehmet Ayvalitas was to be killed as a result of a vehicle deliberately hitting the demonstrators. Again on the night of June 3rd, a student, Abdullah Comert, was also shot and murdered by the police with a real bullet. These three demonstrators massacred by the state were claimed by the movement as a whole and were seen as martyrs of the struggle. The ten thousand demonstrators who shouted “Mother, do not weep, your children are here” in front of Ethem's mothers house after his funeral in Ankara, who chanted “The murderous state will pay” during Mehmet's funeral in Istanbul and who decided to leave gillyflowers where Abdullah was murdered in Antakya, saying “We won't forget, we won't let anyone forget”, proved this. Aside from the murders of Ethem, Mehmet and Abdullah, over ten demonstrators lost their eyes as a result of the police aiming pepper gas canisters and plastic bullets at the faces of the demonstrators. Tens of thousands of people were wounded, dozens of whom are still in a critical condition. Thousands were taken in custody.
After the masses took over Taksim Square from the police on June 1st, the question of what the course of the movement will be started being asked within the movement itself. The prominent question, as expressed in social media, was 'Will we go to work tomorrow after all these events?' Also, aside from those asking the question, a significant portion had started to feel the need for a stronger force than street demonstrations against the state terror still practiced in cities such as Ankara, Antakya, İzmir, Adana, Muğla, Mersin, Eskişehir and Dersim as well as some parts of Istanbul, although police presence had ceased in the Taksim area. These two factors met in the spontaneous call for a general strike which emerged and especially on June 2nd rapidly expanded on social media. As the first impact of this call, the university employees in Ankara and Istanbul declared that they will be going on strike on the 3rd of June. Also in Ankara where the clashes continued intensely, doctors and nurses in some hospitals declared that they would only be treating emergencies and demonstrators. On the same day, Istanbul Stock Market dropped by 10,47 %, the largest drop in the last ten years, and the Taksim Solidarity Platform put forward certain demands. These were democratic demands such as asking for Gezi Park to be preserved as a park, the governors and police chiefs being replaced, the use of tear gas and similar materials to be banned , the release of those taken into custody and the obstacles to the freedom of expression to be diminished.
Eventually the leftist KESK union reorganized its previously planned public sector workers’ strike for June 5th to take place on the 4th and the 5th of June due to the pressure of the workers who are members. On June 4th, DISK, TMMOB and TTB declared that they too were to support the strike on the 5th of June. The strike on the 5th of June took place with a significant participation of public sector workers. In Istanbul alone, 150,000 workers marched to Taksim and about 200,000 workers went out. It is estimated that between 400,000 and 500,000 workers participated in the strike throughout the country. On the other hand, the atmosphere of the strike was under the control of the unions, and the democratic demands of the Taksim Solidarity Platform blurred the workers’ perspective, overshadowing demands such as “No to the performance law” and “Right to strike with collective bargaining”. At this point, it would be appropriate to give the details of an incident which took place in Ankara during the 5th of June strike and exposed the true colors of KESK. During the demonstration in Kizilay Square in Ankara KESK had made an agreement with the police that the police wouldn't attack the demonstrators as long as KESK was there, and had got a permit to demonstrate until six o'clock in the morning. Nevertheless, at around six thirty in the evening, KESK, fearing losing control due to the interaction of the workers in the area with the wide masses who would have come to the square after work, suddenly withdrew from the area without informing anyone. A violent police attack took place right after KESK withdrew. KESK had subjected the masses who'd come to demonstrate for the strike to the violence of the police.
As the movement reached a serious scale, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan went to a visit to North African countries after giving the riot police the directive “End this business by the time I return”. When Erdogan was abroad, President Abdullah Gül stated “We got the message” about the protests and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the environmentalists were right, and agreed to meet the Taksim Solidarity Platform, giving the signals of a different approach compared to Erdogan's strict and arrogant attitude. Violent police attacks against the protesters kept occurring in many cities, above all in Ankara as the Taksim Solidarity Platform met with Arinc, and Sirri Sureyya Onder, an MP from BDP and one of the supposed 'symbolic' names of the movement met with Gül in the capital. A significant tendency among the demonstrators had no trust in the sincerity of figures such as Gül and Arinc and had had the impression that the government was applying 'good cop, bad cop' tactics.
Regardless, before the negotiation process caused a significant loss of momentum within the movement, Erdogan who continued his harsh remarks from North Africa, subtly criticizing even President Gül, returned to the country. With the return of the Prime Minister, the attitude of the government was to get stricter. Moreover, in the light of Erdogan's remark “We are only just holding back fifty percent of the people in their homes”, his supporters in the AKP started organizing welcome demonstrations which were meant to appear as spontaneous. However the fact that the welcome demonstrations took place with the participation of a few thousand people, organized in quite an amateur manner was to show that half the population had no real difficulty staying home. In the welcome demonstrations, Erdogan was to announce that they were to organize two large meetings on the 15th and 16th of June in Ankara and Istanbul respectively. Yet, despite the rather outrageous claims of the government officials, the number of people in the meeting in Sincan, Ankara was to be below 40,000 and in Kazlicesme, Istanbul below 295,000.
At this point, the question of whether there is a crack within the government would be in order. Despite the fact that we can't really talk about a crack, taking into consideration that the AKP is actually a coalition made up of different interest groups, factions, sects and cults, it can be said that this social movement created the potential of a crack for the first time within the AKP. Tayyip Erdogan gave order after order for police attacks against a movement which could die out, be absorbed or at least prevented from radicalizing, risking losing the 2020 Olympics from being given to Istanbul, which is so important to the AKP government, and becoming the target of mockery throughout the world, including that of the Syrian state which warned its citizens not to go to Turkey because it is dangerous! This attitude, which seems irrational, can't be explained by looking at Erdogan's character alone. Erdogan had been able to hold the AKP together so far with his authoritarian attitude of never backing down and if retreating, retreating aggressively, and with the appearance of invincibility created by this attitude. If he was now seen to taking back the words he spat out in the face of such a movement and appeared to have bowed down to the demonstrators, he would lose his invincibility as well. The result of this failure would sooner or later lead to his demise within the AKP. This is why Erdogan doesn’t dare to back down: Not because he is certain that he will defeat the movement he keeps pressing, but because he is certain that if he backs down, sooner or later he will lose.
During the week prior to the AKP's 15th-16th June meetings, Erdogan declared that he was to talk to a delegation of demonstrators while he continued to issue harsh messages. At the same time, attacks against Taksim were re-launched in Istanbul in line with the government’s attempts to sow seeds of division among the protesters by claiming there are 'outside provocateurs' among them. The fact that among the people who first met Erdogan about the demonstrations were celebrities such as Necati Sasmaz and Hulya Avsar, who had nothing to do with what was going on, as well as people known for their pro-government stance, caused a serious reaction and eventually forced Erdogan to meet with representatives from the Taksim Solidarity Platform. Although this was a tough meeting, afterwards Taksim Solidarity Platform and a majority of its components began working towards making the protesters go back to their homes, 'continuing' the struggle in Gezi Park symbolically, with a single tent. However, these efforts were rejected by the masses. Thus Erdogan declared in his June 15th demonstration in Ankara that, if the demonstrators do not leave Gezi Park, the police will attack and evacuate them, using his own demonstration in Istanbul the next day as an excuse. At the night of the same day, Gezi Park was attacked and dispersed again with a horrible police terror. This time, the military police was also mobilized to give open support to the police.
Especially after the prospect of a police attack on Gezi Park came back to the agenda, the calls for a general strike, as well as a reaction to the insufficiency of the 5th of June strike and against the unions, were reignited. Eventually this reaction forced KESK to declare that they would have another general strike if there is an attack on Gezi Park. After the evacuation of the park on June 15th, this reaction increased further and KESK, DISK, TMMOB, TTB and TDHB declared that they were going to go do a work stoppage action on the 17th of June. However, BDP admirably served the AKP government with which it had entered a peace process by forcing its members in KESK to break the strike. Thus, participation in the work stoppage action on June 17th was considerably lower compared to the 5th of June strike. Another significant incident was that this time in Istanbul also, the police attacked the demonstrators after the union representatives left the area.
The protests which involved millions of people throughout the country as well as police violence and state terror against the demonstrators still continue.
When analyzing the Taksim Gezi Park movement, without a doubt the first question that needs to be asked is how we can define this movement, what its class character is.
At first sight, this looks like a heterogeneous social movement, made up of different classes. Within the movement are people from a lot of sections of the population discontented about the latest policies of the government from the petty bourgeoisie such as shopkeepers to lumpen elements such as neighborhood roughnecks, from people from non-exploiting strata who aren't directly exploited such as artisans and street vendors to administrators with high incomes. Moreover, there are certain bourgeois elements among the supporters of the movement, such as Cem Boyner who posed with a banner saying “I am neither rightist nor leftist, I'm a chapuller”, and Ali Koc who owns Divan Hotel in Taksim where the demonstrators took refuge. Although he later denied it, Koc allegedly said “If the doors of the hotel are closed; if the police is allowed in the hotel and the help given is stopped, I will fire everyone working there”.
Nevertheless, we can only understand the real character of this movement by placing it in its international context. And viewed in this light, it becomes clear that the movement in Turkey is in direct continuity not only with the revolts in the Middle East in 2011 – the most important of which (Tunisia, Egypt, Israel) had a very strong imprint of the working class – but in particular the movement of the Indignados in Spain and Occupy in the US, where the working class makes up a large majority not only of the population as a whole but also of the participants in the movements. The same applies to the current rebellion in Brazil and it is equally applicable to the movement in Turkey, where the immense majority of the movement’s components belonged to the working class, above all the proletarian youth.3 Women had a visible numerical significance as well as a symbolic importance in the protests. Both in the clashes and in the local pot and pan demonstrations, women were in the front lines. The widest participation was shown by the strata called the 90's generation. Being apolitical was a label imposed on the demonstrators produced by this generation, some of whom couldn't remember the period before the AKP government. This generation, who were told not to get involved in the events and to look to save themselves, had noticed that they had no salvation alone and were tired of the government telling them what they should be and how they should live. Students, especially high school students, participated in the demonstrators in massive numbers. Young workers and unemployed were widely a part of the movement. Educated workers and unemployed were also present. In certain areas of the economy where mostly young people work under precarious conditions and it is difficult to struggle under normal conditions – especially in the service sector – the employees organized on a workplace-based way which transcended single workplaces, and participated in the protests together. The examples of such participation were delivery boys in kebab shops, bar employees, call center, office and plaza workers. On the other hand, the fact that workplace-based participation didn't outweigh the tendency of workers to go to the demonstrations individually was among the significant weaknesses of the movement. But this too was typical of the movements in other countries, where the primacy of the revolt on the street has been a practical expression of the need to overcome the social dispersal created by the existing conditions of capitalist production and crisis – in particular, the weight of unemployment and precarious employment. But these same conditions, coupled with the immense ideological assaults of the ruling class, have also made it difficult for the working class to see itself as a class and tends to reinforce the protesters’ notion that they are essentially a mass of individual citizens, legitimate members of the ‘national’ community, and not a class. Such is the contradictory path towards the proletariat re-constituting itself as a class, but there is no doubt that these movements are a step along this path.
One of the main reasons behind the fact that such a significant mass of proletarians discontented about their current living conditions organized protests with such a great determination was the indignation and the feeling of solidarity against police violence and state terror. Despite this, various bourgeois political tendencies were active, trying to influence the movement from within in order to keep it within the boundaries of the current order, to prevent it from radicalizing and to keep the proletarian masses who'd taken to the streets against state terror from developing class demands around their own living conditions. Thus while it isn't possible for us to talk of a single demand the movement has agreed on without question, what commonly dominated the movement were democratic demands. The line calling for 'More Democracy' which was formed on an anti-AKP and in fact an anti-Tayyip Erdogan position in essence expressed nothing other than the reorganization of Turkish capitalism in a more democratic fashion. The effect of democratic demands on the movement constituted its greatest ideological weakness. For Prime Minister Erdogan himself built all his ideological attacks against the movement around the axis of democracy and elections; the government authorities, though with loads of lies and manipulations, often repeated the argument that even in the countries considered most democratic, the police use violence against lawless demonstrations – on which they were not wrong. Moreover the line of trying to get democratic rights tied the hands of the masses when faced with police attacks and state terror and pacified the resistance.
As we have said, the Gezi struggle included many different tendencies from the beginning. It would be in order to shortly go through the substance, weight and effects of the different organized tendencies within the movement, which of course at some point overlapped among themselves, as well as the tendencies among the unorganized masses.
First of all, we need to mention the democratic tendency which for the most part managed dominate the movement with its slogans. This tendency, embodied in Taksim Solidarity Platform and BDP MP Sirri Sureyya Onder, unites trade union confederations, leftist, social democratic and nationalist political parties, radical leftist magazine circles, non-government organizations, professional unions, neighborhood associations, environmentalists and similar foundations and organizations. Currently, among the components of Taksim Solidarity Platform are, aside from organizations such as KESK, DISK and the Syndical Power Unity Platform, parties such as CHP, BDP, the Workers’ Party and nearly all leftist parties and magazine circles. However the most active element within the democratic tendency which seems to have taken control of the Taksim Solidarity Platform is left-wing trade-union confederations such as KESK and DISK. Of course, this unity made up at the top levels of bourgeois parties and foundations has serious cracks at their bases. The true base of the democratic tendency is not made up of its component organizations but of the pro-civil society, pro- passive resistance and liberal sections of the movement. Taksim Solidarity Platform and thus the democratic tendency, due to the fact that it was made up of the representatives of all sorts of foundations and organizations, drew its strength not from its organic connection with the demonstrators but from the bourgeois legitimacy, mobilized resources and support of its components. This being said, the democratic tendency has a weakness, namely that of being cut off from the masses due to lacking an organic connection with the demonstrators, even its own base among them. Nevertheless the fact that there is a significant spontaneous dynamic expressed by the slogan “Tayyip resign!” among the masses, strengthens the democratic tendencies’ hand, despite the fact that Taksim Solidarity Platform never put forward such a demand.
Secondly, we need to mention the nationalist tendency which got very excited when the movement first began but whose expectations weren't met and who remained a side tendency. Among this tendency, the CHP should be evaluated separately from the Workers’ Party and the TGB. The CHP's efforts to orient the movement when it begun remained fruitless and later on, Kilicdaroglu's call for the protesters to disperse didn't result in the CHP's own base withdrawing from the area. In fact, there were protesters who expressed anger towards CHP deputies in Istanbul. As for the radical nationalists such as the Workers’ Party and the TGB, their attempts to turn the movement into ‘Republican’ demonstrations, despite having an effect in some localities, didn't bear significant results. A separate effort of the nationalists was to separate the police from the AKP government with lines such as “There are youths of the same age in both sides”, trying to portray the police in a sympathetic fashion. Yet the sheer brutality of the police violence prevented this line from being accepted for the most part. The most common slogan of the nationalists was “We're Mustafa Kemal's soldiers”, and they tried to get Kemalist anthems sung by the demonstrators. Nationalists, whose attempts to react against the Kurdish demonstrators and the general line they tried to impose on the demonstrations were disliked by the masses, owed the limited influence they enjoyed to the Kemalist education system the newly politicized generation came out of.
The bourgeois left is another tendency worth mentioning. The base of the leftist parties who we can also describe as the legal bourgeois left was for the large part cut off from the masses. Generally they tailed the democratic tendency. BDP, while appearing to support the democratic tendency, also tried to prevent Kurds from participating in the movement, though not so successfully in the big cities, giving covert support for the government with which it is involved in a peace process. Stalinist and Trotskyist magazine circles, or the radical bourgeois left, was also for the large part cut off from the masses. They were influential in the neighborhoods where they were traditionally strong. While they opposed the democratic tendency at the moment it tried to disperse the movement, they generally supported it. The analyses of the bourgeois left was, for the most part limited to expressing how happy they were about the 'popular uprising' and trying to present themselves as the leaders of the movement. Even the calls for a general strike, a traditionally memorized line of the left, wasn't really felt among the left due to the atmosphere of blind happiness. Their most widely accepted slogan among the masses was “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism”.
The tendency which had the most impact and enjoyed the most sympathy among the base of the movement was the football fans. Although the administrators of the football ultras did not act separately from the democratic tendency, the effect of these administrators on their own base was limited. Football fans who have gained an experience not weaker than that of the leftists when it comes to acting together, going to demonstrations and even clashing with the police, were the only more or less organized tendency which wasn't cut off from and acted comfortably among the general mass of protesters. They were prominent especially in the clashes. In a way, it was meaningful that the football fans were the part of the movement the protesting masses who'd been apolitical until the day the demonstrations began felt closest to. Turkey is a country where the line 'I am neither a rightist nor a leftist, but a footballist' is quite popular. Their most memorable slogan was “Spray it, spray it, spray your tear gas! Take off your helmet, leave aside your baton, let us see who are the real roughnecks!”.
In addition to the tendencies mentioned above, it is possible to talk about a proletarian tendency or proletarian tendencies within the current movement. We are saying tendency or tendencies, for the proletarian tendency was unorganized and scattered as opposed to the tendencies we've defined above. The proletarian tendency put forward slogans such as “We are not anyone’s soldiers” and also “We are Mustafa Keser's soldiers” and “We are Turgut Uyar's soldiers” against the slogan of the nationalist tendency, “We are Mustafa Kemal's soldiers”. Slogans from the days of the Tekel struggle such as “We are resisting with the stubbornness of the Kurd, the enthusiasm of the Laz and the patience of the Turk” came back. The trees in Gezi Park were named after the Kurdish victims of the Roboski massacre and the Turkish and Arab victims of the bombing in Reyhanli. Moreover, many defended standing up to state terror against the passive resistance line of the democratic tendency. Against attitudes trying to portray the police in a sympathetic fashion, there was the slogan “Police be honorable, sell pastries”. The legitimacy of the demands put forward by the Taksim Solidarity Platform was questioned. The tendency towards vandalism common among the protesters was opposed, not by being declared as the action of provocateurs as the democratic tendency did, but by being reminded that they shouldn't harm the means of living of the poor, by trying to convince. In general, a significant amount of demonstrators defended the idea that the movement should create a self-organization which would enable it to determine its own future.
The section of the protesters who wanted the movement to get together with the working class was made up of elements who were aware of the importance and strength of the class, who were against nationalism yet who lacked a clear political stance. They were the ones who initiated the calls for a general strike. Essentially, although this expressed an awareness of the importance of the participation of the working section of the proletariat, it also carried democratic illusions. For the experience of June 5th was to demonstrate that pressuring the unions for a general strike wasn't a very effective strategy. On the other hand, one of the most important gains of the movement was the fact that this section of the protesters drew the lessons of their experience. In the calls made after the 5th of June, the idea that showpiece strikes for one or two days weren't sufficient had become quite common, and calls for an indefinite general strike had widened. Moreover, the number of people who said that unions such as KESK and DISK who were supposed to be 'militant' were no different from the government was far from negligible. Lastly, against the standing still actions which emerged recently and was pushed forward by the media and the democratic tendency alike to imprison the movement in an individualistic and passive ground, the idea that these actions can only be meaningful if they are done in the workplace emerged.
A certain part of the working section of the proletariat also participated in the movement and constituted the main body of the proletarian tendency within the movement. The THY strike in Istanbul tried to join with the Gezi struggle. Especially in the textile sector where heavy working conditions are common, certain local voices were raised. One of these protests took place in Bagcilar – Gunesli in Istanbul where textile workers wanted to express their class demands as well as come out in solidarity with the struggle in Gezi Park. The textile workers, forced to live under harsh conditions of exploitation, held a demonstration with banners saying “Greetings from Bagcilar to Gezi!” and “Saturdays should be holidays!” In Alibeykoy, Istanbul, thousands of workers had a march with banners saying “General strike, general resistance”. The plaza and office workers who came to Taksim together carried banners saying “Not to work, to the struggle”. In addition to all these, the movement created a will to struggle among workers who are union members. Without a doubt, KESK, DISK and the other organizations that went out on strike had to take such decisions not just due to social media but because of the pressure coming from their own membership, as perfunctory as these decisions were. Lastly, the Platform of Branches of Turk-Is in Istanbul, made up of all the union branches of Turk-Is in Istanbul, called for Turk-Is and all the other unions to declare an all-out strike against state terror from the Monday after the attack on Gezi Park took place, and it would be a mistake to think that these calls were made without a serious indignation among the workers at the base about what was going on.
Despite all this, it is difficult to say that the current movement has widely recognized its own class interests and headed in the direction of a fusion with the general struggle of the working class. . The fact that the proletarian tendency among the movement couldn't express itself enough was mainly a result of the emphasis made on democracy in opposition to government policies. As this axis dominated the movement, the tendency of the worker elements became a backup and its channels of maturation were blocked. Thus, the democratic tendency managed to keep the movement within its own framework. Besides, despite the fact that a majority of the movement was made up of proletarians, they only constituted a part of the class – not its entirety. What brought this section on the streets was state terror and the same state terror is causing a stir among other sections of the working class. On the other hand, the fact that the demands and slogans the democratic tendency put forward to dominate the movement, as well as the fact that the proletarians tendency hasn't been able to develop class demands with a focus on living and working conditions, poses a serious obstacle to the movement to form strong bonds with masses of workers.
The common weakness of the demonstrations all across Turkey is the difficulty of creating mass discussion and gaining control over the movement through forms of self-organization on the bases of these discussions. The mass discussion that has manifested itself in similar movements throughout the world was notably absent in the first days of the movement. Limited experience of mass discussion, meeting, mass assemblies and alike and the weakness of a culture of debate in Turkey were undoubtedly influential in this weakness. On the other hand, the movement felt the necessity for discussion and the means for such a discussion started to emerge.
The first expression of the feeling of necessity of discussion was the formation of an open tribune in the Gezi Park. The open tribune in Gezi Park did not attract a great deal of attention or continue for long, but still the experience of the open tribune had a certain effect. In July 5th strike, university workers that are members of Eğitim-Sen suggested setting up an open tribune. However, the KESK leadership not only rejected the proposal for an open tribune in favor of a May-day style, leftist trade-union tribune whose speeches were not even listened to, it also isolated the Eğitim-sen Branch No 5 to which the university workers belong. Thereupon, the Eğitim-sen Branch No 5 attempted to set up an open tribune but it did not work out. Again, taking inspiration from the open tribune, popular tribunes have been formed in Gazi, Okmeydanı and Sarıyer that are in the neighborhoods of Istanbul, Güvenpark and Keçiören in Ankara, Gündoğdu square and Çiğli in İzmir, in Mersin, Antalya, Samsun and Trabzon. Even though in some of these popular tribunes, the participants mentioned their problems about 4+4+4, the minimum wage and health system and proposed the formation of a resistance assembly, the formation of these tribunes by the bourgeois left constituted a significant limitation.
Apart from the experiences of open and popular tribunes, other experiences that have emerged in the succeeding days were forums that have been organized and held by mass participation. These forums that were set up with the purpose of discussing the future course of movement were planned to be held from the beginning of the week until June 15 – the day of the attack on Gezi Park. Indeed, the call for these forums were made by Taksim Solidarity, whose intention was to employ these forums as a means for convincing people to ‘include’ the resistance within a single symbolic tent; that would be another way of convincing people to end the struggle. The forums did not assume or claim any decision-making authority; their function was envisaged as a means for Taksim Solidarity Platform to hold the pulse of the masses. This case paved the way for the masses getting stuck with the practical questions, especially what to do in case of police intervention. Nevertheless, in the discussions, there emerged some participants proposing that the masses should take charge of the movement via the setting up of assemblies, sharing experiences from the movement in Barcelona, and stating the need to spread the movement to the poor neighborhoods. More significantly, by stating the will to maintain the demonstrations, the masses spoiled the game of Taksim Solidarity aimed at phasing out the movement.
On the other hand, if we have a look at the movements countrywide, the most crucial experience was provided by the demonstrators in Eskişehir. Through a general meeting in Eskişehir Resistance Square, committees were set up in order to arrange and coordinate demonstrations. These committees were the Demonstration Committee for choosing and determining routes and slogans of demos; the University and Education Committee for arranging meetings, briefings, and discussions in the square; the Proposal and Opinion Committee for generating suggestions and ideas for the resistance; the Cleaning and Environment Committee for cleaning and tidying up of tent settlements; the Press Committee for shooting videos, publishing online photos and news, and submitting their news to the mass media; the Coordination and Communication Committee for coordinating between committees; the Security Committee for protecting the square from the attacks within and outside; and the Emergency Committee set up by medicine students and medical experts for medical aid to those injured. What is more significant is that it was decided that a general meeting would be held every day for monitoring and discussing the practices of these committees. With these experience, the masses in Eskişehir were able to assume the control of the movement by establishing their self-organization. In a similar vein, in Antakya, the popular meeting took its own decisions concerning the trajectory of the movements in June 17.
Finally, from June 17 onwards, in various neighborhood parks in Istanbul, masses of people inspired by the forums in Gezi Park set up mass assemblies under the name of forums. Among those neighborhoods setting up forums, there were Beşiktaş, Elmadağ, Harbiye, Nişantaşı, Kadıköy, Cihangir, Ümraniye, Okmeydanı, Göztepe, Rumelihisarüstü, Etiler, Akatlar, Maslak, Bakırköy, Fatih, Bahçelievler, Sarıyer, Yeniköy, Sarıgazi, Ataköy and Alibeyköy. In the forthcoming days, others would be held in Ankara and various other cities. Thereby, in order not to lose control over these initiatives, Taksim Solidarity Platform began to make calls for these forums itself. Nevertheless, it is a strong possibility that these forums may assume more serious roles in the near future. Furthermore, there are some ideas expressed in these forums about the setting up of workplace and neighborhood committees. The call to avoid racist, sexist, and homophobic discourse, and to commemorate the Roboski and Reyhanlı massacres, and the water treatment workers of Muğla who died from inhaling methane gas, has been expressed widely within the forums.
Although in many ways, the Gezi Park resistance is in continuity with the Occupy movement in the USA, the Indignados in Spain, and the protest movements that overthrew Mubarak in Egypt and Bin Ali in Tunisia, it also carries its own peculiarities. As with all these movements, in Turkey, there is a vital weight of the young proletariat. Egypt, Tunisia and Gezi Park resistance have in common the will to get rid of a regime which is perceived as a ‘dictatorship’. As in Egypt, protesters circled around those engaged in Muslim prayers to protect them from attacks; at the same time, the most active participants in Turkey have, as in Egypt, expressed a strong opposition to the interference of clerics and fundamentalists in their daily lives. On the other hand, whereas Tunisia experienced massive strikes with thousands of workers, and Egypt experienced the Mahalla and other strikes, Turkey has only gone through a couple of work stoppage protests...On the more positive side, whereas in Egypt, as the movement gained strength they turned towards to the army for help, in Turkey there has been a reaction against the image of this key state institution.
Contrary to the movement in Tunisia that organized local committees, and in Spain and the USA in which masses generally assumed the responsibility of the movement through general assemblies, in the beginning in Turkey this dynamic has remained highly limited. In Spain, amidst the crisis of capitalism, with the impact of rising unemployment, the Indignados movement was able to affect the orientation of discussions. However, in Turkey, rather than problems about living and working conditions, the practical questions of the movement have occupied a dominant place. The pre-eminent questions were the practical and technical problems of the clashes with the police. Besides, although in Spain the proletarian tendency raised class demands against the democratic tendency in the movement, in Turkey this process has been seriously lacking. The similarity with Occupy in the USA was that an actual occupation occurred; yet in Turkey the occupations were seriously outnumbered by its massive participation compared to the USA. Likewise, both in Turkey and the USA, there is a tendency within the demonstrators that understands the significance of involving the working part of the proletariat into the struggle. The movement in the USA did not succeed in involving the working proletariat despite its face-to-face calls to dock workers in Oakland – as well as calls via social media – to go out to strike in the Western shores of the country. In spite of this, despite the movement in Turkey failing to establish a serious bond with the whole working class, even the calls for strikes via social media were met with more work stoppages than in the USA experience.
But despite these particularities, there can be no doubt that the ‘Çapulers’ movement was a part of the chain of international social movements. Although it did not attract attention in the beginning, this dynamic would become evident in the succeeding days. It turned out that though these movements seemingly had not attracted any attention when they took place, they left strong traces among the masses in Turkey. This movement too, similar to other international waves of struggle, is directly related with the crisis that capitalism has been going through worldwide. One of the fundamental reasons that have held the AKP government in power for 10 years is that it has conducted the process of restructuring capitalism in Turkey. The reaction against this pressure began as a reaction to the AKP’s practices. One of the best indicators that reveal the movement to be part of the international wave was its inspiring of Brazilian protesters. The Turkish protesters saluted the response from the other shore of the world with the slogans of “We are together, Brazil + Turkey!” and “Resist Brazil!” (in Turkish). And since the movement inspired protests with class-based demands in Brazil, in the forthcoming process it may positively affect the flourishing of class demands in Turkey.
The Taksim Gezi Park movement corresponds to the anger against state terror, police violence and the repressive and prohibitive policies of the AKP government and prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan. Within this time period, masses that have perhaps never participated in a demonstration or walked together with people that share their views, and participated a struggle that was defined as apolitical, have been politicized. Masses of people have experienced solidarity, taken up their own agenda, talked about the lives they want in Gezi Park and other occupied parks. The movement made a difference with the foundation of free soup kitchens, free libraries, treatment centers for the injured by voluntary health workers and common living space in which anyone could come and stay. It was one of the most of the important reasons for the maintenance of support for the movement in the forthcoming days of the movement. They also experienced how to fight against the police tear gas.
People became aware of the power of a massive movement through the will to resist the physical power of the state. It can stated that social media have been effectively utilized for the organization of gatherings and demonstrations. Social networks were also used to prevent the arrest of demonstrations and to provide accommodation for them. To make up for the street lamps being turned off during the clashes, people turned on the lamps of the houses; there was free provision of medication by the pharmacies: these were important details of the movement. The young generation of participants that clashed with police responded to the attacks by using the language of music and humor. This resulted in attracting people’s sympathy. Named in the state’s language as marginal the ‘chapulers’ have been embraced even by people that did not get involved directly with the movement.
Even though contrary to similar movements there are no illusions among the masses that this movement is a revolution, the most excited participants of the movement identify the protests as a revolutionary situation. The first thing to recall when responding to such ideas is the insistence by revolutionaries of the past, such as Lenin or the Italian communist left, that a revolutionary situation can only be the product of a maturation of objective and subjective conditions at the international level. And despite the clearly international dynamic of the revolts of 2011 and 2013, which are in turn a response to the deepening of the global crisis of the capitalist system, they still don’t add up to a revolutionary situation. At this point, it is important to remember what Lenin said: “What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.”4
The movements in the Middle East, Spain, Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere do not contain any of these three characteristics. Yes, the ruled do not want to be ruled but the rulers can maintain their rule qualitatively in the way they used to. The poverty and misery of the oppressed classes do not come up the accustomed levels. One of the greatest trumps of the government in Turkey is to refer to the ‘promising’ development of the Turkish economy in the last few years..
Perhaps most significant of all is the fact that in none of these struggles have the masses become independent of the bourgeois democrats In this dead end of capitalism when social oppression is rising, workers’ living and working conditions are getting increasingly worse, wars are getting chronic, peoples’ living spaces are being destroyed, the problem of shelter is common, bourgeois democracy can only be bourgeois dictatorship. Regardless of whether right wing or left wing governments are in power, in this period where it is getting increasingly difficult for state capitalism to obtain capital and get a share of the pie, all governments will practice such policies against the masses. Democracy is pepper gas, democracy is police batons, democracy is IVSEs, Scorpion vehicles. Democracy is bourgeois terror massacring three children of our class without blinking. The democratic tendency dominant within the movement and the political quality of its demands correspond to the democracy which is merely a tool to develop the rule of the bourgeoisie and the lie of development. Behind the slogan “Tayyip resign” chanted during the demonstration, the illusion that many ills will be made up for by any bourgeois power which will replace Erdogan if he resigns. Yet we know that no such thing is possible today.
What is more, the democratic tendency within the movement as well as certain bourgeois writers and journalists describe the movement as a democratic reaction to what is not going right in the country, and intend the movement to take a parliamentary road. Indeed, when we look at Taksim Solidarity Platform, it reminds us of the Olive Branch coalition which came to power opposing Berlusconi. Without a doubt, such a course of events would be a tragic end for the movement, meaning it is dead for the working class. In the coming period, this may well prove to be a greater danger to the movement than state terror.
And yet, despite all the weaknesses and dangers facing this movement, if the masses in Turkey had not succeeded in becoming a link in the chain of social revolts shaking the capitalist world, the result would be a far greater feeling of powerlessness. The outbreak of a social movement on a scale not seen in this country since 1908 is thus of historical importance.
The future of the movement depends on whether the proletarian part of it which form its majority will be able to express class demands arising from its own living and working conditions and on whether it can take the control of the movement in its own hands with mass discussions and spread the movement to the whole class on a workplace basis rather than by trying to pressure the unions into it.
Dünya Devrimi, ICC Section in Turkey
21.06.2013
1A neologism that originated from the protesters’ adoption of the Turkish expression “çapulcu”, originally used by the Turkish PM to describe the demonstrators. The term has a meaning roughly similar to sans-culottes or rabble.
2 These lines were taken from the poem called Milk in Turkish, written by a protestor named Ozan Durmaz in memory of Abdullah Cömert, Ethem Sarısülük and Mehmet Ayvalıtaş. The full version can be found from the following address in Turkey: https://www.tuhaftemaslar.com/sut/ [1003]
3 According to the polls, 58% of the demonstrators in Gezi Park were wage workers, 10% were unemployed and 24% were students. In total, 92% were workers or future workers.
4 Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International
Germany's tormented 20th century history is rich in dramatic and terrible themes, as a number of successful films that have hit the screens over the last few years demonstrate: The pianist, for example1 (on the Warsaw ghetto), or Goodbye Lenin and The lives of others (on East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall). The producer Margerete von Trotta has already drawn inspiration several times from these deep waters, and has not hesitated to deal with some difficult subjects: witness Two German sisters (Die Bleieme Zeit, 1981), a dramatised version of the life and death (in Stammheim prison, in circumstances which were never completely clarified) of the Red Army Fraction terrorist Gudrun Ensslin; a biopic of Rosa Luxemburg (1986); Rosenstrasse (2003), on a demonstration against the Gestapo in 1943 of German women protesting at the arrests of their Jewish husbands. In her new film, Hannah Arendt (2012 in Germany, 2013 in the USA and Britain), von Trotta returns to the subject of the war, the Shoah, and nazism, through an episode in the life of the eponymous German philosopher, remarkably played by Barbara Sukowa, who also played the role of the young Rosa Luxemburg twenty years ago.
Hannah Arendt was born into a Jewish family in 1906. As a young student, she attended the classes of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a brief but intense love affair. The fact that she never disowned either the relationship or Heidegger himself, despite the latter's joining the NSDAP2 in 1933 was to be harshly criticised later; her ties with Heidegger and his philosophy were undoubtedly complex, and would almost merit a book in themselves, and the flashbacks to her encounters with Heidegger are perhaps the least successful in the film, the only scenes where von Trotta seems less sure of her film's theme: the "banality of evil".
Arendt fled Germany in 1933 with Hitler's coming to power, and moved to Paris where she worked in the Zionist movement despite her critical attitude towards it. It was in Paris that she married, in 1940, her second husband Heinrich Blücher. Following Germany's invasion of France she was interned by the French state in the camp of Gurs, but managed to flee and – not without difficulty – reached the United States in 1941. Penniless on her arrival, she managed to earn her living and finally succeeded in winning an appointment to the prestigious Princeton University (she was the first woman to be accepted as a professor by Princeton). By 1960, when the film opens, Arendt was a respected intellectual and had already published two of her most famous works: The origins of totalitarianism (1951) and The human condition (1958). Although she was certainly not a marxist, she was interested by Marx's work, and by that of Rosa Luxemburg.3 Her husband Heinrich had been a Spartakist, then a member of the opposition to the Stalinisation of the KPD during the 1920s, joining Brandler and Thalheimer in the KPD-Opposition (aka KPO) when they were excluded from the party.4 The film makes a passing reference to Heinrich's party membership: we learn from one of the couple's American friends that "Heinrich was with Rosa Luxemburg to the end". And Arendt's philosophical work, especially her analysis of the mechanisms of totalitarianism remains relevant to this day. Her rigorous thought and her integrity allowed Arendt to pierce the clichés and commonplaces of her epoch's ruling ideology: she disturbed by her honesty.
The film's first moments evoke Adolf Eichmann's kidnapping in Argentina by the Mossad. Under the Nazi regime, Eichmann had occupied several important positions, organising first the Jews' expulsion from Austria, then the logistics of the "Final Solution", in particular the transport of European Jews to the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and others. The intention of David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel and so responsible for the Mossad operation, was clearly to mount a show trial which would cement the foundations of the young state, and where the Jews themselves would judge one of the authors of their genocide.
On learning of the coming Eichmann trial, Arendt volunteered to report on the trial for the literary review The New Yorker. Her detailed and meticulous report on the trial appeared first as a series of articles, then in book form under the title Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. The publication caused a huge scandal in Israel and even more in the United States: Arendt was subjected to a violently hostile media campaign – "self-hating Jew" and "Rosa Luxemburg of nothingness" were only two of the more sober epithets aimed at her. She was asked to resign her university position, but refused. This period, the evolution of Arendt's thinking and her reaction to the media campaign, provide the material for the film. And when you think about it, it's a tall order to make a film of the contradictory and sometimes painful evolution of a philosopher's thinking, without trivialising it – and von Trotta and Sukowa rise to the challenge with brio.
Why then did Arendt's report create such a scandal?5 Up to a point, such a reaction was understandable and even inevitable: although Arendt wields criticism like scalpel, with all the skill of a surgeon, but for many the war and the abominable suffering of the Shoah were still too close, the trauma too recent, to be able to distance themselves from events. But the loudest voices were also the most interested: interested above all in drawing a veil of silence over the uncomfortable truths that Arendt's critique revealed.
Arendt cut to the quick when she took apart Ben-Gurion's attempt to make a show of Eichmann's trial, to justify Israel's existence by the Jews' suffering during the Shoah. For this to work, Eichmann had to be a monster, a worthy representative of the Nazis' monstrous crimes. Arendt herself expected to see a monster in the dock, but the more she observed him, the less she was convinced, not of his guilt but of his monstrosity. In the trial scenes, von Trotta places Arendt not in the tribunal itself, but in a press room where the journalists watch the trial over CCTV. This device allows von Trotta to show us, not an actor playing Eichmann, but Eichmann himself; like Arendt, we can see this mediocre man (Arendt uses the term "banality" in its sense of "mediocrity"), who has nothing in common with the murderous madness of a Hitler, or the no less mad coldheartedness of a Goebbels (as they have been brilliantly interpreted by Bruno Ganz and Ulriche Mathes in Downfall). On the contrary, we are confronted with a petty bureaucrat whose intellectual horizon barely extends beyond the walls of his office and its good order, and whose perspectives are limited to his hopes for promotion and bureaucratic rivalries. Eichmann is not a monster, is Arendt's conclusion: "it would have been very comforting indeed to believe that Eichmann was a monster (…) The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal" (p274).6 In short, Eichmann's crime was not to have been responsible for the Jews' extermination in the same way as Hitler, but to have abdicated his capacity for thinking, and to have acted legally and with a quiet conscience as a mere cog in a the totalitarian machine of a criminal state. The undoubted "good sense" of "prominent personalities" served as his "moral guide". The Wannsee conference (which set in place the operational mechanisms of the "Final Solution") was thus "a very important occasion for Eichmann, who had never before mingled socially with so many 'high personages' (…) Now he could see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears that not only Hitler, not only Heydrich or the 'sphinx' Müller, not just the SS or the Party, but the elite of the good old Civil Service were vying and fighting with each other for the honor of taking the lead in these 'bloody' matters" (p111-2).
Arendt explicitly rejects the idea that "all Germans are potentially guilty", or "guilty by association": Eichmann deserved to be executed for what he had done himself (though his execution would hardly bring the millions of victims back to life). That said, her analysis is a courageous slap in the face for the anti-fascist ideology which has become official state ideology, notably in Israel. In our view, the "banality" that Arendt describes is that of a world – the capitalist world – where human beings, reified and alienated, are reduced to the status of objects, commodities, cogs in the machine of capital. This machine is not a characteristic of the Nazi state alone. Arendt reminds us that the policy of "Judenrein" (making a territory "Jewless") had already been explored by the Polish state in 1937, before the war, and that the thoroughly democratic French government, in the person of its foreign minister Georges Bonnet, had envisaged the expulsion to Madagascar of 200,000 "non-French" Jews (Bonnet had even consulted his German opposite number Ribbentrop for advice on the subject). Arendt also points out that the Nuremberg tribunal is nothing less than a "victors' tribunal", where the judges represent countries which were also responsible for war crimes: the Russians guilty of the deaths in the gulags, the Americans guilty of the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nor is Arendt tender with the state of Israel. Unlike other reporters, she highlights in her book the irony of Eichmann's trial for race-based crimes by an Israeli state which itself incorporates racial distinctions into its own laws: "rabbinical law rules the personal status of Jewish citizens, with the result that no Jew can marry a non-Jew; marriages concluded abroad are recognized, but children of mixed marriages are legally bastards (…) and if one happens to have a non-Jewish mother he can neither be married nor buried". It is indeed a bitter irony that those who escaped from the Nazi policy of "racial purity" should have tried to create their own "racial purity" in the Promised Land. Arendt detested nationalism in general and Israeli nationalism in particular. Already in the 1930s, she had opposed Zionist policy and its refusal to look for a mode of life in common with the Palestinians. And she did not hesitate to expose the hypocrisy of the Ben-Gurion government, which publicised the ties between the Nazis and certain Arab states, but remained silent about the fact that West Germany continued to shelter a remarkable number of high-ranking Nazis in positions of responsibility.
Another object of scandal was the question of the "Judenrat" – the Jewish councils created by the Nazis precisely with the aim of facilitating the "Final Solution". It occupies only a few pages of the book, but it cuts to the quick. Here is what Arendt has to say about it: "Wherever Jews lives, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people (…) I have dwelt on this chapter of the story, which the Jerusalem trial failed to put before the eyes of the world in its true dimensions, because it offers the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society" (p123). She even revealed an element of class distinction between the Jewish leaders and the anonymous mass: in the midst of the general disaster, those who escaped were either sufficiently rich to buy their escape, or sufficiently visible in the "international community" to be kept alive in Theresienstadt, a kind of privileged ghetto. The relationships between the Jewish population and the Nazi regime, and with other European populations, were much more complicated than the war victors' official manichean ideology was prepared to admit.
Nazism and the Shoah occupy a central place in modern European history, even more today than in the 1960s. Despite the best efforts of the authors of The black book of communism, for example, Nazism remains today the "ultimate evil". In France, the Shoah is an important part of the school history programme, along with the French Resistance, to the exclusion of almost any other consideration of the Second World War. And yet on the level of simple arithmetic, Stalinism was far worse, with the 20 million dead in Stalin's gulag and at least 20 million dead in Mao's "Great leap forward". Obviously, this owes a good deal to opportunist calculation: the descendants of Mao and Stalin are still in power in China and Russia, they are still people with whom one can and must "do business". Arendt does not deal directly with this question, but in a discussion of the charges against Eichmann, she insists on the fact that the Nazis' crime was not a crime against the Jews, but a crime against all humanity in the person of the Jewish people, precisely because it denied to the Jews their membership of the human species, and transformed these human beings into an inhuman evil to be eradicated. This racist, xenophobic, obscurantist aspect of the Nazi regime was clearly proclaimed, which indeed is why a part of the European ruling class, and of the peasant and artisan classes ruined by the economic crisis, could get along with it so comfortably. Stalinism on the contrary always claimed to be progressive: it could still sing that "the Internationale shall be the human race", and indeed this is why right up to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and even afterwards, ordinary people could continue to defend the Stalinist regimes in the name of a better future to come.7
Arendt's major point is that the "unthinkable" barbarity of the Shoah, the mediocrity of the Nazi bureaucrats, is the product of the destruction of an "ability to think". Eichmann "does not think", he executes the orders of the machine, and does his job diligently and conscientiously, without any qualms, and without making the connection with the horror of the camps – of which he was nonetheless aware. In this sense, von Trotta's film should be seen as an elegy to critical thought.
Hannah Arendt was not a marxist, nor a revolutionary. But by posing questions which undermine official anti-fascist ideology, she is the enemy of commonplace conformism and the abandonment of critical thought. Her analysis has the merit of opening a reflexion on the human conscience (rather in the same way as the work of the American psychologist Stanley Milgram on the mechanisms of the "submission to authority" amongst torturers, dramatised in Henri Verneuil's film I comme Icare).
The publicity given to Arendt's work by the democratic bourgeoisie and its intelligentsia – for whom she has become something of an icon – is not innocuous. The recuperation of her analysis of totalitarianism clearly aims at establishing a continuity between Bolshevism and the Russian revolution of 1917, and the totalitarian machine of the Stalinist state: Stalin was only Lenin's executor, the moral being that proletarian revolution can only lead to totalitarianism and new crimes against humanity. This is what some established bourgeois ideologues like Raymond Aron have not hesitated to exploit Arendt's analysis of the Stalinist state's totalitarianism to feed their campaigns for the Cold War and the "collapse of communism" following the break-up of the USSR.
Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, and as Marx said "The philosophers have so far only interpreted the world. The point however, is to change it". Marxism is not a "totalitarian" doctrine but the theoretical weapon of the exploited class for the revolutionary transformation of the world. And this is why only marxism is truly able to integrate the contributions of art and science, and of past philosophers like Epicurus, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel... as well as those of our own time like Hannah Arendt, with her profound and critical view of the contemporary world, and her elegy to thought.
Jens
1See our critique of the film in n°113 of the International Review (https://en.internationalism.org/ir/113_pianist.html [1012])
2The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi party)
3In 1966 Arendt reviewed JP Nettl's biography of Luxemburg in the New York Review of Books. In this article, she lashed both the Weimar and the contemporary Bonn governments with the scourge of her critique, declaring that the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were carried out "under the eyes and probably with the connivance of the Socialist regime then in power (…) That the government at the time was practically in the hands of the Freikorps because it enjoyed 'the full support of Noske,' the Socialists’ expert on national defense, then in charge of military affairs, was confirmed only recently by Captain Pabst, the last surviving participant in the assassination. The Bonn government - in this as in other respects only too eager to revive the more sinister traits of the Weimar Republic - let it be known (through the Bulletin des Presse-und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung) that the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg was entirely legal, 'an execution in accordance with martial law.' This was more than even the Weimar Republic had ever pretended...".
4The KPO was one of the oppositions to Stalinism which never fully broke with it because, like Trotsky, they were unable to accept the idea of a counter-revolution in Russia.
5For French speakers, there is an interesting documentary made up of radio interviews of the participants in the controversy podcast by France Culture: Hannah Arendt et le procès d'Eichmann [1013]
6The quotes are taken from the the Penguin edition published in 2006 with an introduction by Amos Elon.
7See for example this fascinating documentary series (in German and English) on life in the ex-DDR [1014].
This powerful statement sums up the real nature of the recent revelations concerning the use of undercover police to penetrate and manipulate various protest movements. It was made by one of the women with whom various agents of the Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS) deliberately established relationships in order to gain wider acceptance in the protest movements they wanted to infiltrate. The motto of the SDS was “by all means necessary” and this sums up the general attitude of the capitalist state to maintaining its dictatorship. Human feelings and dignity mean absolutely nothing to the ruling class and their servants.
This was further underlined by the revelations concerning the efforts of SDS and Special Branch agents under the direction of the Metropolitan Police to discredit the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. Only weeks after the brutal racist murder of this teenager in 1993, an SDS agent was assigned to uncover anything that could discredit the Lawrence family. Special Branch used the police family liaison officer - who was supposed to befriend the family - to spy on all those who came to the family’s home.
The cold and calculating way in which various state agencies use and abuse people is shocking. However, this is the nature of the rule of capital. Nothing is too sacred to be ground under the iron heel of the state. The Lawrences’ grief and anger at the police’s racism showed the reality behind the image of the police in capitalist democracy. The women used by the SDS, had the audacity to “want to bring about social change” as one of them said. A questioning of the system, no matter how mild, is something that the state cannot tolerate.
There has been a whole frenzy from politicians, journalists, and even the police, about ‘rogue’ units, abuses of the democratic system, and the need for democratic control of the police. We heard exactly the same piteous laments two years ago following the exposure of the undercover activity of the agents of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOI) who had infiltrated various anarchist, animal rights and environmental groups in the 2000s[1] Once the noise died down about these ‘abuses of police powers’, it was rapidly replaced by calls for more police powers to carry out systematic surveillance of all telecommunications. It is the same now: despite these revelations, we hear calls for more police powers to ‘fight domestic extremism’.
The politicians’ talk about abuses of democracy is as devious as the actions of the SDS, because it seeks to hide the true nature of the capitalist state and its democratic window dressing: “So-called democracy, i.e. bourgeois democracy, is nothing but the veiled dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The much-vaunted ‘general win of the people’ is no more a reality than ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’. Classes exist and they have conflicting and incompatible aspirations. But as the bourgeoisie represents an insignificant minority it makes use of this illusion, this imaginary concept, in order to consolidate its rule over the working class. Behind this mask of eloquence it can impose its class will” (Platform of the Communist International, 1919).
The imposition of this "class will" is precisely the role of secret police units such as the SDS and the NPOI, along with Special Branch, MI5, etc. The Special Demonstrations Squad was formed in the late 60s in order to infiltrate the growing protest movements, and then expanded into infiltratinging animal rights and environmental groups, anarchist and Trotskyist groups in the 80s and 90s. The SDS was part of the Metropolitan Police. In 1999 the NPOI was set up to coordinate and organise nationwide networks of undercover operations and surveillance, The NPOI broadened its remit to include “campaigners against war, nuclear weapons, racism, genetically modified crops, globalization, tax evasion, airport expansion and asylum law, as well as those calling for reform of prisons and peace in the Middle East”, all of which are now defined as 'domestic extremists'[2]. Thus, anyone who opposes or questions what the state does is now an 'extremist' and implicitly linked to 'Muslim' extremists and thus terrorism. This expresses the state’s concern about growing social discontent, even when confined to relatively harmless forms of protest. However, involvement in such movements can and does lead to a wider questioning of the system and the state wants to be able to follow and counter such questioning. It also wants to manipulate such movements in order to generate fear of any form of dissent.
The extent that the state is willing to go to manipulate such groups has been demonstrated in the recent book Undercover: the true story of Britain’s secret police. It claims that the SDS infiltrated an agent into the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement between 1990-93; two others were sent into the anarchist group Class War, one of them working closely with MI5 who were investigating Class War at the time. The authors say that the NPOI is currently running between 100 and 150 agents. The book also argues that the NPOI has officers or links with polices forces in cities and towns across the country, and that they use infiltration in small local protest groups in order to get agents into national groups and movements. The NPOI itself was placed under the management of the National Domestic Extremism Team in 2005, which the Labour government set up to centralise the various domestic forces of repression.
This centralisation was put to full use in 2011 when hundreds of people who had been arrested, stopped or filmed on demonstrations received letters from the Metropolitan Police, warning them that if they attended the November student demonstration in London they would be arrested.
These claims are certainly informative but unless understood in the context of the dictatorship of capital it can lead to paranoia and mistrust.
One of the reasons for the success of these state agencies in penetrating various movements has been the naivety of those involved, a result of the weight of democratic illusions. The idea that ‘the state is not interested in us because we are too small’ is very widespread, not only amongst environmentalists but even amongst revolutionary groups and individuals. There are also illusions that the state would never infiltrate someone for years, even allowing them to live with a militant. There needs to be a conscious effort to understand and draw the lessons from the actions of these agents, not to become paranoid, but to be aware that the state is interested in any organisation or individual who is against this system, and will use any means necessary against them.
This can be seen in the example of a 69 year old GP place on the list of ‘domestic extremists’ because of his involvement in a campaign to stop ash from Didcot power station (Oxfordshire) being dumped in a nearby lake!
Confronted with the state’s complete disregard for the slightest aspect of human dignity, its willingness to violate even our bodies in order to defend itself, we can only express our solidarity with those women who were used by the state but who are now openly talking about what happened to them, even to the extent of meeting their abusers to challenge what they did. But above all we have to be conscious that the ruling class will go to any length to undermine the revolutionary alternative and reject any illusion that their state can be controlled, reformed or made more accountable. It is our main enemy in the class war and our goal is to destroy it once and for all.
Phil 2/7/13
[1]. ‘Methods of infiltration by the democratic state’, https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201102/4201/methods-infi... [1021].
[2]. Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, Undercover: The true story of Britain’s secret police, Faber and Faber, 2013, p 203
It is one of the ironies of the spending review that when so much of the pain is directed towards benefits, George Osborne should claim that the well-off will suffer most. Next year the chancellor will announce a 5 year benefit cap, excluding pensions. Welfare payments will be harder to claim - for instance anyone losing a job will have to wait 7 days before claiming jobseekers allowance. This will be particularly hard on those on the lowest pay scales or in precarious work. This 7 day wait will save £245m, a very modest amount compared to the £11.5 billion which will be spent on more frequent surveillance of the unemployed (meetings every week instead of less frequently, compulsory English lessons, etc). Ed Balls, by contrast, claims that he would like to spend the money on providing a job for every young unemployed person. While Osborne is reminding us that the point of laying workers off is to save capital the cost of maintaining them at all, it seems Balls wants us to forget that the whole point of capital employing anyone, young or old, is to extract surplus value, to make a profit.
Public sector workers are also going to suffer from the spending plans: pay will continue to be curbed, pay progression seniority payments ended, and 144,000 can expect to lose their jobs. While the NHS and schools will not have their cash budgets cut, this has to be seen in the context of growing need. Health needs (so-called ‘demand’) increases 4% a year due to demographic changes and innovation. £3bn of the health budget will be shared with local authority social care, and we know how squeezed the local authorities are. Hospital stays and admissions are being cut. Whole layers of health service workers are employed or incentivised to keep people out of hospital as much as possible – while, of course, remaining responsible for admitting them to hospital when necessary. Others have the job of cutting the prescription budgets. At the same time, previous levels of social care - put in place when the economy was short of labour and women and immigrants were being encouraged into the workforce (in the 50s and 60s particularly) - are being dismantled or charged to the recipients, with much more responsibility falling on the relatives whether or not they are capable of taking it on.
The UK economy, regardless of quibbles about single, double or triple dip recession, remains to recover from the 2007/8 recession, with GDP still 3 or 4% below the previous peak. This creates a problem for an economy trying to reduce the proportion of direct state spending – from 46% to 40% as Osborne intends – and pay back debts that were greatly increased at the time of the banking crisis. Hence the IMF reminder earlier in the year that this will not be achieved without growth. This puts any state on the horns of a dilemma, with the need to both rein in spending and ease up the availability of money to encourage growth. It’s a bit like walking in two opposite directions at once. It was left to Danny Alexander to announce the bulk of the capital spending plans for road and rail, housing and schools, while day to day spending is restricted. How well this spending will encourage growth in the medium term we will wait and see. More roads suggest a promising growth in CO2 emissions at any rate.
Other spending beneficiaries give us more idea of what the state intends. Extra spending for spying suggests an interest in both internal and external security – fundamentally to further Britain’s imperialist interests abroad and to maintain social order at home. Ring-fencing overseas aid also suggests the importance of pursuing the national interest abroad – and in a way less likely to cause unpopularity at home than foreign military adventures such as Iraq.
A few years ago it was the bankers that were blamed for the crisis, pilloried by press and politicians alike for their excessive pay and bonuses. Now it seems it is the unemployed and benefit claimants who are responsible for the national debt. The bankers provided a good scapegoat for the crises, particularly when it took the form of the credit crunch. They had the advantage of being rich, and right at the centre of the storm, as well as distracting us from asking questions about the nature and role of capitalism itself. But the demonisation of the unemployed, and the lowest paid and most precarious workers who also rely on benefits such as tax credit or housing benefit, has a longer term aim in persuading us to accept attacks on these benefits, with their horrendous effects on the quality of life of an important part of the working class.
The ruling class are playing up any kind of division they are able to impose on the working class, not only between the ‘hard working’ and the ‘skivers’ (i.e. employed and unemployed), but also between public and private sector employees. This divide is important when the state is involved in attacking the pay and conditions of those employed in the public sector, particularly those usually held in high esteem such as teachers and nurses. Hence the media attention to scandals in hospital care, undercover reporters sent to see what abuses they can detect and film. But not a word on the cuts and increasing demands that make humane care so difficult.
These campaigns tell us much of the direction of the austerity measures the ruling class is bringing in, centralised through its state. That they are cautious, that they prepare each attack with a campaign of vilification, shows just how much they are aware of the possibility of working class resistance to further austerity.
Alex 13/7/13
We are publishing below impressions of our Day of Discussion held in London on 22 June, written for her own blog by a comrade who posts on our internet forum but who had not previously met the ICC ‘face to face’. The presentations given on the day can be found on this thread on our forum [1022]. We intend to group together and publish all the presentations and write ups of the discussions in one file in the near future.
The original piece can be read on the contributor's blog here:
Well yesterday I went to the Day of Discussion put on by the International Communist Current. They are a left-communist [1024]group. People reading this might not know what that is (and probably don’t tbf) so I will explain quickly what my understanding about the communist left is.
The communist left basically originated in the Russian revolution, supporting Lenin and the Bolshevik Party initially and rapidly getting disillusioned. They didn’t make Lenin particularly happy. They were the ones that Lenin was on about when he wrote his notorious “Left-wing communism – an infantile disorder [1025]” pamphlet, because they were complaining that the revolution was degenerating (which it was) becoming more and more like capitalism again and becoming more and more authoritarian – basically coming to resemble, what we know now as state capitalism or “stalinism” betraying the russian workers they claimed to lead and distorting Marxism into an authoritarian doctrine. One of the founders of it was a guy called Herman Gorter who wrote an “open letter to Comrade Lenin [1026]“.
They think that the Russian revolution degenerated back before Lenin’s death (and also that nationalisation etc is not necessarily a step on the way to socialism or even necessarily an improvement to “normal” capitalism) rather than the Trotskyist view which was that this only happened after Lenin’s death and that what happened in the Soviet union and other “communist” countries was that they were “deformed workers’ states” despite the fact that they were a nightmare for huge numbers of working class people. And therefore that despite the criticisms Trotskyists had of them somehow their governments were usually worth defending.
Lenin and Trotsky were mates and Trotsky had a high position in the Bolshevik hierarchy and he could never bring himself to see the full extent of the wrongness of the Soviet regime.
The communist left on the other hand were closer to the anarchist position in that they believed that the revolution started going very very wrong within a year or two of 1917. There’s loads of stuff, Kronstadt, the fact that they made it very difficult for workers to go on strike, they introduced one-man management (bringing back the old bosses that the workers had overthrown during the revolution)
“what? why do you want to go on strike eh, we have socialism now and “the working class” are now in power?”
I was really pleasantly surprised by the meeting. I had expected it to be a really small meeting full of party hacks but actually around 20 people were there and probably around half of them weren’t ICC members but from other organisations or not in an organisation at all. And most of them were pretty normal and had a good sense of humour (no offence but you’d have to have a good sense of humour to be part of the communist left!).
The topic of the meeting was “why is it so difficult to struggle against capitalism”. I’ve got my own ideas (some of which were sadly reflected in some of my observations that day, although i don’t think this was intentional) and in my next post I’ll do like a summary of that debate.
The good points were that I didn’t see any sectarianism on the level of what you would get in trot groups (there was one guy who made a dig about the SPGB which was out of order and he was swiftly shouted down), not many weirdo party hacks, most of the participants seemed to want to learn from other people rather than just promoting the views of their own organisation. And people with opposing views weren't shouted down or told they were wrong.
There was also free food.
The bad points could apply to most left-wing organisations. One of the problems is that they assume a certain level of knowledge about terms like “decomposition” and things like that but they are hardly the only offenders for that. It also wasn’t as well publicised as it could have been and most of the people there (although not all) seemed to have all been involved in the “mileu” for a long time rather than people who had never been involved in politics. There were a few young people there but not many and some of the contributions at times seemed to be a bit vanguardist talking about how “we” will do this and that and “we” will integrate people into productive communism etc. I dont think that’s exactly what was meant but that’s how it came across but at least they were willing to take criticisms when I and others pointed this out.
I was actually really pleasantly surprised. I have a lot of differences with the ICC, one of them is my opinion about anti-fascism, as they see it purely as a distraction from class struggle. I can see their point but I still think that it is part of the class struggle. that is the main one i guess.
The other criticism I have got is about their papers, as I said they do assume a level of knowledge, it seems a bit stupid but there should be more pictures in the papers and sometimes the print is too small and a bit hard to read because the articles are so long.
I did pick up a lot of their literature, their paper “World Revolution” their theoretical journal “International Review” and a book called “Communism is not a nice idea but a material necessity”, and a pamphlet called “Trade unions against the working class”. I have read some of the anti-trade union pamphlet online but i find it easier to read books on paper rather than online.
The other left communist organisation that was there. the ICT, printed some articles in their magazine that were about Bordiga and Damen and I think some basic introductions to these people could be useful rather than immediately assuming that everyone knows who they are already (because i know who bordiga is but not really familiar with his writings or that much apart from that really) but that is part of my point about language I suppose.
The other bad thing was the fact that it was in London and therefore cost a lot for me to get to (which i can afford at the moment, but I probably won’t always be able to). I’d love to be able to organise or get involved in something that’s more local but at the moment I don’t have the time and I think a lot of people probably feel the same way.
I am quite wary of getting involved in any organisations these days but I was glad I went to this because it’s very rare that I actually get to discuss anything with people these days apart from the internet. And afterwards we all had a drink together and went for a curry, I thought it was great that we got a chance to talk about stuff afterwards and get to know each other a bit as people!
Hundreds of thousands, even millions, have come out to protest against all manner of ills: in Turkey, the destruction of the environment by unrestrained ‘development’, authoritarian religious meddling in personal lives, the corruption of the politicians; in Brazil, transport fare increases and the diversion of wealth into prestige sporting events when health, education, housing and transport are left to fester – and the corruption of the politicians. In both cases, the initial demonstrations were met by brutal police repression which served only to widen and deepen the revolt. And in both cases, the revolts were spearheaded not by the ‘middle classes’ (for the media, that’s anyone who has a job), but by the new generation of the working class, who may be educated but have little prospect of finding stable employment, who may be living in ‘emerging’ economies but for whom a developing economy means mainly the development of social inequality and the repulsive affluence of a tiny elite of exploiters.
In June and July it was again the turn of Egypt to see millions on the street, returning to Tahrir Square which was the epicentre of the 2011 rebellion against the Mubarak regime. They too were driven by real material needs, in an economy which is not so much ‘emerging’ but stagnating or even regressing. In May, a former finance minister of the country and one of its leading economists warned in an interview with The Guardian that “Egypt is suffering its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, In terms of its devastating effect on Egypt’s poorest, the country’s current economic predicament is at its most dire since the 1930s”. The article goes on to say that:
“Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt has experienced a drastic fall in both foreign investment and tourism revenues, followed by a 60% drop in foreign exchange reserves, a 3% drop in growth, and a rapid devaluation of the Egyptian pound. All this has led to mushrooming food prices, ballooning unemployment and a shortage of fuel and cooking gas… Currently, 25.2% of Egyptians are below the poverty line, with 23.7% hovering just above it, according to figures supplied by the Egyptian government”[1].
The ‘moderate’ Islamist government led by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood (backed by the majority of the ‘radical’ Islamists) has rapidly proved itself to be no less corrupt and cronyist than the old regime, while its attempts to impose its stifling Islamic ‘morality’ has, as in Turkey, created huge resentment among the urban young.
But while the movements in Turkey and Brazil, which are in practice directed against the power in place, have created a real sense of solidarity and unity among all those taking part in the struggle, the situation in Egypt is faced with a much more sombre prospect – that of the division of the population behind rival factions of the ruling class, and even of a bloody descent into civil war. The barbarism which has engulfed Syria is a graphic reminder of what that can mean.
The events of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt were widely described as a ‘revolution’. But a revolution is more than the masses pouring onto the streets, even if that is its necessary point of departure. We are living in an epoch where the only real revolution can be worldwide, proletarian and communist: a revolution not for a change in regime, but for the dismantling of the existing state; not for a ‘fairer’ management of capitalism, but for the overthrow of the whole capitalist social relationship; not for the glory of the nation, but for the abolition of nations and the creation of a global human community.
The social movements we are witnessing today are still a long way from achieving the self-awareness and self-organisation needed to make such a revolution. They are certainly steps along the way, expressing a profound effort by the proletariat to find itself, to rediscover its past and its future. But they are faltering steps which can easily be derailed by the ruling class, whose ideas run very deep and form a huge obstacle in the minds of the exploited themselves. Religion is certainly one of these ideological obstacle, an ‘opiate’ which preaches submission to the dominant order. But even more dangerous is the ideology of democracy.
In Egypt in 2011, the masses in Tahrir Square demanded the resignation of Mubarak and the fall of the regime. And Mubarak was indeed forced to go – especially after a powerful wave of workers’ strikes spread across the country, bringing a new level of danger to the social revolt. But the capitalist regime is more than just the government of the day. On the social level it is the whole relationship based on wage labour and production for profit. On the political level it is the bureaucracy, the police and the army. And it is also the facade of parliamentary democracy, where the masses are given the choice every few years to choose which gang of thieves is going to fleece them for the next few years. In 2011, the army – which many protesters thought was ‘one’ with the people – stepped in to depose Mubarak and organise elections. The Muslim Brotherhood, which drew massive strength from the more backward rural areas but which was also the best organised political party in the urban centres, won the elections and has since worked very hard to prove that changing the government through elections changes nothing. And meanwhile, the real power remained what it had always been in Egypt, and in so many similar countries: the army, the only force really capable of ensuring capitalist order on a national level.
When the masses surged back to Tahrir Square in June they were full of indignation against the Morsi government and the daily reality of their lives faced with an economic crisis which is not merely ‘Egyptian’ but global and historic. But, even though many of them would have had the opportunity to experience the true repressive face of the army back in 2011, the idea that the ‘people and the army are one’ was still very widespread, and it was given new life when the army began to warn Morsi that he must listen to the demands of the protesters or else. When Morsi was overthrown in a relatively bloodless coup, there were big celebrations in Tahrir Square. Did this mean that the democratic myth no longer held the masses in its grip? No: the army claims to act in the name of ‘real democracy’ which has been betrayed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and immediately promises to organise fresh elections.
Thus the state’s guarantor, the army, again intervenes to ensure order, to prevent the discontent of the masses turning against the state itself. But this time it does it at the price of sowing deep divisions in the population. Whether in the name of Islam or the name of the democratic legitimacy of the Morsi government, a new protest movement is born, this time demanding the return of the regime or refusing to work with those who have deposed it. The response of the army has been swift: a ruthless slaughter of protesters outside the headquarters of the Republican Guard. There have also been clashes, some fatal, between rival groups of demonstrators.
The wars in Libya and Syria began as popular protests against the regime. But in both cases, the weakness of the working class and the strength of tribal and sectarian divisions quickly led to the initial revolts being swallowed up by armed clashes between factions of the bourgeoisie. And in both cases, these local conflicts immediately took on an international, imperialist dimension: in Libya, Britain and France, quietly supported by the US, stepped in to arm and guide the rebel forces; in Syria, the Assad regime has survived thanks to the backing of Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah and other vultures, while arms to the opposition forces have flowed in from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere, with the US and Britain in more or less covert support. In both cases, the widening of the conflict has accelerated the plunge into chaos and horror.
The same danger exists in Egypt today. The army has shown its total unwillingness to loosen its effective hold on power. The Muslim Brotherhood has for the moment pledged that its reaction against the coup will be peaceful, but alongside Morsi’s ‘you can do business with me’ brand of Islamism are more extreme factions who already have a background in terrorism. The situation bears a sinister resemblance to what happened in Algeria after 1991 when the army toppled a ‘legally elected’ Islamist government, provoking a very bloody civil war between the army and armed Islamist groups like the FIS. The civilian population was, as always, the main victim in this inferno: estimates of the death toll vary between 50,000 and 200,000.
The imperialist dimension is also present in Egypt. The US has made some gestures of regret about the military coup but its links to the army are very long-standing and deeply implanted, and they are not in the least enamoured of the type of Islamism proclaimed by Morsi or Erdogan in Turkey. The conflicts spreading out from Syria towards Lebanon and Iraq could also reach a destabilised Egypt.
But the working class in Egypt is a much more formidable force than it is in Libya or Syria. It has a long tradition of militant struggle against the state and its official trade union tentacles, going back at least as far as the 1970s. In 2006 and 2007 massive strikes radiated out from the highly concentrated textile sector, and this experience of open defiance of the regime subsequently fed into the movement of 2011, which was marked by a strong working class imprint, both in the tendencies towards self-organisation which appeared in Tahrir Square and the neighbourhoods, and in the wave of strikes which eventually convinced the ruling class to dump Mubarak. The Egyptian working class is by no means immune from the illusions in democracy which pervade the entire social movement, but neither will it be an easy task for the different cliques of the ruling class to persuade it to abandon its own interests and drag it into the cesspit of imperialist war.
The potential of the working class to act as a barrier to barbarism is revealed not only in its history of autonomous strikes and assemblies, but also in the explicit expressions of class consciousness which have appeared within the demonstrations on the streets: in placards proclaiming ‘neither Morsi nor the military’ or ‘revolution not coup’ and in more directly political statements like the declaration of ‘Cairo comrades’ published recently on libcom:
“We seek a future governed neither by the petty authoritarianism and crony capitalism of the Brotherhood nor a military apparatus which maintains a stranglehold over political and economic life nor a return to the old structures of the Mubarak era. Though the ranks of protesters that will take to the streets on June 30th are not united around this call, it must be ours- it must be our stance because we will not accept a return to the bloody periods of the past”[2].
However, just as the ‘Arab spring’ took on its full significance with the uprising of proletarian youth in Spain, which has given rise to a much more sustained questioning of bourgeois society, so the potential of the Egyptian working class to stand in the way of a new bloodbath can only be realised through the active solidarity and massive mobilisation of the proletarians in the old centres of world capitalism.
One hundred years ago, in the face of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg solemnly reminded the international working class that the choice offered it by a decaying capitalist order was socialism or barbarism. A century of real capitalist barbarism has been the consequence of the failure of the working class to carry through the revolutions which it began in response to the imperialist war of 1914-18. Today the stakes are even higher, because capitalism has accumulated the means to destroy all human life on the planet. The collapse of social life and the rule of murderous armed gangs – that’s the road of barbarism indicated by what’s happening right now in Syria. The revolt of the exploited and the oppressed, their massive struggle in defence of human dignity, of a real future – that’s the promise of the revolts in Turkey and Brazil. Egypt stands at the crossroads of these two diametrically opposed choices, and in this sense it is a symbol of the dilemma facing the whole human species.
Amos 10/7/13
The Unite union was accused of cramming the Falkirk constituency with new members, a little bending of the rules to install one of its favoured candidates. Nine Unite-supported candidates have already been nominated as Labour candidates for the next election, with 19 more selections still to be decided. Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that he intends to end the automatic affiliation of union members to the Labour Party, making it a positive individual decision to join the party. While this might cut down the union funds available to the party, it is likely that the unions would just increase funding through other means. That’s certainly what the Tories say, and who’s to say that, in this instance, they’re not right?
Miliband’s proposals are supported by ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Other proposals, such as the holding of US-style primaries have been saluted as a sound democratic innovation for British politics. Meanwhile, Bob Crow, leader of the RMT transport union, along with various leftists, thinks that there should be a new Left party that represents working class interests. The Unite union claims that its activities are aimed at ensuring that there are fewer middle class and more working class Members of Parliament. Against this, out-going Falkirk MP Eric Joyce said “The people that Unite want to put into those seats are of course, guess what? Parliamentary researchers, middle class union officials and exactly the same type. The reality is this is an ideological fight. It’s not between the trade unions and Ed Miliband, it’s between Len McCluskey and a few of his anarcho-syndicalist advisers and the Labour party”.
All this is good knockabout stuff and guaranteed to fill the columns of the right-wing press, who insist that Labour hasn’t changed, that it’s a monster from the past. The one thing that it isn’t is a dispute over fundamental questions of principle. All the different Labour and union factions are agreed on essential policy questions. Some accept the argument for the cuts imposed by the Coalition, while others have different state capitalist measures that they think should be employed in the running of the British economy. But these differences are all a matter of degree, differences in emphasis on what the capitalist state should do in maintaining social order, ensuring the most effective exploitation of the working class, surviving in the cutthroat rivalry of capitalism internationally.
While the right-wing media tries to undermine the image of Labour and the unions, the left-wing tries to convince us that there is something to be defended in these capitalist institutions. Don’t be taken in. The differences are only superficial.
Car 13/7/13
This article was written several months ago in response to the annointing of Nelson Mandela in the world media earlier this year when his health took a turn for the worse. Now that news of his death has been announced, it seems appropriate once again to counter the suffocating propaganda of the capitalist class.
In the latter part of his life Nelson Mandela was widely considered to be a modern ‘saint’. He appeared to be a model of humility, integrity and honesty, and displaying a remarkable capacity to forgive.
A recent Oxfam report said that South Africa is “the most unequal country on earth and significantly more unequal than at the end of apartheid”. The ANC has presided for nearly twenty years over a society that threatens still further deprivations for the black majority, and yet, despite having been an integral part of the ANC since the 1940s, Mandela was always seen as being somehow different from other leaders, throughout Africa and the rest of the world.
His 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (LWF) is an invaluable guide to Mandela’s life and views. Even though it is likely to portray its subject in a favourable light, it shows the concerns and priorities of the author.
For example, after 27 years of imprisonment, when Mandela was released in February 1990 he showed no sign of personal vindictiveness towards those who had kept him captive. “In prison, my anger towards whites decreased, but my hatred for the system grew. I wanted South Africa to see that I loved even my enemies while I hated the system that turned us against one another” (LWF p680). If this sounds like a Christian saying ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ it’s partly because it is. When two editors from the Washington Times visited him in prison “I told them that I was a Christian and had always been a Christian” (LWF p620).
You can also see how this trait in his personality proved useful to South African capitalism. After Mandela left prison one of the main tasks of the ANC was to reassure potential investors that a future ANC government would not threaten their interests. In ‘Mandela Message to USA Big Business’ (19/6/1990)[1] you can read something he said on a number of occasions “The private sector, both domestic and international, will have a vital contribution to make to the economic and social reconstruction of SA after apartheid… We are sensitive to the fact that as investors in a post-apartheid SA, you will need to be confident about the security of your investments, an adequate and equitable return on your capital and a general capital climate of peace and stability.” Mandela might have spoken as a Christian, but a Christian who understood the needs of business.
Mandela was certainly consistent, able to look at the present in its continuity with the past. When, for example, the ANC sat down for the first official talks with the government in May 1990 Mandela had to give them “a history lesson. I explained to our counterparts that the ANC from its inception in 1912 had always sought negotiations with the government in power” (LWF p693).
Mandela often referred to the ANC’s Freedom Charter adopted in 1955. “In June 1956, in the monthly journal Liberation, I pointed out that the charter endorsed private enterprise and would allow capitalism to flourish among Africans for the first time” (LWF p205). In 1988, when he was in secret negotiations with the government he referred to the same article “in which I said that the Freedom Charter was not a blueprint for socialism but for African-style capitalism. I told them I had not changed my mind since then” (LWF p642).
When Mandela was visited in 1986 by an Eminent Persons Group “I told them I was a South African nationalist, not a communist, that nationalists come in very hue and colour” (LWF p629). This nationalism was unwavering. When the 1994 election was approaching and he met President FW de Klerk in a television debate “I felt I had been too harsh with the man who would be my partner in a government of national unity. In summation, I said, ‘The exchanges between Mr de Klerk and me should not obscure on important fact. I think we are a shining example to the entire world of people drawn from different racial groups who have a common loyalty, a common love, to their common country’” (LWF p740-1).
From the mid 1970s Mandela received visits from the prisons minister. “The government had sent ‘feelers’ to me over the years, beginning with Minister Kruger’s efforts to persuade me to move to the Transkei. These were not efforts to negotiate, but attempts to isolate me from my organisation. On several other occasions, Kruger said to me: ‘Mandela, we can work with you, but not your colleagues’” (LWF p619).
The South African government recognised that there was something in his personality that would ultimately make some sort of negotiations possible. And, in December 1989, when he first met de Klerk he was able to say “Mr de Klerk seemed to represent a true departure from the National Party politicians of the past. Mr de Klerk …was a man we could do business with” (LWF p665).
Ultimately this mutual respect led in 1993 to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded jointly to Mandela and de Klerk, in the words of the citation “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa”. This long term goal was not something personal to Mandela but corresponded to the needs of capitalism. After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, “The Johannesburg stock exchange plunged, and capital started to flow out of the country” (LWF p281). The end of apartheid started a period of growth for foreign investment in South Africa. Democracy did not, however, benefit the majority of the population. In the fifties Mandela said that “the covert goal of the government was to create an African middle class to blunt the appeal of the ANC and the liberation struggle” (LWF p223). In practice ‘liberation’ and an ANC government has marginally increased the ranks of an African middle class. It has also meant repression, the remilitarisation of the police, the banning of protests, and attacks on workers, as in, for example, the Marikana miners’ strike in which 44 workers were killed and dozens seriously injured.
Mandela was able to say that “all men, even the most cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their hearts are touched, they are capable of changing” (LWF p549). What might be true of individuals is not true of capitalism. It has no core of decency and cannot be changed. The faces of the ANC government are different to their white predecessors, but exploitation and repression remain.
The ANC in their ‘liberation’ struggle used both violence and non-violence in its campaigns. When non-violent tactics were proving unsuccessful the ANC created a military wing, in the creation of which Mandela played a central role. “We considered four types of violent activities: sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and open revolution”. They hoped that sabotage “would bring the government to the bargaining table” but strict instructions were given “that we would countenance no loss of life. But if sabotage did not produce the results we wanted, we were prepared to move on to the next stage: guerrilla warfare and terrorism” (LWF p336).
So, on 16 December 1961, when “homemade bombs were exploded at electric power stations and government offices in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban” (LWF p338) it did not mean that the goals of the ANC had changed – democracy was still the aim. And after May 1983, when the ANC staged its first car bomb attack, in which nineteen people were killed and more than two hundred injured, Mandela said “The killing of civilians was a tragic accident, and I felt a profound horror at the death toll. But disturbed as I was by these casualties, I knew that such accidents were the inevitable consequences of the decision to embark on a military struggle” (LWR p618). These days such ‘accidents’ are often referred to by the more modern euphemism of ‘collateral damage’.
In the 1950s Mandela’s first wife became a Jehovah’s Witness. Although he “found some aspects of the Watch Tower’s system to be interesting and worthwhile, I could not and did not share her devotion. There was an obsessional element to it that put me off” (LWF p239). In the arguments they had “I patiently explained to her that politics was not a distraction but my lifework, that it was an essential and fundamental part of my being” (LWF p240).
These differences led to “a battle for the minds and hearts of the children. She wanted them to be religious, and I thought they should be political” (ibid). And what politics were they exposed to?
“Hanging on the walls of the house I had pictures of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Gandhi and the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1917. I explained to the boys who each of the men was, and what he stood for. They knew that the white leaders of South Africa stood for something very different” (ibid).
There is an interesting contrast here. On one hand, there are four leading members of the ruling capitalist class (and not so different from the South African bourgeoisie) and, on the other, one of the most important moments in the history of the working class.
Mandela said he had little time to study Marx, Engels or Lenin, but he “subscribed to Marx’s basic dictum, which has the simplicity and generosity of the Golden Rule: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’” (LWF p137). He might have ‘subscribed to the dictum’, but the history of the ANC has shown it for a century in the service of South African capitalism. Whether in protests or guerrilla struggle, the goals were nationalist, or just for people to let off steam, because “people must have an outlet for their anger and frustration” (LWF p725). In government, the faces changed from Mandela to Mbeki to Motlanthe and now Zuma, but there were no changes in the lives of the majority. The only difference in the Presidents was that Mandela had the best image.
Mandela was very aware of the myth of Mandela. He made a point of saying that he was not a ‘saint’ nor a “prophet”, nor a “messiah” (LWF p676), in a world where most politicians seem to be devoted to self-promotion and enrichment. This modesty was one of the appealing characteristics of Mandela. It could be explained by his Wesleyan background. In his 27 years in captivity he only once missed a Sunday service, “Though I am a Methodist, I would attend each different religious service” (LWF p536).
Whatever the origins of Mandela’s modesty and seeming decency, he is clearly going to be the face of the ANC’s 2014 election campaign. And, beyond South Africa, the Mandela myth will continue to be one of the pillars of modern democratic ideology.
In his career as a lawyer Mandela “went from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling class to shape society in a way favourable to itself” (LWF p309). He did not make a similar critique of democracy. In his 1964 court statement he expressed himself as an “admirer” of democracy. “I have great respect for British political institutions, and for the country’s system of justice. I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration. The American Congress, the country’s doctrine of the separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouse in me similar sentiments.” (LWF p436) Whatever the character of the man, his life’s work was in the service of capitalist democracy. For its part, capital will certainly continue to make use of his better qualities for the worst possible end: the preservation of its decaying social order.
Car 13/7/13
A comrade in the US reflects on the way different factions of the American bourgeoisie have responded to the ‘spying scandal’
Over the last several weeks the bourgeois media has been engaged in intense coverage of the so-called NSA (National Security Administration) spying scandal. Reports issued by the Guardian and the Washington Post have revealed, through information delivered up by a 29 year old systems manager for NSA contractor Booz Allen, Hamilton, that the United States government has been keeping a phone log of all telephone calls made in the United States, tracking every number dialed, the location of the party called and the call duration. Subsequent reporting revealed that in addition to this log of phone records, the NSA, through its so-called Prism program, has been directly tapping into the servers of the very companies that form the backbone of the World Wide Web: Facebook, Google, MSN, Apple, to name just a few.
According to the so-called whistleblower, Edward Snowden, the technical abilities the NSA now has at its disposal are profound. He claims to have been able to tap directly into any email anywhere, including even President Obama’s. According to his description of the Prism program, the technology is so powerful that an NSA analyst can tap into whatever instant message conversations he/she wants to at any moment. As a part of the story, we also learned that these programs appear to have been given the cover of legality by a sweeping Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) Court warrant allowing the government to “legally” collect this data.
It has been quite clear that the release of this information has been very uncomfortable for the US bourgeoisie. It hasn’t been a good period for the democratic illusion in the United States—the capitalist nation state that champions itself to its own citizens and the world beyond as the foremost guarantor of democracy and civil rights. The revelations about the NSA’s spying programs are only the latest in a series of embarrassing episodes that cast growing doubt on the ability of the US bourgeoisie to credibly proclaim America as a democracy guided by the rule of law. When these revelations hit the news, there was already a build-up of questioning about the Obama administration’s continued use of pilotless drones to kill suspected terrorists, including American citizens, as a matter of executive fiat without even the hint of due process.
Just weeks prior to Snowden’s confession, Obama had been forced to make a nationwide address defending his drone program and excusing the state murder by drone of an American citizen without trial (alleged terrorist Anwar Al-Awlaki). Although he has pledged to close the gulag at Guantanamo Bay, the continued hunger strike and force-feeding of the remaining detainees has been a major blemish on the image of American democracy abroad. While on this issue, Obama has tried to play himself as the good guy working to close the prison in opposition to a hostile Republican dominated Congress, his inability to close Guantanamo and thus fulfill a promise from his first campaign, is a major stick in the craw for his liberal base. While it would be an exaggeration to say that the US’s international image has sunk as low as it did during the Bush administration, it has certainly declined since the days of joyous celebrations following Obama’s initial election.
However, the revelations about the NSA spying programs strike much deeper at the heart of the illusion of American democracy and civil liberties than any of these other issues, as they affect the entire American population writ large. No longer are the excesses of the “surveillance state” directed only at shadowy dark-skinned foreigners or traitors who have gone over to the other side, but at every single American regardless of whether or not they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The worst Orwellian fears appear to have been realized. We are all being tracked, pretty much all the time and there appears to be nothing we can do to hold the state accountable for it. What kind of “democracy” is this?
The Confused Reaction of the Bourgeoisie
Just how uncomfortable Snowden’s revelations have been for the US ruling class was evident in the rather unusual and stumbling reaction of the various bourgeois factions. Many top congressional figures professed to know nothing about these programs and claimed to be deeply concerned by them, or—at the very least—slighted that they weren’t told about them. Judging by how uncoordinated the bourgeoisie’s initial response to the news appears to have been, there is reason to believe that they were not just making this up.
Still, the various heads of the Congressional intelligence committees were quick to react with anger to the release of this classified information. As they clumsily tried to assuage the public by telling us that this stuff had been going on for quite some time and it was nothing new under the sun, etc., their furor was palpable with many calling for the immediate arrest and prosecution of Snowden as a “traitor.” President Obama himself, forced by the growing media frenzy to make a statement, attempted to assure Americans that these programs were vital tools in the fight against terrorism that had stopped terrorist plots in their tracks and that in reality nobody was really listening to their phone calls, at least not without a warrant.
One of the most striking features of the bourgeois response was the unlikely coalitions that emerged. Supposed Liberal Senator from California Diane Feinstein was on the same page as militarist Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham in defending the programs and calling for Snowden’s swift prosecution. Meanwhile right-wing crackpot radio host Glenn Beck and progressive documentarian Michael Moore each declared Snowden a hero. Similarly, while Ron Paul wondered out loud if Snowden would be taken out by a cruise missile, liberal/progressive radio host Ed Schultz—using language typically employed by right wing bullies—aggressively called the leaker a “punk.”
The bourgeoisie have been unable to find a coherent political narrative in which to situate these revelations. The familiar left/right division of ideological labor simply isn’t working out on this one. On the left, the progressive/liberal talking heads are put in a corner. Whatever their level of personal discomfort with these programs, they are obliged to defend a scandal-plagued Obama administration from yet one more embarrassment. On the right, there is a clear divide between the authoritarian hawks who proudly declare (as any good fascist would), “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, and a libertarian element who see everything the state does as a plot to construct a tyrannical fascist/socialist Leviathan.
Clearly, the bourgeoisie is having difficulty getting its ducks in a row in order to present a coherent binary narrative to the public through which to explain this one in comfortable and familiar terms. It is likely for this reason that once the identity of the leaker became known, the media quickly attempted to change the story to make it all about the personality of Mr. Snowden. Just who was this guy? What was his story? Why did he do it? In a painful ode to the celebrity spectacle that today defines American pop culture, the media turned a story about the world’s most powerful “democratic” state spying on every single one of its citizens into a psycho-drama about Snowden’s supposed megalomania, naivety and youthful hubris.
The message was clear: the government may be spying on you, but at least now there is a new celebrity villain/hero personality to delve into and probably an exciting court room drama coming up in the future if/when the US state finally lays it hands on him! That is, if he isn’t extraordinarily rendered somewhere or mysteriously dies of a heart attack while holed up in the Ecuadorean ambassador’s residence. It’s international intrigue worthy of a Le Carré novel! It seemed, as in a modern day twist on the famous words attributed to Marie Antoinette, the bourgeoisie told the public, “If you can’t get openness in government, transparency and all the other mush that is supposed to go along with democracy, well, at least you can eat drama.”
Nevertheless, the bourgeois reaction to this story, as incoherent as it was, stands as a clear illustration of the rifts that have been tearing into the fabric of the US ruling class. Forced to keep the left of its political apparatus in executive power over concerns about the Republican Party’s ability to rationally steer the economy and the ship of the state, the Obama administration has had to govern in a way that puts its “left” credentials into severe question.[1] Already before these revelations, rumblings about Obama being just a kindler gentler version of Bush were rampant among many of the President’s erstwhile supporters.
Contrary to its traditional ideological role as the questioners of repressive power, key elements in the Democratic Party have had to come out in support of these massive spying programs. Meanwhile, law and order Republicans, who on any other day would probably prefer to see Obama join the millions of other African-Americans in prison, have come out as among the administration’s loudest cheerleaders in favor of keeping these programs in full force. The US political crisis continues. In sharp contrast to the image of overwhelming technical power wielded by its intelligence agencies, it’s the sad case that US bourgeoisie can’t even get its messaging straight on how to sell these programs to the public.
The “Democratic” State and Civil Liberties: Illusion Or Structure?
One of the more frustrating features of the media’s coverage of this story was the constant “man in the street” interviews with supposed ordinary citizens, asking their opinion about the revelations. How did the common man feel about the fact that the government was logging his calls and monitoring his IMs? Inevitably, the media would trot out some poor sap who would declare, “I don’t care. I have nothing to hide. Security comes first.” This mentality was a clear reflection of the official line frothed up by the technocrats and politicians: “These programs, this technology, have stopped terrorist attacks. Discontinuing them would make us vulnerable.”
In not so many words, this was President Obama’s approach to the controversy, despite the fact that this attitude stood in open contradiction to his previous positions, stated with force during his 2009 inauguration speech. Referencing previous revelations that the Bush administration had been tapping Americans’ phone calls without a warrant, President-elect Obama loudly declared that the American people should not accept the government prying into its personal affairs in the name of safety. But how quickly the tide turned once he found himself in the chief executive’s mansion!
However, whether or not Obama actually believed what he was saying in 2009 is patently irrelevant. Once he found himself at the head of the state, the overwhelming weight of the surveillance/homeland security apparatus was bound to exert its centrifugal pull. Besides, there was no way a black Democratic President, fighting for legitimacy in the eyes of half the nation, could afford to have a terrorist attack on US soil take place on his watch, without having appeared to exhaust whatever means at the disposal of the state to stop it. One can only imagine the uproar from his Republican opponents had another mass terrorist attack taken place and it was learned that Obama had cancelled these surveillance programs. He really had little choice but to continue and expand the Bush administration’s surveillance activities.
Of course, anyone who has taken a civics class in a US junior high school can tell you that what the US state was doing under these programs is highly illegal and unconstitutional according to the very principles the US state is supposed to uphold.[2] “Once security trumps individual liberty, the road to tyranny and enslavement is open” is one of the first principles drilled into the heads of the youth about why there is such as thing as a “Bill of Rights” at all. And while there were certainly elements within the US bourgeoisie, from left leaning civil rights activists to right wing libertarians, who attempted to make this very point, it was largely drowned out by the louder message emanating from the state apparatus that these programs keep us safe.
Nevertheless, given the level of ideological decomposition that has gripped US society over the preceding years, it was never going to be the case that this message would convince everyone. For every “authoritarian personality” that said he had nothing to hide, there seemed to be five paranoid conspiracists (left or right) who said the state can never be trusted, always lies and forever exercises power in violation of the rule of the law and the nation’s professed commitment to civil liberties. For this segment of the population, everyone in Washington is a forked tongue snake. Obama’s promises that nobody was listening to our phone calls without getting a warrant, or that the Prism program was only tracking foreign nationals, weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. The state always does what it wants, when it wants to, regardless of whether or not it is “legal.” If the state wants to make you disappear, it can probably do so with impunity.
Of course, there is much in this story that actually supports such a view. If the intention was to keep these programs secret in perpetuity, how can we ever be sure the state isn’t doing something else illegal that we just haven’t found out about yet? Obama says these programs are legal because they need a warrant to listen to calls. Anyone who watches Law and Order knows how easy it is to get a warrant—basically, all it takes is having a judges’ phone number. Of course, in the case of the NSA spying programs, it is a secret court, issuing a secret warrant that the targets are never allowed to see or even know exists. Moreover, at the end of the day, even if the state couldn’t get a warrant, what’s to stop it from carrying out the surveillance anyway? The answer is, of course, absolutely nothing at all.
What a curious picture of “democracy” this all is. Not only is the state’s official discourse cynically hypocritical, intellectually bankrupt and disturbingly Orwellian, but also the much-vaunted “civil society” that is supposed to be the lifeblood of liberal democracy appears to have completely broken down. How is the citizenry supposed to hold the government accountable for programs they don’t even know about and which they can only discover through the efforts of leakers and whistleblowers prepared to face the cruelty of the American criminal justice system?
In the view of many somber analysts, the citizenry itself seems to have been turned into such passive or paranoid sheep that they are simply incapable of exercising any “democratic control” over the military/intelligence/technology complex that is now intertwined with our daily lives. The American population appears hopelessly segmented into a false opposition between authoritarian lemmings that don’t care what the government does and those whose anxious paranoia moves them to see a government conspiracy around every corner they look. Whatever the differences in these two worldviews, the content is essentially the same: the state can do whatever the hell it wants—one side doesn’t mind, while the other can’t relax about it. One can only imagine the exasperation of eighth grade civic teachers all across the nation. If this is democracy, who wants it?
Some of the more sophisticated bourgeois think tank/media outlets have attempted to delve deeper into these issues. One of the main themes of this exploration has been the role of the new communication technologies and social media in shaping a public that supposedly does not care about privacy. We can all blame the young generations for this we are told; they simply cannot appreciate the importance of privacy to the formation of the stable identities that democratic citizenship requires.
Picking up on various themes being developed in the halls of academia, we are told that the youth’s obsession with Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets has completely rewired their brains to the point where the very interiority of the self has virtually disappeared. We are in the process of being transformed into an interconnected system of deconstructed selves that bleed into one another like ink from the now obsolete fountain pen. Personal identity, the bedrock of the liberal democratic state, will soon no longer exist. We will all be reduced to mere nodal points in a vast network of data signifiers. It’s possible, some say, that we won’t even be totally human anymore. Perhaps we will become just one big vast cybergenetic “desiring machine” or maybe its “bodies without organs” (to use some of the postmodern jargon), incapable of forming the requisite subjectivity to make liberal democracy function.
In line with all this, more and more members of the chattering classes openly imply that certain civil liberties are now simply technologically obsolete. Such was left/progressive talk show host Bill Maher’s rumination about the fate of the 4th amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure: “If the 4th amendment is now obsolete, why isn’t the 2nd amendment also?”, Maher pondered, in what appeared to be intended as a liberal/progressive rebuff to the Republican right-wing’s intransigent opposition to gun control.[3]
Of course, all of this paints a very gloomy picture of American “democracy.” Images of Marcuse’s “one -dimensional man,” Adorno and Horkheimer’s “administered society," Reich’s “mass psychology of fascism”, Wolin’s “inverted totalitarianism,” or Star Trek’s Borg are conjured up by these dismal assessments of the condition of American civil society in the age of Facebook. Perhaps what Maher really meant to ask was if liberal democracy itself was what was now obsolete?
Whatever the veracity of all of this, regardless of how much the academics overstate the psycho-analytic and sociological consequences of the Internet, the fact that these themes are now openly discussed is a powerful symbol of a supposedly “democratic” society now suffering a profound crisis of confidence in itself. Capitalist democracy now seems afraid of its youth; they represent something strange and inscrutable, perhaps even dangerous. One of the lessons Senator Mikulski of Maryland drew from the revelations was that regardless of their technical skills, it is not always in the best interest of the state to give young people the keys to the intelligence vault.[4] They are too unpredictable, lack the necessary moral commitment to the nation, have no personal discipline, are too easily led astray by unscrupulous hucksters, etc.
For us Marxists, these developments do raise very important questions about the nature of the so-called democratic state. Regular readers of the ICC press will know that we regularly produce critiques of democracy that show how, despite whatever fealty it once had to its own principles, the democratic state is now, as a result of capitalism’s decadence, become a totalitarian arm of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. There is essentially no tangible difference, as far as the proletariat is concerned, between the bourgeoisie in its various democratic, authoritarian, fascist, Stalinist, etc. forms. All factions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary in their commitment to the maintenance of the capitalist system, continuing the exploitation of the working class and engaging in the imperialist project.
But in saying this are we agreeing with the deep conspiracists that the structures of the democratic state are not “real”—that they are a pure “illusion,” beyond which lies only a “wild zone” of unchecked state power that is impervious to popular control?[5] Are all the political machinations of the President and Congress just window dressing or totally irrelevant and not worth paying attention to because the real power lies elsewhere?
Is it the case that we have been living in a full-stop totalitarian system since the entry of capitalism into decadence, and now, with the development of these new technologies, it has become safe for the state to emerge in its full horror, show its teeth and dispense with the illusions of democratic processes and the appearance of respecting civil liberties?
Regular readers of the ICC press will also recall articles reflecting on the “structure of the state” as an important factor in how the bourgeoisie orders its internal political life and also in how some of the various social movements we have witnessed since 2011 have unfolded. For example, in the ICC’s analysis of the way that the ‘Arab spring’ turned out in Libya, where the army was deliberately kept in a weakened state. So, is the idea that the democratic state is of no fundamental difference from authoritarian ones at odds with an analysis that take into account the “structure of the state”?
These are all very difficult questions that demand much further discussions by left communists and all those committed to ending capitalist exploitation. We can’t pretend to be able to give a definitive answer to all these questions here. However, a few preliminary observations can nevertheless be made:
The structures of American liberal democracy were very much “real” when they were designed in the late eighteenth century. The Bill of Rights was a function of the need of the American ruling class to devise a state structure that could protect their overall class rule, while at the same time preventing the state power from arbitrary and extra-judicial interference in commerce, property rights and political organization. However, even in this era, it is clear that these rights were unevenly enforced. Whatever the tangible nature of liberal democracy for the bourgeoisie, the US state has been among the most violent in its suppression of dissent from below. While it is true that democratic civil liberties may have been guaranteed to all white men, these guarantees are useless if the state is not committed to enforcing them or if one cannot afford a competent lawyer to fight for them in court.
Later, at the turn of the twentieth century, with industrial capitalism in full swing, a proletariat developing its struggle, and a World War in the offing, the US state was not shy about openly scrapping its commitment to freedom of speech and organization, imprisoning Socialist leaders such as Eugene Debs for violation of various sedition acts, when they urged resistance to the war. In the later part of the twentieth century, the developing national security state showed little concern for the rule of law in launching the blatantly illegal COINTELPRO operation designed to disrupt and discredit various civil rights, anti-war and Black Power organizations.[6]
Therefore, the new laws put into force in the aftermath of 9/11 (such as the Patriot Act)—while draconian in nature and shameless in their legalization of various activities that seem a blatant contradiction to the 18th century Bill of Rights—do not mark a fundamental departure from the normal practices of the “democratic” state. The US state has shown its willingness to act outside the boundaries of the rule of law numerous times in the past in order to crack down on dissent and pursue various individuals and organizations it has (rightly or wrongly) deemed a threat. When it comes to the cover of legality for its repressive and surveillance activities, the attitude of the U.S bourgeoisie seems to be that it’s nice to have, but not strictly necessary when it is for whatever reason unattainable.
But does all this mean that the US democratic state is a pure “illusion,” that power lies somewhere other than the visible structures of the state? Perhaps with the intelligence agencies or some other “deep structure”[7] that remains hidden in the shadows? The answer to this has to be: yes and no. It is true that the development of state capitalism has produced alternate centers of power that are outside the constitutional structures of the state. These have been known for some time: the military industrial complex, powerful industrial lobby groups, the homeland security/intelligence apparatus, Halliburton, the Cargill Group, etc. Moreover, it is true that these various loci of power can, at times, exert a strong enough influence over the formal structures of the state to the point where it can be accurate to say that they have “captured” some part of it and are molding for their own particular interests. This has been a major problem for US state capitalism as of late in its tendency to obstruct the state from operating in the overall interests of the national capital rather than various particular factions of it.
However, the formal structures of the state remain the primary terrain through which the US bourgeoisie fights its factional battles. The structure of this state may be two and a half centuries old now, and parts of it are clearly showing their age and obsolesce, but in many ways the US bourgeoisie is stuck with it for the foreseeable future. The ideological decomposition of US society (which is in some ways itself a function of the political pluralism built into the US state) means that it is unlikely the US bourgeoisie will be able to make any substantive changes to this structure anytime soon. It is for this reason that the fight over civil liberties will continue to have some salience well into the future, as a tool with which the various bourgeois factions can protect themselves from one another.
However, as to the extent to which the US state will respect these rights in reference to those it considers outside the arena of acceptable politics or bourgeois respectability, the examples of Al-Awlaki, Bradley Manning, Dzhokhar Tsarneaev and the millions of indigent criminal defendants who are denied effective legal counsel every day are powerful evidence of how these so-called protections can be ignored with relative impunity. [8]
These cases stand as evidence that whatever the structure of the state, whatever limitation the bourgeois class attempted to place on its growth two centuries ago, the state itself has a nature, an interest, and a social weight all of its own, which drives it to swallow civil society and establish the measures of efficiency, security and order—against the protections of rights, freedoms and liberties—as its legitimating principle. If the burgeoning bourgeois society of the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century was able to keep this tendency in check for a period, it’s clear that the social conditions that permitted this have long since expired with the closing of the period of capitalist ascendancy and the development of a universal tendency towards state capitalism.
If the bourgeoisie, or this or that faction thereof, has seen fit at times to attempt to restrain the natural growth tendencies of the state, it has only been in order to secure its own class interests, as when the eighteenth century US bourgeoisie established liberal democracy as a remedy against the British parliamentary-monarchial state’s tendency to obstruct the development of the (sub) national capital with arbitrary laws that imposed unrepresentative taxation, excises, customs, tariffs, etc.
The Cult of the Hero Whistleblower
In the weeks since the emergence of these revelations, the media’s attention has quickly turned away from any substantive discussion of the surveillance programs towards a personality study of the self-professed leaker/whistleblower. Depending on whose talking, Snowden has been portrayed as either a brave hero, willing to risk his personal safety to alert the public to this egregious government overreach, or a devious villain who has damaged national security in order to aggrandize his already oversized ego.
In all likelihood, there is some truth to the criticisms of Snowden. In his video interview with the Guardian, he does appear to have a vastly over-inflated image of himself as a martyr before the fact. It also appears likely that at least some of his claims about what he had the ability to do in his position with the NSA are overstated. Nevertheless, it is clear that whatever his exaggerations, Snowden’s reports have struck a nerve with the US state, indicating that the capabilities of these surveillance programs may be even more extensive than has been yet been revealed. In fact, the Guardian reporter who first broke the story, Glenn Greenwald, has promised more disturbing revelations to come.[9]
For all those who continue to believe in the promise of civil liberties, Snowden has become the celebrity hero du jour. He has assumed the mantle of Julian Assange, the embattled Wikileaks founder, as the international symbol of resistance to government secrecy and defender of democratic civil rights and freedom of information.[10] So what about these claims? Does the fact that the state’s violation of its own legal principles CAN eventually be brought to light by a whistleblower mean that democracy is capable of being saved? Can the state be won back for the democratic project?
We don’t think so. First, one would be forced to admit that the emergence of these leaks resulted not from the system working as it was supposed to (through transparency, accountability, and the democratic citizenry holding state power in check, etc.), but through a breakdown in the system of state secrecy and security. It was the failure of the security state that brought this information to light, not the triumph of the democratic citizenry through its elected representatives. While this may prove that even this behemoth state is not without its cracks, it should do little to assuage us that the democratic system can function according to the myths we are taught in school.
While the release of this information, just like Wikileaks’ previous release of secret diplomatic cables, may have caught the state with its pants down and may have embarrassed the Obama administration, there is no indication that the state is going to stop these activities anytime soon. All indications are that these programs, and whatever else they are doing that nobody knows about yet, will continue in earnest. The surveillance state is here to stay, regardless of what the public thinks about it. What better evidence is there than the fact that previous revelations of warrantless wiretapping by the Bush administration did absolutely nothing to dissuade the state from actually expanding these programs, despite a change of the political party in charge in the White House?
While we certainly feel some sympathy with Mr. Snowden’s plight as he is now a fugitive from US justice, it is utterly naive to think that we can depend on leakers and whistleblowers to defend democratic rights which the state will simply ignore if it finds it necessary to do so.
On the contrary, the only protection we can have against the ominous expansion of the surveillance state is to tear down the decomposing capitalist society upon which its foundations rest. The only way this will happen is for the international working class to develop its own autonomous struggle to defend its living and working conditions against the constant attacks capital will be forced to launch against them. Once this struggle reaches a certain level of development, the proletariat will inevitably be brought into direct conflict with the many tentacles of the capitalist surveillance state. The technologies revealed by Snowden, and undoubtedly many others we simply don’t know about, will most certainly be used against the working class, in particular its revolutionary minorities, as this struggle moves forward. The best we can do is to remain aware that we will have to confront them. However, we cannot defeat them by hoping for the revival of a democratic state, which was never entirely real to begin with, and whose time has long passed.
--Henk
06/27/2013
[1] Is this perhaps part of the reason why, after years of quiet on the issue, Obama has come out in support of gay marriage? Is he attempting to shore up his left flank?
[2] The state would likely argue that the FISA court warrant actually makes its activities “legal,” but it is clear that this type of non-specific sweeping warrant, lacking any basis in individualized reasonable suspicion, is exactly the type of arbitrary power that so upset the eighteenth century American bourgeoisie that it was driven to armed rebellion. Of course, at the end of the day something is “legal” if the Supreme Court says it is legal, regardless of how far its decisions may stray from the “original intent” of the so-called Founding Fathers.
[3] In one fell swoop, perhaps in a moment of unintended honesty, Maher had managed to offend practically everyone.
[4] Senator Mikulski’s home state of Maryland, supposedly one of the most progressive in the country, made its own contribution to the growth of the surveillance state when the Supreme Court recently upheld a state law allowing it to take DNA samples of all criminal defendants, even before they have been convicted, and store them in a computerized database. The intention appears to be to eventually construct a national database of DNA samples taken from anyone the police can accuse of a crime. Under the law, the DNA sample can be taken even before the defendant has been brought before a magistrate to determine if probable cause exists. The Court consoled us that the law, as it is currently written, only allows the collection of DNA for “serious crimes.” Of course, it is common practice for the police to charge a defendant with the most serious offense they can plausibly connect to the underlying act even if there is no intention to prosecute it.
“[5] The concept of a “wild zone” of sovereign power beyond any democratic control comes from political theorist Susan Buck-Morss. See her Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) 2000.
[6] Of course the revelations of the existence of COINTELPRO were followed by the Church Commission investigation into these activities—a desperate attempt to revive the image of the state in the eyes of an increasingly alienated public in the aftermath of Watergate. It remains to be seen if the current US bourgeoisie can muster such an effort in response to Snowden’s revelations. Given the state of political discord in Washington, one is tempted to think not.
[7] “Deep Structures of the State” is a concept dear to the academic wing of the 9/11 Truth Movement. See the work of Paul Zarembka.
[8] Just weeks before the public became aware of the NSA’s spying activities, the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright to grant the right to counsel to indigent defendants passed mostly without ceremony. Those media outlets that did cover it, such as NPR, generally featured stories about how most states have spent the last half century ignoring the ruling and providing only symbolic access to public defenders who so lack resources that the best they can do for their clients, even the innocent ones, is to secure a plea deal. According to many who work in the field, the so-called system of “meet ‘em and plead ‘em” has effectively destroyed the right to counsel in the country and the right to a jury trial along with it.
[9] Greenwald’s story is itself interesting. An American by birth working for a British newspaper, some elements of the US bourgeoisie have called for Greenwald’s prosecution for aiding and abetting Snowden’s “espionage.”
[10] For the ICC’s analysis of Wikileaks see: Wikileaks Scandal Reinforces Myth of Bourgeois Democracy [1033] at
The surveillance can be aimed at any citizen, whether or not they are involved in subversive or illegal activities. And not just at US citizens: the scandal has exposed the very close cooperation between the NSA and the British GCHQ, and Snowden has claimed that the NSA is in bed with a whole number of other western states. But that doesn’t make these states immune from being spied on themselves: the US uses the same techniques of mass surveillance to spy on other states, including those once deemed to be its allies, like Germany and France.
The startling development of electronic communication in the last few decades has of course taken the technical capacities of such spy agencies to a new level. But there is nothing new in any of this, and it’s certainly not limited to the US.
The British state, for one, used to lead the field in international spying technology. When it was the most powerful capitalist country it was the centre of the international network of telegraph lines, a similar position to that of the US in relation to the internet. In the First World War British imperialism used this position to tap into the international communications networks of German imperialism. It cut the main cables between Germany and the US, but was able to monitor the other networks Germany had to use. It also got its hands on the wireless facilities of the Post Office and Marconi to monitor German wireless traffic. This was done by Navy Intelligence from Room 40 at the Admiralty Building. Following the war it continued to use and develop these abilities. Today, despite no longer being a superpower, it can use its hundred year history of spying through communications systems to punch above its weight in the espionage game.
As for France, which has protested loudly against the violation of its sovereignty by the NSA, the French newspaper Le Monde has recently published information about the vast data collection and electronic surveillance operations being carried out by the national intelligence service, the DGSE. The French Republic is almost as hypocritical as Putin’s Russia, which is regularly suspected of assassinating journalists who ask too many awkward questions, posing as the defender of freedom and considering offering asylum to the fugitive Snowden.
In sum: they are all at it, and they are all at it more than ever before. They spy on their own citizens because their rule is fragile, undermined by its own social and economic contradictions, and they live in constant terror of the danger of revolt from below. They also spy on each other because these same contradictions push each nation state towards incessant warfare with its rivals, and in this war of each against all, today’s ally can be tomorrow’s enemy. And only one organ is capable of organising spying and surveillance on such a gigantic scale: the capitalist state, which in the age of capitalist decline has truly become a cold inhuman monster which tends more and more to swallow the civil society it is supposed to ‘protect’.
Amos/Phil 13/7/13
The war in Syria is an example of the decomposition and growing irrationality of capitalism as expressed through its capitalist war machines. We can trace this descent if we go back a couple of decades to the ‘Cold War’ period from 1945 to 1989. The two-bloc system, while threatening incidental nuclear annihilation, was, in a perverse way, the height of geo-military organisation and cooperation of capitalism. All the national states involved were subservient, willingly or unwillingly, to the aforementioned bloc leaders and to the interests of the bloc. This was the apogee of imperialist 'stability' even with the brutal carnage that it involved and the risks that it carried.
When the USSR collapsed in 1989, this two-sided bloc “coherence” collapsed with it and the vacuum was filled with centrifugal tendencies, each man for himself and growing tendencies towards the break-up of established nations, a process which goes on to this day. This was evidenced in some of the ex-satellites of the Russian Republic in Europe, Asia and the Caucasus; also in Yugoslavia where, in 1992, the dissolution of this country into opposing fiefdoms, tripped by Germany and manipulated by Britain, Russia, France and the USA, brought the first war in Europe for nearly fifty years. We see tendencies in the same direction today in Libya, Iraq and Syria - all countries war-torn by capitalism. In Africa, Ethiopia is fractious, Sudan split in two, Somalia on the edge and the Congo a death camp of imperialism. The war in Libya has fuelled separatist tendencies in Mali and Niger, with Nigeria affected. Rather than the constitution of viable states we see them splitting into fragments, and further developments of decomposition are expressed in the spread of gangsterism, warlordism, religious fanaticism and that abortion of internationalism - global jihad. All these features have been aroused, fed and inflamed by the wars of the major imperialisms in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.
According to The Observer, 16.6.13, quoting a western official in Beirut (“western official” in this context is either a senior British diplomat or intelligence agent): “Every scenario is a nightmare now”. This came after the US said it would provide arms to the rebels now that it was proved that chemical weapons had been used by the Assad regime. This is another Iraq/ WMD farcical lie. The New York Times has exposed the case of the chemical weapons 'red line' supposedly crossed by the regime which, incidentally, the UN has refused to endorse, in that it rests on the exposure of two individuals to sarin which, as even the White House said: “... does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed, or who was responsible for that dissemination”. There’s also some doubt amongst experts that it is sarin poisoning, with some suggesting exposure to chlorine gas, which has very similar symptoms.
The subsequent convoluted statement from the White House about directing arms to some of the rebels can be taken with a pinch of salt. The US 'chemical weapons red line' is code for getting more fully involved, the consequences of which can only contribute to further bloodshed and chaos. The US administration, through its agencies, along with Britain and France, have been providing arms and training (as well as stashes of money) to rebel groups via Turkey and Jordan, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, since November 2012 (Los Angeles Times, June 20). The US presence in Jordan has been beefed up after military exercises with British forces in June, leaving in place CIA operatives, special forces, a dozen F-16 fighter jets, Patriot missile batteries and one thousand troops on the ground. After this deployment, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said that military assistance, in the form of 'training teams', could be sent to Iraq and Lebanon. The New York Times gave some detail about the amount of arms that the rebels have received since the beginning of 2012: possibly as much as 3,500 tonnes of weapons. In Afghanistan, when the west was arming the fundamentalist Mujahideen they were getting one cargo a month - the Syrian opposition has been receiving one every other day. The Financial Times in May reported that Qatar alone had supplied $3 billion worth of weapons, showing something of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in this war, while their rival, Saudi Arabia, has provided shoulder-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to its Islamist groups in Aleppo. Weapons have been collected from all over Libya and sent by the Benghazi regime, with their stamp of approval, to the rebels - apparently paid for by Qatar under cover of humanitarian aid. Since the EU arms embargo was lifted in May, there’s been a free-for-all in arms provision with Israel also getting in on the act. And, on the other side of the war, there’s the massive weaponry and support provided by Russia and Iran to the Assad regime.
The western-backed Free Syrian Army described as a “corrupt failure” by the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra and, more accurately, as “a rhetorical construct” by Reuters, 19.6.13, is an opposition manufactured from outside Syria by the west. Many of its fighters have been killed and their units disbanded by al-Nusra and many have deserted to its side. Chechen-dominated Sunni rebel jihadi groups in the north have aired a video showing that they have shoulder-launched SA-16 missiles, capable of posing a threat to most war planes and helicopters. These are precisely the weapons that the CIA has tried to keep out of their hands, blocking them from the Jordanian and Turkish border but the jihadists have clearly got them from somewhere. The Chechen fighters command a large group solely composed of foreigners who see the war as global jihad. Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, says: “There is increasing evidence that foreign fighters are gathering under a more unified umbrella in Syria and that the umbrella organisation may have a strong Chechen leadership” (The Observer, 16.6.13).
Oliver Holmes and Alexanda Dziadosz wrote up some good research for Reuters on June 18 from on the ground in Aleppo. They talk about there being 2000 fighters there, originally around the leading group of Ghurabaa al-Sham. This moderate Islamist opposition group was defeated and disbanded overnight by the hard-line Islamists of al-Nusra at the end of last April. The jihadists confiscated all their weapons, ammunition and transport. This pattern has been repeated throughout Syria where groups wanting a supreme religious leadership are overwhelmingly the moderates, they being no match for the hard-line jihadi units. The Reuters reporters go on to say that: “on the ground there is little evidence to suggest that the FSA actually exists as a body at all”. Ghurabaa al-Sham - the so-called democratic resistance - was, in the very words of its leader in Aleppo, made up of “outlaws and reprobates”. They had no support from the majority of the population previously involved in protests against the regime - far from it, as they were thieves and looters who were shipping their booty back to Turkey. Similar stories of looting and theft at the beginning of the war are emerging now and increasingly we are hearing that the jihadis have brought 'order', if only their particular kind of capitalist order. And weapons trading and in-fighting goes on between all these groups and particularly the four Islamist brigades running Aleppo including the al-Qaida linked al-Nusra and the Saudi and Qatari backed factions. The non-jihadi factions, such as the US and the Istanbul-based, Syrian National Council-backed “Falcons of Salqin”, are themselves involved in looting and theft as well as the trading of weapons. The US and the 11 nation “Friends of Syria”, meeting under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Tunisia, have now set up the grand sounding “Supreme Military Council” under which to organise, arm, train and direct its rebel forces. The British and the Americans have put their weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood, but these 'friends of Syria' all have their own tensions with each other and their own agendas for the region, particularly the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. At the moment they look extremely unlikely to forge an effective anti-Assad force.
On July 2, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, after meeting his Russian counterpart, said that a “Geneva II” meeting would be convened as soon as possible in the search for peace and “to stop the bloodshed” in Syria. The meeting had been scheduled for June but is now put off until after August because of the holidays! The chemical weapons red line - a line pushed by Britain and France - was called a step too far by the US administration and the “clarifying moment” vaunted after talks with Putin showed that there was no agreement. But the real clarification was made by Hezbollah (“the army of God”) in taking the strategic town of Qusair from the rebels and opening up battle lines from Iran all the way to the Israeli border. This is what is drawing in the Americans. Many Hezbollah fighters have been battle-hardened in fighting against Israel but thousands are regularly sent to Iran for training. It’s this force, as well as Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who have repulsed the rebel push and gone onto the offensive. And, just as they all talk of peaceful solutions, the war spreads ever wider: Lebanon is now involved with the highly populated areas of Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon affected by RPG and machine-gun fire. Sixteen Lebanese soldiers were killed by Sunni Islamists on June 23 in Sidon, which The Times of Israel called a “war zone”. The Lebanese government is weak, the state is faction-ridden and hardly recovered from its own 15-year-old civil war with its hundred thousand dead.
The war is also deepening in the US and British-made disaster of Iraq. Paramilitaries and militias rule the streets of this country where, despite its oil wealth, there’s no constant water or electricity and poverty, terror and insecurity reigns. The busiest places in Iraq are the emigration offices where many, mostly unsuccessful, are trying to get out of the country. Prime Minister Malaki has been accused of working with the Iranians (which he does) and of opening up a land corridor with Iran in order to channel fighters and weapons into Syria (which he probably has). Hundreds of Iraqi civilians are being killed and mutilated by car bombs weekly in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and Tigrit, mostly set by Sunni Islamists and related to the war in Syria. Both pro- and anti-Assad forces are moving backwards and forwards from Iraq and into Syria and have been for some time now.
The human cost in Syria grows ever greater. US news agencies report one hundred thousand dead - a third of them civilians; 40% loss of GDP; 1 in 5 schools and 1 in 3 hospitals closed; lack of power and water; 2.5 million unemployed; millions unable to buy enough food and refugees, internal and external, running into millions. Billions of dollars are spent on the means of destruction but the Geneva I meeting promised $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid, most of which will not appear and a large slice of which will go directly to the military factions. There’s half-a-million refugees in Lebanon alone. Some refugees have been forcibly turned back from the Jordanian border straight into Syrian gunfire. At the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan many have returned to Syria because they would rather live in a war-zone than these filthy, crime-ridden camps bearing the logo UNHCR which are run by mafias, smugglers and people traffickers.
This is the new world order of decomposition and imperialism, where a militarily resuscitated Russia aligns with China in order to protect Iran and all their interests, economic and strategic, in the Middle East. Unlike the conflicts of the cold war, limited, confined, understood by the two blocs, this is a war of decomposing capitalism, with more variable components and thus more dangerous. As well as the major players, there are the diverging interests of Iran, Turkey, Israel, along with Qatar, Saudi and Egypt. As well as irrationality the war also shows the weakening of US power - as great as it still is and, on an imperialist level, this will only contribute to the chaos. As much as they say that they don’t want it, there is the danger here of the US, Britain and France getting drawn in behind the jihadists - if this hasn’t already happened. This is not a war of Sunni against Shia, but a war of capitalism taking over these religious strains and playing up sectarianism, feeding, prolonging and spreading the conflict. Iran for example has used the Shia brand for its own purposes and it’s Iranian imperialism, not Iranian religion, that is in play here. The defence of national capitalist interests in an increasingly contested world arena is the essence of imperialism and it applies to Iran, to the rest of the local states, and their big power backers.
Against the imperialist carnage in Syria, contrast the protests in Turkey and Egypt which, though part of an international phenomenon, are important local expressions that carry the seeds of a movement away from and against imperialist war. These movements are not immune from attempts to open up another path to imperialist chicanery and butchery, but at the moment such mass protests - which have economic considerations at their basis - are not welcome by any side[2]. These mass movements, at the moment lacking a clear class consciousness and organisation, begin to pose an alternative to imperialist war in Syria, a war that is tending to get more dangerous and out of control.
Baboon 5/7/13 (this article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[2]. Though opposing sides like the Saudi’s and the UAE on one hand, and the Assad regime on the other, have expressed their pleasure at the overthrow of the Morsi clique, they have done so for different imperialist reasons. For the former this is a blow to their rival Qatari Muslim Brotherhood enemies, and for the latter, particularly just after Morsi had declared for the largely MB dominated anti-Assad opposition, this represents a setback for their rival. But no powers involved here, the local powers, the USA, Britain, France, nor Iran, nor its most important backer, Russia, nor China from a distance, want to see millions of protesters on the streets, expressing their deep indignation.
The study of warfare in archaic and prehistoric societies has enjoyed something of a fashion in recent years, even including the thesis that warfare played a critical role in the evolution of humanity.[1] In the scientific literature (or at least in the literature of scientific vulgarisation), Lawrence Keeley’s book War before civilization has achieved a certain status as a work of reference.[2]
Keeley begins by situating two opposing views of primitive human society that have emerged in Western social theory since the Renaissance: on the one hand that of Hobbes, who famously described the primitive condition of man before the emergence of the state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, and on the other that of Rousseau, who was one of the first and most influential exponents of the idea of the original “noble savage” corrupted by civilisation.
As Keeley points out, the Hobbesian view of man provided a useful subtext for European colonial powers who argued that by policing the inter-tribal relations of primitive peoples they were bringing peace where none had been before. This situation changed radically after World War II: the two world wars shattered the confidence of intellectuals in the old colonial powers in the superiority of Western civilisation; the unparalleled barbarity of Nazism, arising in one of the greatest and most cultured European nations, as well as the disintegration of the colonial empires in bloody conflict (Dien Bien Phu, the war in Algeria, the suppression of the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya) made the Rousseauesque view suddenly far more attractive. As a result, anthropological and archaeological studies tended to ignore or misinterpret the evidence for violent conflict contained in ethnographic studies or archaeological fieldwork: fortified settlements, for example, were interpreted as religious sites and the frequent appearance of weapons in burials as mere symbols of prestige. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Keeley does not ask whether the new approach to violence in archaic societies might be related to the current fashion for justifying the old colonialism and even proposing a return to a new pax americana (see especially Niall Ferguson’s Empire and Colossus).
This said, Keeley’s statistical approach, both in living archaic societies and in the archeological record, leaves little doubt that warfare has been prevalent throughout human history, and that it has often been every bit as bloody and cruel as the battles of World War II, or the martyrdom of Vietnam. He demystifies the relatively “harmless” nature of archaic societies’ “set-piece” battles which generally end with a minimum of casualties, pointing out the far more murderous, and frequent, nature of ambushes and surprise attacks which can sometimes result in the extermination of entire settlements or even societies. The statistical approach, while it can open our eyes to the basic facts, nonetheless has definite limits when it comes to understanding them: the reductio ad absurdum of this approach can be seen in his remark that in one of the “peaceful” societies that he mentions – a polar Inuit group of 200 people who, until they were contacted at the beginning of the 19th century, were so isolated that they believed themselves the only humans in existence – a homicide every 50 years would equal the homicide rate of today’s United States. The mere fact that archaic and modern warfare both involve killing by no means makes them identical. As Marx remarked in another context: “Hunger is hunger; but the hunger that is satisfied by cooked meat eaten with knife and fork differs from hunger that devours raw meat with the help of hands, nails and teeth. Production thus produces not only the object of consumption but also the mode of consumption, not only objectively but also subjectively.”[3] For one thing, archaic societies are classless, there is no constraint involved in the decision to go to war and military aggression is not undertaken by forced armies of conscripts:[4] the very nature of primitive communist societies means that warfare depends entirely on volunteers. Nor is there anything like the privileged officer caste which remains safely behind the lines, as was notoriously the case in World War I, and indeed in all modern warfare: archaic war chiefs lead from the front and share the same risks as those they lead. Nor does the “primitive” warrior experience the depersonalisation of much modern warfare: nowhere in archaic societies, for obvious reasons, will we find the equivalent of the B52 bomber pilot in Vietnam or Iraq who rains death with impunity on an entire population, much less the modern drone pilot in a Nevada military base whose experience of warfare resembles nothing so much as a video game. Indeed, one of the reasons Keeley evokes for the low rate of casualties in primitive set-piece battles is that they often set face to face warriors related by marriage or blood – a warrior will take his place in the battle line with the deliberate intention of avoiding the risk of injuring or killing a relative. Primitive warfare, in short, is less “inhuman” in the proper sense of the term.
For us, the main interest in Keeley’s book is twofold:[5] first, in his analysis of the reasons for the “peaceful” or “warlike” nature of different archaic societies, and second in his exploration of the attitudes of these societies to war and to warriors themselves.
One point to emerge clearly from Keeley’s study is that, while wholly peaceful archaic societies may be rare, all are by no means equally violent. We cannot do justice here to Keeley’s interesting discussion of the various anthropological theories advanced to explain why war breaks out between different groups – the issue of vendetta, for example, would merit a study in itself – rather we will limit ourselves to highlighting the role of “disaster-driven warfare”: “it is becoming increasingly certain that many prehistoric cases of intensive warfare in various regions corresponded with hard times created by ecological and climate changes” (Chapter 9, “Bad Neighbourhoods”). In other words, archaic societies tend to resort to warfare when the carrying capacity[6] of their local environment changes for the worse and they are unable to adapt to the change quickly enough through the development of technology.
One thing often missed in studies of archaic warfare is the question of how war is viewed by the participants themselves, and this to our mind is one of the most interesting aspects of Keeley’s book, so much so that we will quote it at some length. Keeley’s discussion of this topic can be grouped under the following headings:
1. People’s view of the activity of war itself,
2. The attitude towards warriors and killing,
3. The warrior chief.
It comes as little surprise that in general, women have a wholly negative view of war: in the case of defeat they often stand to lose the most with the least chance of resistance, in the case of victory they stand to gain the least, and their economic activity (gardening, etc.) is more vulnerable to pillage. “Representing the unanimous opinion of her sex in a society where land disputes were the most common cause of fighting, one Mae Enga woman protested: ‘Men are killed but the land remains. The land is there in its own right and it does not command people to fight for it’”. As far as men are concerned, Keeley goes on to note that “At some level, even the most militant warriors recognised the evils of war and the desirability of peace. Thus certain New Guinea Jalemo warriors, who praised and bragged about military feats and who took great pleasure in eating both the pigs and the corpses of vanquished enemies, readily confessed that war was a bad thing that depleted pig herds, incurred burdensome debts, and restricted trade and travel. Similarly, despite their frequent resort to it, Kapauku Papuans seem to hate war. As one man put it: ‘War is bad and nobody likes it. Sweet potatoes disappear, pigs disappear, fields disappear, and many relatives and friends get killed. But one cannot help it. A man starts a fight and no matter how much one despises him, one has to go and help because he is one’s relative and one feels sorry for him.’”. An ethnographic study of New Guinea warriors known for bravery found that without exception they suffered from nightmares and exhibited forms of neurosis comparable to those observed in modern combatants.
This negative attitude to warfare is strikingly confirmed by the idea, common the world over according to Keeley, that a warrior who had just killed an enemy was “regarded by his own people as spiritually polluted or contaminated. Often he had to live for a time in seclusion, eat special food or fast, be excluded from participation in rituals, and abstain from sexual intercourse” (Chapter 10, “Naked, poor, and mangled peace”). Keeley goes on to give concrete examples: “Because he was a spiritual danger to himself and anyone he touched, a Huli killer of New Guinea could not use his shooting hand for several days; he had to stay awake the first night after the killing, chanting spells; drink ‘bespelled’ water; and exchange his bow for another. South American Carib warriors had to cover their heads for a month after dispatching an enemy. An African Meru warrior, after killing, had to pay a curse remover to conduct the rituals that would purge his impurity and restore him to society. A Marquesan was tabooed for ten days after a war killing. A Chilcotin of British Columbia who had killed an enemy had to live apart from the group for a time, and all returning raiders had to cleanse themselves by drinking water and vomiting. These and similar rituals emphasize the extent to which homicide was regarded as abnormal, even when committed against the most bellicose enemies”.
Despite these misgivings (to put it mildly) about killing, courageous and skilful warriors were universally esteemed. This is hardly surprising: in a situation of endemic warfare, the warriors’ success could be all that stood between the tribal group and extermination by the enemy. What is more surprising is that, according to Keeley, even warlike societies reserved their greatest esteem not for warriors but for their “peace chiefs”, whose desired qualities had nothing to do with warfare: “The six desired characteristics of an Apache headman, for instance, were industriousness, generosity, impartiality, forbearance, conscientiousness, and eloquence (…) Among the Mae Enga, it was recognized that ‘rubbish men’ – those with the least wealth and the lowest status – were often the most effective warriors”. Where Keeley falls down, is in his (in our view) rather facile comparison with the attitude of modern societies towards returning soldiers: he ignores the class division of modern society, which means that the mass of the armed forces come from the working class and share the contempt and exploitation of the ruling class with their civilian class brothers and sisters.[7]
Is man violent by nature? Perhaps we can be permitted to conclude with a hypothesis. In nature, all animals are contradictory: on the one hand, violence is to be avoided because it puts at risk the individual’s survival, hence its ability to reproduce; on the other, violence is a necessary and inevitable part of life because every animal is in competition with others both to survive and to reproduce. Man shares this natural heritage, but he is also different. Man’s capacity for cultural adaptation, his capacity for mutual solidarity which is one of the foundation stones of his culture, has made him the most successful predator on the planet and to this extent he has freed himself from nature’s obligation to violence. We are not then surprised, on reading Keeley’s work, to discover this contradiction between on the one hand man’s capacity for violence when confronted with the struggle for survival, and on the other so widespread and so powerful a revulsion at the exercise of violence against his fellows. This contradiction will only be resolved by the removal of one of its terms, by the disappearance of the need to compete with his fellows in a society where the division among different tribes is replaced by the participation in a worldwide human community: in short, in communism. Yet the disappearance of violence will not come about through an ecumenical realisation of our common humanity, but through “the negation of the negation”: “force plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms”.[8]
Jens, 09/05/2013
[1]. See for example a study published by Samuel Bowles in the June 2009 issue of Science, and reviewed in The Economist [1038] of the same week. This study is definitely a minority view among scientists since it is based on a group selection theory of evolution as against the “selfish gene” theory which is today the generally accepted evolutionary model.
[2]. Lawrence Keeley is a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois in Chicago. His book is also available in French (Les guerres préhistoriques) but not in Spanish. His book was first published in 1996 and reprinted in 2001.
[4]. Or indeed of slaves as under the Egyptian Fatimids, or of levies among a tributary population like the Turkish Janissaries.
[5]. An important part of the book is devoted to demonstrating the effectiveness of archaic tactics compared to those of state societies, a subject which need not concern us here.
[6]. For a summary of the notion of carrying capacity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity [1040]
[7]. It is worth pointing out that the examples cited by Keeley, and which we have quoted here, are all drawn from peoples known for being particularly bellicose and frequently engaged in warfare.
[8]. Engels, Anti-Dühring [1041]
In our previous article analysing the situation in Egypt, we wrote in our conclusion:
“capitalism has accumulated the means to destroy all human life on the planet. The collapse of social life and the rule of murderous armed gangs – that’s the road of barbarism indicated by what’s happening right now in Syria. The revolt of the exploited and the oppressed, their massive struggle in defence of human dignity, of a real future – that’s the promise of the revolts in Turkey and Brazil. Egypt stands at the crossroads of these two diametrically opposed choices, and in this sense it is a symbol of the dilemma facing the whole human species”[1].
The tragic events which have taken place and accelerated during the month of August in Egypt following the reactions to the army coup against former president Morsi, in particular the bloody repression of the Muslim Brotherhood which peaked on the 14th August, bear witness to the whole gravity of this historic situation and confirm this idea of a “crossroads” for the whole of humanity.
The quagmire of decomposition, of economic and social crisis, the corruption and disastrous policies of the Morsi government (elected in June 2012) led the population back to the streets to express their discontent with growing poverty and insecurity. It was this deteriorating situation, aggravated by the political irrationality and endless provocations of the Muslim Brotherhood, which pushed the Egyptian army to carry out the coup of 3 July, deposing president Morsi from office. Parallel to this, the social agitation continued, stoking up very dangerous tensions and some bloody confrontations. This was nothing less than a juggernaut heading towards civil war. The only force capable of holding society together, the army, was compelled to step in and prevent it from breaking apart. The strongman of the hour is therefore the head of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. The latter was obliged to impose a policy of brutal repression, mainly using the civil police against the Muslim Brothers and the pro-Morsi forces. Throughout the summer, there was a growing number of clashes between the pro and anti- Morsi elements, resulting in a number of deaths, particularly among the Muslim Brotherhood. The pro-Morsi demonstrations and sit-ins, which gathered together men, women and children, were dispersed in a violent manner. The army assaults left over a thousand dead. Martial law, in the shape of a state of emergency and a curfew, was imposed in Cairo and 13 provinces. A number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and activists (over 2000) were arrested, including the ‘supreme leader’ Mohammed Badie and many others, some of whom died in prison after an escape attempt.
Since then, the demonstrations, targets for the bullets of the police and the army, have become less numerous. In maintaining order in this manner, the army and the police have won the support of the majority of the population who see the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists. This support for the army and the state, mixed up with a growing anti-Islamist feeling, but tainted with nationalism, can only weaken the proletariat, which risks being caught up in the negative logic of the situation. This is all the more true in that the rejection of religious fundamentalism is fed by the democratic mystification which still retains a great deal of strength.
Unlike the great demonstrations in Tahrir Square which led to the downfall of Mubarak and where the political presence of women was tolerated and where they were relatively protected, the terror reigning today has led to a spectacular moral regression, such as the collective rape of women in the middle of demonstrations, and the pogrom atmosphere against the Copts (hundreds of churches have been burned and a number of Copts have been killed).
As we wrote in our previous article:
“The working class in Egypt is a much more formidable force than it is in Libya or Syria. It has a long tradition of militant struggle against the state and its official trade union tentacles, going back at least as far as the 1970s. In 2006 and 2007 massive strikes radiated out from the highly concentrated textile sector, and this experience of open defiance of the regime subsequently fed into the movement of 2011, which was marked by a strong working class imprint, both in the tendencies towards self-organisation which appeared in Tahrir Square and the neighbourhoods, and in the wave of strikes which eventually convinced the ruling class to dump Mubarak. The Egyptian working class is by no means immune from the illusions in democracy which pervade the entire social movement, but neither will it be an easy task for the different cliques of the ruling class to persuade it to abandon its own interests and drag it into the cesspit of imperialist war”.
It’s also true that there have been some new expressions of the class struggle, notably in Mahalla where 24,000 workers came out on strike after half their wages were not paid[2]. There have also been strikes in Suez. And while some demonstrators have held up banners proclaiming ‘Neither Morsi nor the military’. But these rare voices have been stifled more and more, just as the courageous struggles of the workers have been increasingly isolated and thus weakened. While the situation has not reached the tragic level it has in Syria, it is becoming more and more difficult to break out of the deadly logic leading towards such barbaric outcomes.
The internal instability that has been aggravated by recent events is not taking shape in a secondary country of the region. Egypt is a turning point between North Africa and the Middle East, between Africa and Asia. It is the most populous country of the Muslim world and Africa and its capital, Cairo, the biggest metropolis of the continent. The country is part of a Sunni arc opposed to the Shiite countries, notably Syria-Lebanon and Iran, the sworn enemy of the US and Israel in the region. From the geographical point of view Egypt therefore occupies a major strategic position, in particular with regard to the interests of the USA, the world’s leading, but declining, imperialist power. During the Cold War, Egypt was an essential pawn guaranteeing the stability of the region to the benefit of the US. This advantage was consolidated with the Camp David Accords of 1979, sealing the rapprochement between Egypt and Israel and the US. The relative stability linked to the balance between the rival military blocs of east and west made it possible contain and tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood even though they were kept under constant state surveillance – in the epoch of Nasser they had been banned outright. Today the disappearance of the bloc discipline and the development of every man for himself, of social decomposition, is accentuating centrifugal tendencies and especially the rise of radicalised factions like the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which Mubarak had already seen as a ‘state with the state’[3].
The international context, above all the free for all between the big global powers, is now serving to exacerbate all these inherent tensions. In the Middle East itself, the growing cleavage between Qatar and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, which are close to the US despite their extreme Wahabite ideology, and Egypt on the other, is pouring oil on the fire. This is why the US can’t draw back from financing the Egyptian army (to the tune of at least 80%), even though it can see that the situation is getting more and more out of its control.
Capitalism has nothing to offer but poverty and chaos. Whatever bourgeois gang is in power, the situation of the mass of the population can only get worse. But contrary to what the bourgeoisie and its media would have us believe – that the failure in Egypt is indubitable proof that any uprising can only end up in religious obscurantism or in dictatorship - the historic perspective of the proletarian revolution, even if it’s not an immediate one, is the one and only alternative to barbarism. It is the responsibility of the proletariat to become aware of this and to express its class solidarity in order to offer a real perspective for all the struggles going on in the world. Only the decisive intervention of the world proletariat, above all its most experienced fractions in the old European industrial centres, can open the road to the future – world revolution
WH 28/8/13
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201307/8946/egypt-highlights-alternative-socialism-or-barbarism [1043]
[2] https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/79967/Business/Economy/Egypts-Mahalla-textile-workers-onstrike-again.aspx [1044]
[3] The Muslim Brotherhood, constituted by Hasan al Banna in Egypt in 1928, quickly implanted itself in a number of Arab countries. It had a retrograde, traditionalist ideology, based on the project of a grand Sunni Caliphate, the logic of which came up against all the countries which had already been formed as national entities. See https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_islam.html [1045]
The alternative to capitalism is published by Theory and Practice [1046] whose website contains a broad range of texts from political currents such as the SPGB, left communism and situationism. The book contains essays by Adam Buick and John Crump which were first published in 1986 and 1987. It’s not presented as an official publication of the SPGB, although the book was sent to us for review by comrades who are members of the organisation. In any case, while Adam Buick is a longstanding member, John Crump left the SPGB in the 1970s, criticising the party’s parliamentary conception of revolution and arguing – as we shall see – that the SPGB was by no means the only authentically socialist organisation in the world, in opposition to the ‘hostility clause’ contained in its 1904 statement of principles[1]. Despite these criticisms, relations between Crump and the SPGB seem to have remained fraternal until his death in 2005, and it would also seem that one of the reasons why the Socialist Studies group split from the party (or as it sees it ‘reconstituted the SPGB’) in 1991[2] was the influence of Crump’s efforts to push the SPGB in certain untraditional directions.
The first part of the book is a straightforward account of what capitalism actually is, a task that it is as necessary as ever given the immense sea of confusion which surrounds the term. The idea that capitalism can be defined as individual enterprise or ownership, a conception shared both by the openly capitalist right and the allegedly anti-capitalist left, still has to be confronted and rejected: it was central to the ideology pervading the ‘Occupy’ movements of 2011, where notions of making the rich pay their taxes, abolishing bankers’ bonuses, defending public ownership etc were extremely tenacious despite the waning influence of the established organisations of the left within these movements. The essay was originally published as ‘State capitalism: the wages system under new management’ and the central aim of this return to basics is to show that state capitalism, whether in its Stalinist, social democratic or other political forms, remains capitalism because capitalism is not at root a form of property but a social relation, where the mass of producers are compelled to sell their labour power, and a capitalist minority (private or state) accumulate the value extracted from this inherently exploitative relationship. It then goes on to do what the SPGB has been doing for over a hundred years now: defend the fundamental principle that socialism (or communism, it rightly sees the terms as interchangeable) can only be based on the abolition of the wage relationship, and is a stateless, moneyless world community.
We have few criticisms of this section of the book, except to say that it has a somewhat timeless approach which doesn’t really explain why state capitalism has become the most important form of capitalist ‘management’ for the entire period of the SPGB’s history. For us, this can only be understood with reference to the passage of the capitalist mode of production from its ascendant to its decadent phase: in a system faced with near permanent war and economic crisis, and dangerous outbreaks of revolutionary class struggle, state capitalism - the state’s totalitarian grip on social and economic life - becomes a condition for ensuring the survival of the system. Although the SPGB has always rejected our conception of decadence, it holds some conceptions which are not far from it in practice, such as the idea that from the beginning of the 20th century capitalism had created the material conditions for abundance and thus for the socialist transformation, rendering capitalism ‘obsolete’. But the full implications of the system becoming a barrier to human progress have never been drawn by the SPGB, even if in conversations with individual members there is obviously a serious interest in this question.[3]
It also seems evident to us that there are many comrades in the SPGB who feel somewhat embarrassed by the idea that ‘electing a socialist majority’ to parliament could be at least part of the revolutionary process. We will come back to this, but for now we want to turn to two of the ideas contained in the essay by John Crump, who was, as we have already noted, a critic of the parliamentary road: the idea of the ’thin red line’, and the idea that socialism could be achieved without an intervening period of transition.
The essay ‘The thin red line and non-market socialism in the 20th century’[4] complements the essay by Adam Buick in the sense that it shows that most of the officially accepted varieties of ‘socialism’ are actually proponents of state capitalism and can thus be seen as a left wing of capitalism. Crump terms them ‘social democratic’ and ‘Leninist’, the latter referring mainly to the Stalinist regimes of the eastern bloc which were still in existence at the time of writing. We reject the term Leninist to describe these regimes, since this equates the Stalinist parties which managed them with the revolutionary Bolshevik party of 1917, but we don’t intend to enter into that debate right now.
Overall, we find this essay to be based on a positive and constructive premise: that throughout the 20th century, a genuine vision of socialism has been maintained by a number of political currents which have shared five key points in opposition to the false conception of socialism propagated by the left wing of capital: production for use; distribution according to need; voluntary labour; a human community; opposition to capitalism as it manifests itself in all existing countries. He categorises these currents as follows: anarcho-communism; impossibilism (groups like the SPGB) ; council communism; Bordigism; situationism. These groups make up the real socialist tradition of the 20th century.
We could object to the categories or see the need to update them: there are plenty of anarcho-syndicalists today who fulfil the criteria; there’s no space for left communist groups like the ICC and ICT which are neither council communist nor Bordigist; situationism is hardly a political movement these days while on the other hand there are a number of groups which belong to the ‘communisation’ current which certainly fit the overall category. And we could add various other political animals to the ark.
We could also say that the criteria for marking off a genuine socialist/communist movement from the left wing of capital should lay much more emphasis on the last point, which seems to be added as an afterthought. This is essentially the question of internationalism, and it’s the only one which actually refers to present day political issues rather than the programme for the future. And we have seen in the past how this criterion, above all when concretised by the question of imperialist war, has been a true dividing line between loyalty to and betrayal of the socialist cause.
However, as we said, the basic approach is a fruitful one. In opposition to the sectarianism of the ‘hostility’ clause, Crump is arguing that there something like a ‘proletarian political camp’ which shares certain common principles despite their many differences (such as the parliamentary question, the role of the vanguard party, etc). Crump even defends the Bordigists against the charge that their position on the party makes them indistinguishable from leftist groups like the Trotskyists. We don’t know where the SPGB officially stands on this idea of the ‘thin red line’. We do know that the Socialist Studies group specifically cited Crump’s views on this issue as a revision of the SPGB’s principles. The SPGB has always been prepared to debate with anyone, irrespective of their class nature. But this recognition of a wider milieu than the party itself demands something a bit more: it demands a recognition that we are comrades who should have an attitude of mutual solidarity towards each other, an attitude that is sadly missing in today’s proletarian political movement.
At the end of the essay Crump speculates that it might in future be necessary to add a sixth criterion: opposition to any notion of a transitional society. In his view socialism must be introduced straight away or not at all:
“One feature which capitalism and socialism have in common is their all-or-nothing quality, their inability to coexist in today's highly integrated world, which can provide an environment for only one or other of these rival global systems. In the circumstances of the twentieth century, the means of production must either function as capital throughout the world (in which case wage labour and capitalism persist internationally) or they must be commonly owned and democratically controlled at a global level (in which case they would be used to produce wealth for free, worldwide distribution). No halfway house between these two starkly opposed alternatives exists, and it is the impossibility of discovering any viable 'transitional' structures which ensures that the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will have to take the form of a short, sharp rupture (a revolution), rather than an extended process of cumulative transformation....”
Here Crump is very much on the same lines as the SPGB (and others such as the communisation tendency).
We agree with Crump and the SPGB that state capitalism is not a transitional stage towards socialism, and that the economic programme of a victorious working class does not consist of ‘accumulating’ value to the point where here is a sufficient level of productive capacity to make abundance possible. Capitalism has already developed a huge overcapacity and what is required is the transformation of the productive apparatus rather than its ‘development’ in any capitalist sense.
But what strikes one is how superficially optimistic Crump’s vision is. He admits that capitalism has bequeathed us a bit of a mess which will have to be cleared up, and that some temporary measures may be needed to deal with shortages, but at the same time we will almost overnight (a few months, or at most a few years) have eliminated markets, nations, and all the rest of it, and be living in a world of free access communism.
It seems like a vast underestimation:
- Of the dire material consequences of capitalism surviving a hundred years into its epoch of senility, at the level of ecological damage, the waste and irrationality of a productive apparatus geared to competition and war;
- Of the inevitable brutal reaction of the ruling class which will not recognise any legal niceties in attempting to suppress a revolutionary movement;
- Of the near impossibility of the revolution being simultaneous in all countries at once, and thus the necessity to subordinate any economic measures taken in the area controlled by the working class to the number one priority of spreading the revolution internationally;
- Of the ideological poison distilled not only by a hundred years of barbarism but also of thousands of years of class society, of alienated social relations which will constantly hold back humanity’s efforts to become self-aware and self-organised[5];
- Of the inability of capitalism to create a world limited to bourgeoisie and proletarians, which means that the proletarian revolution will be faced with the task of integrating millions of individuals who belong to other non-exploiting strata and who will not have the same material interest in communism. Exchange will still exist with small property owners for example, hence the law of value will not vanish until all these social layers have been incorporated into the working class.
It’s of course true that to make the revolution in the first place the working class will have to confront and overcome many of the ideological obstacles which hold it down, as well as the physical barriers erected by the bourgeois state. But class consciousness is not something that is downloaded for good - it evolves through advances and retreats and there is no guarantee that even after the first victories of the revolution, initial difficulties in taking the communist programme forward will not result in regressions and even counter-revolutionary moods. The struggle for communist ideas will be every bit as intense after the revolution as before it. For all these reasons, a phase of transition between capitalism and communism will be inevitable.
This is a major discussion and we can’t hope to take it very far here[6]. But one thing does need to be said. Crump considers that the rejection of a transition period could be a sixth key point demarcating real socialists from apologists for capital, but we would suggest that some of the other differences among the ‘non-market socialists’ could become much more crucial well before the working class had assumed political power: in particular, we would expect that communists would be involved in a real political struggle against organisations and tendencies who argued that the councils should submit to this or that party ‘by right’ – or against those who argued that instead of being diametrically opposed to each other , councils and parliament can co-exist, a fatal error that helped bury the German revolution (and thus the Russian revolution as well) in 1918-19.
Amos
[1] https://revolutionarytotalitarians.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/john-crumps-critique-of-the-spgb/ [1047]
[3] See also this recent contribution by Binay Sarkar of the Indian affiliate of the World Socialist Movement. www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/ascendancedecadence... [1049]
[4] theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/thin-red-line-non-market-socialism-twentieth-century-john-crump-1987
[5] There is a debate on the question of transition on the SPGB internet forum here. One of the SPGB’s posters – ALB – expressed surprise at the emphasis the ICC comrade (Alf) placed on the subjective elements of the revolutionary process and the necessary but difficult struggle against alienation: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/icc-way-and-our-way [1050]
[6] For a more global view about why periods of transition between one mode of production and another are necessary, see: 'Problems of the Period of Transition (April 1975) [1051]'
In this article, one of our sympathisers (who posts as "Fred" on the ICC forum), makes an analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [1056] and relates the symbolism of this classic novel to the struggles of the working class of the time and their impact on bourgeois ideology.
Everyone has heard of Frankenstein. He is an ugly and destructive monster, concocted by his mad -scientist creator from bits of dead bodies, and beloved by Hollywood film-makers and audiences alike. Anything nasty and unpleasant, like nuclear bombs, can be referred to as "frankensteinian" ; AIDS could appropriately have been called as such. But there's a flaw in all of this. Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley's novel published in 1818, is not the name of the monster, or "the creature" as she preferred to name it, but of the rich bourgeois medical student who manufactured it, after bouts of grave robbing, and whose name was Victor Frankenstein.
A recent viewing of the film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gave this viewer a shock. The "creature" is played by an unrecognisable ......... so ugly is his face with its stitches. In one scene, in the depths of a very hard winter, he secretly assists a poor peasant family in whose barn he is hiding, by pulling turnips out of the frozen ground, which they can no longer manage themselves so hard is the frost. The creature himself has a massive strength and great reserves of energy. He leaves the turnips by their door. They in turn place food for "the spirit of the forest". And then it struck me. The "creature", the product of the bourgeois Victor Frankenstein's efforts, is none other than the working class. And the whole story can be read as a myth about the creation by the bourgeoisie of the labouring class, on whom it depends, and of which it is so fearful and sees as something necessary, yes, but unpleasant, ugly, frightening and uncivilized. Have things changed since then? (NB. A little research on the web confirms that this "Marxist" interpretation of the story has been around for some time.)
But, if this is the case, and i think it must be, the question arises as to whether Mary Shelley knew what she was doing, or whether the imagery of the story emerged from a subconscious response. Well we don't know of course. The story is set significantly in a revolutionary age at the time of the French Revolution, which was before Mary's birth. But there were certain dramatic events nearer home during the years leading up to her story (1812-1817) that might well have put an awareness of the emergence and growing strength of the working class into her mind. These events involved the Luddites, who doubtless struck fear into the hearts of the bourgeoisie with their machine breaking, potential for rioting, burning down buildings, and even dressing up as women in the streets. What monstrous horror it all was! What was happening to respectable society? Did the lower classes no longer know their place?
The bourgeoisie’s fear of the lower orders
The historian Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out that Britain had more troops fighting against the Luddites than it had fighting Napoleon in the Iberian peninsula. Parliament in Britain had a law imposing death on machine breakers, so seriously were the Luddites taken. Byron, the poet and friend of both Mary and Percy Shelley, in whose house they had been staying when the question of writing a horror story had first come up (Byron producing a draft of a story about Vampires - to be developed later by others into the Dracula and Vampire film industry) was moved to sympathize with the Luddites, saying they deserved pity not punishment, so miserable was their plight as their jobs were taken over by cheaper unskilled labour using the new machine technology.
Communists today may regret that the Luddites resorted to rioting and destruction, as not being best the way forward for the growth of proletarian solidarity and consciousness. But as Hobsbawm has also noted: there was no question of hostility to machines as such. "Wrecking was simply a technique of trade unionism in the period before and during the early phases of the industrial revolution." Yet such a technique may not have augured well for the development of the movement. And then there is the question of revenge. To lose your job is no fun, and to lose it to machinery and cheap labour an insult needing a vengeful act. Or so it can seem. The Luddites took revenge. The "creature", Frankenstein's monster, also takes savage revenge,on his creator and his creator's relatives. It is truly a horror story. But then everything involving the bourgeoisie is a horror story is it not, and even more so today?
In The Luddites 1811-1816 Marjie Bloy writes:
“Stocking knitting was predominantly a domestic industry, the stockinger renting his frame from the master and working in his own 'shop' using thread given to him by the master; the finished items were handed back to the master to sell. The frames were therefore scattered round the villages; it was easy for the Luddites to smash a frame and then disappear. Between March 1811 and February 1812 they smashed about a thousand machines at the cost of between £6,000 and £10,000. In April 1812 the Luddites burned the West Houghton mill in Lancashire. Samuel Whitbread, an MP, said of the event ‘As to the persons who had blackened their faces, and disfigured themselves for the purposes of concealment, and had attended the meeting on Deanmoor, near Manchester, it turned out that ten of them were spies sent out by the magistrates... These spies were the very ringleaders of the mischief, and incited the people to acts which they would not otherwise have thought of’. [Parliamentary Debates, lst Series, Vol. 23, Col.1000, (l8l2)] The authorities were incapable of stopping the attacks so the government felt obliged to put in place special legislation. Machine-breaking had been made a capital offence in 1721; in 1811 a special Act was passed to secure the peace of Nottingham. At the Nottingham Assizes in March 1812, seven Luddites were sentenced to transportation for life; two others were acquitted”.
It's worth noting here that "the blackened faces" contained government spies, an historic confirmation of the great duplicity of the ruling class and their penchant for Machiavellian strategies, even at the beginnings of the workers' movement. Did they dress as women too?
So, to return to Mary Shelley and her frankensteinian creature. Given the public activities of the Luddites, she may well have seen in her "scientifically" produced creature at least a reflection of the emerging and if-it-did-but-know-it all powerful working class. As the author of the novel, or perhaps as a woman, she does not find her "creature" as obnoxious as do most of the other characters in the story. As one commentator has said: the monster is the nicest person in the book. But then if he is "the working class" and most everyone else in it is bourgeois, and pursuing somewhat selfish interests as they do, then this is no surprise. In the middle of the novel Shelley undertakes to educate her creature, allowing him to learn to speak and then undergo a ferocious course of reading, centered largely on Milton's Paradise Lost which introduces the idea of the creature being an Adam who really requires an Eve. Perhaps what he really required was an Edward had he but known it. But this is a complication I will not be taking up here. The story ends in the frozen Arctic wastes, where both master and slave are cremated on the same funeral pyre. The creature by choice burned alive.
Working class, or capital itself?
You might of course interpret this story in a different manner, and see the creature not as the embodiment of the working class but as the materialized form of capitalism itself: ugly, frightening and immensely powerful. Yet even in this latter understanding the creature remains the product, the creation of the bourgeois Frankenstein; as is capitalism itself the uncontrollable and unwitting creation of the bourgeoisie as a class. Is such ambiguity the sign of good story?
But why is the tale so full of fear? The creature himself is fearsome to behold; strong and inclined to violence if frustrated. What he seeks is love and understanding; a very human requirement, and not one we would associate with unfeeling and relentless capitalism the system. Then there is science and the scientific endeavour. It is Frankenstein's ill-considered attitude to science which allows him to invent something he comes very much to regret. Rather like later scientific inventions such as the nuclear bomb and chemical and biological weaponry. Is science, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, another matter to be feared? Is the bourgeoisie always an irresponsible and immature class only capable of acting responsibly in the realm of profit pursuit where of course anything goes?
And then there are the Luddites. Not mentioned as such in the novel, but then neither are the bourgeoisie or working class. Is it from the Luddites that the initial fear underpinning the story originated? I speculate of course. But the Luddites were not typically working class as we understand that class now. They were an early manifestation of working class protest. You might even see them as having aspects of terrorism in their behaviour. They blackened their faces, cross dressed, smashed machinery and burned down factories. They doubtless instilled fear in the bourgeoisie. Who exactly were they? What did they want? Why did they behave in such a frightening and theatrical manner? We might compare them in some ways in their activity, to the Mau Mau in Kenya, using fear, secrecy and terrorism in pursuit of their aims, and installing an inexpressible anxiety in their bourgeois suppressors. But the example doesn't properly hold - the Mau Mau being an aspect of the bourgeoisie themselves, looking for national liberation, which the Luddites were certainly not - only the form of protest may be compared.
That the creature represents Napoleon, as seen by the English bourgeoisie, is not I think one we can go along with. Pulling turnips, living with peasants, learning to read surreptitiously, these are not things easily associated with Bony, though he was of course, through and through, a manufactured creature of the bourgeoisie himself!
Fred
The rise in the use of food banks has reached huge proportions. The food banks, originally intended for the most destitute within society, are starting to be used across all sectors of the working class, often including those parts who might have previously seen themselves as belonging to the ‘middle class’. The figures produced by the Trussel Trust (a charitable organisation) are revealing: in Britain in every town and city we have seen the opening up of food banks, and the number of people needing the banks to feed themselves and their families has gone up as follows:
2008/9 | 26,000 |
2011/12 | 128,697 |
2013 | 200,000 (estimated for this year so far) |
It’s not just in Britain where we’ve seen populations resorting to food banks. Over this past year in Greece and Spain we have seen the same situation: workers being forced into queuing for food hand-outs in order to live. However, these are economies which are openly bankrupt and these are emergency measures, are they not? But even in a much more prosperous country and economy such as Canada we are seeing the same thing:
“Last year Mr. De Schutter (a UN official) completed an 11 day mission to Canada, his first to a developed country. He reported ‘very desperate conditions’ in a country where 850,000 rely on food banks and condemned the Canadian government’s ‘self-righteous’ failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem on its doorstep” (‘UN Official alarmed by Food Banks in UK’, Independent 17.02.13)
Chronic and society-wide hunger used to be associated with the countries of the ‘Third World’, but it’s now spreading in the bastions of the ‘Rich World’ as well. It’s the same the whole world over under austerity.
Melmoth 1/9/2013
We publish below an appeal by the Hungarian bookshop Gondolkodó Autonóm Antikvárium that we received with the request to support them and to spread the appeal. The ICC has known and appreciated this bookshop for more than 15 years. Our press is available at this address, as well as a lot of other internationalist publications in different languages. We have also been able to take part in different discussions organised in Budapest by the bookshop.[1] In fact it is one of the rare bookshops with this proletarian (and not left bourgeois) focus in the East Central European region, even though we don’t know if it is the only one which has been functioning continuously for many years as the comrades write in their appeal.
A bookshop can be a place for distributing revolutionary positions and – even more important – for discussions about them in search for political clarification and theoretical coherence. The comrades of Gondolkodó Autonomous Bookshop and the ICC agree on the necessity to overcome the capitalist mode of production and national states, even if we have divergences about other issues, namely about the role of the revolutionaries and how to organize as such. However this is not an impediment to spreading this solidarity appeal but a stimulus for further debate – in Budapest or elsewhere, on the internet or in personal meetings.
ICC, 26/07/13
Solidarity appeal for the renovation of Gondolkodó Autonóm Antikvárium (Gondolkodó Autonomous Bookshop) 2013 Summer.
The Gondolkodó Autonomous Bookshop is the only workers’ movement distribution place, library and meeting-place in the East Central European region (namely in Hungary) which has been functioning continuously for many years (now for 20 years). Now this place must be renovated because the walls are wet and mouldy, the mortar has been falling, the sets of shelves are rickety, the drainpipe is often clogged up etc. The condition of the library has been worsening gradually and also the distribution of publications is harder under these circumstances.
Since we can not pay for all the costs of the general renovation we ask for your financial help in order that we could do the renovation during the summer. Please support this aim according to your possibilities (if you can send 10 Euros then do it, but if you have more money you can send a bigger amount).
Comrades, activists and sympathisers, please spread our solidarity appeal and support us!
Thanks for your help in the name of internationalist proletarian solidarity!
GONDOLKODÓ AUTONOMOUS BOOKSHOP
Hungary- Bp-1012 . Logodi Utca 51
website : gondolkodo.mypressonline.com [1059]
e-mail: [email protected] [1060]
https://www.facebook.com/gondolkodo.antikvarium [1061]
Raiffeisen BANK
Name : Tütö László
Iban : HU 3912 0101 5401 3152 1900 2000 06
Swift code : UBRTHUHB
[1] See for instance our article on a public meeting held in 2010 at Budapest about the world economic situation and the perspectives for the class struggle, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/12/hungary-public-meeting [1062]
The closeness of the vote expressed just how deeply conflicted the British ruling class is, and not only over Syria but its whole imperialist strategy.
Once British imperialism had its empire. Following the loss of Empire as the result of two world wars, it became the USA's loyal lieutenant during the Cold War. This meant that despite being a second rate military power it could have a place at the top table, or as parts of the ruling class like to say: punch above its weight.
With the disappearance of the old bloc system British imperialism has been faced with the increasingly complex problem of how best to defend its own interests. Should it simply remain loyal to the USA? Move more towards Europe, or somehow try to maintain an independent course adapting itself to challenges as they arrived? This strategic choice has become increasingly problematic as the world has sunk deeper and deeper into evermore chaotic international relations. In 1991 it was a pretty easy decision for the British ruling class to go along with the USA in attacking Iraq. There were parts of the ruling class that warned about the dangers of the new world order. British imperialism however did not come out of this war too badly. Only 12 years later however the decision to back the US in the 2nd Gulf war was more problematic because parts of the ruling class feared the chaos that would follow and the danger of linking the national interest so closely to that of the US. Blair and the pro-US fraction that he represented drove through the decision however, using every devious trick in the book to get support. However, far from furthering the national interest it suffered a bitter humiliation as Iraq, and Afghanistan, sunk into chaos and British armed forces were exposed as being dependent upon the US. Blair, and thus the British ruling class, became linked with George W Bush and a visibly declining US imperialism. Supporting the US has become extremely costly.
On the other hand, not supporting US military action means accepting not being able to punch above one’s weight, and being a secondary power. Also where do you turn for alliances? There are those who say closer relations with Europe are the way forwards, but this increasingly means a complex game of alliances against the rising power of German imperialism. The Cameron team with the backing of much of the ruling class had been pursuing a policy of seeking to build relations with the growing powers such as India, Brazil, Turkey, as well as commercial relations with China.
However, all the relations that the British bourgeoisie build in Europe and beyond are increasingly unstable because of its increasing inability to use its close relations with the US to counter-weigh the actions of its rivals.
It is in this context that we have to understand the events around the vote on Syria. The divisions went across party lines and reflected the deeper division in the whole ruling class.
To go along meant being pulled further into the consequences of the US declining status ie desperate military action in Syria in order to try and display US military superiority but at the possible cost of being sucked into another war. Former military leaders openly stated their opposition to becoming involved: “A former head of the navy, Lord West, and a former head of the army, Lord Dannatt, reflected widespread criticism within the military and defence circles by pouring scorn on claims by ministers that military strikes did not mean the UK or the US were taking sides in the civil war. ‘As regards a limited strike, this was always an impossible notion,’ said Dannatt. ‘Any use of explosive ordnance by the west, for whatever purpose, would have committed us to participation in the Syrian civil war irrevocably’.” (The Guardian, 31.8.2013). The historical significance of not supporting the US was clearly stated by a former adviser to the Foreign and Defence secretaries, Crispin Blunt, who said “he hoped the vote would relieve Britain of its ‘imperial pretension’ and stop it trying to punch above its weight on the world stage” (ibid).
It was the loss of this role on the world stage that concerned those in favour of supporting the US’s action. This was made clear by Michael Clarke, the director general of the Royal United Services Institute (one of the British imperialism’s main think tanks): “...there is a danger it could become a tipping point where the UK falls into strategic irrelevance in US eyes. We can all be friendly, well respected, kith and kin, etc -like the Dutch- but just not be taken seriously as a strategically significant player in security matters” (ibid).
The events around the US’s announcement that it was going to strike Syria have thus placed the British ruling class on the rack.
The US however, also suffered through these events. Its international authority was further undermined by its inability to get the support of its partner in the ‘special relationship’. French imperialism may now be the US’s “oldest ally” but it is clear to everyone that John Kerry only said that to insult the British ruling class. For US imperialism having to rely on a country which only a few years ago it was pouring scorn on for not supporting the 2nd Gulf War, is not a sign of strength but historical weakness.
The US will not forgive British imperialism easily. Obama’s refusal to hold a meeting with Cameron at the G20 meeting in Russia was a very public snub, which very visibly demonstrated the price of not supporting them. The other major imperialist powers will also take note of this.
This decision not to back the US whilst being fundamentally a matter of how best to defend the national interest, also reflected a self-inflicted wound. The blatant manipulation of public opinion over the 2nd Gulf war, Blair’s talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction etc, and the trouble and tragedy that unfolded in Iraq afterwards, badly dented confidence in politicians. This meant that the public was highly sceptical of any claims made by the government. The vote against military action has certainly boosted the idea that parliament has some power, and thus strengthened democratic illusions. If the most powerful parts of the ruling class had wanted to support the US, they would have done so but it would have been at the cost of a further weakening of any confidence in the ruling class.
Cameron et al may have wanted to use the US insistence on action as a means to push the rest of the ruling class to support such action and thus the special relationship, but it is clear that important parts of the ruling class refused to go along with this. This is an event of historical importance because it expresses a further step in the decline of British imperialism. A decline that will exacerbate the divisions in the ruling class, and push it to take up more military actions where it can in order to make a display of its power, no matter how limited. There may be a resurgence of the pro-US fractions as this historical weakness becomes clearer, but the US will be extremely wary of the British ruling class. British imperialism is being pushed further onto the side lines.
Phil, 6.9.13
The hideous spectacle of the children’s bodies exhibited after the chemical attacks of 21 August on the outskirts of Damascus didn’t truly move the world leaders, whose hypocritical reactions were dictated solely by their imperialist interests. The use of gas by both sides during the First World War, the unleashing of chemical agents in Vietnam and of the atomic bomb against Japan are all proof that our wonderful democracies have never hesitated to resort to the most murderous weapons. The declarations coming from the government offices are all the more hypocritical because the bombing and massacre of the Syrian population, the over 100,000 deaths since the war began, the flight of millions of refugees fleeing the carnage have, up till now, not been a ‘red line’ as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned.
It’s possible that the use of chemical weapons was a Syrian/Russian provocation (Assad had been warned several times by Obama in 2012 that he must not cross this ‘red line’) in the direction of rival powers, principally the USA and France. But in any case the ‘red line’ was never more than more than a highly mediatised pretext to prepare ‘public opinion’ for an eventual military intervention. In the face of the growing tragedy, all the comings and goings between the various states are no more than a jockeying for imperialist interests in which the populations on the ground are of no importance . And it’s precisely the relations between the rival powers which explain the length of the conflict and the atrocious suffering of the populations: by comparison, other regimes swept away by the ‘Arab spring’, like Libya, didn’t last anything as long because it was less crucial as a focus for inter-imperialist rivalries.
Russia scored a diplomatic coup when it proposed placing Syria’s chemical weapons under “international control”; this produced a flurry of further diplomatic initiatives by its rivals, which have not hidden the impotence of the latter, and of the USA in particular. But whatever the outcome of this latest crisis and the decisions taken in government ministries, and whether or not there is a direct military intervention in Syria, we are seeing a spectacular rise in warlike tensions against a background of mounting chaos, of an increasingly uncontrollable situation which has made the clash of arms more and more widespread. The use of chemical weapons on several occasions already, the extension of the conflict to Lebanon, the presence of all kinds of vultures in the region, from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to Turkey and Iran, whose involvement in the conflict is a particular source of anxiety for Israel, are all evidence that the conflict reaches well beyond the borders of Syria. Even more significant is the presence of the bigger imperialist powers, which illustrates the level reached by imperialist rivalries since the end of the Cold War. Thus, for the first time since 1989, we are seeing a major political confrontation between the old bloc leaders, the USA and Russia. Although very much weakened by the disintegration of the eastern bloc and of the USSR, Russia has been going through a revival, after carrying out a scorched earth policy in Chechnya, Georgia and the Caucasus during the 1990s. For Russia, Syria is vital for ensuring its presence in the region, holding on to its strategic links with Iran, restricting the influence of the Sunni Muslim republics on Russia’s southern borders, and maintaining a port to the Mediterranean.
This sharpening of tensions can also be measured by the fact that China is much more openly opposing the US than in the past. Although during the period of the blocs China moved very far from Russian influence, having been neutralised by the American camp following the bargain struck with Nixon over the war in Vietnam, it is now becoming a major opponent which is worrying the USA more and more. With its meteoric rise on the economic level, China has also been advancing its imperialist interests in Africa, the Far East, and Iran, a primary aim being to ensure its access to energy. As a late arrival on the scene it is a major factor in the further destabilisation of imperialist relations.
The strengthening of these two powers has been possible, above all, because of the increasingly evident weakening and isolation of the USA, whose attempts to play the role of world cop have met with utter failure in Afghanistan and Iraq. We can get some idea of how difficult things have become for the US by comparing its ‘intervention’ in Syria with the role it played in the first war against Iraq, back in 1991. Using Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait as a pretext for a huge display of its military superiority, it succeeded in building a military ‘Coalition’ involving not only a number of Arab countries, but also the principal members of the western bloc which were already tempted to break free of the USA’s grip following the disintegration of the eastern bloc. Germany and Japan, though not involved militarily, bankrolled the adventure while Britain and France were directly ‘called up’ for the fighting. Gorbachev’s ailing USSR did nothing to stand in America’s path. Just over a decade later, with the second invasion of Iraq, America had to deal with active diplomatic opposition from Germany, France and Russia. And while in both in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, America could count on the loyal support, diplomatic and military, of Britain, the latter’s defection from the planned military intervention in Syria was key to the Obama administration’s decision to call off the intervention and to listen to the diplomatic option put forward by Moscow. The vote in the Commons against Cameron’s proposal to support military intervention is testimony to deep divisions in the British bourgeoisie resulting from the country’s involvement in the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq[1], but above all it is a measure of the weakening of US influence. The sudden discovery that France, which continued to support the push to intervene, is America’s “oldest ally” should not give rise to any illusion that France is going to take on the role of loyal lieutenant which Britain has (notwithstanding its own ambitions to seek a more independent role) played in most of the USA’s imperialist enterprises since the end of the Cold War. The alliance between the US and France is much more circumstantial and thus unreliable as far as the US is concerned. To this we can add the discretely discordant notes coming from Germany, whose quiet rapprochement with Russia is another concern for Washington.
At the time of the first Gulf war in 1991, President George Bush Senior promised a New World Order, with the US Marshall keeping things nice and peaceful. What we have actually seen is a growing imperialist free for all, dragging the world towards barbarism and chaos.
In the context of this new battleground, Syria is a very important strategic prize. Modern Syria emerged early in the 20th century with the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. During the First World War, Britain mobilised Syrian troops with the promise that the country would be granted independence after the war was won. Britain’s aim was of course to maintain its control of the region. But already in 1916, following the secret Sykes/Picot accords, Britain ceded control of Syria to France. The main aim of this agreement was to block the ambitions of Germany, which had already envisaged the construction of the Baghdad railway in order to “bring Constantinople and the military strongholds of the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor into direct connection with Syria and the provinces on the Euphrates and on the Tigris”[2] Today, because of the instability of the traditional maritime routes through the Persian Gulf, Syria has become one of the terrestrial routes for the transport of hydrocarbons. Opening onto the Mediterranean through a corridor on the Levant (which is also used for the transfer of weapons from Russia) and to the east towards the oil-producing countries, this will be an increasingly important factor in the politics of the region.
The tensions developing today are this to a large extent linked to Syria’s historic importance in the region. They are also fuelled by the role played by Israel, whose threats against Syria and Iran[3] are a further source of disquiet for the large imperialist powers. Regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are deeply involved, being the main purveyors of arms to the ‘rebels’, while Turkey is also seeking to defend its interests by playing on the presence of a Kurdish minority in northern Syria.
And there is also a major polarisation around the Shia regime in Iran, which controls the strategic oil route through the Straits of Hormuz. This is intimately linked to the naval build up in the area, particularly of the US fleet. It also explains Iran’s commitment to its nuclear programme, which Putin provocatively supports, calling for “aid for the construction of a nuclear power station”.
Up till now, the blood-soaked Assad regime has been seen by all the imperialist powers as one that ensures a certain stability and predictability, as something less worse than what might take its place. Today, if the Syrian opposition ended up on top, there’s no doubt that there would be a chain reaction leading to incredible chaos and all kinds of unpredictable scenarios. The Free Syrian Army is a real patchwork and there is no truly united opposition. This weak political conglomeration, despite the discrete support of pro-American and pro-European forces, who have been ensuring the flow of arms without any ability to control their circulation, has been infiltrated, or at perhaps flanked by jihadi terrorist groups, many of whom have come from outside Syria and are acting for their own interests like the warlords who flourish in Africa today. There is more or less zero possibility of the western powers being able to rely on a real opposition that can offer an alternative to the regime.
This is a wider phenomenon which we can see in all the other Arab countries that were faced with similar events during the Arab Spring: no real bourgeois opposition able to offer a ‘democratic alternative’ and a minimum of stability. All these regimes have only been able to survive thanks to the strength of the army, which has tried to hold together the numerous clans of the ruling class and prevent society from falling apart. We saw it in Libya and more recently in Egypt following the army coup d’État against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. All this is the expression of a real impasse, typical of capitalist decadence and especially of its final phase of decomposition, where all that can be offered during an economic crisis is poverty, the brute force of the army, repression and bloodletting.
And this situation is all the more disquieting because it is feeding religious divisions which in this part of the world are among the sharpest: divisions between Christians and Muslims, Shia and Sunni Muslims, between Muslims and Jews, between Muslims and Druze, etc. Without being directly at the root of the conflicts in the region, these fractures are deepening the hatreds and hostilities of a society which has no future. This is also a region which in past has been marked by numerous genocides, as in Armenia, by the expulsion of populations, by colonial massacres which have left a legacy of hatred that in turn serves as the source of new massacres. Syria in particular is a focus for these divisions (Alawite/Sunni, Muslim/Christian, etc) and under the cover of war there have been innumerable cases of pogroms against this or that community, with the influx of fanatical jihadis, some backed by Saudi Arabia, making the situation worse than ever.
The catastrophe is all the more serious in that the US, a military super-power in decline, has been spearheading the descent into chaos. It has gone from world cop to pyromaniac fireman. In 2008, when Obama triumphed over Bush, it was in no small measure due to his image as an alternative to the unpopular warmonger Bush. But now the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama has shown himself to be no less of a warmonger, despite his talents as a politician, something his predecessor didn’t possess. Obama is more and more losing credibility. He has to deal with public opinion which is increasingly opposed to war, increasingly affected by the Vietnam syndrome, while at the same time facing an unbearable economic crisis which makes it more and more difficult to lavish money on military crusades. For the moment, the USA’s retreat from punishing the Assad regime with military strikes can be explained by invoking very real geo-strategic difficulties, but this has also led Washington into resorting to new contortions, such as the hypocritical and ridiculous distinction between “chemical weapons” and “weapons which only use chemical components”. Some nuance!
With the increasing number of quagmires, the mystifications which served their purpose in justifying the military crusades of the 90s – “clean war”, “humanitarian intervention” etc - have lost their impact. The USA is facing a real dilemma which is undermining its credibility with its allies, especially Israel, which has become more and critical of the Americans. The dilemma is this: either the US does nothing, and this can only embolden its rivals and encourage new provocations on their part; or they strike out and his only increases hostility and resentment towards them. What is certain is that like all the other imperialist powers, they can’t escape the logic of militarism. Sooner or later, they can’t keep out of new military campaigns.
The infernal spiral of these military conflicts once again highlights the responsibility of the international proletariat: even if it is not in a position to have an immediate effect on the growing military barbarism, it is still the only historic force that can put an end to his barbarism through its revolutionary struggle. Since the beginning of the events, and above all from the moment when the open armed conflict began to overwhelm it, the weakness of the proletariat in Syria has meant that it is not able to respond to the war on its own class terrain. As we have already pointed out, “the fact that the manifestation of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Syria has resulted not in the least gain for the exploited and oppressed masses but in a war which has left over 100,000 dead is a sinister illustration of the weakness of the working class in this country – the only force which can form a barrier to military barbarism. And this situation also applies, even if in less tragic forms, to the other Arab countries where the fall of the old dictators has resulted in the seizure of power by the most retrograde sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Islamists in Egypt or Turkey, or in utter chaos, as in Libya”[4].
Today, the course of events fully confirms the perspective which Rosa Luxemburg put forward in The Junius Pamphlet:
“Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’ What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales”.
WH, September 2013
.
[1] For further analysis of the Commons vote against intervention, see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201309/9114/syria-vote-impasse-british-imperialism [1064]
[2] Rohrbach, The War and German Policy, quoted by Rosa Luxemburg in The Junius Pamphlet, chapter 4.
[3] Israel has issued virtual ultimatums to Iran over its nuclear policy, while it still has a dispute with Syria over the Golan Heights.
[4] Resolution on the international situation, 20th ICC Congress
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, the massacres keep spreading. The horror of capitalism accelerates, deaths pile up. A continuous carnage that no one seems able to stop. Capitalism in utter decomposition is dragging the world into generalised barbarism. The use of chemical weapons as in Syria today is unfortunately only one of the instruments of death among many others. But there is nothing inevitable about this perspective, which left to itself will result in the destruction of humanity. The world proletariat cannot remain indifferent in the face of all these wars and massacres. Only the proletariat, the revolutionary class of our epoch, can put an end to this nightmare. More than ever humanity is faced with one choice: communism or barbarism.
On Monday 21 August an attack with chemical weapons left hundreds dead in an area close to Damascus. On the internet, on TV screens and the newspapers there were unbearable images of men, women and children in agony. The bourgeoisie, without any scruple, has seized on this human tragedy to advance its sordid interests. The regime of Bashar al Assad, a butcher among butchers, has, we are told, crossed a red line: you can use any weapons to slaughter people, but not chemical ones. These are ‘dirty’ weapons, as opposed to the ‘clean’ ones like conventional bombs and mortars or even the atomic bombs the Americans dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945. But the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie has no limits. Since the First World War of 1914-18 where poison gas was used massively for the first time, killing several hundred thousand people, chemical weapons have been continuously perfected and used. The superficial agreements about their non-utilisation, especially after the two world wars and in the 1980s, were just empty declarations, which were not meant to be applied[1]. And many theatres of war since this time have seen these kinds of weapons being used. In North Yemen between 1962 and 1967, Egypt used mustard gas without restraint. In the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, towns like Hallabja were bombarded with chemical weapons, leaving over 5000 dead, under the benevolent gaze of the ‘international community’ of the US, France and all the members of the UN! But they are not just the speciality of small imperialist countries or dictators like Assad or Saddam Hussein, as the bourgeoisie would like us to believe. The most massive use of chemical weapons, alongside napalm, was carried out by the USA during the Vietnam war. Vast amounts of herbicide contaminated with dioxin were used to destroy rice plantations and forests in order to reduce the population and the Vietcong to famine. This scorched earth policy, this deliberate desertification, was the work of American capital in Vietnam, the same which today, alongside supporters like France, is getting ready to intervene in Syria, allegedly to defend the population. Since the start of this war in Syria, there have been over 100,000 deaths and at least a million refugees fleeing to surrounding countries. Looking past the discourse being poured out by the bourgeois media, the working class has to know the real causes behind this imperialist war in Syria.
Syria is currently at the heart of the imperialist tensions and conflicts which are extending from North Africa to Pakistan. If the Syrian bourgeoisie is tearing itself apart inside a country which is now in ruins, it has been able to rely on the insatiable appetites of a whole number of imperialist powers. In this region, Iran, Hezbollah from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey are all more or less directly involved in this bloody conflict. The most powerful imperialisms in the world are also defending their squalid interests. Russia, China, France, Britain and the USA are playing their part in the continuation of this war and its extension across the region. Faced with their growing incapacity to control the situation, they are more and more just sowing death and destruction, according to the old scorched earth policy (‘if I can’t dominate this region, I will set it on fire’).
During the Cold War, the period which went officially from 1947 to 1991 and the fall of the USSR, two blocs confronted each other, led by Russia and the USA respectively. These two superpowers directed their ‘allies’ or ‘satellites’ with an iron hand, forcing them to fall in line in the face of the enemy ogre. This ‘world order’ was based on the discipline of the bloc. It was a historical period that was full of danger for humanity, because if the working class had not been able to resist, even passively, the ideological march towards war, a third world conflagration would have been possible. Since the collapse of the USSR, there are no longer two blocs, no more threat of a third world war. The discipline of the blocs is in pieces. Each nation is playing its own card; imperialist alliances are increasingly ephemeral and circumstantial. As a result conflicts are multiplying and in the end no bourgeoisie can control it. This is chaos, the growing decomposition of society.
Thus the accelerating weakness of the world’s leading imperialist power, the US, is an active factor in the whole Middle East plunging into barbarism. Immediately afterthe chemical attack on the suburbs of Damascus, the British and French bourgeoisie, followed much more timidly by the American bourgeoisie, declared loudly that such a crime could not go unpunished. A military response was imminent and it would be proportionate to the crime. The problem is that the American bourgeoisie and other western bourgeoisies have been through a serious reverse in Afghanistan and Iraq, countries which are also in a total mess. How could they intervene in Syria without finding themselves in the same situation? This has resulted in some very significant foreign policy differences within the ruling class, and the recent rejection of Cameron’s call for military action in the UK parliament was a graphic expression of these divisions. On top of this, these bourgeoisies also had to deal with what they call public opinion. The population of the west doesn’t want this intervention. The majority no longer believe the lies of their own bourgeoisies. The unpopularity of this proposed intervention, even in the form of limited bombings, has posed a problem for the ruling class in the west.
The British bourgeoisie has thus had to renounce its initial bellicose declarations and move away from the path of military intervention. This expressesthe fact that all the bourgeoisie’s solutions are bad ones: either it doesn’t intervene (as Britain has just decided to do) and this is then a big statement of weakness; or it does intervene (as the US and France are still planning to do) and they risk stirring up more chaos, more instability and incontrollable imperialist tensions.
The proletariat cannot remain indifferent to all this barbarism. It is the exploited who are the main victims of the imperialist cliques. Whether it’s Shia, Sunni, secular, or Christian being massacred, it makes no difference. There is a natural and healthy human reaction to want to do something about this right away, to stop these abominable crimes. It is this sentiment which the grand democracies are trying to exploit, justifying their warlike adventures in the name of ‘humanitarian’ causes. And each time the world situationgets worse. This is clearly a trap.
The only way that we can express real solidarity towards all the victims of decaying capitalism is to overthrow the system which produces all these horrors. Such a change can’t happen overnight. But if the road towards it is long and difficult, it’s the only one that can lead to a world without wars and countries, without poverty and exploitation.
The working class has no national flag to defend. The country where it lives is the place of its exploitation, and in some parts of the world, the place of its death at the hands of imperialism. The working class has a responsibility to oppose bourgeois nationalism with its own internationalism. This is not an impossibility. We have to remember that the First World War was brought to an end not by the good will of the belligerents, or by the defeat of Germany. It was ended by the proletarian revolution.
Tino 31/8/2013
[1] The ‘Greatest Briton’ of all, Winston Churchill, certainly never stopped arguing for and even sanctioning their use, whether against ‘primitive tribesmen’ in rebellion against the Empire, the revolutionary workers of Russia, or the German proletariat during the Second World War: see, for example:
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/265_terror1920.htm [1065]
https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p501b_Weber.html [1067]
For several weeks there has been such a torrent of unexpected good news about the British economy that our rulers have become quite excited. It has given a shot in the arm to the markets, because of an expectation of an earlier than predicted rise in interest rates. And it has helped push the IMF to a humbling re-appraisal of the criticisms it has previously made of the British government’s economic policy. In fact the IMF is now praising the British government’s approach to economic management as the light of the world, replacing the old fashioned idea that China and the other emerging countries offered hope to us all.
The bourgeois media’s commentary on this alleged recovery has been quite informative, and we can largely let them tell the story in their own words. Unfortunately for the bourgeoisie, it’s a recovery that turns out not to have lasted very long.
When Cameron and Osborne came to power, they gave the impression that a short but severe bout of austerity measures would be sufficient to rein in the deficit and pave the way to recovery in fairly short order. Therefore, although austerity is not enjoyable in itself, the rewards would soon be available and effectively cancel out the necessary reductions in living standards. As the bourgeoisie themselves admit, the reality has been that they have not managed to steer the economy even back to the level of economic output that prevailed prior to the financial crisis of 2007. An important consideration that partially accounts for the governing team in particular now talking confidently about ‘recovery’ is that they could foresee getting back to that level of output prior to the next election. That would have given them enough to suggest that the original promises of the government were not completely hollow.
Except during the admittedly extended periods when it was actually in recession, there has not been an absolute lack of good news about the British economy since the outbreak of the financial crisis. The difficulty for the bourgeoisie in creating a convincing story of good news about the economy is that each piece of good news has been followed almost straight away by bad news. If industrial output was up, services were down, and vice versa. If exports were up, consumer demand was down. If employment was up, unemployment (surprisingly) was not down. And so on, along those lines, the evidence has gone for years.
The difference over recent weeks was a series of reports on different aspects of the economic situation that all tended to exceed the rather cautious expectations of forecasters who were used to getting their fingers burnt by over-optimistic predictions. As the Financial Times said on September 5th:
“Expert economic opinion regularly bends with the wind. Rarely has it been blown so far so quickly. Talk of a ‘flatlining’ economy was universal until the spring, when fears of a ‘triple-dip’ (recession) disappeared. But after a string of good economic figures and the release of an extraordinarily strong services sector business survey yesterday, economists rushed to judge that growth was running at boom-time rates. …
If the economy is growing at 1 per cent this quarter ... that rate of growth is roughly the pace of former rapid recoveries from recession. If sustained, output would finally climb back above the level of its previous peak (before the financial crash) in spring 2014, a year before the general election.…
Civil servants and central bankers know that the speed of recovery says little about its breadth or durability and are still struggling to explain the turnaround. Before they swap caution for confidence, they will want to take stock of the wider picture which remains mixed.”
Without going through the FT’s retailing of the mixed evidence, we can skip to the following day, September 6th when the run of good headline news fell apart:
“A damper was put on rapid recovery hopes today with disappointing industrial production figures and a widening of Britain’s stubbornly high trade deficit in July.
Industrial output was flat over the month after a healthy 1.1% expansion in June. Economists had expected production to edge up slightly. The trade in goods deficit rose to £9.8 billion, considerably larger than City traders’ forecasts of 8.15 billion.
The monthly gap was higher than the £7.3 billion deficit recorded in July 2012. There were also signs of problems in emerging markets beginning to affect British firms, with export to non-European countries plunging by almost 16%.” (from The Evening Standard)
The fact that “problems in emerging markets” are affecting the hopes of the bourgeoisie for a broadly based recovery in the British economy should give the International Monetary Fund pause for thought. Again we can refer to an article in the FT of September 5th:
“Turmoil in emerging markets this summer has forced the IMF into a humbling series of U-turns over its global assessments.
In a confidential note seen by The Financial Times, the IMF has dropped its view of emerging economies as the dynamic engine of the world economy, instead noting that ‘momentum is projected to come mainly from advanced economies where output is expected to accelerate’.”
This is very sound, except for the last point. Presumably we are due to hear much less, at least from the IMF, about China, the Brics and ‘globalisation’ being the light of the world in economic terms. That’s a relief! As the ICC has always pointed out, the basic foundations of globalisation, of a world economy, had already been achieved by the end of the ascendant period of capitalism, i.e. by the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was precisely at this point that the system entered into its historic crisis.
The bourgeoisie have essentially come to use the term globalisation to express their (ill-founded) hope that huge dynamic growth in emerging economies and China in particular will somehow succour the stagnating economies of the west. But since the rise of China, in particular, underlines precisely how uncompetitive the western economies are, it is difficult to follow this line of reasoning. Of course, the west has sold huge volumes of raw materials to China and also sophisticated engineering (even Britain sells in the latter category to China). But the overall trade deficit of the west with China shows the real balance of economic power and the decline of the older industrial economies.
At the same time, countries like China are highly dependent on the western countries as markets for the mass of commodities that they have been churning out at a frenetic rate thanks to the brutal exploitation of their workforce. With the recession in the west, China and the other Brics are now beginning to falter in their turn.
Faced with this rather worrying scenario, the IMF is proposing now to institute British economic management as the new beacon of the world to replace China! This is quite a turnaround:
“In April, Olivier Blanchard, IMF chief economist, singled out the UK as a country that should lighten up on austerity, but the fund now recommends that countries follow the British policy of ‘achieving structural fiscal targets and allowing automatic stabilisers to play freely’.” (FT)
But, as The Evening Standard commentators note, discussing the retardation in Britain’s export performance, the “problems in emerging markets” are very likely to undermine the objective of the British bourgeoisie to achieve a balanced and durable recovery. The fact that the world economy is indeed interconnected is not some kind of automatic solution to the crisis as so many bourgeois commentators placidly assume. On the contrary, it is the guarantee that all the components of the capitalist system are doomed to sink together.
Hardin, 6.9.13
There is nothing really new about revelations that our rulers are a ruthless, murderous, Machiavellian, conspiratorial class. It would be naive for revolutionaries to think otherwise because this would directly lead to fostering illusions in the democratic state and the idea that this state would abide by the rules or operate fairly. In general, throughout history, the workers’ movement has tended to underestimate the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie and it has paid a great price for doing so. The enormous reach and depth of state surveillance that has recently been unmasked is thus not an exception and not really a scandal, but the true face of a capitalist society which is driven by the cancers of militarism, terrorism (for the most part fostered directly and indirectly by the major powers) and competition as well as the imperative need to use its spies, police and secret agencies as weapons of repression and oppression against the working class or any elements that come up against the system. This is just as true of the velvet-glove democracies as of the iron-fist totalitarian regimes - they are all expressions of the dictatorship of capital and they provide themselves with the tools to maintain that dictatorship, of which spying is just a part. Behind all the fuss about state surveillance, despite all the outrage and protest from left to right, these are the very principles of capitalist society being put to work and the outrage tends to cover up this reality. Spying has always been an important tool in class societies, all the more so in capitalist society and particularly a capitalist society in its decadent phase where the size and intensity of the state’s espionage machine reaches new extents and depths.
There are at least three factors that underlie the spying activities of the capitalist state:
- the economic competition which breeds industrial espionage - the more frantic and desperate the competition, the more so the spying around it. The recent revelations showed that this includes the NSA spying on embassies and other institutions of its so-called allies (such as France and Germany) as well as its more traditional imperialist foes;
- military confrontations and the developments of imperialism. These are unthinkable without ‘intelligence’, spying, undercover agencies at work;
- the maintenance of class domination. Class society compels the ruling class to use repression, secret police, undercover agents, all kinds of observations and spying on the working class and on any oppositions or protests. This is particularly the case with the working class, the revolutionary class in capitalist society. Here the spying had to become systematic.
To express outrage that governments, the US in the case of the NSA, or Britain in the case of GCHQ, use their spying agencies against economic or military rivals, or populations at large, is just hypocritical. The same British media outlets and liberals today bleating about a “free press” and censorship are the same ones that joined in the vilification and demonisation of the miners during their pivotal strike of 1984/5, and the same ones that repeated the state’s lying propaganda about WMD in Iraq in 2003. All countries are forced to spy and lie and there is no state, no ruling class without its secret services, machines of surveillance and undercover operations. The democratic New Zealand government has just passed a new spying bill giving the state more power over its population (Guardian, August 20), and its police and intelligence services have direct access to US surveillance networks such as PRISM; meanwhile a ‘national liberation’ organisation such as the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank has 7 different police/security bodies. This hypocrisy is also endemic to the system itself with the call from the White House last year for an international convention to regularise “consumer data privacy in a networked world” (Guardian, 27.4.13). This was just another weapon in the USA’s cyber-warfare, particularly involving China. Scandal after scandal has emerged in the countries that the US and Britain were spying on but all of them are at it. Germany’s BND intelligence agency has used “massive amounts” of daily intercepts from the NSA (Der Spiegel, 7.8.13) and they have been working closely together for decades. It’s a similar story from France whose politicians like to boast about the independence of their country. And while they are cooperating at one level, at another they are all spying on each other.
While they existed during capitalism’s rise as a dynamic system, while they even pre-date capitalism itself, spying activities take on a new dimension in capitalism’s decadence. This is because of permanent war and imperialist conflict; increased commercial rivalry and competition which also tend to overflow into the realms of military developments; and, above all, because of the need to keep a tight watch and control over the working class. Those are the main reasons why we see such a strong growth in these parasitic bodies and their activities. Even in the period of counter-revolution when the working class was more or less absent as a fighting force - indeed arising from it - came the most developed means for permanent surveillance. The totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and the Stalinists built the most secret and fearsome apparatus for spying and repression: the Gestapo and the Russian GPU. From the Second World War, where the spying activities of all the belligerents were vital for victory or defeat, these machines developed further during the Cold War where they were again intensified by technological means along with a considerable growth of the CIA and other such organisations. There are also developments in the closeness between the head of the state and the secret services. In Russia every president bar one, Boris Yeltsin (who was close to them), came directly from the KGB or their predecessors; President Bush Senior was previously the head of the CIA and Klaus Kinkel, the former German Foreign Minister, was head of the German secret services In 1981, the Thatcher clique, which had links to the secret services, set up the shadowy MISC 57 unit, three years before taking on the miners, and secret service bosses in many Middle East countries are very close to the head of government and the forces of direct repression.
There’s an idea among some revolutionary elements, an idea that sits side-by-side with the rejection of an analysis that the bourgeoisie is an intelligent and conspiratorial class, that the police “won’t bother with the likes of us - we’re too small, too insignificant”. Such ideas are concessions to democracy which also underestimate the fact that the bourgeoisie has often been clearer about the crucial role of revolutionary organisations than the working class (See the article in WR 252 ‘Revolutionary organisations struggle against provocation and slander’[1]). Mussolini’s secret police maintained a spy in the very small left communist group Bilan in the 1930’s and the nascent group of the ICC in France in the early 70’s was watched over by the police. These are things that we know.
Just one time in history have the real details and methods of the political police been examined and exposed by revolutionaries. This was when the archives of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, fell into the hand of the Bolsheviks and were analysed by the revolutionary Victor Serge, which resulted in his book What everyone should know about repression (first published in 1926)[2]. In it he is clear that the state apparatus is not just a war machine for competing groups, but a machine for the repression of the exploited. This is an incredible read for what Serge describes as the “prototype of the modern political police”. By 1900, the Okhrana was organised internationally and by 1905 it was engaging in highly sophisticated levels of espionage across Russia with extensive spying networks. To keep track of all this, spies would spy on spies and spies would spy on them, and informers, secret agents, provocateurs, police spies were everywhere in Russia: “The police had to see everything, know, understand and have power over everything. The strength and perfection of their machinery appears all the more terrible because of the unsuspected forces they dragged up from the depth of the human soul”. You can see from reading the book how paranoid the bourgeoisie was about the working class, and we have had a hundred years of state capitalism since then to reinforce and refine their fears and their machines of repression.
Serge denounces “legality” and the respect for it as an element of class collaboration in much the same way as “accountability” and “transparency” - and indeed “legality” - are used around the NSA issue today. This naivety “ignores the real role of the state and the deceptive nature of democracy; in short, the first principles of class struggle”. He doesn’t at all underestimate the “powerful and cunning adversary” and from this denounces the idea of the “idyllic revolution”. In respect of the undercover forces at work today, Serge gives some considerable insight: “Police provocation is above all the weapon - or the curse - of decomposing regimes. Conscious of their impotence to prevent what is going on, the police incite initiatives which they can then repress. Provocation is also a spontaneous, elementary action resulting from the demoralisation of a police force at its wits’ end, overtaken by events, which cannot perform tasks infinitely above its capacities, and nonetheless wants to justify the expectations and expenditure of its masters”. And finally on Serge, in line with our position above: “There is no force in the world which can hold back the revolutionary tide when it rises and all the police forces, however Machiavellian, scientific or criminal, are virtually impotent against it”.
There’s been lots of talk in the media about these leaked secrets showing how we have arrived at George Orwell’s nightmare vision of 1984 and “Big Brother is Watching You”; with some saying that we have gone well beyond it. Orwell’s 1949 book, with its story of the state overlooking every aspect of one’s life, every corner of it, was a horror story of the counter-revolution. It’s a story of perpetual warfare generated to keep the population behind the state, of the national socialism of Big Brother and the hopelessness of rebellion. The rebel hero, Winston Smith, eventually has all the spark of revolt snuffed out of him and any hope of a different society is completely extinguished. This book was a reflection of the counter-revolution, of the dark days leading up to and coming out of the Second World War when the working class seemed totally helpless, impotent and atomised vis-a-vis the state. But, in reality, even in the depths of this period of counter-revolution, even in places like Nazi Germany or the police states of the eastern bloc and the militarised democracies, there were still acts of revolt, compassion, solidarity, protests and strikes, some major, some very minor in character but all the more significant given the period that they took place in.
It’s true that today Orwell’s nightmare vision of a citizen’s every step being followed by the state is very much a reality. But we have more than enough evidence that all the state’s surveillance and all the state’s bloodhounds cannot control a population in revolt and particularly the working class. The recent demonstrations and protests across the world, even if greatly facilitated by an electronic field that can be switched off, show the potential difficulties for the ruling class. There were very strong strikes in the eastern bloc countries, Hungary, Poland, Russia in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, despite the all-pervasive nature of the state apparatus, particularly their interior ministries and their trade union spying networks. In East Germany the 1953 workers’ strikes knocked the repressive apparatus of the state, including the unions, sideways, despite its reliance on one of the biggest bodies of secret police in the world, the Stasi - an organisation that went to the extent of collecting sweat samples from people and storing them in tubes in order to identify them later. The workers’ self-organisation in the MKS in Poland, 1980, shows even more clearly how to fight state repression: the ruling class, consisting of the army, party, security services and the official trade unions, wanted to cut off the phone-line between the MKS in Gdansk and the rest of the country, i.e. the other workers’ assemblies. But the workers met up and responded with a force that pushed back the arm of repression. It was the general assemblies - where workers of several cities and towns were united and debated and decided together - which held the forces of repression at bay. The elected strike committees also used the company/union PA address system to broadcast talks between the workers and the politicians directly to the workers. This is a question of the historic course, of an undefeated working class and we have the more recent example of the self-organisation of the proletariat in China in the face of formidable state repression. Unlike the vision of “1984”, today a massive and widespread mobilisation of the working class cannot easily be contained. Thousands, millions of protesting workers, especially if centralised through general assemblies or even at well-organised and pointed demonstrations, cannot easily be corralled, let alone overcome. From this perspective we begin to understand a bit more here about the unions being the state’s police of the working class.
But if we can take heart from the actions of our class we mustn’t console ourselves with a false sense of security. In relation to the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities, there can be no doubt about the determination, ruthlessness and cold-bloodiness of the ruling class in wanting to destroy and eliminate their threat and this inevitably leads to harassment, imprisonment and assassinations, as we saw even in the heights of class struggle in Germany during the revolutionary wave of 1918/19. Deportations, the kidnapping of thousands of opponents by innumerable regimes, the pogromist campaigns against revolutionaries all bear witness to the consciousness of the ruling class. The bourgeoisie has never been nice to the working class when it dares to raise its head against capitalism in any effective manner.
The next part of this series can be read here [1070].
Baboon 6.9.2013 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
We are publishing here an article by our comrades in Brazil, analysing the major social movement that took place there in June.
A ‘spectre is haunting the world’: the spectre of indignation. Just over two years after the ‘Arab Spring’ which shook and surprised the countries of North Africa, and whose effects are still being felt; two years after the movement of the Indignados in Spain and Occupy in the USA; and at exactly the same time as the movement in Turkey, the wave of demonstrations in Brazil has mobilised millions of people in over a hundred cities and shown characteristics which are unprecedented for this country.
These movements, taking place in very different countries and very far apart geographically, nevertheless share some key common features: their spontaneity; their origins as a reaction brutal repression by the state; their massive nature; the fact that the majority of the participants are young people, especially via social networks. But the most important common element is the powerful feeling of indignation about the deterioration of living conditions provoked by a profound crisis which is sapping the bases of the capitalist system and which has significantly accelerated since 2007. This deterioration has taken the form of a growing level of precariousness throughout the proletariat and enormous uncertainty about the future among young people who have become proletarian or are in the process of proletarianisation. It is no accident that the movement in Spain took the name of ‘Indignados’ and that in this wave of massive social movements this was the one which went furthest in questioning the capitalist system and in its forms of organisation through massive general assemblies[1] .
A proletarian movement
The social movements of last June in Brazil, which we welcomed and in which we intervened as far as our means allowed, have a particular significance for the proletariat of Brazil, Latin America and the rest of the world, and a large extent went beyond the traditional regionalism of the country. These massive movements were radically different from the ‘social movements’ controlled by the state, by the PT (Workers’ Party) and other political parties, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST); similarly, it is different from other movements which have arisen in various countries of the region in the last decade or so, like the one in Argentina at the beginning of the century , the ‘indigenous’ movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, the Zapatista movement in Mexico or Chavism in Venezuela, which were the result of confrontations between bourgeois or petty bourgeois factions, disputing control of the state and the defence of national capital.
In this sense, the June mobilisations in Brazil represent the most important spontaneous expression of the masses in this country and in Latin America over the past 30 years. This is why it’s crucial to draw the lessons of this movement from a class standpoint.
It is undeniable that this movement surprised the Brazilian and world bourgeoisie as well as revolutionary organisations[2] inside and outside Brazil and the groups and organisations which had initially facilitated it. The struggle against the public transport price rises (which are negotiated each year between the transport chiefs and the state ) was just the detonator of the movement. It crystallised all the indignation which had been brewing for some time in Brazilian society[3] and which took shape in 2012 with the struggles in public administration and in the universities, mainly in São Paulo and the big building sites in the programme for accelerating growth (PAC). There were also a number of strikes against wage cuts and insecure working conditions and against health and education cuts over the last few years.
Unlike the massive social movements in various countries since 2011, the one in Brazil was engendered and unified around a concrete demand, which made it possible for there to be a spontaneous mobilisation of wide sectors of the proletariat: against the rise in public transport fares[4]. The movement took on a massive character at the national level from the 13th June, when the demonstration in São Paulo against the fare increases called by the Movimento Passe Livre – Movement for Free Access to Transport[5] - was violently repressed by the police. However, for five weeks, as well as in São Paulo, there were demonstrations in many different towns and cities across the country, to the point where, in Porto Alegre, Goiãnia and other towns, this pressure forced the local governments to give in over the fare increases, after hard struggles and heavy state repression.
This was expressed clearly through the social movement in Goiãnia on 19.6.13:
“In Goiãnia after five weeks of demonstrations, and one day before the sixth big gathering, which confirmed the presence of tens of thousands of people on the street, the Prefecture directed by Paulo Gracia (of the PT) and the governor Marconi Perillo (of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, the PSDB – centre right) held a joint meeting and decided to revoke the fare increases. We know that this decision was the product of the pressure of over a month of mobilisation and of the fear that things would escape the control of the provincial government and the contractual enterprises”[6]
The movement straight away situated itself on a proletarian terrain. This was expressed through the extension and breadth of the movement and, although on a minority scale, by taking a distance from nationalist slogans. In the first place, we should underline that the majority of the participants belong to the working class, mainly young workers and students, mainly coming out of proletarian families or those undergoing proletarianisation. The bourgeois press has presented the movement as an expression of the ‘middle classes’, with the clear intention of creating a division among workers. In reality, the majority of those catalogued as middle class are workers who often receive lower wages than skilled workers in the country’s industrial zones. This explains the success of and the widespread sympathy with the movement against the transport increases, which represented a direct attack on the income of working class families. This also explains why this initial demand rapidly turned into the questioning of the state, given the dilapidation of sectors such as health, education and social assistance, and increasing protests against the colossal sums of public money invested in organising next year’s World Cup and in the 2016 Olympics[7]. For these events the Brazilian bourgeoisie has not hesitated to resort to the forced expulsion of people living near the stadia: at the Aldeia Maracanã in Rio in the first part of the year; in the zones chosen by construction firms in São Paulo, who have been burning down favelas in the way of their plans. This situation was expressed clearly by the Bloco de Lutas Pelo Transporte 100% in Porto Alegre on 20.6.13:
“The struggle is not just for a few centimes and is not only about Porto Alegre since the mobilisation has taken on a national dimension and goes beyond the demand about the fare increases. Today over ten cities have announced a reduction in transport fares. Now there are hundreds of thousands of us in the streets of Brazil, fighting for our rights. The theme of the World Cup is already present in the demonstrations. The same popular mass which is questioning the transport system is also questioning the investment of millions of public money in the stadia, in displacing families by urban planners for the needs of the World Cup, the power of FIFA and the state of emergency which is going to restrain the rights of the population”[8]
It is very significant that the movement organised demonstrations around the football stadia where Confederation Cup were being played, in order to get a lot of media attention and to reject the spectacle prepared by the Brazilian bourgeoisie; and also in response to the brutal repression of the demonstrations around the stadia, which resulted in a number of deaths. In a country where football is the national sport, which the bourgeoisie has obviously used as a safety valve for keeping society under control, the demonstrations of the Brazilian proletariat are an example for the world proletariat. The population of Brazil is known for its love of football, but this didn’t prevent it from rejecting austerity imposed to finance the sumptuous expenses devoted to the organisation of these sporting events, which the Brazilian bourgeoisie is using to show the world that it is capable of playing in the premier league of the world economy. The demonstrators demanded public services with a ‘FIFA type’ quality. The movements of June spoiled the party of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.
With regard to the demands, the movement showed its indignation about the effects of decomposition on the Brazilian bourgeoisie, attacking the most representative expressions of its corruption, indolence and arrogance: in Brasilia, the capital, they took over the installations of congress and attempted to enter the Itamaraty palace, the symbol of the state’s foreign policy; in Rio de Janeiro, they tried to enter the legislative assembly, and residents of the favelas, such as Rocinha, protested in front of the residence of the governor of Rio; in São Paulo, they tried to enter the Prefecture and the provincial legislative assembly and in Curitiba they tried to get into the seat of the provincial government. An extremely significant fact was that there was a massive rejection of the political parties (especially the PT) and union and student organisations that support the power: in São Paulo a number of their members were excluded from the demonstrations because they held up banners showing that they belonged to the PT or the CUT, or to other organisations and parties of the left, electoral or not, like the PSTU (Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificados), the PSOL (Partido Socialismo o Liberdade) , the Brazilian CP and various unions.
Other expressions of the class character of the movement were shown, even though in a minority. There were a number of assemblies held in the heat of the movement, although they were not the same as the ones in Spain. For example the one in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, which were called ‘popular and egalitarian assemblies’ which proposed to create a “new spontaneous, open and egalitarian space for debate”, in which over 1000 people took part.
These assemblies, although they demonstrated the vitality of the movement and the necessity for the self-organisation of the masses to impose their demands, revealed a number of weaknesses:
In the movement there were also explicit references to the social movements in other countries, especially Turkey, which also referred to Brazil. Despite the minority character of these expressions, they were still revealing about what was felt to be shared by the two movements.
In different demonstrations, you could also see banners proclaiming “We are Greeks, Turks, Mexicans, we have no country, we are revolutionaries” or placards saying “It’s not Turkey, it’s not Greece, it’s Brazil coming out of its inertia”.
In Goiãnia, the Frente de Luta Contra o Aumento, which regrouped various base organisations, underlined the need for solidarity and for debate between the different components of the movement:
“WE MUST NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE CRIMINALISATION AND PACIFICATION OF THE MOVEMENT! WE MUST REMAIN FIRM AND UNITED! Despite disagreements, we must maintain our solidarity, our resistance, our fighting spirit, and deepen our organisation and our discussions. In the same way as in Turkey, peaceful and militant elements can co-exist and struggle together, we must follow this example”[9]
The great indignation which animated the Brazilian proletariat was concretised in the following reflections by the Rede Extremo Sul, a network of social movements on the outskirts of São Paulo:
“For these possibilities to become a reality, we can’t allow the indignation being expressed on the streets to be diverted into nationalist, conservative and moralist objectives; we can’t allow these struggles to be captured by the state and by the elites in order to empty them of their political content. The struggle against the fare increases and the deplorable state of services is directly linked to the struggle against the state and the big economic corporations, against the exploitation and humiliation of the workers, and against this form of life where money is everything and people are nothing”[10]
The Brazilian bourgeoisie, like all national bourgeoisies, has for decades been hoping that Brazil could become a continental or world power. To achieve this, it’s not enough to dispose of an immense territory which covers almost half of South America, or to count on its important natural resources. It has also been necessary to maintain social order, above all control over the workers, less through the military yoke than through the more sophisticated mechanisms of democracy. Thus in the 1980s it carried out a relatively smooth transition from military dictatorship to republican democracy. This objective was attained on the political level with the formation of two poles: one regrouping the forces of the right, formed by two parties set up in the 80s: the PSDB composed of intellectuals from the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and right wing groups linked to the dictatorship (PMDB, DEM, etc); the other of the centre left, structured round the PT, with an important popular influence, mainly among workers and peasants. In this way a kind of alternation between right and centre left governments was established, based on ‘free and democratic’ elections. All this was indispensable for strengthening Brazilian capital on the world arena.
The Brazilian bourgeoisie was thus better place to reinforce its productive apparatus and face up to the worst of the economic crisis of the 90s, while on the political level, it succeeded in creating a political force around the PT, which because of its youth as a party, was able to integrate union organisations and leaders, members of the Catholic church adept at ‘liberation theology’, Trotskyists who see the PT as a mass revolutionary party, intellectuals, artists and democrats. The PT was the response of the left wing of the Brazilian bourgeoisie after the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 which had weakened the left of capital on a global scale. It was able to do something which was the envy of the other bourgeoisies of the region: create a political force which could control the impoverished masses, but above all maintain social peace among the work force. This situation was consolidated with the accession of the PT to power in 2002, making use of the charisma and ‘working class’ image of Lula.
In this way, during the first decade of the new century, the Brazilian economy raised itself to seventh place on the world ladder, according to the World Bank. Today it is part of the ‘cream’ of the so-called ‘group of emerging countries’, the so-called BRICS[11]. The world bourgeoisie has hailed the ‘Brazilian miracle’ carried out under Lula’s presidency, which has supposedly pulled millions of Brazilians out of poverty and allowed more millions to enter this famous ‘middle class’. What no one ever mentions, neither the PT, nor Lula, nor the rest of the bourgeoisie, is that this ‘great success’ has been achieved by distributing a part of the surplus value as crumbs to the most impoverished, while at the same time the situation of the mass of workers has become ever more insecure.
The acceleration of the economic crisis became evident in 2007 and this is still affecting the world economy six years later. Lula, like other regional leaders, declared that the Brazilian economy was ‘armoured’ against it. While the other economic powers faltered, the Brazilian economy was satisfied with its performance. But while Brazil is not at the eye of the economic storm, it is undeniable that given the interdependence of the world economy, no country can escape its effects, still less Brazil which is highly dependent on exports of its raw materials and services. We see the proof of this with China, Brazil’s great partner among the BRICS: the Chinese economy is now strongly affected by the world crisis.
The crisis still remains at the root of the situation in Brazil. To try to attenuate its effects, the Brazilian bourgeoisie has been stimulating the internal economy through a policy of major works, provoking a construction boom in both the public and private sectors, extending to the renovations and new builds of the sporting infrastructure for 2014 and 2016. At the same time it has been facilitating credit and debt among families to stimulate internal consumption, especially in the area of housing and electronic goods. This policy has led to an increase in public expenditure and a rise in taxes.
The limits of this are already tangible at the level of economic indicators: a balance of payments deficit estimated at 3 billion US dollars in the first quarter of this year – the worst result since 1995 – and a slow-down in growth (predicted at 6.7% in 2013). But it can be felt above all in the deterioration of the buying power and living conditions of the working class as a result of the rising prices of consumer goods and of services (including transport). There has also been a strong tendency towards the reduction of jobs and an increase in unemployment.
Thus, the protest movement in Brazil doesn’t come from nowhere. There are a whole number of causes which lie behind it, and they are being aggravated by the development of the economic crisis. As a result of the protests the state has been forced to augment social spending at a time when the economic crisis is obliging it to take measures to reduce such spending. President of the republic Dilma Rousseff has already declared that such spending has to be cut.
As we might expect, the Brazilian bourgeoisie has not stood with its arms folded in the face of the social crisis which, although it has eased off, remains latent. The only result obtained by mass pressure was the suspension of the very elevated fare increases[12] which the state has made up for by using other means to finance the transport enterprises.
At the beginning of the wave of protests, to calm things down while the government worked out a strategy to control the movement, president Rousseff declared, via one of her mouthpieces, that she considered the population’s protests as “legitimate and compatible with democracy”. Lula meanwhile criticised the “excesses” of the police. But state repression didn’t stop, and neither have street demonstrations.
One of the most elaborate traps against the movement was the propagation of the myth of a right wing coup, a rumour spread not only by the PT and the Stalinist party, but also by the Trotskyists of the PSOL and the PSTU. This was a way of derailing the movement and turning it towards supporting the Rousseff government, which has been severely weakened and discredited. In reality the facts show precisely that the ferocious repression against the protests in June by the left government led by the PT was equally if not more brutal than that of the military regimes. The left and extreme left of Brazilian capital are trying to obscure this reality by identifying repression with fascism or right wing regimes. There is also the smokescreen of ‘political reform’ put forward by Rousseff, with the aim of combating corruption in the political parties and imprisoning the population on the democratic terrain by calling for a vote on the proposed reforms.
To try to regain an influence within the movement on the street, the political parties of the left of capital and the trade unions announced, several weeks in advance, a ‘National Day of Struggle’ for the 11 July, presented as a way of protesting against the failure of the collective labour agreements. In this simulated mobilisation, all the trade union organisations and those both close to government and opposition lent a helping hand.
Similarly, Lula, showing his considerable anti-working class experience, called on 25 June for a meeting of the leaders of movements controlled by the PT and the Stalinist party, including youth and student organisations allied with the government, with the explicit aim neutralising the street protests.
The great strength of the movement was that, from the beginning, it affirmed itself as a movement against the state, not only through the central demand against the fare increases but also as a mobilisation against the abandonment of public services and the orientation of spending towards the sporting spectacles. At the same time the breadth and determination of the protest forced the bourgeoisie to take a step back and annul the fare increases in a number of cities.
The crystallisation of the movement around a concrete demand, while being a strength of the movement, also put limits on it as soon as it was unable to go any further. Obtaining the suspension of the fare increases marked a step forward, but the movement did not on the whole see itself as challenging the capitalist order, something which was much more present in the Indignados movement in Spain.
The distrust towards the bourgeoisie’s main forces of social control took the form of the rejection of the political parties and the trade unions, and this represented a weakness for the bourgeoisie on the ideological level, the exhaustion of the political strategies which have emerged since the end of the dictatorship, the discrediting of the teams which have succeeded each other at the head of the state, in particular as a result of their notoriously corrupt character. However, behind this undifferentiated rejection of politics stands the danger of the apoliticism, which was an important weakness of the movement. Without political debate, there is no possibility of taking the struggle forward, since it can only grow in the soil of discussion which is aimed at understanding the roots of the problems you are fighting against, and which cannot evade a critique of the foundations of the capital.
It was thus no accident that one of the weaknesses of the movement was the absence of street assemblies open to all participants, where you could discuss the problems of society, the actions to carry out, the organisation of the movement, its balance sheet and its objectives. The social networks were an important means of mobilisation, a way of breaking out of isolation. But they can never replace open and living debate in the assemblies.
The poison of nationalism was not absent from the movement, as could be seen from the number of Brazilian flags displayed on the demonstrations and the raising of nationalist slogans. It was quite common to hear the national anthem in the processions. This was not the case with the Indignados in Spain. In this sense the June movement in Brazil presented the same weaknesses as the mobilisations in Greece and in the Arab countries, where the bourgeoisie succeeded in drowning the huge vitality of the movements in a national project for reforming and safeguarding the state. Nationalism is a dead-end for the proletarian struggle, a violation of international class solidarity. In this context, the focus on corruption in the last analysis also worked for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and its political parties, especially those in opposition, and gave a certain credibility to the perspective of the next elections..
Despite the majority of participants in the movement being proletarians, they were involved in an atomised way. The movement didn’t manage to mobilise the workers of the industrial centres who have an important weight, especially in the São Paulo region. It wasn’t even proposed. The working class, which certainly welcomed the movement and even identified with it, because it was struggling for a demand which it saw was in its interest, did not manage to mobilise as such. This question of class identity is not only a weakness at the level of the working class in Brazil, but on a world scale. It’s a characteristic of the period that the working class is finding it hard to affirm its class identity; in Brazil this has been aggravated by decades of immobility resulting from the action of the political parties and the unions, mainly the PT and the CUT.
This situation explains to some extent the emergence of social movements we have seen in Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Egypt etc, where new generations of proletarians, many of them without work, have revolted with the understanding that capitalism is shutting off any possibility of having a decent life, and feel in their bones the insecurity of their daily lives.
Nevertheless, the mobilisations in Brazil are a source of inspiration and contain many lessons for the future unity of the Brazilian and world proletariat. They show that there is no solution to our problems within capitalism and that the proletariat must assume its historic responsibility of struggling against capital; that the proletariat in Brazil must seek its class identity not only through solidarity at the level of the country, but worldwide. In this way its struggle will converge with that of all the young proletarians who are now mobilising against capital.
Revolução Internacional (ICC in Brazil) 9.8.13
[1] See in particular the lead article in International Reviews 146 and 147 https://en.internationalism.org/ir/146/editorial-protests-in-spain [1074]; en.internationalism.org/international-review/201111/4593/indignados-spain-greece-and-israel [343]
[2] By this we means groups that defend the idea that the proletariat is the subject of the revolution, who oppose all forms of nationalism and who fight for the proletarian revolution and a communist society as the only alternative to capitalism. These are basically the positions of the communist left.
[3] At a public meeting organised by the ICC and other comrades at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in April 2012, around the theme of the Indignados movement in Spain, a meeting which gave rise to a great deal of discussion and questions about the nature of the movement – its origins, goals, the social forces involved, its way of organising etc – one student asked the following question: “can you explain why in Brazil, there hasn’t been a movement like the one in Spain when we too are also very indignant?”. The Brazilian proletariat, especially its younger generation, did not take long to come up with an answer.
[4] See our first article ‘Police repression provokes the anger of youth’, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8281/brazil-police-repression-provokes-anger-youth [1075]
[5] The MPL is an organisation with a reformist programme, since it considers that the capitalist state can guarantee the right to free transport for the whole population.
[6] See the article by Frente de Luta Contra o Aumento : passapalavra.info/2013/06/79588 [1076]
[7] According to predictions, these two events will cost the Brazilian government 31.3 billion dollars, or 1.6% of GNP, whereas the family supplement programme which is being heralded as a beacon social measure of Lula’s government only represents 0.5% of GNP
[11] Apart from Brazil, the BRICS are comprised of Russia, China, India, and more recently South Africa
[12] Here is a comparison of transport fares in Brazil and elsewhere, showing the price per passenger for buses, trams or tubes.
Country/City |
Fare in US dollars |
New Delhi |
0.25 |
Beijing |
0.26 |
Buenos Aires |
0.28 |
Caracas |
0.35 |
Mexico City |
0.37 |
Lima |
0.47 |
Moscow |
0.85 |
Istanbul |
0.95 |
Santiago |
1.17 |
Johannesburg |
1.25 |
Hong Kong |
1.33 |
Los Angeles |
1.50 |
São Paulo |
1.53 |
Rio de Janeiro |
1.56 |
As austerity bites and capitalism shows its teeth in its relentless quest for profit and for ways to offset its crisis onto the working class, the recent revelations of the explosion in so-called zero hour contracts have filled the newspapers and our television screens. Signing up to a zero hours contract is a condition that can mean no wages or little wages at the end of the week. In the hope of gaining some employment many workers wait at the end of a phone for whatever an employer or an agency offers. This uncertainty, the knowledge that perhaps you won’t have a job next week or the week after, is profoundly demoralising for workers and isolates them into individual units competing on the job market. In many cases of the zero hours contract the national minimum wage applies but they are being applied across the board, both in the private and, increasingly, the public sector - social and care workers, in the NHS. Health authorities have introduced zero hours which have also affected professional higher paid staff. The employers or agencies offering these contracts are not obliged to offer sick pay or holiday pay and they can usually be terminated at will. There can be no doubt that there has been an explosion in all kinds of precarious work, including the phenomenal rise in part time and casual work at the minimum wage or lower, as well as zero hours. This is a huge attack on the living conditions of the working class.
Zero hours contracts are clearly one of a number of ways of making jobs more precarious and are greatly advantageous to the bourgeoisie in reducing the cost of labour. So why the huge media publicity? Why has Vince Cable announced a government review (even if Ian Binkley of the Work Foundation has pointed out that this review is totally inadequate)? Why has the Labour Party apologised for not spotting it sooner? Why has Edinburgh University felt ‘shamed’ into agreeing to end its 2,712 zero hours contracts? Reports don’t tell whether the new arrangements will be any better for the workers!
“The greater use of zero hours contracts is taking place against a background of falling real wages, high levels of workplace fear of the consequences of redundancy and unfair treatment for a significant minority, and an employment recovery where permanent employee jobs have been in a minority” (https://www.theworkfoundation.com [1081]). Apart from the implication that capitalist employment is ‘fair’ for the majority, the Work Foundation report gives a good idea of the wider context of the increase in zero hours contracts. And also the motivation for all this publicity: while politicians hypocritically wax indignant about these contracts, they hope to divert our attention from the overall worsening of conditions for the whole working class. This issue also has the advantage of being one where we can be encouraged to demand the protection of the state through legislation against abuses by private employers, although this is an illusion as the situation of health and care workers shows. Meanwhile Vince Cable can bleat that - “well it’s not ideal, but at least it allows for ‘flexibility’” for employers and workers.
The official statistics on zero hours are rubbish, as we can see from the ONS (Office of National Statistics) estimate of 250,000 on such contracts which is less than the number affected in the care sector alone. The Work Foundation estimates there are one million, and Unite has now estimated 5.5 million based on a survey of 5,000 of its members. Whatever the true figure zero hours and other precarious and flexible work practices create a vast reserve pool of labour which nominally can appear as employed, allowing Cameron to boast of ‘creating’ thousands of new jobs.
One million or 5.5, the figures for the growth in zero hour contracts are definitely on the up. This has been the case for many years in the fast food industry. The opt out clause when there is criticism of the low pay and work precariousness in this industry is that they are ‘franchised ‘ out and the contracts have nothing to do with the major fast food chains. Even so, McDonald’s have admitted that 90% of their employees, that’s 82,200 staff, are on 2 hour contracts; Burger King (a franchised operator) employs all of its 20,000 workers on zero hour contracts. Likewise Domino Pizza - similarly a franchised operation - has 90% of its 23,000 staff on zero hours.
The rise in zero hours contracts has been particularly marked among care workers, with a majority now on zero hours, with an increase in the proportion of their contracts being zero hours “from 50% in 2008/09 to 60% last year. The government has estimated that there are 307,000 care workers on zero hour contracts, despite estimates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) that Britain’s zero hour workforce is 250,000 people” (The Guardian: 27.08.13.).
This trend towards zero hours contracts has not just affected ancillary staff and primary care staff, who often work through bank agencies: many health care professionals such as radiologists, psychiatrists, and heart specialists are also being offered zero hour contracts by the Health Trusts.
The education sector has also seen implementation of zero hours:.
“More than half the 145 UK Universities and nearly two thirds of the 275 Further Education Colleges said that they used the contracts, which do not specify working hours and give limited guaranties on conditions” (Guardian: 05.09.13).
The Labour Party is shedding crocodile tears on the iniquities of the zero contracts. Chuka Umunna (the Shadow Business Secretary) has said, “Flexibility works for some, but the danger today is that too often insecurity at work becomes the norm”. Ground-breaking stuff! To show its seriousness the Labour Party brought together a conference of employers and unions: “This is why Labour has convened this important summit bringing together representatives of employees and employers to consider what action must be taken. In contrast this Tory led government has refused to have a proper and full consultation on the rise of zero hour contracts or to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves” (Guardian: 20.08.13).
Up until this statement and the occasional bleats from Andy Burnham, the Labour Party has remained extremely quiet on the issue of zero hour contracts. The Labour Party made much about introducing the minimum wage in its election manifesto of 1997 and indeed introduced the Minimum Wage Act of 1998. However, within this act was contained the retention of zero hour contracts. Legally, the Labour government had to retain the right for agencies to impose flexible work contracts. Firms and agencies have exploited this right from the last Labour government and of course the Tory and Lib-Dem government didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth!
The development of the recession and the austerity that has been imposed since the crisis of 2008 has seen a massive use not just of zero hour contracts but of part-time work, of firms and agencies using insecurity and precarious work to the hilt.
We can see with the Hovis workers (Premier Foods) in Wigan the beginnings of a fight back. After 400 fellow workers at Hovis in London were given redundancies at the beginnings of this year, the Wigan bakery workers began a series of strikes at the beginning of August.
30 Wigan Hovis workers were given redundancies and management announced that hourly pay was being reduced from £13 per hour to £8.60 an hour and working hours cut, while management brought in agency staff to take up the short fall. In an interview with Socialist Worker (03.09.13) one worker said: “We’re not having it. They always want something from us - pensions, wages, conditions. It’s time to draw a line.”
The Wigan bakery workers have embarked on a series of one-day strikes. Their picketing had been positive, with lorry-drivers and other workers refusing to cross pickets. However, there are inherent dangers in this tactic of rolling strikes (as the last postal workers’ strike demonstrated). The union, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) has demonstrated its ability to negotiate the 400 London redundancies and were quick to demand rolling strikes.
The use of agency staff at the same time as redundancies and other attacks has the potential to cause divisions among the workers to the benefit of the employers and unions. Therefore it is encouraging to read “Agency workers have joined the picket line” in the same Socialist Worker article.
Other sectors have entered into struggle against the imposition of zero hour contracts. In Liverpool on the 9th of August we saw 400 council workers (street cleaners and road maintenance and ground staff) go on strike against imposed redundancies and new contracts. In London at the beginning of the year we saw London Underground Piccadilly line tube drivers’ strike against planned new contracts.
Workers today face widespread attacks through precarious work, falling real wages, reductions in benefits, reduced health and social care. In order to push these through the bosses and the state use all sorts of tricks to isolate and divide workers as much as possible. What workers need is unity, solidarity and confidence in our ability to fight.
Melmoth, 7.9.13
"What's the name of Mohamed's mother?" asked the al-Shabab fighters of some poor innocents out shopping; and when the answer wasn't forthcoming, men, women and children were lined up and executed. Such is the twisted, depraved and gruesome logic of these religious fighters that, even in the face of the daily global horrors of decomposing capitalism, such events still shock and sicken us. Executed by members of al-Shabab, who seem to have come from Kenya, Somalia and further afield, for not knowing the name of Mohamed's mother or not being able to quote from the Koran shows the depth of the depraved horrors that capitalism serves us up on a plate[1].
But al-Shabab, like the terrorists who attacked the Ain Amenas gas plant in Algeria last January killing 38 people, picked their target with care. Nairobi is East Africa's most prosperous hub full of western tourists, business interests - both regional and international, diplomats, military agencies, spies and aid operations. From this there's no doubt that the intensity of the news coverage in Britain about the attack by al-Shabab militants on the Nairobi shopping centre is reflective of the number of western victims[2]. The sort of numbers affected, at least 70 killed so far and possibly up to 200 still missing, is around the almost daily casualties and wounded in terrorist attacks in Iraq, the less frequent but regular attacks in Pakistan, not to mention the now "international community" sanctioned daily killings and destruction in Syria. But this doesn't at all mitigate the horror of the Westgate attack where men, women and children, along with around 200 workers in a supposedly safe and benign environment, had to face the sudden, deadly and frightening prospect of all hell breaking loose.
What this attack ultimately demonstrates is a further example of how the greatest achievement of the "War on Terror" is the generalisation of terror, terrorists and terrorism. It's a further example of the how the Clinton/Bush/Obama policy of US imperialism directly contributes to aggravating and spreading the very problems that this policy is supposed to deal with. To that extent it's also illustrative of the growing historical weakness of US imperialism despite it being the most powerful military force on the planet by far. The whole region around the Horn of Africa and down into central Africa is an imperialist battlefield and contains multiple bases and special forces of western countries, the USA, Britain, France and Israel particularly. Given its strategic importance this region must be among the most heavily surveyed and tracked on the planet and still they were unable to pick up or stop this well-organised and ruthless attack. British and American security officials are now suggesting that they knew an attack was coming but didn't know exactly where - but anyone with any interest in the region would be aware of that. There's no doubt that the Kenyan security forces are inept and corrupt, more concerned with lining their own pockets; but fundamentally they are just pale reflections of their more efficiently provided western counterparts.
The responsibility for the devastation of the whole region around Somalia and the rise of even more irrational forces lies fundamentally with the major imperialisms whose frequent actions and incursions here contribute to the growing instability and chaos which then demands further actions and incursions which contribute further to growing instability and chaos.... and so it spirals outwards and downwards. Of course it is mainly the poor and the masses that pay. There are around half-a-million Somali refugees in the biggest such compound in the world in Kenya, with another 500,000 reckoned to be outside. Here the usually optimistic NGO's comment that the situation is hopeless. Amid all the misery, famine, deprivation and poverty of the region are corrupt local bourgeois and western special forces bases bristling with the latest weaponry and technology. The US has set up its "Africa Command Post" in Kenya backed up by British and Israeli intelligence and special forces.
Obama said on September 23 that he was committed to "dismantling these (terrorist) centres of destruction" but the fact is that the general decomposing conditions of capitalism and US attempts to deal with them creates such phenomenon, spreads them and fosters a steady and growing stream of recruits, local and international, to the jihadi causes. Since operation "Restore Hope" and the battle of Mogadishu in 1993, from which US forces had to retreat, greater instability has spread through the entire region. Even when it looked like there was a relatively stable government in Somalia, with the moderate Islamic Court Union a few years ago, any attempt at stability was destroyed by the US counter-offensive in firstly backing the Ethiopian army's invasion of December 2006 and then the US and British backed African Union body which forced the overthrow of the ICU, the setting up of the Transitional Federal Government (now the US-backed Federal Government of Somalia) charade. This in turn provoked the descent into greater chaos and the rise of al-Shabab. Up until then the force was a hybrid movement subject to infighting, which it remains to some extent, and was finding it difficult getting recruits in Somalia, often reduced to press-ganging or bribing unemployed youngsters to join. The dearth of pro-western targets in Somalia, and Ugandan and Kenyan involvement in the Africa Union (AMISON) army sent to Somalia, along with US drones, to rout these rebels, led al-Shabab to undertake two attacks in Uganda in 2010 on people watching World Cup matches outdoors (killing over 70 and injuring hundreds), previous border attacks on the Kenyan army (there's been two more in the last couple of days) and then the Westgate atrocity. The al-Shabab group went from a moderate Islamic force to a ruthless media-wise affiliated al-Qaeda global jihad outfit which, to the great concern of western intelligence agencies, has attracted a considerable number of foreign fighters, particularly American and British, with easy access across western borders and potential access to western targets. Paradoxically this threat becomes even greater if al-Shabab is defeated in Somalia.
Most of the funding for al-Shabab comes directly from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and the strident and aggressive Saudi brand of Wahabi Islamism is more and more being forced on the relaxed and open Somali religious expression - the same Saudi imperialism that is inextricably linked to the major western powers. But al-Shabab had its own lucrative activity in the charcoal business and revenues from Somali ports. They don't seem to have been involved in the piracy that stalks these waters, which looks to be made up of impoverished fishermen and local gangsters. But that hasn't stopped these waters from being turned into a sea of militarism, with warships from all over Europe, China, Russia, NATO and India all in competition. At any rate al-Shabab was kicked out of Mogadishu and the Somali ports by 2011. The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia estimated that in 2011, before mainly Kenyan forces took it from them, al-Shabab was earning $50 million a year from Somali port activity in Kismayo (Bloomberg, 22.9.13). After the Kenyan takeover of this port - where, in an echo of the Assad regime’s economic dealings with al-Nusra - there are reports that Kenyan authorities continued to work with contacts of al-Shabab that remained in order to keep the money flowing. But resentment of this grab of Kismayo and its riches by Kenyan imperialism was sorely felt by the rebels and they promised retribution which, in the inhuman logic of imperialist war, they have delivered.
The Kenyan regime of President Uhuru Kenyatta has recently been at odds with Britain and America over its human rights record and both the latter criticised it and loosened political ties with it somewhat, while military and intelligence cooperation continued. But the Kenyan regime played the Chinese card, warming up relations with Beijing and forcing Washington and London to resume their full backing of the regime. Kenyatta, and senior Kenyan politician William Ruto, were both due to face charges at The Hague criminal court for encouraging murder, rape, deportation and persecution when they both unleashed their thugs on the population at the time of Kenyan elections six years ago. The official figures from this blatant democratic terror was one thousand one hundred dead, tens of thousands of wounded and 250,000 people displaced. Kenyatta and Ruto have now been excused from the court so that they can help their country!
There have been reports about the incompetence of the Kenyan security forces in handling the attack and it's true that incompetence goes hand in hand with the corruption and gangsterism that is the hallmark of politics in this region. The first police on the scene at Westgate have been criticised for not knowing what to do, but these lowly police officers wouldn't normally be allowed in the upmarket mall. Kenyan security forces then arrived and, according to some reports, began to shoot each other and, one can imagine, innocent people panicking. Then the heavy mob of US and Israeli commandos entered the scene and while we don't know who set them off, subsequent explosions brought down the ceiling of the building crushing an unknown number underneath.
What's likely to happen now, apart from pogroms and harassment against the Somali population in Kenya, is a very forceful response of the Kenyan military on the still-remaining al-Shabab positions in Somalia. As said above, this could turn out the worse possible option out of any number of bad options, scattering the foreign jihadis around and back to their own countries to seek further revenge. More Boston-like attacks are both the nightmares and creation of the western regimes. This region of Africa, in and around the Rift Valley, was the birthplace of humanity. It's the place where our ancestors began their struggle for survival against all the odds. Today, along with the permanent and depraved battlefields of the "Democratic Republic of Congo" where child soldiers, mass rape, warlordism, religious irrationalism and disintegration are overlooked and manipulated by the major powers, the whole region is increasingly an imperialist free-for-all where any atrocity goes, a true crucible of capitalist barbarism.
Baboon. 28.9.13
(This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1]The right-wing anti-Muslim US website, "Atlas Shrugs" denounces Muslims present for not providing the answers to the questions asked by the terrorists to the non-Muslims. As if anyone was expecting to take part in a religious quiz where the prize was life or death. But such nonsense is a flimsy cover for spreading the lie that Muslim = terrorist, a sentiment more subtly propagated by all the mainstream media.
[2] The week after Westgate, Boko Haram killers shot 50 students in their beds at an agricultural college in Nigeria for the crime of engaging in western education. It’s doubtful that the dead in this and similar cases will get the same media coverage as the Westgate victims.
Below is the translation of an article written by our comrades in Mexico and published in Spanish in number 133 of Revolución Mundial (March-April 2013).
The terror and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution are often explained solely through the personality of Stalin, an uncouth individual, a careerist and an adventurer. It is certain that his character was an important factor in the historical role played by Stalin, but not the only one.
60 years ago, on 6 March 1953, the world press announced the death of Stalin. “The mad dog is dead, the madness is over”, was the popular adage employed in Spanish-speaking countries. But in the case of Stalin, such a statement was unjustified. If Stalin was at the helm of the physical and moral destruction of a whole generation of revolutionaries, if he openly contradicted all the internationalist principles of marxism and if he has been the leader of one of the major imperialist powers that presided over the division of world, his death in no way eliminated or halted the counter-revolutionary dynamic that he largely contributed to in his lifetime. This confirms that his role as a major player in the counter-revolution was made possible by the failure of the world revolution to extend. It was the isolation of the revolution that directly produced the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party and its transformation into a state party putting national interests above those of the world revolution.
The grim legacy of Stalin has served and continues to serve the interests of the ruling class. Winston Churchill, a well known figure of the exploiting class and bitter enemy of the proletariat, paid tribute to the services rendered by Stalin to the bourgeoisie, saying he “will be one of the great men in Russian history”.
In the revolutionary wave that emerged during and after the First World War, it was the Russian proletariat at the head of the revolution of 1917 that produced the most powerful dynamic of the international wave. The process continued in 1918 when the battalions of the German working class rose up, seeking to spread the revolution, but they were ruthlessly crushed by the German bourgeois state led by Social Democracy with the broad collaboration of the democratic states. Attempts to spread the proletarian revolution were thus stifled and the triumphant Russian revolution became isolated. The bourgeoisie of the whole world then erected a cordon sanitaire around the proletariat in Russia, making it impossible to hold on to the power it had seized in 1917 It was under these conditions that the counter-revolution arose from within: the Bolshevik party lost all its working class vitality, fostering the emergence and dominance of a bourgeois faction that was lead by Stalin.
Therefore, Stalinism is not the product of the communist revolution but rather the product of its defeat. Following to the letter the advice provided by Machiavelli, Stalin had no hesitation in resorting to intrigue, lies, manipulation and terror to install himself at the head of the state and to consolidate his power, strengthening the work of the counter- revolution by resorting to acts as ridiculous as rewriting history, doctoring photos by eliminating from them certain personalities he regarded as ‘heretics’ because of their oppositional stand. At the same time he promoted the cult of his personality and distorted the truth about the scale of repression and making this the core of his policy. This is why Stalinism is in no way a proletarian current; it is quite obvious that the means used and objectives pursued by Stalin and the group of careerists he surrounded himself with were overtly bourgeois.
With the ebbing of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the counter-revolution opened the door to the actions of Stalin. Thus, persecution, harassment and the physical elimination of combative proletarians were the first services he rendered to the ruling class. The world bourgeoisie applauded his methods, not only because an important generation of revolutionaries was wiped out but also because it was done in the name of communism, tainting its image and throwing the whole working class into total confusion.
The charges trumped up by the political police, the use of concentration camps and other atrocities, were supported by all the democratic states. For example, even before the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev (in 1936) in which threats against their families and physical torture were used, the democratic states applauded the services that Stalin rendered to their system: through the medium of their ‘worthy’ representatives assembled at the League of Human Rights (headquarters in France), the bourgeoisie approved the perfect ‘legality’ of the purges and the trials. The declaration of the novelist Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize for Literature winner in 1915 and distinguished member of this organisation, is indicative of the attitude of the ruling class: ‘“there is no reason to doubt the accusations against Zinoviev and Kamenev, individuals discredited for quite some time, who have twice been turncoats and gone back on their word. I do not know how I could dismiss as inventions or extracted confessions the public statements of the defendants themselves.”
Similarly, before the forced exile of Trotsky and his subsequent hounding across the world, the Social Democratic government of Norway and the French government, in total complicity with Stalinism, did not hesitate to harass and ultimately expel the old Bolshevik.
The full extent of the decline of the Bolshevik Party was revealed in when Stalin introduced the doctrine of the possibility of building socialism in one country.
Immediately after Lenin’s death in January 1924, Stalin hastened to place his pawns into key positions in the party and to focus his attacks on Trotsky, who was, after Lenin, the most respected revolutionary, and in the front line of the organised mass mobilisation of October 1917.
One proof of the departure of Stalin from the proletarian terrain is in formulating, along with Bukharin, the thesis of ‘socialism in one country’. (Let’s not forget that, some years later, Stalin would have Bukharin executed!). As the self-proclaimed ‘supreme leader of the world proletariat’ and the official voice of marxism, the best service that Stalin provided to the bourgeoisie was precisely this ‘doctrine’ that distorted and perverted proletarian internationalism, that had always been defended by the workers’ movement. This policy discredited marxist theory, spreading and sowing confusion not only among the generation of proletarians of that period but also today amongst the current generation. For example, we are cynically presented with facts like the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), the crushing of the Hungarian uprising (1956), or the invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, as expressions of ‘proletarian internationalism’. A character like Che Guevara claimed that the shipment of arms to countries like Angola was a demonstration of proletarian internationalism. This is not at all a confusion but is a deliberate policy aimed at demolishing this central pillar of marxism.
In the Principles of Communism (1847), Engels clearly defended the internationalist argument attacked by Stalin : “Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone? No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilised peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilised countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilised countries (…) It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range”.
The Bolsheviks, with Lenin at the helm, conceived the revolution in Russia as a first battle in the world revolution. That is why Stalin was lying when, to validate his thesis, he said it was a continuation of the teachings of Lenin. The bourgeois nature of this ‘theory’ dug the grave of the Bolshevik party and also that of the Communist International by subjecting these bodies to the defence of the interests of the Russian state.
The growth of terror through the concentration camps and the surveillance, control and repression organised through the NKVD (the secret police), etc., symbolise the counter-revolutionary juggernaut oiled by Stalin. But this is only the backdrop to the profound role it would fulfil: permitting the reconstitution of the bourgeoisie in the USSR.
The defeat of the world proletarian revolution and the disappearance of all the proletarian life from the Soviets provided the conditions for the establishment of a new bourgeoisie. It is true that the bourgeoisie was defeated by the proletarian revolution of 1917, but the subsequent ruin of the working class allowed Stalinism to rebuild the ruling class. The bourgeoisie’s reappearance on the social scene did not come from the resurrection of the remnants of the old class (except in a few individual cases), or from the individual ownership of the means of production, but in the development of a capital that would appear depersonalised, with no individual faces, only in the incarnation of the party bureaucracy merged with the state, that is to say, under the form of state ownership of the means of production.
For this reason, assuming that the nationalisation of the means of production is the expression of a society different to capitalism or that it represented (or represents) a ‘progressive step’ is a mistake. Thus when Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed explained that “state ownership of the means of production does not change cow dung into gold and does not confer an aura of holiness on the system of exploitation”, he went on to insist on the fact that the USSR was a ‘degenerated workers’ state’, which was an implied appeal for its defence. This was from the outset a profoundly confused conception. Trotskyism, above all after Trotsky’s death, pushed this logic to its extreme by dragooning the working class behind the defence of one imperialist camp, that of the USSR, during the Second World War, which demonstrated the Trotskyist current’s abandonment of the proletarian terrain.
In fact, the behaviour of Stalinism during the Second World War openly demonstrated its bourgeois nature: in 1944 ‘the Red Army’ cynically stood by while the Nazis crushed the Warsaw Uprising and, together with the Allies, participated in the re-division of imperialist spoils at the end of the war.
As we said above, the world bourgeoisie has received and still benefits from the great service provided by Stalinism, even if hypocritically, it distanced itself from Stalin, calling his government evil, while not hesitating to use it to fuel patriotism and to justify the imperialist war of 1939-45. This policy has by no means exhausted itself.
The year 2012 was marked by an acceleration of the struggle in Georgia (formerly part of the USSR) between bourgeois factions. As part of this bourgeois quarrel, there was a return to invoking Stalin to feed a nationalist campaign .
At the end of 2012 and the first months of this year, the Georgian bourgeoisie, under the pretext of recovering its historical legacy, restored statues of Stalin to several cities. The Georgian bourgeoisie (mainly the ultra-nationalist party Georgian Dream) revived his memory for the sole reason that he was born in this region, but more particularly to spread numbing propaganda among the exploited and chain them to the defence of the local bourgeoisie.
Similarly, changing the name of the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad for six days during the festive commemoration of ‘the defense of Stalingrad’, more than just a provincial act, must be understood as a justification by the bourgeoisie of the imperialist war which ennobles the role played by butchers like Stalin.
But if the bourgeoisie pays tribute to the memory of its bloody guard dogs, the working class needs a better understanding of the world and how to change it. It needs to reclaim its own history and learn from its own experiences and to better recognise the anti-proletarian profile of Stalin and Stalinism; it has, above all, to discover the internationalist principles of marxism that the bourgeoisie has persistently distorted and attacked, because they are the key to real class action.
Tatlin, February 2013
When the state cuts benefits, when politicians or the media make a big scandal about how much those not in work are getting, it is always in the name of fairness. For Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, the long term unemployed will have to accept work placements, training, or just turn up and hang around in an office all day if there is no work or training for them, in order to be “fair for those who need it and fair for those who pay”. That’s when they are not claiming that toughness and a punitive approach is the kindest thing for those who are sick, disabled or unemployed. But is it true?
The attacks on benefits have accelerated since the recession of 2008, so that we have seen the cap on benefits, the bedroom tax, and the vilification of claimants. The economy has not yet recovered from that recession, with GDP still more than 3% below the level of the first quarter of 2008. And it certainly isn’t only the unemployed who face attacks. The whole working class is facing a rise in the state pension age, with teachers and firefighters the latest to face a rise in the occupational pension age as well as greater costs and reduced pension benefits. Young adults will no longer get housing benefit at all – adding to the number forced to continue living with their parents. The whole public sector is facing a 1% pay cap, with NHS staff facing a pay freeze. Many workers face the threat of their firm being shut down if they don’t accept worse pay and conditions and a number of redundancies, most recently those at Grangemouth. And we all face a rise of approximately 10% in energy prices from all the main suppliers – so much for competition and shopping around.
This is the ruling class idea of fairness – every part of the working class is affected by crisis, it’s tough, but it’s tough for everyone. In order for this argument to work we have to forget that we are part of the working class and accept the divisions and competition imposed on us: ‘strivers’ (those fortunate enough to have a job) against ‘shirkers’ (the unemployed); public sector against private sector; teachers against NHS workers in the struggle for scarce budgetary resources.
The reality is that we do have a common interest as workers. Let us take the example of making the unemployed work for their benefits and its so-called fairness to those who ‘pay’ because they are in work. If my job can be done by one of the unemployed on work placement, how soon do I either have to do the work for less or even lose my job? In capitalism there is always a larger or smaller number of unemployed, and every ‘striver’ with a job is also at risk of being forced into becoming an unemployed ‘shirker’.
It’s the same with every attack. If 18-25 year olds cannot get housing benefit that means very often they cannot get independent housing whether or not they have a job, especially in high cost areas such as London. This affects the whole family with the parents putting up their adult children.
Attacks on those in work are no exception. If the state caps pay rises at 1% in the public sector, significantly below the official inflation rate of 2.7%, then through competition this has a downward effect on wages and salaries in general. Of course, when it comes to the pay freeze in the NHS this has a much wider effect. Just like the attacks on the unemployed, it comes with a pretence of fairness and a vilification of the victims. The excuse is that those working in the NHS already get an annual increase due to seniority, which is doubly dishonest – firstly because Agenda for Change is being imposed to introduce performance related pay, and secondly because the annual increases only apply to some of the staff for part of the time; and overall as older staff retire they are replaced by younger on the lower pay scales. The vilification comes in the form of blaming those who work in the NHS for the deterioration that comes from poor staffing levels, poor training and perverse incentives imposed by the latest targets.
The attacks affect us all, so how can we all fight back against them? Recent strikes by school teachers, firefighters, and university lecturers and support staff show that there is a great deal of discontent. The issues are very similar when not exactly the same: an increase in pension age for both firefighters and teachers; the question of pay in schools, where performance related pay is being brought in, and universities, where a 1% offer goes nowhere near overcoming the 13% deterioration in real pay; as well as the issue of increased workload for teachers. Meanwhile the CWU has called off strike action in the Post Offices and Royal Mail in a joint statement with management about future negotiation over the threat to jobs (about 1,500 under threat with the proposal to shut 75 offices) and to pay and terms during the Royal Mail privatisation.
But the actual strikes have seen the workers kept completely separate from each other. The NUT and NAS/UWT teaching unions called a series of regionally divided, one day strikes in October, calling off further action for negotiation. The university unions and Fire Brigades Union called one day and 4 hour demonstration strikes respectively in the same week but on different days. As usual with union strike action workers have been kept separate even when fighting on the same issues at the same time. The strike has been taken out of the hands of workers and made into an adjunct to union negotiation. The chance for workers to meet and discuss with others facing similar attacks in different industries has been avoided – because what is a necessity for the workers in taking their struggle forward is a danger for the forces of the ruling class ranged against them, the bosses, the state and the unions.
Alex 2.11.13
The following article was written by a comrade in North America in the midst of the US federal government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis. While the immediate crisis has now passed with another temporary deal to kick the can down the road, the underlying tensions remain, virtually ensuring that the US political system will suffer further convulsions in the period ahead.
On October 1st, the US federal government entered a “partial shutdown” after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to reach an agreement on a continuing budget resolution (CR) to keep the government running for another six weeks. As a result of the shutdown, 800,000 federal workers are on furlough, national parks and memorials are closed and most ”non-essential” government functions have come to a halt. As we write, federal small business loans are not being processed, student loans are on hold and money appears to be running out for many federal “safety-net” programs, such as the WIC program, which provides emergency assistance to pregnant women and those with infant children. Bourgeois economists now worry that the shutdown is costing the US economy $160 million a day. 1
At this time, there appears to be no clear end to the shutdown in sight. Republicans, whose original rationale for not agreeing to fund the government was to defund “Obamacare,” seem unlikely to surrender without extracting some sort of concession from the Democrats, while President Obama says he simply will not negotiate with Republicans at the point of a hostage-taker’s gun.
What’s worse is that the shutdown is occurring as the deadline for the United States to raise its “debt ceiling” once again approaches. If Congress does not raise the nation’s statutory borrowing limit by October 17th, the United States will shortly thereafter default on all or part of its national debt, something which most professional economists agree would be the beginning of a global economic catastrophe. While elements of the Tea Party seem to be intent on forcing the issue, there are some recent signs that the Republican Party may soften its stance on the debt ceiling and agree to a temporary increase in the nation’s borrowing limit. Still, as we write, the resolution of this crisis is far from settled, and—as numerous analysts have pointed out—whatever the real intent of the Republicans, the closer the nation gets to the October 17th deadline without raising the debt ceiling, the chances of some kind of unintentional disaster increase. As one commentator put it, “If you keep wrestling at the edge of the cliff, eventually you will go over it.” The American bourgeoisie seems locked in a game of nuclear financial chicken with itself, putting an already fragile global economy at risk of a complete meltdown.
However this situation resolves, regardless of whether or not the more rational elements of the Republican Party win out over the Tea Party wing, this episode marks yet one more step into a deepening political crisis that has rocked the American ruling class since Obama’s election in 2008. Moreover, these events are just one more embarrassment for the United States on the international stage, coming on the heels of the revelations about NSA spying this past summer. Already, the Chinese officials have publicly called for “de-Americanizing” the global economy and suggestions have been floated of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar, based on the Chinese Yuan but managed in London.
While it would be a mistake to overstate the nature of the political crisis—the American state is not on the verge of collapse just yet—it would also be an error to chalk these events up to just another contentious partisan fight over how to manage the nation’s deepening economic and imperialist difficulties. More than a mere policy dispute between various bourgeois factions, these events could possibly presage a major realignment in the American political system, potentially calling into question the stability of its two party structure and division of ideological labor.
So what is the nature of this political crisis and what does it say about the position of the United States in the context of continuing global economic difficulties? How does the political crisis of the US bourgeoisie fit with the theory of capitalist decomposition? In what follows, we will explore these questions, pointing out the danger for the proletariat in falling behind any faction of the bourgeoisie, even if the Democrats appear for the moment on the surface as the embodiment of order and rationality against the ideological decomposition of the Republican Party.
Although the political difficulties of the US bourgeoisie originate from at least the failed impeachment of President Clinton in the late 1990s and the botched presidential election of 2000, the current situation of Tea Party inspired mayhem stems from the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008. As we have analyzed in previous articles, although the main factions of the US bourgeoisie were behind Obama’s meteoric rise to the Presidency as a kind of anti-Bush, his election was not greeted with universal acceptance.2 Even before he was inaugurated, conservative groups were organizing to oppose his Presidency. The Tea Party, a loosely defined marriage of grassroots conservative organizations and corporate sponsors, rode white racist resentment of the first African-American President and paranoid fears of impending socialism to reach national prominence in 2009 and 2010.
Stoked by establishment Republicans who sought to use the grassroots energy of the movement to regain control of Congress, and by corporate money in search of a low regulation, anti-union business environment, the Tea Party had become a major player in national politics in advance of the 2010 mid-term elections. Although used by the Republican establishment to further its electoral agenda, the Tea Party clearly represents an element of the US bourgeoisie that is not traditionally counted among its “main factions.” Regionally, it is based in the South with some allies elsewhere, particularly in suburban and ex-urban regions of the Mid-West and West. Sociologically, it mostly represents small bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements with local and regional power that previously did not exert much influence on the national level. These are mostly small and medium sized business people: car dealers, doctors, etc, who feel shut out by the growth of federal authority in their regions and who were resentful of the giant federal bail-outs given to Wall Street in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown. For many of them, the mandate contained in Obamacare - that certain businesses provide health insurance to their employees - feels like an onerous intrusion of the federal government into their local and regional economies.
Politically, the Tea Party counts on the “white backlash” against mass immigration, continuing white racism against African-Americans and anti-welfare and anti-tax demagoguery to stoke up a passionate electoral base among parts of the petty bourgeoisie and white working class with their talk of resistance and no compromises with the forces they oppose with religious like fervor. Ideologically, they represent a hodge podge of libertarian, authoritarian and traditionalist themes, united by a Manichean tendency to view their struggle as a kind of crusade and their opponents as the embodiment of societal decay, treason and foreignness. While the roots of the Tea Party go back generations, even to the reaction by local white elites against the rights won by African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War, this faction of the American bourgeoisie has not enjoyed this level of political influence at the national level since their defeat during the Civil Rights era.
It was with this faction, which had gained a new insurgent energy in the wake of Obama’s election, that the establishment Republicans made a Faustian bargain in advance the of the 2010 mid-term elections. Moreover, Wall Street used the Tea Party as a hedge against any possibility that the Obama administration and its Democratic allies may develop a taste for raising taxes and imposing too many regulations on their casino economy in the wake of the 2008 meltdown. The Republican establishment legitimated the Tea Party, while Wall Street bank rolled it all the way to a Republican take-over of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms.
Since the 2010 midterms, despite President Obama’s successful re-election bid in 2012, the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representative has wreacked havoc within the US bourgeoisie. Now beholden to the “radicals” in his caucus, House speaker John Boehner has had to toe their ideological line, already taking the nation close to default in 2011.3 While the weight of the Tea Party within Congress has been useful for the main factions of the bourgeoisie in pushing an austerity agenda, including the painful sequester cuts that took effect earlier this year, the Republican refusal to compromise with the President has prevented a “grand bargain” that would attack the national deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare and raising certain taxes. Moreover, the visceral hatred felt by many in the Tea Party caucus for immigrants has prevented any deal for comprehensive immigration reform from coming to fruition, frustrating the main factions of the US bourgeoisie’s search for a solution to these burning problems for the national capital.
However, perhaps most contentious has been the attempts by the Republican Party to undue President Obama’s signature health reform legislation.4 Despite its modest effect in mitigating the drag on the national capital represented by runaway health care costs, the Republican Party has fought tooth and nail, although so far unsuccessfully, to prevent the implementation of this law, leading to the current government shutdown. This is despite the fact that the law was a brainchild of Republican think-tanks and initially implemented on the state level by the Republicans’ last Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.
It is difficult to see the “material interests” at the level of the national capital that the Republican Party is defending with their opposition to the implementation of this law, leading many to conclude that their obstructionism is driven by the extent to which their party has been “captured” by Tea Party ideologues hell bent on repealing a law they see as a form of “socialism.” Whatever the small benefit to the national capital of Obama’s reform efforts, the implacable opposition to it from the right seems mostly to be an effect of ideological decomposition on the small bourgeoisie, enabled by the increasingly short-term political maneuvering of Wall Street and their Republican allies.5
While it may be the case that Tea Party positions are “locally rational” in the political context of their gerrymandered districts, this means little on the level of the national and global economies. In fact, one of the main features of the current crisis is the rise to power within the US ruling class of elements that appear to have no idea how a modern capitalist state must function or the requirements of remaining a hegemonic power in a globally integrated economy.
While there may be some long term “rationality” in the Tea Party’s concern about the US national debt (in the way a broken clock is right twice a day), this in no way legitimizes a seemingly suicidal opposition to raising the debt ceiling. If the US wants to maintain its global hegemony, it will simply have to continue to borrow money—such are the contradictions of a globalized decadent capitalism. Of course, the Tea Party may be right in one sense—it is indeed absurd that in order to maintain its global position the US must continue to sink further into debt. This fact only illustrates the historical bankruptcy of the entire capitalist system. Still, from the perspective of the national capital, this in no way legitimates the Tea Party’s seemingly self-destructive death wish with ending US foreign borrowing overnight, or the ridiculous obsession of the Paul family with abolishing the Federal Reserve.
Now that the American political system has wound itself into a position of “governing through crisis,” passing from one deadline crisis to the next, it is reasonable to ask, just as the more sophisticated bourgeois analysts do, if there is a way out of this mess? It is in the process of addressing this question that the American media has recently discovered the work of the Spanish political scientist Juan Linz.6 Linz, recently deceased, based his career on the comparative studies of democracies, arguing for the superiority of Westminster style parliamentary democracy over the Presidential system. Indeed, in the academic field of comparative politics the question of why many Presidential systems have been prone to collapse has been a burning issue for decades, particularly in the study of Third World “democracies,” many of who adopted a Presidential system only to shortly thereafter experience political impasse and a military coup. In Presidential systems, in which it is possible for the chief executive and the majority in the legislature to be from different parties, a crisis of democratic legitimacy, it was argued, was an inherent threat to the continuity of the state as neither the President nor the legislature could claim a full “democratic” mandate.
Of course, there was always one glaring exception to the tendency towards instability in Presidential systems: The United States of America, which despite experiencing a Civil War over slavery, had maintained a functioning and stable Presidential system for over two centuries. In the United States, the “checks and balances” inherent in the separation of powers appeared to work, preventing momentary majorities from enacting radical changes to the social and economic order. However, Linz argued that the exceptional nature of the United States was due more to the character of American political parties than a unique political culture. American parties have historically not been very well sorted according to “ideology.” Both the Democratic and Republican parties have tended towards pragmatism as each represent broad coalitions, which can recognize and act on common interests with elements of the other party. Should this change and the parties develop an ideological character, the United States would be prone to the same kind of political crisis that has led to the collapse of democratic state structures in other nations.
From the perspective of the current impasse in US politics, there is much to support in Linz’s analysis, in particular the increasing tendency towards “ideological sorting” in the US political parties. In many ways this analysis fits with our own, which has described an increasing “ideological hardening” in US society. However, from a Marxist perspective this only begs the question of what is driving this ideological sorting? In our analysis, it all comes back to the forces of capitalist decomposition and their reciprocal effect on the US political structure.
However, it is important to note that this process of ideological sorting has, to this time, disproportionately affected the Republican Party. Its bargain with the Tea Party—itself a reflection of an increasing tendency towards short term thinking—has allowed the forces of ideological decay to assert themselves in such a way that today the US bourgeoisie faces a virtual civil war within one of its major political parties, between the Tea Party insurgency and the remaining figures of the Republican establishment. Earlier this year, this war was expressed in the fight over immigration reform, in which it was expected by most pundits that the Republicans—out of electoral self-interest—would cut a deal with Democrats to overhaul the immigration system. Unfortunately, for the main factions of the US bourgeoisie in both parties, this has failed to transpire, mostly out of strong resistance from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party who simply will not allow the US state to grant anything smacking of amnesty to those who have violated the law.
Although the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives constitutes only a minority of members, they have been able to direct Republican policy over the past several years through the threat of a primary challenge from the right to any Republican who appears too soft in negotiations with Democrats or who fails to toe the Tea Party line on important issues. The primary threat is enabled by increasingly gerrymandered electoral districts, in which Republicans face no real competition from the left and therefore are forced to lurch ever further to the right. Moreover, the influx of unregulated campaign money, coming mostly from right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers, which is now allowed under recent Supreme Court decisions, makes it possible for political neophytes from the right to upset many establishment Republicans in primary elections, drawing on the energy of an increasingly radicalized activist base intent on fighting back against the demographic change symbolized by the Obama Presidency.
Nevertheless, for all the triumphant media talk following Obama’s reelection about the demographic tide that is supposed to herald a new error of Democratic political dominance, the US bourgeoisie seems unable to surmount the difficulties posed by the right wing backlash. While the Democrats may now have a natural advantage in Presidential elections, this has not yet translated to off year and down ballot races. Couple this fact with the gerrymandering carried out by Republican controlled state legislatures and the Republican Party can continue to win control of the House of Representatives. Much dismay has been heard in the bourgeois media that however much the public at large is angry with Republicans over the government shut down and threat of default, the GOP is unlikely to feel much political pain at the ballot box.
Safe in their gerrymandered districts, Republican legislators have little to fear from Democrats at the same time they face an existential threat from a right-wing primary challenger should they stray too far from right-wing orthodoxy. Others argue that the Republican Party has basically given up trying to win the Presidency, preferring to enact its agenda through other means by weakening the office of the Presidency, using whatever tactics are necessary, including holding the global economy hostage. 7
There seems to be few good ways out of this impasse for the US ruling class. Although it is certainly possible that some temporary compromise will relieve the immediate threat posed by the debt ceiling limit and the government shut down, this will unlikely do anything to transform the underlying structural problems dogging the US bourgeoisie. Once again, the best the main factions of the bourgeoisie will likely be able to do is to kick the can down the road. The US ruling class is stuck with the fact that its state structure seemingly promotes a system of “locally rational, nationally foolish” for much of the Republican Party, and the traditional means for keeping the perverse incentives towards extremism under control have mostly broken down.
Perhaps the most damaging prospect for the US bourgeoisie of this political crisis is the calling into question of its traditional two-party democratic illusion and division of ideological labor. If ideological decomposition has turned the Republicans into an openly reactionary party representing a demographically doomed constituency, the Democratic Party is itself increasingly losing its image as the “party of the working class.”
Pushed by the Republican Party’s increasing rightward lurch, the Democratic Party has been forced to try to be both the party of the labor unions and at the same time that of neo-liberal corporatism. Within the broad Democratic coalition must co-exist such diverse political stances as the furthest left of the established unions like the Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU) and the so-called urban education reformers who push charter schools, merit pay and openly demonize the teachers’ unions. More and more, while the Republican Party enacts an enforced ideological purity, the Democratic Party appears to stand for nothing, except compromise itself, elevating deal making into an end in itself. In order to appear as the rational, “grown-up” party, nothing is off the table, not even Social Security and Medicare. But how can a party that acquiesces so easily to cuts in the meager social wage serve as a buttress against any social unrest that may emerge in the future? While for now, the Democrats can use the Republican Party’s meltdown as political cover, it is unclear for how long it can keep this charade going, especially when Obama is no longer the face of the party after 2016.
It is clear that the American state system is under severe stress at this time. Its two party democratic illusion is in jeopardy: one of its major parties is experiencing a serious upheaval that could possibly result in a split, while the other is increasingly called upon to shed its image as the protector of the working class. There appears to be fewer and fewer options open to the American bourgeoisie to repair the situation within the current structures of the state. While it is impossible to predict precisely how this will play out, it is important to note that each time the punditry has predicted that the Republican Party will come out of its ideological stupor in order to protect its electoral interests, it has only tended to dig in its heels further. While this allows the Democratic Party to claim to be the rational party, workers should have no illusions about what this means. For the Democrats, rationality means compromise, with each new compromise requiring the working class to bear the brunt of the pain. We should remember that in the current fight over the government shut down, the Democratic Party has already accepted the Republicans’ painful budget numbers. The budget, which is ostensibly at the heart of the current stand-off, is only several billion dollars more than that proposed by the Republican Party’s chief of austerity Paul Ryan. With each substantive crisis, the Democrats’ opening gambit is often already a restatement of its “opponent’s” position, revealing the true nature of both parties as enemies of the proletariat.
This should leave us with few doubts that in this contest between thieves both parties have austerity for the working class in mind. Thus, however more “rational” the Democrats claim to be compared to their Republican counterparts, it is necessary to grasp the meaning of their "rationality" in context. If rationality means enacting those polices that serve the interest of the US national capital, this will ultimately mean more austerity for the working class even if a deliberate blow up of the global economy is avoided.
All the political drama and media spectacle over these crises seems to include an important message that the media has tried to reinforce: the key to the functioning of any democratic political system is that all sides must be willing to compromise. Thus, compromise is set-up as an end in itself; it becomes the litmus test for rationality and good governance. Those who take a principled stand in favor of one position or another are ultimately painted with the brush of “extremism” and are said to act outside the boundaries of “democratic norms.” As a result of its recent behavior, many analysts have decided that the Republican Party is no longer a “normal” political party, but one bent on chaos and destruction. However much this is true, we have to be clear to separate this discussion from any attempt to turn this critique back on revolutionaries.
As descendants of the communist left, we are well aquatinted with the critique of those who refuse to compromise. Many of the charges thrown around by the pundits at the Republican “radicals” today are very similar to things Lenin said to dismiss the Dutch and Italian lefts within the Comintern. The refusal to compromise is labeled “juvenile,” “absolutist” and “impractical.” Compromises are supposed to be necessary in order to avoid premature confrontations, which one is likely to lose (as appears to be fate of the Republican Party today).
While we think any attempt to associate the communist left with the kind of intransigence at work in today’s Republican Party is not historically appropriate, it may very well be the case that the media is using the current crises to transmit a broader lesson about “radicalism” to the general population. Perhaps it is not for nothing that the phrase “Tea Party radical” has gained such currency? The message appears to be that anyone who steps outside the boundaries of normal politics is simply irresponsible, if not downright crazy, and should be summarily dismissed. “Grown-ups compromise.” They don’t refuse to negotiate when the pain for not doing is mutual ruin.
From our point of view, it is one thing to hold firm to the principles that delineate the boundary of bourgeois from proletarian politics as the historic communist left did, and another altogether for one bourgeois party to threaten the blow up the global economy if it doesn’t get its way. The communist left was a reaction to the growing political degeneration of the Comintern (as a result of the failure of the world revolution to spread from it Russian bastion) and its progressive reintegration into the state apparatus of capital. Today’s Tea Party intransigence is a reflection of the decomposition of the capitalist system and its centrifugal action upon the bourgeois political apparatus, which in turn pushes the underlying economic system to the brink of catastrophe.
For the working class, the lesson in the current crisis is clear. The bourgeois political apparatus is reaching the point of breakdown. While for now this process may be affecting one party more than another, there is no reason to expect deliverance from the Democrats. While the Democrats may not be interested in provoking a national default, they will most likely avoid this through a “compromise” that includes more attacks against the working class’s standard of living.8 There is only one way out of this morass and it starts with the working class returning to the path of its own autonomous struggles outside of the control of all capitalist political parties.
Henk, 10/14/2013
1 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-08/shutdown-costs-at-1-6-billion-... [1086]
2 See the series of articles we have produced since the election of 2008 in Internationalism.3 For our analysis of the first debt ceiling crisis of 2011 see: U.S. Debt Ceiling Crisis: Political Wrangling While the Global Economy Burns https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201108/4459/us-debt-ceiling-cr... [1087]
4 For our analysis of “Obamacare” see “Obamacare”: Political Chaos for the Bourgeoisie, Austerity for the Working Class. [1088]
5 For an analysis that attempts to find the rational interests in Tea Party antics see this blog by Michael Lind: Tea Party Radicalism is misunderstood: Meet the “Newest Right” [1089].
6 See Juan Linz, The Crisis of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) 1978.
7 Such was the analysis of MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell in yet another attempt to find the rationality in the Republican Party’s actions.
8 Of course, in the current crisis Obama and the Democrats have finally discovered that compromise has its limits. Not willing to repeat his mistake of 2011, in which he openly negotiated with hostage-takers, Obama has so far remained steadfast in his refusal to negotiate until the debt ceiling is raised and the government reopened, recognizing that do so would continue the negative precedent of rewarding economic terrorism. However, Obama and the Democrats have also been painfully clear that once the debt ceiling is raised and the government reopened, anything and everything is on the table in future budget negotiations.
The media are full of unbearable images of children and whole families dying of starvation in a world where vast amounts of food are being thrown away. The violence of this absurd poverty seems to have no limits. 10,000 people die of hunger every day. A child under 10 dies of starvation every 5 seconds. 842 million people are suffering from severe undernourishment. And this misery is spreading throughout the world, reaching part of the population of the ‘rich’ world, where food banks are becoming increasingly common. And if we are not immediately faced with hunger, we are being made to feel culpable for the horrors stalking the ‘third world’.
The ‘experts’ give us the most unbelievable explanations for all this. There are too many people. Our food regime is not adapted to the resources of the planet. We don’t have enough respect for these resources. In short, everything is geared to making us feel as guilty as possible, while those who are really responsible for this are never denounced. Is it their fault that modest families in the ‘Northern’ countries have to buy food at the lowest prices at the supermarkets? Shouldn’t we blame the ‘consumers’ for buying products made in the most dubious conditions? There are those who repeat this endlessly, and many of them tell us if we ‘consume in a different way’, everyone will be better off, including those in the poor countries. Our problem is that we are not being responsible. We eat too much and we eat badly, so it’s all our fault if others are going hungry.
There’s not much doubt that we eat badly, given all the colourings, sugars, and pesticides in our food. We will come back to that later on. But for now the question is this: how can we really understand this situation? Our planet is a very fertile place, blessed with an extremely rich and diverse ecosystem which contains vast potential. With more than 10Gha (10,000,000,000 hectares) of potentially cultivable land, it seems inconceivable that with the current technology so many people should be facing starvation. And yet they are. If we compare the resources available on the planet with the actual use being made of them today, we can see immense contradictions, contradictions which are threatening the very survival of our species.
Let’s look a bit more closely at these contradictions. As we said, the planet disposes of 10Gha of potentially cultivable land. According to a report published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Britain[1], the total amount of land actually being cultivated today represents 4.9Gha, i.e. around half of what is available for the production of food. This same report indicates that the average capacity of a one hectare field to produce grain or maize would make it possible, given current means, to feed between 19 and 22 people for a year, whereas the exploitation of a hectare destined for producing beef or lamb for human consumption makes it possible to feed around 1.5 people a year.
The existing productivity in the agro-food sector thus makes it possible to feed the whole world population. If millions of human beings are dying of hunger every day, the cause is this ignoble system which does not produce to satisfy the needs of humanity but to sell and make a profit. Here is the big difference with the famines of the Middle Ages: these were a result of the limited development of tools, of techniques, of the organisation of land and labour. Human beings continued to exploit every inch of land in order to make up for this lack of productivity. Today, under capitalism, humanity possesses extraordinary capacities which it is not using. Worse than that: the race for profit leads to immense waste:
“In South-East Asian countries for example, losses of rice can range from 37% to 80% of total production depending on development stage, which amounts to total wastage in the region of about 180 million tonnes annually...The potential to provide 60–100% more food by simply eliminating losses, while simultaneously freeing up land, energy and water resources for other uses, is an opportunity that should not be ignored.” [2]
In Europe, 50% of food products end up in the bin – 240,000 tons every day.
In response to famines, putting a stop to such waste, to the destruction of unsold food, would appear to be the immediate measures that need to be taken, even if they are largely insufficient. But even these basic measures can’t be taken by capitalism because in this society human welfare and the satisfaction of needs, even the most basic ones, is not at all the goal of production. Factories, machinery, capital only exist to make a profit and the workers are only fed so that they can produce surplus value, the source of profit. Measures that might seem simple and obvious can only be adopted by the proletariat in a revolutionary situation.
This said, in the long term, a society free from social classes and capital will have to take much more radical measures than this. The capitalist mode of production ravages nature, exhausts the soil, poisons the air. The majority of animal species are threatened with extinction if the destructive madness of this system isn’t halted.
Those who are conscious of this situation can only react with indignation. But many claim that the way forward is to reduce consumption, and to practice negative growth. But the solution is neither ‘productivist’ (producing more and more without concern for the aim of production), or negative growth (producing less so that each human being lives just above the poverty line, which is impossible under capitalism with its inevitable class inequalities). It has to be much more radical and profound than that. If production is no longer spurred on by the hunt for profit but by the satisfaction of human need, then the conditions of production will have to change completely. In the realm of food production, all research, the whole organisation of labour and the soil, the process of distribution...will be guided by the respect for humanity and nature. But this implies the overthrow of capitalism.
From what we know today, agriculture first made its appearance around 10,000 years ago, somewhere around the south east of what is today Turkey. Since then, techniques have continued to develop, sometimes resulting in major leaps in output. The use of animals to pull the swing plough became general in antiquity, while the development of the wheeled plough and of three crop rotation around the 10th century AD led to definite improvements in production. However, it is important to remember that despite the advances that marked this long period[3], the technical knowledge of the time did not make it possible to generate stable harvests from one year to the next. There were many examples of great famines that decimated the population: in 1315 for example, as a result of a particularly cold and rainy year, harvests in France were 50% below that of previous years, resulting in the deaths of between 5 and 10% of the population. To a lesser extent the same phenomenon could be seen in 1348, this time followed by the Black Death which struck an already weakened population. To simplify, during the 14th and 15th centuries when the climate was less favourable than in the previous period, there was a terrible famine every 20 or 30 years. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that agricultural production ceased to suffer so severely from blows delivered by the climate. The progress in machinery and the use of fossil fuels (coal and oil), the advances in inorganic chemistry and the introduction of mineral fertilisers led to a considerable increase in output. With the development of capitalism, agriculture became an industry, in the image of the textile industry, or transport. Tasks were rigorously planned and the concept of the manufacturing process, with the scientific organisation of labour, permitted an unprecedented increase in productivity. All this led people to believe that periods of crisis and famine would give way to centuries of abundance. Most of the scientists of the day swore by the progress of science and thought that the development of capitalist society would be the remedy for all ills. Most, but not all. In 1845 for example, when capitalism was in full expansion, a terrible famine struck Ireland. Mildew and humid weather led to a fall in the potato crop of nearly 40%. The consequences for the population were dramatic – it is estimated that there were a million deaths between 1846 and 1851. But even if the techniques of the day were still fairly rudimentary, it would be a mistake to see the potato blight as the sole cause of the catastrophe. In contrast to what happened in 1780, Ireland’s ports remained open due to the pressure of Protestant negotiators and Ireland carried on exporting food. While whole families on the island were dying of hunger, convoys of food belonging to the landlords, escorted by the army, set off for England. This is how England’s capitalist development took place. The boundless cruelty of the capitalist system led Engels to write in 1882:
“In the advanced industrial countries, we have subdued the forces of nature and harnessed them to the service of man; we have thus infinitely multiplied production to the point where a child today can produce what once took 100 adults. And what are the consequences? Growing over-work and mounting poverty for the masses, and every ten years, a huge debacle” (Dialectics of Nature).
In the next article [1093]we will examine this subject in the context of the decadence of capitalism.
Enkidu 20/10/13
[1]. ‘Global food, waste not, want not’
[2]. Global Food
[3]. We can also refer to the work of Oliviér Serres (1539-1619) on the structure of agricultural practice
In the aftermath of the general elections of 22 September 2013 in Germany, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic, Angela Merkel and leader of the Christian Democrats, is presently negotiating the formation of a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats. The new government will be the third in a row under the Chancellorship of Merkel. The first one was also a Grand Coalition with the second largest party in the Bundestag, the SPD. The second one was a coalition with the small liberal partner, the FDP. One of the results of the recent elections was that Merkel lost her coalition partner. For the first time since the foundation of the Federal Republic after the Second World War, the Liberals failed to gain entry to parliament. At the moment of writing, the formation of a coalition of the Christian Democrats with the SPD appears to be by far the most likely outcome. The course of the negotiations between these two parties already indicate that, although the Christian Democrats have a much bigger share of the seats in parliaments, the new coalition with the SPD, if it comes into being, will be “written in the handwriting of the Social Democrats”, as the media have already declared. In other words: the programme of the new government will not be to immediately and frontally attack the working class, although these massive attacks will of necessity follow in the course of time.
By far the most remarkable result of the recent elections however was the fact that the Chancellor and her party, who have already ruled the country for two full terms of office, could celebrate such an electoral triumph. In a country which, since the war, has, with one brief exception, always been ruled by coalition governments, Merkel came close to gaining an absolute majority – for Germany a sensation. This is all the more remarkable since, in most of the other countries of Europe, the economic situation is so serious, and the need to attack the working population so acute, that any government, whether of the left or the right, tends to rapidly lose popularity and even credibility and thus to be sent back into opposition at the next elections. This at least is the form which the social safety valve of capitalist democracy presently takes in Europe: The anger of the population is canalised and neutralised into a “protest vote”, which, for the “political class” has the consequence that the long-term continuity of a given governing team becomes increasingly unlikely. A dramatic example of this development is France, where the left wing government of Francois Hollande, not long ago celebrated by the media as the new hope for the working people of the whole of Europe, has suffered after only one year in office an all time loss of public sympathy. But what we see in Germany is the contrary development, at least for the moment. The question is: how is this to be explained?
Perhaps the most important “secret” of the lasting electoral strength of Angela Merkel lies in the fact that it was not necessary yet, under her chancellorship, to massively attack the population. And one of the reasons for this is that her predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and his left coalition of the SPD and the Greens, already did this so successfully that Merkel is still reaping the rewards. Schröder’s so-called “Agenda 2010”, unleashed at the beginning of the new century, was a huge success from the point of view of capital. It succeed in reducing the global wage bill of the country so radically that its main rivals in Europe, such as France, publically protested against the “wage dumping” of the continent’s leading economic power. It also succeed in enforcing an unprecedented “flexibilisation” of the work force, in particular through a breathtaking development of precarious employment, not only in traditionally low wage sectors, but at the heart of industry. Thirdly (and this was not the least of Schröder’s achievements) all of this was achieved through an attack which was absolutely massive, but not generalised. In other words, instead of attacking the proletariat as a whole, the measures were designed to create deep visions within the class, between employed and unemployed workers, between workers with regular contracts and those without. In the big factories a veritable apartheid system was established between the regular employees and the “casuals” doing the same job for only half or even only a third off the wage; in some cases they were not even allowed to use the company canteen. As a result, whereas in many other European countries such massive attacks had to be implemented without much previous planning under the hammer blows of the so-called financial crisis from 2008 on, Merkel was in the comfortable position that in Germany these measures were already in place and bearing their fruits for capital.
Another specificity at this level is that the attacks in Germany were not hatched out, for instance, by one of the infamous neo-liberal “think tanks”, but first and foremost by the trade unions. Agenda 2010 was worked out by a commission led by Peter Hartz, a friend of Schröder at the Volkswagen concern, with the direct participation of the trade union factory council of Volkswagen and the IG Metall, the metal workers’ union, the most powerful trade union in Europe, which (as many employers have publically admitted) understands more about successful management than the managers themselves. No wonder that today the majority of the German bourgeoisie, including the employers’ federations, is eager to have the Social Democrats (and with them the unions) join Merkel in a coalition government. And no wonder that Merkel, after losing her liberal coalition partner, is presently distancing herself increasingly from the ideology of neo-liberalism, singing songs of praise for the good old German model of the alleged “social market economy” (where the trade unions directly participate in running the country) and even beginning to advocate the extension of this model to the rest of Europe.
Another reason for Merkel’s success story lies in the strong competitive edge of the German economy. If this competitive edge were based solely on the wage dumping explained above, it would now be melting away in face of the drastic attacks elsewhere in Europe in recent years. But in reality it has a much broader basis in the economic structure of the country itself. There is a danger for marxists, confronted by the abstract mode of functioning of capital, of themselves being mesmerised by this abstract character, and thus falling for the impression that the relative strength or weakness of a national capital depends solely on abstract criteria such as the development of the organic composition of capital or the rate of indebtedness in relation to GNP etc. This leads to a purely schematic vision of the capitalist economy, where political, historical, cultural, geographical, military and other factors disappear from sight. For instance, if you look at the growth rates or the level of debts of the USA and compare them with those of China, you can only conclude that America has already lost the race against its Asiatic challenger and might even end up with some kind of third world status. But this forgets that the USA is still the capitalist paradise of innovative “start ups”, that it is no coincidence that the centre of the new media is the United States, and that the political culture of a Stalinist led country like China prevents it from emulating its rival.
In her polemic with the revisionist Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg (in her book Reform or Revolution?) explained that the “laws” discovered by Karl Marx concerning the rising organic composition and the centralisation of capital do not mean the necessary disappearance of middle sized enterprises. On the contrary, she explains, such smaller companies necessarily remain the heart of the technical innovation which is at the hub of an economic system based on competition and the obligation to accumulate. Germany is not a paradise for capitalist start ups like the United States (the heavy weight of its bureaucratic traditions prevent this). But it remains to this day the Mecca of the world engineering and machine construction industries. This strength is based on highly specialised, often family led companies, who pass their skills on from generation to generation, and on a highly qualified work force based on a unique apprenticeship system and on traditions which go back to the Middle Ages. In the past 20 years, in a coordinated operation between the employers’ federations, the government, the banks and the trade unions, these small and middle size machine-constructing enterprises, without necessarily increasing their size, have been transformed into world-wide operating businesses. But their base of operation remains Germany. Here again, the signature of the trade unions is evident. Whereas an employer will tend not to mind whether profits come from a plant in Germany or abroad, as long as there are profits, the thinking of the trade unions is almost viscerally nationalistic, since their primordial task is to control the work force in Germany itself, in the interests of capital, and this can best be done by maintaining industry and jobs “at home”. The metal workers’ union directly concerned, the IG Metall, is a fanatical defender of Germany as an industrial base (the “Standort Deutschland”).
All of this helps to explain why Germany, at least to date, has been better able to resist the terrible deepening of the world economic crisis of capitalism since 2008 than most of its rivals. But none of these advantages would have helped much had the structure of the capitalist economy not radically changed since the days of the terrible depression which began in 1929 and which ended in World War Two. At that time, the heartlands of capitalism, the most developed countries of the day, Germany and the United States, were hit first and were the worst affected. This is no coincidence. The crises of decadent capitalism are no longer crises of expansion, they are crises of the system as such, developing at its heart and naturally afflicting the centre directly. But as opposed to 1929, the bourgeoisie today is not only much more experienced, it above all has a gigantic state capitalist apparatus at its disposal, which cannot prevent economic crisis, but which can prevent the crisis from taking its natural course. This is mainly why, since the re-appearance of the open crisis of capitalist decadence at the end of the 1960s, the economically and politically strongest states have been the ones best able to resist. None of this prevents the crisis not only from coming ever closer to the historic centres of capitalism, but also from affecting these centres in an ever more serious manner. But this does not necessarily mean that there will be a partial economic collapse there in the near future like in Germany or the USA after 1929. At all events, the international and European management of the “Euro-Crisis” in recent years clearly demonstrates that the state capitalist mechanisms of pushing the worst effects of the crisis onto weaker rivals still function. Both the property and finance crisis which began in 2007/2008, and the crisis of confidence in the joint European currency which followed it, directly menaced the stability of the German and French banking and finance sector. The main results of the different European salvation operations, all the money so generously lent to Greece, Ireland, Portugal etc, was the shoring up of the German and French interests at the expense of weaker rivals, with the additional result that the workers of those countries had to bear the main brunt of the attacks. And whereas the reasons we gave at the beginning of this article to explain the electoral success of Merkel were not of her own doing, concerning this question it certainly was Merkel and her finance minister Schäuble who defended the German interests tooth and nail, so that the European partners were often driven to the brink of exasperation. And here it is clear that behind the high vote for Merkel there is a nationalist impulse which is very dangerous for the working class.
There are thus objective reasons which help to explain the electoral triumph of Angela Merkel: the relatively successful resistance of Germany, at least to date, to the deepening of the historical crisis, and Merkel’s capacity to defend German interests in Europe. But the most important single reason for her success was that the whole German bourgeoisie wanted her success and did all it could to promote it. The reasons for this do not lie in Germany itself, but in the world situation as a whole, which is becoming increasingly threatening. At the economic level, the crisis of the European economy, and the wavering confidence in the Euro, are far from over – the worst is yet to come. This is why the phenomenon of Mutti Merkel, the “wise and caring mother” in charge of the German state, is now so important. According to a popular school of thought within modern bourgeois economic “theory”, economics is to an important degree a question of psychology. They say “economics” and mean capitalism. They say “psychology” and mean religion, or should we say: superstition? In Volume One of Capital, Marx explains that capitalism is based to an important degree on the belief in the magic power of persons and objects (commodities, money) invested with purely imaginary abilities. Today, the confidence of the international markets in the Euro is mainly based on the belief that somehow the involvement of “the Germans” is a guarantee that all will be well. Mutti Merkel has become a world-wide fetish.
The problem of the common European currency is not peripheral, but absolutely central, both economically and politically. In capitalism, the confidence between the actors, without which a society with a minimum of stability becomes impossible, is no longer based on mutual confidence between human beings, but takes the abstract form of confidence in money, in the existing currency. The German bourgeoisie knows from its own experience with the hyper-inflation of 1923, that the collapse of a currency lays the basis for explosions of uncontrollable instability and insanity.
But there is also the political dimension. Here Berlin is extremely anxious about the long term development of social discontent in Europe, and about the immediate situation in France. It is alarmed by the incapacity of the bourgeoisie on the other side of the Rhine to come to terms with its economic and political problems. And it is worried about the prospect of social unrest in that country, since the German working class in the past decades has developed a particular admiration for the French proletariat and tends to look to it for leadership.
It is with full consciousness of its international responsibilities that today, with the results of the recent elections, the German bourgeoisie has chosen a government which embodies and symbolises strength, stability and continuity, and with which it hopes to face up to the coming storms.
Weltrevolution (the ICC's section in Germany). 4th of November 2013.
Our sympathiser, Baboon, analyses the recent struggle at Grangemouth.
The price for keeping the Grangemouth petro-chemical section, indeed the whole refinery, from shutting down: a no-strike agreement, a 3-year pay freeze, cuts in shift-pay and bonuses, less favourable conditions for new workers, “limited redundancies” and an end to the Final Salary pension scheme (more contributions from the workers, less pay out), has been “embraced, warts and all” by Len McCluskey and his Unite trade union. When asked on the BBC if this wasn’t a humiliation, McClusey said no, “we sort out problems like this all the time”. And indeed the actions of the trade union Unite go hand in hand with the bosses’ attack. The workers at BA will attest to this where, a few years ago, the Unite union brought in a two-tier wage system, divided workers at Gatwick from Heathrow and cut wages and conditions to the extent that some workers and stewards tore up their union cards in angry meetings with the union representatives. Like BA, the events around Grangemouth demonstrate both the attacks raining down on the working class and, at the very least, the uselessness of the trade unions in representing the interests of the working class.
Much is made by papers like the Trotskyist Socialist Worker and the Stalinist Morning Star about the billionaire boss of Grangemouth “blackmailing” the workers and about the “greed” of the owner, but this is what capitalism does as a matter of fact and is increasingly forced to do as the crisis deepens and its profits are threatened. For those on the Left one answer is the nationalisation of the plant, as if that would in any way attenuate the exploitation of the workers. One of the first coordinated actions of the banks nationalised after the 2008 crisis was the sacking of tens of thousands of workers. One might think that the oil industry would be profitable, but this is far from the case as it constantly tries to lower costs through reducing wages and making inroads on working conditions and safety measures (look at BP in the US and the neglect that resulted in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010). The Swiss-based, half Chinese-owned Grangemouth oil refinery, like many in Europe and Latin America, is suffering from the intense cut-throat competition with the US and Middle Eastern refineries on the oil market-place, while local demand has declined because of the recession.
This free-for-all also makes a mockery of the Coalition’s recovery talk about new investments and bold energy policies. The writing was on the wall with the so-called ‘unthinkable’ closure of the Coryton oil refinery in Essex over a year ago despite a Unite spokesman saying at the time that “it was a going concern ready to make a profit” (BBC Business News, 24.1.12). 850 jobs went here when the plant shut down despite more generalised protests from workers that included those of Grangemouth and the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire – protests that Unite disowned. Quite a few Coryton workers went to Saudi Arabia but many upped and moved to refineries around the UK, including Grangemouth. The Coryton plant was run on such tight margins that the whole place was a disaster waiting to happen and it did on October 31, 2007, where a fire and massive explosion shook homes fourteen miles away. Luckily for the workers it happened out of working hours, though the cloud of poison given off was toxic for miles around. Since that incident the plant saw over 20 “serious” (Health and Safety Executive) incidents up until it closed last year.
The fragility of the oil industry is by no means confined to Britain as is shown by the strike by 40,000 Petrobas workers in Brazil against attacks on their wages - which the union turned into an argument about nationalisation - and strikes and protests by petro-chemical workers in Portugal against cuts in their wages and conditions. It’s the brutal logic of capitalism: if a firm doesn’t make the required profits then the business shuts down and the workers are thrown out of a job and possibly out of their homes. Not only are the trade unions unable to confront the laws of capital, they are complicit in their functioning as well as the policing of the workers under their joint agreements, procedures and ever-extending commitments to ‘flexibility’. The trade unions represent a completely false opposition to the bosses while being complicit in their attacks. What did the Unite union do at Grangemouth?
The threat to close the Grangemouth petro-chemical division would have cost over 800 jobs immediately and threatened another 2600 direct and contractor jobs if the closure extended to the refinery, i.e., 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing industry would have gone up in smoke. The company, Ineos, has been trying to change workers’ terms and conditions since it bought the plant from BP seven years ago, so it’s not like the unions were not warned of the impending attack. In April 2008, Grangemouth workers were involved in a strike over attacks on their pensions - the first strike at Grangemouth for 73 years. But here, this month, a clique of the Unite shop stewards organised a vote in one shop of a hundred workers, not against the attacks of the company, but against the actions of Ineos in enquiring into the time the union convenor was spending on Labour Party politics in Scotland. The attack on the workers was entirely secondary to the union which was more concerned with defending one of their own who was said to be involved in ballot rigging and other machinations around the corrupt politics of the Falkirk Labour Party. It’s often said that the union leadership is ‘out of touch’, ‘bureaucratic’ and the ‘rank-and-file’ is the real union. There’s something inescapably and intrinsically Stalinesque about the trade unions in that their structures and frameworks give rise to cliques and cabals of small minorities even with the best will in the world. They, and their practices, are the antithesis of the mass, open meetings of workers that can point the way forward.
The rank-and-file apparatus was indeed ‘the real union’ here at Grangemouth, reflecting the in-fighting and political machinations of the union leadership, which has nothing to do with the class struggle. Eighty-one of the workers balloted voted to strike for the steward and the other 1300 direct workers and more than a thousand contractors who were Unite members didn’t get a say. There’s no wonder there was a lot of residual anger amongst the workers against the union for its actions and its non-action. When the boss threatened closure the union called off its pathetic forty-eight hour strike, and the work-to-rule and overtime ban that the workers were carrying out “in the interests of maintaining production”. And when the closure threat was maintained the union capitulated, as evidenced by the words of Unite boss, McCluskey above and Unite’s Scottish secretary, Pat Rafferty, pleading for talks (Guardian, 21/10/13) and agreeing to the no-strike agreement the previous day.
The rejection of the company plan didn’t come through a Unite ballot but, as many reports said, from individual workers, about two-thirds of them, returning a ‘no’ to the company’s plans. This at least showed a combative potential of the Grangemouth workers who were involved in solidarity actions with Coryton (above) and also involved in solidarity actions with the 2008 Tanker Drivers’ strike. As the plant was ‘saved’ (for how long?) the TV concentrated on the justly relieved workers (though some criticism of the trade union came through), but there is a large core of workers here that have experience of solidarity actions and sometimes illegal struggle, who were clearly against the ‘survival plan’. In the summer of 2008, Grangemouth workers showed solidarity with Shell tanker drivers as picketing and ‘secondary actions’ took place from Plymouth, through Wales and Somerset up to Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Scotland. The victory trumpeted by Unite here was a deal stitched-up by them and the bosses which resulted in a pay offer just 0.7% more than the original offer to the Shell drivers. The real victory was in the often illegal solidarity actions of the workers across union divisions.[1]
Attacks have been raining down on oil industry workers, just like all workers, since the 90s particularly and we will see more Grangemouths and Colytons in the years to come as capitalism’s crisis intensifies. It is very difficult for workers to struggle effectively in today’s conditions, particularly when the firm is about to close down and your job is on the line, or in the face of what seems overwhelming odds and isolation. But these questions won’t go away for the working class because the attacks of capital will become relentless. At Grangemouth the workers had the whole gamut of the state ranged against them: the ‘evil’ boss, Alex Salmond and his brand of Scottish nationalism, Westminster politics and Falkirk Labour Party plotting and scheming, the Trotskyists and Stalinists denouncing “fat cats” calling for nationalisation and ideas of ‘workers’ control’ - and the Unite trade union also singing the left’s tunes with its leader Len McCluskey saying on BBC News (24/10/13) that “the future of this plant is paramount to the shop stewards (pause) and the workers” and that he wouldn’t allow “the future of Scotland to be put in peril”. And so he puts himself and his union, and his compromised clique of shop stewards, at the service of the company in its ongoing attacks on the working class.
Baboon 29/10/1 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
The stabbing of Greek rapper Pavlos Fyssas in September by a self-confessed member of Golden Dawn has led to a wave of official actions against the neo-nazi party. Members, deputies and its leader have been arrested on charges of belonging to a criminal organisation, following the lifting of its parliamentary immunity. Individuals have been charged with murder, attempted murder, sex trafficking, money laundering, benefit and tax fraud. Its state funding has been suspended. Witnesses have given evidence of the involvement of the party in attacks on immigrants, extortion and arms smuggling.
Political parties have shown themselves united in their support of the measures taken, all agreeing that Golden Dawn (GD) is a serious threat to democracy. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of left wing opposition party Syriza supported the repressive measures: “The intervention shows that our democracy is standing firm and it is healthy” while suggesting that the ‘intervention’ had not gone far enough as Syriza called for all GD members to be arrested. The Greek Socialist Workers’ Party saw the actions of the coalition government as a “victory” and declared “We celebrate this development”, while demanding that there should also be a “cleansing” of the police.
The divisions in Greek politics have always run deep. Yet, on the economic level, the conservative New Democracy and the social democratic PASOK, after more than 35 years of alternating in government denouncing each other’s every move, joined together in a coalition government in November 2011 in order to impose even tougher austerity measures. Similarly, for all the different views of the economic calamity that Greece has been in over the last six years - whether or not, for example, to leave the EU - the parties have united in their defence of democracy. This is not before time for the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks who produced a report in April this year which said that Greece had perfectly adequate legal grounds to ban Golden Dawn. In February he had called on Greece to do more against offences committed by GD and its links with the police. He also recommended investigations into police brutality.
The state of democracy in Greece has been a preoccupation of the international bourgeoisie for some time. In a recent report from the Demos think tank Backsliders: Measuring Democracy in the EU, Greece and Hungary come out as the most serious causes for concern. Greece is seen as “overwhelmed by extremely high unemployment, social unrest, endemic corruption and a severe disillusionment with the political establishment”.
On every count the report sees Greece coming out badly. It’s the most corrupt country in the EU, “… in countries like Greece and Italy corruption has risen in line with sluggish economic fortunes”. The catastrophic state of the economy is linked to widespread discontent – another recent report found Greeks now the most unhappy people in Europe. In the face of discontent “Some have argued that freedom of assembly has been challenged repeatedly by the Greek police, who have been accused of the use of teargas and violence against peaceful protestors and the incitement of riots since 2008”. The emergence of Golden Dawn is seen as pointing to a failing of the whole Greek ‘political class’. The links between GD and the police disturb the report’s authors.
The report is also concerned at the decline in turnout at Greek elections, although that is seen as a general problem: “countries across Western Europe are experiencing a sustained decline in voter turnout over the past 50 years, seemingly driven by increased apathy and a perceived absence of political choice.” In Greece, superficially, there might seem as though there was a tremendous range of choice, with a generous variety of parties from left, right and centre. However, as is seen elsewhere, the perception that in reality all parties stand for much the same has been dawning over a long period.
Although the Demos report is supposedly focussed on democracy, it has a wide-ranging brief. The treatment of immigrants is highlighted. “They can face tough conditions on arrival. Amnesty International has accused Greece of treating migrants like criminals and disregarding its obligations under international law. In January 2011 the European Court of Human Rights found Greece had violated Article 3 of the ECHR, which requires member states to prohibit torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, because of its poor asylum procedures”. Here the respectable parties of Greek democracy meet up with the neo-nazi Golden Dawn. Members of GD have physically attacked migrants, while the Greek government has undertaken an official campaign.
In August 2012 the Greek coalition government launched Operation Xenios Zeus. Tens of thousands of people, supposedly illegal undocumented migrants, have been subjected to abusive stops and searches on the streets, and hours-long detention at police stations. Of 85,000 detained about 4200 (about 6%) have been faced with charges of unlawful entry. Many have been sent to the Amygdaleza detention centre in northern Athens (the ‘Greek Guantanamo’). Here, officially, 1600 migrants are held, forced to live in inhuman conditions, subject to police abuse, denied proper health care, with Muslims being attacked while at prayer, until they are deported. The head of the Greek police union said that conditions were inhuman and unacceptable for the guards as well. Xenios Zeus is the Greek patron of hospitality.
While Golden Dawn have attacked migrants on the streets, there are other foreigners who are more generally blamed for the current situation in Greece. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely described as the ‘new Hitler’ because of the role of Germany in the imposition of austerity measures. The Left is only marginally more sophisticated when it attacks the Troika of the EU, IMF and European Central Bank, while calling for withdrawal from the EU. As government repression cracked down on Golden Dawn its spokesmen hinted at ‘foreign influences’ or compared Greek Prime Minister Samaras to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. The parties of the bourgeoisie have a similar approach in practice and in rhetoric.
What concerns the bourgeoisie outside Greece is the potential for instability and the unpredictable role of Golden Dawn. In the democratic campaign GD can be portrayed as the force that goes beyond the framework of parliamentary democracy. But what Greek history of the last hundred years shows is that it has not only been under the dictatorship of Metaxas and the rule of the Colonels that the repression has been a central concern for the ruling class. In 1929 the Liberal government of Eleftherios Venizelos, for example, introduced the Idionymon law. This was aimed at “a minority that seeks the violent overthrow of the established social status quo by disseminating its principles and attracting followers, often through essays and underground means, and has put in danger the security of society”. The penalty for those found guilty of having subversive ideas was imprisonment for six months or more, often on one of the islands of exile. Strikes effectively became illegal affronts to social peace. Venizelos specifically excluded using the law against fascists, and Metaxas used it as part of the legal apparatus of his own regime. Also, in the 1950s and 60s, in the period between the Greek Civil War and the advent of the Colonels, parties of the centre continued to preside over an apparatus that retained the camps and other instruments that had been used by the authoritarian dictatorships.
The rise of Golden Dawn was tolerated by the other parties of the Greek bourgeoisie until the killing of Pavlos Fyssas. GD had killed others before then, but the pressure to reinforce the apparatus of democracy became overwhelming. The new-found unity of the bourgeoisie against Golden Dawn has given an impetus to Greek democracy. However, this is not going to last forever. The early November killing of two members of Golden Dawn provoked much speculation on what would follow. One approach saw it as retaliation for the death of Fyssas and anticipated an escalation of tit-for-tat violence. This would not necessarily lead to greater instability as the Greek state would be in a position to say that further repression was required against other extremists, not just neo-nazis. It is a commonplace in Greek ‘moderate’ politics to see all ‘extremists’ being essentially the same. Not only are Golden Dawn portrayed as a threat to democracy, there are other forces that can be labelled ‘extreme’ in order to be confronted by the state. These will certainly include militant workers and revolutionary groups.
The bourgeoisie in Greece has shown how its major parties can be united to impose harsh economic measures. It has rallied to the democratic capitalist state in the name of anti-fascism. Its biggest enemy is the working class. When the bourgeoisie unites against protests and struggles that are impelled by discontent, the state is prepared for physical repression, while others will pose as the friends of the exploited. In struggle you can expect to be attacked by nazi thugs – the democratic state has a far wider weaponry, both repressive and ideological, and it is sophisticated enough to use the threat of fascism to bolster its own power.
Car 2/11/13
At the beginning of October, an overloaded ship went down near Lampedusa in Italy. More than 350 immigrants died. A few days afterwards, another boat carrying migrants sank, and another ten people drowned. Every year in the Mediterranean 20,000 people lose their lives on the verge of reaching the sought-after Fortress Europe. Since the 1990s, the corpses of human beings fleeing from poverty and war have been piling up at the frontiers, along the coasts, in the deserts of the Sahara – like the 92 women and children from Niger abandoned by people smugglers to die of thirst and exhaustion in the Sahara at the end of the same month.
The ruling class has shed copious crocodile tears about the Lampedusa tragedy because its scale, and its proximity to ‘home’, made it impossible to ignore. To have done so might have stirred up too much anger, too much thinking.
The sordid polemic about the failure of Italian fishermen to help the victims has also served to divert people’s attention towards the hunt for scapegoats – even though the current laws actually criminalise those who help illegal immigrants and in previous cases captains of fishing vessels have already been prosecuted for trying to “give assistance to illegal entry”.
The grand media coverage of the Lampedusa tragedy is aimed at creating a mental fog and obscuring the huge repressive apparatus set up by in a coordinated manner by the states. The ideological trap is made up, on the one hand, of overtly xenophobic propaganda and, on the other, by ‘humanitarian’ speeches which, by emphasising the ‘rights’ of the victims, serve to separate immigrants from other proletarians.
One thing should be clear: capitalism in crisis and its politicians are indeed responsible for this new tragedy. It’s they who compel thousands of hungry people to embark on ever-more suicidal adventures to get round the obstacles placed in their path. It’s therefore not surprising if these same politicians were jeered at the airport by a shocked and disgusted local population[1].
Like these immigrants, all proletarians are really those who have been ‘uprooted’. Since the beginning of capitalism, they have been torn away from the land and from artisan labour. In the Middle Ages the majority of the exploited remained tied to the land; the rising power of capital subjected them to a violent exodus from the countryside
“The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this ‘free’ proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition”.[2]
Historically capitalism developed on the basis of free access to labour power. To extract surplus value it generated enormous population shifts. It was the unity of the new conditions of the exploited that led the workers’ movement to recognise that “the workers have no country!”
In addition, without the slave trade from Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries, capitalism would not have been able to develop so quickly in its industrial centres and through the slave ports of Liverpool, London, Bristol, Zeeland, Nantes and Bordeaux. In the 19th century, with the black labour force ‘freed’ into wage labour, economic growth fuelled even more massive displacements of populations, especially towards the American continent. From the early 19th century until 1914, 50 to 60 million Europeans headed towards the USA in search of work. At the beginning of the 20th century, nearly a million immigrants entered the USA every year. For Italy alone, between 1901 and 1913, nearly 8 million people became immigrants. During the ascendant phase of capitalism the system was able to absorb this mass of workers whose labour power was needed by an expanding economy.
With the historic decline of the system, migration and the displacement of populations have not stopped. On the contrary! Imperialist conflicts, especially the two world wars, economic crises, and disasters linked to climate change have fed ever-growing migrations. In 2010, it was estimated that there were 214 million migrants in the world (3.1% of the world population[3]). On the basis of climate change alone, certain projections estimate that there will be between 25 million and one billion extra migrants by 2050[4].
Because of the permanent crisis of capital and the overproduction of commodities, migrants have come up against the limits of the market and the increasingly brutal rules imposed by the state. Capital can no longer integrate labour power on the same scale as before. Thus, in contrast to the period prior to the First World War when it opened its doors to the ‘huddled masses’, the USA has set up a whole system of quotas to drastically restrict entry, and is now building walls to halt the flow of migrants from Latin America. The economic crisis which opened up at the end of the 1960s has led all governments, especially in Europe, to set up heavy-handed patrols around the southern Mediterranean, employing an armada of boats to control the flow of migrants. The undeclared aim of the ruling class is clear: migrants should stay at home and rot. To ensure this, the good democrats of Europe, and notably France, have not hesitated to use the muscular services of a Gaddafi in Libya or the authorities in Morocco to make sure that those trying to reach Europe don’t get through the desert.
These controls at the frontiers, which have got tougher and tougher, are the product of decadence and of state capitalism. They are not new. In France for example:
“The creation of identity cards in 1917 really overturned administrative and police practices. Today we are habituated to having our passports stamped and we no longer think about the police origins of the process. But it was by no means neutral that the institution of identity cards was initially aimed at the surveillance of foreigners in a period of open war”.[5]
Today the paranoia of the state towards foreigners suspected of being troublemakers has reached unprecedented heights. Huge metal or concrete walls at the frontiers[6], topped with barbed wire or electrified, are a sinister reminder of the death camps of the Second World War. In 1989, the European bourgeoisies celebrated the fall of the ‘Berlin Wall’ in the name of freedom. This was indeed a barbaric materialisation of the ‘Iron Curtain’; but those doing the celebrating have shown that they too are builders of walls!
The decadence of capitalism has become a period of vast displacements which have to be ‘controlled’. It’s the era of deportations, of concentration camps, of refugees (the number of Palestinian refugees went from 700,000 thousand in 1950 to 4.8 million in 2005). The genocide of the Armenians in 1915 led to the first mass movements of refugees of the 20th century. Between 1944 and 1951, nearly 20 million people were displaced or evacuated in Europe. The partition of states and other divisions have also resulted in massive displacements. While the ‘Iron Curtain’ blocked an exodus from Eastern Europe, the search for cheap labour power led the European countries to draw on the southern Mediterranean and Africa. Economic impoverishment and the ‘national liberation’ struggles produced by imperialist conflicts during the Cold War also fed the distress and displacement of a ruined peasantry, serving to create vast megacities surrounded by slums in the peripheral countries. These have become breeding grounds for mafia gangs involved in prostitution and the traffic of arms and drugs. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, refugee camps have sprung up like mushrooms, especially in Africa and the Middle East, where the population lives on the edge of survival, prey to famine, illness, and gangsters of all stripes.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the eastern bloc, two major events have intervened, on top of the growth of military conflicts, to weigh on the labour market and increase the flow of migration:
For an initial period, workers from the eastern countries went west; this coincided with the first relocations of industry and it helped to exert a powerful pressure on wages. In addition, countries which had previously been on the margins of the world market, such as India and China, opened up the possibility of uprooting millions of workers who had come from the countryside, swelling the ranks of a reserve army made up of unemployed proletarians who could be dragooned for work when needed.
The very low level of wages paid to these workers in the context of a saturated world market makes it possible to put further pressure on wages and results in even more relocations. This explains the fact that in the central countries since the 1990s the number of illegal and clandestine workers has exploded in certain sectors, despite the strengthening of controls. In 2000 there were about 5 million clandestine workers in Europe, 12 million in the USA and 20 million in India. The central states make ample use of this workforce, generally poorly qualified and without official papers, and whose extremely precarious position makes them ready to do pretty much anything for very low wages. Under the watchful eye of the state a whole parallel market has been created, sustained by workers who are subject to all kinds of blackmail and live in atrocious conditions. The majority of agricultural harvests are now being taken in by foreign workers, many of them illegal. In Italy, 65% of the agricultural labour force is illegal. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, 2 million Romanians migrated to southern Europe for agricultural work. In Spain, the housing ‘boom’ which came before the crash was to a large extent based on the sweat of underpaid clandestine workers, often from Latin American countries like Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, etc. To this we must add the grey areas of the economy, such as prostitution. In 2003, in a country like Moldavia, 30% of women aged between 18 and 25 had gone missing! In the same year, 500,000 prostitutes from eastern Europe were working in western Europe.
In Asia and in the Gulf monarchies, we see the same phenomena for domestic workers and building workers. In Qatar, immigrants make up 86% of the population, and, as the recent scandal about the preparations for the 2022 World Cup has revealed, many are working in conditions of near slavery.
Today, with the development of military tensions, we can already seeing an influx of people escaping war zones, especially from the Middle East and Africa.
In the face of growing barbarism, of brutal police measures against immigrants and the xenophobic campaigns disseminated by the ruling class, the proletariat can only respond with indignation and with international class solidarity. This means rejecting any idea that immigrants and ‘foreigners’ are the cause of crisis and unemployment.
The media, especially those aligned to the Right, are constantly bombarding us with images of immigrants who foment crime and disorder and live as parasites from the ‘generous’ benefits handed out by western countries. In reality, it’s the immigrants who are the first victims of the system. This nauseating right wing propaganda has always been used to divide workers. But the more insidious traps are the ones laid by the ‘humanitarian’ Left, with its false generosity and good old common sense, which also divides the working class by treating immigrants as a special case.
Today, when factories are closing one after the other, when the order books are getting thinner despite all the talk of ‘recovery’, it is becoming increasingly clear that all proletarians are being hit by the crisis and growing poverty, whether immigrants or not. What meaning can there be in the idea of competition for jobs from illegal workers when jobs for everyone are disappearing?
Against this ideological offensive, against the policy of repression, the working class has to reaffirm its historical perspective. This begins with basic solidarity and advances towards recognising its own revolutionary strength in society.
WE 21/10/2013
[1]. Alongside the Italian Prime Minister A Altano, there was the president of the European Commission M Barroso and C Maimstrom, the internal Chargé d’Affaires, who had come mainly to stress that, in the name of humanitarianism, they supported a hardening of the surveillance of the frontiers by the forces of ‘Frontex’
[2]. Marx, Capital, Vol 1 chapter XXVIII
[3]. Source: INED
[4]. 133 natural catastrophes were recorded in 1980. The number has gone up to over 350 a year in the last few years. See www. unhcr.org
[5]. P-J Deschott, F Huguenin, La république xenophobe, JC Lattès 2001
[6]. For example, at Sangatte in Northern Europe, in southern Europe (Ceuta, Melila), on the US-Mexican border, in Israel faced with the Palestinians, in South Africa faced with the rest of the continent, or in Gabon where the authorities are in the process of constructing an electrified wall 2.40m high and 500 km long
The headline of the Mail article was ‘The man who hated Britain’ and the question of patriotism, of ‘love for one’s country’, was the central issue being debated by left and right. In an intelligent article published in The Guardian at the height of the furore[1], Priyamyada Gopal duly notes the squalid nature of the Mail article, with its subtly anti-semitic and anti-immigrant undertones, but she also asks some questions about the standard line of defence against the Mail’s attack.
“The defence of Ralph Miliband runs along wearyingly familiar lines – that he unambiguously proved his patriotism by fighting in the anti-Nazi war, which along with ‘no apology for the empire’ has become the principal litmus test for love of Britain. His lifelong commitment to a supple Marxism is noted but quietly skimmed over as an embarrassingly anachronistic aspect of an otherwise decent and loyal man. Yet a defence of Miliband senior which does not also challenge the red-bashing that often goes hand in hand with antisemitism is, at best, equivocal. More perniciously, it accepts the distorted terms set by the rightwing press which defines patriotism narrowly through obedient adulation of monarchy, militarism and elitism”.
You might think that the author is going to challenge some very big shibboleth’s here: patriotism itself, the Second World War.... But then you would have to have missed the article’s headline (‘The Daily mail may not realise, but Marxists are patriots’) and the argument developed in the ensuing paragraph, which is a left-wing apology for ‘real’ patriotism:
“Ralph Miliband was not a patriot because he served in the navy. He was a lover of this country and its people precisely because he understood that institutions like the monarchy and the House of Lords symbolise and perpetuate inequality, and that militarism usually encourages the poor to die defending the interests of the privileged. His patriotism has more in common with long progressive patriotic traditions in Britain, from the Diggers and Levellers to the Chartists and anti-privatisation campaigners. It was about claiming land and country for the majority of its labouring denizens rather than the plutocrats and the powerful who live off the fat of the land while spouting an insincere ‘nationalism’ which serves less to create collective wellbeing than to prevent their privileges being questioned”.
It’s true that the young workers’ movement was often tinged with patriotic ideas. This was entirely understandable in an epoch (from the 17th to the 19th centuries) in which the formation of nation states contained a progressive element, because capitalism itself was an advance over feudalism and other outmoded social systems. But what was essential to formations like the Diggers and the Chartists was their vigorous defence of the exploited against the exploiters, which cannot but challenge all divisions among them and thus tend towards affirming the international unity of the class struggle. This was already explicit with the Communist Manifesto of 1848, which proclaimed that “the workers have no country” and looked forward to a global association of the producers.
At that time, the Manifesto still foresaw the possibility of temporary alliances with the more forward looking elements of the bourgeoisie. But this kind of alliance lost all meaning as the entire capitalist system entered an epoch of permanent, world-wide inter-imperialist conflict, announced most definitively by the outbreak of the First World War. At this point, marxists pronounced the death sentence on the nation state:
“The nation state has outgrown itself – as a framework for the development of the productive forces, as a basis for class struggle, and especially as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Leon Trotsky, Nashe Slovo, 4 February, 1916)
In the last hundred years, humanity has been faced with a situation where it can only survive and move forward by breaking the chains of the nation state and rejecting all appeals to fight in its defence. This is why the question of internationalism has been such a fundamental dividing line in the history of the workers’ movement in this century. Support for the First World War was the end of the line for the majority of the social democratic parties. Support for its re-run in 1939-45 marked the death of many of the political currents whose origins lay in a reaction against social democracy’s betrayal in 1914: the Communist Parties, now entirely rotted by Stalinism, and even the majority of the Trotskyist organisations which had advertised their internationalism against Stalinism’s nationalist abortions, ‘socialism in one country’ and the Popular Fronts.
Marxists are therefore not, in any shape or form, patriots. To love one’s country, for the Daily Mail means loving the Queen, the church, the armed forces – evidently the ‘country’ of a small elite. But the left version of this patriotism is no less faithful to key institutions of the capitalist state: the nationalised industries, as well as the unions and the rest of the so-called labour movement, which have long been integrated into the present social system.
Ralph Miliband was by all accounts a very good university teacher and he certainly had a thorough grounding in the writings of Marx. But his ‘supple’ marxism never challenged the notion that the working class had something to defend in the existing state. Politically he acted as a critical supporter of the Labour left and even his more theoretical contributions on marxism and the state end up enlisting Marx into the defence of the democratic republic. In an article on Lenin’s State and Revolution, for example, he argues that Marx’s writings could be interpreted in different ways – some statements pointing to the need to smash the old state, others towards its radical democratisation[2]. This is true – even after the Paris Commune, Marx did not entirely abandon the idea that the revolution could take place in the framework of the democratic republic. But Miliband, rather than grasping the historical significance of Lenin’s ‘update’ on this position in the period of unbridled imperialism, takes Marx’s imprecisions out of their historical context and uses them to speak in favour of a policy of democratising the existing state rather than destroying it.
In this sense Gopal is correct (but not for the reasons she thinks) to link Miliband’s patriotism with his essentially democratic programme for capitalism:
“It is time to junk the cheap and facile propaganda that socialism is reducible to Stalinist depredations. In Ralph Miliband’s own anti-Stalinist understanding, socialism was about ‘the wholesale transformation of the social order’ by giving ordinary people control over the economic system, fully democratising a political system in which ordinary citizens feel disenfranchised and helpless, and ensuring ‘a drastic levelling out of social inequality’. It is the abandonment of these democratic aspirations for the craven pieties of the Daily Mail that must really ‘disturb everyone who loves this country’”.
In World War One, the idea of defending the democratic gains of the workers’ movement inside capitalism was used to justify the war against German militarism (or Russian Czarism); the same ideology was used on a much vaster scale to mobilise the working class for the Second World War. In the day to day struggles of the working class, slogans based on the same basic concept – defence of the nationalised industries like the NHS, defence of ‘trade union rights’ and all the rest – are used to line workers up behind one part of the bourgeoisie against another.
Gopal argues that “Ralph Miliband would also have found his son’s claim that capitalism can be ‘made to work for working people’ incoherent, and wilfully ignorant of how capitalism actually works”. But in reality, Miliband Senior himself never broke from the idea that the capitalist state and capitalist social relations – suitably nationalised and democratised – can be made to work for working people.
Amos 31/10/13
[2]. Socialist Register, 1970, republished here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1970/xx/staterev.htm [1100]
Jean-Pierre left us during the night of 13 September, following a long and incurable illness whose fatal outcome was recognised by everyone, including himself. For more than two years our comrade, who had greatly enjoyed playing sport, little by little lost the use of his limbs, his breathing and finally his speech. During this process, Jean-Pierre was always perfectly conscious of every moment in the evolution of his illness and its consequences. This lucidity obviously affected him profoundly because he knew he would have to give up so much of what he loved: physical activity, a direct contact with nature, in particular the mountains where he used to go on long rambles (he lived in the Alps), cooking....But he didn’t accept this fatalistically. He wanted to stay at home for as long as possible and no one could make him change his mind about this. He firmly insisted on staying in this familiar, human space to maintain the closest possible links with his family, friends and comrades. This space was his access to the world, the place where he had his books, the place where he could talk about politics and current events until the last moment, the place where he could watch a film and talk about it, the place where he could read the poetry he liked. His strongest wish was to put limits on the medical procedures aimed at keeping him alive. He struggled to the end for these wishes to be respected. A few weeks before his death Jean-Pierre agreed to go to hospital for palliative care. He knew that he wouldn’t be coming back home. Our comrade didn’t submit to this, he chose it and assumed it. But always his concern was to give the maximum space to those close to him, to his children and his comrades, and to continue the political struggle. The hospital staff and the militants who shared his last moments testified that our comrade departed “with great serenity” despite the considerable suffering which gripped him to the end. We, his comrades, know that developing this serenity was the last work in his life. He was one of those personalities who demand admiration because of their tenacity and the courage with which they face the end. We were all happy to be able to enter the personal and political space he so generously set aside for us. It gave us great pleasure and provided us with major lessons for our lives and our militancy. For all that, Jean-Pierre, we are infinitely grateful.
Jean-Pierre joined the ICC relatively late in his life. After being mobilised for the war in Algeria, which he experienced as a moment of unacceptable and unspeakable barbarism, he never stopped working for the perspective of constructing another society where these kinds of horrors would be banished forever. Holding on to this notion, he went through May 68 with all his hopes and all his confusions, in particular his communitarian ideas. He didn’t discover the ICC until the 1990s. There he found the theoretical and practical coherence of marxism, which enabled him to make a real political break with the confused ideologies he had maintained up until then. This encounter rooted him firmly in the “passion for communism” (according to his own terms). His indignation towards a world full of barbarism had finally found the meaning he had been looking for, the combat for the world proletarian revolution.
After that our comrade situated the political struggle at the forefront of his life until his last moments. He was animated by a deep conviction and despite the fatal advance of his illness, every visit to him included a political discussion. As long as he could he participated in the regular meetings of the ICC and carried out his responsibilities as a militant. At the end, from his bed, he did it via the internet. He was especially insistent on paying his financial contributions so that he could still be part of the functioning of the organisation as much as his means allowed.
But above all, his concern to be rigorous was shown by his determination to defend organisational principles and their spirit by taking position on this difficult political question throughout the last few years. The comrade was convinced that the construction of an organisation of the proletariat is a difficult art which has to be learned and transmitted thanks to a theoretical effort. Convinced as he was of the necessity for revolution, he sought to fight against all the obstacles that stand in the way of our class carrying out its task of emancipating humanity. He was always aware of the titanic, planetary dimension of this battle. A daily defensive battle, of course, but above all one that required a conscious approach, with a cultural element which can strengthen us for the offensive needed to overthrow the capitalist system. He was also profoundly aware of the weight of the dominant ideology pressing on the organisation and on the individuals within it, and of the perverse effects of social decomposition on relations between human beings. He knew that the real way to resist this pressure is to be found in the collective strength of debate in the organisation, based on moral principles and an intellectual depth. This concern never left him: how to struggle effectively, how to live up to your responsibilities, both as an individual militant and as an organisation, as a collective and associated body. It is because he had these concerns that he was so consistent at the level of the functioning of the organisation, always fighting against what as early as 1903 Lenin called the ‘circle spirit’, the vision of the organisation as a sum of individuals who come together purely on the basis of affinity. Such a vision was for him clearly and diametrically opposed to the real needs of a revolutionary organisation which can serve as a bridge to a real proletarian party in the future. The work of building the organisation thus has to be carried out in the ‘party sprit’. He always took a position against the temptation to get together on an affinity basis. For him the organisation could not be reduced to a ‘band of mates’, a circle of friends, even if he maintained warm and fraternal relations with all his comrades and had strong ties of personal friendship with some of them. To use his expression, he contributed to this combat “with just a little thread of a voice” to his final breath.
His devotion, his tenacity, his commitment remains alive in all his comrades. He was an example for us of what a convinced militant can be.
Jean-Pierre’s personality was so engaging that you can’t pass over it in silence. He was always curious, his mind was always developing and he had a lot of empathy not only for those closest to him but for others he met on the way. His company always testified to these qualities. He knew that everybody evolves, that everybody is in constant movement and goes through crises which can be moments for going forward. He recognised this in himself and often gave the evidence for it. He was happy to talk about his long, complex and chaotic journey towards marxism and class positions. It was by no means a tranquil river and no doubt this is what sustained his interest in others, his respect for their contradictions, which he always saw in a positive light as a potential for advance. He always had this vision of the future which went beyond any easy criticisms.
Jean-Pierre was a great admirer of Rabelais. He loved the frankness that his work exudes, his sensual, crude and even brutal love for life. A good meal, generously shared, was something sacred for him, as a precious moment of conviviality. He often opened up his universe through reading out the texts and poems he admired. Those who knew him were privileged to share his great pleasure in this. The silences which sometimes followed also had an active content, the sense of mutual communication through listening. Jean-Pierre was an example of a fighter devoted to the organisation and the perspective of the revolution, and his temperament was that of a person animated by the love of freedom. He has left us his passion, his tastes, and in doing so has drawn us a sketch of what it is like to be a human being who sees the other as an integral part of his own happiness, who participates in the artistic and scientific dance of humanity.
The militants of the ICC share deeply the pain of his children, of his family, of his friends. We have lost our comrade Jean-Pierre, but his memory is ever-present for those who have had the good fortune to know him and work by his side.
The ICC salutes you, comrade, as an exemplary militant for the cause of communism, to which you gave the best of yourself.
ICC 15.10.2013
We are publishing here an account by one of our comrades, who posts on our forums as Demogorgon, of his experience of the recent national strike in the Higher Education sector.
I work in Higher Education in a low-grade administrative function. My workforce is ‘represented’ by three unions: Unite, Unison and UCU. On the 31st October, and for the first time ever, all three unions called a sector-wider strike over the issue of pay.
The majority of workers in my office are not in any of the unions. One colleague, a member of the UCU, did support the ballot and voted to strike. As the strike neared it became clear that there was no effort whatsoever on behalf of the unions to publicise it to non-members. A Unison notice-board remained absolutely devoid of any information. My main source of information as to what was going on was my UCU colleague who forwards me anything she receives.
The response of the University was interesting, however. A couple of weeks before the strike date, they announced they were introducing the “Living Wage” for lower paid staff and that the senior management team were generously rescinding their “contractually and legally agreed” bonuses so that the Christmas bonus for staff could be reintroduced this year.
Nonetheless, it was only a week before the strike that any real awareness of it began to circulate in my office and that was mainly because I talked about it. The general response was negative. Most colleagues couldn’t see the point of action. Even the colleague who had voted for the action was beginning to have doubts. She still agreed with the action, but her issue was the workload that she had to deal with.
It’s difficult to convey the pressure our office is under this time of year. My UCU colleague is starting at 8 in the morning and leaving gone 6 at night, every day for months, then doing work at home evenings and weekends. Because of the nature of our functions, if we don’t do the work that’s assigned to us, it just doesn’t get done. And it doesn’t stop coming in if we’re not there. Going on leave is now a nightmare because you come back to the two weeks of work which isn’t even touched in your absence. She simply felt terrified at the thought of having to work another weekend to catch up if she missed a day in the office.
Two days before the strike, the unions issued a joint statement to all workers, relying on their members to distribute it around the offices. This is despite the fact that they are fully aware that many offices have no members.
The letter set out the reasons for the action but contained a shocking (if you don’t understand the true nature of the unions, that is) claim that non-members could not participate. It is, of course, something of a joke among left-communists that it is actually the unions that enforce all the anti-strike legislation.
In a previous UCU strike over pensions, I went to a mass UCU meeting to show solidarity and said I would not cross the picket line. The response of the presiding official was to tell everyone that people not involved in strike must go into work! I ignored the advice and joined the picket where I was welcomed - even the branch secretary was impressed enough and whenever I saw him always asked to make sure I had not suffered any reprisals. The regional official actually refused to speak to me on the picket!
In any case, while it is customary for the unions to enforce anti-strike legislation they are also in the business of enforcing anti-strike legislation that doesn’t even exist! In fact, non-union members can join strikes and, as long as the strike itself is a “protected action”, they enjoy the same right not to be dismissed as union members.
In response, I decided to issue my own leaflet. I kept it to one side of A4 and did not give 12 paragraph treatises on the role of the unions in decadence! I simply tried to answer the concerns of my colleagues and persuade them to strike. I challenged the assertion about non-member participation from the unions, but did not go further than that.
I distributed the leaflet, leaving copies on everyone’s desks first thing in the morning and waited somewhat nervously for my colleagues to come in. Several picked it up and read it and said nothing. As more arrived some discussion began. I was, naturally, teased a fair bit! My favourite comment was from our team manager who said while the University had asked people to report their strike status by 10am on the day, I had shown my dedication to the institution by doing it well in advance! It was meant in jest and I took it in that spirit.
Most colleagues were confused but there was some talk about the issues of the strike and although most agreed the cause was just either felt it didn’t affect them (we have a high proportion of young, temporary staff) or that striking would make no difference. My overworked UCU colleague was unable to overcome her ambivalence.
Then another colleague came to speak to me and she was clearly disturbed by my leaflet. Originally she hadn’t planned to join the action, but was no longer sure. She basically went through all the points in my leaflet and we discussed each of them. She was deeply disturbed that the unions would say something that was apparently not true (the point about protection for non-union members). She even thought I was a union rep and was a little confused when I said I wasn’t and I certainly wasn’t trying to sell the union! She asked me why I thought they had said what they said - she was clearly doubtful of my point but at the same time wasn’t able to rebut it as I’d sourced my claim. I replied - prefacing it by making it clear I was wearing a cynical hat! - that they didn’t really seem to be interested in pushing the strike and were more interested in making themselves the vehicle for discontent and hoovering up potential members than actually defending us. She was clearly disturbed by this (at one point I actually thought she was close to tears!) and said in her previous work-place she’d watched the unions do nothing while pay freezes were imposed and people continually laid off and that was why she hadn’t joined here. I agreed with her points and said this was why I wasn’t a member of the union, but that we still had to take a stand and this was an opportunity to do so.
The day of strike came and I went to one of the pickets, getting there early. While others picketed in shifts, I stayed for the full duration. Contrary to the union statement, I was not turned away. One member remembered me from the previous strike and welcomed me.
There was an initial tendency for people to picket in their own unions. I joined a UCU one and suggested moving to join a Unite picket further down the road but this was met with a bit of confusion and concern about the picket being “too big”. Over the course of the day though, we were joined by Unison and Unite members so the picket took on a far more mixed quality.
There was not a great deal of discussion. Throughout the morning I managed to put a few points about effective struggles into conversation organically and people listened although I’m not sure they understood. The most in-depth discussion was with an NUT functionary who turned up to show solidarity and I chatted to her about unions. She was saying it must be tough when we’re all in different unions, to which I pointed out I wasn’t in a union at all unless you count the biggest group ... workers! She was a bit taken aback but accepted all the points about being divvied up as she had raised them herself.
When the picket ended, I went to the rally. There were between 100 and 150 people there and it was the usual format of 45 minutes of branch secretaries and local and national functionaries giving more-or-less predictable speeches: workers are being dumped on, greedy bosses, greedy government, the unions have done a lot for everyone, get everyone to join the union!
The last 15 minutes was opened to the floor and more contributions from other officials and someone from the Socialist Party continued in the same vein. I finally plucked up courage to speak and asked a very simple question: are the unions going to carry on striking together or were they going to revert to the usual strategy of split strikes and instructing members to cross each others’ picket lines?
Embarrassed silence and ironic smiles from the panel followed. After what seemed like a very long awkward moment and after banging on for over half-an-hour about how the unions were standing together, the UCU national official finally said he had no information about that at the moment but the line at present is to stand together. The meeting was then wound up.
Back at work the next day, I learned that I had been the only one to join the strike. I wasn’t at all surprised, of course. My friend told me she had sat in her car overcome with guilt for 45 minutes before finally going in. Although everyone came in, the atmosphere was subdued. I told her I understood and I do - and the important thing wasn’t to cry over what was done but to understand what’s being done to us.
What did my small action achieve? On the face of it, very little. None of my colleagues were persuaded to join the strike. But I was able to prevent them from sleepwalking into their decision - they were forced to make a conscious choice about their decision. A tiny seed of consciousness that may, one day, flower into something more significant.
I also showed that being a marxist is more than “reading clever books at lunchtime” which is often how people see me. It means standing up for something, even if only in a very small way. I also showed that it’s possible to do so without brow-beating or being accusatory. At root, my colleagues were frightened and I understand because I was frightened too. I cannot judge others for crossing picket lines when I cannot honestly say if I will always have the courage not to.
Would my action have been any more effective had I been in the union? I can’t see how. I would still have spoken against them both in my leaflet and at the meeting. And, more importantly, why would I give money to organisations that tell workers to cross picket lines?
Demogorgon 2/11/2013
Official Strike Action 31/10/2013
As I’m sure you’ve heard, all three unions have called official strike action on Thursday this week. After considering the matter, I have decided to support our colleagues in their decision to strike.
As the unions have already argued, pay in Higher Education has been eroded by 13% in the last four years. In fact, the wider situation is much worse and has been going on for far longer: “Median wages in the UK were stagnant from 2003 to 2008 despite GDP growth of 11 per cent in the period. Similar trends are evident in other advanced economies from the US to Germany. For some time, the pay of those in the bottom half of the earnings distribution has failed to track the path of headline economic growth”[1].
Employers have been able to get away with eroding our working conditions for years because we have passively accepted it. As long as we continue to accept it, our pay will decline, our pensions will continue to be eroded and our workloads will increase. Taking strike action can send a powerful message that we won’t accept these things any longer. But it will only be effective if we all stand together.
I understand that many of you will feel uneasy about taking strike action.
Going on strike means losing a day’s pay and after years of declining pay, this is not a small problem! But we’ve already lost much more than that. How much more will we lose if we don’t fight back?
Others are concerned about their workload and having to catch up after a day out of the office. As we all know, things are frantic this time of year! But how did we get to this state? As real wages have gone down, work-loads have increased. And every time we accept extra work we encourage the University to push more onto us further down the line.
If low-pay and high workloads are such a problem then there is even more reason to take a stand!
I know some will be afraid that that going on strike may result in losing their job. Because this is an official action, you cannot be dismissed for joining it. This protection also extends to non-union members who participate. Although the unions claim in their recent letter that “non-members are not allowed to participate in the strike”, this is not true. In fact, according to the www.gov.uk [1102] website, non-union members are allowed to join a strike in their workplace and receive the same legal protections: “Non-union members who take part in legal, official industrial action have the same rights as union members not to be dismissed as a result of taking action”[2].
It should go without saying that all workers, regardless of their union-membership, have the same problems and should fight together to solve them.
I hope that you will support my decision and, if you feel able, join our colleagues so we can resist the erosion of our pay and conditions together.
Me
[1]. Missing Out: Why Ordinary Workers Are Experiencing Growth Without Gain, The Resolution Foundation, July 2011
The opening line from L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between seems strangely appropriate when reflecting on the recent accusations of slavery made against Aravindan Balakrishnan (aka ‘Comrade’ Bala) and his wife, and 'comrade', Chanda. Since the news broke of three women, a 57-year-old Irish woman, a 69-year-old Malaysian and a 30-year-old British women, being rescued, following a series of clandestine phone calls to the Freedom Charity from a flat in Brixton, one of the places they had been held captive for 30 years, there has been a catalogue of increasingly bizarre headlines and revelations that, rather than clarifying the events surrounding the case, serve to further confuse and obstruct our ability to understand the strange case of ‘comrade’ Bala.
What initially appeared to be a depressing, but not wholly unfamiliar, tale of domestic servitude became something akin to a soap opera with each day bringing the latest twist in the form of another lurid headline. First we learnt that the women had met through a “shared political ideology” and had lived collectively. Rumours of the involvement of a 'cult' were rife. Once the accused had been named we were introduced to the Maoist, Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought who, were are told, were the inspiration for the Tooting Popular Front in John Sullivan's 1970s TV sitcom, Citizen Smith.
Led by Bala and with a membership of around 20 members that included two of the alleged slaves, they operated a bookshop, or collective/squat depending on who you read, the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre in Brixton in the mid-1970s. It was closed following a police raid in 1978 and, although it did continue to be active in to the mid 1980s publishing, for example, notices in the CPGB's Morning Star, the Institute appeared to have 'gone underground'. It now seems that Bala and a handful of supporters maintained their commitment to collective living and spent the last 30 years moving around South London occupying as many as 13 - again, the number varies depending on who you read - different addresses.
Once these 'facts' had been established the floodgates opened, stories concerning secret love letters to neighbours, long lost sisters, foreign gurus who proclaim themselves Christ, brainwashed ex Cheltenham Ladies College 'high-flyers', estranged daughters of code breaking war heroes, lost inheritances, the mysterious parentage and lack of education of, and documentation for, the 30-year-old British women and disturbingly a suspicious death following a fall from a window of a property occupied by the group, all appeared within a matter of days alongside a copious amount of 'comment' from both the left and right. But with Bala and his wife now on bail until January 2014 and more up to date and equally salacious stories to replace it, this case, which the Metropolitan Police described as “a complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years, brainwashing would be the simplest term” (Guardian 23/11/13), already appears to be fading from view before we can even begin to make sense of it.
So, rather than getting caught up in all the speculation around these three women, what we can we say now about the questions raised by this case?
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s tens of thousands of young people influenced by the wave of strikes, anti-war actions and student occupations that occurred internationally during this period began to look for alternatives to the future offered by capitalism. This led to a significant growth in the number of organisations who identified themselves as ‘Marxist’ and ‘revolutionary’. The Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought were just one example of this general tendency.
Just how 'revolutionary' these groups were can be seen from looking at their own propaganda. The Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, like the Communist Party of England (ML) who had expelled Bala in 1974 for the “pursuance of conspiratorial and splittist activities and because of their spreading social fascist slanders against the Party and the proletarian movement”[1] and all other 'good' ‘anti-revisionists’ at the time, claimed affiliation to the Communist Party of China and slavishly supported the Chinese state (in the majority of cases their loyalty was later transferred to Hoxha's Albania). For all their reckless, confrontational behaviour towards the state and their radical language of “building a red base in Brixton to encourage the People's Liberation Army to liberate the area”, of being 'devoted soldiers of Chairman Mao' and calls of 'death to the fascist British state', the Institute's framework, the belief of the possibility of socialism in one country, was a nationalistic, state capitalist one. To use an uncomplicated word it was 'reactionary'. They may have exchanged Moscow for Beijing but there were still hand in hand with Stalinism, as Tariq Ali, apparently without irony, wrote in the Guardian (27/11/13), “[reproducing] the model of a one-party state within their own ranks”. 'Power to the people' may have been the slogan but it was the party, not the working class, led by its well-trained cadre, that would take power 'come the day'. With this mind set the step, morally and ethically, from being a sect worshipping the 'great helmsman' to a tight-knit commune following a 'Christ like' guru doesn't seem that big.
For all those other left-wingers who ridiculed the Institute, smirking at their leaflets over a pint, the idiom 'people in glass houses... ' springs to mind. The Institute may have been an extreme example, even for a milieu not known for its restraint or modesty[2], but there were instances of equally questionable behaviour and morality amongst, for example, the Trotskyist left, who largely shared the Stalinist's illusions that the 'deformed workers' states' or 'bureaucratic centralism' found in the so-called socialist countries was somehow 'progressive'. Gerry Healy's sexual abuse of young women in the Workers' Revolutionary Party during the same period is an object lesson in the sort of behaviour you could expect from the leader of an organisation that was ultimately loyal to capitalism and its state. This behaviour was not restricted to the 'unenlightened' 1970s, as the recent revelations of the conduct of a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party also demonstrates.
Of course, all of this supports the bourgeoisie’s contention that, (to paraphrase a poster that was popular in the 1970s): ‘you don’t have to be mad to be a Marxist, but it helps’. The ruling classes of all nations have campaigned against the workers' movement from its inception. Whether it be Churchill's concerns over the Bolshevik ‘conspiracy’ in the 1920s, McCarthyism in the 1950s or the triumphalism over the ‘death of communism’ in the 1990s their attempts to rid the world of the 'red menace' have continued unabated. The ideological weight of the collapse of the eastern bloc has begun to slowly shift over the last ten years so the appearance of 'Maoist slaves' and 'manipulative gurus' will only be welcomed. What better way to discredit an idea, a movement than question its sanity. The members of the Institute were/are clearly 'mad', 'weird' or 'brainwashed' when compared with the rest of society who live 'normally', weren't they?
Well, if we ignore, as the bourgeois press does, the fact that we live in a society where all relationships are subject to a range of stresses, pressures and inhuman ideologies, that would suggest that the tens of thousands of young people who joined organisations like the Institute throughout the 1960s and 1970s were equally as mad, wouldn't it? And that the tens of thousands of people who are participating in the emerging social movements from Brazil to Turkey today are also 'mad', after all that isn't 'normal' behaviour either, is it? All of this is, of course, nonsense. The cynicism of the arguments used by the bourgeoisie against those who, however confused, question its rule tells us more about the period we're living in than it does about the individuals involved. As Brendan O'Neill wrote in the Daily Telegraph (27/11/13), rather than asking “how could a seemingly odd, one-off couple manage to mistreat three women like this? They're saying: this is where ideological commitment gets you”. He continues, and this is worth quoting in full, “at a time when everyone is encouraged to obsess over their personal identity, to nurture their self-esteem, to devote more energy to narcissistic pursuit of therapeutic self-improvement than to any big political project, the whole of the seventies and eighties look increasingly odd to us. We can't believe people lived and breathed politics. We can't believe people sacrificed some of life's pleasures in the pursuit of political ideals. We can't believe those things happened because they seem so alien in this era of navel-gazing selfie-taking, in which writing a Tweet is considered political activity and all big systems of meaning – whether left-wing, right-wing or religious – are seen as foolish, dangerous and corrupting”.
It is not commitment to a political, or any other, ideal that is at fault here. It's rare that we find ourselves agreeing with Tariq Ali but he is correct when he writes, “young women and men who joined far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They [just like young women and men today] wanted to change the world” (Guardian 27/11/13). Just to be clear, this doesn't mean that we think 'anything goes', any response to capitalism is positive. We just don't think, for the simple fact that the society we live in is 'complicated', that those we disagree with politically necessarily, automatically, set out consciously to be 'tyrants'. To echo Brendan O'Neill, it is the, alleged, manipulation and abuse of three women by someone at least two of whom thought of as their comrade, as an ally in their fight to 'change the world', it is this betrayal of trust and respect that appears to be at the heart of this sad case. Unfortunately, the capitalist press, and its bourgeois sponsors, can't or doesn't want to, make this important distinction. There can be no discussion, no ambiguity, for them Marxism will always be mad or bad or, as in the case of Bala, a bit of both.
There is one final thing we can say about the strange case of ‘comrade’ Bala and that concerns the role of the police and, for want of a better term, 'the care industry'. Any regular reader of the British press will be familiar with the 'moral hysteria' that has permeated political discourse over recent years. This has intensified following the revelations concerning Jimmy Savile. The response to these three women's request for help is yet another example of the disregard shown to any attempt to uncover, in a sensitive or thoughtful way, the facts, the 'truth' of the case in question. As soon as the story broke the 'great and the good' were queuing up to have their say, this was 'Britain's worst ever slavery case', these three women were 'the tip of the iceberg' with thousands being held against their will in Britain, 'modern slavery is all around us'. But this household was well-known to the state with Bala, Chanda and two of the alleged ‘slaves’ all having been arrested numerous times in the 1970s and the remaining members of the ‘commune’ were rehoused by Lambeth Council five years ago. The police took a month after the initial tip off to raid the property and the accused are on bail. Despite attempts to compare this case with other recent slavery cases the available 'facts' don't appear to support the claims of campaigners, and comments made by police support this, “we do not believe that this case falls into the category of sexual exploitation, or what we all understand as human trafficking” (Guardian 23/11/13). The video that has emerged of two of the women along with their alleged captors attending the inquest in 1997 of their housemate who died after falling from a window also raises questions about just how these women were enslaved. At the risk of speculating, the footage suggests a 'Stockholm Syndrome' scenario that has gone stale over time, with Bala's promise of revolution having vanished long ago; all they're left with is 'revolutionary discipline'.
As we have already said, the ‘truth’ of what happened in this Brixton flat will not be revealed for some time, if indeed it is ever truly revealed. We don't deny that forms of slavery undoubtedly exist in Britain today but this story isn't about understanding why, which would surely pose the question why and how vulnerable people from poorer countries end up in Britain. While the bourgeois press, charities and government agencies are pursuing their own agendas these women’s lives appear only as symbols or statistics of society’s ills. They are living 'evidence' of the ‘care industry’s’, unsubstantiated, claims of widespread abuse and slavery. We can only end by saying that, whatever the outcome of this case, we wish these women well as they try and make sense of their lives. It’s probably too late for Balakrishnan to appreciate what he’s done, to practise some old fashioned ‘self-criticism’. In buying wholesale into the myths of Maoism he acquired a set of ideas that could justify everything from imperialist wars to domestic servitude.
Kino 2/12/13
[1] Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) – August 1st, 1974 (https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/cpestatements.htm [1104]).
[2] For example, musician Cornelius Cardew, a founding member of the RCPB (ML), the successors of the CPE (ML) in the lyrics to the song ‘Smash the Social Contract’ proclaimed “The proletarian party RCPB (ML) leading and guiding the working class to unite to smash the contract”.
We are publishing here - rather belatedly due to technical issues - a series of texts that have contributed to the public Day of Discussion held by the ICC in London, in July 2013.
The day was divided into two sessions, morning and afternoon: the morning session was titled "Capitalism is in deep trouble. Why is it so hard to fight against it?", and we are publishing three short introductory presentations, followed by a brief summary of the discussion. Our readers can also listen to the audio transcript of the morning session.
The afternoon session was on the transitional period from capitalism to communism, a subject which has long been a matter of intense debate among communists, but also historically between communists and anarchists. This session only had one presentation, this too is followed by a brief summary of the discussion. Sadly, the audio recording was of too poor a quality for us to put it online.
All these presentations and summaries were produced by comrades who are sympathisers or contacts of the ICC. We couldn't have done it without them, and we thank them warmly for their efforts.
Those interested can also see a comment on the day of discussion posted on our forum [1107] shortly after the event.
Two presentations introduced the morning discussion focusing on class struggle and crisis.
The first presentation on crisis by Link put forward a view of the development of an understanding of crises by revolutionaries. It traced, over the period of decadence, militants’ understanding of different phases of crises and growth and posed a number of questions raised by the last two decades of austerity and increased exploitation which were accompanied until recently by a lack of class struggle.
The second presentation by KT discussed the struggles between two classes in the recent period. It reviewed the bourgeoisie’s austerity attacks on the working class as well as its ideological attacks in the wake of the collapse in Russia and addressed the working class response. Neither the apparently passive class in Europe nor the appearance of the violent social revolts in various countries over the past 5 years suggest a historic defeat such as in the 1930s.
A third contribution “Is capitalism in terminal decline? Where is the working class? [1022]” by baboon was posted in advance on the ICC discussion forum.
Since the 1980s there has been a period of downturn in struggle, but also an extended period of crisis which has not generated a broad or significant working class response in the heartlands of capital. Does this mean that the concepts of the decline of capitalism and war or revolution and socialism or barbarism are wrong? Does it mean that there needs to be new ways of organising, new activities for revolutionaries? Does it rule out the possibility of a better society? For me the answer must be no! A look at history of the last century confirms their validity. The Russian revolution and the revolutionary wave are key events, crisis of the 30s and the horror of WW2, the emergence of new political thought and class struggle in the late 60s, the evident inability of capitalism in recent years to provide for a improving standard of living for its people, indeed its ability to do only the opposite is proof enough for me that the left communist analysis of capitalism is valid.
So let’s not forget that capitalism has always been in trouble. Even when it could act as a progressive system and expand production and the class system nationally and internationally at the same time as improving living standards, as developing support services such as health and education for its population, as developing new sciences and technologies, it was at the same time destroying old cultures, killing hundreds of thousands in the process, making men women and children work for long hours in brutal working conditions, providing little or no protection from illness accidents and cyclical economic crisis. This is so because it was always an exploitative system, a class society exercising violence, ideological and economic control to achieve its goals.
Marx’s view of historical materialism lays a fundamental framework for viewing crisis in that societies have progressive periods and period of decline, called by the ICC ascendancy and decadence.
This framework applies to capitalism as an exploitative class based society. However it does not mean, as I’ve just suggested, that in one period everything is improving and in the period of decline there is only hardship. There have also been significant technical and social changes over the past 100 years. Education and health systems extend, communication, manufacturing and transport technologies have changed beyond all recognition, consumer goods dominate home markets.
Does this mean all change is progressive? Absolutely not - the reforms of the last century reflecting the needs of capitalism trying to maintain itself. Capitalism today needs reformism to keep ideological control of workers and to hold back prevent class action.
I start here because I want to get away from the idea that we should only describe the past century as a continuous process of deterioration in the economy and social conditions as society comes ever closer to revolution.
Clearly the main point of today’s discussion is the state of class struggle currently So I hope my introduction now will just set a framework and a background to the discussion of today’s situation on the basis of looking at how crises have developed in 20th and 21st centuries. I hope in doing this to stress some useful ideas and to have a go at a few notions that I think are unhelpful and outdated. You’ll be grateful to hear then that I am not going to do this by looking a crisis in terms of economics but from a political point of view.
This current period of low class struggle does question some of the ideas that were developed post WW2 and before. This is a difficult and unexpected period which poses many new problems for analysis of crisis. It’s easy to see that by looking at the lively discussions on the ICC website and how they have generated many problematic issues. Some of the issues remain pose real questions for an understanding of crisis,eg. the size of pre-capitalist markets, role of debt, markets or production as primary issue, and I’d add population growth since 1950s as well as suggestions that we can ignore theory, ignore past events because they were too long ago, make things happen now, find better ways to organise, speak to new militants or searchers (as they seem to have become known).
I see nothing in the current period that questions the idea that capitalism is in terminal decline.
But I do think it means some revisiting of the theories of how we understand crisis and decadence. This extended period of crisis accompanied by a lack of struggle should give us more information with which to improve the analysis of the course of decadence.
I do get the feeling at times that for us old farts it’s too easy to drift back to our youth and pretend things haven’t changed. But since ‘68, 45 years have elapsed and 1917 was 50 years before that. The young comrades of today cannot envisage the struggles of the 60s and 70s any better than the comrades of that period could envisage events in 1917. The period since WW2 have been very long and we’ve only seen one wave of class struggle in that time.
How does this elongated period affect an analysis of the current situation.? This is I think a core question for today.
I want therefore to give an overview of crises from a political point of view
When WW1 started, Luxemburg, Lenin, etc. spoke of the period of imperialism, the period of revolution and appear to have thought of it as the end of capitalism. They saw this as a short term prospect and as a period of continuous class struggle.
In 30s and 40s, revolutionaries struggled to understand the decline of that revolutionary wave and to see it in context of political changes that were taking place in society.
In the 40s and 50s comrades had to develop an understanding of defeat of the class and identified war and revolution as opposing class responses to crisis.
In the 60s and 70s, the comrades coming out of GCF and later Solidarity, Workers’ Voice etc. had to develop an understanding of the emergence of new struggles against capitalism as it returned to open crisis out of a period of growth. Everybody at that stage however again saw the collapse of capitalism and emergence of revolutionary period as imminent if not immediate.
Since the 1980s comrades have struggled to maintain their existence in the context of a lack of class struggle and it is this context that poses the questions today.
This is why an understanding of crisis is important to us all and I would argue that the most important task of revolutionaries is this discussion of the current situation. So despite some of the arguments in the ICC webpages, the discussion of what Luxemburg, Bukharin and Mattick said about crises, of what Lenin said about organisation, of what went on in 1917, of Marxist ideas from the past, of science and evolution, of subterranean consciousness, of anarchism and of environment, etc., etc. are essential contributions (of more or less significance) to this ultimate task. These issues facilitate the discussion of today’s situation. Because this is a skill that one day must enable future comrades to analyse the heat of a revolutionary situation and make decisions about whether it is time to call on the class to wait, to retreat and to attack. So please don’t denigrate economic theory or the events of the Russian revolution etc. as old hat and not worth your time.
We would in truth not be having this discussion if there was open class struggle in Europe. Why there isn’t, is a problem but it’s also the opportunity to review and improve understanding of the past and of today.
For me the period of say 1914 to 1924 is really significant. It proves to me beyond all doubt that a working class revolution can happen and if it can happen once it can happen again. But it was almost 100 years ago and perhaps it is all too easy to look back and say this was only a highpoint in struggle and things were easy for comrades.
Comrades had difficulties then too.Capitalism was at its highpoint politically and economically. Yes crises existed, but the economy was not in that bad a shape prior to WW1, national bourgeoisies saw only the example of the UK in terms of what they could achieve for themselves. The working class suffered awful working and living conditions, streets were dirty unhealthy places where homeless adults and kids scrabbled to survive, little education or health systems were available, society was only just finding out how to provide sewers and power supplies. Transport to work was not available, sick pay, holiday pay was non-existent.
Common was still the belief was that women and workers had no understanding of society and politics, and were born to their station in life. The divide between probably rich and poor was far greater than now. Nationalism was strong because few people outside the army know what foreigners were really like. The Church, particularly Catholicism still had a strong hold on people’s behaviour.
Revolutionaries had no computers and no internet to communicate, letter post was still a novelty, just as was the motor car, telephones, duplicators, typewriters. Leafleting must have been hard going! Comrades were still organised on a national basis (Russian SDLP members were émigrés abroad, rather than members of UK, Austrian German SDLP). National meetings however must have taken days to get to. The norm must have been to organise through local indeed very local meetings. Communication within organisation no matter how structured or well organised must have been so slow and problematic. What is called now centralisation was scarcely possible then. Worse still, revolutionaries had to contend in every meeting with the reality that they were members of SD or the LP alongside all the reformist and liberal tendencies and they all needed to be brought together. How do you discuss and organise anything when in the rooms are the equivalents of modern day Tony Blairs or Tony Cliffs or Vanessa Redgraves?? Horrible idea
What’s my point?Adverse conditions are not new! The revolutionary wave was enormous and worldwide the evidence is there to see.
We have not yet experienced that again but from the 60s to the 80s we did see the emergence of a wave of worldwide class struggle. Reactions at that time were similar in some ways to Marxists at the end of WW1, ie.that the period of revolution is here, class conflict is growing and the end is nigh. But it did not come and still has not.
Economic crisis has intensified and attacks on working class living standards continue. Capitalism tries to control the working class and society in general in ever more desperate - and maybe obvious - ways as it extends its structures and mechanisms globally and intensifies them locally.
This period can easily be understood by our schema recognising waves of struggle. It does raise questions about some formulations however.
Well, only to the extent that decadence is clearly not just a permanent nonstop crisis or a continuous revolutionary wave. It’s not either a simple cycle of war-revolution-crisis-war-reconstruction, crisis-war- revolution or even crisis- class struggle-war, reconstruction crisis. The course of events up to the 1950s is not necessarily the model for the events from 1980s onwards. Hence it may be more appropriate to consider decadence as a separate element to crisis theory. Clearly the theory of saturated markets and need for pre-capitalist markets is no longer a satisfactory explanation for ongoing crises and TROPF [tendency for the rate of profit to fall] theory actually implies falls and rises in the rate of profit in both periods.
Previous assumptions that decadence means permanent crisis and permanent class struggle appear now obsolete. Decadence may put revolution on the historical agenda but it does not give guarantees and it may mean intensified crisis for capitalism but it does not eliminate capitalism’s dynamic strong capacity to adapt and grow.
It is now also much harder to say that reforms are not possible than it was in the 30s or 40s. because clearly there have been economic, technical and social changes in the last 100 years., I know that reform implies improvements for the working class not just changes but it seems more accurate now to emphasise that it is reformism that is not possible. Capitalism is fighting to keep control of its system and reforms/changes are used because the ruling class needs them for its own purposes even if that is keeping the working class in its place.
As capitalism persists, localised conflicts emerge and destroy areas of the globe. Lebanon, N Ireland, Afghanistan, Ruanda, Palestine, Somalia and latterly Syria have all been turned into models of barbarism. Maybe not yet permanently but not easy to reverse out of either. These local wars in peripheral countries have not however developed into global wars between major powers in the way conflicts in Poland and Serbia have done in the past. However this does that mean it is impossible. The start of the WW2is not the model for what is happening now, just as the revolution emerging from WW1 isn’t either. All it should suggest is that greater clarity does not come automatically from a tendency to make more predictions!!!!!
The ideas that theYears of Truth in the1980s have determined the remainder of history, that crisis leads directly to class struggle, are inappropriate.
Significant deepening of economic crisis has not led to significantworking class action in Europe or America. Were the Years of Truth decisive and the class beaten then? There is nothing now to suggest such a negative outcome. WW3 has not happened and the ruling class still fear the emergence of working class struggle and organises to confront the working class in this crisis. Rather the Years of Truth had a more significant impact on the organisation of the ruling class.
I have struggled to understand the concept of Decomposition as it seems like a justification of the Years of Truth idea. However the rather excellent description of ideological and social decomposition that appeared in 1R151, provides a valid overview of capitalism throughout decadence but holds nothing specific about the current period since 1990.
We discuss later what is socialism and how to get there but what is barbarism? We throw this formula around very lightly but I suspect everybody means different things by it.Fair enough, but ongoing decadence ought to inform a discussion here. I don’t believe Marx meant the apocalypse a la Mad Max or Defiance or whatever - even if you can’t exclude that notion. Ongoing developments in capitalist decadence imply surely a slow decline into incessant economic social and military conflicts, warlordism, a loss of centralised social control, loss of capitalist law and order. There’s strong section in IR151 mentioned above that seems more appropriate here.
In fact, just as low tech manufacturing has been exported to developing countries in Asia where labour and resources are cheap, so has class struggle. The mass factories and production lines which dominated in Europe at the start of the 20th century are now in Asian countries, which just like Russia at that time, are weak and underdeveloped capitalist economies. Levels of class struggle and the intensity of struggles have been high in China India Bangladesh, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and recently Turkey and Brazil. Clearly what happens in Europe, America and Japan will be critical in the long term but in the short term I do wonder if eurocentrism is too dominant in today’s thinking and that more value should be given to struggles in what used to be called the Third World.
How do crises in decadence affect underdeveloped and even developing countries? Is this different to the impact on what used to be called the 1st world?
Link
The first part of this presentation by the comrade Link ably reminded us that the proletariat has always experienced real difficulties and convulsions in all epochs of its existence.
We should recall the origins of these difficulties: they lie in the fact that the modern proletariat is the first revolutionary class which is also at the same time the exploited class of society. Because of this, it cannot draw upon any economic power in the process of conquering political power. In fact, it’s the very opposite: in direct contrast to what happened in past revolutions, the seizure of political power by the proletariat necessarily precedes the period of transition during which the domination of the old relations of production is destroyed and gives way to new social relations. We’ll talk more of this Period of Transition later. We should not neglect to dissect the current ‘theory’ of “communisation” when we do so.
So, for the working class, the producer class, its struggle against its conditions of exploitation (which is a revolutionary struggle at root) relies solely on its collective nature, its capacity to organise, and its consciousness of what this organisation has to achieve. We’re talking of aglobal, internationalclass living under what, in future times (we hope) will come to be seen as the wholly ‘unnatural’ situation of nation states, of divisions of humanity into different classes, of power, authority and decision-making in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, with the production of our material (and spiritual) needs subject to irrational forces. How stupid was that? future generations may ask. How stupid is that, we say today!
In short, the working class as a whole has always had great difficulty in building up a permanent base for its struggles and understanding the goal of its struggles, as Link points out and, in the last 100 years in particular, as the state has been obliged to swallow more and more of civil society, the workers’ struggles have seen their permanent mass organisations – Social Democratic Parties and trade unions - integrated into the survival apparatus of capitalism.
This is precisely why, even if we can at times see an underlying continuity, a sub-sea or subterranean maturation at work, workers struggles necessarily appear to us as waves, ebbing and flowing, often becalmed, sometimes random, apparently unconnected, and certainly not sequential with one wave inevitably and always following on at a higher level than the other. Marx spoke of the jagged course of workers’ struggles which appear to throw their opponent to the ground only to recoil, withdraw. And we must use judgement; have criteria, when we seek to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different moments of the class struggle. Much depends not only on the confidence of the class and the strength of its class identity, but also on the terrain over which these waves must break.
How do we compare, for example (and to illustrate this in an admittedly superficial way with specific struggles), how can we weigh the current (June 2013) spontaneous movement in Brazil which has pushed back the bourgeoisie, forced it to temporarily withdraw its attack of a public transport fare rise, with the strikes in France in 2010 against the state’s pension reform, which failed to force the ruling class to withdraw its attacks? Apart from any weaknesses on the workers’ part, didn’t the workers in France lack the element of surprise, of setting the time and the place for the struggle? Weren’t the trade unions and the state in massive collusion to head off this important moment of social unrest? Shouldn’t we also assess not just the failure of the French workers in 2010 but also understand the massive strength of the movement to progress as far and for as long as it did given the obstacles it faced?
Thus we must suggest a nuance to the previous presentation: the class struggle involves, at root, two major classes. To say the class struggle of the past period has been at a low ebb – the ICC talks of it not being up to the level required to push back the bourgeoisie - is perhaps to underplay the fact that the opposing class, the bourgeoisie, has been operating at top speed, has been struggling at an extremely high level, if you like, in order to maintain its dominance, and sod the consequences for the rest of society.
We recall from the 1970s the difficulties within the proletarian milieu – within the ICC itself – to grasp the fact that the bourgeoisie even had a consciousness, a view on how it should deal with its class enemy; a resistance to the fact that the ruling class manipulated its ‘democratic elections’, lined up its ideological troops of left and right to combat the workers struggles. [edit: or the fact that the state infiltrated small proletarian organisations!] The fact that it didn’t inevitably get the line upit desired, or that the encroaching economic crisis reduced its room for manoeuvre shouldn’t disguise this fact. Undoubtedly the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 had a profound, pre-eminent effect of smothering the combativity and consciousness of the working class, effectively curtailing the struggles which had begun in May 68 and once more ridiculing a crucial perspective –communism, the world of abundance in which each lived each according to his/her needs, each according to his/her ability.
However even before then, the ruling class had begun a counter-offensive against the working class which had taken its toll. Classically this offensive took the form of a right wing party in government, attacking workers living standards and enacting anti-proletarian laws with a left wing of social democracy and unions in opposition to sabotage workers’ response and to compound their feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.
So when we today assess the difficulties encountered and displayed by recent workers’ movements, we should recall the distance they’ve travelled from the period of 1990 to 2005 and recognise the terrain that’s ranged against them.
And let’s also put these difficulties into a further historical context: the previous presentation takes us through the decades of the past 100 years or so – an absolutely necessary journey. When it gets to the 1940s, it talks of revolutionaries trying to understand thedefeatof the previous revolutionary wave. In short, they were then, and we are here, talking of a counter-revolution, a political and physical decimation of the proletariat. And by stressing the political as well as the physical defeat, we remind ourselves that there was no absence of large scale struggles world-wide in the 1930s: it’s just that these tended more and more to be marshalled by and behind one faction of the bourgeoisie against another: behind united fronts, sacred unions, New Deals, fascist totalitarianism, Stalinist Soviet nationalism – and against rival bourgeois factions. The proletariat was in this period dragged off its class terrain. The harsh ‘lessons’ of Spain remain to be widely reappropriated. The second world war, followed by the Cold War, was the result.
Is it the same today when we discuss the difficulties of the struggle? Evidently not. The illusions - and the word is used advisedly - sown by the dominant class, from which the everyday ideas of society emanate, in an abstract ‘democracy’; the calls to ‘vote wisely’, the diminishing but still evident reliance on trades unions to organise the struggle, all of which we see today, represent not a fundamental march behind the needs of capital but the lack of awareness of the proletariat of its own identity, strength and potential. It’s not at all the same thing as a period of historic defeat.
The first part of the presentation affirmed that it’s not just a question of expecting the crisis to deepen still further in order to see a proletarian reaction, particularly in Europe and America. In fact we can see that a sudden deepening of the crisis can, in the first instance, paralyse a proletarian response just as much as a drip-feed of attacks spread out through time can induce a kind of soporific effect on the struggle. For instance, in Great Britain, “...the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years....This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued...”The IFS says:‘The falls in nominal wages that workers have experienced during this recession are unprecedented, and seem to provide at least a partial explanation for why unemployment has risen less ...To the extent that it is better for individuals to stay in work, albeit with lower wages, than to become unemployed’...”The Guardian, June 12, 2013. So fear is a factor paralysing the struggle.
Yet this partial passivity does not prevent the attacks escalating: on the contrary. And while we necessarily refuse and refute a reductionist ‘crisis deepens/workers struggle increases’ narrative, the fact is that the heart of Western Europe has so far been spared the kind of attacks witnessed in Greece, Portugal, Ireland or even the youth unemployment levels of Spain. This cannot last. The worst is ahead of us. All of us – China, India, the US, Japan, South America, all of Europe... The crisis is progressively reducing the bourgeoisie’s capacity to push the worst of its effects onto the ‘peripheral nations’.
What level of crisis engenders a generalised response? We cannot say. As we’ve argued above, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. But if you do want to ponder what level of deterioration it took in the past to push the working class into revolutionary action, consider that it required 3 years of absolute hell, mayhem and mass murder at the front combined with increasing deprivation at home to give rise to the first revolutionary wave in 1917... Mankind doesn’t jettison a tool until it has absolutely proved its worthlessness, says Marx. How much proof do you need? That’s the question...
The situation is not static: The economic crisis today is indisputably deeper than four or five years ago. All the job cuts, wage reductions, all the zero hour contracts and reduction in subsistence payments to the aged and the jobless, and the long-term sick (in short, the unravelling ‘social safety net’, the dismantling ‘welfare state’ where it existed in the first place); the almost zero interest rates and all the bail-outs have solved absolutely nothing. The problem underlying the crisis of 2007-2008 wasdebt- a debt originating almost 70 years ago immediately after WW2 when capitalist production did not re-ignite according to ‘market laws’ but required, over a period of 20 years, the world’s richest nation, the USA, to turn itself into the world’s most indebted nation, in order to bankroll world recovery.
Yet today, to try to escape this historically-determined debt-mess:“Japan, for example, has recently thrown the kitchen sink at its persisting economic problems in a desperate $1.2 trillion gamble that it's bet on itself against all-comers. So far Britain and the United States has "invested" around $7 trillion in Quantitative Easing the vast majority of which is not going into production but into paying off debts and further speculation. In a previous IR[International Review, ICC theoretical journal]the figure of $8 is used just to generate one dollar of "real" production.” (Baboon, post 12, ICC Day of Discussion thread, cited above). In short, the answer to the debt crisis has so far been ... more debt!
The difference between 2007/2008 and 2013 is not any ‘recovery’ in the economic crisis: on the contrary. It’s in the temporary and fragile ‘recovery’ of the bourgeoisie’spoliticalgrasp of the situation, the ruling class’s ephemeral ability to present the illusion that it is in control of the situation, has re-established mastery over the world. It is all smoke and mirrors, sorcery, black magic of the first order. No-one says it doesn’t work ... for a while. What all this ‘sacrifice’ and fictional cash has bought the bourgeoisie is a little ‘time’.
Let’s recall Lenin’s simple truism:a revolutionary situation arises when the rulers can no longer rule as before, and the ruled can no longer be governed as before.In 2007/2008, a crack appeared in the bourgeoisie’s matrix, in its version of reality: the queues outside the banks started to form; people, ‘ordinary’ people, talked about ‘the economy’ ‘the crisis’, its implications for the future, for them and their children, for the old generation, for the next generation – a social space was opened ... and quickly closed.It was re-openedin Tunisia, in Greece, in Egypt the US and, above all in Spain, with the ‘public assemblies’ and open meetings of the Indignados movement. All this will happen again. And again. In different places, with different forms, sparked by different issues, as with fare rises in Brazil, or threats to public spaces in Istanbul - superficial sparks which ignite profound underlying issues. This much we can say is “inevitable” as night follows day.
Moreover, these struggles, as in May 68, will not ‘merely’ focus on ‘economic’ questions: already, the struggles in China and Bangladesh call into question inhuman working conditions; in Turkey and China (not to mention the recent flooding of central Europe), the question of the environment and its destruction is central; in India, the position of women following abhorrent rape cases is a cause of mass mobilisation... these are not ‘secondary’ or ‘non-class’ issues: they are central to our survival as a species. They are issues to which only the working class has the key, even if the vast majority of society is pressing on the door...
The social revolts of the last few years – from ‘food riots’ and reactions to increasingly brutal state repression - show that the vast majority of this world seek, require, are striving for, a liberation from capital’s crises, wars, and degradation of every fundamental of human existence. Clean air and water. Unadulterated food.Access to the latest medical and technological advances.An abolition of sexual and other forms of slavery. All this has been made possible by the development of the productive forces, even under the disfiguring cloak of capital’s profit drive.
Instead, the majority of humanity faces war and austerity. It witnesses what happens in Libya, in Syria, when a social movement against this or that regime is co-opted in to a fight for this or that ruling faction. This is the ‘alternative’: the decomposition of bourgeois society which threatens the “ruin of the contending classes”, which offers barbarism as a counterpoint to the possibility and necessity of a social future.
The question is: will the revolutionary class, the proletariat, the class which holds the future in its hands, emerge from this mess as an increasingly distinct, organised and conscious social force to give form and theory to the strivings of the immense majority? Can it distinguish itself from them, in order to impose its vision, its intrinsic, collective organisations of discussion and decision-making which prefigure the future transitional organisations of humanity? Can it equip itself with the mechanisms that, in previous times, it employed to fight against capital and its wars and austerity – the factory committees, the workers’ councils, the councils of the unemployed? Because these are the stakes.
Why is it so hard to struggle? Perhaps an outdated question these days. Why is it so hard to struggle effectively? What are the methods and the goals of the struggle?
These are the practical problems posed now.
“We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: ‘Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle.’ We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that ithas toacquire, even if it does not want to.” (Marx,Letter from theDeutsch-FranzösischeJahrbücherto Ruge [1108]’, 1843)
The key feature running throughout the discussion related to an analysis of the current wave of struggles across the world rather than just the lack of struggles in the UK or Europe
One aspect was the objective of struggles. In the recent wave of struggles, the main concerns are partial issues or consumption struggles rather than economic factory-based struggles. This reflects the limitations of economic struggles, the transfer of manufacturing and jobs to low wage countries, and a recognition that pensions, prices, benefits, rents although more concerned with consumption than production can be seen as much closer to the living conditions of the broad working class. Even issues related to environmentalism, freedoms, feminism, housing are coming to the fore. Used to be called partial struggles but are maybe coming to the fore as capitalism imposes more austerity on us all. A question posed at present is what is the potential for development in these struggles?
It was also noted that the term ‘partial struggles’ relates to struggles in the Middle East, southern Europe/Mediterranean countries and lately Brazil whereas struggles in China and the far east have been more factory based and there is still passivity in rest of Europe and America. Also related here is the impact of globalisation during the past decades. The structure of capitalism has changed significantly with smaller concentration of workers in heartlands of capitalism and massive scales of production shifted to low wage countries. This product of globalisation has itself an impact on struggle and how class consciousness develops in that it again supports the ideological attack that class struggle is not worth it.
The issue of the impact of the collapse of USSR in 1989 was raised with some discussion on how much it has changed the nature of the current wave of struggle, and lack of struggle in Europe, through the idea that communism does not work. It was however pointed out that there has been a massive increase in workers in China and India and this won’t affect them. Youth involvement was also identified as a key feature and often youth appear be taking a lead in the demonstrations. Youth unemployment is an important issue here
The proletarian movement may not be in control, may be a minority tendency in these struggles but is nevertheless a clear and significant presence.
Internationalism was noted as a sign of the strength of such struggles and a feature of the content. But it was also stressed that we need to make an international analysis of the struggles first and foremost. Capitalism is now a world market The international context sets the framework in which struggles are appearing rather than the national features.
Another theme running through the discussion was the idea of class identity and the development of class consciousness. Whilst not the focus of discussion these topics were seen as significant to an understanding of the evolution of struggle and the context they created for future struggles. Differences were also drawn between the experience of the class in the far east and in Europe, impacting on the ideologies that the bourgeoisie can use to attack struggles eg in China less experience of TUs. The same lack of experience of Trade Unions and wages struggles was evident in Europe in 60s and 70s. It was pointed out that the spark for revolutionary struggle can however be apparently trivial events such as in 1905.
Link
This is the audio recording of the debate that followed two presentations on the subject "Capitalism is in deep trouble, why is it so hard to struggle?".
In The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV Marx writes:
“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
So, for Marx, the DotP (ie "Dictatorship of the proletariat" - an abbreviation used throughout here) is a 'political transition period' which corresponds to a transition in ‘society’, which I take it here means the economy.
In a letter to J Weydemeyer in 1852, Marx writes:
“... And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them... What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classesis only bound up withparticular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to thedictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to theabolition of all classesand to aclassless society.”
Marx then saw his contribution as being to elucidate the transformation from capitalist society to communist society as being conditional on the proletariat establishing its revolutionary dictatorship.
Subsequent events – particularly the Paris Commune and the Revolution in Russia - have allowed some attempts to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat to made and this in turn has provoked some debate about the forms the DotP might take, and the problems it may face. This is however still very much a work in progress; obviously, no ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ has ever been established which has acted as the ‘bridge’ from capitalist society to communist society; the attempts at proletarian power that have been made have, fairly rapidly, been recuperated back into capitalism, if indeed it can be argued that they ever left it.
If we think of the DotP as being a period of transition, then it stands to reason that at its beginning, the economic form that prevails is capitalism. It cannot be otherwise; if the proletariat is re-organising society (and as a fundamental part of that re-organisation, the economy) the re-organisation must begin in capitalism and be a process of capitalism being transformed into something else. If anything else were possible, the DotP would not be necessary – if it were possible for capitalism to spontaneously transform itself into new forms, especially at a local level, then socialist society doesn’t have to be global and doesn’t have to be established by the working class. But these things are not possible; capitalism must be abolished by the working class, and it must be abolished globally. Until it has done so, the proletarian dictatorship still retains the capitalist mode of production - because socialism cannot exist in one country, there is no alternative to an increasing attenuated capitalism. As the world revolution spreads, and more of the economy comes under the proletariat’s control, measures can be taken that anticipate ‘socialism’ but if socialist society is in itself classless and propertyless and stateless then it cannot exist, anywhere, untilallproperty is in the hands of the proletariat, everyone has been integrated into production (thus ending ‘classes’), and production itself has been restructured to fulfil real human needs not profit – or the need to go towards fighting the bourgeoisie.
But as socialism in one country is not possible, the DotP can only be a period of political transition corresponding to an economic transition if the world revolution succeeds. If there is no possibility of the transition to socialism - because of the defeat of the world revolution - then what becomes of the DotP? It's a political form that doesn't correspond to any kind of material reality, a 'political transition period' that doesn't correspond with an economic transition period. All that the dictatorship can do, isolated in one revolutionary territory, is seek to organise capitalism (not transform it) in order to defend any 'gains' of the revolution, though of course, as we have seen in the 20th century, it is at the same time dying on its feet as it is deprived of any material basis other than the continued existence of capitalism. A revolutionary political form cannot survive in a non-revolutionary period, because the basis of the revolutionary political form is the suppression of capitalism; and by the early 1920s the revolution was in retreat and the capitalist powers once more on the attack. The existing conditions did not allow the revolution to extend and thus what came out of the defeat of the revolution was a 'deformed' version of the DotP, which had not begun the transition to socialist society because it had been prevented from doing so, by the failure of the world revolution.
So, what is the concrete difference between the dictatorship of the proletariat and an economy run by a state-capitalist class? Both entail control over the economy; but the crucial factor is the direction of the revolution. In a period of revolutionary advance the proletarian power will be taking over functions of control of society. If the revolution is in retreat the likelihood is that the functions of the state will begin to separate themselves from control by the working class. Even in time of revolutionary advance this may happen, but we have few examples to draw on. In Russia, in the years immediately following the revolution, we see a process of the Bolshevik Party substituting itself for the working class. The Bolsheviks in 1917 were not a new class of state-capitalist bureaucrats; on the contrary, they were at that point the best representatives of the international proletariat, but as the world revolution faltered and the Bolsheviks more and more saw themselves as guardians of the new ‘soviet republic’ in Russia, they identified with and fused themselves with the state. It seems that the fundamental process of the state-capitalist class coming into being was that of the deprivation of the working class of political power, the disintegration of worker's democracy, which happened in the late teens and early ‘20s. I would argue that this disintegration of proletarian power is not in fact a consequence of the Bolsheviks coming to power, but a cause. I would see the checking of the revolution at the borders of the Russian state as being the cause of this failure.
As Rosa said in 1918,
“Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle.” (Russian Revolution, Ch 8)
Lenin used the expression ‘semi-state’ to describe the DotP in State and Revolution (Ch. 1 Pt. 4):
“According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither away", but is “abolished” by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state”.
This semi-state, in the conception of the ICC, is a power that is not identical with the workers’ councils.
“while the new state is not identical to those that preceded it in history, it still retains characteristics that constitute an obstacle to the development of the revolution; which is why, as Engels had already pointed out and as Lenin had made clear in State and Revolution,the proletariat must on the very day of the revolution begin the process of eliminating the new state.
After taking power, the main obstacle that the soviets would run into in Russia was the newly emerged state, which “despite the appearance of its greater material power[...]was a thousand times more vulnerable to the enemy than other working class organs. Indeed, the state owes its greater physical power to objective factors which correspond perfectly with the interests of the exploiting classes but can have no association with the revolutionary role of the proletariat”; “The terrible threat of a return to capitalism will come mainly in the state sector. This, all the more so as capitalism is found here in its impersonal, so to speak, ethereal form.Statification can help to conceal a long-term process opposed to socialism.”(ICC, “What are the workers' councils? (Part 5) 1917-1921: The soviets and the question of the state”)
However, I'm a little confused by the way the ICC poses the problem, I must admit. My assumption is that the militia, the factories, distribution networks - everything will be under the control of the workers' councils. This is the ‘proletarian state’ (in so far as there can be such a thing).
Are the worker's councils, workplace or neighbourhood committees and general assemblies, and the organs of armed coercion, together the 'semi-state'? If the means of decision making, operating production/distribution/consumption of goods and services, and the means of exercising coercive force against other classes and strata are merged, is it counter-revolutionary?
From the recent exchanges on this question between the ICC and OpOp:
[the position of the ICC exhibits] “an accommodation to a vision influenced by anarchism that identifies the Commune-State with the bureaucratic (bourgeois) state”. [This puts] “the proletariat outside of the post-revolutionary state while actually creating a dichotomy that, itself, is the germ of a new caste reproducing itself in the administrative body separated organically from the workers’ councils”.
I certainly wouldn’t go so far as OpOp here, if the ICC is wrong, there is no basis for the new ‘caste’ and there is no problem to solve; on the other hand if the ICC is right then the working class needs to be aware of ‘its own’ state turning into a conservative force, of escaping its control.
Can this happen as the revolution is advancing? We have so little knowledge it is difficult to speculate. Only one revolution in recent history has come close to success, and that nearness to success was short-lived. It is possible that even in times of advance, the ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ may be in danger of escaping from the control of the working class –with different parts of the administrative machinery becoming alternative centres of power. But, in times of revolutionary retreat it seems inevitable that the state will act as a conservative force.
The state exists while there are different groups in society with opposed interests. Once classes have been abolished through the abolition of property, then there is no social basis for a state. Even before this, the fact that the state is under the control (if not identical with) the proletariat means that it is unlike any previously existing state, the state of a majority of the population. The state in a sense 'withers' at the same time as the condition of being a worker is generalised. When all are workers, no-one is 'working class'(ie, a separate category of workers in society); when all administer the state, the state ceases to be an entity separate from the population. Incidentally, this may be the first time in history that the term ‘democracy’ would be appropriate, when ‘all the people of earth’ are involved in ‘ruling’.
Administration of society - that is, in the revolutionary period, state functions of organisation of production and monopoly of violence - is the task of the workers' councils (the organs of the working class organised at the point of production). Do these 'state functions' actually imply a 'state'? In a sense yes - if it looks like a state and acts like a state it's functionally a state. But it is a (pre-para-semi-)state (of a different type), because it is the state of a majority, for the first time in history. But whatever its type the state itself is not identical to the working class; it may be under its control but the two aren't the same thing.
But when the revolution is actually 'complete'? When all the territories are under the control of the working class and all property is collectivised and the entire productive and distributive apparatus is under the control of the working class, when all other classes have been integrated into production? There is no 'state' then, just a classless communal society. But to get there... what other option is there but for the working class to administer a 'state' that controls a part only of the world economy? Until the 'parts' are unified into socialised production, these parts must necessarily I think be capitalist. The 'withering away' comes precisely because those capitalist parts are wedded together to produce a socialised whole. The three things - taking over the whole economy, generalising the condition of the working class by integrating the other classes into production, and the withering away of the state - are the same phenomenon seen from different angles.
This is the task of the dictatorship of the proletariat – the abolition of property and integration of the whole of humanity into the productive process, the complete re-organisation of society to facilitate production for need not profit, and the consequent abolition of itself as a class. In this process it seems likely that it will need to be vigilant that the structures it sets up to help in this process do not escape its control and become a conservative or indeed retrograde force.
Slothjabber
Slothjabber’s presentation brought up many important questions and contributions from participants such as:
If the proletariat controls the state, are they exploiting themselves? Adam Smith says the state exists to protect the wealth and property from others. Do capitalists still exist? S argued that in a sense the workers will be exploiting themselves... The law of value, wage-labour, production for exchange continue to exist in the transition period.
How important is the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’?, given that historically the word ‘dictatorship’ has been defined differently to how it is currently conceived.
The presentation seems to be talking in terms of‘stages’ managed by the class (or their representatives!). I think of it as a process (as opposed to distinct ‘stages’). If the revolution is to spread, it has to be an attack on the economy. Of course, it is a political struggle too. But both at the same time. By chipping away at the economy, by undermining the wage economy and wage labour, we can begin a process. So the idea of a fixed transition: first political, then economic, rather than a continual process, is inaccurate.
There is not an administrative solution to the Period of Transition. It is a matter of class consciousness. The soviets existed for years, though they were empty of content. All will depend on the capacity of the proletariat to retain control over its own activity. The problem for us is that even when the bourgeoisie is overthrown, the proletariat will still be faced a majority of other non-exploiting classes. How does the proletariat relate to them? In a hospital: we'll still need the consultants after the revolution. There must be some form of compromise with the needs of these elements. The state is an instrument of class rule, yes, but also an instrument of all society. If the workers create that state, how do they retain their purity from other classes in society? By the barrel of a gun? Or by mediation? And if the latter, then the state is not the most revolutionary part of society.
A large part of the proletariat are engaged in work which will be obsolete in communist society such as retail workers whose jobs exist on the premise of there existing a class who seek to make a profit by selling the products of our labour. Naturally communist society is not based on buying and selling for profit so these jobs, although proletarian, become obsolete to society. How can workers engaged in this sector of the economy be integrated into communist society?
We can't build a new society in the shell of the old, but we can build class consciousness through struggle: occupations, strikes, insurrections etc... A long period of struggle can lead to the proletariat creating its own institutions of governance such as workers’ councils. But if councils are just workplace-based, what about lots of people who don't fit into this but have been in struggle?
We should also consider the impact of the revolution upon popular culture, it is not just a matter of socialising the means of production but socialising life itself, eliminating social alienation and developing feelings of solidarity. The workers’ revolution will entail an overthrowing not just of contemporary politics and economy but will also bring about a moral revolution of sorts.
There exists a difference of opinion between the SPGB and the ICC on the Period of Transition. The SPGB believe that the PoT will not be as prolonged or chaotic as others think, the context of Marx believing that there will be a prolonged PoT was that capitalism had not yet fully developed worldwide, thus some temporary measures were needed to produce a modern economy which could cater to everybody’s needs. The SPGB argue that because we now have the productive capabilities to cater to everybody’s needs and the democratic institutions to achieve power it will be possible to have a swift, peaceful transition to communist society.
At the beginning of the summer some international media outlets published, in the margins, information about the struggle of retired workers in Nicaragua for their pensions and the repression that they suffered from the Sandinista government[1]. The headlines affirm that: "The Sandinista government represses the old folks"[2]. The Sandinistas under Ortega obviously defended themselves from this charge. On this subject we are publishing below an article sent by the Nucleus of Internationalist Discussion of Costa Rica, a group close to the ICC. The article denounces the trap laid by the bourgeoisie aimed at confining the struggle of the pensioners and turning it into a simple political campaign, a fight between bourgeois factions. At the same time this article defends the spontaneous and proletarian nature of this conflict which has shown the brutality of official repression by Sandinista "commandos". In the opposing bourgeois camp this struggle is cynically used in the hope of removing the Sandinistas from government and taking their place. The text compares the struggle itself to the demonstrations in Brazil and Turkey by noting that in these two countries we saw above all the reaction of the youth, whereas in Nicaragua it was the retired who expressed their dissatisfaction. But in both cases it is the same proletarian struggle. We are in agreement with this insistence, beyond the particularities underlined, such as the massive numbers involved. The explosions of the "indignant" in Spain or the movements which have unfolded in Brazil because of the price of public transport, or those in Turkey, have mobilised many more people, hundreds of thousands. But despite the scale of these movements, it was evident that the working class was taking part in the struggle alongside other sectors of the population; and even if its initiatives and traditions of struggle impregnated these movements, particularly the assemblies in Spain and the expressions of solidarity in Turkey and Brazil, the working class didn’t acquire the confidence to take the lead in the overall social movement, to put forward its own demands on a class basis and evolve a perspective for the struggle.
The struggle of the “old folks” in Nicaragua was much less massive than the movements in these countries. But for all its undeniable weaknesses it was a real expression of the working class.
As everywhere throughout the world, capitalism and its crisis is attacking the working class more and more. Misery can only increase, along with a brutal repression faced with any will to struggle. The Sandinista government, which historically has been sold as a "socialist" alternative, has once again shown its real face, as part of the world's bourgeoisie and an arm of repression against the working class. It's in this context that we understand the protests of the retired of Nicaragua, in the framework of struggles which are developing here and there throughout the world, with a working class which refuses to sacrifice what little it has on the altar of enriching a minority of capitalists, which can no longer bear the weight of a system which has been rotten and decadent for a long time. The Sandinista government has not been backward in making its exploited pay for the crisis. Even if these demonstrations haven't reached the numbers of more recent struggles in Turkey and Brazil, they are part of the whole struggle of the world proletariat. The struggles of these old people do not concern themselves alone but also youth and the entire class, because the attack on the retired is done in the same way as the attack on the living conditions on the whole of the working class and other exploited layers.
Last June a group of retired workers occupied the offices of Nicaragua's social security (INSS) for some days in order to demand a minimum pension for workers who had not completed the minimum contributions of 750 parts in order to qualify for a pension. What they asked for was a pension based on a minimum salary of $140 and some possibilities of medical care. Only 8000 of the 54,000 workers fulfilled the conditions to receive a "solidarity ticket" of $50, an amount on which they could hardly survive. The remainder received nothing at all!
According to information from the INSS, 71,658 persons, of whom 54,872 are still alive, have contributions between 250 and 750 parts. The response of the INSS authorities was the following: "there's no money!", "Anastasio Somaza took it in 1979!"[3].
Repression fell on the "old folks" from two sides: the Sandinista militias and the police. During the occupation, the police barred access to the families and friends who brought provisions to the occupants, some of whom said that they were prevented from getting a drink. Some days later, young sympathisers joined the protests. On its side the government let loose its shock-troops that it disguised as "a spontaneous, popular organisation" that the police let pass in order to undertake a much more aggressive repression, more aggressive than the police themselves. Nobody could make a complaint since no-one had seen anything and no aggressor was arrested. Finally, the forces of order proceeded to a strong-arm eviction under the pretext "of taking the old people for medical check-ups", whereas it was the police themselves that had prevented the provision of food and drink, thus putting these people in danger. And further, the occupiers were accused of having "caused devastation" to the installations.
Some days afterwards, the authorities called for a "counter-demonstration" in order to show "solidarity with the government". These mobilisations were sponsored by the Sandinista government which set up the logistical means at its disposal, including making municipal transport available, to guarantee the success of its appeal.
The speeches of the Nicaraguan opposition, and that of the international bourgeoisie, were always the same: "The left government of Nicaragua represses the old", whereas, on the other side, the Sandinista government affirmed that "The right wants to manipulate our old folks". That's what you can read in the media of the international bourgeoisie and those of the Sandinistas. This is the game whose aim is to fool our class and give the impression that there's a difference between one and the other side, whereas they are all part of the same exploiting class.
These old folks were perfectly justified in wanting to struggle for their retirement pensions and we must defend them. We must denounce the repression of the government against a fraction of the working class which is living in misery, as is the case of these workers with too few contributions. The fact of having too few to qualify is above all due to the precarious work undertaken by these workers without counting those that went to Costa Rica and returned without any contributions at all due to their situation of illegal work.
The speeches of the Ortega government appeal to a pseudo-socialist patriotism which divides the working class. They say that it is the "right" that is behind these struggles and, at the international level, the "left" is accused of being behind the measures against the "old folks". Whatever excuses are put forward: "There's no money because of Somoza" for some, or "it is really the left which represses the retired" for the others, one sees very well that the left and the right do the same thing. All their talk only serves to obscure the fact that they both have the same politics: the oppression of the working class by capital whatever its form
It's important to unmask this false dualism which only serves to divide the working class. We must show what's hidden behind the left of capital with its so-called "socialism of the 21st century" which is only the same capitalism and the same exploitation that exists everywhere.
The political road of the “indignant” in Turkey and Brazil, where there's been the beginning of a more general struggle against capitalism, shows that the sole alternative for the working class is to struggle on a united basis. This requires a confrontation with the unions who only divide the class into isolated struggles of the sector or the corporation. It's the vision of unity which allows the evolution of consciousness through concrete struggles which stand up for common interests. Capitalism in its present crisis is revealing its true face and confirming that only a new society can bring humanity back from the edge of the abyss. There is no other outcome to the crisis than the destruction of capitalism and the defeat of all governments, including those that call themselves "socialist". It is only a united working class that can provide a future to humanity and stop the destruction of the planet.
Nucleo de Discusion Internacionalista en Costa Rica (July 2013)
Managua, June 2013
[1]What has been written by the ICC on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua can be found here and there in different articles, but can be summed up in this quote: "Even if they wanted to establish a 'socialist revolutionary-type government', it is only, concretely on the ground, the same scenario that was written by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua: the pure and simple defence of a bourgeois regime and of the national economy", from an article talking about elections in neighbouring El Salvador (‘Elections in Salvador: the FMLM, from Stalinist guerillas to government’). In Spanish Revolucion Mundial no. 96 (2007) carries an article entitled ‘Nicaragua: regresan los sandinistas al gobierno para dar coninuidad a la explotacion y opresion’).
[2]"Viejito", old folks: this term is neither contemptuous nor condescending in Latin America, but an affectionate description of pensioners.
[3] This Somoza was part of a family of dictators which held power in Nicaragua since the 1930's with the most brutal methods. They were supported by the United States for whom this sort of government was a guarantee against any sort of advance by the opposing bloc (the USSR) into the countries of Latin America, above all following the Castro victory in Cuba. Founded in the 1960's, a guerrilla group called the Sandinista Front was supported by the Russian bloc and ended up overthrowing Somoza. The present Sandinista government in Nicaragua has the support of Venezuelan Chavism but above all, being a very poor and very indebted economy, of various international organs. All this is wrapped up in a national-socialist type verbiage with concessions to Catholicism and decorated with anti-Americanism.
The year of ‘commemorating’ the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War began with a controversy between Right and Left which illustrates rather well how both wings of the ruling class intend us to understand the significance of the 1914-18 war.
In an article in the Daily Mail (where else?), education secretary Michael Gove gave it to us straight. Denouncing “left wing academics”, TV shows like Blackadder and The Monocled Mutineer and the musical Oh What a Lovely War! for belittling Britain and denigrating patriotism, Gove insists that for all its attendant horrors, the Great War was “plainly a just war”[1]. Picking up the torch from a weighty tome by Max Hastings published last year[2], Gove insists that the real cause of the war was aggressive Prussian militarism and that it was right to resist it. Or as Hastings put it in an article in the Mail last summer, the purpose of the 1914 commemorations should be “to explain to a new generation that World War One was critical to the freedom of Western Europe”.
Gove’s article was criticised both in the lead and in an editorial in the Observer of 5 January, while in the same edition space was given to the shadow education spokesman Tristram Hunt, a cultured historian who has written a rather sympathetic biography of Engels. Hunt’s article was entitled ‘Using history for politicking is tawdry, Mr Gove’[3], and its central theme is that while Gove is sowing political divisions by attacking the Left, the commemorations should be a time for national reflection that will lead to an “understanding of the meaning and memory of the First World War”. Hunt insists that “contrary to the assertions of Michael Gove and the Daily Mail, the left needs no lessons on ‘the virtues of patriotism, honour and courage’”. He lays particular emphasis on the role of ordinary working class people in the conduct of the war:
“Appeals by trade union leaders to oppose German aggression, particularly against Belgium, led more than 250,000 of their members to enlist by Christmas 1914, with 25% of miners volunteering before conscription. Typical was John Ward, one of my predecessors as MP for Stoke-on-Trent and the leader of the Navvies’ Union. To ‘fight Prussianism’, he raised three pioneer battalions from his members and, commissioned as a colonel by Lord Kitchener, led them to battle in France, Italy and Russia”.
Hunt also reminds us of the important changes brought about by the war – the vote was extended to all working class men and to women over 30 in 1918, “culture and technology at all levels were transformed by the war and colonial frontiers redrawn, with Irish independence signposting the future decline of empire”.
Hunt doesn’t agree with Gove’s one-sided view that the war was all the fault of the Kaiser and “Prussianism”, citing other historians who have shown the rather sordid role played by Russia and Serbia in the outbreak of the conflict. Rather significantly, British imperialism’s equally sordid role is not analysed. But Hunt does argue that it’s futile to play the “First World War blame game”. His main concern is not to look into the origins of the war but to contribute to a national commemoration that will “reflect and embrace the multiple histories that the war evinces – from the Royal British Legion to the National Union of Railwaymen to the Indian, Ethiopian and Australian servicemen fighting for the empire”. No doubt there will be room in Hunt’s multicultural war effort for the pacifists and conscientious objectors too.
In sum, while the right sows divisions, what Hunt calls the Left stands for national unity. The working class has its role to play, but only as part of this patriotic union.
In an attempt to show that he’s not at all soft on Prussian aggression, Hunt provides us with a rather interesting quote from Kaiser Wilhelm, a word of advice to Chancellor von Bulow in 1905: “First cow the socialists, behead them and make them harmless, with a bloodbath if necessary, and then make war abroad. But not before and not both together”.
Hunt uses this quote to back up his argument about the patriotism of the left: “The British left responded to such fascism by largely supporting the war effort”. Leaving aside the sloppy characterisation of the Kaiser’s policy as “fascism”, what this quote reveals above all is the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie – its understanding that it could only go to war if the working class movement had first been “cowed” or “beheaded”. This applied to every national section of the ruling class, not only the German. But the Kaiser’s proposed bloodbath proved unnecessary precisely because the ancestors of today’s ‘left’ – the dominant right wing of the socialist parties of the day – were the product of a long period of internal degeneration in the workers’ movement, and when the call came in 1914 they proved to be no less patriotic than the official representatives of empire. And Hunt is quite right to highlight the crucial role played by the trade unions – again, in every country – in the mobilisation for war.
This insidious process of degeneration and ultimate betrayal by its own organisations left the working class totally disoriented at the outbreak of war and prey to the nationalist hysteria that made the mobilisation for war possible. The bloodbath of the trenches quickly followed. But the defeat was not total. A minority of the workers’ movement - such as the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Spartacists in Germany - kept the flag of internationalism flying against the national flags of the ruling class. And eventually the heightened exploitation in the factories, the spread of hunger and the pointless massacre on the battlefields gave rise to growing discontent, expressing itself from 1916 on in strikes, mutinies, the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils and revolution in Russia and Germany, which forced the ruling classes to bring the war to a hasty conclusion so that they could unite against the revolutionary menace.
When the working class forgot its international interests and succumbed to the myth of national unity, it was led off to the slaughter. When it remembered that it has no country, that its enemy is capitalist exploitation in all countries, the war machine was paralysed and a window was opened on a new world where nations, states, and imperialist wars are a relic of the prehistoric past. That is the “understanding”, the fundamental lesson, that we should draw from 1914. Amos 5/1/14
After this article was written the Guardian published further articles about this controversy, both of them taking up positions well to the left of Tristram Hunt. In a spirited defence of the truth contained in the humour of Blackadder Goes Forth[4], Stuart Jeffries takes Hunt to task for being a bit of a wimp and having his eye on the next election, lamenting that he wasn’t enough of a “lion” to stick up for Blackadder’s view of the conduct of the war as a “toff-hobbled martial shambles” and for the arguments of various left wing historians who have shown the causes of the war in the imperial ambitions of all the Great Powers of the day, not just Germany. He also takes issue with Hunt’s assertion that the British left in the main supported the war, citing the case of Bertrand Russell who was a conscientious objector. But once again there’s not a word about the working class resistance to the war – the strikes on the Clyde, the internationalist stance adopted by revolutionaries like Sylvia Pankhurst or John Mclean. And in the end Jeffries’ alternative to Gove’s uncritical patriotism is a more conscious, considered patriotism: “What Gove doesn’t argue is the more interesting point that the very basis for British patriotism relies, not on accepting the historical narratives he believes in, but in part on the hard satirical work involved in undermining those myths. Let others take themselves seriously. Uncritical patriotism? Unreflective pride in the military? Unquestioning conviction that we’re a force for good? Flags on the front lawn? What are we now, American?”
Seamus Milne then weighed into the debate with a much more intransigent title: ‘First World War an imperial bloodbath that’s a warning, not a noble cause’[5]. The article is quite explicit about the nature of the 1914-18 war and in rejecting Gove’s apologetics about the war as a defence of western democracy:
“This is all preposterous nonsense. Unlike the second world war, the bloodbath of 1914-18 was not a just war. It was a savage industrial slaughter perpetrated by a gang of predatory imperial powers, locked in a deadly struggle to capture and carve up territories, markets and resources.
Germany was the rising industrial power and colonial Johnny-come-lately of the time, seeking its place in the sun from the British and French empires. The war erupted directly from the fight for imperial dominance in the Balkans, as Austria-Hungary and Russia scrapped for the pickings from the crumbling Ottoman empire. All the ruling elites of Europe, tied together in a deathly quadrille of unstable alliances, shared the blame for the murderous barbarism they oversaw. The idea that Britain and its allies were defending liberal democracy, let alone international law or the rights of small nations, is simply absurd.”
Any genuine marxist could endorse this view. Except for the brief phrase slipped into the first paragraph: “unlike the second world war, the bloodbath of 1914-18 was not a just war”. But in this phrase is the fundamental dividing line between the mouthpieces of the left wing of the bourgeoisie and revolutionary internationalists, for whom, just like the first world war, the second world war was also “a savage industrial slaughter perpetrated by a gang of predatory imperial powers, locked in a deadly struggle to capture and carve up territories, markets and resources”. Indeed, it was fought by the same powers who confronted each other in the first bloodbath, and this indicates that the war was in essence a resumption of the first, which had been ‘interrupted’ by the revolutions of 1917 and 1918. Once the ‘Bolshevik danger’ had been eliminated, once the world working class had been defeated by the combined forces of social democracy, Stalinism and fascism, the way was opened for the unfinished business of 1918 to be concluded, by even more horrible forms of barbarism than during the first, where the majority of victims were not soldiers but civilians, subjected to the multiple holocausts of Auschwitz, Stalingrad, Dresden and Hiroshima.
The idea that the Second World War was a just war unlike the first is a key element of ruling class ideology. The argument that the need to oppose Hitler meant that this was no longer an imperialist war, or that it had suddenly become permissible to fight for some of the contending imperialist powers against others, was above all the speciality of the left – the Labourites, Stalinists and Trotskyists – who played the same role of recruiting sergeants in 1939-45 as the right wing socialists in 1914-18. Amos 11/1/14
We are publishing a contribution from a comrade in the USA which takes a very critical stance on the recent ‘fast food strikes’. He provides a good deal of evidence that far from being a spontaneous expression of the workers ‘from below’, this was essentially a campaign waged by updated forms of trade unionism and popular frontism. We invite comments, especially from other comrades in the USA, in order to help place these developments in the broader context of the class struggle in the USA and internationally.
The recent campaigns among retail and food service workers in the United States are portrayed as a rank and file revolt in the new growth industries, a sense that it is the beginning of a second wave of the Popular Front, where unions grow by leaps and bounds and coalitions of progressive and left forces agitate for reforms. This spirit of the 1930’s is real in the media and at the upper echelons of the trade union apparatus, but in the workplaces around the country, the workers themselves are largely a backdrop rather than an active agent. It is important for Marxists to be aware of the organizations operating within the working class and the character of apparent struggles. Why various class reactions take the form that they do is central to understanding the social forces of capital.
The sense that what is going on in America is a public relations campaign rather than a new viral spread of militant unionism can be seen in this admission from the left labor press:
“The Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which started OUR Walmart, says 30,000 participated in Black Friday actions last year. Most of those were supporters; 88 were strikers.” [1]
Out of a population of 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers in the United States, only 88 workers walked-out nationwide (not including supply chain, warehouse and production workers employed by Wal-Mart contractors and sub-contractors, which have been the site of traditional strikes in recent years). The social media campaign and media blitz in the lead up and following Black Friday 2012 focused on a map of the US with dots on every store where there was a planned or sanctioned protest. The number of strikers and actual Wal-Mart workers was dwarfed by the throngs of Popular Front-style coalitions and alliances of the bourgeois left and center (Workers World Party, Coalition for a Mass Party of Labor, OURWalmart, UFCW, clergy, activist groups, low level Democratic Party representatives) that made up the majority of bodies present at the store protests.
This phenomenon of a media-centered narrative peddled by the unions with little connection to the shop floor is important for understanding the history and trajectory of the fast food struggles this past year and larger developments in American trade unionism as of late. Like the Wal-Mart Black Friday strikes template, another large service sector union is the main force behind the narrative in the fast food campaign: in the former case, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), in the latter the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). While UFCW announced at the end of August 2013 that they will be re-affiliating to the AFL-CIO federation, they have been a major force in the smaller Change to Win federation. Understanding the changing orientations of the largest unions in the country and a miraculous revival of nationwide organizing drives in growth industries has to begin with the origin of Change to Win.
The Change to Win federation began as a coalition of discontented union leaders within the AFL-CIO: the 'New Unity Partnership' in 2003. Within 2 years, the 'New Unity Partnership' became an upper echelon reform movement rebranded as 'Change to Win'. Led by the Service Employees and animated by unions like the Teamsters, Food & Commercial workers, UNITE-HERE and the very small United Farm Workers, these unions represent a younger membership in the few growth areas of the domestic US economy. Leaving the AFL-CIO in 2005 saw the reform coalition morph into a new trade union federation, whose focus was a return to an 'organizing' model and greater resources devoted to industry-wide agitation and organizing. It was a move by growing unions to dominate the declining trade union center, the AFL-CIO, and focus on new frontiers rather than maintaining a rump union movement tied to long organized manufacturing and construction industries. These changes in the institutional foundations of American trade unionism have, for the last 8 years, led to a changing orientation that became apparent in the retail and food service industries this past year.
The announcement that UFCW was leaving Change to Win and re-joining the AFL-CIO, made on August 8th 2013, let some of the inner workings of the trade union bureaucracy seep into the narrative: the 'Strategic Organizing Center' of the Change to Win federation is credited with 'leading some of the best campaigns to give workers rights and dignity'; and that the UFCW desires to integrate the AFL-CIO unions into the SOC campaigns.[2] This is a vital part of understanding the origins and the content of the ongoing fast food and retail workers struggles. The rise of worker's centers, union fronts (or 'pop-up unions'), long-term corporate campaigns and Alinskyite activist groups, are all related to changes in the functioning of the trade unions in the midst of an existential crisis and declining memberships. Still in the Change to Win federation is the Service Employees International Union; which has done to fast food what the UFCW has done to Wal-Mart, directed and coordinated through the Strategic Organizing Center and allied inter-organizational efforts. The importance of the SOC cannot be overemphasized as it relates to these developments. The left labor press outlet In These Times noted, "Change to Win itself is small–only about 35 employees–and three-fourths of its $16 million budget goes to the Strategic Organizing Center."[3]
The fast food agitation and media narrative only makes sense in light of the changes at the top of the American trade union apparatus. Seemingly spontaneous waves of shop floor anger, described as strikes in the press, complete with matching signs and t-shirts, do not arise from nothing.
"While the farmworkers [Coalition of Immokalee Workers] have made progress by cajoling and boycotting highly advertised fast food brands, the restaurant workers have been employing a strategy of short strikes. Two hundred workers from dozens of different restaurants in New York struck for a day in November [2012], and then double that number walked out in early April from McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy’s, Domino’s, and Papa John’s." - Labor Notes, May 24 2013, Jenny Brown [4]
"After years of downplaying strikes, the union that’s funding fast food organizing is now embracing the tactic. The Service Employees have underwritten short strikes by fast food workers in seven cities in the last two months—including the largest, in Detroit, where 400 workers walked out of dozens of restaurants and completely shut down three." - Labor Notes, June 24 2013, Jenny Brown [5]
The national campaign is an amalgamation of city-based and local campaigns that operate in the same manner (directed and funded by SEIU). The national ‘Fight for 15’ campaign ($15 an hour and the right to union representation) manifests itself in local campaigns often made up of the same organizations or types of organizations who agitate among the working-class. As an example, picking any city that has seen strikes and protests by workers of multiple fast food employers demonstrates these national trends: for this article, we’ll start with Seattle, Washington:
May 30, 2013, workers from different fast food chains (Burger King, McDonalds, Jack InThe Box, etc.) walked off the job. The liberal magazine The Nation reported, "Like those cities’ strikes, Seattle’s is supported by a coalition of labor and community groups; in each case, the Service Employees International Union has been involved in supporting the organizing efforts. The Seattle campaign, Good Jobs Seattle, is backed by groups including Working Washington, the Washington Community Action Network and One America."[6]
The ‘Fight for 15’ campaign’s local component in Seattle is a coalition called ‘Good Jobs Seattle’, which is comprised of a social media presence online which is a cloned website (the same template as other local coalitions like Fast Food Forward in New York City and others that comprise the ‘Fight for 15’ campaign). On the ground, it depends on activists and staffers from several organizations:
Working Washington, like the 'Good Jobs Seattle' title and website, appears at first to be an umbrella coordination and organizing center for the state of Washington; on its 'About Us' page, Working Washington says it is a "coalition of individuals, neighborhood associations, immigrant groups, civil rights organizations, people of faith, and labor united for good jobs and a fair economy," and references the slogans of the Occupy Movement (the 1% vs. 99%). However, the catch tag of the website is, "Fighting For A Fair Economy: Working Washington"[7]. Fighting For A Fair Economy is a campaign of the Service Employees International Union; like the various umbrella and coalition websites, searching for "Fighting For A Fair Economy" online turns up several results, such as this website which carries SEIU's trademark purple in the background and also references the language of Occupy Wall Street:
"The Fight for a Fair Economy (Ohio) is a collaboration of efforts between SEIU, labor allies, community partners and grassroots supporters to fight back against attacks on working people and their families all across Ohio."[8]
Affiliates of the SEIU as well as numerous local unions all make use of the same template in their internet-social media orientation and organizing; the same slogans, the same language, the same message. This discrepancy between the narrative promoted in the mainstream and liberal-progressive press and the obvious stamp of a national organizational apparatus (and lack of signs of traditional working-class struggle) on the whole phenomenon have led to rumblings in the left-labor press about what is truly going on. At first, unnamed union sources could be found quoted sporadically in press stories of a ‘PR blitz’ rather than a new union fever or grassroots demand for a return to Keynesian common sense taking place in the working-class. Recently, voices in the left-wing of American trade unionism have begun to publicly question the retail and food service campaigns. This is most clearly demonstrated in the article, “Fight for 15 Confidential,” originally published online in the left labor press outlets In These Times and Labor Notes. The article’s author (with greater resources compared to those of small revolutionary groups) was able to further verify the roots of the phenomenon and the true character of the ‘strikes’ and ‘minimum-wage rebellion’. The story contains numerous anecdotes and opinions from rank and file food service workers across the country.[9]
Pick any city where the campaign is underway (Fast Food Forward in New York City, Raise Up MKE in Milwaukee, etc.) and the template and organizations involved will largely be the same. A combination of SEIU, Jobs with Justice, clergy, national and regional civil rights and community activist organizations (descendants of ACORN), workers’ centers and the same social media-press release model are always present. Like the Wal-Mart Black Friday actions, which just took place again for the second year in a row, there are examples of traditional strike actions and relatively higher levels of workers’ participation depending on the local conditions. There have been arrests of retail and food service workers who refused to abide by the ‘protest rally’ tactics of the union representatives and leftist allies and instead attempted to demonstrate autonomous class action (such as obstructing customers from entering establishments that have striking workers) - but these were the extreme minority of an already small minority of workers involved.
In this era of high unemployment, particularly among minorities and young people, part-time and precarious work, the forms chosen by trade unions to enrol workers located in industries that are inherently resistant to traditional collective bargaining units are largely irrelevant. That a union drive takes place through a strong social media presence and with “alt-labor” forms like workers’ centers does not change the basic nature of what is happening. Campaigns which are tangential to the shop floor, such as municipal and statewide attempts to raise the minimum wage, combined with different forms of union membership give the appearance of a resurgent working-class movement demanding a return to the Keynesian consensus even if the militancy and workplace roots of past movements in class history (for the 8 hour day and unemployment insurance for example) are absent. In practice, the fast food and Wal-Mart campaigns are a phenomenon of reverse-base unionism. Unlike the experience in Europe in the 1970’s and 1980’s, where rank and filist and left-unionism tendencies absorb real class anger and turn class action back into the channels compatible with the labor relations regime of capital through unofficial base unions and workplace committees, these recent high profile phenomenon in the United States are almost exclusively the child of trade union bureaucrats and union war chests. The left labor press in America admits the role played by full-time union officials and union funds to prop up and direct nationwide agitation in targeted workplaces and regions through various forms [9]. The result is a media spectacle, a phantom class movement with only the most miniscule participation and involvement of regular workers.
Communists can only ascertain the nature of what is unfolding, and question why there is such loud protest generated from a historically worn down section of their class. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and directives from paid staffers and activist volunteers create a situation not unlike the Tea Party linked groups who put on elaborate protests during the 2010 election under the pretense of a grassroots rebellion against big government. ‘Astro-turfing’, the art of orchestrating a media campaign to give the appearance of a movement that does not exist, was used to change the dominant political-social narrative in a bourgeois election season. Communists must view the pseudo-movement in retail and food service as a union organizing drive operating under the pretense of being something else.
M.Lida
[1] https://www.labornotes.org/2013/11/walmart-workers-plan-raucous-black-friday [1117]
[2] "[The SOC] is leading some of the best campaigns to give workers rights and dignity. While no longer an affiliate of CTW, we continue our strong relationships with the Teamsters, SEIU and the Farmworkers. We will remain active in the SOC and bring our AFL-CIO partners into collaboration with private-sector unions in an effort to build more power for workers." UFCW Press Release 08/08/2013
[3] inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15366/fast_food_slow_burn
[4] https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/food-chain-workers-double-team-wendy%E2%80%99s?language=en [1118]
[5] https://www.labornotes.org/2013/06/fast-food-strikes-whats-cooking?language=en [1119]
[6] www.thenation.com/article/archive/fast-food-workers-striking-seattle [1120]
[7] www.workingwa.org/about [1121]
[8] fightforafaireconomy.org/about
[9] inthesetimes.com/article/15826/fight_for_15_confidential
At the beginning of January, outlining the coalition government’s Spending Review of 2016-17 and 2017-18, George Osborne ‘alarmed’ Iain Duncan Smith and ‘angered’ Nick Clegg by proposing that the initial £25 billion in spending reductions would include £12 billion in welfare cuts.
This in no way indicates that there are serious differences between these government politicians. One senior government figure has described this as “a difference in narrative between George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith who both want to cut back the welfare state … There is the lopping off narrative of George Osborne and then there is the narrative of making people less reliant on the welfare state by making work pay. But that takes a long time”[1]. Nick Clegg has another narrative: while agreeing to the proposed £25 billion deficit reductions it is “lopsided and unbalanced” to take all this from spending and “the only people in society, the only section in society, which will bear the burden of further fiscal consolidation are the working-age poor”.
When we look at the reality behind these exchanges we will see that (a) all these politicians are accomplished bare-faced liars, even when they speak the language of harsh truths; (b) the cuts they envisage are every bit as vicious as described in Osborne’s announcement but will be much more widespread; and (c) the bourgeoisie and their government have no choice but to continue to attack the conditions of the working class in the defence of capitalism.
Let us start with Clegg’s concern to balance benefit cuts with tax. The LibDems envisage 20% of the £25 billion will come from tax, and there is a definite proposal for a mansion tax on homes work £2million. This is nothing but a fig leaf to hide their support for the cuts, as they carefully publicise a proposal that will not impinge on the working class and the vast majority of the population, all the better to lull us into a false sense of security – and to get elected.
Iain Duncan Smith takes the medal for common or garden hypocrisy with the narrative that cutting benefit is good for you by making work pay. The only way to do that in the capitalist crisis is to cut benefits … but the majority of people receiving working age benefits are actually in work, getting working tax credits or housing benefit. Nor does he tell us where all the new jobs will come from.
If we look outside the present government to the Labour shadow chancellor, a comment by Simon Jenkins shows that there is no alternative on offer here. “Indeed, after listening to Balls evade every question put to him this week, I realised he would have done much the same as Osborne, mistakes and all. Balls never challenged Osborne’s subservience to the City and the Bank. He never questioned the liquidity squeeze or demanded risks be taken with inflation.”[2]
The political parties have no basic differences when it comes to attacking working class living standards, especially those of the most vulnerable sectors, such as the young and the pensioners. Take the removal of housing benefit from young people under 25. In large cities such as London it is usually not possible to obtain independent housing on a single average wage so those unable to live with parents, even among the employed, will be forced into appalling crowding or homelessness. The overall cost of housing benefit to those under 25 is currently £1.8 billion according to the Department of Work and Pension figure, but the measure will only save about half that, while those with children or fleeing domestic violence are exempted. The ‘balancing’ measure to means test social housing for those on £60,000 to £70,000 a year might save £40-£76million (see Guardian article, note 1). The article quotes a Whitehall source saying “It is laughable that you can get anywhere near £12bn in cuts this way”.
If we look at the figures of what Osborne’s policies will save we can see that he hasn’t told us the half or even the 90% of where £12 billion will be saved from benefits, let alone the full £25 billion is coming from. The blighted perspectives for young people today are real enough, but we should realise that if we accept the chancellor’s logic the attacks will have to encompass the whole working class: “Even for a budget as large as welfare, £12bn is not a trivial sum. It is the equivalent of freezing the value of all working-age welfare benefits for five years.”[3] In particular we can already see that the new rules for Universal Credit, which will cover tax credit and housing benefit in future, are making it impossible for many of those relying on housing benefit to get rented accommodation at all.
Except for pensioners – surely they’ll be OK with the Cameron’s promise of a ‘triple lock’ on the state pension to rise with the higher of prices, pay or 2.5%? Pensions are, in reality, also under attack, chiefly through the rise in the pension age. And the triple lock will not change a situation in which those reliant on the state pension are condemned to a life of poverty: the basic state pension of £110.15 a week, plus £200 winter fuel allowance, works out to less than £6,000 a year or about half the pay for a 40 hour week on the minimum wage. Like pensions, even the areas of the economy that are ‘protected’ or ‘ring fenced’ such as health or education are inadequate and feeling the squeeze.
With capitalism caught in an irresolvable crisis of overproduction, each business and each national economy is fighting to gain a share of a market that is too narrow to keep them all going. It is not a question of more or less state, but of how the state will manage to attack the living standards of the working class to make its economy more competitive. For workers it is a question of recognising that the whole working class is under attack and that we can only resist together.
Melmoth/Alex 11.1.14
The food crises which mark the development of capitalist production have been accentuated with the system’s entry into decadence, and even more so in the present period of it rotting on its feet, of decomposition, often taking qualitatively different characteristics. And even if capitalism has always poisoned, starved and destroyed the environment, today, in seeking to exploit every last part of the world for its profit, its destructiveness has extended its ravages to the whole planet, which means that this system today threatens the very survival of the human race.
By separating the use value of goods from their exchange value capitalism has historically cut humanity out of the very goal of productive activity. Does agriculture aim at the satisfaction of human needs? Well, in capitalism the answer is “no”! It is simply the production of commodities whose content and quality don’t matter so long as they find a place on the world market and allows the cheaper reproduction of labour power.
And with the decadence of capitalism production has been intensified to the detriment of quality. This is the harsh reality we observe in the development of agriculture since the Second World War until the present time. Following the war the watchword was: produce, produce and produce! In most of the developed countries agribusiness has seen its capacity to produce increase at an astonishing pace. The spread of agricultural machinery and chemical products was very great. In the decades 1960-1980 the intensification of agriculture was known by the misleading name of the “green revolution”. There was no consideration for ecology there! It was, in reality, a question of producing the maximum for the least cost, without much regard for the resulting quality, to face the sharper competition. But the contradictions of a system in decline could only accumulate and so increase overproduction. Produce, produce … but sell to whom? To the hungry? Certainly not! Lacking sufficient solvent markets the goods were very often destroyed or decayed where they lay.[1]
Millions of people die of starvation in Africa and Asia, growing masses have to depend on charities in the developed countries, while numerous producers are constrained to destroy part of their product to respect their “quotas” or artificially maintain their prices.
The descent of the capitalist system into its historic crisis makes the problem worse still. On the basis of the chronic economic crisis investors greedy for profit seek to place their capital into profitable food securities (like rice or cereal), speculating and playing the market like a casino without any scruples, leaving a growing part of the world population to starve: “To give a few particularly clear figures, the price of maize has quadrupled since summer 2007, the price of grain has doubled since the beginning of 2008, and in general food prices have increased by 60% in two years in the poorer countries”[2]. For populations in a precarious situation as in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Indonesia or the Philippines, this rise has become quite simply unbearable and has ended up provoking hunger riots at the time of what is today called the “2007-08 world food price crisis”[3]. In a cynical farce the same scenario, exacerbated by the high use of food crops for the production of biofuel (soya, corn, rapeseed, sugar cane), was repeated in 2010, dragging the poorest into even more extreme misery.
Alongside the tragedy that it reserves for the populations of the ‘third world’, capitalism has not forgotten the exploited in the ‘developed’ countries. While agricultural production has grown considerably over the last decades, allowing the global reduction in the percentage of malnourished people, we must look at the disastrous results. The extreme intensification of agriculture with massive and uncontrolled use of chemicals has considerably depleted the soils to the extent that the nutritional value of its products and their vitamin content has been equally depleted.[4] Recent studies tend to show a direct correlation between the utilisation of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides in crops and the obvious increase in the number of cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.[5] Furthermore the use of sweeteners like aspartame (E951 on the labels) or glutamate in the food industry, like the spread of food dyes, has shown itself to be very harmful to health. An experiment on rats showed that it destroys nerve cells.[6] We are not going to make a list of all the harmful substances present in our food, as that would take pages and pages.
“It is all a question of the dose”, we are told. But no study has made public or completed to show the cumulative effects of these different “doses” ingested in the same product day after day. We only have to note some of the effects of nuclear irradiation of our food: such as after the Chernobyl accident with the explosion of thyroid cancers, malformation in the population of the region following the ingestion of contaminated food. It is the same with sea food in Japan today since Fukushima. The murderous character of capitalism has well and truly taken a new dimension. To generate profit, capitalism can make its exploited swallow anything.
Echoing Engels’ approach in The condition of the working class in England, let us recall some facts which show the way present day capitalism shows its concern for the health of those it exploits: “In December 2002, the affair of the relabelling of boxes of infant formula milk that had reached its use by date. The multinational illegally imported the milk from Uruguay to put it on sale in Colombia…. El Tiempo, Saturday 7 December remarked that ‘to the 200 tons of milk seized, … can be added another 120 tons seized while in the process of relabelling to appear as if it had been produced inside the country and to hide the fact that it had passed the date fit for human consumption’.”[7]
Among the numerous adulterated products of capitalism we find for example Norwegian salmon which, like battery hens, is full of antibiotics and even dyes to respond to the demands of the market. The concentration of drugs in their bodies is enough to make farmed salmon into a monstrous mutant species with deformed heads or notched fins…. But because a minister in the country owns several farms and firmly holds the omerta code of silence, academics have been ousted for pointing out the carcinogenic danger, even the toxicity of farmed salmon. To this we should add the tons of pollutants which are found in the sea, the PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls, used as coolants) in the rivers, radioactive waste whether buried or not.[8] … This is without taking account of the harm from heavy metals, dioxins, asbestos carried in our food and on our tables. Water and the products of the sea, the air we breathe, the animal products we eat and cultivated land are deeply impregnated with all these sources of contamination.
There is plenty to be indignant about in this permanent food crisis across the planet, where some are starving and others are poisoned.
The anger of those who fight the aberrations of this system is profoundly justified. But, at the same time, “Controlling and reducing the level of wastage is frequently beyond the capability of the individual farmer, distributor or consumer, since it depends on market philosophies, security of power supply, quality of roads and the presence or absence of transport hubs.”[9] Ultimately this means that looking for solutions at the local and individual level leads, in the short or medium term, to an impasse. Acting as a responsible and well informed ‘citizen’, that’s to say as an individual, can never give a solution to the immense waste that capitalism generates. The search for ‘individual’ or ‘local’ solutions carries the illusion that there could be an immediate response to the contradictions of capitalism. As we have seen the reasons are profoundly historical and political. The real fight must be carried out at this level. “Now the propagandists of capital call on us to ‘improve our eating habits’, to ‘reduce weight’ in order to prevent, to eliminate the ‘junk food’ in the schools… Not a word on raising wages! Nothing to ameliorate the material conditions of the oppressed! They talk about habits, seasonal food, or congenital illness… But they hide the real cause of humanity’s worsening nutrition: the crisis of a system that exists only for profit.”[10]
Enkidu, 25/10/13
[1]. Following bad commercial strategies, linked to the rise in the Indian embargo on its rice: “Thailand has lost its rank as the world’s premier exporter and the country has accumulated the equivalent of one year’s consumption. Hangars of the former Bangkok airport were used to stock the rice that no-one knew where to put to prevent it decaying” (‘Thailand stifled by its rice’, Le Monde 24 June 2013).
[2]. International Review 134, ‘Food crisis, hunger riots, only the proletarian class struggle can put an end to famine’.
[4]. “In the period 1961 to 1999, the use of nitrogenous and phosphate fertilisers increased by 638% and 203%, respectively, while the production of pesticides increased by 854%.” Global Food Report, p 13, https://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/reports/Global_Food_Report.pd... [1132]
[5]. See journalist Marie Monique Robin’s Notre poison quotidian.
[6]. Idem.
[7]. Christian Jacquiau, Les coulisses du commerce équitable, p.142. Our translation.
[8]. Le Monde 7 August 2013 reminds us that at Fukushima 300 tons of contaminated water is released into the Pacific every day.
[9]. Global Food Report, p18.
[10]. ’Mexique: l’obésité, nouveau visage de la misère sous le capitalisme’, on the ICC website June 2010.
In Germany right wingers said that immigrants who were only coming to the country for benefits should be deported. They call it ‘Armutsmigration’ – ‘poverty migration’. The Social Democratic Vice Chancellor of Germany put a ‘balanced’ point of view “We don’t need all-out discrimination against the Bulgarians and Romanians but nor should we ignore the problems some big German cities faced with the immigration of poor peoples.” Like the Labour Party in Britain, they say they’re against racism, but poor foreigners are a problem.
In Britain the government has made sure that new immigrants will not be automatically entitled to benefits, that they can be deported if begging or homeless. On the right, Boris Johnson (who says he’s pro-immigration) wants a two year clamp down on migrants receiving benefits, and for the state to get tough on illegal immigration. From UKIP Nigel Farage puts forward a five year halt to immigration as the way to solve all social and economic problems. The left say that immigration is good for the economy. Farage says that maybe it would be better to be poorer.
‘Benefits tourism’ is the catchphrase in Britain. However, it’s just the latest label used to stoke up prejudice and find new scapegoats. Ed Miliband and other leading figures in the Labour Party say that immigration got out of control under Blair and Brown and that there should be ‘sensible’ controls on immigrants. They agree that immigration can enrich culture and economy, but Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna thinks that there has been far too much “low-skill immigration” in the EU. He maintains that “the founders of the European Union had in mind free movement of workers not free movement of jobseekers.”
Ultimately, across the British bourgeoisie, there is agreement that Britain is a ‘small island’ country, that there’s only room for so many, and immigration has to be firmly under control, if not actually stopped. This ‘common sense’ view (like its equivalent in a big, non-island country like Germany) is used to back up the basic nationalist framework of capitalist ideology. With all the recent anti-immigrant propaganda it is hardly surprising that surveys in the UK are showing more people wanting a reduction in immigration, and more wanting a big rather than a small reduction. Labour says that cheap, unskilled foreign workers are taking jobs that could go to cheap, unskilled British workers. If you’re unemployed you could put your situation down to one of many causes. You might feel it’s because of some personal inadequacy, or you might listen to the media and politicians telling you that foreigners have taken all the jobs. Neither explanation gets close to understanding the roots of unemployment in the basic workings of the capitalist system.
The effects of the economic crisis, imperialist war, ecological disaster, social problems like urban overcrowding and rural desertion, cultural impoverishment – all these flow from the reality of capitalism, not from workers travelling to find work and other opportunities. On the contrary, the more capitalism sinks into crisis, the more the exploited will be forced to move from country to country in search of work, shelter or security. This is something built into the condition of the working class, which has always been a class of immigrants.
Capitalism poses everything from a national standpoint. If workers’ wages are reduced the bourgeoisie wants workers to blame workers from other countries, not the bourgeoisie’s system of exploitation. Workers can’t let themselves go along with nationalist ideology, whether it’s of the right or the left. The most dramatic example of how nationalism can be used against us is in times of war when workers have been taken in by calls to sacrifice their lives in defence of the nation – in other words, the interests of the national capitalist class and its state. But any time that capitalism tries to divide workers, the only response can be by uniting to resist exploitation, by waging a common struggle of all proletarians, ‘native’ and ‘foreign’, employed and unemployed. Workers’ struggles ultimately have the potential to do away with all frontiers, all nation states, and to build on the rich cultural diversity of all humanity.
Car 11/1/14
As capitalist society slowly unravels, its inner nature as a war of each against all comes openly to the surface, and takes on a particularly savage form in its weakest regions, where pogroms, inter-ethnic and inter-religious violence threaten the basic social fabric. In the Middle East, in Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, the divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims has been deepened by a series of suicide attacks by al-Qaida type groups on Shia mosques and gatherings. In Africa, the ‘world’s youngest state’, South Sudan, is collapsing into a horrific chaos marked by massacres between Nuer and Dinka tribal groups; in the Central African Republic, Muslim and Christian gangs vie with each other in brutality. But as this article written by our French comrades shows, these expressions of barbarism at the local level are exacerbated and even manipulated by the bigger imperialist powers who are seeking to defend their own interests at all costs. In Syria, for example, the forces on the ground are sustained by players on the global arena: Assad’s Shia/Alawite regime by Iran, Russia and China; the ‘moderate’ Sunni rebels by the US and Britain, and the radical (Sunni) Islamists by countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In the Central African Republic, France has been supporting Muslim militias against their own former pawn who had turned for help to the rival South African imperialism, which is in turn backed by China. The permutations and alliances change constantly, but what doesn’t go away is the way that imperialist powers will make use of any local dictator, army or armed gang in the never-ending struggle against their rivals. WR, 11.1.14
Peace does not reign in Mali! On the contrary, French imperialism is getting more and more dragged into the chaos there. But at the same time France has decided to intervene in the nearby Central African Republic, in order, it claims, to “protect” the population and “re-establish order and allow an improvement in the humanitarian situation”. The media have been showing images of the massacres taking place in the CAR, with the US state department talking about a “pre-genocidal” situation. But the press doesn’t talk about the responsibility of France in the explosion of this barbarism, even though France has long been an active factor in the crimes committed in its former colonies and spheres of influence (the Rwandan genocide being a prime example[1]).
Regarding Mali, contrary to the lying statements by François Hollande, there has been no “victory over the terrorist groups”. France has certainly obliged the Malian cliques to organise ‘free and democratic’ elections (presidential last August and legislative in November) in order to “restore the Malian state and ensure peace”, but this propaganda is at total variance with the facts.
“Why commit 1500 soldiers to this ‘reconquest’ of North Mali? Supplemented by some elements of the Malian army and the UN African force whose French officers deplore ‘their lack of fighting spirit and their mediocre equipment’. Finally, what a bizarre idea to have baptised this new French engagement ‘Operation Hydra’, referring to the seven-headed serpent whose heads grow back after being chopped off… In fact, combat planes have been intervening regularly and there have been some tough battles near Gao and the border with Niger… in Bamako, when Admiral Guillard (head of the French forces) talked shop with general Marc Fourcaud, commander of the French expeditionary force, he carefully avoided fixing a date for the end of their intervention: ‘ we need to increase our adaptability, imagination and vigilance in the face of an enemy that is willing to fight to the end’. That’s another way of saying that this is not ‘a simple counter-terrorist action’ as claimed by Jean-Yves Le Drian, minister of defence” (Le Canard enchaîné, 30.10.13).
“Despite the presence of thousands of French and African soldiers and the efforts to track them down, the terrorist groups have carried out three murderous attacks since September 2013. Particularly elaborate was the raid on 23 October at Tessalit in the north east of Mali, against the Chadian soldiers of the integrated UN mission for the stabilisation of Mali (Minusma); this tells us a great deal about the capacity for resistance of Aqmi and Mujao” (Courrier international 7-13.11.13)
To this can be added a series of murderous clashes between the Malian army and the nationalist forces of the NMLA over control of the town of Kidal, not counting the bloody hostage-taking and suicide bombings which regularly hit the civilian population.
All this confirms that in Mali there is still a brutal war going on between the Islamist gangs and the gangs acting in defence of order and democracy, all of them hungry for blood and economic gain, all of them cynically sowing death and desolation among the populations of the Sahel.
Since March 2013, the Central African Republic has been sinking into nightmarish disorder, following the military coup piloted by a coalition of rebels calling itself the Seleka, which ousted former president Francois Bozizé, who also came to power in a putsch. He was replaced by Michael Djotodia[2]. Once in power, the armed groups got down to murder, rape, pillage of resources like gold and diamonds and all kinds of rackets. To escape this monstrous carnage, hundreds of thousands of people have had to leave their homes and take refuge either in the forest or in neighbouring countries. But it’s not just the former rebels, now in power, who are sowing terror – the partisans of the former president are doing the same[3]. All this is happening under the indifferent gaze of hundreds of French soldiers who have limited themselves to counting the dead. No doubt haunted by the ‘Rwandan experience’, when it was accused of complicity in the genocide, French imperialism has launched itself into a new intervention in Central Africa.
“It’s just a matter of days; France will launch a military operation in the Central African Republic. ‘A precise operation, limited in time, aimed at re-establishing order and allowing an improvement of the humanitarian situation’ indicated a source from the ministry of defence” (Le Monde 23.11.13)
At the time of writing, the French government has announced that it will be sending another 1000 troops to reinforce the 400 already there.
“This is a country which Paris knows well, the best as well as the worst . It is almost a caricature of what used to be called ‘Françafrique’. A state where France made and unmade regimes, replacing dictators escaping its control with others more malleable. In recent months we have seen the mysterious visits to Bangui by Claude Guéant and Jean-Christophe Mitterand, two figures of a moribund ‘Françafrique’” (Le Monde 28.11.13)
The French gendarme has again set out on the road to Bangui to re-establish its neo-colonial order, but contrary to the big lies of the Hollande government, this is not to “allow an improvement of the humanitarian situation” or because of the “extraordinary exactions” going on there. Because just a year ago the French authorities were averting their eyes from some “abominable acts” in the CAR and there has been a grand media silence about them up to now. And for good reason. The French government is not at all at ease denouncing the massacres and mutilations being suffered by the population of the CAR. Let’s not forget that François Bozizé, who came to power in 2003 via a coup directed from afar by Paris, was overthrown at the end of March 2012 by a coalition of armed groups (the ‘Seleka’) covertly supported by France. In reality, French imperialism made use of these armed gangs to get rid of the former ‘dictator’ who had been getting away from their control:
“Jakob Zuma didn’t hesitate for a moment to rush to the aid of Central African president François Bozizé when the latter, threatened by an armed rebellion, appealed to him in December 2012. The fact that Bozizé has been abandoned by France and is supported in a rather ambiguous way by his Francophone neighbours – which are seen as so many neo-colonies by Pretoria – increased South Africa’s determination to intervene. In one week, 400 soldiers from the South African Defence Forces (SANDF) were transported to Bangui. Installed in local police stations but also in Bossembele and Bossangoa in the centre of the country, they have had no contact either with the multinational African forces on the spot, or with the UN, or with the French contingent. Jakob Zuma doesn’t have to report to anyone. And the big Chinese firms, who have been operating in secret in the north east of the CAR, where there are much-sought after oil reserves, are not complaining. They are counting on South African protection to make their first searches”. (Jeune Afrique, 10.03.13)
Here we see the real reason for the abandonment of ex-President Bozizé: he betrayed his French masters by getting into bed with South Africa, a declared rival of France behind whom, barely concealed, stands China, a redoubtable rival for the oil resources of the country. However, given the defence agreements between France and the CAR (which among other things allows a permanent French military presence in the CAR), Hollande should have supported Bozizé when he appealed to him. Instead of that, the French president decided to punis’ his former dictator friend by all possible means, which included permitting the advance of the blood-soaked Séléka gangs towards the presidential palace, which had previously been surrounded by hundreds of French troops.
We can measure the cynicism of Francois Hollande when he now says that “there have been some abominable actions in the Central African Republic. There’s chaos, serious and extraordinary exactions. We have to act”.
This is the hypocritical language aimed at camouflaging and justifying the abominable crimes which the former colonial power is ready to commit in the CAR, at masking its complicity with the various murderous gangs who are ravaging the country.
Clearly the Hollande government doesn’t give a damn about what happens to the populations of Central Africa, Mali, or elsewhere. What it does care about is defending the interests of the national capital in one of the last bastions of French imperialism, the Sahel, a highly strategic zone replete with raw materials, in the face of the other imperialist sharks challenging for influence in the region. Amina 29.11.13
[2]. Since this article was written, Djotodia has himself resigned, prompting new disorders in the capital.
[3]. This conflict has taken on an inter-religious form because the Seleka is mainly Muslim and has been carrying out atrocities against Christians. This led to the formation of the “anti-balaka”, Christian militias who have in turn been attacking Muslims and destroying mosques.
In part one of this article [1136], we mentioned the existence of spying throughout civilisation and the way that it’s been perfected by the capitalist ruling class, the bourgeoisie, a class which is Machiavellian and conspiratorial par excellence. We looked at the factors which underlie the spying activities of this class: economic, military and class domination. We saw, from the archives of the Russian secret services, the Okhrana, ‘liberated’ by the Russian Revolution of 1917, just how pervasive and extensive was the spying of the capitalist state over a hundred years ago and how the development of technology has taken this forward in an entirely ‘natural’ fashion. Finally, without underestimating the ruthlessness and intelligence of the bourgeoisie, whose different factions will not hesitate to spy on each other and the working class and its revolutionary forces, we look at the limitations of the state’s spying and repressive apparatus in controlling populations in revolt, particularly the organised proletariat.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, security and spying went onto another level as the spread of terrorism reinforced the idea that societies, countries and ‘allies’ are besieged fortresses fearing attacks of one sort or another on the ‘homeland’. The result has been an increase in barbed and razor-wire, floodlit, concrete and steel checkpoints, patrolled by military, police and vigilantes, and in electronic and droned surveillance along European and American borders. All this is often accompanied by a constant campaign against asylum-seekers and refugees, against the threat of ‘penetration’ of one kind or another, from ‘alien’ foreigners to cyber-warfare. Never before has a ruling class been forced to develop and deploy such sophisticated arsenals of surveillance and repression. It’s been estimated that 6000 miles of walls have gone up in the last ten years alone[1], a sure expression of the decomposition of capitalism in this so-called ‘globalised and inclusive’ world. But no matter how much the authorities try to set up surveillance mechanisms aimed both externally and internally, no matter how much the US (and others) turn their countries into fortresses against migrants, instability, trafficking, or potential terrorists, the system cannot stop the descent into greater chaos and violence. On the contrary, it contributes to it. The strongest, most well-equipped power in the world, the USA, cannot stop the destabilisation of its borders.
In Mexico twenty-six thousand people were killed in 2012 alone in its border-related drug wars and Russian RT News has reported that Mexico has “the highest levels of US intelligence assistance outside Afghanistan” (22/12/13). On the Canadian border there’s a whole united nations of crime gangs trafficking humans, narcotics and weapons. US/Canadian border patrols have increased by 700% since 9/11 and there’s even talk of building a wall there! More and more areas of the globe are prone to flights of refugees and migrants, victims of war, crime and poverty, of defeated uprisings in the slums and townships. None of this can be stopped by barbed-wire and fences and certainly not by the most powerful computer spyware yet invented which, for the most part, just looks on cynically and helplessly. The recent heart-rending events covered by TV, showing Africans, Iraqis, Afghans and, increasingly Syrians fleeing from wars and poverty, often perishing in the attempt in deserts or at sea, reveal the inability of the European powers to stem this flow of human misery. Indeed, their wars directly contribute to it. The Italian island of Lampedusa alone has, according to The Guardian, 3/10/13, seen more than 8000 migrants land in the first 8 months of the year, with the same article quoting human rights organisations in Italy saying that the Mediterranean had “become a cemetery. And it will become even more so”. And this while the region and its sea are under surveillance like never before.
One of the glib phrases used by the ruling class in order to justify its wholesale spying upon us is: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. It was used by British Foreign Secretary William Hague at the beginning of the National Security Agency (NSA) ‘scandal’ in the summer and has also been attributed to the Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Recent revelations (Newsnight, 18/12/13) show how there is not a whit of evidence that the NSA’s surveillance has prevented one terrorist attack. The ‘alert’ of August 3 and 4 last, which was based on the NSA’s uncovering of supposed planned attacks on western embassies in Arab countries, resulting in 19 diplomatic posts being shut down, shows how these completely unverifiable threats are used for political purposes, both to rally populations and intimidate them as well as to cover up or justify imperialist manoeuvring. And as for the excuses about ‘preventing another 9/11’, there’s plenty of publicly known evidence that the US security services knew quite a lot about the bombers before the event. All the major powers are now well on the way with drone technology which is used for both surveillance and attack - without your forces being hurt. China, for example, has recently deployed drones in the East China Sea, increasing its operational and strike capabilities. But these weapons used to strike ‘terrorist’ targets, with the majority of their victims being innocent civilians, are just oil on the fire, creating, from pools of disaffected, despondent unemployed youth, more suicide bombers, more jihadis. This in turn demands ever more sophisticated tools in the longer run to ‘contain and control’ ever more potential enemies. These latter, imbued with nationalism, religious fervour or just anger and a thirst for revenge are themselves just as much victims of capitalist decay. Yemen is an example of it, where Al-Qaeda is not “On the path to defeat” as President Obama put it, but is continually renewed and expanding, becoming increasingly dangerous and more difficult to track. And none of this whole range of surveillance does anything to counter the ‘home-grown’ terrorists from which there’s almost no protection. The 7/7 London bombers and the two deeply troubled Boston bombers, who had no links to Al Qaeda and who used an ordinary household appliance, a pressure cooker, to create carnage and havoc, are examples of this. And if the security forces, with all the money, technology and facilities thrown at them, can’t follow a couple of known potential terrorists how are they going to track the hundreds coming back to Europe from Syria, Somalia and elsewhere, let alone the ‘lone wolves’ already present?
Nevertheless, the fear of terrorist attacks ‘at home’, arising from the chaos spilling over from western-led wars in the Middle East, has sparked another push for the development of surveillance techniques and a mentality of ‘defend the state’ in those same western countries. This also applies to the increasing risk of world-wide cyber attacks, the latter being part of the same spiral. There are no innocent states here, and while the US is the strongest element, they are all at it against each other, France, Germany, Russia, China, etc. who all adapt their own national ideology to support their role as ‘victims’ and ‘protectors’. And democracy is strengthened particularly by those who object to this surveillance, the ‘whistleblowers’ like Edward Snowden and his ilk who want ‘transparency’ in order to boost the democratic state[2]. At the same time the ‘gap’ between the state and the general population has been growing with the former seeing the latter more and more as an element to be distrusted, tracked and spied upon. Technological developments have made this spying and surveillance easier and more extensive, as shown by the example of the US and Britain tapping directly into fibre optics at the bottom of ocean floors, which are a major part of everyone’s communications.
Alongside the development of spy technology there is also the cancerous growth of the forces of capitalist order. It has been estimated that up to 30,000 people are working directly for the NSA, with something like 200,000 employed by 13 different secret services and any number of contractors, and there’s nothing new about contract spies working for the state - several large private security agencies worked for the US state at the beginning of the 1900s. There are no figures for the British GCHQ but it must be many thousands, and it’s notable that they are all heavily unionised. There’s growing infiltration by an army of police/security agents in protest movements, mosques, drug cartels and mafias and none of it makes any impression, it is even counter-productive in the state’s own terms, and becomes an end to itself swelling the security aspect and deepening the murkiness of the state apparatus[3]. The secret services themselves take on a certain ‘autonomisation’ and tend to get out of control, involved in all sorts of manipulations and shady dealings. The most recent example of that is the CIA in and around Syria providing arms and money directly and indirectly to jihadi forces while reporting to Congress that only the Free Syrian Army was receiving aid, sending its FSA stooges to Washington to insist that this was the case and that the FSA was a strong force on the ground with the jihadis being a small minority[4]. This ‘autonomisation’ is also evidenced by the British ex-Cabinet minister, Chris Huhne, who was in this exalted position for two years up to 2012 and who said that the Cabinet was in “utter ignorance” of the two biggest covert operations undertaken by GCHQ, Prism and Tempora (The Guardian, 6/10/13).
‘Democratic Britain’, the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, has more CCTV cameras than anywhere in the world by a large margin. In 2011, Cheshire police came up with a number of 1.85 million, along with sharply improving facial recognition software. There’s also the development of internet-enabled computer chips which are increasingly going into many products and were even being put in litter bins on the streets of London, enabling them to ‘communicate’ with passing smart phones. Everywhere are spies: on workers (trackers, personalised computers for jobs, individual productivity targets, etc.), universities, schools, local authorities, companies, uniformed thugs at tube stations, social security informer lines, grass-up an immigrant adverts - all these outside the ‘official’ secret services, but no less part of the militarisation of society. Under the whip of competition and profits, companies establish ‘profiles’ of every single customer. Once you have bought a product via electronic means or with a store card then this technology is used to know the when and where of your buying habits. Although employee blacklists have existed since the working class was born, technology has vastly improved their reach. Police forces across the country supplied information on thousands of workers to a blacklist operation run by Britain’s biggest construction companies in a conspiracy of the state with its police and industry (The Observer, 13/10/13). Such talk had been dismissed by elements of the state as ‘a conspiracy theory’ but this is just the tip of the iceberg, going well beyond the construction industry.
When Tony Blair left office in 2007, his Labour government had built up a surveillance state that out-performed the Stasi in its scope and in the technology used. Parliament passed 45 criminal justice laws and created 3000 new criminal offences. Labour Prime Minister Brown, who followed Blair, extended this record and the Tories have further extended it since (The Guardian, 14/8/13).
In the 1984 miners’ strike six pickets were killed and eleven thousand arrests were made by the paramilitary police, who assaulted miners and their families with impunity, used snatch squads, set up illegal road blocks and vandalised cars and property belonging to miners and their supporters. No expense was spared by the state in this campaign, one that it was determined to win at all costs, and much of this was under the direction of the secret Whitehall group, MISC57, set up in 1981 for this very purpose. Also against the miners were the DHSS, which illegally stopped dole payments, the media of course with the BBC at its head showing it was not above some North Korean-style film manipulation. The Director-General of MI5 at the time, Stella Rimington, wrote in her 2001 biography about how MI5 used its counter-subversive agents against the miners. Stipendiary magistrates were leaned upon, legal rights for the miners were ignored, police evidence was crudely fabricated and tightly restrictive bail conditions were backed up by courts. All this could have been overcome, and many workers were being further radicalised by the repression, but the NUM with its nationalist and corporatist agenda was mainly responsible for isolating the strike.
The trade unions are now state structures whose role is to oversee, channel, even initiate the actions of workers in order to subsequently control the force of the working class. As state organisations representing the national interest, the trade unions rely on a regimen of information coming to the top through the union conduits that exist deep into any strike, discontent or actions by the workers. The union structures also lend themselves to infiltration by other parts of the state and the secret services in particular. A news report for the BBC, 24 October 2002, said that Joe Gormley, a past president of the National Union of Miners, was a Special Branch informant. Also, during the 70’s when more and more wildcat strikes were breaking out, the report said that more than 20 trade union leaders were talking to Special Branch. Files released under the Freedom of Information Act point to the use of secret service ‘moles’ within the NUM during the 1984 strike and the same report (The Guardian,16/5/05) details how MI5 and GCHQ eavesdropped on striking miners. It’s worth noting that only a tiny fraction of secret service and government documents relating to these events have been released because of “national security”. In relation to the role of the secret services in industrial relations, the same BBC report above details how the car company Ford only agreed to invest in Halewood on Merseyside because of a suspected secret deal with MI5 and Special Branch. According to a former SB officer, Tony Robinson, part of his responsibilities was “to make certain that the Ford factory is kept clear of subversives”. Also on the role of Special Branch, ex-agent Annie Machon in “Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers” writes about how this agency constantly spied on groups like the Socialist Workers’ Party, Militant Tendency and the CPGB. She adds that in the time before computerised spying took off, MI5 had more than a million personal files (PFs) on people some of them written in long-hand. A file was even made up for a school pupil who had written to the CPGB for information for his school project; he was labelled “a communist sympathiser”.
Arrogant and confident after their success over the miners, the police, from chief constables downwards, engineered a major conspiracy over their deadly role in the manslaughter of 96 people at Hillsborough football stadium in April 1989. The conspiracy extended across the whole state including the NHS, local councils, the media with its police-induced slanders and innuendo, local and national politicians, the Football Association and others. Then there’s the infiltration of police spies into mainly innocuous protests, again showing how fragile the state is, paranoid and intolerant of its citizens who think that they have democratic ‘rights’. The ruling class’ complete lack of scruples was shown in the way the police used the names of dead children in order to do their dirty work, including inciting provocations and having sex with the women that they duped - “raped by the state” indeed. And there are the death squads and the slanders of innocent victims and the conspiracies following their murders: the electrician Charles de Menezes and the paper-seller Ian Tomlinson. There are also what appear to be the cold-blooded killings of Azelle Rodney in April 2005, and Mark Duggan more recently. There are many more examples, too numerous to mention here, of how the police get away with murder. The state is everywhere and the police and security services are its main agents. And all this violence, violation and abuse is happening in democratic Britain where, increasingly, any form of protest is deemed illegal by the state and its police.
None of this is peculiar to Britain: spying and state repression are natural to the rule of capital, and they can only be strengthened by the descent of the system into crisis and chaos. In the face of this, calls for ‘transparency’ and the ‘right to know’ are just feeble attempts to shore up the democratic system. No amount of transparency can alter the general tendency to the fortress state. Only the class struggle of the exploited can obstruct the repressive power of the state and open the way to its ultimate destruction.
Baboon 24/12/13 ((This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1]. Joe Henley, ‘Walls: an illusion of security from Berlin to the West Bank’, The Guardian, 19.11.13.
[2]. It’s beyond irony that Snowden has been welcomed to Russia by the Putin regime whose agents still operate from the notorious Stalinist-era Lubyanka building in Moscow. The investigative journalist and security expert, Andrei Soldatov, estimates that the FSB spy agency employs 200,000 people. The same could be said about Snowden’s elevation to hero by some of the most oppressive left wing states of Latin America - all of whom are involved in using the latest technology for spying and surveillance and who want to use Snowden in order to push their own nationalistic anti-Americanism. Thus any whistleblower can easily become a tool in the hands of one state or another, showing that the tentacles of ‘Big Brother’ can’t be broken by individuals - who can become integrated into democratic or nationalist campaigns - but by the smashing of the state as a whole. These tentacles are thus not an exception nor a scandal but the true face of capitalist society based on militarism, competition and the oppression of the exploited and its revolutionary minorities.
[3]. Against this trend of increases in the security apparatus of the state throughout decadent capitalism, between the wars, the US, wary of covert state activity and underestimating part of its responsibility as the major power, shut down or degraded most of its own intelligence agencies, with the exception of the FBI. That led them to rely more on the British whose Empire had intelligence structures that had existed since the 19th century and which had been constantly updated and strengthened. These British agencies were even used to spy on sections of the political apparatus of the US during the inter-war years and throughout the Second World War. See In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence by Rhodri Jeffreys--Jones. But the US has learned its lessons since.
[4]. A couple of days after the now discredited FSA spokeswoman was giving her CIA-inspired lies to Congress, IHS Janes Consultancy published its authoritative findings saying that there were up to 45,000 hard-line Islamists fighting in Syria with some 10,000 directly linked to Al Qaeda (Daily Telegraph, 15.9.13). These startling facts seem to have contributed to the administration’s overall re-think on the Syrian war.
Since 21 November, Ukraine has been going through a political crisis which looks a lot like the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004. As in 2004, the pro-Russian faction is at loggerheads with the opposition, the declared partisan of ‘opening up to the West’. There is the same sharpening of diplomatic tensions between Russia and the countries of the European Union and the USA.
However this remake is not a simple copy. In 2004 the rejection of an obviously rigged election lit the fuse; today it’s the rejection by President Viktor Yanukovych of the agreement on association proposed by the EU that’s at the origin of the crisis. This issue with the EU, a week before the date envisaged for the signing of the agreement, provoked a violent offensive against the government from the different pro-European factions of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, who have been shouting about “high treason” and demanding the resignation of the President. Following calls for “the whole people to respond to this as if it was a coup d’État, i.e. by coming out on the streets”[1], the demonstrators occupied the town centre of Kiev and camped out on Independence Square, the symbolic centre of the Orange Revolution. The brutal repression, the confrontations and large number of injuries led the prime minister Mykola Azarov to declare that “what’s happening has all the signs of a coup d’État” and to organise counter-demonstrations. As in 2004, the media in the big democratic countries made a lot of noise about the will of the Ukrainian people to free itself from the Moscow-backed clique in power. The photos and reporting didn’t so much put forward the perspective of democracy but the violent repression by the pro-Russian faction, the lies of Russia and the diktats of Putin. The hope of a better, freer life is no longer tied to the perspective of an electoral victory by the opposition, which today is in a minority, unlike in 2004 when Victor Yushchenko was a sure bet to win.
In 2005, with regard to the Orange Revolution, we wrote:
“Behind this barrage, the essential question has nothing to do with the struggle for democracy. The real issue is the ever growing confrontation among the great powers, in particular the US’s present offensive against Russia, which aims at getting Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence. It is important to note that Putin directed his anger essentially against the US. In fact, it is the US which is behind the candidate Yushchenko and his ‘orange’ movement. At the time of a conference in New Delhi on December 5, the leader of the Kremlin denounced the US for trying to “reshape the diversity of civilization through the principles of a unipolar world, the equivalent of a boot camp” and impose “a dictatorship in international affairs, made up of a pretty-sounding pseudo-democratic verbiage”. Putin has not been afraid of throwing in the face of the US the reality of its own situation in Iraq when, on December 7 in Moscow he pointed out to the Iraqi prime minister that he could not figure out “how it’s possible to organize elections in the context of a total occupation by foreign troops”! It is with the same logic that the Russian president opposed the declaration by the 55 OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) countries in support of the process taking place in Ukraine and confirming the organization’s role in monitoring the unfolding of the third round of the presidential elections of December 26. The humiliation the ‘international community’ inflicted on Putin by refusing to acknowledge his own backyard is aggravated by the fact that several hundred observers from not only the US, but also from Great Britain and Germany, will be sent.
Ever since the collapse of the USSR and the catastrophic constitution of the Commonwealth of Independent States (which was meant to salvage the crumbs of its ex-empire), Russia’s borders have been relentlessly under threat, both because of the pressure from Germany and the US, and the permanent tendency toward exploding, inherent to it. The unleashing of the first Chechen war in 1992, then the second in 1996 under the pretext of the fight against terrorism, expresses the brutality of a power in decline trying to safeguard its strategically vital position in the Caucasus at all costs. For Moscow the war was a matter of opposing Washington’s imperialist schemes, which aim at destabilizing Russia, and those of Berlin, which developed an undeniable imperialist aggressiveness, as we had seen in the spring of 1991, when Germany played a major role in the explosion of the Yugoslav conflict.
The Caucasus question is therefore far from a solution, because the US resolutely continues to advance its own interests in the area. It is in this context that we can understand Shevardnadze’s eviction in 2003 by the ‘rose revolution’, which placed a pro-American clique in power. This has allowed the US to station its troops in the country, in addition to those already deployed in Kyrgyzstan and in Uzbekistan, north of Afghanistan. This strengthens the US’ military presence south of Russia and the threat to Russia of encirclement by the US. The Ukrainian question has always been a pivotal one, whether during tsarist Russia or Soviet Russia, but today the problems is posed in an even more crucial fashion.
At the economic level, the partnership between Ukraine and Russia is of great importance to Moscow, but it is above all at the strategic and military levels that the control of Ukraine is to it of even greater importance than the Caucasus. This is because, to begin with, Ukraine is the third nuclear power in the world, thanks to the military atomic bases inherited from the ex-Eastern bloc. Moscow needs them in order to show, in the context of inter-imperialist blackmails, its capacity to have control over such great nuclear power. Secondly, if Moscow has lost all probability of gaining direct access to the Mediterranean, the loss of Ukraine would mean a weakening of the possibility to have access to the Black Sea as well. Behind the loss of access to the Black Sea, where Russia’s nuclear bases and fleet are found in Sebastopol, there is the weakening of the means to gain a link with Asia and Turkey. In addition, the loss of Ukraine would dramatically weaken the Russian position vis-à-vis the European powers, and particularly Germany, while at same time it would weaken its capacity to play a role in Europe’s future destiny and that of the Eastern countries, the majority of which are already pro-American. It is certain that a Ukraine turned toward the West, and therefore controlled by it and the US in particular, highlights the Russian power’s total inadequacy, and stimulates an acceleration of the phenomenon of explosion of the CIS, along with a sequel of horrors. It is more than probable that such a situation would only push whole regions of Russia itself to declare independence, encouraged by the great powers”[2].
The big difference between today and 2004 is a result of the weakening of the USA, which has been accelerated by its succession of military adventures, notably in the Middle East. Russia’s retreat on the international scene has on the other hand been attenuated, notably with the Russo-Georgian war in 2008. This conflict reversed the tendency towards rapprochement between Georgia and the EU, which Ukraine was also aspiring to. So while the first ‘revolution’ was an offensive by the USA against Russia, the second is by all the evidence a counter-offensive by Russia. It’s president Yanukovych who sparked the hostilities by annulling the association agreement with the EU in favour of a ‘Tripartite Commission’ including both the EU and Russia. The accord initially envisaged would have allowed the establishment of a free trade zone that would have seen Ukraine joining the EU by the back door and thus moving closer to NATO. These attempts at rapprochement with the EU were seen by Moscow as a provocation since the aim was to tear Ukraine away from its influence. The situation in Ukraine has been essentially determined by these imperialist conflicts.
The immediate origin of this new crisis can be traced to the pressure mounted by Russia and the western powers on the Ukrainian bourgeoisie since the pro-Russian faction came to power in the 2010 elections. From this time, Angela Merkel offered to act as an intermediary in the negotiations over the gas contracts signed with Moscow in 2009 by the former prime minister, Julia Timoshenko. But Moscow immediately declined the offer, thus preventing the Europeans from sticking their noses in Russo-Ukrainian affairs.
Three months before the Vilnius Summit which was to culminate in the signing of the agreement between Ukraine and the EU, Russia issued its first warning by closing its frontiers to Ukrainian exports. A number of sectors, including steel and turbines, suffered as a result. Ukraine lost 5 billion dollars in this business; 400,000 jobs were at stake, along with numerous enterprises that work solely towards the Russian market. Moscow also resorted to the following piece of blackmail: if Ukraine doesn’t join the Customs Union around Russia, the Kremlin would ask other members of this Union to close their frontiers as well[3].
The various cliques of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie have been deeply divided by all this pressure. Certain oligarchs, like Rinat Akhmetov, had been opposed to signing the Vilnius agreement. At the moment, everyone is waiting to see the outcome. The pro-EU oligarchs, but also those close to Russia, are fearful of any exclusive relationship with Moscow. They want to maintain for as long as possible Ukraine’s position of ‘neutrality’, to maintain stability until the next elections in order to postpone a confrontation with Russia. Ukraine’s exclusive alignment with Russia’s imperialist policies is thus not accepted, even by the pro-Russian faction.
On the other hand, the pressures from the EU are not without their own contradictions. The main outlets of Ukrainian industry and agriculture are the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine exports next to nothing to the EU countries, which is on the verge of signing a free trade agreement for commodities which don’t actually exist! For Ukrainian commodities to meet with European standards, industry would have to invest around 160 billion dollars in the productive apparatus.
For the western powers, Ukraine is mainly of interest as a supplementary sphere of influence. Customs barriers between Ukraine and Russia are practically non-existent – there are few customs duties. Thus both from Moscow’s and the west’s points of view, the agreement with the EU boils down to opening Russia up to western commodities. Obviously, this is unacceptable for Russia.
Ukraine is being hit by the contradictions between its economic interests and the pressures of imperialism. This impasse is undermining the coherence of its various bourgeois factions and pushing them into an irrational stance, notably the opposition. While the party in government is more or less for the ‘neutrality’ of the Ukraine, the opposition is trying to sell the Ukrainian population the illusion of a standard of living comparable to that of the Europeans if Ukraine would only sign the agreement with the EU. But its heterogeneous composition, which is a difference with 2004, shows the degree to which the advance of decomposition has put its mark on any political perspective. The most lucid European analyses[4], which are in principle in favour of Ukraine’s European orientation, don’t hide this:
“If this opposition takes power, I don’t see very well how it will turn out for an opposition led by a boxer who may be affable enough but isn’t up to running a government. Then the next personality is Timoshenko and her team, and everyone knows that this is a mafia team from the word go. There really are big questions about the financial honesty of this team – that’s why she’s in prison. Then the third component is the Nazis[5]. Thus Nazis plus mafia plus incompetent people – it would be a catastrophe. It would be a government like certain states in sub-Saharan Africa”. Here we see clear verification of the fact that “The area where the decomposition of capitalist society is expressed in the most spectacular way is that of military conflicts and international relations in general”[6].
The ideological grip of the different factions of the political apparatus is being undermined by the contradictions of the situation. The division of labour that is normal in the more developed democratic countries doesn’t work very well here. But this doesn’t stop the democratic mystification being used against the working class in Ukraine as much as at the international level. Here too we have the supposed struggle between democracy and dictatorship. The bourgeoisie is also well able to play on the nationalist strings which are so well kept up in Ukraine. The appeals to the interests of the ‘Ukrainian nation’ peddled by the pro-Russian faction are echoed by the many national flags carried in the demonstrations.
The ‘Orange Wave’ of 2004 was the result of divisions within the ruling class which weakened the position of Victor Yanukovych [7]. Control of the state apparatus began to escape him. The success of his rival, Yuchenko, was to a large extent due to the paralysis of the authority of the central state, but also to Yuchenko’s ability to make use of the official values of the regime of Leonid Kuchma, president between 1994 and 2005: nationalism, democracy, the market and the so-called ‘European option’. Yuchenko became the ‘saviour of the nation’ and the subject of a personality cult. The ideology of the ‘Orange’ movement was in no way different from the mystifications the bourgeoisie had used to brainwash the population for 14 years. The masses who supported Viktor Yuchenko or who backed Yanukovych were simply pawns manipulated by different bourgeois factions in the interest of this or that imperialist option. Today the situation is no different in this respect. The ‘democratic choice’ is just a trap.
We could add that Yuchenko, whose clan took power after the ‘Orange Revolution’, did not hesitate to impose repression and sacrifices on the working class when he was the prime minister and head banker of the government of his pro-Russian predecessor, Kuchma. The Yuchenko clan not only made use of the illusions of the Ukrainian population to get into power, but also considerably enriched itself on the back of the state, fully justifying its reputation as a mafia-like clique and resulting in the imprisonment of his accomplice, Julia Timoshenko.
But this same Timoshenko, heroine of democracy and the Orange Revolution, is at the origin of 15 billion dollars of credit from the IMF obtained through tough negotiating for three months. As an annex for this agreement, this is what she obtained for the working class in Ukraine: raising of the retirement age, increase in local taxes, in the price of electricity, water, etc.
In spite of their disagreements about imperialist options, the different political factions of the bourgeoisie, from right to left, have no other perspective than to force the working class into poverty. To take part in elections for this or that political clan will not slow down the attacks. Above all, by ranging itself behind a political faction of the bourgeoisie and behind democratic slogans, the workers lose their capacity to struggle on their own class ground.
Ukraine and all the sharks swimming around it express the reality of a capitalist system at the end of its tether. The working class is the only class radically opposed to this system. It must above all defend its own historic perspective and fight against all the campaigns aimed at mobilising it for the battles between competing bourgeois cliques, each one in a bigger dead end than the next one. The proletarian revolution is not opposed to a particular bourgeois clique and in favour of another, but is against their whole system – capitalism.
Sam 22/12/13.
[1]. Appeal by Julia Timoshenko, the head of the clan in power between 2005 and 2009, issued from prison
[3]. Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, which along with Russia are Ukraine’s main trade outlets
[4]. See the interview with Ivan Blot about the Ukrainian opposition on The Voice of Russia
[5]. The Svoboda party is formally called the National Socialist Party of Ukraine. Historically it descends from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, whose armed wing (the UPA) actively collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War and massacred the Jews of Galicia in western Ukraine
[6]. Resolution on the international situation from the 20th Congress of the ICC https://en.internationalism.org/inter/133_ukraine.htm [1137]
[7]. See ‘Ukraine, the authoritarian prison and the trap of democracy’ https://en.internationalism.org/ir/126_authoritarian_democracy [1138]
The British bourgeoisie have recently become more confident about declaring that there is an economic recovery underway – at long last – in Great Britain. Nonetheless, where more serious commentary is concerned, the sense of relief amongst bourgeois economists and commentators is still tempered with some reserve, even if it mainly concerns the length of time the recovery is taking. A Financial Times poll of economists at the beginning of the year gives a good sense of the current view of matters held by the bourgeoisie:
“After 3 grinding years of stagnation and almost seven after the financial crisis started, economists have finally regained their confidence that Britain’s economy is on the move.
A large majority believes the recovery will at least maintain its recent strength and households will begin to feel better off in 2014, as wages begin to grow faster than prices and unemployment continues to fall. Few think there are clouds on the horizon in 2014, although more worry about the longer term. …..” (Financial Times, 2/01/2014)
It should be noted that these expert commentators did not actually anticipate this much-praised upturn:
“Several quarters of strong growth have encouraged UK economists, largely caught out by the upturn’s strength, to become much more optimistic.” (ibid)
Well, quite! There is no reason, in other words, to suppose that these experts have somehow got the hang of where the economy is heading. Also we should note that the term ‘recovery’ is being used here in a specific and restricted sense. Seven years on from the start of the current financial crisis the economy is still well below the level prior to the crisis – 2 percentage points or so. In fact, therefore, there is no ‘recovery’ as yet, if recovery means (as it is often taken to mean) getting back to the level before the crash. If the present recovery, in the sense of a period of sustained growth, does indeed continue as the economists hope, then the economy might actually recover (in the sense of getting back to where it started) sometime before the next election. Some economists have actually noted that, in this respect, the performance of the economy is actually worse than during the Great Depression.
It is necessary to see matters in a wider context. The British economy is not isolated from the rest of the world economy. The European economy, for example, was mired in recession for no less than 18 months and it is not really out of the woods yet:
“The [UK] was one of the few to beat expectations in the second half of 2013, when the recoveries in the euro area and Japan faltered.” (ibid)
It should be noted that it is only in the current period that Britain appears to be doing better than its rivals:
“Despite its strong performance over the past year, the UK economy has consistently lagged behind most rivals since the crash. Until last year it was among the worst performers of the Group of Seven economies.” (ibid)
It is also the case that China, India and Brazil – all members of the so-called BRIC group of countries – have been suffering severely recently at the economic level. In the case of Brazil this has had repercussions at the social level, showing the underlying instability that characterises all these countries. Indian growth has slowed significantly so that the rupee has weakened to the extent that it is causing serious worry to the Indian bourgeoisie. This is true even though the rate of growth looks very healthy compared with the advanced economies – this point also applies to China. China’s rate of growth is still over 7% (according to the official figures at least):
“‘From the overall situation we can predict that the future industrial growth rate will decline, the export growth rate may drop and economic growth is still under downward pressure,’ said Zhang Liqun, an economist, in a statement accompanying the release of [an official purchasing managers’ index].” (ibid)
The Chinese bourgeoisie is very conscious of the fact that the economic and social situation in China is very fragile, unlike most Western commentators who tend to be mesmerised by China’s growth rates. However, even these commentators have toned down their references to the glittering prospects offered by the process of ‘globalisation’. In general, all that the bourgeois commentators mean by talking about globalisation is that they are hoping that China (and India and Brazil) will grow with sufficient strength to make up for the lack of demand in the Western economies and supply a sufficiency of markets to keep them functioning. And we have arrived at a point where the prospects for that happening are clearly diminished very severely. This has been accepted by the bourgeoisie increasingly over the last months.
China responded to the global financial crisis with a rapid and very large extension of credit to keep its economy moving and now has to find a means of dealing with the overhang to keep its banking and shadow banking system intact, which sounds familiar[1]. China experiences the global crisis of capitalism just like any economy even if its growth rates are, for the present, still something for the developed economies to envy.
Similarly, in the case of Britain, the recovery that we have been discussing here seems, at least in part, to be the result of government interventions that have been made recently – notably its intervention in the housing market, which is widely credited with helping to restore consumer confidence. And consumer confidence is cited as a key factor in the recovery:
“Though many economists this year stick to that policy advice [to change the monetary policy remit to something more expansionary], they recognise that that they did not see the change of mood that persuaded households to spend, even with incomes still under pressure.” (ibid)
If this is the main factor that has caused the economists to be caught out, then that hardly suggests that this is a broad based, sustainable recovery such as the bourgeoisie are aiming for:
“Diane Coyle of Enlightenment Economics warned that the supply side of the economy was holding it back. ‘There are multiple and long-standing problems with the economy’s capacity to produce and export ….’”. (ibid) She cites skills gaps and lack of finance for growing companies, for example.
Undoubtedly, the steps that the government has taken to stimulate the housing market are the most striking ‘contribution’ it has made to this rather lop-sided recovery. Obviously, the government can pat itself on the back if it thinks this is a major component of the recovery, as many commentators do. The problem is that the bourgeoisie is in essence resorting to the same methods which got it into so much trouble in 2007. What the bourgeoisie mean by getting the housing market moving is that prices are rising as the conditions under which loans are given are eased – thus encouraging new buyers who have been locked out of the market. These easier conditions – which are government backed – exist alongside the bourgeoisie’s general policy of ‘easy money’ (quantitative easing and very low interest rates) that it has had in place since the financial crisis to sustain the economy. Just as the Chinese bourgeoisie are doing now, eventually the ruling class in Britain and elsewhere will have to pay a price for this in terms of restricting credit in order to avoid a new ‘debt crisis’.
In sum, the ruling class is trapped in a downward spiral because its financial machinations can’t overcome the basic contradictions of its system, which is perpetually driven to produce more than what Marx called the “restricted consumption of the masses” can absorb. This is not overproduction in relation to need, but overproduction in relation to demand backed by the ability to pay. The drug of easy credit may bring temporary relief to the patient but in the end the medicine only exacerbates the disease: giving the consumer money to pay for your own production is ultimately self-defeating unless it is accompanied by the possibility of opening up new markets, and this is severely limited in a world where capital already dominates almost every corner of human existence.
Hardin, 10.1.14
[1]. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke provided a definition of shadow banking in April 2012: “Shadow banking, as usually defined, comprises a diverse set of institutions and markets that, collectively, carry out traditional banking functions--but do so outside, or in ways only loosely linked to, the traditional system of regulated depository institutions. Examples of important components of the shadow banking system include securitisation vehicles, asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) conduits, money market mutual funds, markets for repurchase agreements (repos), investment banks, and mortgage companies.” (https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20120413a.htm [1141])
We are publishing below the translation of an article from Accion Proletaria, the ICC's paper in Spain, which analyses the strike of rubbish collectors in Madrid of November 13 and which stresses an essential and vital factor for the class struggle: workers' solidarity.
November 17 last, general assemblies of the Highways Department of Madrid ended 13 days of strike by accepting an agreement which avoided job losses of close to 1200 workers as well as threats of wage cuts of up to 43%. Coming out of these assemblies the feeling among workers was one of relief, a feeling that they had gained something, at least temporarily, from the outcome of an interminable struggle against the incessant attacks from this system against our living conditions. That they had this feeling wasn't so much because of the tangible results of negotiations - because these workers had been forced to accept the freezing of wages up to 2017 as well as a temporary contract of work limited to 45 days a year up to this same date - as for the way that they had succeeded in resisting this latest blow: support from a rousing demonstration of workers' solidarity. A solidarity which was revealed to all the workers of the three sub-contracting firms responsible for the Madrid streets and which spread to the workers of the public firm TRAGSA, to the bars of the most populous districts of Madrid where "collection boxes of support" were placed as a spontaneous form of assistance in order to compensate from economic losses of the strikers or in the concentration of solidarity amongst them on the last night of the negotiations...
The media and the TV channels particularly - themselves accustomed to "rubbish" programmes - focused attention on the sacks of garbage and on the protagonists who were shown as social rejects. Firstly, regarding the media, there wasn't a television programme that didn't take its cameras onto the streets in order to interrogate the population on "the inconvenience caused by the strike" (they didn't make the least enquiry about the inconvenience caused by the budget cuts of the highways services) or on their economic repercussions, except for business people, hotel owners, etc. It was really the launching of an ideological campaign being used to put the population up against the refuse workers. This kind of campaign has been used successfully on several occasions before, including with the complicity of the unions[1]. However this time, public opinion, above all in the workers' districts of Madrid, went to the side of the strikers. Thus for example in a "proclamation" of the Popular Assembly of Lavapies, one can read: "The men and women on unlimited strike is an example for us all. No sensible person can remain with folded arms looking at these events (...) What we are seeing today, is only a prefiguration of a Madrid filthy and left to rot which will hit our popular quarters; if the strike is defeated it will follow that there will be less workers and in worse conditions (...) If the workers who look after our streets and parks (and consequently, all of us) go on strike, we must support them to the end, we must be with them among the strike pickets and in demonstrations (...) If they imprison the strikers, we must be on the streets every day in greater numbers. The motives and the anger of strikers must not be reduced to silence by the police, judges, the bosses, the media and the union chiefs. If the strike ends it must be because we have won something and not because of agreements concluded on the backs of the men and women on strike..."[2].
When they tried to pass off the strikers as "blackmailers", the workers remembered that the origin of these job cuts was a cut in the budget of the highways municipality of Madrid and that the local firms - subsidiaries of the larger concerns - were being fattened up by building speculations and other gifts accorded by the administration while at the same time the latter was trying to lay the cost on the backs of the employees of these enterprises and the population of the workers' districts of Madrid.
It's true that the arrogant attitude of the mayor of Madrid, worthy spouse of the ex-President Aznar ("worthy" of him in any case...), served to heat up the atmosphere of support for the struggle somewhat. When she put forward an ultimatum calling for an agreement in the middle of the night of November 15, by threatening to call on the workers of the public concern TRAGSA to abort the strike, she met with a refusal of these same workers (who, in their turn, were threatened with job cuts) to play the role of scabs against their comrades. Trying to recruit 200 workers that she wanted immediately only appeared completely ridiculous. The same night, during which the mayor supervised the semblance of a minimum service dressed in a fur coat, the boss himself accepted replacing cuts in wages by a freeze up to 2017, and reported on the following night, going beyond the time of the ultimatum, the decision on job cuts. Among the workers a feeling spread that, this time, they had been able to put a brake on the attacks.
Why was this? Because our exploiters became more reasonable? Nothing could be further from the truth: a few days later the same protagonists - or almost - announced a very similar attack aimed this time against laundry workers of Madrid hospitals. And did the unions make a "volte-face" (as the PSOE repeated) in order to defend the workers? You can't say that when you can see that they signed agreements involving thousands of job cuts in the banks, at Panrico, RTVE and so on. During the night of Saturday November 16, when the unions of the highway workers of Madrid were ready to accept a deal on a reduced number of job cuts for hundreds of workers(in fact, the UGT stayed at the negotiating table and the Workers' Commissions quit, although they returned later). And this was not only in the highways sector but also others - who were meeting up around the building where these so-called negotiations were taking place and began to call for a demonstration on the following day. A few hours later, the companies withdrew the announced plan of job cuts, replacing them with technical measures of temporary unemployment.
The key factor in the course of this struggle - solidarity - has been the fruit of a change obscured by bourgeois propaganda which preferred to focus attention on the piles of rubbish bags, or on the declarations of the mayor who, recently, has reappeared among the media complaining of a permanent campaign aimed at her. For the exploited, on the contrary, the most important thing is the response given by an anonymous striker to a television reporter who asked him what was positive about the strike: "To discover that someone who works alongside me is a real comrade."
The "basic" mechanism on which the capitalist system rests is one of relentless blackmail: the isolated worker can only obtain his or her means of existence if their labour power profits capital. The propaganda of our exploiters artfully insinuates that this is an "order" inherent to human nature, wanting to reduce our existence to that of a commodity, aiming by any means to let the "market value" of this commodity fall to the lowest possible price. But in reality the price of labour power is not determined on the blind laws of capitalist exchange (supply and demand, the law of profit and exchange value...) but also on moral parameters such as courage and anger faced with the inhumanity of the laws which regulate society, solidarity and the defence of the dignity of the workers. Here, two worlds oppose one another and are separated by an abyss: those of human need and those of the interests of capital.
All attempts to sacrifice the first to the second is presented as a defence of the "competitive edge" of the enterprise or to the profitability of the public service such as health or education. Whether the living conditions of the exploited are to be sacrificed to the demands of this or that firm, this or that local or regional industry, or even the interests of the nation, this very clearly implies the sabotage of the very principle of solidarity between the exploited in order to put in its place a fraudulent fraternity between exploiters and exploited. The most important contribution of the struggle of workers of the Madrid highways is not to have shown an infallible way of drawing concessions from the boss, but of having won a level of solidarity which serves to strengthen the unity of the class rather than further subjecting the workers to the logic of exploitation.
Again we're seeing today a deluge of thousands and thousands of redundancies and, among those workers that "keep" their jobs, brutal wage cuts. Everywhere the concern of workers is growing faced with the cynicism of the exploiters who are announcing the end of the crisis and a recovery for the Spanish economy while scapegoating those most hit by poverty becomes more commonplace and dramatic. This agitation has given rise to a number of protests and mobilisations. But we must be honest and not let ourselves be fooled. In the great majority of cases, this agitation among the ranks of the workers has been recuperated by the parties of the left of capital and the unions through a string of movements that have been dispersed and, above all, diverted onto a false version of solidarity, that of the defending democratic institutions.
We can use the example of Radio-Television Valenciana[3] where the anger faced with job cuts was channeled into the defending "television at the service of the public and the region". On this terrain, the unions had a free hand to justify the reduction of wages by proposing a so-called viability plan - all in the name, of course, of salvaging the "national heritage". On these grounds the workers of Canal 9 were forced to march alongside the deputies of the PSOE who, when they were in power, undertook the most massive plan of job cuts in Spanish radio and television!
On this rotten ground our exploiters present themselves to us as "allies" and workers of other firms, other sectors of production or other countries, are presented as competitors and enemies. It's what we've seen for example at Panrico or at FAGOR. In the first case, the workers at the firm of Santa Perpetua of Mogoda, who refused to accept redundancies and wage cuts, were exposed to a brutal offensive by the boss and the media, but also from the unions which told them that their intransigence and those of workers of other firms were putting the "future" in danger. Another case was the Mondragon Group, part of the FAGOR business and up to recently a model for the "rise of Basque industry" and the advantages of "cooperative systems". A "cooperative" which has now thrown onto the streets more than 5,000 workers who then found themselves caught up in an ideological battle about which units were the most "profitable" or whether they had the right to be relocated to other firms of the group...
Competition between workers[4] can deliver profits on capitalist investment but implies the ruin of the exploited. Class solidarity isn't sufficient to protect workers indefinitely from the attacks of capitalism in the period of decadence, but it does show the sense of a social alternative, another form of the understanding of relations between men that do not submit to the laws of the market. As the Communist Manifesto, written some 150 years ago, indicates: "Sometimes the workers triumph, but it is an ephemeral triumph. The real result of their struggles is less their immediate success than the growing union of all the workers".
Valerio (November 25, 2013)
[1] Which we denounced in our article in April 2013 : es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201304/3714/para-defendernos-contra-los-despidos-y-los-recortes-hay-que-superar-los-metod [1143]
[2] The complete text of the proclamation by this assembly, produced during the struggle of the Indignados in 2011, can be found here: www.alasbarricadas.org/noticas/node/26904 [1144]
[3] es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201311/3953/lo-que-esta-en-juego-con-el-cierre-de-canal-9 [1145]
[4] The Spanish car industry is surviving the crisis mainly through a brutalisation of the workforce, with contracts for young people which are set at only 70% of the wage. The most significant result of this is to see how the right wing People’s Party and the unions both rejoice about swiping production from other enterprises such as Ford, Nissan, SEAT…but this will never supply our daily bread, either today or tomorrow. Unless we impose class solidarity, there will always be someone more desperate ready to accept even bigger wage reductions.
“Tyranny is tyranny let it come from whom it may.” 1
The unprecedented response of the US state to the April 2013 bombings in Boston and more recent revelations about NSA spying on the entire population have inevitably struck at illusions in American liberal democracy and civil liberties. We’ve written about what lies behind the US state’s increasingly repressive activities today,2 but these illusions run deep and it’s also important to look at their historical roots.
Our series on the early class struggle in America has reached the ‘American Revolution’ of 1765-1783, which of course has a cherished place in bourgeois mythology as a brave struggle against tyranny by patriots who founded “the world’s oldest democracy”. The working class did indeed gain real and lasting reforms from this struggle, which took place in the epoch of capitalism’s progressive expansion across the globe. But as this article shows, these gains were limited and even at the moment of its birth American democracy clearly revealed its class character, proving that, even in ascendant capitalism, the most democratic republic served as a mask for the dictatorship of capital.
As we saw in the first article, faced with the threat of a unified struggle by black and white slaves and labourers, the bourgeoisie in North America successfully adopted a strategy to divide the proletariat along racial lines. Nevertheless the class struggle continued to be characterized by violent uprisings and insurrectional struggles that posed a growing threat to the capitalist class and finally precipitated a crisis for the existing system of political rule:
There were organised and violent struggles by sailors and labourers against impressment into the British navy. In the most serious of these, in 1747 a crowd of over 1,000 led by ‘‘Foreign Seamen, Servants, Negroes, and other Persons of mean and vile Condition’’ held control of the town of Boston for three days, seized naval officers as hostages and threatened to hang the Governor. Confrontations with the press gangs flared again in the 1760s.3
A renewed wave of African slave plots and revolts erupted in the Caribbean which spread to North America and intensified after 1765 as slaves seized opportunities created by the growing crisis of the ruling class. This reached a high point in the 1770s with uprisings in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Boston (in which Irish workers also participated), New Jersey, New York and Maryland.4
There was also increasing unrest and resistance among indentured servants – i.e. time-limited slaves. In 1768, in “the most serious insurrection of white workers in the history of the British colonies on the North American mainland”,5 300 Italian and Greek workers in Florida rebelled, seized arms and ammunition, captured a ship and prepared to set sail for Cuba. Troops had to be despatched before the rebels surrendered.
There were almost continual struggles by small farmers along the eastern seaboard. In 1766 violence in the Hudson Valley erupted in a massive uprising with pitched battles involving 1,000 white tenant farmers. In the most significant pre-revolutionary struggle, in North Carolina from 1766 to 1771 a movement of over 6,000 poor farmers and labourers (‘Regulators’) waged a prolonged campaign against the corrupt local capitalist regime until eventually defeated by a militia army and artillery fire.
There were increasingly violent struggles and spontaneous protests by the impoverished proletariat in the rapidly growing cities, in the context of a deepening economic depression. In 1765 a crowd led by seamen and labourers attacked Fort George, seat of royal authority in New York, attempting to burn it to the ground in protest against new British taxes on the sale and use of commodities, while as part of the same protests a Boston crowd vented its pent up fury on the houses and property of wealthy merchants and prominent loyalist officials.
The ruling class saw in these last struggles, not a protest against new taxes but “a War of Plunder, of general levelling and taking away the Distinction between rich and poor”, and feared they would lead to “an insurrection of the poor against the rich”.6
The American bourgeoisie seized on this growing crisis as an opportunity to advance its own political and economic interests, but from the beginning it faced a dilemma: despite being haunted by the fear of an ‘insurrection against the rich’, it had to make use of direct action and illegal methods in order to give its own struggle the necessary political firepower against the British state. It therefore had no option but to try to harness the struggles of the poor urban proletariat – commonly dismissed as the ‘mob’ – while at the same time preventing them from developing into a more dangerous class struggle against capitalist society.
Caught unprepared for the violence of the early protests, which quickly threatened to escape the control of the conservative merchants and planters who led the opposition to British rule, the American bourgeoisie was forced to depend on more radical leaders who were closer to the struggles of the proletariat and better able to mobilise popular support for anti-British objectives. Revolutionary leaders like Samuel Adams in Boston defended a more radical democratic vision of the revolution but shared a deep suspicion of ‘the mob’ and actively worked to prevent the class struggle from escaping the confines of the bourgeois independence movement.
With the backing of radicals like Adams, organisations such as the Sons of Liberty and Committees of Correspondence came into being as a response to the “threatened anarchy” of the early protests. Their rank and file tended to be white artisans and skilled workers (women, indentured servants and of course slaves and free blacks were all excluded), but the leadership was in the hands of smaller merchants, master craftsmen and professional men, who acted to ensure order.
The artisans and skilled workers exerted enormous pressure for more radical action not only against British authority but also the domination of the merchants, which the leadership was forced to go along with in order to prevent being swept aside. But the American bourgeoisie was ultimately successful in isolating the most militant elements of the poor urban proletariat and in mobilising artisans and skilled workers behind its programme of nationalist and protectionist demands, so that by the time of the famous 1773 ‘Tea Party’, for example, the crowd in Boston acted as a political agent of the radical bourgeoisie, its struggles confined to exclusively anti-British actions.
The American bourgeoisie had no option but to mobilise artisans, workers and small farmers to fight its war against Britain. Impressment into the American navy was taking place by 1779 despite the earlier struggles against the tyranny of the British press gangs.
There was no strong support for independence among the population and little enthusiasm for the war, which caused runaway inflation and increased poverty. There was inevitably a stark contrast between the suffering and sacrifice of the proletariat and the profits and privileges of the bourgeoisie. There were at least fifteen major mutinies involving large numbers of soldiers in the American army. In 1781 for example, 300 New Jersey troops defied their officers and marched on the state capital where they were quickly surrounded and disarmed and two leaders shot as “an example” on George Washington’s orders.
Some of the poorer artisans and workers were radicalised by being mobilised into the militia which, like the New Model Army in the English revolution, became a centre of intense political debate. In Philadelphia the militias seized the early initiative in rejecting British rule, demanding the right to vote and to elect their own officers. Backed by the radical bourgeoisie and small farmers, they overthrew the colonial government and elected a convention that produced the most democratic constitution of the American Revolution. During the war the militia’s Committee of Privates also took the lead in pressuring the bourgeoisie on behalf of “the midling and poor” and threatened violent action against profiteers. In 1779 a group marched into the city and attacked the house of a wealthy lawyer and prominent conservative republican who opposed price controls and the new democratic constitution (the ‘Fort Wilson Riot’).
In the South, the first priority of the American bourgeoisie throughout the war was to prevent a generalised slave insurrection. Fear of arming slaves led to a ban on their recruitment (although both free and enslaved Africans fought in many of the battles of the Revolution, especially in the north). After a cynical offer to free slaves if they joined the British army, this ban had to be reversed, but the prevention of a slave insurrection continued to trump American military strategy and manpower needs. Tens of thousands of slaves deserted the plantations to either join the British or liberate themselves in what amounted to a mobile slave revolt of immense proportions; in South Carolina as many as 20,000 deserted or 25 per cent of the entire slave population, and even more in Georgia. As soon as the British finally surrendered at Yorktown, Washington posted guards on the beaches to stop slaves escaping aboard British ships.7
Nor was it only slaves who posed a threat. Rural areas remained largely in the grip of right-wing political elites who were often viewed as more oppressive than British tyranny. Attempts to mobilise the population, especially in areas with a recent history of class struggles, met with varying degrees of resistance, fuelling ruling class fears that the war would unleash a generalised insurrection of the poor. In Maryland the militia spearheaded a local struggle for democratic rights, demanding the vote or they would lay down their arms. There were also attacks on members of the ruling class suspected of hoarding commodities. In the Carolinas, scene of major pre-war rural rebellions, many small farmers and labourers viewed their rulers’ calls for liberty and natural rights as rank hypocrisy and resisted all attempts to mobilise them. There were several large uprisings and in some parts of the South bourgeois rule collapsed completely: “With the fall of Charleston in the spring of 1780, a total civil war engulfed the Lower South. From that time until the war’s end, the region experienced social anarchy.”8
The state to emerge from the war was a weak, decentralised Confederation with no standing army to enforce its rule. The victorious American bourgeoisie soon faced concerted resistance to its attempts to impose its authority.
Around 70 per cent of the population in the ex-British colonies were small independent farmers. The colonial regime had always faced difficulties in exerting control over this group, which resisted attempts to enforce land ownership claims and demands for rent. During the war the American bourgeoisie was able to win support by confiscating the holdings of British landowners and turning them over to freeholders, who became mortgagees, paying back loans from banks instead of rent to landlords. But at the end of the war the priority of the new American state was to repay its enormous war debt and re-establish the terms of American credit in the world economy. It began to squeeze the small farmers, taking them to court, imprisoning them, confiscating their land and selling it below value.
In 1786 4,000 small farmers in Massachusetts fought back, in what became known as ‘Shays’ Rebellion’. This began as a peaceful movement for reform but the state just imposed stricter laws and increased repression through the courts, leading one local farmer to argue, “The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers.”9 Army veterans organised a disciplined force and burned down the courthouses. The movement achieved a high level of organisation, forming committees which in effect became an alternative government. Local militias sided with the insurgents and the local bourgeoisie itself had to fund an armed expedition to crush the rebellion. After a failed march on Boston the rebel army was defeated and dispersed and several leaders were hanged. The former radical Samuel Adams accused “British emissaries” of stirring up the farmers and helped to draw up a Riot Act and a resolution suspending habeas corpus to crush the rising. Against pleas for clemency for the convicted rebels, he argued: “the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”10
By forcing farmers into debt and then using the new federal state to crush resistance, the American bourgeoisie finally succeeded in imposing capitalist authority on these independent producers and brutally integrating them into commodity production, thus achieving its aim of creating a class of capitalist small farmers which would help provide a buffer against the struggles of the poor proletariat, slaves and frontier Indians.
Ultimately the struggle of the small farmers was to try to preserve their existence as independent producers and essentially looked backwards to a previous, idealised stage of capitalist development. In practice, due to the vast availability of land, many were able to temporarily escape their new status by re-locating to the frontier.
‘Shays’ Rebellion’ directly influenced the debate on a new US Constitution, finally convincing anti-federalist elements in the American bourgeoisie of the need for a strong central government fully equipped to suppress insurrections of the poor.
In the wake of the uprising the federalist wing of the bourgeoisie (Madison, Hamilton, Jay) argued for a strong republic as a “barrier against domestic faction and insurrection”, seeing clearly that given the inevitable division of society into “those who hold and those who are without property” the principal task of the state was to manage the resulting class conflicts. Far from being a weakness, as anti-federalists argued, the large size of the new republic would make it even more difficult for incipient rebellions to unify:
“The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. […] A rage for paper money, for the abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union…”11
The resulting Constitution was thus not only designed to protect the interests of the rich, but was part of a conscious strategy by the most far-sighted faction of the American bourgeoisie to prevent future internal threats to the rule of capital from “those without property”. (The railing of today’s ‘Tea Party’ movement against overweening federal government while demanding a return to ‘government as intended by the Founding Fathers’ shows just how far removed it is from the real history of American capitalism, let alone its real interests…).
When resistance from small farmers flared again in the so-called ‘whiskey rebellion’, a tax protest by farmers in Pennsylvania in 1794 that spread to Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, this time the federal government mobilised 10,000 militia under Washington to occupy the region and unleash a wave of repression.
The same Constitution protected the institution of slavery and the rights of slaveholders to pursue fugitive slaves. As the price of its support for the new state the southern slaveholding bourgeoisie was given a guarantee that the slave trade would continue for at least 20 more years, during which time slavery in the Lower South expanded massively: in 1800 there were many more enslaved Africans than there were in in 1776. Slavery in the northern states was progressively ended, but as late as 1810 almost a quarter of the black population of the North remained slaves.
The Revolution cemented the political rule of the slaveholding bourgeoisie, whose slave-based plantation economy was essential to the survival of the new republic. To justify why the ‘universal’ rights enshrined in the Constitution – supposedly the self-evident gift of God – could be denied to an entire section of the population, increasing use was made of racist, pseudo-scientific concepts of biological inferiority and white supremacy. The growth of such ideas, together with the sanctioning of slavery and constitutional guarantees to the slaveholders, further entrenched the deep racial divisions in the early American proletariat.
The American Revolution strengthened capitalist domination in North America and established a more effective state apparatus to enforce bourgeois rule.
The American bourgeoisie – one of the most intelligent fractions of the capitalist class in this epoch – was able to successfully harness the class struggles of artisans, labourers and small farmers to its own struggle for political power. In doing so it taught an invaluable lesson to the rest of its class in how to rule: the need for flexibility, compromise and above all for policies specifically designed to mobilise popular support and forge tactical alliances with sections of the working class. (The success of these policies at the time is shown, for example, in the enthusiastic demonstrations by white artisans and workers in New York City to celebrate the signing of the Constitution.) Having achieved its goal, the American bourgeoisie then abandoned all pretence of more radical social and economic change and ruthlessly asserted the need for capitalist order.
The American bourgeoisie fought its successful national liberation struggle in order to remove the obstacles placed in the way of its pursuit of profit by the mercantilist policies of the British capitalist state, which restricted the growth of American trade and industry in order to prevent a threat to domestic manufacture. The fact that this struggle led to the removal of this obstacle to the growth of capitalism – and hence to the growth of the proletariat, its ultimate gravedigger – is alone enough to give the American Revolution a progressive character from the perspective of the interests of the working class.
The American Revolution also triggered further bourgeois revolutions in Europe, especially the Great French Revolution of 1789, which weakened the grip of decayed feudal society and removed obstacles to the growth of the proletariat internationally, thus hastening the conditions for capitalism’s ultimate overthrow.
Before the war there was no industrial proletariat to speak of in North America. The needs of the war against Britain accelerated the process of industrialisation and by the mid-1790s we can see a growing polarisation of interests between capital and labour, with an increase in strikes followed by the formation of the first permanent trade unions, which heralded the emergence of the modern working class in American capitalist society.
Some sections of the American working class gained real and lasting reforms from the Revolution. Due to the pressure exerted particularly by the struggles of the artisans, skilled and unskilled workers, the right to vote was extended to most white male workers in many states (but by no means all and not without ruling class resistance). By 1832 property qualifications had been removed in all but four states. This meant that, unlike the British working class, for example, which was still fighting a protracted battle for basic democratic rights in the mid-19th century, in America many workers had the right to vote even before the emergence of the industrial proletariat and its own permanent organisations, trade unions and political parties. But these gains for parts of the proletariat need to be seen alongside the sanctioning of slavery and the deployment of racist ideologies which ensured that the American working class remained deeply divided.
Under the influence of the struggles of the American proletariat the radical political thinkers of the bourgeoisie (Paine, Jefferson, Samuel Adams) had developed revolutionary new ideas which justified violent resistance to colonial tyranny and oppression based on a recognition of “the natural rights of man”. These ideas represented a breakthrough in bourgeois political thought in this epoch. But once in power, America’s Founding Fathers ensured that their new state was equipped to prevent violent resistance to their own rule and they did not hesitate to use it to crush further struggles against home-grown tyranny and oppression.
Liberal democracy proved to be the perfect ideological cover for the American bourgeoisie’s struggle against the obstructions to its pursuit of profit while the Bill of Rights served not only to protect its class rule but also to prevent unjustified state interference in this pursuit. The noble sentiments of the Declaration of Independence sanctified a state which from the moment of its birth defended the sordid interests of a system based on oppression and exploitation.
The story of the American Revolution from the point of view of the proletariat amply confirms Lenin’s conclusion in State and Revolution that “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this […], it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.” This was the enemy that the American proletariat faced in the next phase of its historic struggle to emancipate itself from all forms of tyranny.
MH 27/01/2014
1 Cry of the Boston crowd rioting against being drafted into the army at gunpoint by the American ruling class four days after the Declaration of Independence, quoted in Dirk Hoerder, ‘Boston Leaders and Boston Crowds, 1765-1776’, in Alfred Young (Ed.), The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, 1976, p.266.
2 See ICC online: “Boston Bombing: Terrorism Serves the State [1147]”, and NSA Spying Scandal: The Democratic State Shows Its Teeth [1148].
3 Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, 2000, p.216.
4 Linebaugh & Rediker, Op. Cit., pp.225-226.
5 Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1965, p.178.
6 Gary B. Nash, ‘Social Change and the Growth of Prerevolutionary Urban Radicalism’, in Young, Op. Cit., p.29.
7 Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army, 1996, p.80.
8 Ronald Hoffman, ‘The “Disaffected” in the Revolutionary South’, in Young, Op. Cit., pp.276-293.
9 Quoted in Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 2005, p.92.
10 Ibid., p.95.
11 James Madison, Federalist no. 10 [1149], 1787. This collection of articles is a fascinating insight into the thinking of the most intelligent faction of the American bourgeoisie at this time. Significantly, it is still referred to by the US Supreme Court when interpreting the intentions of the Constitution’s writers [1150]
This article tries to get a better understanding of the present social situation in France, which has been marked by a retreat in the class struggle since 2010. But because, as it says in the article, “the proletariat has no country: everywhere it wages the same struggle, in all countries it is one and the same class. The defeats or the victories of one part of the proletariat in this or that corner of the globe are defeats or victories for the proletariat as a whole on world scale, and according to its outcome each struggle ends up either denting the confidence of the whole class or arousing its enthusiasm”. The dynamic of the class struggle is studied here in its historical and international dimension, with all the elements of interdependence that this implies. The social movement in France has an impact on the workers of all countries, just as the movement across the world influence the situation in France. As we will see, this international dimension of the proletarian struggle is well known to the bourgeoisie, which in the face of its mortal enemy, the proletariat, is capable of going beyond its national divisions in order to coordinate its efforts and come to each other’s aid.
Since the movement against pension reform in 2010, four years ago, there hasn’t been any struggle on the same scale in France. However, there is no lack of reasons to fight. Caught in the crossfire between the economic crisis and government attacks, living conditions have continued to deteriorate. Lay-offs, austerity plans and factory closures have hit new heights (63,100 enterprises closed in 2013, reaching the previous record of 2009); every worker has to carry out more tasks with less colleagues and deplorable resources, while being subject to an immense moral pressure making them feel guilty and harassed; social benefits are melting away like snow in the sunshine; thousands of unemployed workers are deprived of benefits on the smallest pretext; taxes of all kinds are shooting upwards. Even more than the material attacks on the proletariat, the bourgeoisie’s contempt for the workers which it treats like cattle is becoming unbearable. The situation is disgusting and should give rise to something much greater than anger: indignation! So why this dreary social landscape? And it’s even worse: for some months now, the only demonstrations in the headlines are those mobilising the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, calling for a retreat into regionalism and spitting hatred towards homosexuals, Jews, women who have abortions…
To try to understand this situation, without entertaining pretty illusions or falling into despair, to confront the real difficulties of the struggle against capitalism – that should be the attitude of all those who want to contribute to the dawn of a new world. The words of Rosa Luxemburg uttered in to the insurrectionary workers of Berlin in January 1919 should be a source of inspiration to us:
“I think it is healthy to have a clear sight of all he difficulties and complications of his revolution. Because i hope that, no more than it is for me, this description of the great difficulties and tasks mounting up will not have a paralysing effect on you: on the contrary, the greater the task, the more we will bring together all our forces!” 1
Stalinism’s second stab in the back
Stalinism was the gravedigger of the proletarian revolution of 1917. When the German government had drowned in blood the insurrections of 1919, 1921 and 1923, the proletariat in Russia was totally isolated: the counter-revolution could then advance inexorably towards complete victory. But his triumph for the bourgeoisie did not take the form of a military conquest by the white armies, like the Versaillais who crushed the Paris Commune in 1871. It came from the ‘inside’, behind the red mask of a Bolshevik party which had gradually degenerated and then betrayed the working class.
This was a real historical tragedy, not just because the victory of the counter-revolution meant the deportation or massacre of millions of fighters who had remained faithful to the combat of 1917, but also because these crimes were perpetrated in the name of communism. The greatest lie in history – Stalinism equals communisms- was a terrible ideological poison injected into the veins of the workers. It made it possible to create a monstrous deformation of the proletarian struggle for the emancipation of humanity. For all those taken in by this shameful lie, what did the choice seem to be? Either to carry on claiming adherence to communism by defending, either blindly or ‘critically’, the ‘fatherland of socialism’, the USSR, and all its crimes; or to reject the USSR, the Russian revolution and the whole history of the workers’ movement without distinction. This was Stalinism’s first stab in the back.
And the second? It was carried out when the USSR collapsed. An enormous campaign was mounted at the beginning of the 1990s: the death of communism and even the ‘end of history’ were declared2 The same message was dinned into people’s heads again and again: the revolutionary struggle of the working class leads to the most terrible barbarism. So, “to the dustbin with Marx, Engels and Lenin since they were just Stalin’s forebears! To the dustbin the lessons of the workers’ struggles throughout history because they could only give birth to a monster! Long live eternal capitalism!” The sociologists and other experts came along with their own little contribution to this by adding that, in any case, the working class no longer existed in Europe or the USA because industry had almost disappeared: blue collars and the 1848 Communist Manifesto were just relics.
We should never underestimate the huge destructive power of this ideology. The workers of this or that sector, the unemployed, the pensioners, young workers in insecure jobs....found themselves atomised in the 1990s because there was no visible working class with which to identify. They were without a future because the fight for a better world was officially impossible, and without a past because reading books about the history of the workers’ movement taught you only that class struggle leads to the horror of Stalinism. Despair, the feeling of ‘no future’, loneliness thus made a great leap forward, just as feelings of solidarity and militancy took a leap backwards. Lacking any perspective, the social fabric began to decompose and is still decomposing3.
Thus the dynamic of struggle that was born with the proletarian earthquake of May 1968 and which had spread across the whole world was broken in 1990-91. The bourgeoisie had managed to convince the proletariat that it didn’t exist, that there never had been a revolution and never would be4.
The Machiavellianism of the ruling class
The bourgeoisie is the most Machiavellian, manoeuvring ruling class in history. And if the Paris Commune of 1871 and above all the Russian revolution of 1917 have taught it one thing, it is that it needs to everything it can to prevent the proletariat from affirming its historic perspective. A brief summary of the manoeuvres and traps set up by the bourgeoisie towards the workers of France since the 1990s is very enlightening about the way this class is constantly preoccupied with blocking the development of consciousness in the proletariat by tirelessly exploiting its mortal enemy’s main weakness – not knowing what it is, the loss of its identity:
In 1995, the French bourgeoisie took advantage of the disorientation among the workers in order to refurbish the image of its most loyal guard-dogs, the trade unions. Since it knew perfectly well that it was impossible at that point for the workers to take control of their own struggles given the weakness of class consciousness, the French bourgeoisie artificially created a massive movement by simultaneously launching two attacks: a very broad one that affected everyone (the Juppé plan on social security) and a specific one (against the ‘privileged’ status of the railway workers), which was very obviously a provocation. This was calculated to allow the unions to look as if they were, this time, united, militant and radical. To what end? Given the increasing wearing out of the unions and the defiance shown towards them by the workers after 35 years of sabotaging social movements from May 68 and the struggles which followed in the 70s and 80s, it was important for the bourgeoisie to provide a new and more positive image for its organs for controlling the working class, to restore the workers’ confidence in them. This is why, faced with this cardboard cut-out movement, the Juppé government pretended to be shaking in its shoes and officially withdrew the attacks. The trade unions had their victory and the message got through: struggle pays if and only if you follow your unions like sheep5. Because there is nothing more dangerous for the bourgeoisie than workers starting to think and organise for themselves.
In 2003, the social atmosphere had changed. The bourgeoisie came up with the same trick: two simultaneous attacks, a general one (yet another reform of pensions) and a particular one (suppression of thousands of jobs in national education). But the government played it differently this time. The manoeuvre was a simple one: hide the attack on the retired, which affected the whole working class, by harassing a specific sector with a specific measure. And here the unions, whose credibility had been improved by the manoeuvre of 1995, came onto the scene. Pushing the question of pensions into the background, they put forward the particular demands of the workers in national education. Thus, the sector of the working class that was most directly affected, instead of being the locomotive of a wider movement, got stuck in the trap of corporatism. The teachers found themselves isolated and powerless. The unions managed to exhaust the most militant elements by dragging them into desperate and sterile actions like the boycott of the end of year exams. And in order to carry out this sabotage, the bourgeoisie took malign pleasure in announcing that not one strike day would be paid . The prime minister at the time, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, could thus come out with a message addressed to the whole working class: “it’s not the street that governs”.
In 2006, the movement against the CPE had not been programmed in advance by the government. On the contrary, it came as a surprise. In its origins, the attack seemed to be a relatively minor one: it was a question of installing a new contract that would make employment for the under 25s a little less secure. However a large portion of the young future proletarians reacted in an unexpected way by taking things in hand through real general assemblies and by refusing to get trapped in a movement of ‘young people’. On the contrary they called for solidarity from other sectors – pensioners, the unemployed etc. This involved some clashes with the student unions who everywhere tried to undermine this push towards the self-organisation and extension of the movement. Demonstration after demonstration took place with more and more members of the working class joining in a completely disinterested way (since the intended reform didn’t affect them directly). They were drawn in by what cements our class together: the feeling of solidarity. The bourgeoisie was intelligent enough to see the danger and immediately withdrew its project in order to put a stop to this dangerous dynamic.
In the following year, 2007, there was still a breath of enthusiasm from these events. The railway workers on the one hand, the high school students and university students on the other, were attacked separately in a targeted manner. Many high school students joined the movement on the railways, and the demonstrations pulled in quite a number of workers from other sectors, the pensioners and the unemployed. At the general assemblies, union leaders were booed and kicked out6. Having said this, because the drive towards solidarity in the working class was not as strong as it had been the year before and the general assemblies remained under the control of the unions, the government did not give in: the attacks went through and the struggle wore out. The price paid by the bourgeoisie to get through the message that ‘struggle doesn’t pay’ was a significant degree of discredit for the unions. But the defeat was not sufficiently bitter for the proletariat as far as the bourgeoisie was concerned. The ruling class could not stop there.
In 2008 and 2009, in Guadeloupe, there was immense anger about the cost of living, The French bourgeoisie then used this militant but isolated proletariat, lacking experience and poisoned by racial divisions between white and black, as laboratory animals to test out its manoeuvres. There followed the biggest workers’ mobilisation in the island’s history, impressive on the quantitative level, but contained from start to finish by the local trade union federation, the LKP. The movement ended up with a few promises about price controls and some short-term assistance, but above all with a considerable exhaustion of militancy. The manoeuvre had worked and could then be tried out on the mainland.
2010 thus saw throughout the year a series of massive demonstrations. Here again here was huge anger over the question of accessing pensions, symbolising a future that looked more and more bleak. But right away the unions took things in hand. In fact, after a number of meetings with the government, their response had been planned well in advance. Month after month at first, and then week after week, they mobilised on a broad scale and got millions of works to turn out for ‘days of action’ each one more sterile than the one before. A very small minority reacted against this by holding general assemblies outside of union control, mobilising a few hundred people and calling for workers to organise themselves. But this call, profoundly correct for the future, could only be a pious wish in the immediate situation, which was marked by very strong union control. In the wake of these days of action, where discussions were forbidden by the union police, where encounters between different sectors of the exploited class was made impossible because of the way the unions split everyone up behind ‘their’ banner, ‘their’ colleagues, where general assemblies were restricted mainly to the union members and divided up sector by sector, enterprise by enterprise, department by department, the result was exhaustion and discouragement and above all a growing feeling of impotence. To complete this work of sabotage, and when the movement was in decline, the unions started getting radical and called for blocking the economy by occupying the supposedly strategic oil refining sector. The most militant workers thus found themselves isolated trying to defend the blockade of ‘their own’ oil refining unit. This manoeuvre, we should recognise, was a significant success for the bourgeoisie because four years later the feeling of impotence generated at the time was such that the social situation today is still marked y an atmosphere of depression.
The timing of this manoeuvre needs also to be looked at. Why this concern to exhaust the militancy of the workers in France at precisely this moment? In the summer of 2007, with the subprime crisis and above all in the autumn of 2008 with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank, the world economic crisis went through a sudden aggravation. In Europe, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain were hit hard, especially by the explosion of unemployment and cuts in public sector wages, while France was relatively spared. And yet it was in France that we saw the first ‘response’ by the trade unions. Why? Through the artificial movement in 2010 which went on to the point of exhaustion, it is quite possible that the bourgeoisie dug a kind of firebreak: feeling the anger and reflection that were developing in the countries hardest hit by the crisis, especially in Spain (a country which also has a long experience of workers’ struggles), it had to wear out this anger in a preventative manner and so discourage the struggle in France. To see a simultaneous struggle by these two neighbouring proletariats would have been very dangerous for the bourgeoisie. In any case, this union manoeuvre by the French bourgeoisie had the effective result of demoralising the workers just before the development of a major social movement on the other side of the Pyrenees. In 2011, when the movement of the Indignados emerged on the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and spread throughout the world, even to Israel, or to the USA under the name of Occupy, it failed lamentably in France since the workers were already down in the dumps. The geographical extension of the Indignados movement towards its nearest class brothers and sisters was thus blocked and the Indignados ended up being isolated...which partly explains why in Spain as well the social situation is very bleak despite the incessant heavy blows of the economic crisis. The proletariat has no country: everywhere it wages the same struggle, in all countries it is one and the same class. The defeats or the victories of one part of the proletariat in this or that corner of the globe are defeats or victories for the proletariat as a whole on world scale, and according to its outcome each struggle ends up either denting the confidence of the whole class or arousing its enthusiasm. This is why the bourgeoisie’s success in preventing the movements in France and Spain from converging explains the retreat in struggle since the end of 2011 which goes well beyond the frontiers of these two countries; the isolation of the Indignados movement has also had repercussions on an international scale.
The other reason for this negative dynamic, which is something that was always inscribed in the process of decomposition and of loss of class identity since 1990, is the sinister turn taken by the ‘Arab spring’. The initial social movements in Tunisia and Egypt, with the symbol of the occupation of Tahir Square, even if they were from the start marked by the weakness of inter-classism, were also animated by a wave of indignation and, more concretely, by workers’ strikes. The Indignados movement saw in them a source of inspiration and courage: from the first days of the struggle in Madrid it raised the internationalist slogan ‘From Tahrir Square to Puerto del Sol!’. However, in Libya and Syria where a historically much weaker proletariat was not able to put its mark on the movement, we saw the horrors of civil war and the involvement of regional and international imperialist forces which ended up totally dominating the situation, turning it into a murderous confrontation between rival bourgeois gangs. Egypt in turn, though obviously to a lesser degree, fell into a situation of constant confrontation between bourgeois factions. The apparent message that came from this chain of events, widely broadcast by the media which was very generous with its horrible images, is that the social struggle, the aspiration for dignity and freedom, are dead ends which always end in chaos. And the most recent events in Ukraine confirm this feeling even more. The working class will have to undertake a real effort of reflection in order to understand the real reasons for this degeneration into civil war:
The proletariat has nothing to gain from fighting for bourgeois democracy or a ‘more human capitalism’ because that means fighting to maintain a system of exploitation which can only be barbaric;
It has everything to lose from allowing itself to be dragged behind the confrontation between cliques and gangs of the bourgeoisie;
It has no local, regional, national, communitarian, ethnic or religious interests to defend;
Its struggle is for the abolition of exploitation, of classes and frontiers on a world scale;
Its strength lies through the development of its consciousness and its morality, its self-organisation and international solidarity.
The ideological manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie permanently distils a whole number of lies and subterfuges in order to undermine the capacity for thought and reflection. All the manoeuvres of the French bourgeoisie since the 90s provide evidence of this major weapon of the ruling class faced with its enemy: its intelligence and the strength of its ideological propaganda:
The years which followed the collapse of the USSR were dominated by this ruthless ideological offensive on the death of communism and the ‘end of history’; years in which the lie that Stalinism equals communism was repeated ad nauseam. This was a terrible blow to the workers’ confidence in the struggle for a better world, as we have already seen;
The demonstrations of 2003 as we have also said, showed that there had been a slight change in the social climate in comparison to the ambient despair of the 90s: not only was anger and militancy very strong but even more important people had begun thinking about the evolution of the world situation. The commodification of every human activity, the destruction of the planet and run-away job insecurity were all subjects of concern. The anti-globalisation movement of the 90s, which essentially stood for a nationalist orientation and a fear of the future, mutated into the idea that ‘another world is possible’, animated by a desire to fight against uniformity and standardisation. This evolution is interesting because it reveals a change in the state of mind within the working class. The bourgeoisie had been obliged to adapt, to develop its propaganda in order to keep the workers in its ideological grip and to divert their reflection from discovering the real roots of humanity’s ills: capitalism, exploitation of man by man, class society. Because anti-globalisation, like ‘alternative worldism’ are ideological traps laid by the bourgeoisie to dilute the workers in interclassism, to take them away from revolutionary thought and push them into battles for illusions like more democracy, a more human policy against neo-liberalism, fair trade etc7.
A few years later, from the summer of 2007, the serious aggravation of the crisis pushed the bourgeoisie to adapt its language once again. Traditionally, the dominant discourse on the world economic situation was to deny the gravity of the situation. At the time of the failure of the Lehman Brothers bank in the autumn of 2008, by contrast, all the media, politicians and intellectuals started waving their arms about and shouting catastrophe: the world was facing the threat of no longer going round, the world economy could slide into the abyss of debts and the apocalypse was round the corner. Why this radical change of tone? Why stop hiding the real gravity of the world economic situation and suddenly start dramatising it without limit? Since the economic crisis could no longer be hidden, the bourgeoisie had decided to talk all day about it in order to prevent any independent thought. Above all this alarmist discourse was used in order to justify the “necessary sacrifices”. Here again we have to think about a possibility: the American government and its central bank, the FED, certainly had the financial resources to save Lehman Brothers, but they decided to declare it bankrupt. It is not to be excluded that this was done to unleash a media panic and justify those sacrifices. Increasing the profitability of the American and European national economies had become a vital necessity faced with the growing competition of the ‘emerging countries’, particularly China. In the name of the ‘struggle against the deficit’ a whole number of countries brought in polices based on a drastic reduction of social spending, wage cuts, suppression of jobs in the public sector etc8 . For example today Spain has effectively restored the competitive edge of its national economy and is again exporting.9
The French bourgeoisie has also played this card. Many state employees who have reached the retirement age are not being replaced, wages have been frozen, social assistance reduced, taxes increased. But unlike other neighbouring countries it has not carried out very broad attacks: promised reforms of social security, unemployment benefit, pensions, status of state employees etc have been put off again and again.
This is further proof of the intelligence of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat living in France is, like elsewhere, atomised and does not know that it exists. This said, and the movement of 2006 was a new proof of his, this is an experienced and historically militant proletariat. Even though its consciousness of itself has been terribly weakened, a massive and frontal attack by French capital would risk sparking off an equally massive and frontal social movement. Not only does the French bourgeoisie not want this, its neighbouring bourgeoisies are also afraid of such a thing.
Thus since 2010 and the manoeuvre which demoralised the workers, the ruling class has been trying to maintain this phase of social calm. It constantly attacks living and working conditions but in small packets here and there. While a lion, sure of its strength, hurls itself on a gazelle with one bound, the hyenas, who rely on intelligence and strategy, harass their prey, take small bites, wear it out with patience and precision. Even if each French president dreams of being a lion10, the French bourgeoisie really acts like the hyenas when it comes to the workers. It attacks this or that sector, reduces this or that benefit or increases this or that tax by a few euro, according to the old adage: divide and rule. The bourgeoisie makes the best of its enemy’s weaknesses: since the working class has lost its class identity, since it is living under the reign of social decomposition and of atomisation, it falls on the working class in small groups, and even individual by individual.
The left, which has been in power since the victory of the ‘socialist’ François Hollande in 2012, has once again shown itself to be particularly adept at playing this game, which requires hypocrisy, sneakiness and an ability to instrumentalise decomposition. Not only has it acquired the art of disguising its attacks but has done it under cover of a thick ideological fog. By putting forward its law legalising marriage for all, by making a very public show of opposition to the anti-Semitism of the ‘comedian’ Dieudonné, or by creating a tax which is aimed in particular at small industries, peasants, shopkeepers and artisans, it knows that it has been stirring up the most reactionary elements in society. And it has worked: demos against gays, against Jews, for the ‘defence of the regions’ which claim to unite small bosses and workers under the same ‘red caps’11, it’s all been thrown into the pot.
This is a very effective ideological trap. First it disseminates either these putrefying ideas, or a fear of a dynamic which looks like it is heading towards fascism. Then it creates the illusion that the left is progressive because it is facing up to the most openly reactionary elements. In either case, this increases the disorientation of the working class, its loss of sight of what it is and the social power it represents, by diluting the workers in these inter-classist movements, whether they are pro- or anti- the government.
The international solidarity of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat in France
The French bourgeoisie is thus particularly adroit in the way it undermines the consciousness of the proletariat and derails its thought into dead end. For example, it’s no accident that this was the birthplace of ‘alternative worldism’, which then spread across the globe12. This strength is the fruit of a long experience of confronting its enemy: 1848, 1871 and 1968, to take only a few examples which have in common the fact that they saw the proletariat in France in the forefront of the international struggle that provided an example to its class brothers and sisters the world over.
However, the presence in France of an experienced and militant exploited class also limits the bourgeoisie’s margin for manoeuvre. While it is intelligent enough to try to avoid massive and frontal attacks and to opt for a policy of harassment and a more gradual erosion of living conditions, French capital still needs some major structural reforms if it is to restore its competitive edge on the world market. France is on the verge of becoming the ‘sick man of Europe’, a title given to the UK after the Second World War and to Germany in the 1990s. But these countries have both improved their situation by carrying out deep and brutal attacks under Thatcher and Schröder respectively.
France’s inability to carry out similar attacks worries Germany in particular. It has no interest in seeing the French economy go under , because this would damage the European economic institutions. But more than this, a serious recession in France would imply more factory closures, an explosion of unemployment and drastic austerity, which could provoke a powerful response from the proletariat. There is clearly a dilemma facing French capital: attack massively, with the risk of provoking a revival of struggle, or wait and watch the economy deteriorate...at the risk of provoking a revival of struggle. This is why the German bourgeoisie is looking at how to help France to recover its competitive edge without creating any uncontrolled social movements. German advisers have been heading for the Élysée for months now (for example, the meeting between Hollande and Peter Harz, Schröder’s former adviser and the mind behind all the attack in Germany since 2000 that have been aimed at making jobs less secure and at reducing unemployment benefits). Germany is thus helping the French bourgeoisie to think about how to mount the necessary attacks. In particular, the two countries have to coordinate their planning in order not to make attacks too simultaneously and to avoid provoking anger at the same time on both sides of the Rhine. Just as the bourgeoisie did all it could to avoid potential link-up between the struggles in Spain and France, it is right now concerned about keeping the workers in France and Germany divided by staggering the attacks in a concerted manner. The German bourgeoisie’s support for the French state in its need to carry out attacks began as soon as Hollande won the presidential election: Germany was the first to spread the idea that Hollande was a bit soft and indecisive, a “Flamby”13...thus giving the impression that he would be unable to take bold measures and thus to attack the working class. This image was also consciously popularised by the French bourgeoisie because it will help the government carry out attacks without making its intentions too obvious.
This international solidarity of the bourgeoisie does have its limits. The bourgeoisie is still divided into nations and is engaged in bitter competition on the world market. This competition also takes military form and the tragic proof of this is the imperialist barbarity which has ravaged the planet since 1914. But history has shown one thing: this division ends when it comes to the proletariat. During the Paris Commune, the Prussian army which occupied a part of France was ready to help the Versailles to crush the Communards even though the corpses from the Franco-Prussian war were still warm. In 1917, all the powers came together to help the white armies against the Russian revolution even while the world war was still raging elsewhere. On another level, during the mass strike in Poland in 1980, the democratic bourgeoisies rushed to the aid of the Polish bourgeoisie to help it deal with the proletariat, not militarily, but ideologically: the French CFDT trade union, in particular, played a very important role, using its considerable experience in the sabotage of workers’ struggles to advise the newly formed Solidarnosc trade union to do the same.
The future belongs to the class struggle
To summarise: the proletariat faces a ruling class which is the most Machiavellian in history. Its ideological propaganda and its international unity against the exploited reveal the breadth of the difficulties facing the movement towards revolution. The bourgeoisie above all has the ability to turn the rottenness of its own system against the working class: capitalism has no future to offer, people fear for the future and this engenders the tendency towards irrational thinking or retreating into a corner. The bourgeoisie makes use of these fears, of this retreat, this irrationality to reinforce the atomisation of the workers, to cultivate the feeling of powerlessness and thus to be able to attack them one after the other.
However, the future belongs to the proletarian struggle! The obstacles are huge, but not insurmountable. The bourgeoisie will not stop dividing us, but the proletariat has already proved that the feeling of solidarity runs deep. This is why the movement against the CPE in 2006 was so precious. The government’s attack was aimed solely at those under 25 but hundreds of thousands of workers, pensioners, unemployed, joined the struggle. They were carried along by a strong sentiment of solidarity. This dynamic could come to light to the extent that the movement was organised outside of union control, through real autonomous general assemblies, animated by open debates which could express the real nature of the working class. This movement was a promise for the future, a small seed which can germinate and give rise to magnificent wild flowers. Thus, in order to be able to participate in the movements to come, it’s necessary to have our ears open, to be able to base ourselves on historical experience, on the great lessons of the past, without dogmas and rigid schemas. The destruction of the big industrial units of Europe and the USA, the creation in these areas of many jobs linked to research, administration, services, distribution; the multiplication of short term, intermediate contracts, the total job insecurity of young people and the explosion of unemployment, all this will have a string impact in the way that future struggles will develop and move forward despite all the traps laid by the bourgeoisie. When in New York young people involved in the Occupy movement in 2011 saw that gathering in the street, both to live together and to fight, gave them a feeling of engaging in new social relations, made them recognise that they had been suffering enormously from their isolation in different workplaces where they spent a few weeks, days or even hours, when they weren’t stuck at home without any job at all...without knowing it, they were pointing towards the future, to the importance of living and struggling as part of a social fabric animated by solidarity, by sharing, by real human encounters. The street, as a place to assemble will thus take on a growing importance, not to go on tame processions where we are divided up and deafened by union megaphones, but to debate frankly in autonomous, open general assemblies. In the same way the movement against the CPE in 2006 and of the Indignados in 2011 show just as clearly that ‘precarious’ young people, less scarred by the whole campaign about the death of Stalinism being the death of communism, and more indignant about the future that capitalism has in store for us, will play a decisive role with their enthusiasm, creativity and willingness to struggle. The older workers (retired or still at work) will have the possibility of forging solidarity between the generations and the particular responsibility of transmitting their experience, of helping to anticipate traps which they have experienced themselves in the past. These are just the “broad signposts”, to use Marx’s term, which have begun to appear in recent years, but the creativity of the masses will bring many changes and unexpected discoveries.
Pawel 6.3.14
1 Cited by Paul Frölich, Rosa Luxemburg, p 347 of the French edition.
2 The American economist and philosopher Francis Fuuyama had a big success when he declared the ‘end of history, i.e. the end of the class struggle, the absolute victory of the ‘liberal world’ (i.e. of capitalism) and a rapid decline in the number of wars. The war in the Gulf in 1990, a few months later after this triumphant proclamation showed the real depth and truth of this great bourgeois visionary
3 Read our ‘Theses on decomposition’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
4 Rosa Luxemburg, talking about the revolution a few days before she was murdered by soldiers acting on the orders of the social democrats in power, finished her last text, ‘Order reigns in Berlin’, with a few words underlining the importance of history for the proletariat – of the link between past, present and future, as well as her confidence in the future: “I was, I am, I will be”
5 In fact the Juppé plan was pushed through in its entirely in small packets in the years that followed
6 See ‘Intervention of ICC militants in two rail workers assemblies’, https://en.internationalism.org/wr/310/rail-interventions [1156]
8 While at the same time the central banks and the states continued to deal with the debts by pumping more debts into the economy...
9 This is a striking example of the contradictions capitalism faces. The competitive character of the Spanish economy is vital to the economic health of the country and also to put a stop to the financial crisis hitting the EU. Nevertheless Spain’s exports will also contribute to the saturation of the markets and damage neighbouring economies like France.
10 Churchill was often referred to as ‘The last lion’
11 These demonstrators wore the ‘bonnets rouges’ as a symbol of unity
12 The main association representing this current, ATTAC, was formed in France in 1998
13 A Flamby is a kind of sticky caramel flan
On April 14, what's being called the biggest strike in recent memory in China began at one of the Yue Yuen factories in Dongguan, southern China. Depending on what reports one reads, the numbers on strike went from thirty to forty thousand, with the South China Morning Post of April 18 reporting the number as 50,000[1]. The strike started at one of the 7 factories of the Taiwan-based Yue Yuen Industrial Holding Company, the world's largest branded shoemaker, which makes footwear for Nike, Adidas, Converse, Reebok, Timberland and dozens more. A woman just retired from one of the factories worked out her pension payments and discovered that they were well short of what she expected. A strike broke out at the factory and a couple of hundred workers walked out, only to be followed by tens of thousands more from the other 6 plants in the following days. A few days later, anything from two thousand to six thousand workers (depending on reports) walked out from the Yue Yuen plant in the neighbouring province of Jiangxi over the same issue of the underfunding of the social wage.
The underfunding of workers' benefits - pensions, injury compensation, redundancy pay, sickness and unemployment pay - is becoming a big issue for the working class in China, particularly as factories close, relocate to cheaper locations abroad like Vietnam for example, or internally within China, as with from militant Shenzhen to more peaceful (for the moment) Huizhou Province for instance. This chronic underfunding is by no means a phenomenon linked to foreign-owned companies as some elements of the Chinese bourgeoisie have suggested - and have done so in the past in relation to Japanese-owned businesses - but is the general practice of Chinese capitalism along with all the capitalist states of the west as workers’ pensions, unemployment pay and social benefits are cut further and further back. It's also significant that the working class in China is raising the issue of pension provisions and other longer term benefits. It shows, just like the workers of the west, the great concern and unease that exists for the future and future generations of workers. Their actions are in a line with the struggle against pension cuts in France 2010 which mobilised workers of all ages onto the streets in a massive show of anger and protest. It's the same issue that mobilised the New York subway strike in December 2005 when the bosses attempted to cut future pensions payments and curtail medical benefits leading some 35000 workers to walk out. A similar concern for the future has contributed to mobilising workers and youth in mass demonstrations in Spain and Greece bringing tens of thousands onto the streets. And it took all the deviousness of the British trade unions to smother the concern and anger of workers in Britain against a brutal assault on pensions in both the private and public sector with the unions helping the bosses to facilitate cuts in pensions, while cutting the pensions and increasing the contributions of workers directly employed by them.
Another issue coming to the fore for the proletariat in China, raised by cuts in social benefits and the growing number of factory closures is that many jobs are now classified by the state as "temporary". This means great difficulty in obtaining education for children, health care and all the benefits listed above because one doesn't have a permanent residence permit. Workers here are not only fighting for a better cut of the "social wage" but in this strike are also demanding a 30% pay rise[2]. The company has made some sort of offer to the workers but, such as it is, this has clearly been rejected by them and what's lacking in the "People's Republic" is any effective trade union machinery trapping the workers in the negotiating fraud. As Yue Yuen spokesman and executive director George Lui, put it on April 22: "We are not quite sure who to deal with"[3]. This is a real problem for the Chinese ruling class and leads them to rely more on the short term and ultimately counter-productive solution of brute force against the subtlety of trade union sabotage carried out by those organisations in the west for example.
Despite the fighting spirit and the solidarity expressed by the working class in China, indeed because of it, there are also problems and obstacles that the workers need to confront, just like their class brothers in the west. Strikes in China are this year a third up on the same period last year which also saw significant increases in incidents of labour unrest; and we should remember that 99% of strikes in China are unofficial and illegal. Researchers this year have spoken of "a notable surge in the number of strikes and workers' protest since the Lunar New Year Holiday in February... the workers movement (i.e., strikes and protests) continues to be broad-based in a whole range of industries across the country"[4]. Underlining the repressive response from the Chinese state the research goes on to say that there is "a noticeable increase in both police involvement and arrests arising from workers' protests". With a weak and despised union apparatus there's no wonder that riot police have been liberally deployed here in Dongguan as they increasingly have been against workers' struggle in China. Clear information about the conduct and organisation of the strike by workers is not readily available for obvious reasons but there is some evidence that the workers feel the need to organise assemblies and elect their own delegates (there was a call from workers at one Dongguan factory for the election of their own delegates and there is certainly a "leadership" to this strike). Still, we can't know the details here. What is clear is that shortly after the strike began around a thousand workers from one Yue Yuen plant started to march (possibly to another factory), the march was confronted by riot police and dogs and its leaders were arrested with some hospitalised[5]. There were also forays by riot police arresting some workers in and around the factory. It's quite possible that they were militants fingered by the ubiquitous All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) goons, 900,000 of whom, mostly Party members, exist across the country.
The strikes of the Yue Yuen workers are ongoing - as has been the general strike wave in China for some time - but similar issues have been raised in previous strikes this year: at IBM's Shenzhen factory and Walmart stores in late March. The ACFTU was instrumental in setting up Walmart's 400 stores in China in 2006/7 amid a government-led drive to unionise private companies. Part of the deal was that all Walmart employees would have their compulsory subs to the union deducted straight from the workers’ wages. This is now normal for Chinese industry and is a very lucrative deal for the ACFTU given its 260 million members. British unions (and unions in the west generally) have been in on this scam for decades, enriching themselves directly from the workers' payroll with the agreement of the bosses and the law.
The protest by workers against the pathetic redundancy pay offered by Walmart with the closure of their store in the Hunan province city of Changde is interesting for the attempt to "radicalise" elements of the ACFTU. Leading the protest is one Huang Xingguo, the branch secretary and chairman of the union. It turns out that Huang, like many Chinese union leaders, has come from admin management and is now apparently devoting his cause to the workers[6]. The identification of unions with management is not at all an unfamiliar story to workers in the west, although in the latter there is more ideological obfuscation. Huang has gone a step further in following western unions by involving groups of lawyers and taking the road well-trod by British unions in looking for industrial harmony through the courts. This is an increasing tendency in China as this particular faction of the bourgeoisie looks for class peace through negotiation within the law. Other militants who have been involved in the initial strike have been arrested but unlike Huang, who is free to consort with cliques of lawyers, they have not been supported by the US union, ALF-CIO. Contrast this to one Wu Guijun, a real representative of the workers during their 3 week strike at the Hong-Kong based Diweixin furniture makers in Shenzhen[7]. Wu was among some 200 workers arrested, detained and is still in jail but he's had the unfortunate experience of being backed by letter-writing western liberals, academics, trade union executives, human rights lawyers and even, for their own imperialist interests no doubt, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (20.12.13), all bleating about the right to strike and protest which doesn't even exist in their own countries.
The ongoing Dongguan strikes, the whole continuing strike wave in China, shows the militant courage of large masses of the proletariat. But, like their comrades in the west, the working class in China has significant challenges to confront and overcome. The strike also shows the role of the trade unions who are everywhere mandated to protect the national interest of whatever country they are working in. The function of the trade unions, and this is clearly expressed in China, is to police the workers, along with the riot police, facilitate the attacks upon them and protect the state. This is happening in China with its specifics at the moment but these anti-working class activities are fundamental aspects of the trade unions everywhere.
Baboon, 24.4.14 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[4]China Labour Bulletin, 10.4.14
[5]The Xinhua state newswire, 17.4.14, reports the arrests but denies anyone was injured. This is contradicted by many other reports.
The evolution of the situation in Venezuela after a month of sporadic confrontations and demonstrations in the streets has unfortunately not lived up to the potential originally contained in this uprising of young people rebelling against poverty, rising living costs (the official rate of inflation is 56%), precarious employment, insecurity, permanent terror and a future in total contradiction with the propaganda of the post-Chavez regime. While the level of repression has got a lot heavier (18 deaths and 260 wounded by 5 March) since the texts below were written, the bourgeoisie has managed to get control of this movement, mainly through the use of oppositional factions, both of the left and the right. The ruling class has got down to pushing this movement onto the ground of democratism and nationalism, as we can see from the immense national flags displayed in the demonstrations. The manipulations and manoeuvres of rival imperialist interests have overtaken the anger on the street and the Venezuelan student movement has shown that it has not overcome the weaknesses of 2007[1]. Once again it has fallen for the traps and lies of the democratic opposition, which has the function of smothering its explosive character, cutting it from its proletarian roots and handing it over to the politicians and other exploiters.
We are publishing a translation of the two statements already published on our Spanish website: a contribution by a close sympathiser of the ICC who wrote and distributed a leaflet in the days after the repression of young people on 12 February by the Maduro government and its agents. The other is a text presenting this leaflet written by our section in Venezuela. Both point to the real stakes in the situation: the necessary link between this revolt of the young and the more general resistance of the proletariat on its class terrain, even though this link has been sabotaged by all the forces of the bourgeoisie acting to derail and recuperate the movement.
These statements also have the merit of breaking the relative black-out in Europe over these events. The bourgeoisie has once again tried to hide the real point of departure of this massive youth rebellion against increasingly intolerable living conditions, placing all the emphasis on the fight between ‘Chavists’ and ‘anti-Chavists’, between the ruling power and the ‘democratic opposition’.
The leaflet below, written and distributed by a sympathiser of the ICC, takes a position on the brutal repression unleashed by the Chavist regime (currently led by Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro) against a massive mobilisation called by the students for 12 February in the centre of Caracas, calling for the release of four of their imprisoned comrades and protesting against scarcity, the rising cost of living and insecurity in the cities. The repressive actions of the ‘Bolivarian Socialist’ regime has left three dead and dozens of wounded and arrested.
The student mobilisation has detonated an immense wave of indignation which has been building up within the working masses and the population in general, who have been hit very hard by a grave economic crisis. Large sectors of the population at national level supported the determined actions of the young people, coming together in a movement of generalised protest against the regime and to show their rage and indignation against the high rate of inflation, which has not been countered by any wage increases; against the growing scarcity of basic goods (in particular food, medicine, hygiene); against the high level of public insecurity which has taken the sinister form of 200,000 murders in the lifetime of the Chavist regime; against the deterioration of health services, the casualisation of jobs and the grotesque propaganda of the Chavist regime which at both national and international level has been trying to sell the ‘benefits’ of ‘Bolivarian socialism’. In reality, this regime epitomises the barbarism and poverty which decomposing capitalism offers humanity.
As we have seen with other social movements around the world, the Chavist bourgeoisie has resorted to its preferred methods of action: open and ruthless repression against the demonstrators, using not only the official state forces but also the civilian militias armed and paid by the state, the Bolivarian committees whose function is to intimidate, to create a climate of terror, which includes firing on unarmed demonstrators. It is they who are directly responsible for the deaths and the injuries. But by allowing these para-police forces to act freely, the state has tried to hide its own responsibility in the repression. These actions by the ‘Bolivarian revolutionaries’ should not surprise us. Throughout its history the bourgeoisie has used declassed and lumpenised elements as its shock troops against the proletariat. We saw this with the fascist networks (Mussolini’s Blackshirts and the Nazi Brownshirts) as well as with the Stalinist regimes, like in Cuba with the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, or under the dictatorial regimes in the Arab countries (Libya, Syria, Egypt), or again more recently with countries allied to ‘21st Century Socialism’ such as Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia...
The bourgeoisie is aware of the gravity of the country’s economic crisis, which in turn is an expression of the crisis of world capitalism. The economic methods of the regime have merely precipitated an imminent crisis. Despite the considerable income from oil, the Chavist regime can no longer cope with the vast levels of public expenditure needed to keep up the populist policies of almost 30 years, or continue providing cheap oil to buttress a geo-political strategy which is getting weaker and weaker. Thus the conditions for the emergence of the protests have been steadily ripening. To prevent any convergence between those who were previously supporters and opponents of the regime, the government has imposed a media and internet black-out to prevent the dissemination of information about the protests, while the state media tried to mobilise the pro-Chavez part of the population against the students and the demonstrations, criminalising the protesters and presenting itself as the only guarantor of social peace.
Despite the obstacles set up by the state, given the economic, social and political situation, the new student movement has a potential which could enable it to go beyond its initial composition and to spread onto the national level.
To get to this, it will have to avoid falling into the same traps as the movement of 2007, which was weakened and derailed by all the false friends represented by the parties in opposition to the regime, who are just the other side of the same coin, part of the same political apparatus of capital. They offer no way out of the crisis. This is why we fully agree with our comrade when he writes in the leaflet that the only way forward for this movement is to unite with the working class sectors which, despite the repression and harassment of the trade unions, have remained standing and struggling over the last few years: the workers of the steel, oil and health sectors, the state employees, etc.
As we said in 2007, we salute the spontaneous upsurge of this new movement of student youth, whose confrontation with the state contains elements which make it part of the proletarian struggle against the capitalist system. These are the same elements which were present in the social movements which have shaken the world from the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 to the Indignados in Spain, Occupy in the US and the recent movements in Brazil and Turkey.
The ‘highest achievement of 21st Century Socialism’ (according to those with a nostalgia for Stalinism) has been shaken recently by a wave of riots which has spread across the whole republic and whose main actor has been the mass of young people, who have come from different social strata, and who have concentrated in themselves the oppression of a population attacked by the decomposition of a social model based on the cruellest form of capitalism (a caricatured form of state capitalism) and which has affected national life these past 15 years. The rage provoked by an infernal spiral marked by insecurity, by the scarcity of virtually everything you need to live more or less decently, by the absence of any basis of hope for an improvement, by a feeling of frustration produced by living in a social reality which has jettisoned the values which once motivated humanity to storm the heavens.
On 12 February, rather than joining in the patriotic hoopla of the Day of Youth, the young people, outside of the rotten framework of the politicians, called for a demonstration to demand the liberation of a group of students arrested in the province of Tachira, and held in a high security prison on charges of terrorism – an expression of the repressive escalade which ‘21st Century Socialism’ has unleashed against the protests which began to grow throughout 2013 and which have included various sectors of the working class, in particular those of essential industries (Sidor, Venalum, Alcasa, Ferrominera, Bauxilium) and more recently workers of the oil industry in the Jose refineries, who were jailed on the pretext of being traitors to the country. The accusation of being traitors, terrorists, unpatriotic, Yankee’s lick-spittles, and agents of imperialism has been used by Chavism and its hired killers in the Committees against any expression of discontent or against any struggle by the workers for immediate demands, not only against the students.
On 12 February 2014, the young people involved in the protest found themselves on a ground mined in advance by Chavism and its capitalist opposition (the MUD[2] , Leopoldo Lopez and the de-frocked left Stalinists who worked hand in hand with right). This division of labour sterilised the rebellion, derailed it from paths that could have led to a convergence with the proletarian sectors who are on the same side of the barricade as the students and who could bring the political organisation and direction capable of standing up to the repression and exploitation of the Bolivarian capitalist state. The regime fears the explosive nature of struggles animated by young proletarians and the student movements, who through recent experiences, especially those of 2007, have gained the capacity to draw strength from the general discontent of a population bombarded by a deluge of the mystifications of official propaganda.
In 2007, the protest movement was pushed onto the sterile terrain of defending a television network (RCTV), a scenario dominated by rival visions of capitalism; in the end the movement was reduced to a caricature in which the leading role was given to mediatised ‘stars’ of protest. And then on 12 February 2014, the official speechmakers, having criminalised the youth protesters with their usual jargon, set upthe following scenario: a division of labour with the opposition, aimed at leading the movement into an impasse. The Minister of Justice issued a warrant for the arrest of Leonardo Lopez while also threatening to abolish the parliamentary immunity of the oppositionist Corina Machado on charges of associating with the delinquents of the organised gangs. This was followed by the creation of a commission of criminal inquiry for having called on the young people to demonstrate.
Neither Lopez nor Machado had called for the slightest mobilisation and their fleeting presence at the demonstration was reduced to making rousing speeches and surfing on the militancy of the young people. But the moment the Chavist rabble began its bloody charge against the demonstrators, in concert with the Committees of death, the Bolivarian National Guard and the Bolivarian National Police, they disappeared: they and the other MUD cronies were nowhere to be seen. The difficult job of facing up to the Bolivarian state on the barricades and of collecting the dead was left to the young people. The MUD defenders of capitalism as well the Chavist leaders gave themselves the role of pontificating to the media.
The protest movement must not repeat the errors of 2007 and develop the struggle on a terrain which is not its own – this will lead it to the precipice of frustration and resounding defeat. The only natural environment from which the current youth protests can draw any strength is the proletarian sectors of society which, throughout 2013, have stood up against the attacks of the capitalist state, and whose resistance can only advance by drawing on the potential for extension contained in the youth protests. These sectors contain the possibility of imbuing the current protests with a revolutionary content, of constructing a solid political and organisational platform, a class fortress that can overthrow this rotten capitalist system that Chavism and its acolytes are trying to keep upright. These are the workers are the essential industries n the region of Guayana, the oil workers spread across the whole national territory, the workers of the public sector who have broken their bridges with the trade unionism that has tried to tie them to Chavism. This is the ground on which we have to prepare the battle.
HS, 18.2.14
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/student-protests-venezuela; [1165] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/apr/students-may-2007 [1166]
[2] Mesa de la Unidad Democratica: a more or less radical coalition of parties opposed to Chavez created in January 2008 but dominated by a centre left and social democratic tendency, making common cause with the right parties who traditionally oppose Chavist populism.
It's difficult to know where to begin in the face of the growing devastation throughout the world that is posed by the increased militarism and barbarism of the capitalist system. The confrontation between Ukraine and Russia has grabbed the headlines recently but it can only be understood in a more global context in which we are seeing a constant sharpening of military tensions and open conflicts across a very considerable portion of the planet.
In chapter one, "Bourgeoisie and Proletariat", of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx wrote about the need of capitalism to look for "a constantly expanding market for its products (which) chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere". If this was characteristic of capitalism's global expansion of commodity production accompanied by "blood and iron", then the characteristics of capitalism's fights over saturated markets and a world now carved up by the major powers are all the more intense, destructive and irrational. Even bourgeois commentators have noticed the similarities with the period prior to World War One to that of today: the arms races, the fights for resources, tensions within and between states, the growth of all sorts of nationalisms and xenophobia, etc. There are though many differences at many levels between the early 1900's and today but, fundamentally, we are confronting the same capitalism and the same question: socialism or barbarism. Nothing has really changed in the sense that capitalism still means war. What has changed in relation to war is the development of state capitalism over a century, the extension of militarism and the accumulation of the means of destruction, stored powers of massive destruction which, along with their ever-more sophisticated delivery systems, are nothing but sterilized, useless capital. Apart from being a threat to humanity, this is an absolute drain on the accumulation of capital overall, further exacerbating economic crisis. War and militarism today, in a word imperialism, take on a deadly life-force of their own that goes well beyond the rational and itself spawns further irrationality.
We could start with Africa. In 1884, at the high point of capitalism’s imperialist expansion, the Berlin Conference divided up the African continent between the main European powers. But it was not long before this “scramble for Africa” turned into a source of direct conflict between those same powers. Throughout decadence the continent has been a theatre of war – in both world wars, in the ‘Cold War’, and above all as part of the slide into military chaos that succeeded the collapse of the old bloc system. The longest and bloodiest of these wars has probably been waged in the sickly-named Democratic Republic of Congo. Here war has raged since the early 90's, at the dawn of George Bush Senior's promised era of "peace and prosperity". Though largely ignored by the media, the war in the Congo shows many characteristics of the decomposition of capitalist society. Seven local countries and a number of the major powers are directly involved in a war that, according to the website War Child, Conflict in the Congo,1 has killed more than five-and-a-half million people, including 2.7 million children, many of whom have been recruited as child soldiers. Typical attributes of imperialism are expressed here in civilian massacres, mass rapes, a huge flight of internal refugees and the reign of warlords, clans and irrationality. This renewed scramble for Africa could be added to the list of pre-WWI similarities, with this time the additional presence of the imperialist appetites of the People's Republic of China.
In Libya, following David Cameron's and Sarkozy's "victory tour", the effects of this "just war" have caused devastation and spread vast swathes of instability across the whole of northern Africa. The reverberations have been felt in the heart of Africa's most populous nation and a so-called "emerging economy", Nigeria - a country whose bourgeoisie has recently played the China card against British and American influence. But this new “economic giant”, an accredited member of the so-called MINT club of the nouveau riche2, has not been spared from the region's underlying dysfunction: this has been expressed in religious pogroms between Muslim and Christian and the murderous activities of the fundamentalist faction Boko Haram. Meanwhile the Nigerian government has joined the new international trend to use gay people as a scapegoat for the world’s ills, passing laws that not only increase penalties for gay sex but require all citizens to rat on their gay neighbours.
Elsewhere in the region, Mali and Somalia are all unstable entities who affect the countries close to them, and throughout this region we see French, British and American militarism, sometimes working together, sometimes against one another . China, Russia, Israel and Germany are also becoming involved. The outbreak of war and of inter-religious slaughter between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic has geographically extended and further deepened the war in the DRC3. Just to confirm this pall of capitalist decay over much of Africa, South Sudan, the world's newest nation, born a couple of years ago under pressure from US and British imperialism, has fractured and collapsed into a war that has initially involved over ten thousand deaths and a further million refugees in a region of so many refugees that the aid agencies are unable to cope (Independent, 20.1.13, for just one example). The war is now spreading to the already decimated Darfur region. As always, the media present this as war of ethnicities, an irrational war of savages or religion. It's irrational all right but this is an imperialist war with one South Sudanese gang backed by Washington and Britain and the other by Beijing. In other words, whatever the relative actions of countries or warlords on the ground, the weight of imperialist stresses is overwhelming. And the news coming from "the world's newest nation" (RTE, 25.2.14) is that South Sudan is among the world's most dangerous nations to give birth!
From one capitalist hell-hole to another in Afghanistan where the AfPak war continues to rage, drawing in India in an attempt to stymie Pakistani interests. Both are involved in their own nuclear arms race and China is backing Pakistan for its own imperialist ends. The proposed withdrawal of ISAF troops under US control and the strengthening of the Taliban show both the weakening of the world's superpower and the continuation of misery for this long-suffering population. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost; billions, if not trillions of dollars have been spent by the west here - and Prime Minister Cameron has declared the Afghan war "Mission Accomplished!" (Daily Telegraph, 16.12.13). If the mission was to pave the way for the flourishing of warlords, produce record levels of opium and further hammer the condition of the population, particularly women and children, then indeed it’s mission accomplished. The AfPak war is yet another expression of the chaos and instability generated by decomposing capitalism.
Another "mission accomplished" was written on the banner behind George Bush as he made his victory speech about the 2003 war on Iraq on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Since then, like Libya, Iraq has gone from bad to worse with daily atrocities and bombings - with Fallujah, once devastated by America, now under bombardment by jihadists. The daily death toll in Iraq, on top of the hundreds of thousands killed already by American and British imperialism, has now reached Syrian proportions.
The rise of fundamentalists and opposing factions has been woven into the network of the war in Syria which has spilled over into Iraq and Lebanon and sent ripples to the Golan Heights and the border with Israel. Thousands of foreign jihadis are fighting in Syria and many pose a threat to their states "back home" and not least within Europe. As the Assad regime push on with its bloodbath, backed by Russia and China, there's a whole nest of Middle Eastern vipers - not least Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan - all involved in the Syrian war on different sides of the divide. The US, Britain and France - with their own differences between them - have been somewhat sidelined but continue to stir up this imperialist cauldron for their own ends. US Central Command, COMCOM, says that it is active in 20 countries in the Middle East and has a military presence in 22 countries in Africa4. These do not include "special operations" that have increased under the Obama administration. We can only wonder about the actual presence of the US, Britain and others and their implantations and manoeuvres in the Middle East.
From the devastated regions of Africa and the Middle East we "pivot", like US imperialism, to the East. Here we find more arms races and sharpened nationalisms with a faltering Chinese economy expressing its imperialist thrust "locally". Japan is rearming at a furious pace and regional powers are being sucked into this potential maelstrom, including South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and Indonesia, each with their own imperialist appetites within the framework of US influence. The Gulag of a nuclear-armed People's Republic of North Korea adds to the chaos and instability.
The expansive and destructive contradictions of the capitalist economy underpin the developments of imperialism both through its rise and fall. Economic considerations do play a role in the development of wars and tensions today: oil, gas, trade routes, raw materials and so on. But the economic rationale becomes more and more difficult to see and rather it's the reverse that's the case with capitalist war and militarism costing more and more for less and less or no return; and, more than that, spreading misery, atrocities, chaos and further instability. War and militarism are for capitalism today a global drain but - and this is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism - these factors are essential to the nation state on pain of death. Greater areas are devastated by imperialist war, from Africa, the birthplace of our species, to the cradles of civilisations in the Middle East and the "enlightened" empires of the East. All this amounts not just to the destruction of culture but the destruction of human beings on an unprecedented scale. There's little rationale and no post –war "reconstruction" in all this. We've seen that after recent wars: the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, all the bourgeoisie's talk of reconstruction has been nothing but cynical lies. Only the working class has the power to reconstruct, to construct a new society and to do this it must directly confront imperialism by confronting its own ruling class and its "national interest", particularly in its heartlands of darkness.
Baboon 11.3.14
2 MINT is a neologism invented by the same gigantic economic mind – Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs - that gave us the BRICS. It stands for Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey.
4For much more on this see the research of L.J. Bilmer and M.D. Intsiligatov at Harvard University
We've just passed the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike in Britain, a strike which began in March 1984, lasted nearly a year and involved some 120,000 workers; a strike moreover which had its roots in the whole period beforehand of international class struggle. Despite returning to this question over a couple of decades, and particularly on anniversaries, we make no apology for looking at this issue once again given that the lessons of this strike and its defeat, the role of the trade unions - particularly the National Union of Miners - are important not only for the working class in Britain but also for the proletariat internationally.
The strike itself broke out after a long period of rising international class struggle - a strike wave in Britain, strikes in Germany, Belgium, the USA, Italy and Poland, to name but a few - with the workers more and more tending towards self-organisation and, in this process, coming up against the constraints and diversions of the trade unions. If there are some revolutionary, anarchist or libertarian elements that are unaware of the fundamental role of the trade unions in policing and attacking the working class (indeed some of these elements actively work within the unions and bolster their ideology), then there are elements of the ruling class that are well aware that the trade unions belong to them and and know how to use them to the greatest effect. Such was the case with the 1984 miners' strike where the state used repression on the one hand and the National Union of Miners and its leader Arthur Scargill on the other, in order to crush the miners and deliver a message that "struggle doesn't pay" not only to the class in Britain but to the proletariat internationally.
Under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the British bourgeoisie prepared well and carefully from the very early 80s in order to take on the miners. A shadowy Cabinet Office group, MISC 57, was set up in 1981 in order to lay the ground. This included buying up land next to power stations so that coal could be stockpiled and the group also identified the power, steel and rail workers as too dangerous to be involved. The watered down, sanitised 2001 memoirs of MI5 boss Stella Rimington show how MI5 used its agency not only against the NUM leadership (there is absolutely no contradiction with one element of the British state spying on another) but also on the ground against miners[1]. There was widespread bugging by GCHQ and the involvement of MI5 agents in the NUM leadership. Such infiltration is not at all unusual in the trade unions as these structures, ruled from the top with Byzantine rule-books, lend themselves, indeed offer themselves, to infiltration by the secret services. What many naive believers in "open democracy" on the left see as a "conspiracy theory" is the real activity of the state against the working class. Joe Gormley, for example, a president of the NUM was, like many union leaders, a Special Branch informant. An early proposal to use troops against the miners was rejected as too dangerous - a wise decision by the state given the number of soldiers on leave that eventually fought alongside the miners on the picket lines and in protests. Another key weapon in the repressive apparatus was the police who were given carte-blanche to crack down on the miners, the mining communities and other workers, and provided with bottomless funds to do so. The state was set up to go on the attack: a MI5 section - DS19 - was set up for directing the police, surveillance and providing agent-provocateurs; the courts dished out sentences against miners which went beyond their powers; there was similar lawbreaking from the DHSS which turned down legitimate claims of miners' families; and the media of course with the blatantly lying BBC heading the pack entirely at the service of the British state and against the working class.
But it was the trade unions, with the NUM at the forefront, that provided the real line of defence for the British state and the defence of the national interest. The miners were given decent pay rises in the early 80s (not least as a result of their struggles) and the Thatcher clique concluded secret deals with the ISTC steel union, the NUR rail union and the power workers union in order to keep their workers out of the strike - which they did using their union rule-books and union discipline. The GMBU, with workers in the rail and power industries, ordered its workers to cross miners' picket lines, as did other unions including the NUR. The NACODs pit-deputies' union ignored an overwhelming ballot by their members to join the strike and the dockers' union, whose workers struck in July, kept their workers and their strike isolated from the miners' actions. And of all the unions, all of them "scab" unions as all unions have been for decades, the great National Union of Miners clearly demonstrated its own scab nature at the end of the strike by leading the 60% of miners still out, "with heads held high" as the union put it, across picket lines of miners who had been sacked or were on bail. Despite acts of solidarity and support from individual workers or groups of workers, the whole of the trade union apparatus showed in practice its support for the state against the miners. To back up this formidable opposition to the miners, many of whom were being radicalised by the overt repression of the police and other state agencies, the whole gamut of leftism, whose concern is always in tandem with the unions for the national interest, was mobilised behind the NUM and other trade unions in order to maintain credibility in the fiction among workers that it was inside the union structures and in defence of the union that the miners had to be supported. And the unions, the NUM and the other major unions, supported the workers like the rope supports the hanged man. The overt repression of the police and the subtle divisive repression of the NUM and other unions worked hand in hand against the miners specifically and the working class in general. The defeat of the miners' strike was never a done deal and the bourgeoisie had some worrying moments when the strike threatened to extend and get out of control. But it was the NUM and the Scargill "factor" that kept the miners trapped in the union framework and it was this framework/prison that proved decisive in the defeat of the miners and their strike.
Arthur Scargill became president of the NUM in 1982. He was the perfect foil for the Thatcher clique, the other side of the coin in the left versus right game that the British bourgeoisie was getting down to a fine art. He was deliberately set up as a bogeyman and the more the bourgeoisie attacked him the more he drew the majority of the miners behind him This is an old trick of the ruling class and the modus operandi of the British bourgeoisie - particularly using its popular press and TV stations - in many important strikes through the 60's, 70's and into the 80's. Union leaders were labelled "socialist firebrands", "reds" and so on but many of these "wreckers" managed to get knighted, made Baronesses, or some other title that got them into the House of Lords. Others ended up with part-time plum jobs on various state bodies with some of them presumably getting a pension from the security services for whom they had worked. We saw a glimpse of this game recently with the appearance of the media's Bob Crow appreciation society on the occasion of his death. Not a lot of chance of this for Arthur because this was a very important strike for the bourgeoisie to win. He had to be elevated to supreme pantomime villain and he was just right for the role. Scargill started his political life as a Young Stalinist and this career bureaucrat knew all about rising through the union ranks from his position as a minor legal functionary of the NUM to become the leader at the top of the union. And today, the pathetic figure of Scargill is reduced to ongoing legal battles with his union. Despite his inestimable services to the state, there will be no knighthood for Arthur Scargill.
In 1981, a wildcat strike by tens of thousands of miners - which threatened to get even bigger - pushed the Thatcher government to withdraw its pit closure plans and severely dented the latter's credibility in the eyes of the ruling class. Thatcher was on her way out but the British victory in the Falklands War, facilitated by the US, gave renewed vigour to the British bourgeoisie and it turned to dealing with the "enemy within" - the working class, the main battalion of which, due to their militancy and will to fight, was the miners. The repressive plans mentioned above were put in place and the ruling class relied on the NUM leadership, along with the other main unions, to play the role that it had consistently played in the past: isolating the miners and leading them into an ambush and subsequent defeat. Scargill and the NUM started this ball rolling with a ridiculous overtime ban began in November 1983, which gave the bosses all the warning they needed in order to build up coal stocks and their own repressive forces. None of Scargill's whining and evasions in his "memoirs" alters this or any of his and his union's role in the defeat that followed[2]. There were plenty of workers' initiatives that counter-posed a class dynamic particularly based on their self-organisation. This included the very effective 'flying pickets' when the strike started in March 1984, which the union tried to curtail. But the union had the misplaced confidence of a great number of the workers behind it and this reinforced the role of the NUM, with its nationalist demands for "British Coal" and "Defend the NUM". The union fixated the miners on the Notts collieries and set-piece battles, like the ones around the Orgreave coking plant that, in the face of repressive forces, the miners could only lose. While the only dynamic that will take a workers' struggle forward is self-organisation and extension to other workers, Scargill, the NUM and the other unions, turned this militancy back into warfare between the miners, growing isolation and unwinnable ritualised battles.
It's not a question of "bad leadership" or of the personality of Scargill. It was the whole union structure of the NUM and the other major unions that defeated the miners and delivered a blow to the rest of the class in Britain and internationally. We can see this more clearly in the correspondence between David Douglass, a rank-and-file NUM official and the ICC published a few years ago[3]. The strike says Douglass was "through the union and in defence of the union" which was one of the major problems as the miners were unable to break with this framework and involve other workers - many of whom were involved in their "own" struggles at the time. He insists on the importance of "the different levels and functions of the union", which again was a problem not only for other workers to get involved but were incomprehensible to many miners. Rule books, area divisions, branch ballots and all the rules around them, regional areas under distinct Stalinist-like leaderships in competition with other areas - the NUM had all these divisions within itself and they helped to strangle any initiative of the miners to cut through all this shit and move the direction of the strike towards a result.
There were many positives expressed in this strike from the actions of the workers themselves: the militancy and combative spirit of the working class; the solidarity and sacrifice of the miners and their families; the expressions of self-organisation and the active involvement of other workers and not a few serving soldiers. And the role of the women directly in the struggle who, while the "feminists" were demanding a bigger place at capitalism's table, were radicalised, took to the streets in their thousands and tens of thousands and continued supporting workers' strikes and protests long after the miners' strike was over[4]. But the overwhelming lesson of the miners' strike for the working class today is that not only are the trade unions useless for taking a struggle forward - they are prisons policed by officials and rules whose main function for the capitalist state is to keep workers isolated and divided. We can look back and see that that was exactly what the NUM and the other unions did in 1984/5.
Baboon, 13.5.14 (This article has been contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
In October 2013, a new ‘political group’ was born and gave itself the pompous name of ‘International Group of the Communist Left’ (IGCL). This new group doesn’t tell us much about its identity: it is in fact made up of the fusion between two elements of the group Klasbatalo in Montreal and elements from the so-called ‘Internal Fraction’ of the ICC (IFICC), who were excluded from the ICC in 2003 for behaviour unworthy of communist militants: as well as robbery, slander, and blackmail, these elements crossed the Rubicon with their deliberate behaviour as snitches, in particular by publishing in advance, on the internet, the date the conference of our section in Mexico and plastering up the real initials of one of our comrades, presented as the ‘leader of the ICC’. We refer our readers who are unaware of this to the articles published in our press at the time1.
In one of these articles, ‘The police-like methods of the IFICC’, we clearly showed that these elements were freely offering their good and loyal services to the bourgeois state. They spend the greater part of their time assiduously surveying the ICC’s website, trying to inform themselves about everything going on in our organisation, nourishing themselves with and spreading the most nauseating gossip dragged up from the sewers (especially about the couple Louise and Peter, two ICC militants, who have obsessed and excited them to the highest degree for more than 10 years!). Shortly after this article, they further aggravated their case by publishing a document of 114 pages, reproducing numerous extracts from the meetings of our international central organ, supposedly to demonstrate the truth of their accusations against the ICC. What this document really demonstrates is that these elements have a sickness of the mind, that they are totally blinded by hatred towards our organisation, and that they are consciously handing over to the police information that can only help them with their work.
Hardly was it born that this new abortion named the ‘International Group of the Communist Left’ uttered its first cry by unleashing some hysterical propaganda against the ICC, as we can see from the title page of their website: ‘A new (final?) internal crisis of the ICC!’, accompanied by an ‘Appeal to the proletarian camp and the militants of the ICC’.
For several days, this ‘international group’ made up of four individuals has been carrying out a frenzied activity, addressing letter after letter to the whole ‘proletarian milieu’, as well as to our militants and some of our sympathisers (those whose addresses they have got hold of) in order to save them from the claws of a so-called ‘liquidationist faction’ (a clan made up of Louise, Peter and Baruch).
The founding members of this new group, the two snitches of the ex-IFICC, have just taken a new step into ignominy by clearly revealing their police methods aimed at the destruction of the ICC. The so-called IGCL is ringing the alarm bells and crying at the top of its voice that it is in possession of the internal bulletins of the ICC. By showing off their war trophy and making such a racket, the message that these out and out informers want to get across is very clear: there is a ‘mole’ in the ICC who is working hand in hand with the ex-IFICC! This is clearly police work which has no other aim than to sow generalised suspicion, trouble and ill-feeling in our organisation. These are the same methods that were used by the GPU, Stalin’s political police, to destroy the Trotskyist movement from the inside during the 1930s. These are the same methods that the members of the ex-IFICC have already used (notably two of them, Juan and Jonas, founding members of the IGCL) when they made special trips to several sections of the ICC to organise secret meetings and circulate rumours that one of our comrades (the “wife of the ICC’s chief”, as they put it) is a “cop”. Today, it’s the same procedure to try to sow panic and destroy the ICC from the inside, but it’s even more abject: under the hypocritical pretext of wanting to “hold out a hand” to the militants of the ICC and save them from “demoralisation”, these professional telltales are really addressing the following message to all the militants of the ICC: “there is one (or several) traitors among you who are giving us your internal bulletins, but we won’t give you their name because it’s up to you to look for them!”. This is the terrible objective of all the feverish agitation of this new ‘international group’: to once again introduce the poison of suspicion and distrust within the ICC in order to undermine it from within. This is a real enterprise of destruction which is no less perverse than the methods of Stalin’s political police or of the Stasi.
As we have recalled several times in our press, Victor Serge, in his well-known book which is a reference point for the workers’ movement, What every revolutionary should know about repression, makes it clear that spreading suspicion and slander is the favourite weapon of the bourgeois state for destroying revolutionary organisations:
“confidence in the party is the cement of all revolutionary forces....the enemies of action, the cowards, the well-entrenched ones, the opportunists, are happy to assemble their arsenal – in the sewers! Suspicion and slander are their weapons for discrediting revolutionaries...This evil of suspicion and mistrust among us can only be reduced and isolated by a great effort of will. It is necessary, as the condition of any real struggle against provocation - and slanderous accusation of members is playing the game of provocation - that no-one should be accused lightly, and it should also be impossible for an accusation against a revolutionary to be accepted without being investigated. Each time that the least suspicion is aroused, a jury of comrades must pronounce and rule on the accusation or on the slander. Simple rules to observe with an inflexible rigour if one wants to preserve the moral health of revolutionary organisations”
The ICC is the only revolutionary organisation which has remained faithful to this tradition of the workers’ movement by defending the principle of Juries of Honour in the face of slander: only adventurers, dubious elements and cowards would refuse to render things clear in front of a Jury of Honour2.
Victor Serge also insists that the motives which lead certain revolutionaries to offer their services to the repressive forces of the bourgeois state don’t always come from material misery or cowardice:
“there are, much more dangerously, those dilettantes and adventurers who believe in nothing, indifferent to the ideal they have been serving, taken by the idea of danger, intrigue, conspiracy, a complicated game in which they can make fools of everyone. They may have talent, their role may be almost undetectable”
And as part of this profile of informers or agents provocateurs, you will find, according to Serge, ex-militants “wounded by the party”. Simple hurt pride, personal resentments (jealousy, frustration, disappointment...) can lead militants to develop an uncontrollable hatred towards the party (or against certain of its militants who they see as rivals) and so offer their services to the bourgeois state.
All the ringing ‘Appeals’ of this stuck-up agency of the bourgeois state which is the IGCL are nothing but calls for a pogrom against certain of our comrades (and we have already denounced in our press the threats made by a member of the ex-IFICC who said to one of our militants , “You, I will cut your throat!”). It’s no accident that this new ‘Appeal’ by the snitches of the IFICC was immediately relayed by one of their friends and accomplices, a certain Pierre Hempel, who publishes a ‘blog’ as indigestible as it is delirious, ‘Le Proletariat Universel [1175]’, in which you can read stuff like “Peter and his floozy” (*cf note below). The “floozy” in question being none other than our comrade who has been harassed for over ten years by the snitches and potential killers of the ex-IFICC and their accomplices. This is the very ‘proletarian’ literature that circulates the ‘Appeal’ of the ‘IGCL’ which will pique the curiosity and voyeurism of the so-called ‘proletarian’ milieu. You get the friends you deserve.
But that’s not all. If you click on the links on the note below3, our readers who really do belong to the camp of the communist left can get a more precise idea of the pedigree of this new ‘International Group of the Communist left’: it has been sponsored for several years by a tendency within another office of the bourgeois state, the NPA (the ‘New Anticapitalist Party’ of Olivier Besancenot which stands at elections and is regularly invited to appear on the TV). This tendency in the NPA often makes loud publicity for the IGCL, putting it on the front page of its internet site! If a group of the extreme left of capital makes so much publicity for the IFICC and its new disguise as the IGCL, this is proof that the bourgeoisie recognises one of its faithful servants: it knows it can count on it to try to destroy the ICC. Thus the snitches of the IGCL would have every right to claim a decoration from the state (obviously from the hands of the Interior Minister), since they have rendered much more eminent services to it than most of those who have been graced with medals by the state.
The ICC will cast as much clarity as possible on all this and inform its readers about the follow-up to this affair. It is quite possible that we have been infiltrated by one (or several) dubious elements. It wouldn’t be for the first time and we have had a long experience of this type of problem going back as least as far as the Chenier affair. Chenier was an element excluded from the ICC in 1981 and a few months later was seen officially working for the Socialist party which was in government at the time. If this is the case them obviously we will apply our statutes as we have always done in the past.
But we can’t rule out another hypothesis: that one of our computers has been hacked by the services of the police (who have been surveying our activities for over 40 years). And it’s not impossible that it was the police itself (by passing themselves off as a ‘mole’, an anonymous ICC militant) which transmitted to the IFICC certain of our internal bulletins knowing quite well that these snitches (and especially the two founding members of the IGCL) would immediately put them to good use. This would not be at all surprising since the IFICC cowboys (who always shoot faster than their own shadows) have done the same thing before, in 2004, when they flirted with an ‘unknown’ element from a Stalinist agency in Argentina, the ‘Citizen B’ who hid himself behind a so-called ‘Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas’. This purely fictitious ‘Circulo’ had the great merit of publishing gross and ignoble lies against our organisation, lies which were complacently relayed by the IFICC. As soon as these lies were exposed, ‘Citizen B’ vanished, leaving the IFICC in consternation and disarray.
The IFICC/IGCL claims that “the proletariat needs its political organisations more than ever to orient it towards the proletarian revolution. A weakening of the ICC still means a weakening of the whole proletarian camp. And a weakening of the proletarian camp necessarily implies a weakening of the proletariat in the class struggle”. This is the most disgusting hypocrisy. The Stalinist parties declare themselves to be the defenders of the communist revolution when they are in fact its fiercest enemies. No one should be taken in: whatever the scenario – the presence in our ranks of a ‘mole’ of the IFICC or manipulation by the official forces of the state - this latest ‘coup’ by the IFICC/IGCL clear shows that its vocation is in no way to defend the positions of the communist left and work towards the proletarian revolution but to destroy the main organisation of the communist left today. This is a police agency of the capitalist state, whether it gets paid or not.
The ICC has always defended itself against the attacks of its enemies, notably against those who want to destroy it through campaigns of lies and slander. This time it will do the same. It will be neither destabilised or intimidated by this attack by the class enemy. All the proletarian organisations of the past have had to face up to attacks from the bourgeois state aimed at destroying them. They defended themselves ferociously and these attacks, far from weakening them, on the contrary strengthened their unity and the solidarity between militants. This is how the ICC and its militants have always reacted to the attacks and informing of the IFICC. Thus, as soon as the ignoble appeal of the IGCL was known about, all the sections and militants of the ICC immediately mobilised themselves to defend, with the utmost determination, our organisation and the comrades targeted in this ‘Appeal’.
International Communist Current. 4.5.14
1 The police-like methods of the 'IFICC' [1176]; The ICC doesn't allow snitches into its public meetings [1177] ; Calomnie et mouchardage, les deux mamelles de la politique de la FICCI envers le CCI [1178].
2 See in particular our communiqué of 21 February 2002, Revolutionary organisations struggle against provocation and slander [982]
3 tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=655 [1179]
tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=2058 [1180]
tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=7197 [1181]
(*) We should point out that this sinister buffoon does not hesitate to write in his blog that "If the police had sent me such a document [ie the ICC's internal bulletins], "I would have thanked them in the name of the proletariat". No comment.
For the last five years the population of northern Nigeria has been living in a state of terror. From its first call to jihad in 2009, Boko Haram has been carrying out the most horrible atrocities. The group simply massacres all those who don’t fit into its version of Islam and Sharia law – villagers, school students...Since the beginning of this year alone, Amnesty International estimated that their crimes have accounted for 1500 victims, to which should be added the 300 burned alive and machine gunned in the village of Gamboru Ngala.and probably the further 118 or more blown up by the bombings of a market place and a hospital in Jos on 20 May.
This group and its barbaric ideology is without doubt a caricature of capitalist decomposition, with its flight into irrationality and nihilism. In particular they are opposed to anything that is supposed to be linked to ‘modern’ or ‘western’ culture and education: their name literally means ‘Western education is forbidden’.
The attention of the world media has been especially focused their kidnapping of 276 high school girls from their dormitories in Chibok. A large number of the girls were later paraded in front of the cameras as ‘converts’ to Islam, but not before the Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekauhad been filmed ranting about how the girls would be sold as slaves in the market place.
Such a barbaric act has provoked a huge amount of indignation, as could be seen on the social media in many countries. The slogan ‘Bring back our girls’ appeared on 23 April and was spread on the internet by the millions. This was a healthy reaction, a refusal to remain indifferent to all the atrocities being committed every day, all over the world. The exploited class is in general more affected by the fate of other human beings who they may not know but with whom they feel connected. This instinctive feeling of belonging to one and the same humanity is a key element in the class struggles of the future
However, the bourgeoisie, through its political mouthpieces, has rapidly leapt on this bandwagon and used it to make a big display of its emotion and ‘solidarity’. Thus we have for example Michelle Obama posing in front of the ‘Bring back our girls’ slogan, suitably hand-made for authenticity. This image went round the world as a symbol of the concern of the big powers for the threatened schoolchildren. What cynicism! What hypocrisy! It’s true that Boko Haram is a bunch of fanatical killers. But the big bourgeoisie is no less murderous. It runs a system of inhuman exploitation and will stop at nothing in the defence of its interests. It carries out massacres on a vast scale, and with cold calculation: two world wars, Korea and Vietnam, the Gulf war 0f 91, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s...there is no end to the list of imperialist slaughters. Meanwhile, while the media made all the noise, it was the parents of the schoolchildren themselves who got together to pay the cost of the petrol needed to search for the missing girls.
This whole media circus has one aim, to restore the image of the leaders of the big democratic countries. A few nice photos, a few fine words, a few clicks on the social media and a few crocodile tears in front of the cameras – what better way for these butchers to make us forget their own blood-soaked crusades?
This is how the bourgeoisie uses the barbarism of its own system to regenerate its democratic ideology, and to justify a new round of interventions in the region. The war launched by Boko Haram is mainly limited to the north of the country and is not yet having a big impact on the Nigerian economy – the main wealth of the country, its oil, its big cities, its centres of production are located in the south. But even if the campaigns of the big western powers are not linked to an immediate economic motive, they still have very important geo-strategic interests in the region and this is a new opportunity to gain a military foothold at each other’s expense. Thus on 6 May, the US announced that it was sending in its ‘technical experts’ to assist; the day after France followed suit by announcing that it would be dispatching a ‘specialised team’; soon after that Britain sent in its ‘special advisers’, and the Israelis have also got in on the act.
None of these powers care a jot about the schoolgirls. Experience has shown us what the humanitarian intentions of the bourgeoisie amount to: they are an alibi to advance their pawns in the merciless imperialist competition that they are all involved in.
DG, 15.5.14
More than 300 killed and dozens of serious injuries: the explosion which ripped through the Soma mine in the west of Turkey is the most murderous industrial disaster in the country’s history. This is in no way an ‘accident’, a product of sheer bad luck that we just have to accept like a fact of life. This is a crime – a crime of capital.
After the collapse of the mine, thousands of workers and students spontaneously came out onto the streets, not only in Soma and Izmir (a port close to Soma)but also in Turkey’s big cities, Ankara and Istanbul, and in the Kurdish regions. Braving ferocious repression, tear gas and truncheons, the demonstrations grew in size daily, nearly a year after the great social movement sparked off by the defence of Gezi Park in Istanbul.
The bourgeoisie and its tame media have kept very quiet about this anger. All the TV channels have concentrated on showing grieving families weeping for their dead, interspersed with speeches by Erdogan and the energy minister promising to compensate them - as if this could soften their pain or bring back the dead. And to calm the social tension, to put a lid on the anger of the miners, they are being promised other jobs after the mine is closed.
The media black-out on the street demos and the assemblies of students occupying the universities has been accompanied by heightened police control of the population. Very little information about what actually happened in Soma is getting through. The government has mobilised its imams to dose the workers with religious opium, to try to get them to prostrate themselves in the face of Fate, to resign themselves to the capitalist order.
In the demonstrations, solidarity with the families of the victims and indignation at the indifference of the government and the bosses has come up against the brutal repression of the police state. The photograph above of a young woman holding a placard saying “this wasn’t an accident, this is murder. The government is responsible” is very significant of the depth of the anger and the social discontent.
At the time of writing, general assemblies of workers and students are being held in the universities of Istanbul and Ankara, following the police attacks on the demonstrations.
Alongside the imams, the Turkish bourgeoisie is also mobilising all its democratic forces, its ‘opposition’, to hold down the danger of a social explosion. The slogan ‘the government must resign’ has been raised by the all democratic forces involved in the demonstrations. The forces of democratic ‘progress’ (the left and extreme left parties, the trade unions, etc) are thus playing their own role in the preservation of capitalist order and national unity. Their ‘radical’ speeches against the Erdogan government have one aim: to dispose of the social time bomb and divert the anger of the workers and students into the election trap. The imams call on the workers to resort to prayer; the opposition forces call on them to disperse themselves in the polling booths and to call for a better management of the national capital by a more ‘competent’ bourgeois clique.
It so happens that the presidential elections will take place in August, for the first time on the basis of universal suffrage. All the trumpets of democracy will be calling on the exploited to act as mere ‘citizens’. It’s not by chance that Erdogan’s opponents insist so much on the ‘public power’s lack of attention to conditions in the workplace’, especially in the mines. And it’s no coincidence that the unions have proclaimed a day of general strike in order to ‘protest at the negligence of the authorities’. The unions and opposition parties are trying to focus attention on Erdogan, in order to sow the illusion that a different clique of exploiters could manage the exploitation of the proletarians in a more human way, and thus to prevent any reflection about the real causes of this catastrophe: the capitalist mode of production itself.
Obviously the provocative declarations by the prime minister can only serve to increase this feeling of revulsion for Erdogan’s unlimited cynicism. When he coldly asserted to the families involved that “accidents are in the very nature of mining”, this could only intensify the anger. And then we had the even more provocative spectacle of the cops beating up demonstrators and even of Erdogan and his bodyguards physically striking out at demonstrators.
Erdogan’s brutality and arrogance really shows the true face of the whole bourgeois class, a world class of exploiters and murderers. Capitalism ‘with a human face’ is a pure mystification because the bourgeoisie, whatever clique is in government, right wing or left wing, doesn’t give a toss about human lives. Its only concern is profit. And whether it is secular or religious, the state is always a police state, as we can see in the most developed democratic countries, where demonstrations are always well controlled by the forces of the opposition and the union stewards on the one hand, and by the forces of repression on the other.
Akin Celik, the director of the Soma mine, told a Turkish newspaper in 2012 that they had managed to reduce production costs to $24 a ton as opposed to $130 before the privatisation of the mine. How had such a feat been achieved? Obviously by cutting corners wherever they could, especially in the area of safety. This was done with the blessing of the unions who are now denouncing the government’s negligence. You couldn’t be clearer than this Soma miner [1187]: “there is no safety in this mine. The unions are just puppets and the bosses only think about money”.
But the greed of the bosses is not the fundamental cause of industrial disasters and ‘accidents’ at work. If costs have to be reduced again and again, it’s in order to maintain the productivity of the enterprise, its competitive edge. In other words, the very way that the capitalist mode of production operates, based on competition, on the world market, on production for profit, inexorably push the bosses, even the least ‘inhuman’ ones, to endanger the lives of those they exploit. For the bourgeois class, the wage labourer is just the source of a commodity, whose labour power has to be bought at the lowest possible price. And to lower the costs of production, the bourgeoisie has no choice but to economise on safety at the workplace. The exploiters can’t be too worried about the lives, safety and health of the exploited. The only thing that counts is the order book, the profit margin, the rate of surplus value.
According to a report published in 2003 by the International Labour Organisation, every year across the world, 270 million wage earners are the victims of accidents at work and 160 million contract ‘professional’ illnesses. The study reveals that every year two million people die while doing their job. That’s 5000 a day!
And this horror is not limited to the third world. In France, every year, according to the CNAM (Caisse National d’Assurance-Maladie – the national sickness l insurance organisation) 780 employees are killed by their work every year, over 2 every day. There are about 1,350,000 work accidents a year, which means 3,700 victims every day, or in an eight hour working day, 8 injured every minute.
Whether we cross frontiers or go back in time, capitalist exploitation has always spread death. As Engels showed in 1845 in his study on The Conditions of the Working Class in England:
“The coal-mine is the scene of a multitude of the most terrifying calamities, and these come directly from the selfishness of the bourgeoisie. The hydrocarbon gas which develops so freely in these mines, forms, when combined with atmospheric air, an explosive which takes fire upon coming into contact with a flame, and kills everyone within its reach. Such explosions take place, in one mine or another, nearly every day; on September 28th, 1844, one killed 96 men in Haswell Colliery, Durham. The carbonic acid gas, which also develops in great quantities, accumulates in the deeper parts of the mine, frequently reaching the height of a man, and suffocates everyone who gets into it... A proper ventilation of the mines by means of fresh air-shafts could almost entirely remove the injurious effects of both these gases. But for this purpose the bourgeoisie has no money to spare, preferring to command the working-men to use the Davy lamp, which is wholly useless because of its dull light, and is, therefore, usually replaced by a candle. If an explosion occurs, the recklessness of the miner is blamed, though the bourgeois might have made the explosion well-nigh impossible by supplying good ventilation. Further, every few days the roof of a working falls in, and buries or mangles the workers employed in it. It is the interest of the bourgeois to have the seams worked out as completely as possible, and hence the accidents of this sort”. Chapter on ‘The mining proletariat’
The deaths in Soma are our deaths. It’s our class brothers who have been killed by capitalism. It’s our class brothers and sisters being beaten up in the demonstrations in turkey. The exploited of the whole world must feel involved in this catastrophe because this whole system is a catastrophe for humanity.
Faced with the barbarism of this social order, which breeds death not only in military conflicts but also more and more in the workplace, the exploited must refuse to make any common cause with their exploiters. The only solidarity they can show with the bereaved families of Soma is the struggle on their own class terrain. Everywhere, in the workplaces, in the high schools and the universities, in assemblies and meetings, we have to discuss the real causes of this tragedy. We have to spring the traps of the reformist guard dogs of the bourgeois order who brandish the scarecrow of Erdogan to hide the real responsibility of world capital.
Against the sermons of the imams, ‘don’t fight, pray’, against the slogans of the democratic opposition, ‘don’t fight, vote’, we have to reply:
Solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in Turkey! Down with capitalism! Struggle against the exploiters of all countries!
Révolution Internationale, 16.5.14.
Our rulers just can’t get enough of war.
A whole year of ‘commemorations’ of World War One, with opinion divided among them about whether this was a Good War or a Bad War. The right wing tends to argue that this was a Good War. The Kaiser was Bad, and had to be stopped. And Britain’s empire was, on the whole, a Good Thing, which had to be defended. The left wing can then pose as very radical, and say, this was a Bad, Imperialist War.
A week or more of celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944, with royals and presidents hob-nobbing in northern France on the big day. This time left and right are united: this was a Good War. The US and the British were definitely the Goodies, and the Germans were the Baddies. The Goodness of the war is proved by the fact that it made the world safe for Democracy.
When it comes to the First World War, the left can quote authentic revolutionaries like Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg and tell us that capitalism, at a certain stage in its historical development, inevitably turns to imperialism and war to prolong its survival past its sell-by date. But they mysteriously forget all this when it comes to the Second World War, which was to all intents and purposes the same war fought by the same imperialist powers as the conflict that ended only 20 years previously. The magic of ‘anti-fascism’, of ‘Nazism is the greater evil’, wipes away what marxism tells us about the real nature of capitalism, and the barbarism of Auschwitz and Treblinka justifies the barbarism of the aerial obliteration of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In opposing the First World War on the basis of working class internationalism, the revolutionaries who went on to form the Communist International insisted that if capitalism in decay was not overthrown by proletarian revolution, it would drag humanity into a deadly spiral of wars which would threaten its very existence. History has proved them right: the Second World War – which revolutionaries opposed for the same reason – plumbed even greater depths of horror than the First. The “Cold War” that immediately followed wiped out millions in proxy wars between the two superpowers, with the sword of nuclear annihilation hanging over mankind’s head. The break-up of the two imperialist blocs after 1989 did not bring peace, but a growing war of each against all that has swept across Africa, the Middle East, and, with the war in ex-Yugoslavia, to the gates of Europe. The great powers, reacting to the break-up of their spheres of influence, have since 1989 intervened militarily even more often than during the Cold War, but as we can see in Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan, they have only accelerated the plunge into chaos.
Today the ruin that is Syria, the permanent massacre that is the Congo and Central Africa, the growing tensions between the USA and Japan and China in the Far East, the descent of Ukraine into an imperialist ‘civil war’ fuelled by both Russia and the western powers – all this is testimony to the fact that the rulers cannot have enough of war, that their system needs it, feeds on it, fuels it, even if this murderous addiction will also lead to capital’s own destruction. Hence all the efforts of all the ruling classes of the world to stir up the poison of patriotism, to make the exploited of the world identify with their exploiters and wave the national flag, which is always the flag of capitalism and war.
For the working class, to identify with our rulers, to march in their parades, leads to suicide. To understand our identity with all the exploited of the world, to unite in struggle against the capitalists’ call for sacrifice in the national interest, to carry on that struggle against the capitalists even when they go to war, to oppose the national flag with the flag of the international revolution – that is the only hope for a world without war.
Amos, 8.6.14
In Egypt, the army’s candidate Abdel al-Sisi has won a ‘landslide’ victory, polling between 93% and 96% of the votes. True, the elections were widely boycotted, and only 46% of the electorate went to the polls (government estimate) and the main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, was banned; true this election was in fact an out and out farce comparable to the one that Bashir Asad organised in war-shattered Syria on 3 June (and even Asad only polled 88.7% of the vote!). But just as the sectarian divisions in Syrian society have led many – such as Christians and members of the Alawite sect that the Asad family belongs to – to support Asad’s brutal regime out of fear of what would happen if he lost the civil war, so in Egypt the fact that many ordinary people continue to support the rule of the army is also a product of fear.
Fear of the repression and corruption incarnated by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government that came to power in the elections that followed the fall of the Mubarak regime in 2011. Fear of the crime in the streets that has grown appreciably worse since the decline of the mass movement that ousted Mubarak. Fear of the jihadist version of Islam which was gaining influence under the cloak of the ‘moderately Islamist’ Muslim Brotherhood. It was this climate of fear which led even many of those who had participated in the 2011 movement – which had been directed against Mubarak’s army-based regime – to turn back to the army in the hope that it would guarantee a minimum of order.
This order, of course, is also based on the same ruthless repression which kept Mubarak in power for so long, and which sustained the brief rule of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. The clearest proof of this was the mass death sentence handed out last March to over 500 Brotherhood supporters who took part in a demonstration which resulted in attacks on people and property, and the death of one police officer.
Such blatant manipulation of the courts, whether or not the deaths sentences are carried out, is designed, like all forms of state terror, to drum home the message that any form of rebellion against the state will not be tolerated.
For the moment the message is getting home: the social revolts and the workers’ strikes of 2011 have fallen silent.
In 2011, these movements were seen as part of an ‘Arab spring’, an outbreak of hope, where people could leave their fear behind and come together in their thousands in the streets, facing the forces of repression (not only the police and the army, but also the criminal gangs unleashed on the demonstrators by the regime). Massive strikes centred round the huge textile factories and other industrial concentrations affirmed the power of the working class and were a decisive factor in the decision of the ruling class to ditch Mubarak. The revolts centred in Tunisia and Egypt were an inspiration to a rebellion across the divide of war, in Israel, and to the ‘Indignation’ which motived the mass demonstrations and assemblies in Spain, the Occupy movement in the USA, and the street rebellions in Turkey and Brazil in 2013.
But these revolts never escaped the profound ideological illusions of those who took part in them. They were in essence the response of a new generation of the working class, faced with a capitalist system mired in an insoluble economic crisis and with a future of insecurity, unemployment and austerity. These revolts saw themselves as revolutions, even as part of a world revolution, but they were the product of a proletariat which has largely lost its sense of identity as a class, forgotten its real history and its traditions of struggle. The participants acted in their hundreds of thousands, but they still largely saw themselves as citizens, individuals, not as part of an associated class.
‘Democracy’ is the logical expression of this outlook of the atomised citizen: one man, one vote, enter what the French call the ‘isoloir’ the polling booth/isolator to elect a capitalist party to manage the capitalist state. And this was the great goal that was offered to, and largely accepted by, these movements, with only a small minority arguing that the assemblies where people came together to discuss and take decisions could be the basis of a new form of power, like the soviets of 1917 – one which left the ‘democracy’ of bourgeois parliaments in the dustbin. On the basis of this abdication to democracy, dictators like Morsi and al-Sisi may vie for government office, but the state power they serve remains intact.
Today the dreams of the Arab spring have been rudely shattered: in Egypt which has become a sordid contest between power-hungry factions, in Libya which is collapsing into the rule of local armed gangs, with the chaos spreading south into Chad, Mali and beyond; in Syria, above all, which has become an almost unimaginable nightmare, where Asad rules over a country that has been bombed to ruins, and where the ‘opposition’, increasingly torn between ‘moderate’ and ‘extreme’ Islamist factions, offers the grimmest possible alternative. In Ukraine, a series of events which were superficially modelled on the Arab spring was immediately engulfed in nationalism and integrated into the reviving imperialist rivalries between Russia and the western powers. In Europe and the USA as well, the struggles against the impact of the capitalist crisis have gone into retreat. Small wonder that so many have succumbed to despair, where the hope of changing the world is dismissed as a fairy tale.
But this is not the first time that the class war has gone underground. The proletarian revolution takes its time. It does not obey an immediate calendar, or respond machine-like to a certain level of economic indicators. Those who stand for the genuine revolution against world capitalism have the task of drawing out the lessons of past defeats so that the revolts of the future do not repeat the same mistakes – not least, the fatal error of believing in the bourgeois sham of democracy.
Amos, 6.6.14
As the results of May’s elections to the European Parliament became clear, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was “more than a warning. It is a shock, an earthquake.” The ‘seismic’ outcome was that about a quarter of the seats would be taken up by parties that are ‘malcontents’ when it comes to the European dream.
From the Right there were massive gains by the Front National in France, the UK Independence Party in the UK, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece and other ‘extremist’ parties in Hungary, Austria and Denmark. From the Left there was Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain. In Italy the Five Star Movement, difficult to categorise in left/right terms, also had an impact, coming second overall in the poll.
As has happened before, with only a 43% turnout across Europe, the majority of people didn’t vote at all. And of those who did, how many had any real concern with the European Parliament, how it functions and whatever it is it does? British Foreign Minister William Hague said “I think that people do know that in the European elections they can have a free vote, a free hit”. The Euro vote is seen as a focus for frustrations, an impotent means of expressing anger or unhappiness. This also applies to those who are elected. UKIP leader Nigel Farage said in a speech in February: “We can’t change a thing in Europe” and that while Eurosceptics could “have some fun” in the European Parliament trying to block legislation, it would “not last very long” (Guardian 27/2/14).
But if more than 200 million (out of 380 million) people didn’t bother to vote, what can be said of the illusions of those who did? Elections channel discontent into support for different factions of the bourgeoisie, but it is significant when new or revived forces come to the fore and support for long-established parties declines. In Greece, for example, there is a widespread conviction that European institutions are dominated by Germany and many parties, not just Syriza, see the re-structuring of the EU as essential if national economies are going to improve. But across Europe, nationalists of all hues blame the EU for economic and social problems: in short, the EU is a visible scapegoat for capitalism’s economic crisis, in a way not dissimilar to blaming the bankers for the crash of 2008.
More sinister is the growing tendency of the ‘new’ political forces to focus the blame on immigrants and ethnic or religious minorities. Racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric are the common currency of bourgeois parties, but groups like Golden Dawn are not just anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant in words, they terrorise their victims, using physical violence without hesitation. The spirit of the pogrom lurks in the anti-immigrant nationalism of many parties.
In the propaganda of all the populists, left and right, there are simple answers. Everything’s the fault of the EU. It’s all because of German domination. It’s immigrants. It’s the Jews. Where once middle class voters would have confidence in their conservative or liberal choices, and workers would routinely support the parties of the left, there is now increasingly disorientation throughout society, because while the ruling class is increasingly incoherent and fragmented, the working class is not putting itself forward as a social force which can change society at its roots. In such a situation, discontent with the way things are does not easily lead to a questioning of the capitalist system that is at the root of material deprivation and cultural impoverishment; disillusionment with the ‘respectable’ parties that manage the various capitalist states can soon be replaced with illusions in ‘new’ parties that promise ‘radical’ alternatives or identify easily defined scapegoats.
The real power of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, does not lie in its parliaments, European or national, but in its position as the class which appropriates the surplus value created by the working class. Elections give an outlet for dissatisfaction, and, when traditional parties begin to become discredited, there are other forces waiting in the wings. But these forces are there solely to make sure that ‘the more it changes, the more it stays the same’.
Car 8/6/14
City and media commentators think that things are definitely looking up for the British economy. The statistics that they are basing themselves on certainly show a vigour in the economy that has not been present for six long years, since the crash of 2008. The housing market is moving forward at a great pace, and not just in London. So much so, there is definite anxiety about an unsustainable bubble. Unemployment has fallen sharply – much faster than predicted by the Bank of England. The UK car industry has seen a long period of growth with sales rising for 27 months in a row (although presumably some of the demand is met by German output, for example). Some see exports doing well, but the UK’s trade deficit with the rest of the world widened by more than expected in April, because of weaker manufacturing exports, which were offset by the usual surplus in the services sector.
But British commentators do look for good news about the performance of the economy, and like to compare it with Europe where possible. As a commentator in the Evening Standard (5/6/14) said: “Consider that the eurozone economy grew by just 0.2 per cent in the first quarter, missing targets, while Britain advanced at four times that rate. The European Commission forecasts 1.2 per cent growth for the economic bloc this year followed by 1.7 per cent next; it has pencilled in 2.7 per cent and 2.5 per cent for the UK over the same periods.”
A key reason why the commentators feel a little less restrained in talking up the performance of the British economy is that it has finally, at this point in time, arrived back at the level of output prior to the financial crash in 2008 (i.e. 6 years). Previously, even if, at times, the economy appeared to be on an overall growth track, everyone knew that there was no recovery in the formal sense: arrival back at the level of economic activity before the recession. Furthermore, the time taken to arrive back at the starting point for Britain is longer – much longer – than in the case of the Great Depression. In the Great Depression (in the 1930s) it took ‘only’ 4 years for the economy to arrive back at the level of output it had at the beginning of the recession. This is one reason why the state authorities (notably Mr. Carney and his colleagues at the Bank of England who have responsibility for interest rates) take quite a very measured view of the performance of the economy and have caught out speculators on interest rates more than once.
The ‘recovery’ takes many forms. The level of employment in Britain in actual numbers is much higher than it was at the beginning of the recession. Historically, it is higher than it has ever been. This is a bit confusing since unemployment is very high as well – even after the recent falls, it is over 2 million (and that is only the official count). Nonetheless, it is true that employment has expanded as the population has expanded (partly due to natural increase and partly due to immigration). Now, one does not have to be an expert to see that productivity has therefore fallen – significantly fallen. To figure out national productivity the bourgeoisie simply divide the overall economic output by the number of people working. Since the economy has only just got back to where it started (in 2008) it follows that productivity has fallen since the working population is significantly larger. That is a very serious problem for the bourgeoisie and has a profound implication for the ‘success’ of the recovery. That is why the bourgeoisie do not talk about their success in employing so many new people as often as one might expect – despite the fact that what has been achieved on this level is not replicated in every country.
Furthermore, for the bourgeoisie’s purposes, claims of ‘falling unemployment’ are not undermined by the growth of chronic underemployment, highlighted by the scandal of zero hours contracts; and ‘overall economic output’ tends to include any number of parasitic and unproductive activities, such as property speculation. In sum, more reasons for being sceptical about the ‘recovery’.
This is why for every proclamation of progress in the economy, usually from the government and its least critical supporters, there is also caution. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) recently upgraded their predictions for growth, but “dampened some of the feelgood factor with a warning that 2014 could mark the high point for the economy as households come under renewed financial strain next year once interest rates start to rise.” (Guardian 30/5/14). The director general of the BCC warned that “The task at hand is to ensure that 2014 is not ‘as good as it gets’ for the UK economy” (ibid) A spokesman for the treasury agreed that “we cannot take the recovery for granted” (ibid).
Other commentators are more blunt. “James Meadway, a former adviser at the Treasury, has criticised Chancellor George Osborne’s claim that newly released GDP figures prove ‘Britain is coming back.’ He argues that the government’s relentless pursuit of stringent austerity and expansion of household debt is reinforcing the risk of a major economic crash. Meadway argues that the policies driving UK growth are fatally flawed: ‘We are setting up… exactly the conditions that helped produce the crash of 2008: debt-led growth, in which stagnant or falling real earnings are masked by increasing levels of household debt that sustain continued consumer spending.’
Despite the 0.8% increase in growth over the last quarter, current performance indicates that manufacturing output ‘will not recover to its 2008 level before 2019.’ With average earnings rising at a rate of 1.4%, and the Consumer Price Index’s inflation figures ignoring the large cost of housing at around 40% of household income, real inflation ‘is now running at 2.5% a year, well ahead of increases in earnings…The fall in real earnings since 2008 is the longest sustained decline in most people’s living standards since the 1870s.’” (Guardian 1/5/14)
This particular bourgeois expert comes perilously close to telling the truth: that the ‘recovery’ is largely a sham fuelled by debt, that the prospects for future difficulties are clearly discernible, and that the perspective for the working class is a continuing attack on its living conditions.
Hardin/York 8/6/14
The country has a new president, Petro Poroshenko, elected by a majority in the first round of voting and promising to defeat the “separatist terrorists” in the East of the country within hours. A new hope he is not. His political career started in the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and then the Party of Regions, loyal to Kuchma, an ally of Russia, before swapping to Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine Bloc in 2001. He has been a minister in governments of both Yushchenko and Yanukovych. A chocolate billionaire, he was accused of corruption in 2005 and fought the presidential election with the support of former boxer Vitaly Klitschko, who was elected Mayor of Kiev at the same time, and his corrupt backers, Levochkin and Firtash. Ukraine has yet another corrupt oligarch in charge, imposing the only perspective this rotten capitalist system has in store for humanity: militarism and austerity.
Far from defeating the pro-Russian separatists in hours, the fighting has continued with Ukraine repulsing a separatist assault on Donetsk airport, at the cost of dozens of lives, and losing a helicopter with a general on board. The fighting continues and the separatists remain in place.
Far from ushering in a new era of democratic stability and growth, Ukraine’s presidential election on 25 May was another step in its slide into bloody civil war, just as much as the referendums held by separatists in Crimea in March and Donetsk and Luhansk in May. What we are seeing is the widening of the internal divisions in this bankrupt artificial country, precipitated by imperialist manoeuvres from outside. The danger is that the country will be torn apart in civil war, ethnic cleansing, pogroms, massacres, and widening imperialist conflict and instability in the region.
Ukraine is Europe’s second largest country, an artificial construct including 78% Ukrainians and 17% Russian-speaking who form the majority in the Donbas Region, as well as various other nationalities including the Crimean Tartars. Economic divisions follow much the same lines, with the coal and steel industries in the Russian speaking East largely exporting to Russia, and accounting for 25% of the country’s exports, and with the Western part of the country, which has been the scene of the Orange protests in 2004 and the Maidan protests this last winter, looking towards the EU for its salvation.
The economy is a disaster. By 1999 output fell to 40% of the level of 1991 when the country became independent. After a relative revival it contracted by 15% in 2009. The industry in the East is out of date, highly dangerous and polluting. Depletion of the mines has led to more dangerous working at depths up to 1200 metres with the threat of methane and coal dust explosions as well as rock bursts (the hazards that caused over 300 deaths recently in Soma, Turkey). Pollution from mine water affects water supplies, while antiquated coke and steel mills spew out visible air pollution and spoil tips or slag heaps risk mud slides[1]. Added to which there is radioactivity from Soviet era nuclear mining. These industries are not competitive in the medium term, or even the short term if they have to face EU competition, and it is difficult to see who will want to put in the necessary investment. Not the oligarchs who have a history of getting very, very rich while the economy goes to pot. Not Russia which has its own out of date Soviet era industry to cope with. And surely not Western European capital which presided over the closure of much of its own mining and steel industries in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea that Russia could offer a way out of economic disaster, impoverishment and unemployment, which has all been going on while the oligarchs get rich – a sort of nostalgia for Stalinism and its disguised unemployment – is a dangerous illusion that could only undermine the working class’ ability to defend itself.
Illusions in money from the west are equally dangerous. The IMF bailout in March, worth $14-18billion, replacing the $15billion withdrawn by Russia when Yanukovych fell, has come on condition of strict austerity, raising fuel prices 40% and cutting 10% of public sector employees, about 24,000 jobs. Unemployment figures are already unreliable as many people are unregistered or underemployed.
While Ukraine was part of the USSR and surrounded on its Western borders by Russian satellites, the divisions did not threaten the integrity of the country. This does not mean such divisions were not used and played on. For instance 70 years ago the Crimean Tartars were expelled and only recently some of them returned. The divisions are being played up in the most nauseating and bloodthirsty manner by all sides. It’s not just the far right Svoboda, nor the interim government’s rehabilitation of Stepan Bandera, the wartime Ukrainian Nazi: Yulia Tymoshenko uses the language of shooting and bombing Russian leaders and population, and Poroshenko is putting this into practice. The Russian side is equally nauseating and murderous. Both sides have formed paramilitaries. Even Kiev does not rely solely on the regular army. These irregular forces include the most dangerous fanatics, mercenaries, terrorists, killers, inflicting terror on the civilian population and killing each other. Once these forces are unleashed they will tend to become autonomous, out of control, leading to the sort of death toll we see in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria.
Russian imperialism needs Crimea for its Black Sea fleet, a warm water fleet with access to the Mediterranean. Without its Crimean bases Russia could no longer maintain operations in the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean. Its strategic position depends on Crimea. Ukraine is also needed for defence of the South Stream gas pipeline when it is finished. This has been a constant concern since Ukrainian independence. It simply cannot tolerate the possibility of a pro-Western Ukrainian government in charge of Crimea, hence its response to any question of an agreement with the EU. In 2010 it gave a discount on gas in return for an extension of the lease on its naval base in Crimea. When the Yanukovych government postponed the Association Agreement with the EU last November, Russia responded with a $15bn assistance package, which was halted when Yanukovych was impeached and fled Ukraine. Shortly after it took over Crimea and organised a referendum on joining Russia, which it could use in its propaganda war in favour of its annexation, despite the fact it has not been internationally recognised.
So in March Russia had Crimea, de facto if not recognised internationally. But it is still not secure, since it is surrounded by Ukraine, a country that is on its way to signing an Association Agreement with the EU and therefore allying with Russia’s enemies, and trying to escape from Russian blackmail by finding new donors in Western Europe. For strategic reasons, in order to have an overland access to Crimea, Russia needs the Eastern part of Ukraine under its control. Eastern Ukraine is a whole different matter from Crimea, despite the weight of the Russian-speaking population that provides the alibi for Russia’s moves. With no military base in Eastern Ukraine the separatist referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk cannot secure these regions for Russia but only destabilise them, lead to more fighting. It cannot even be certain to control the local separatist gangs.
Russia has one other card to play in the possible destabilisation in the area:Trans-Dniester, which broke away from Moldova on Ukraine’s South Western border, and also has a large Russian-speaking population.
This is by no means a return to the cold war. That was a period of decades of military tensions between two imperialist blocs that divided Europe. But in 1989 Russia had become weakened to the point that it could no longer keep control of its satellites, or even the old USSR, despite its efforts, such as the war in Chechnya. Now many Eastern European countries are in Nato, which can operate right up to the Russian border. But Russia still has its nuclear arsenal, and it still has the same strategic interests. The threatened loss of all influence in Ukraine is a further weakening it cannot tolerate, and it has forced it to react.
The USA is the only remaining superpower, but it no longer has the authority of a bloc leader over its ‘allies’ and competitors in Europe, as shown by the fact that it could no longer mobilise these powers to support it in the second Iraq war the way it could in the first. The US has in fact been weakened by more than 20 years of being bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The USA is faced with the rise of a new rival, China, which is destabilising South East Asia and the Far East. As a result, despite the USA’s intention to cut its military budget, it is obliged to focus attention on that region of the world. Obama has said that “some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences”[2]. That does not mean it will not try to get a piece of the Ukrainian action through diplomacy, propaganda and covert operations, but it has no immediate perspective of military intervention. Russia does not face a united West, but a number of different countries all defending their own imperialist interests, however much they verbally condemn its moves in Ukraine. Britain does not want sanctions that harm Russian investment in the City, Germany is mindful of its current reliance on Russian gas, although it is searching for other energy suppliers. The Baltic states are in favour of the strongest condemnation and measures since with large Russian populations in their countries they also feel threatened. Thus the Ukrainian conflict has sparked off another spiral of military tensions in Eastern Europe, showing that they are an incurable cancer.
At present Russia faces sanctions which are potentially very damaging since it relies so much on its oil and gas exports. Its recent deal to sell gas to China will be a great help. China abstained on the UN condemnation of Russian annexation of Crimea. On the level of propaganda it claims Taiwan on the same principle as Russia claimed Crimea, the unity of Chinese speaking people, but it does not want to admit the principle of self-determination when it has so many minorities of its own.
All the bourgeoisie’s factions, both within Ukraine and those stirring things up from outside, are facing a situation where every move makes things worse. This is like zugzwang in chess, a game much loved in Russia and Ukraine, a position in which any move a player can make only worsens his position, yet he has to move – or resign. For instance, Kiev and the EU want a closer association, which only leads to conflict with Russia and separatism in the East; Russia wants to secure its control of Crimea, but instead of taking control of Ukraine or its Eastern region all it can do is stir up separatism and instability. The more they try and defend their interests, the more chaotic the situation, the more the country slides towards open civil war – like Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This is a feature of the decomposition of capitalism in which the ruling class cannot put forward any rational perspective for society, and the working class is not yet able to put forward its own perspective.
The danger for the working class in this situation is that it should be recruited behind the various nationalist factions. This danger is greater because of the historical enmity based on the real barbarity carried out by each faction during the 20th century: the Ukrainian bourgeoisie can remind the population and particularly the working class of the famine that killed millions as a result of forced collectivisation under Stalinist Russia; the Russians can remind their population of the Ukrainian support for Germany in the Second World War; and the Tartars have not forgotten their expulsion from Crimea and the deaths of about half the 200,000 people affected. There is also the danger of workers being hoodwinked into blaming one or other faction for their increasing misery, and being drawn into support for the other on that basis. None of them have anything to offer the working class but worsening austerity and bloodthirsty conflict.
While it is inevitable that some workers will be drawn into the pro or anti-Russian sentiment[3] we do not know the situation on the ground. But the fact that the Donbas has become a battle ground for nationalist forces emphasises the weakness of the working class in the area. Faced with unemployment and poverty they have not been able to develop struggles for their own interests alongside their class brothers in western Ukraine, and are faced with the danger of being divided against each other.
There is a tiny, but nonetheless significant, minority of internationalists in Ukraine and Russia, the KRAS and others, whose courageous statement, “War on war! Not a single drop of blood for the ‘nation’!”[4], defends the working class position. The working class, while it cannot yet put forward its own revolutionary perspective, remains undefeated internationally, and this is the only hope for an alternative to capitalism’s headlong drive towards barbarism and self-destruction.
Alex, 8.6.14
[1]. No-one who was living in the UK in 1966 can mention such mudslides without being reminded of the Aberfan disaster in which a slag heap buried a primary school, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
[2]. The Economist 31.5.14
[3]. For instance 300 miners, a significantly small number, rallied in support of separatists, (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/miners-russia-rally-donetsk [1191]).
Iraq has been in an almost permanent state of war for four decades. It has been the theatre of three imperialist wars since 1980. But history is not just repetition. This new conflict, after 100 years of capitalist decadence, is the expression of the decomposition of a society which has become totally irrational. The tragedy unfolding in Iraq goes well beyond the frontiers of this country. As we go to press, the murder of three young Israelis, and the revenge murder of a Palestinian of the same age, is sharpening tensions in Israel/Palestine, with Netanyahu using it as a new opportunity to step up the simmering conflict with Hamas and with Iran.
For a century, capitalist society has been through two world wars which left tens of millions dead. Since 1945, there has been a succession of localised imperialist conflicts.
The wars in Korea and especially in Vietnam from the 50s to the 70s, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East such as the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and the conflict in Lebanon in the 1980s, the intifada between the Palestinians and Israel, the war in Somalia in 1992, in Rwanda in 1994, in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000, but also in the Ivory Coast, Sudan, and most recently in Mali ...the list of imperialist wars goes on and on. For whole portions of humanity, horror has become their daily bread.
And the opening of the 21st century has not seen any improvement, far from it. According to the UN there are now officially over 50 million refugees in the world. These masses of human beings fleeing from war and disaster are for the most part stuck in camps, at best surviving from day today with little provision for food, medicine and hygiene. But for the bourgeoisie this doesn’t count for much and war continues and spreads. Syria is in ruins and a large part of the terrorised population lives in cellars and devastated buildings. And now for the fourth time since 1980, a new open war is ravaging Iraq. This inhuman reality confirms in blood and tears what the revolutionaries were saying a century ago:
“‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism”[1]. Between 1914 and 1945, this regression into barbarism was illustrated in particular by the outbreak of two world wars. Since then, it has taken the form of a proliferation of local wars which today are the expression of a society rotting on its feet. Why? Because since the 1960s, neither of the two fundamental classes in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, have been able to develop their own perspective: world war on the one hand, world revolution on the other. The proletariat emerged from the Stalinist counter-revolution at the end of the 1960s (May 1968 in France being the symbol of the revival of the proletariat’s ability to struggle), so that the bourgeoisie was no longer facing a working class which had been crushed physically and ideologically, and ready to be dragooned into a new imperialist butchery, as in the 1930s. But at the same time, the proletariat has not been able to affirm its revolutionary perspective. Since 1989, the lying but horribly effective propaganda which equates Stalinism with communism, and the collapse of the ‘Soviet’ bloc with the end of the dream of a new society, has served to bring about a deep reflux in proletarian consciousness and in the self-confidence of the exploited. The situation thus appears to be blocked: neither world war, nor revolution. But nothing remains fixed, and society tends to decompose. Iraq is a dramatic illustration of this.
Since the beginning of the 80s, Iraq has been in an almost permanent state of war.
This development of antagonisms and hatred between the Shia and Sunni populations is not only the result of the instrumentalisation of religious differences, or the simple defence of the bourgeois cliques that operate within these communities. Certainly the unleashing of obscurantism and irrationality, which is a world-wide phenomenon, is a fertile soil for the growth of religious and ethnic hatred. The fact that religious prejudices are such a potent element in this and other wars is itself a sign that capitalism is in a phase of terminal decline. The door has been opened wide to a new series of pogroms between different communities, as we are now seeing in Syria..
Today the forces of ISIS are on the offensive and heading towards Baghdad. Initially ISIS came from a Sunni tribal militia linked to the nebulous Al-Qaida. After the latter distanced itself from ISIS, the latte proclaimed its objective of creating an Islamic state that would take in Iraq, Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine. In fact, as well as being made up of radical Islamists, ISIS is composed of a numerous former officers and fighters of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, whose main aim is to get revenge for being turfed out of power. On top of this there is the military strengthening of the Kurdish Peshmergas who are now militarily and politically dominating the Iraqi Kurdish region. This is a whole complex of armed forces with antagonistic interests, a situation pregnant with future conflicts.
Since the end of the 1990s the USA’s global leadership has got weaker and weaker. Faced with the rise of Chinese imperialism, now an enemy of the first rank, the US is obliged to maintain a considerable military force in southern Asia, while also having to take account of the attempted advance of Russian imperialism, in Syria for example. In these conditions American imperialism has been obliged to do deals with the devil of yesterday. The accession of Rohani, for the moment more moderate than his predecessor, to the presidency of Iran, has been the pretext for a diplomatic opening. This is what’s behind the negotiations on the problem of Iran’s nuclear programme. This has led to a rise in tensions with Russia which has been one of Iran’s main supporters, as well as to discount from Israel, an implacable enemy of Iran. However, the new war in Iraq is above all affecting Saudi Arabia, which for decades has been one of America’s main allies. This leading Middle Eastern state, which has a lot of internal divisions, is not looking kindly on the American hand tendered to Iran and the uncontrollable offensive by ISIS[2]. Its imperialist position is being threatened across the region. Thus, the recently signed bilateral agreement on energy between Saudi and China is not simply motivated by economic concerns. This is part of an attempted rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and China. Saudi Arabia is being more and more openly challenged in the Middle East, and it can’t let this happen without reacting, in Syria and probably in Iraq as well.
The fact that the US is clearly in an impasse with regard to the situation in Iraq illustrates the fact that its position as the world’s leading imperialist power is getting weaker all the time. Unable to come back in force to Iraq after quitting it from a position of total failure such a short time ago, it is obliged to support the present government in Baghdad, at least in words. It’s clear that the US wants to avoid the dismemberment of Iraq, just as it hoped that Syria wouldn’t fall apart. But its growing inability to stabilise the situation has itself become a factor pushing towards further chaos in the region. Today no one is really master of the house. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia know this, as do all the warlords and jihadists in the region. The Middle East is h is increasingly fragmenting into a whole number of permanent war zones. Everywhere religious, national and ethnic divisions are playing an increasing role in this slide into barbarism.
The current war in Iraq is a dramatic illustration of the decomposition of this society. This is what we wrote about this after the collapse of the Russian bloc after 1989:
“The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time ’partners’ are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war... However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest”.(After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilisation and chaos [1194], International Review 61)
Even if we can’t foresee the precise direction that events are going to follow, we can be sure that this part of the world is being dragged inexorably into the abyss of decomposition.
Tino
4July 2014
[1] Rosa Luxemburg in 1915, in her Junius Pamphlet, repeating the words of Engels.
[2] Financial and military aid from Saudi Arabia to ISIS, which had previously been considerable, suddenly stopped in January when ISIS entered into war with the other Syrian rebel groups supported by the Gulf states.
Readers will be aware that we have reduced the frequency of the publication of World Revolution.
On the positive side, our website is now our main publication, which we can update as necessary between publication dates giving a proletarian view on significant events in the world. It is also able to reach readers in parts on the world that our papers cannot.
At the same time, the rise in postal charges means that producing and selling papers is increasingly expensive.
From this issue we will be producing World Revolution quarterly, 4 issues a year. Our new subscription prices will appear in the next issue. All existing subscribers will get the full number of issues they have paid for.
September 20, 2014, 11 am to 6 pm
Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Rd, Kings Cross, London WC1X 8QY
In all the noisy commemorations about the First World War, some things are more or less left in silence. First, that a crucial responsibility for the war lay with the ‘Labour’ and ‘Socialist’ parties who in 1914 voted for war credits and set about mobilising the workers for the war effort; and second, that the war was ended by the revolutionary struggles of the working class.
In the first session of this day of discussion, we will look at how the majority of the parties of the Second International came to betray the fundamental principles of internationalism and integrate themselves into the bourgeois state. This treason did not come about overnight, but was the product of a long process of degeneration which still contains many lessons for today. We will focus in particular on the German Social Democratic Party, the great jewel of the International, whose capitulation in 1914 was a decisive factor in the collapse of the International.
In the second session we will begin the discussion by showing a short film about how the working class recovered from its disarray in 1914 and, after three years of slaughter, began the wave of strikes, mutinies and uprisings which forced the ruling class to end the war and, for a while, threatened the very existence of the world capitalist system.
All welcome. Comrades who envisage coming to the meeting from outside London and will need accommodation should write to us at [email protected] [532].
We can hardly get away this year from a whole variety of historical experts telling us how the First World War actually got started and what it was really about. But very few of them – not least the left wing ideologues who are full of criticism about the sordid ambitions of the contending royal dynasties and ruling classes of the day –tell us that the war could not be unleashed until the ruling classes were confident that plunging Europe into a bloodbath would not in turn unleash the revolution. The rulers could only go to war when it was clear that the ‘representative’ of the working class, the Socialist parties grouped in the Second International, and the trade unions, far from opposing war, would become its most crucial recruiting sergeants. This article begins the task of reminding us how this monstrous betrayal could take place.
When war broke out in August 1914, it hardly came as a surprise for the populations of Europe, especially the workers. For years, ever since the turn of the century, crisis had followed on crisis: the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911, the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, just to name the most serious of them. These crises saw the great powers going head to head, all of them engaged in a frantic arms race: Germany had begun a huge campaign of naval construction, which Britain had inevitably to answer. France had introduced three-year military service, and huge French loans were financing the modernisation of Russia’s railways, designed to transport troops to its frontier with Germany, as well as that of Serbia’s army. Russia, following the debacle of its war with Japan in 1905, had launched a thoroughgoing reform of its armed forces. Contrary to what all today’s propaganda about its origins tells us, World War I was consciously prepared and above all desired by all the ruling classes of all the great powers.
So it was not a surprise – but for the working class, it came as a terrible shock. Twice, at Stuttgart in 1907 and at Basel in 1912, the Socialist parties of the 2nd International had solemnly committed themselves to defend the principles of internationalism, to refuse the enrolment of the workers in war, and to resist it by every means possible. The Stuttgart Congress adopted a resolution, with an amendment proposed by its left wing – Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg: “In case war should break out [it is the Socialist parties’] duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule”. Jean Jaurès, the giant of French socialism, declared to the same Congress that “Parliamentary action is no longer enough in any domain... Our adversaries are horrified by the incalculable strength of the proletariat. We have proudly proclaimed the bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie. Let us not allow the bourgeoisie to speak of the bankruptcy of the International”. In July 1914, Jaurès had a statement adopted by the French Socialist Party’s Paris Congress, to the effect that: “Of all the means used to prevent and stop a war, the Congress considers as particularly effective the general strike, organised internationally in the countries concerned, as well as the most energetic action and agitation”.
And yet, in August 1914 the International collapsed, or more exactly it disintegrated as all its constituent parties (with a few honourable exceptions, like the Russians and the Serbs) betrayed its founding principle of proletarian internationalism, in the name of “danger to the nation” and the defence of “culture”. And needless to say, every ruling class, as it prepared to slaughter human lives by the millions, presented itself as the high point of civilisation and culture – its opponents of course, being nothing more than bloodthirsty brutes guilty of the worst atrocities...
How could such a disaster happen? How could those who, only a few months or even a few days previously, had threatened the ruling class with the consequences of war for its own rule, now turn round and join without protest in national unity with the class enemy – the Burgfriedenpolitik, as the Germans called it?
Of all the parties in the International, it is the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, the Germany Social-Democratic Party (SPD) which bears the heaviest responsibility. Not that the others were guiltless, especially not the French Socialist Party. But the German party was the flower of the International, the jewel in the crown of the proletariat. With more than a million members and more than 90 regular publications, the SPD was far and away the strongest and best organised party of the International. On the intellectual and theoretical level, it was the reference for the whole workers’ movement: the articles published in its theoretical review Neue Zeit (New Times) set the tone for marxist theory and Karl Kautsky, Neue Zeit’s editor, was sometimes considered as the “pope of marxism” As Rosa Luxemburg wrote: “By means of countless sacrifices and tireless attention to detail, [German Social Democracy] have built the strongest organization, the one most worthy of emulation; they created the biggest press, called the most effective means of education and enlightenment into being, gathered the most powerful masses of voters and attained the greatest number of parliamentary mandates. German Social Democracy was considered the purest embodiment of Marxist socialism. German Social Democracy had and claimed a special place in the Second International – as its teacher and leader” (Junius Pamphlet).
The SPD was the model that all the others sought to emulate, even the Bolsheviks in Russia. “In the Second International the German ‘decisive force’ played the determining role. At the [international] congresses, in the meetings of the International Socialist Bureau, all awaited the opinion of the Germans. Especially in the questions of the struggle against militarism and war, German Social Democracy always took the lead. ‘For us Germans that is unacceptable’ regularly sufficed to decide the orientation of the Second International, which blindly bestowed its confidence upon the admired leadership of the mighty German Social Democracy: the pride of every socialist and the terror of the ruling classes everywhere” (Junius Pamphlet). It was therefore down to the German Party to translate the commitments made at Stuttgart into action and to launch the resistance to war.
And yet, on that fateful day of 4th August 1914, the SPD joined the bourgeois parties in the Reichstag to vote for war credits. Overnight, the working class in all the belligerent countries found itself disarmed and disorganised, because its political parties and its unions had gone over to the enemy class and henceforth would be the most energetic organisers not of resistance to war, but on the contrary of society’s militarisation for war.
Today, legend would have it that the workers were swept away like the rest of the population by an immense wave of patriotism, and the media love to show us film of the soldiers seen off to the front by a cheering population. Like many legends, this one has little to do with the truth. Yes there were demonstrations of nationalist hysteria, but these were mostly the actions of the petty bourgeoisie, of young students drunk with nationalism. In France and in Germany, the workers demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands against the war during July 1914: they were reduced to impotence by the treason of their organisations.
In reality of course, the SPD’s betrayal did not happen overnight. The SPD’s electoral power hid a political impotence, worse, it was precisely the SPD’s electoral success and the power of the union organisations that reduced the SPD to impotence as a revolutionary party. The long period of economic prosperity and relative political freedom that followed the abandonment of Germany’s anti-socialist laws in 1891 and the legalisation of the socialist parties, ended up convincing the union and parliamentary leadership that capitalism had entered a new phase, and that it had overcome its inner contradictions to the point where socialism could be achieved, not through a revolutionary uprising of the masses, but through a gradual process of parliamentary reform. Winning elections thus became the main aim of the SPD’s political activity, and as a result the parliamentary group became increasingly preponderant within the Party. The problem was that despite the workers’ meetings and demonstrations during electoral campaigns, the working class did not take part in elections as a class, but as isolated individuals in the company of other individuals belonging to other classes – whose prejudices had to be pandered to. Thus, during the 1907 elections, the Kaiser’s Imperial government conducted a campaign in favour of an aggressive colonial policy and the SPD – which up to then had always opposed military adventures – suffered considerable losses in the number of seats in the Reichstag. The SPD leadership, and especially the parliamentary group, concluded that it would not do to confront patriotic sensitivities too openly. As a result, the SPD resisted every attempt within the 2nd International (notably at the Copenhagen Congress in 1910) to discuss precise steps to be taken against war, should it break out.
Moving within the bourgeois world, the SPD leadership and bureaucracy increasingly took on its colouring. The revolutionary ardour which had allowed their predecessors to oppose the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 faded in the leadership; worse still it came to be seen as dangerous because it might expose the Party to repression. By 1914, behind its imposing façade, the SPD had become “a radical party like the others”. The Party adopted the standpoint of its own bourgeoisie and voted the war credits: only a small minority stood firm to resist the debacle. This hunted, persecuted, imprisoned minority laid the foundations of the Spartakus group which was to take the lead of the 1919 German revolution, and found the German section of the new International, the KPD.
It is almost a banality to say that we are still living today in the shadow of the 1914-18 war. It represents the moment when capitalism encircled and dominated the entire planet, integrating the whole of humanity into a single world market – a world market which was then and still is today the object of all the great powers’ covetous desires. Since 1914, imperialism and militarism have dominated production, war has become world- wide and permanent.
It was not inevitable that World War I should develop as it did. Had the International remained true to its commitments, it might not have been able to prevent the outbreak of war but it would have been able to encourage the inevitable workers’ resistance, give it a political and revolutionary direction, and so open the way, for the first time in history, to the possibility of creating a world- wide human community, without classes or exploitation, so bringing an end to the misery and the atrocities that a decadent and imperialist capitalism has ever since inflicted on humanity. This is no mere pious wish. On the contrary, the Russian revolution is the proof that the revolution was not, and is not only necessary, but possible. It was the masses’ immense assault on the heavens, this great upsurge of the proletariat, that made the international ruling classes tremble and forced them to bring the war to an end. War or revolution, socialism or barbarism, 1914 or 1917...: humanity’s only alternative could not be clearer.
Sceptics will say that the Russian revolution remained isolated and finally went down to defeat by the Stalinist counter-revolution, and that 1914-18 was followed by 1939-45. This is perfectly true. But if we are to avoid drawing false conclusions, then we need to understand the whys and wherefores rather than swallow whole the endless official propaganda. In 1917, the international revolutionary wave began in a context where the divisions of war were profoundly anchored, and the ruling class exploited these divisions to overcome the working class. Disoriented and confused, the proletariat failed to unite in one vast international movement. The workers remained divided between “victors” and “vanquished”. The heroic revolutionary uprisings, like that of 1919 in Germany, were drowned in blood, largely thanks to the traitorous workers’ party, the Social Democracy. This isolation made it possible for international reaction to defeat the Russian revolution and prepare the ground for a second world-wide butchery, confirming once again the historic alternative that is still before us: “socialism or barbarism”!
Jens
According to recent polls, 87%, even 97% of Israelis supported the military onslaught on Gaza when it was at its most intense. Some held parties on the hills overlooking the Strip, drinking beer while watching the deadly firework display from afar. Some of those interviewed in the wake of Hamas rocket attacks said that the only solution is to kill all of Gaza’s inhabitants – men, women and children. The Times of Israel published a piece from an American Jewish blogger Yochanan Gordon entitled ‘When Genocide is Permissible’1 In the marches that followed the murder of the three Israeli youths on the West Bank – the event that sparked off the present conflict – the slogan “death to the Arabs” became a crowd favourite.
In Gaza, it is reported that the population subjected to the merciless Israeli bombing and shelling cheered when Hamas or Islamic Jihad unleashed a new round of rockets, intended, even if rarely with any “success”, to kill as many Israelis as possible – men, women and children. The cry “death to the Jews” can be heard once again, just like in the 1930s, and not only in Gaza, and the West Bank but also in “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations in France and Germany where synagogues and Jewish shops have been attacked. In Britain there has also been an increase in anti-Semitic incidents.
Three years ago, in the summer of 2011, in the wake of the ‘Arab spring” and the “Indignados” revolt in Spain, the slogans were very different: “Netanyahu, Assad, Mubarak, same fight” - that was the watchword of tens of thousands of Israelis who had come out onto the streets against austerity and corruption, against the chronic housing shortage and other forms of social deprivation. Tentatively, nervously, the unity of interests between impoverished Jews and impoverished Arabs was addressed in meetings that crossed the national divide and in slogans about the housing question being an issue for everyone regardless of nationality.
Today, there have been reports of small gatherings of Israelis chanting that Netanyahu and Hamas are both our enemies, but they have been surrounded, drowned out and even physically attacked by the right wing Zionists with their increasingly blatant racist appeals. Ironic fate of the Zionist dream: a “Jewish Homeland” supposed to protect Jews from persecution and pogroms has given birth to its very own Jewish pogromists, typified by gangs like Betar and the Jewish Defence League.
In 2011, speakers from the protest movement voiced the fear that the government would find an excuse to start another assault on Gaza and thus drive social protest into the dead end of nationalism. This latest conflagration, more murderous than any of the previous wars over Gaza, seems to have begun with a provocation by Hamas or possibly a separate jihadist cell – the brutal kidnap and murder of the Israeli youths. But the Israeli government, with its spectacular deployment of troops to find the youths, and the arrests of hundreds of Palestinian suspects, was only too eager to seize on the events to strike a blow against the recently formed coalition between Hamas and the PLO, and at the same time, against those who stand behind Hamas, in particular Iran, the Shia “Islamic republic” currently being wooed by the US as an ally in Iraq against the advance of the fundamentalist Sunnis grouped in ISIS. But whatever the Israeli government’s motives in “accepting” the Hamas provocation (which of course includes the constant firing of rockets into Israel), there is no question that the current upsurge in nationalism and ethnic hatred in Israel and Palestine is a deadly blow against the fledgling growth of social and class consciousness that we saw in 2011.
It being the much-trumpeted centenary of the outbreak of World War One, we are reminded of what the internationalist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote from her prison cell in the Junius Pamphlet (originally titled The crisis of social democracy) about the atmosphere of German society at the outbreak of the war. Luxemburg tells us about
“the patriotic noise in the streets, the chase after the gold-coloured automobile, one false telegram after another, the wells poisoned by cholera, the Russian students heaving bombs over every railway bridge in Berlin, the French airplanes over Nuremberg, the spy hunting public running amok in the streets, the swaying crowds in the coffee shops with ear-deafening patriotic songs surging ever higher, whole city neighbourhoods transformed into mobs ready to denounce, to mistreat women, to shout hurrah and to induce delirium in themselves by means of wild rumours…. the atmosphere of ritual murder, the Kishinev air where the crossing guard is the only remaining representative of human dignity”
As a matter of fact, by the time she wrote these words, in 1915, she was making it clear that this initial nationalist euphoria had been dispersed by the growing misery of the war at home and at the front, but the point remains: the mobilisation of the population for war, the cultivation of the spirit of revenge, destroys thought, destroys morality, and creates a disgusting “Kishinev air” - the air of the pogrom. Luxemburg was referring to the pogrom in 1903 in the city of Kishinev in Tsarist Russia where Jews were slaughtered on the mediaeval pretext of the “ritual murder” of a Christian boy.
Like the feudal powers who were happy to stir up anti-Jewish riots to divert attention from popular discontent against their rule, and not infrequently to make sure that the destruction of the Jews also destroyed the large debts that kings and lords had incurred at the hand of Jewish money-lenders, the pogroms of the 20th century also have this dual characteristic of a calculated, cynical manipulation on the part of the ruling class, and the awakening of the most irrational and antisocial feelings amongst the population, most notably amongst the desperate petty bourgeoisie and the most lumpenised elements of society. In Kishinev and similar pogroms, the Tsarist regime had its Black Hundreds, gangs of street thugs ready to do the bidding of their aristocratic masters. The Nazi authorities who stirred up the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938 presented the beatings, lootings and murders as an expression of “spontaneous popular anger” against the Jews following the assassination of the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan.
The imperialist powers that rule the world today continue to stoke up these kinds of irrational forces in the defence of their own sordid interests. Bin Laden began his political career as an agent of the CIA pitched against the Russians in Afghanistan. But the destruction of the Twin Towers by Bin Laden’s al Qaida provides a potent example of how these forces can easily escape the control of those who try to manipulate them. And yet the progressive weakening of the USA’s world hegemony has led it to make the same mistake in Syria, where, alongside Britain, it was happy to covertly back the radical Islamists opposing the Assad regime – until they threatened to install in Syria and now in Iraq a regime even more hostile to US interests than the rule of Assad. Even Israel, with its highly trained secret service agencies, repeated the error when it initially encouraged the growth of Hamas in Gaza as a counterweight to the PLO.
At its most advanced stage of decline, capitalism is less and able to control the forces of the netherworld that it has conjured up. A clear manifestation of this tendency is that the spirit of the pogrom is spreading across the planet. In Central Africa, in Nigeria, in Kenya, non-Muslims are massacred by Islamist fanatics, provoking counter-massacres by Christian gangs. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Sunni terrorists bomb Shia mosques and processions, while ISIS in Iraq threatens Christians and Yazidis with conversion, expulsion or death. In Burma, the Muslim minority is regularly attacked by “militant Buddhists”. In Greece, immigrants are violently attacked by fascist groups like the Golden Dawn; in Hungary, the Jobbik party rails against Jews and Roma. And in “democratic” Western Europe xenophobic campaigns against Muslims, illegal immigrants, Romanians and others have become the political norm, as in the recent European elections.
In response to the Kishinev pogrom, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, at its historic 1903 congress, passed a resolution calling on the working class and revolutionaries to oppose the threat of pogroms with all their might:
“In view of the fact that movements such as the all too sadly well-known pogrom in Kishinev, quite apart from the abominable atrocities they commit, serve in the hands of the police as a means by which the latter seek to hold back the growth of class consciousness among the proletariat, the Congress recommends comrades to use all in their power to combat such movements and to explain to the proletariat the reactionary and class inspiration of anti-Semitic and all other national-chauvinist incitements”
How right was this resolution in seeing the pogrom as a direct attack on proletarian class consciousness! In 1905, faced with mass strikes and the appearance of the first workers’ soviets, the Tsarist regime unleashed the Odessa pogrom directly against the revolution. And the revolution responded no less directly: the soviets organised armed militias to defend Jewish neighbourhoods against the Black Hundreds.
Today this question is more universal and even more vital. The working class is seeing its class consciousness, its very sense of itself as a class, sapped and undermined by the relentless juggernaut of capitalist decomposition. At the social level, this decomposition of capitalist society means the struggle of each against all, the proliferation of gang rivalries, the sinister spread of ethnic, racial and religious hatreds. At the level of nation states, it means the spread of irrational military conflicts, unstable alliances, wars that both escape the control of the great powers but also drag them further into the very chaos they have created. And we are seeing in the wars in Israel/Palestine, in Iraq, in Ukraine, how the spirit of the pogrom becomes a direct adjunct of war, and threatens to turn into its ultimate avatar: genocide, the state-organised extermination of entire populations.
This sombre picture of a global society in its death agony can induce feelings of anguish and despair, especially since the hopes that sprang up in 2011 have been almost totally shattered, not only in Israel, but across the whole Middle East, which has seen protests in Libya and Syria submerged in murderous “civil wars” and Egypt’s so-called “revolution” giving rise to one repressive regime after another. And yet: these movements, above all the one in “democratic” Spain, did begin to create a perspective for the future by showing the potential of the masses when they come together in demonstrations, in assemblies, in profound debates about the direction of capitalist society and the possibility of getting rid of it. They were a sign that the proletariat is not defeated, that it has not been totally overwhelmed by the advancing putrefaction of the social order. They revived, in however confused and halting a manner, the spectre of the class struggle, of the international proletariat, which made the revolutions of 1905 and 1917-18, which put an end to the First World War with its strikes and uprisings, which blocked the road to World War Three with the renaissance of its struggles after May 1968 in France, and which has again begun to show its hand in the class movements between 2003 and 2013. The exploited class in capitalist society, realising the common interests that unite it across national, ethnic and religious barriers, is the only social force that can stand against the spirit of revenge, against the scapegoating of minorities, against national hatreds and against nation states and their endless wars.
Amos
1 It was quickly withdrawn following widespread criticism, but the fact that it could be published at all is indicative of a growing state of mind in Israel.
The contribution that we are publishing below was posted on our online discussion forum by an ICC sympathiser in response to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in early August, and the subsequent protests and unrest[1].
Among the strengths of the posting are that it criticises the rhetoric of black nationalism and left liberalism. It acknowledges that looting, setting things on fire, and undirected expressions of anger are not in themselves going to change the world. It identifies the violence of state repression as a global phenomenon. It sees the importance of workers’ struggle and the need for social revolution.
The shooting of a young black man by police in the US followed by protests is not unusual. The text obliquely refers to the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in 2012, and the shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland in 2009. These are among the incidents that are known internationally, for the angry responses they provoked. In fact the latest available figures show that a white police officer kills a black person in the US on average 96 times a year. In total the figure reported by local police to the FBI of all killings by the police is typically more than 400 a year (and that self-reported figure is probably a great underestimation). It could be suggested that, alongside the protests, it is also significant the number of times that there have been no protests.
The text also insists that “working people have to continue to defend themselves against the brutal repression of the ruling class”. We would add that, in the face of repression, elementary self-defence can be the beginning of self-organisation. If you look at what happened in Greece with the December 2008 Athens killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the subsequent protests, there were many occupations of universities and schools, which often devoted time to discuss questions way beyond the current situation. It is not just a matter of carefully considering “our tactics and methods and their effectiveness”, or finding out the best way to deal with tear gas and rubber bullets, important though that is. The extension of protests into a wider movement is posed with every struggle. The “more reflection and discussion” that is necessary is not limited to the tactics of struggle, but requires a serious attempt to understand capitalism, what it has become, and how the working class stands in relation to its exploiters and oppressors. The text asks what would happen “If one day we all woke up and just said, ‘No’”? In reality, the process that leads to revolution involves the development of class consciousness, drawing lessons from the setback of struggles, reflecting on the historic experience of the working class, and, ultimately, identifying the goal of communism. The protests of today can only be part of the movement toward a social revolution through the development of consciousness on a massive scale, a process that necessarily goes through numerous advances and retreats..
The post is right to point to the violence of state repression. In Ferguson armoured cars and snipers were routinely deployed. Local police throughout the US get military surplus equipment. The US has been in a lot of wars. That’s a lot of weaponry for a system desperate to defend itself. It also underlines the necessary scale and consciousness required of the struggle against it
There are a few formulations in the post that we would query. For example, the idea that “the wealthy American capitalist can’t afford a prosperous black nation” is contrary to the way capitalism actually functions. If there ever is prosperity, a rising sector or national group with money to spend, then it offers capitalism possibilities to sell more of its commodities. Whatever the prejudices of individual bourgeois, capitalists like selling things, whatever the colour of the money, the buyer, or the government.
In terms of the repression of the bourgeoisie, this is posed worldwide, fundamentally because the working class is an international class, which can only threaten capitalist domination through an international struggle. As the text says “workers have to unite together across racial lines in order to save society and possibly all of human civilization from destruction”.
ICC
Immediately outside the confines of a tightly packed apartment complex in Ferguson, Missouri lay the crumpled corpse of a young teenager. His body was left in the street for four hours. He had been shot six times by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. This dead young man had no criminal record and the police did not have a warrant for his arrest. His name was Michael Brown. He was 18 years old.
So Ferguson joins the list, along with Sanford, Money, San Francisco, New York City, London, and so many other places in the United States and the world.
The response from the African-American community who are joined together with many other working people in St. Louis County has been fairly significant. However the rhetoric coming from people and the protests has ranged from black nationalism to “left liberalism” to libertarianism. Most of the dialogue has been based around the idea that race and human rights are the main issues in Michael Brown’s death.
But what other forces are at work here?
The repression of the protests and anger from the people of Ferguson, and across the country, by police and other government forces has struck a chord with many Americans. Among the many questions being asked, why are so many black youth being killed in similar situations in America? Is the life of an African-American valued less than others? Why aren’t the rights of African-American people better respected in the “democratic” system in America?
The capitalist system exploits all working people. Workers all over America are subjected to the same kinds of repression, even if the scale and drama of each situation varies.
There is a long tradition of the United States government violently suppressing street protests and assemblies by working class people! And all over the rest of the world!
Racism is at its core based on ethno-national divisions. The ruling class employs the police and the paramilitary (paid for by our taxes) who kill our children over bogus reasons because they themselves are inherently racist. Capitalism breeds racism. The wealthy American capitalist can’t afford a prosperous black nation, in Missouri, in California, in Africa or anywhere else. Capitalism means the competition of nations, races, economies and this relies directly on the elbow grease of all working men and women.
Ferguson, Missouri right now looks more like the West Bank than the United States. This is a common sentiment of the demonstrators, who have been talking back and forth with Palestinians and Egyptians about the best way to avoid tear gas and rubber bullets.
Why are the demonstrators in Gaza and Israel experiencing similar events to those of working class people in the “first world”? Why these experiences in a “developed” nation like the United States? Because working people have no borders, no countries. No matter where we live we are all subjected to the will of the state government, “democratic” or otherwise. It should come then as no surprise that the Ferguson police chief himself, along with many other St. Louis county police officers have actually trained weapons combat and guerrilla tactics in Israel in recent years.
Isn’t it Ironic? Nope, it’s just capitalism.
Working people have to continue to defend themselves against the brutal repression of the ruling class through the use of the capitalist state, whether it’s economic repression, the repression of people’s dignity, or the violent repression and murder of our youth.
But we have to carefully consider our tactics and methods and their effectiveness. Unchanneled anger gets us nowhere. More reflection and discussion is always necessary. Setting trashcans on fire and throwing rocks at armored personnel carriers and urban tanks is not the path to stopping the murder of black children. Neither is looting strip malls.
The only solution is a social revolution, which can only be carried out by working people like you and me. No matter how much we appeal to our handlers, the ruling class, to improve the condition of our lives it is fundamentally in their interest not to help. This decadent system can barely stay afloat in its current condition. And to demand from the government and the people who control us respect of our “democratic rights” and basic needs is to overload this system’s capacity. Unless we all want to go down sinking together, workers have to unite together across racial lines in order to save society and possibly all of human civilization from destruction.
What rights can they give us, democratic or not, that would stop our bosses from taking a cut of our work and our pay for their profit? As long as the exploitation of workers continues, and the extraction of profit from the labor of the working class continues, no amount of “civil” disobedience is going to stop poverty! We are being clubbed over the head by capitalism. It doesn’t help if the club was democratically elected.
We have to take away the stick.
What our rulers have continued to show us is that no matter how peaceful we are, there are always violent reprisals to be had at the hands of the state. Many times when people talk about social and economic justice, the redistribution of the wealth, it assumed the system is in a position to grant these reforms. But the wealthy are not just going to hand over their wealth! Do you think they store their billions under their mattress, or in massive piggy banks? No, their wealth is in hedge funds, stocks and bonds, and to demand economic justice is a direct hit to their money. Money extorted from the profit of our labor.
If all the people in Ferguson, including the police and the politicians, just stopped going to work, who would be around to protect us from each other? Would we be killing and stealing from each other? Or is it the system itself that encourages the killing? If one day we all woke up and just said, “No”, what would happen to the world?
Maybe places like Ferguson, Missouri could be a better place.
Jamal 8.20.14
Comrades,
I recently had a letter published in the CPGB Weekly Worker. It appears that there are some ‘Communists’ that consider such views as Ultra Left (I am quite happy with being Ultra Left) what would the ICC consider such views?
Below is a copy of my letter.
“In recent weeks there has been some debate as to whether believers can be members of the party or not. That is for CPGB members to decide. However, the CPGB is not the only group involved in revolution.
As a revolutionary socialist, I think that people who believe in god should be forewarned that all religious buildings after the revolution will be bulldozed and replaced with hospitals and decent housing for the working class.
The problem with god and religion is that it goes hand in hand with capitalism (in god we trust - and the US dollar) and monarchy, thus making god an enemy of the people. Even the Vicar of Rome does not really believe in god’s existence, as is proved by his lack of faith as he travels around in his bulletproof vehicle.
Religions create division even within the same religion, let alone between Christians, Muslims and Jews and others. Let’s leave this superstition where it should be - in the distant past. Let’s get on with the job in hand and get rid of this rotten system.
Now, if you can excuse me, I am off to start my present list ready to send to Father Christmas.”
Thank you for your letter, and our apologies for the delay in replying. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t discussed it. After some consideration, we decided to focus on the fact that you seem to have written to us as an expression of the ‘ultra-left’, since this poses some very basic questions about what we mean by the ‘left’ in general.
While we do refer to ourselves as left communists, we don’t call ourselves ‘ultra left’, since the latter has so often been used as a term of abuse hurled either by opportunists or outright bourgeois apologists at those who are seeking to defend and develop authentic communist politics. The term ‘communist left’ arose during the 1920s when the Communist Parties were entering into a phase of opportunist degeneration; and those like the tendencies around Bordiga, Pannekoek, Pankhurst and others who opposed this trajectory were frequently labelled ultra-leftists or infantile leftists[1] by those most caught up in the opportunist course. Since that time the Communist Parties haven’t stayed in a kind of opportunist half-way house: during the 1930s they became direct agents of the capitalist counter-revolution and of imperialist war. They were absolutely central in the mobilisation of the working class for the slaughter of 1939-45, and in the defence of the imperialist Russian state.
In our view, once an organisation has crossed the class line which separates the bourgeoisie from the working class, there is no going back. In general, crucial historical moments like war or revolution provide us with the criteria for judging whether this definitive passage has taken place. This was certainly the case with the ‘social chauvinists’ when they supported the war in 1914 and helped to crush the revolution (especially in Germany) in 1918-19, and history repeated itself with the Communist Parties originally formed to fight against this betrayal.
The organisation which you belong to, the CPGB, is an offshoot of the Stalinist CP in the UK and has never called into question its origins in a bourgeois party. The fact that it has subsequently veered first towards a kind of Trotskyism and then towards a strange attempt to revive pre-First World War social democracy certainly does not mean that such a fundamental self-critique has taken place. On the contrary: both social democracy and Trotskyism have also proved themselves to be part of what we call the left wing of capital – social democracy in 1914-18, Trotskyism with its participation in the second world war, its defence of the USSR and of wars of ‘national liberation’, and its critical support for the Labour and Stalinist parties. So moving from one variety of bourgeois politics to another does not mean that the essential question has been posed.
The characterisation of social democracy, Stalinism and Trotskyism as capitalist political tendencies is of course the ultimate in ‘ultra-leftism’ as far as any of these tendencies are concerned, but for us it is simply the necessary defence of class principles – the same path as that taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, or Luxemburg and Liebknecht, when they denounced those who had abandoned internationalism in 1914, and by the left communists in the 30s who understand that the Communist Parties had become the mortal enemy of the revolutionary movement. For these revolutionaries this was in no sense an academic or semantic dispute; it was the social democracy who directed the hunting down and murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in 1919, and it was the Stalinists who carried out the assassination of thousands of revolutionaries in the 30s and 40s.
One of the main functions of the organisations of the capitalist left is to recruit people who are beginning to question capitalism and then turn this questioning into dead-end forms of thought and activity. This is why we have never rejected discussion with individual members of such organisations even though we reject any form of cooperation with the organisations as such. But equally we have always stressed that any political progress by such individuals cannot avoid a radical break with the organisations of the capitalist left and their whole world outlook.
We will not enter here into the questions about religion that you pose, except to make it clear to you that the policies you advocate – such as the destruction of cathedrals and, apparently, the forcible suppression of religion by the proletarian dictatorship – may be called ‘ultra-left’ by your fellow CPGB members, but they certainly have nothing to do with the real traditions of the communist left and of Marxism in general. In fact the state repression of religion has always been a feature of the Stalinist regimes and proof that they were incapable of addressing the problem of religion at its roots: the alienated social relations which are equally the source of capitalism, whether in its democratic or Stalinist forms. […]
For the ICC, A
[1]. Our views on this are explained at greater length here: https://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left [1200]
Iraq and Syria are no strangers to capitalist war and the very existence of these countries comes directly from the imperialist war of 1914-18. Iraq and Syria were created by imperialism along the Sykes-Picot border drawn up by Britain and France in 1916 to carve up the region from the lands of the Ottoman Empire. These two countries were born in and from a war that in some ways has continued ever since. Both were assets for the Allies in the Second World War against Germany and subsequently subject to coups and manipulations by the British and Americans in the Cold War against Russia from the 50s. Iraq was again used by the West against Iran in the bloody war of 1980 and was the whipping boy in 1991 where many tens of thousands were killed in a failed effort to keep the western bloc together while the butcher Saddam Hussein and his Revolutionary Guards were left intact. The 2003 invasion, led by the US and Britain, saw thousands more killed and injured by fuel-air and cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs and uranium-tipped shells. The peoples of Iraq are not unfamiliar with the embrace and kiss of imperialism, particularly the American, British and French kind.
The taking of Mosul on June 10, a city of over one million people, by IS (the “Islamic State”, known until June this year as “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”), has opened up a whole new descent into capitalist barbarity, chaos, terror and war across the already blighted region of the Middle East. IS is no rag-tag army of loose affiliations like Al Qaeda (which formally disavowed IS in February this year) but an efficient and ruthless fighting machine that is presently capable of waging war on three fronts: south towards Baghdad; east towards Kurdish territories and west into Aleppo, Syria. The Baghdad-based expert on IS, Hisham al-Hashimi says that the force is 50,000 strong (The Guardian, 21/8/14) and the same report says that it has “...five divisions’ worth of Iraqi military weapons, all of them US supplied” and suggests that “the large numbers of foreign fighters are increasingly holding sway in many areas”. IS has spread its particular reign of terror by growing from Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), then spread into the maelstrom of Syria where it absorbed, either willingly or under pain of death, other jihadist or ‘moderate’ anti-Assad forces; it now controls significant areas of the Euphrates Valley where it has established its ‘Caliphate’ across what little remains of the Iraq/Syria border, i.e., the Sykes-Picot line. The destruction of this border is significant of the deepening decay and chaos that is more and more the mark of capitalism across greater regions of the world.
With the regression into this particular shambles of the Middle East, comes a force, the Islamic State, whose tenets of a Muslim Caliphate are based on religious divisions and arguments of over a thousand years ago. The completely reactionary nature of this Caliphate is both a deepening and a reflection of the reactionary and irrational nature of the whole world of capitalism - a tendency in continuity with the First World War and all the subsequent imperialist massacres. The Islamic State has no possible future except as another destabilising gang of bandits, thugs and killers, an expression of imperialism which has stepped into the bloody mess of the wars tearing the region apart. Despite being a force of religious reaction, as shown in its brutal terror against civilian Shias, Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, Shabaks, IS is fundamentally an expression of capitalism that has been supported and built up by local imperialist powers then assimilated into becoming the front line in an anti-Assad, anti-Iranian front. This development has been supported by the actions - direct or indirect, it doesn’t matter - of America and Britain.
Surely not, some would say, where’s the sense in that? But capitalism has a history of creating its own monsters: Adolf Hitler was democratically put in place with the assistance of Britain and France in order to act as a force of terror against the working class in Germany primarily. Saddam and his killer regime were made in the west, particularly Whitehall. The same for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. The Islamic fundamentalist madrasas and Osama bin Laden were essentially products of the CIA, and of MI6 with the Pakistani secret service ISI, acting on their behalf in order to confront Russian imperialism in Afghanistan – a concoction which then gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The establishment of Hamas was initially encouraged by Israel as a means of weakening the PLO and jihadi forces have been armed, encouraged and supported by the west in Libya and the ex-Russian republics.
All the above have turned and bitten the hands that reared and fed them, showing that it’s not a question of evil individuals, but efficient capitalist psychopaths armed and encouraged by democracy. And now in the Middle East, more than ever, everything that the local and major imperialisms do to try to confront their rivals, play their cards or shape events ends not just in failure but contributes to the general deterioration of the situation, piling up more profound and widespread problems in the longer term.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been a force for over ten years but its offshoot, IS, under the new leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - released from US prison in the US Iraqi facility of Umm Qasr on Obama’s orders in 2009[1]- has been backed by Saudi and Qatari monies laundered through the compliant Kuwaiti banking system with their fighters given access to and fro across the border of Turkey. They have been armed, directly or indirectly, by the CIA and there are ongoing reports of IS fighters trained by US and British special forces in Jordan and the US base in Ircilik, Turkey[2]. Why? Because they wanted an effective fighting force against the Assad regime - much more effective than the ‘moderate’ forces. Even the Syrian regime has done business with IS and used it in the age-old strategy of supporting one’s enemy’s enemy. By supporting the forces of IS the local powers and the west sought to counter the growing strength of the Iran/Hezbollah/Assad fighting machine backed by Russia.
The Caliphate of IS doesn’t have much long term perspective but at the moment it is expanding and growing, particularly attracting a sort of ‘international brigade’ of nihilist youth. It has billions of dollars of equipment and a cash-flow from its many businesses. In another absurd twist US fighter power is ‘degrading’ its own material in selected areas. That’s not the only twist in events: US air power has given cover to the Kurdish PKK in their fight against the jihadis, even though it is a group designated as ‘terrorist’ by the US. Iran, Assad’s Syria and the West are in some ways now on the same side with reports (The Observer, 17/8/14) of Iranian warplanes operating from the massive Rasheed air base south of Baghdad and dropping barrel bombs on Sunni areas. There are undoubtedly Iranian forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria confronting IS. Turkey and Jordan, even the Saudis are now concerned about the threat of this organisation. Nothing is settled here; everything is in flux - imperialist flux.
When Sunni elements from Anbar Province joined IS to take Mosul in June, it was clear that the war in Syria had spread into Iraq. This was a complete reversal of the situation of 2006/7, where the Sunni tribal leaders of Anbar joined with US forces in the ‘Awakening’ to defeat Al-Qaeda. But the US-backed, Shia-dominated al-Maliki government in Baghdad excluded the Sunnis from any power, encouraged a pogrom-like attitude against them by Shia gangs, and treated their populations as would an occupying army. The new ‘inclusive’ government in Iraq can readmit some of its Sunni MPs but the latter are likely to be beheaded if they dare to go back to their constituencies. The US can hope for a stable government but the perspective for Iraq looks very much like a break up. The US cannot control or contain this chaos which it has, on the contrary, facilitated. For the moment it has decided to defend the Kurdish capital Irbil, where it has American ‘boots on the ground’, oil and other interests. There’s no ‘humanitarian’ intervention here, that’s just a blatant lie[3]. More lies from Cameron with “Britain is not going to get involved in another war in Iraq” (BBC News,18/8/14) alongside lies about the ‘humanitarian’ nature of its intervention. The decision to arm the Kurds by the US, France, Britain, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic, though by no means a common policy, can only strengthen the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), strengthen the tendency towards Iraq’s likely break up and cause more problems in the region.
In Irbil there are 60,000 refugees and in Dohuk, one of the poorest regions of Iraq, there are 300,000 more. Over a million in Iraq and millions across the region. These unprecedented numbers on the move, along with collapsing borders, is an expression of the further decay of this rotten system. The Iranian regime has been strengthened, the borders of Turkey (a NATO member) and Jordan weakened and threatened and yesterday’s terrorists and evildoers become today’s allies. And the ‘blowback’ danger to western capitals and industrial areas, always a threat as Prime Minister Blair was warned of by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in 20054[4], is now much more acute as the eventually defeated Jihadis return to the major centres and look for ways to continue their brutal attacks. IS encapsulates the putrefying, regressive nature of capitalism and its flight into militarism, barbarity and irrationality: killing and dying for religion[5], the wholesale slaughter of civilians, the rape and slavery of women and children. The US and its ‘allies’ may be able to push back IS, but it cannot contain the imperialist chaos that has given rise to it. On the contrary, the major and local powers can only deepen this instability further. What they don’t want is exactly what they have worked for and will continue to work for, because the whole capitalist system drives them blindly in this direction.
Baboon 23/8/2014
This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC.
[1]. https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jun/19/jeanine-pir... [1201]
obama-set-isis-leader-free-2009/
[3]. Obama and Prime Minister Cameron took credit for rescuing the Yazid’s from Mount Singar but they were more concerned with defending Irabil and the same for the Kurdish Peshmergas who abandoned these civilians, giving the more radical PKK the opportunity to step into the breach and present themselves as the true saviours of the Yazidis, although many of them still remain stranded and in considerable danger.
[5]. One of the more effective and absurd defences by IS against US-led Iraqi forces trying to re-take Tikrit was the flying suicide bombers who launched themselves out of windows and off roofs onto the advancing columns.
The Communist Party of Great Britain, which each summer hosts the “Communist University” in London, is different from the Socialist Workers Party. It’s extremely difficult for revolutionaries to speak at SWP meetings because they pack the floor with their own members who are pre-arranged to monopolise the brief period of debate that usually follows a lengthy introduction (or three). At the Communist University meeting titled ‘Left wing communism, an infantile disorder?’ the period of discussion was long enough and open enough for an ICC member to develop his argument. The SWP, in contrast, is not in the least open to critical theory. For example, internal discussion of the anthropological ideas of Chris Knight and Camilla Power, who have both spoken several times at ICC congresses, was ruled out by the SWP leadership. Both anthropologists gave talks at the Communist University and their ideas are given a regular airing in the CPGB paper Workers Weekly. When the SWP talk about the degeneration of the Russian revolution, they generally argue that it all went wrong under Stalin and readily agree with Lenin’s dismissal of the left communists as childish sectarians. At the meeting on left wing communism, several CPGB members or supporters agreed that the degeneration of the Soviet power began right from the beginning and expressed doubts about the leftist habit of using Lenin’s book Left wing Communism as a tactical manual for all occasions; one said that the Bolsheviks’ suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 had been a kind of “friendly fire” tragedy.
Does this mean that there is a class difference between the CPGB and the SWP? We don’t think so. Both groups provide examples of a genuine crisis among the organisations that make up the ‘left wing of capital’: the SWP with its mass defections following the revelations about sexual violence by a member of the central committee against a female member; and (as we argue in this issue to a CPGB member who has written to us), the CPGB with its curious meandering trajectory that has led it from Stalinism (it began as a faction within the old CP) to a kind of Trotskyism and now towards a flirtation with Kautskyism and pre-1914 social democracy. But the CPGB has only moved from one location to another within the horizon of leftism without ever once questioning its historic roots in the Stalinist counter-revolution, and its adoption of a more ‘democratic’ approach than that of the more brutal SWP does not change this. This is a question we can come back to in another article but it is relevant to the sense of the intervention we made at this meeting.
The talk on Lenin’s book was given by David Broder, a former member of the Commune group which originally split from the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to work on a synthesis between Trotskyism and a sort of libertarian or councilist outlook, calling for ‘communism from below’. This group was a further product of the crisis of leftism and although it gave rise to some interesting discussions in and around it, the group has never really broken the umbilical cord connecting it to the capitalist left. And although Broder has now left the group you can still say the same about his own political history.
The presentation by Broder, who had previously contributed an article on Bordiga and Bordigism to the Weekly Worker[1] and has been in Italy researching the revolutionary movement in Italy during World War Two, contained some very accurate observations about how the survival needs of the early Soviet state pushed the Bolsheviks and the Communist International towards opportunist tactics - in particular the United Front with the social democratic parties and organisational fusion with centrist currents in Italy and Germany . This criticism had a certain councilist flavour: at one point the October revolution was described as a “coup” and the Communist International defined more or less as a tool of the Soviet state from day one. But Broder did emphasise the importance of the left communists’ defence of principles against tactical concessions which essentially reflected the increasingly national interests of the Soviet state rather than the necessity for international revolution. The intransigent internationalism of the communist left in the revolutionary period that followed the First World War was emphasised, even if it was also pointed out that they were never unified into a coherent international fraction.
And yet when it came to sketching out the history of the communist left after the 1920s, the talk descended into caricature. There was virtually no mention of the communist left in the 1930s and during World War Two, and no mention at all of the still existing political organisations of the communist left which have, in one way or another, tried to develop the work initiated in the early 1920s by the KAPD in Germany or Bordiga’s Communist Party of Italy. The impression given was that the left communist tradition evolved as follows: Socialisme ou Barbarie, with its ideas about ‘workers self-management’ in the 1950s and 60s, then the ‘communisation’ current which is uninterested in the defensive struggles of the class and demands communism right now. Included in this trend were the TPTG and Blaumachen in Greece (already inaccurate because only the second group fits this category), but particularly well-known individuals rather than political groups: Gilles Dauvé, Jacques Camatte and John Zerzan. The latter two were surely added to make the subsequent history of left wing communism look as ridiculous as possible: Camatte because, while he did begin his political life with the ‘orthodox’ Bordigists and later developed an interest in other currents of the communist left, ended up deciding that capital had become so all-powerful that the only solution was to “leave this world”, and Zerzan, who was never part of the communist left anyway, because he drifted into a kind of deep primitivism which came to the conclusion that human beings began to go wrong when they invented language.
These criticisms of Broder’s version of the subsequent evolution of left communism were included in our intervention at the meeting. Some of the previous participants had criticised Broder for not clearly drawing out any political lessons from his presentation; in defending the real continuity of the communist left, we insisted on the vital theoretical work the surviving fractions carried out in the dark period of the 30s and 40s, which led the most clear-sighted tendencies to the lesson that the role of a communist party is not to take power on behalf of the workers or identify itself with the transitional state – an error which not only pulled the Bolsheviks towards crushing working class opposition but also towards their own destruction as a party of the revolution. In particular, we insisted that the left communists were the only consistent internationalists during World War Two, along with a handful of anarchists and dissident Trotskyists, and that those currents that supported the anti-fascist war passed to the other side of the barricade, as had the social-chauvinists in 1914. This question of the integration into capitalism of the organisations of the official ‘Labour Movement’ – not of the working class itself, as the communisation theorists tend to argue – was seen in embryo by the left communists of the 20s and developed by their political descendants, who had experienced first-hand that Stalinism, for example, was not an opportunist or mistaken trend within the workers’ movement, but a direct agent of bourgeois repression against workers and revolutionaries.
This affirmation – which implies that to be a communist today you have to stand outside and against the organisations of the bourgeois left - was aimed not only at the CPGB but also at Broder who remains within the horizons of Trotskyism. This was confirmed in his response to our intervention regarding the Second World War: although he has always maintained that, unlike the Trotskyists, he regards the 1939-45 conflict as an imperialist war on both sides, at this meeting he rejected the position of the communist left that saw the patriotic Resistance as an integral part of the imperialist war fronts and opposed working inside them[2]. For him, it was necessary to be ‘inside’ the partisans because that is where the workers were - a classically Trotskyist pretext, and itself a degenerated version of Lenin’s argument, in Left Wing Communism, in favour of working inside the reactionary trade unions.
Amos 30/8/14
[2]. In fact, the left communist Partito Comunista Internationalista, formed in Italy in 1943 on an unclear basis that was criticised by our more direct political ancestors, the Gauche Communiste de France, was ambiguous about whether or not to participate in the partisan groups, as we argue in this article from no. 8 of our International Review: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/197701/9333/ambiguit... [1205]
John Ball, as Melvin Bragg points out in his two-part documentary Radical Lives[1], was consciously written out of history for 300 years after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Unfortunately the real message and meaning of the movement which John Ball gave voice to is also kept hidden in the present, and also in Melvin Bragg’s own programme.
Although Radical Lives is a well made and informative documentary, which does much to restore John Ball’s historical importance, it is also a piece of bourgeois liberal propaganda. Bragg from the outset states that he rejects the term ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ because although peasants took part so too did many other strata of society such as “artisans, administrators, one or two Knights of the realm”. This was certainly true, but he goes on to claim that the revolt was in fact a movement of the amorphous and comfortingly liberal/democratic but in actuality non-existent group the “commons of England”. This is an angle he is extremely keen to push, because he is in effect arguing that the Peasants’ Revolt was not an expression of the exploited class and their instinctive drive towards a communistic world view, but rather an early precursor to what marxists describe as a bourgeois revolution.
This idea may or may not have merit and it would require a much more in depth study to fully get to grips with what exactly the Peasants’ Revolt represents historically; I would suggest that it was more of an expression of the exploited peasants than of the emerging bourgeoisie. This is mainly because of the strength of its communistic tendencies and also the fact that it simply seems too early for a bourgeois revolution to really be a serious prospect - but all this is really a side issue for now, what is important to understand is the way in which Melvin Bragg’s views obscure the reality of the peasants’ revolt and it’s true legacy.
There is a conscious or unconscious policy throughout the show of ‘whatever you do don’t mention communism’; this is shown particularly clearly when he quotes Ball himself. The well-known quote
“My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common, when there shall be neither vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they have used us!… They have wines, spices and fine bread, when we have only rye and the refuse of fine straw; and if we drink, it must be water. They have handsome seats and manors, when we must brave the wind and rain in our labours in the field; but it is from our labour they have the wherewith to support their pomp.… Let us go to the king, who is young, and remonstrate with him on our servitude, telling him we must have it otherwise, or that we shall find a remedy for it ourselves” (Typical sermon, described in The Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and other places adjoining by the contemporary historian Jean Froissart)
becomes “matters goeth not well to pass in England nor shall do until everything be common and the Lords be no greater masters than we be.” This rendering is nicely vague and democratic-sounding and can be understood as merely being a condemnation of the oppressiveness of the Feudal state and its undemocratic notions of the ‘divine right’ to rule. However the full quote and a half way thorough understanding of John Ball and the primitive Christianity which he turned to for his beliefs would make the condemnation of class society and private property in general much more clear; perhaps this is why it was avoided?
We are told by Bragg that John Ball’s vision of Christianity was a “kind of democracy in which men and women lived equally without being oppressed either by the Church or by the state.” He then quotes more of the quote above without seeing the contradiction between that and his ‘democratic’ ideology; namely the fact that the quote talks almost entirely about differences in wealth between the ‘Nobles’ and the poor and the fact that “it is from our labour they have the wherewith to support their pomp.” The implication being that the state in ‘democracy’ no longer oppresses anyone. John Ball was not a mere ‘democrat’. Rather, Ball and a few other Christians in history took seriously Jesus’ real teachings, representing the communist tradition which stretches back as long as human history.
It can be said that I am nit-picking at an otherwise good documentary to point out what we communists would guess would be the case before watching any BBC programme - which is that it’s probably not going to have a clear marxist analysis. However it is still important to point these things out because it is ultimately a question of which class inspiring events such as the Peasants’ Revolt belong to - the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, the exploiters or the exploited. The Peasants’ Revolt, although ultimately a failure, as all our movements have so far been, remains highly inspirational and needs to be appreciated as part of our struggle and our history.
One of the most inspiring things about the Peasants’ Revolt, which the documentary brings out well, is its highly moral character. It is referenced a few times that there were very few instances of looting and that the violence that was carried out was almost universally done in a conscious and deliberate way against individuals known to have taken a serious role in the oppression and exploitation of the poor, rather than being allowed to descend into pogrom or riot mentality. The moral position against looting was taken in order to show that the rebels were not thieves but were interested only in gaining freedom from serfdom and oppression. This expresses both great strengths of the movement but also a few of its weaknesses. For example the peasants may have taken land from landowners they were opposed to but their attitude to wealth itself was largely one of dismissive anger. This is shown clearly in the order issued to those raiding the houses of noblemen in order to burn the documents and records which kept them in servitude: “None, on pain to lose his head, should presume to convert to his own use anything that was or might be found, but that they should break such plate and vessels of gold and silver, as were in that house in great plenty, into small pieces, and throw the same into the Thames or into the privies” (cited in The English Rising of 138, H Fagan and R H Hilton, Lawrence and Wishart, 1950, p120. This is a little known history of the revolt, but probably the best so far)
Another extremely inspiring aspect of the revolt is the way in which the peasants managed to co-ordinate their movement across large swathes of the country, especially in Kent and Essex, in a time before mass communication was easily achievable. The tendency towards ‘localism’ which this produced was always an issue for peasant movements and is an important reason why the peasantry are not seen by marxists as a revolutionary class as such. The fact that they could to some extent overcome this difficulty is an indication of just how inventive and powerful the exploited can be when they come together in a common cause.
In many of these aspects of the movement the role played by John Ball and Watt Tyler should not be underestimated. The movement was shaped massively by the teachings and worldview of John Ball in particular and his rhyming couplets such as the famous “When Adam delved and Eve span/ Who then was the Gentleman?” became extremely popular. Similarly his advice and moral demands such as his prohibition against looting were almost astonishingly (to us brought up in decomposing capitalism at least) strongly held to by the vast majority of those involved.
As a movement it clearly was not free of weaknesses and it was ultimately doomed to remain a glimpse of a dream which is still to be realised. This was largely because of the historical context, not yet truly allowing for the practical dismantling of class society, but this expressed itself ideologically also in a number of ways: for example firstly its vision of communism was still very much a ‘Christian communism’, a communism of poverty, and therefore there was little in the way of practical ideas about how to create and maintain the new society they envisioned. And the trust in the King and the failure to really question the idea of kingship in general proved a fatal mistake when the King repaid their trust with deception and savage repression. This trust in the King is a clear warning to all revolutionary movements: beware of and be on guard against any illusions fostered by the dominant class because any of these can become fatal in the struggle against their systems of tyranny. There are still ‘Kings’ or idols that we as a class still harbour illusions in today: democracy, the rule of law, the nation, or any of the countless lies perpetuated daily by the present day ‘noblemen’. Hopefully, when the proletariat does again rise up, it will not fall for any of these fatal lies.
Jaycee, 29/8/14
(This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1] First shown BBC2, 1 August 2014 as ‘Now is the Time – John Ball’; part two was ‘The Rights of Man – Tom Paine’, shown a week later.
In Iraq and Syria Britain condemns the advance of the Islamic State while insisting it will not take part in any military intervention; in Gaza it supports Israel’s right to self-defence while freezing export licences for military equipment in protest at the growing slaughter; while in the Ukraine it supports sanctions against Russia so long as the impact on its financial sector is not too great. Such apparent contradictions are often seen in the opaque and convoluted manoeuvres of participants in the ‘international community’. However, for the British state today they express not just the usual twists and turns of imperialist tactics but a growing incoherence at the level of imperialist strategy. This has its roots in the growing fragmentation and barbarism that has come to dominate the international situation since 1989 and in the long term decline of British power.
The decline of British imperialism from global domination to a distrusted second rate power has often been analysed. Nonetheless, it is worth recalling that before the First World War the British Empire encircled the globe and its military power, especially naval, was superior to its nearest rivals. Even then, however, the economic dominance that this was based on had already been eroded by the rise of rivals headed by Germany and America. The ‘Great War’ revealed this weakness to the world, perhaps with the exception of the British ruling class. The inter-war period was one of turbulence and uncertainty, above all because the revolutionary threat posed by the international working class meant that the reshaping of the imperialist world order was effectively interrupted.
In this sense, the Second World War can be seen as a completion of the First, in that it confirmed America’s dominance and Britain’s demotion to the second rank. However, the division of the world into the two blocs that emerged from the ruins of the war created an unprecedented situation, characterised on the one hand by a confrontation which if unleashed could have destroyed the planet and, on the other, by a certain level of stability as the lesser powers curbed their ambitions in exchange for the protection of the bloc leaders. This in no way meant that this was some kind of peaceful balance of power; on the contrary, it was marked by endless and bloody proxy wars as the two blocs probed each other and sought to gain the upper hand. Nor, indeed, did it mean peace and harmony within the blocs: ambitions were curbed, not abandoned.
The British ruling class generally recognised that its interests were best served by staying close to the US. This both reflected the existence of real common interests against the Russian Bloc and acquiescence to a situation it could no longer challenge – as the US had made clear in the 1950s when it slapped down Britain’s attempt to act independently over Suez. One consequence of this was that Britain effectively maintained a position in the global order that its own economic strength no longer warranted. The unravelling of the Western Bloc that followed the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 changed this irrevocably.
For many states this situation presented them with new possibilities. Old vassals of the USSR turned towards the US and Europe, others such as Germany and Japan that had been constrained after their defeat in the war began to stretch their muscles. The failure of American attempts to hold the line through the first Gulf War and beyond emboldened lesser powers, such as Israel and Iran, to assert themselves regionally.
For Britain however, this was less an opportunity than a threat because it was once again confronted by the full reality of its decline and the legacy of its past global swagger that had sown hatred and distrust amongst allies and enemies alike. At the same time, its ruling class not only had the imperialist ambitions common to all ruling classes, but also the pretensions of its past power and glory. In the new world order, the British state found itself caught between a US that was struggling to maintain its old authority and which was increasingly drowning parts of the world in blood in its attempts to do so, and a Europe that was increasingly dominated by a resurgent Germany. In our press we have charted British imperialism’s efforts to steer an independent line over the last quarter of a century and analysed the development of factions within the ruling class arguing for differing imperialist strategies. In the last decade we have shown the impasse into which the Blair government drove British imperialist strategy as a result of the turn towards the US that followed 9/11 and the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cameron came to power with an idea of breaking out of this impasse by reaching beyond its parameters to new powers such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Brazil and China, but this vision also foundered in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. Today it seems that every move Britain makes backfires. The intervention in Libya in 2011 to help the rebellion against Gaddafi was hailed a success at the time because it achieved its aim rapidly and with no loss of British military personnel. Today, the country is torn apart by a myriad factions of former ‘freedom fighters’ and the British embassy has been closed and its staff have fled. As we show in other articles in this issue, barbarism is spreading in many parts of the world, being particularly concentrated in those places where the US has led efforts to defeat ‘extremism’ and restore ‘order’ and where its former protégés and pawns have gone freelance.
The result within the British ruling class has been to increase its divisions and to force them into the open. This was seen most explicitly a year ago when the attempt to sanction military intervention in Syria was defeated in the House of Commons (see “Syria intervention vote: Impasse of British imperialism” in WR 362, September/October 2013[1]). The impasse that now exists within the ruling class means that it has been unable to develop a coherent imperialist policy in the last 12 months and it is this, rather than tactical oscillations, that lie behind the apparent contradictions noted at the start of this article.
In Iraq and Syria, Britain has joined the condemnation of the Islamic State but has been hesitant in getting involved. Nonetheless, there has been a gradual move from initially only providing ‘humanitarian’ aid, to agreeing to transport weapons to the Kurds supplied by others and then to declaring its willingness to supply British military equipment. The fighter aircraft originally deployed to aid the humanitarian mission are now carrying out military surveillance while ministers repeatedly state there will be no ‘boots on the ground’. Divisions have already come into the open, with military figures, such as Lord Dannatt, calling not only for armed intervention, but also for direct talks with President Assad of Syria. He has been joined by the former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind who said Britain had to be “harshly realistic” and likened working with Assad to the wartime alliance with Stalin, arguing that “history judged them right in coming to that difficult but necessary judgement” (Guardian 22/08/14).
There have also been demands for Parliament to be recalled, which Cameron has resisted on the grounds that the intervention in response to the humanitarian crisis does not require an emergency debate. Most recently, the possibility of joining the US air strikes has been raised in a report in the New York Times (26/08/14), which quoted unnamed US officials saying they expected that Britain and Australia would be willing to participate. Britain’s position does not exclude this possibility since ministers have only ruled out the use of ground troops. Thus it is possible that Cameron is trying to move towards intervention gradually, testing out the level of opposition as he goes in order to avoid a repeat of the humiliation over Syria. The execution of the journalist James Foley, because it may have been carried out by a British member of the Islamic State, could help to provide a pretext, although Cameron did not immediately take this opportunity.
During the latest violence in Gaza the British Government has condemned the rocket attacks by Hamas and reiterated its position that Israel has a right to defend itself, while gradually increasing its criticism of Israel over the number of civilian deaths and the attacks on UN buildings. There have been divisions across the political parties, coming to a head with the resignation of Baroness Warsi who condemned her government’s policy as “morally indefensible” and claimed that it was no longer acting as an ‘honest broker’ in the region. She was attacked by some fellow Tories, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, for over-reacting, suggesting that it was more a matter of pique over her demotion in the recent cabinet reshuffle than of principle as she claimed. There have also been tensions in the coalition over military exports to Israel, with Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Trade Minister stating that exports would be suspended if violence resumed.
Turning to the Ukraine, Britain supported its move towards Europe as part of its long-term support of the expansion of the European Union as a way of counter-balancing Germany’s position. Thus it supported the protestors in Kiev, playing down the fascist sympathies of many of the organisations involved in it, and has been happy to portray Russia as causing the current conflict for its own territorial ambitions. It has also supported the imposition of sanctions, suggesting that the restrictions on the movements and financial transactions of various senior figures in Russia would somehow have a real impact. However, it was far less willing to impose effective financial sanctions because of the possible impact on Britain’s financial sector, which remains one of the few profitable parts of the economy.
The confusion and indecision currently evident should not be seen as implying any lessening of Britain’s imperialist ambitions. The challenge is over precisely what those ambitions are and how to achieve them. So, intervention, whether in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere should not be ruled out. Nor should further attempts to develop new relationships amongst all the competing powers. But the historic decline of British imperialism cannot be reversed and the impasse it has reached remains. On paper, Britain remains a strong military power, ranked sixth in the world in terms of expenditure. Despite recent cuts, the current level of spending at 2.3% of GDP is only slightly lower than a decade before when it was 2.4% (“Trends in world military expenditure, 2013”, SIPRI 2014). But this reveals the real problem for Britain: the disorder and uncertainty of the international situation and its own history means that it faces the possibility of under-performing, of punching below its weight.
Just as Britain has ordered aircraft carriers without aircraft to carry, so today it has imperialist ambitions without a coherent strategy to realise them.
North, 29/08/14
Until only one week ago, the inhabitants of the working-class neighbourhood of Gamonal [in the town of Burgos in Castile, central Spain] have daily come out onto the streets to demand a halt to building work of a major road. The mayor had continually refused to do anything, but faced with persistent demonstrations and the widespread solidarity across Spain (in at least thirty towns), he initially announced a temporary suspension of the work and then finally on Friday 17th [January] agreed to call a total halt to it. However, when the residents, met in their assembly on Saturday 18th, they decided to continue the struggle, demanding the unconditional release of everyone taken into custody and the removal of the anti-riot police.
Why and how did such a movement arise? What lessons does it provide? Is it part of the international struggle of the working class? We will try to answer these questions in order to stimulate discussion and to aid the development of the class struggle. That said, we also want to express in particular our solidarity with the struggle and with those who were imprisoned.
The struggle appears to have arisen out of something quite small: the reconstruction of a boulevard (a large avenue), part of the unfolding programme of road work taking place in many cities, lining the pockets of the urban developers, and tainted by corruption, but with no concern at all for improving the lives of local residents.
But sometimes we can be deceived by appearances and only a serious examination of the background to the struggles can enable us to understand them and to support them. In much the same way, a significant social movement in Turkey arose after the felling of some trees in a park in Istanbul[1]
Gamonal is a working-class neighbourhood of Burgos built in the 1960s next to an industrial area of the same name. The enormous buildings are like rabbit hutches squeezed together to make vertical slums. But if suffering from such living conditions for many years has left a bitter after-taste, more recently unemployment has increased dramatically, social services have been cut, and municipal taxes have spiralled, and evictions have increased ... an accumulated burden of suffering reflected in the faces of people in signs of anxiety, worry and a fear of things getting even worse.
In this context, rebuilding a boulevard that shows a blatant waste of money, and the proposals for an underground car park that would threaten the fragile foundations of many buildings, was seen as the final straw to break the camel's back coming on top of unacceptable levels of unemployment, a bleak future, atomisation, “living on one's nerves”. This is not peculiar to Burgos, but is the daily experience of millions of workers and exploited around the world.
The struggle of Gamonal can't be compared with other kinds of protest where people come along and make a lot of noise before quietly retreating to the whence they came, home to their atomised and solitary existence. Every day without exception the assembly was held at noon and at 7:00 in the evening following the day's demonstrations.
The assemblies were the brain and the heart of the movement. The brain, because here there was a collective reflection about how to struggle, about what actions to take next, about the decisions to make. The heart, because the assembly is a real expression of the means of communicating, developing understanding and establishing links to break the isolation and the atomisation, which are the terrible stigma of a society where everyone is trapped "in their own little world", dominated by the commodity..
As some people who actively participated in the struggle wrote on a blog[2]: "The failure of the old structures of pseudo-participation such as political parties and the creation of the self-organised assemblies, without leaders, everyone participating as equals, opens the door to a new world", but even more important was the insistence that "we all are needed, the elderly, youth, the mothers and fathers and children" and it is inside the assembly (the method specific to the working class) where they all have a place and can each make specific contributions.
The assembly aimed to deepen consciousness. The struggles which have unfolded around the world since 2003 have arisen in the context of the loss of working class identity; the class has lost confidence in itself and is unable to recognise itself as such.[3] However, this is what we read: "Today, Thursday [16 January], we have freed our imprisoned comrades. Local residents, parents, all kinds of people in solidarity, came to greet them upon their release from prison in Burgos chanting. ‘You are not alone’ (and)’ Long live the struggle of the working class’!" Realistically, we know that this is only an indication, but such proclamations highlight the fact that at least some minorities are beginning to have confidence in the power of the working class.
One graffiti stated: "Barricades close the street but open up the road, Paris May 68 - Gamonal 14 January". Let us repeat: there is no room for complacency but we must emphasise the relationship established between this movement in a neighbourhood of Burgos and the struggle of May 68. Marx spoke of the subterranean maturation of consciousness in the great mass of workers as an old mole digging his hole and advancing through the depths of the earth. Today, the working class seems to be buried in a dark well, but the struggle of Gamonal shows it entails a striving for consciousness. Diario de Vurgos reminds us: "We are carrying a new world in our hearts".
It is very significant that the movement did not stop after the final abandonment of the roadworks, stating that it is necessary "to go much further, extending the struggle for housing, against work-unemployment -insecurity ... and in creating a community of struggle that confronts the various attacks of the State". "It is always necessary to keep alive the flame of a phenomenon that is not at all new and is part of the collective heritage of all the exploited and oppressed of the world."
The state responded quickly. The neighbourhood was surrounded on all sides by riot police. It was an undeclared state of siege, with the police checking identities, establishing roadblocks everywhere, breaking up any "suspect" groups. There were 46 arrests.
The democratic state, which we are told is the champion of respect for human rights, treated the detainees in a brutal and humiliating manner: "In the assembly this afternoon [Thursday, 16th], a young boy who was held in prison, spoke about his stay in the police station and prison. Beatings were dished out at the police station, (...) This youth was carrying a backpack when he was arrested that the police subsequently filled with stones. When he protested saying it was not him who put stones in the bag, the police threatened to put him in a cell with more police and to beat him up as they had done with others".
The unions and left parties provide a false picture of the state. They recognise that it has a nasty face (politicians, the government of the day, the police and its excesses) only to bamboozle us with the other face, that of the "eminent" judges who would not hesitate in indicting the daughter of the King! But such fairy tales vanish when we look at the actual experience of Gamonal: "This morning, the judge of the court No. 3 in Burgos jailed four comrades held on bail of 3000 euros, accused of committing crimes against public order on the Monday evening. (...) At the time of his court appearance, [this youth] has said that the judge spoke to them, insulted them, distrusted them, not even listening to their statements about how they had suffered in the police station". With the state, it is not a matter of the "nasty face" and the "friendly face"; it is a machine for repression in the service of the exploiting class and all its institutions play their part in this from the police and the church to the judges and unions.
The best weapon against repression is the massiveness of the struggle and the search for solidarity. On each occasion the assembly asked the participants not to disperse individually on their own after the event, but to leave in the most compact groups possible so that the anti-riot police were not able to hunt down lone protesters at the end of the demo. The assembly was trying to avoid police provocations that try to create a melee, dispersing the protesters into isolated groups and using police power against them. Diario de Vurgos puts it very clearly: "Today was not a pitched battle, it was psychological: the forces of repression have used intimidation for hours, gradually, throughout the neighbourhoods, with their guns, batons and uniforms, oozing hatred, trying to send the message: 'we are in charge here' but we have not fallen into the trap. They are not in control, though they want to be. Today, more than ever, the street still belongs to the neighbourhood of Gamonal and it is the neighbourhood itself that sets the tone and pace of the struggle and only the neighbourhood that decides when we roar and when we bite".
That said, Diario de Vurgos falls into a contradiction: "In Madrid, we went out into the street three days running and we continue to charge [against the police]. In Zaragoza, barricades were built, as well as in Valencia and Alicante; in Barcelona, the windows of banks inside the barricades were smashed and in the Ramblas the police station was attacked. There were twenty arrests across the country. It is now up to us to show solidarity with all those who showed it to us! "Previously, Diario Virgos showed very clearly how the Gamonal Assembly had avoided the trap of isolated clashes with the police, and now it highlights such clashes.
We offer our support to the 20 detainees. We do not condemn their actions, on the contrary, we understand their rage and frustration very well. What we condemn is the trap the bourgeoisie has set up to make us believe that the struggle can be fought on the terrain of street violence by small minorities.
What is the "Gamonal danger" according to the televised news? It seems that what shook the Interior Minister most was the sight of hooded individuals throwing stones, the burned out containers and the shattered windows. There are probably some stupid bourgeois experiencing the chills faced with such ''disorder''. But Capital is a cold and impersonal machine and its smartest managers (who are also the most cynical) know perfectly well what in truth worries them most. In other words, what the so-called ''communications'' media don't speak the truth about when referring to Gamonal: the massive nature and "assembly form" of this movement.
Let's look at a blog called El Confidencial that credits itself with informing politicians and the employers. Regarding Gamonal[4], this blog says: "Jobs, housing and residents' participation, as in the case Gamonal, are not defended anymore on the basis of the same logic of five or six years ago, when there was no alternative leadership to the unions or organisations directly linked to political parties. Since then there has been a process of discrediting and decomposition of these social agents in parallel with the success of the new forms of organisation and protest, which have less structure but, on the other hand, a clear capacity to mobilise". Further on, these gentlemen give a warning. "The new logic of protest took everyone by surprise. They do not fall within the traditional definition of organisations and social movements, they do not correspond in any way to the neighbourhood associations, let alone the trade unions". Not one word about the "terrible danger" against which we were hysterically alerted by the Minister of the Interior or the Commissioner of the Government of the Region of Madrid (the latter now considered as "progressive" because of his ''criticisms'' of the Gallardón Law[5]).
The strength of Gamonal rests on two pillars: the assemblies and solidarity. Solidarity with the 46 imprisoned in response to the fact that today, Monday, the struggle continues owing to the fact that the prisoners have not been released or the charges against them dropped. But this solidarity has taken on a greater significance owing to the extension of the movement all across Spain.
The Assembly of Gamonal decided to send some delegates to other towns to inform them of its struggle and to explain its key objectives and especially to show that there is an underlying mutual interest in struggling together. This germ has borne fruit and on Wednesday 14th at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, where 3,000 people, mostly youth, demonstrated in support of Gamonal. On the Thursday and Friday, the demonstrations spread elsewhere while continuing inside the country's capital city. There were demonstrations in more than 30 cities where it was mostly young people gathering together to shout slogans of support for Gamonal. The solidarity of the street has strengthened the commitment of the Gamonal residents. The profound experience of 2011 was not completely lost in the void of forgetfulness[6], and some traces of it can be seen here and there. Only two months ago, there was the cleaners' strike in Madrid, and there were expressions of working class solidarity from other sectors[7] that helped to cushion the blows felt by the strikers. In November 2013, a large wave of strikes rocked Bangladesh in solidarity with the textile workers there. Currently, there is a struggle of workers in the Lavanderias (laundries) in the Madrid hospitals outside and against the unions. Similarly, the workers of Tragsa (a public company carrying out 'environmental work' consisting of 4,600 people across Spain) have rejected the agreement signed by the unions proposing 600 redundancies.
But it would be a serious mistake to overestimate the movement.
The Assembly of Gamonal had its own dynamics that the opposition parties (PSOE and IU[8]) failed to stop. But if people rejected the PSOE, the IU was better equipped to exert its influence in the neighbourhood associations and, even if it was still not able to block the struggle, it was able, on the other hand, to stop any clear understanding of it. It did this by arguing that the current PP government was the cause of the problems, and that everything could be blamed on the detrimental effect of privatisations on the public sector, and the claim that "an alternative" was possible if the municipal administration was really linked "to the people". For those who think only in terms of "action" and what matters is that "people react" without clearly knowing why, with whom, and to what end, raising any other sorts of questions would amount to talking nonsense and making life more complicated.
In fact, this only serves to hide the need we all have - we, the proletariat - to make the effort to reflect, to reclaim our historical experience. If we are going to avoid the errors of the past, we need a revolutionary theory that is a real force for action.
This difficulty to provide ourselves with an orientation is rooted in the fact that the demonstrations in solidarity with Gamonal are not backed up by assemblies. This means that, while being very precious and full of promise, the solidarity has remained at the level of good wishes; it has not been made concrete, and the demonstrations have not gone beyond simple protest.
Despite what is signified by the slogan "Long live the struggle of the working class!", the movement has still seen itself as a "citizens' or people's" struggle (in the demos we often heard : "The people united will never be defeated"). The bourgeoisie and its parties impose this vision (and the unions too speak about "popular protest").
If we see ourselves as "citizens" or "the people", we become the class brothers of the politicians who deceive us, of the police who beat us, of the judges who imprison us, of Amancio Ortega, the richest man in Spain; we are all part of the "greater Spanish family". And if we accept this "Holy Family", we have to also accept insecurity, cuts in social spending, lay-offs, as is required to make the "Spanish brand" more competitive[9]. This is what the government, the employers and the right wing politicians proclaim in all their cynical frankness and what the left and the unions oppose with their idyllic vision of "trademark Spain" without cuts or redundancies, which they do not believe in themselves, as is clearly seen whenever the left is in government or the unions sign agreements on redundancies and wage cuts.
As we said in our international leaflet on the balance sheet of the movements in 2011: ''However society is divided into classes, a capitalist class that owns everything and produces nothing and an exploited class (the proletariat) which produces all and has less and less. The driving force of social change is not the democratic game of ‘the decision of a majority of citizens’ (this game is nothing more than a masquerade that covers up and legitimises the dictatorship of the ruling class) but the class struggle. The social movement needs to join up with the struggle of the principle exploited class (the proletariat) that collectively produces most of the wealth and ensures the functioning of social life: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, ports, construction, post offices (...) There is no opposition between the struggle of the modern proletariat and the profound needs of social layers exploited by capitalist oppression. The struggle of the proletariat is not an egotistical or specific movement but the basis for 'the independent movement of the immense majority to the benefit of the immense majority'(The Communist Manifesto)”.
It is clear that in so far as the struggles are considered part of a "citizens' movement", they will not be directed against the state but will engage in a desperate search, continually coming up against the same wall of so-called "reform", which amounts to "everything must change so that everything can stay the same", as the Prince of Lampedusa said. Beyond insights like seeing the link between Gamonal, 2014, and May 68, if the struggles are seen as a "popular actions", they will not be able to break out of the national shackles and will not put forward what is needed: being an active link in the broad international movement of the proletariat. It is obvious that in so far as the struggles do not integrate themselves into the class struggle, they will not be fighting against the global capitalist system, but they will lose themselves in allocating blame to each in turn, to the speculators, the bankers, the corrupt politicians and so on, like selecting from an interlocking nest of Russian dolls.
The assemblies, the debates, the discussions in the streets, in the workplaces and in the schools, must address these dilemmas. We shouldn't be afraid either of problems or criticisms. "These present movements would benefit from critically reviewing the experience of two centuries of proletarian struggle, and attempts at social liberation. The road is long and fraught with enormous obstacles, which calls to mind the slogan oft repeated in Spain: 'It is not that we are going slowly, it is that we are going far'. By starting the widest possible debate, without restrictions or discouragement, that is consciously preparing the future movements, we will be ensuring that this hope becomes a reality: another society is possible!" (Excerpt from our international leaflet quoted above). Gamonal with its assemblies and solidarity is one more step on the long and difficult road.
Acción Proletaria (22 January 2014)
[1] See ‘Indignation at the heart of the proletarian dynamic’ in International Review 152, https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201310/9197/indignat... [1210]
[2] This is the collective Diario de Vurgos (deliberately spelled with a "v", because the Spanish "b" and "v" are pronounced the same way), that describes itself as "the inhabitants of the Burgos underground" in opposition to the official Burgos parties, trade unions, church and other elements of the system, including the city newspaper Diario de Burgos. Their findings are very interesting and it seems they have had a positive impact on the struggle. Their e-mail is https://diariodevurgos.com/dvwps/ [1211]
[3] To be able to see the struggle of Burgos in the dynamic of the international class struggle, we encourage readers to analyse the resolution on the international situation from our last congress (from point 15). https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201310/9219/20th-icc... [1212].
[4] https://www.elconfidencial.com/alma-corazon-vida/2014-01-19/de-los-ere-al-gamonal-los-nuevos-conflictos-y-el-cabreo-de-la-gente-comun_68995/ [1213]
[5] The Minister of Justice is going to propose a very restrictive abortion law
[6] See our international leaflet, 2011: from Indignation to Hope, https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/2011_movements_lft2.pdf [388]
[7] See the Spanish language text: es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201312/3961/la-fuerza-de-la-lucha-es-la-solidaridad-de-clase [1214]
[8] The PSOE is the Spanish Socialist Party. Since 2012 it has been in opposition. IU, United Left, is a coalition around the Communist Party (similar to the one in France), playing the same role of "radical" democratic opposition . The PP is the right wing People's Party that is currently in government.
[9] The Spanish State has launched a campaign with the label "Trademark Spain" to promote its products.
Humanity should weep to see this, and greatly fear what it foretells. But to paraphrase the great philosopher Spinoza weeping is not enough; it is necessary to understand.
This growing nightmare is getting out of control but it is not impossible to understand. The cause of this upsurge in barbarism is the same one that resulted in the First World War: imperialism. That is, the life and death struggle by each national capital for a greater share of the world market.
In the nineteenth century the emerging capitalist nations could gobble up the rest of the planet. Millions died in the process. The major powers armed themselves to the teeth from the end of the century as each advance by one threatened the interests of the others. This culminated in World War I when Germany was forced to strike out to counter its strangulation by the other main powers. Millions upon millions of proletarians were slaughtered on the industrialised killing fields of France, Belgium, Turkey, Russia. This was the barbaric price humanity paid for capitalism’s continued existence. A tribute that increased the longer capitalism continued.
The Second World War turned much of the Eurasian land mass into one vast battlefield where there was no or little difference between military and civilians. In this war the ‘other side’ was the entire population of the enemy countries; thus destruction of the men women and children became the ‘legitimate’ aim of the war. It was now total war for the total destruction of the enemy. World War I had slaughtered millions of men, World War II annihilated tens of millions of men, women and children. This barbarism did not end with the war. Europe and the US may have had ‘peace’ but the rest of humanity suffered endless war as the two imperialist blocs reduced one country after another to ruin. North Vietnam had more tonnage of explosive dropped on it than the US used in the whole of World War Two. If this was not enough imperialism held out the prospect of the total annihilation of humanity in a third world war.
The end of the old imperialist blocs was hailed as the end of the threat of nuclear destruction and the opening of a New World Order. However, the last quarter century has witnessed an accelerating process of the decay of the US’s superpower status. It could not have been otherwise. Freed from the threat of destruction by the other bloc, every capitalist nation has been compelled to place its national imperialist interest first. Initially the US could use its might to get its rivals to tow its line, as seen in the “international coalition” during the first Gulf War, but by the 2003 war in Iraq it was faced with open hostility from many of its former allies like Germany and France.
As its power has weakened so its rivals have become emboldened. Russian imperialism’s recent push into Ukraine would not have happened if it had feared the response of the US. The Russian bourgeoisie, confronted with the US and Europe’s efforts to pull Ukraine away from its sphere of influence, had no choice but to act. But the Russian land-grab in Crimea and part of Eastern Ukraine was encouraged by the US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia has also used its support for the Assad regime to put pressure on the US. Its military, intelligence and diplomatic resources have propped up the regime. At the same time it blunted the USA’s efforts to step up its military campaign against the regime by agreeing to get rid of its chemical weapons.
At the global level the US has also been confronted by the rise of Chinese imperialism which is challenging its domination of the Far East, the Indian Ocean and even into Africa[1]. This growing imperialist power is also backing the USA’s main rivals in the Middle East: Syria and Iran. This has led to the US pivoting its imperialist policy towards the Far East. China is no military rival to the US, but it can certainly use the USA’s weakness to its own ends.
The weakening of US imperialism is being paid for in blood and suffering of millions around the world. Africa is another example. Only two years ago the US boasted about the ‘freeing’ of Libya from the terror of Gaddafi: this July the US ambassador, as well as the British, had to flee from Tripoli as this country went into free fall as rival militia, army units, and gangs fought for control of all the major cities in the country. The USA’s ‘freeing’ of Libya has certainly freed up the supply of looted arms from the collapsed Libyan army’s weapons dumps. These weapons have flowed across North Africa in order to feed numerous wars and armies, for example the upsurge of the jihadists in Mali last year was stimulated by the flow of arms and Islamist fighters from Libya.
In the Sudan, the US-backed break away South Sudan had no sooner declared itself as a new state, with great fanfare in the Western media, than it began to be torn apart by a bloody war between parts of the bourgeois faction that had been supported by the US. This collapse of the USA’s effort to undermine the Sudanese government can only have stimulated the ambitions of Khartoum and its Chinese backers.
If the US cannot even stop some puppet government dependent upon it from falling apart, why would other countries and factions in the region have any confidence in the US?
In 1914 it was the weaker imperialism’s desperate effort to try and break the strangle-hold of its main rivals that struck the match of the conflagration, and the same scenario was repeated in 1939. Today it is the actions, or the inability to act, of the world’s main imperialist power that is stoking up barbarism. The American military is by far the biggest, most sophisticated and powerful in the world, dwarfing its rivals, but each time the US has used its military power it brings about more instability and barbarity. This is evident in Pakistan where the increasing use of drones, cruise missiles and secret special forces operations to assassinate the “enemies of the US” (including 4 US civilians), and the consequent slaughter of civilians, is further shaking the foundations of a state like Pakistan which is already failing, whilst at the same time supplying ever more recruits into armed groups who claim to be fighting the US.
And the evolution of the “Islamic State” is the clearest proof that the USA’s efforts to manipulate different factions of the bourgeoisie are producing the disastrous phenomenon of ‘blow back’. Like al Qaeda before it, set up to oppose the Russians in Afghanistan but then becoming an avowed enemy of the USA, Isis or Islamic State was initially fed by the US and regional allies like Qatar as a force capable of confronting the ruthless Assad regime in Syria, but this ‘pawn’ has now become such a danger to the stability of the region that the US is now sending out feelers not only to Iran but also to Assad to see whether they can come to an agreement about fighting this new threat! This about-face speaks volumes about the increasing incoherence of US foreign policy, a reflection of its underlying weakness.
The USA will not be able to respond to this situation by retreating into a new isolationism. It will be forced, as the Obama administration is now being forced in Iraq and Syria, to launch itself into new military adventures. This is a spiral of barbarism which can only be halted by the elimination of its source: capitalism in its epoch of imperialist decline.
Phil 28/8/14
[1]. For a more detailed analysis the imperialist situation in the Far East, read the special issue of the International Review dedicated to this question: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/2012/5305/november/i... [912]
When Poroshenko was elected president of Ukraine he promised to defeat the “separatist terrorists” in the Donbass region, and in the last month the combination of Kiev’s regular army and irregular militias has gained a lot of ground particularly around Luhansk, with increasing cost to life as the fighting moved into more populated cities with more civilians caught in the crossfire. Estimates of the dead are all above 2,000. To this can be added the 298 killed when flight MH17 was shot down when Russia put powerful antiaircraft guns in the hands of separatists without the ability, or even the concern, to recognise civilian transponder signals, compounded by capitalism’s way of balancing the risk of flying over a war zone against the cost of extra fuel to go round it.
Ukraine is an inherently unstable and artificial country[2] grouping the majority Ukrainian population with a minority of Russian speakers as well as various other nationalities. The component populations are divided by historic hatreds going back to the famines of Stalin’s forced collectivisation, to the divisions in the Second World War, the expulsion of Crimean Tartars, all of which is played on by the extreme nationalist politicians and gangs. Added to this, with the economy already in disastrous straits the Ukrainian west of the country sees its salvation in closer trade with the EU while the East remains tied to trade with Russia.
For all that, this ‘civil’ war is not a fundamentally Ukrainian affair, but one whose genesis and implications are completely integrated into the wider imperialist conflicts in Europe and beyond. Before 1989 Ukraine was part of the USSR and divisions were held in check. Today Russia finds itself more and more tightly squeezed by the expansion of the EU and of NATO to include much of its former Eastern European sphere of influence, so much so that Barack Obama says the challenges Russia represents are “effectively regional” (The Economist, 9.8.14). But even with this former superpower cut down to regional size, there are some things it cannot give up, including its Crimean base on the Black Sea, a warm water port giving access to the Mediterranean and via the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean. Likewise it cannot allow Ukraine and its South Stream pipeline to fall entirely under the control of its rivals and enemies. Hence the encouragement and support to the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. In this Russia has benefited from the fact that the USA’s attention has turned to the Far East and the need to counter the rise of China.
So no way could Russia stand by and let ‘Novorossiya’ be destroyed. Russia has not only supplied heavy weapons to the separatists, but also has 20,000 troops massing near Rostov and carrying out manoeuvres on the Ukrainian border. The incursion of an estimated 1,000 troops has not only gone to the rescue of Donetsk, but started to make a land corridor towards Mariupol in the south. Clearly the ‘Novorossiyan’ separatists are not doing enough towards Russia’s desire to forge a land bridge to Crimea, which it annexed last March, and perhaps also towards the pro-Russian separatists in Trans-Dniester in Moldova. For the moment, this is only a not-so-covert incursion, not an open invasion. The perspective for now is continued destabilisation.
Meanwhile Ukraine wants to join NATO. Poroshenko and Putin may have met in Minsk at the Eurasian Union meeting in Minsk, but there was no basis for negotiation.
The ‘west’ cannot let Russia get away with this incursion, even if it is now only a regional power, even when Obama admitted the US has yet to develop a strategy to counter it. First of all there is diplomatic condemnation. Then there are increased sanctions, this time affecting Russian banks, decided after the Malaysian airliner was shot down. Then the question of supplying Kiev with aid: $690m from Germany as well as $1.4billion from the IMF (the second instalment of $17billion promised when Russia cut off aid last winter). No doubt the aid will also include sale of weapons. Lastly, Britain is to lead a new multilateral Joint Expeditionary Force of 10,000 from 6 countries, none of them NATO heavyweights, and Canada may also become involved – at this stage this is largely symbolic and certainly does not presage a military response to the Ukraine crisis. While all the EU countries are united in their interest in countering the Russian offensive, we should not imagine that there is a united ‘international community’ or ‘west’. In fact the neighbouring countries and European powers are all busy protecting their own interests: France is still delivering helicopter carriers to Russia, Britain still wants Russian businesses to invest through the City of London, and Germany still depends on Russian gas, and each wants the others to bear the cost of any sanctions. There are also divisions with those countries which take a much more hawkish view of the Russian incursions, usually because they have their own Russian minorities and fear the same kind of instability could be fomented at home. Meanwhile Serbia is caught in the dilemma of trying to keep its old Russian ally while also orientating itself towards the EU, a situation that cannot hold.
The conflict in Ukraine is very destructive. In addition to the loss of life and physical destruction of infrastructure, particularly in the East, there is the effect on the economy. Although the mining and heavy industry in the Donbass is out of date and dangerous, the loss of a region that accounts for 16% of GDP and 27% of industrial production is a disaster for Kiev, whose GDP is predicted to fall by 6.5% by the end of the year and whose currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by 60% against the dollar since the beginning of the year. It is truly dependent on the aid it is getting. Things will only get worse in the winter if Russia withholds the gas it depends on – with particularly disastrous implications for the population facing a Ukrainian winter.
117,000 people have been internally displaced and there are nearly a quarter of a million refugees in Russia.
The nature of the fighting, with both sides depending on militias made up of some of the worst fanatics, mercenaries, terrorists and adventurers, not only inflicts these killers on the civilian population now, but is also creating a really dangerous situation for the future. Who controls these irregular forces? Who will be able to call them off? We have only to look at the proliferation of various fanatical gangs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Libya to see the threat.
The greatest danger for the working class in the Ukrainian conflict is that it could be recruited behind the various nationalist factions. One very concrete guide to the success or failure of this recruitment can be seen in the willingness of workers to allow themselves to be drafted into the army, and in Ukraine there have been a number of protests against this. Mothers, wives and other relatives of soldiers have blocked roads in protest at their deployment to the Donbass: “after six soldiers originally from the region of Volhynia were killed, mothers, wives and relatives of soldiers of 51st brigade blocked the roads in the region of Volhinya to protest against further deployment of the unit in Donbas…
Demonstrations and protests organized by wives and other relatives of draftees asking return of soldiers home or trying to block their departure to the front meanwhile spread to other regions of the Ukraine (Bukovina, Lviv, Kherson, Melitopol, Volhynia etc.). Families of the soldiers were blocking the roads with chopped down trees in the region of Lviv at the beginning of June” (article by the Czech group Guerre de Classe posted on the ICC discussion forum)[3]. There have been occupations of recruitment offices, military training grounds, even an airport.
Not all protests have managed to avoid the siren songs of nationalism. For instance the same article reports demonstrations in the Donbass calling for peace and an end to the “anti-terrorist operation”, in other words only for the end to the military action by the other side. In spite of this they report strikes by miners in the region with demands for safety (not going underground when bombardment could lead to them being trapped) and for higher wages.
These protests reported by Guerre de Classe are an important sign that the working class is not defeated, that many workers are not willing to throw their lives away on such a military adventure for the ruling class. It does not mean that the working class in Ukraine and Russia is already strong enough to directly call the war into question and the danger of the working class being recruited by the various nationalist gangs remains. To truly put the war into question would require a much more massive and above all much more conscious struggle of the working class on an international scale.
Alex, 30.8.14
[1]. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski has described the Ukraine civil war as “Europe’s most serious security crisis over the past decades”.
[2]. See ‘Ukraine slides towards military barbarism’ in WR 366 (https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201406/9958/ukraine-slides-tow... [1216]).
[3]. https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/guerre-de-classe/9820/ukraine... [1217] (https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/neither-ukrainian-nor-russian/ [1218]), and video of protests can be seen on here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWi0Daf228M [1219].
Ebola is not merely a medical problem. It is foremost a social question, the product of a system that has all the technology and scientific know-how to reduce the suffering of the people in the world by epidemics to a minimum, but isn’t able to achieve this.
In its history mankind was regularly confronted with the outbreak of natural diseases, killing huge amounts of the world population. But the evolution of knowledge made mankind increasingly capable of finding the means to diminish their devastating effects and the number of people killed.
Probably the first massive and global pandemic was the so-called “Black Death”, peaking in Europe in the years 1346–1353. It was one of the most devastating epidemics, leading to the death of an estimated 30–60% of Europe's total population. By applying measures of quarantine mankind succeeded in preventing it spreading further. In the 19th century, in1826, a cholera epidemic broke out, hitting Europe and infecting tens of thousands of people in Britain. At first the idea was that it was caused by direct exposure to the products of filth and decay. But using simple research methods a small number of doctors showed that a lack of hygiene in the water supply spread the disease, something Friedrich Engels showed clearly:
“…..in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic plunged the sanitary police (…) it is in almost the same state as in 1831! (….) Not only the cellars but the first floors of all the houses in this district are damp; a number of cellars, once filled up with earth, have now been emptied and are occupied once more. (….) In one cellar the water constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to bale out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the street!” (The Condition of the Working Class in England)
In Hamburg, one of the fastest growing cities in Germany, cholera again raged for ten weeks, bringing all commerce and trade to a complete standstill. 8,600 people died.
In the year 1892 Friedrich Engels hoped that “The repeated visitations of cholera (…) and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities.” (Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892). Science finally found that cholera was transmitted through contaminated water supply and by exposure to the faeces of an infected person.
In the course of the 19th century medicine achieved enormous break-throughs. The development of vaccines and, more importantly, the introduction of environmental sanitary measures, coupled with a better understanding of infectious disease (epidemiology), have been invaluable weapons in the fight for human health. “The most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous...” (Idem)
In the first half of the 20th century, the development of science continued, still achieving a considerable progress. The discovery of antibiotics, the introduction of effective drugs vaccination against an increasing number of diseases, have meant that a number of diseases no longer cause anything like the same number of deaths as before WWII. Thus sixty years ago the bourgeoisie was convinced that the global war against infectious diseases in the world was on the road to victory.
However with the aggravation of the contradictions of the capitalist system, the onset of decadence of capitalism, the historical crisis of the bourgeois system, the conditions had ripened for the outburst of two world wars and a numerous number of local wars. This was to have a dramatic impact on public health. World War I in particular led to the outbreak of a new pandemic.
The war had lead to a complete devastation of large regions of Europe, the displacement of millions of people, the destruction of the means of production and habitation, the massive transport of army troops from and to all regions of the world …. In other words: the creation of a huge chaos and a major regression of sanitary conditions and hygiene.
A new strain of influenza – dubbed Spanish flu as a result of wartime censorship rules - became highly contagious in the fall of 1918 in France. Chinese labourers, shipped from northern China to France, working just behind the frontline in the most horrible circumstances, already on the brink of starvation, infected the soldiers in the trenches. The flu quickly spread to the US and parts of Asia. The influenza killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, ranking as one of the deadliest epidemics in history. The bourgeoisie has always denied or played down any links between the conditions created by the war and the huge number of deaths from flu.
The progress in medical science and health systems which was achieved from the middle of the 19th century on was never extended towards and put into practice in all the countries of the world. In the so-called “developing countries”, access to such improvements remained blocked for the large majority of the workers and peasants. And this has never changed since. Increasing alarms about contagious diseases in these regions of the world are casting a shadow of doubt over the propaganda about the “bright future” and the “good health” of the present system.
For marxism, there is nothing surprising here. These diseases are expressions of the fact that the capitalist system is rotting on its feet, because of the existing stalemate between the two main classes in actual society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As the proletariat is not able to affirm its perspective of revolution, the contradictions of capitalism in decay only aggravate more and more.
The phase of the decomposition, beginning at the end of the 1980’s, provokes a spirit of ‘every man for himself’, tears away at social cohesion and leads to an ever-increasing moral decay. Decomposition has been marked by the tendency towards complete chaos in all corners of the world. Capitalism in decomposition not only fails to counter diseases, but even tends to aggravate and even initiate them.
Against the background of this growing chaos and because of the corresponding worsening of hygienic conditions, at the beginning of this millennium:
approximately 3.3 billion in the “developing countries” had no access to clean drinking water;
nearly 2.5 billion people (more than one third of the world population) has no access to basic sanitary supply.
each year 250 million people get sick by contaminated water, in 5 to 10 million cases leading to death.
The advent of new infectious diseases and the re-emergence of old ones in different areas of the world, avowedly free of such diseases, have precipitated a new health crisis, which threatens to overwhelm all the gains made so far. Diseases that used to be geographically restricted, such as cholera, are now striking in regions once thought safe. While some diseases have been almost completely subdued, others such as malaria and tuberculosis, which have always been among the greatest “natural” enemies of mankind, are fighting back with renewed ferocity, causing millions of deaths every year.
It is the decomposition of society that is clearly responsible for healthcare getting out of control. SARS for instance, one of the last dangerous pandemics before the outbreak of Ebola. SARS “is thought to have jumped species in a poverty-stricken area of South East China where people live crowded together with their animals in conditions, reminiscent of the Middle Ages. This [situation] is at the origin of many of the most serious flu epidemics world wide. The ‘success’ of the world market in decadence lies not in preventing the emergence of the disease, but in providing the means for its spread across the globe.” (‘SARS: Symptom of a decaying society’, World Revolution, May 2003).
“It’s in Africa that capitalism’s descent into militarist barbarity is most clearly pronounced. In continuing conflicts, in the fragmentation of capitalist states, the wearing away of frontiers, the role of clans and warlords (……,) it’s possible to see fragmentation and chaos extending across a continent, giving us an idea of what the decomposition of capitalism could have in store for the whole of humanity. (‘The spread of war shows capitalism is at a dead-end, World Revolution, May 2013)
In the past decades, of the three countries worst hit by Ebola (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea), two have been ravaged by civil wars and ethnic massacres. Between 1989 and 2003 Liberia’s infrastructure was devastated by two civil wars. Sierra Leone had been plagued by a civil war of 11 years. More than 100,000 people lost their lives and many more of them had suffered ‘special’ punishment in the form of barbaric mutilation.
Moreover extractive projects by foreign companies, ruthlessly exploiting oil and gas or one of the mineral sources for the new economies, has lead to a massive deforestation and the destruction of the local habitat and natural infrastructure. The breakdown of social cohesion severely affected the livelihoods of the rural population. Indigenous people were forced to quit their land and shift to urban shanty towns.
Among the three countries, Liberia is one of the least economically developed and most impoverished countries in the world. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 1.3 million people in Liberia live in extreme poverty. In Sierra Leone 70% of the population live in extreme poverty. Half the population of the three countries live in the greatest misery, lacking the most basic hygiene such as access to clean drinking water.
Continuous deforestation has also led to a radical change of the climate conditions in the countries of western and central Africa. Precipitation extremes are projected to increase. Sudden shifts from dry to wet conditions are favourable for the outbreak for Ebola. It is the combined effect of exploitation by foreign companies, the radical change of weather conditions and the global economic crisis that has created the conditions for the present health catastrophe.
The outbreak of the Ebola in the course of this year was not the first one. There have been repeated outbreaks almost every year since it was first discovered in 1976 in central Africa. Ebola is primarily a rural disease, where food gathered from hunting exposes people to infected animals, and where lack of clean water spreads infection. The isolated conditions in rural areas limited the numbers affected, only killing some hundreds of people.
This year the Ebola spread for the first time to the heavily populated areas along the west African coast. In these areas not only the conditions of sanitation, but also the state of health care, are disastrous, increasing the vulnerability of the township communities to the epidemic.
The virus completely overran the capacity of the local health systems. It is permanently racing ahead of the ability to control it. After 60 health care workers had died in the Ebola outbreak, there was a certain level of panic. Joseph Fair: “There’s been a lot of abandoning ship.” After the disease had killed nearly 1,000 people and infected nearly 2,000, on August 8th the World Health Organisation declared the Ebola epidemic an international public health emergency.
The pace of the infection is still accelerating. The public health system in Monrovia is nearing total collapse. All the most basic units for health care, including malarial drugs for children and medical care for pregnant women, have been closed.
In the West Point township in Monrovia local residents, upset by the events and out of deep distrust for the government, attacked a school that the authorities had quietly turned into an isolation center for people with Ebola symptoms. The protesters broke into the school and took bedding and other supplies. On Saturday August 18th West Point’s angry residents attacked health care workers.
On August 19th, a quarantine was announced forWest Point, trapping an estimated 75,000 people, turning the township in a huge graveyard. Residents were now in the killing fields of the epidemic. They can die, but at least it’s among themselves! The quarantine, causing the death of hundreds of people, not only because of Ebola, but also through malaria (children) and lack of food and clean water, had to be lifted after 10 days. In any case residents broke out in huge numbers.
The Ebola virus has all the potential to become a disaster on a scale never seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920, nearly one hundred years ago.
Until now there has only been a tiny influx of aid from the wealthy countries. Half way through September documented pledges or donations totalled $326.7 million dollars. Besides the mobilisation of a few hundred dedicated volunteer doctors and nurses, for the greater part little actual deliveries of supplies, equipment and healthcare personnel take place. The documented contributions still fall short of the $600 million that will be needed for hospital beds, personnel and other needs to subdue an outbreak that is spreading with alarming speed.
US spending, over the past nine months, amounts to barely $100 million dollars. This contrasts dramatically with the billions made available by the imperialist powers, and their allies among the Gulf monarchies, for the new war in Syria and Iraq, let alone the hundreds of billions squandered on wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless Obama described the Ebola outbreak as a “national security priority” for the US, for it could trigger the destabilization of west Africa, posing “profound economic, political and security implications”. So he could think of nothing else than the sending of three thousand troops.
Reports from the WHO point to an exponential increase in cases, doubling roughly every three weeks. The IRC, on behalf of 34 NGO’s, has warned that the globe has only four weeks to stop the crisis from spiralling out of control (October 2, 2014). At the same time it finds that, of the 1,500 new drugs that were made available worldwide between 1974 and 2004, only 10 targeted the tropical illnesses. Regarding Ebola, since 1976, hardly any research has been done. So tropical diseases continue to affect more than a billion people in the world and kill up to 500,000 a year.
John Ashton, Faculty of Public Health in London, described the actual situation as “the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework.” The New Yorker bluntly stated that“diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries aren't a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever provide a return”.
The actual spreading of the Ebola provokes a huge anxiety in the central countries. As always, the very 'anti-racist' states are quite keen to use the fear of African travellers to stir up xenophobic sentiments among the population of Europe. The dominant fractions of the ruling class make their own use of the climate of fear and panic:
By using soap and clean water the Ebola virus can be rather simply contained. But present day capitalism is even not capable of applying such a simple measure. The Ebola outbreak is the product of a sharpening of the contradictions of capitalism which, for a century, “has only brought more misery and destruction in all their forms. Faced with the advanced decomposition of its system, the dominant class has nothing other to offer than ideological lies and repression”. (‘SARS: It is capitalism which is responsible for the epidemic’, World Revolution May 2003)
Zyart, 15.10.14
The recent wave of youth protest in Hong Kong was begun by students organised by the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism on September 14, when hundreds of them occupied the roadways of several major arteries in the city, particularly its business district. The protests were over the change in rules imposed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), mainly in restricting “civic” nominations in the electoral process for 2017. In fact, the post of Chief Executive, the issue in contention, has been appointed by Beijing since Britain handed the territory back in 1997 under the so-called “one country, two systems” idea. The change in the rules coming from Beijing aims to strengthen the role of the business community in the electoral process, thus reflecting and responding to the need of the Chinese ruling class to consolidate its already tight grip on Hong Kong politics.
After some hundreds of protesters were initially and violently cleared from the streets, “Occupy Central” (“Occupy Central with Love and Peace”), an organisation initiated by a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, demanded that the PRC (the People’s Republic of China) government listen to them and began a campaign of civil disobedience with the aim of securing a voting system that provides a process that “satisfies the international standards in relation to universal suffrage”. Democratic and pacifist ideas have dominated the left in Hong Kong since the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. The “Occupy Central” demand is doubly absurd because the state in every democratic country in the world today vets its own electoral candidates in one way or another and the origins of this demand lie with a particular legal faction of the island’s bourgeoisie. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) here is simply continuing the strategy used by British imperialism when it ruled the colony both at the level of legal chicanery and at the level of violent repression in order to reinforce its rule.
Following the repression of the students by police and organised thugs, government ultimatums, talking of “outside interference” and threatening bloody reprisals, came and went. What repression there was only served to bring more protesters onto the streets, resulting in a wider occupation of central points. A feature of the now dwindling protest movement has been its pacifism, its “politeness”, holding up arms as if in surrender, etc. This was especially noticeable in the business district of Admiralty and the super-expensive shopping district of Causeway Bay targeted by the protesters. By contrast, in the urban and working class district of Mong-Kok, fighting against the police has been ongoing and has only died down in the last few days. At the time of writing the government has had talks with the protest leaders and, given the demand for “universal suffrage”, appear to have things more or less under control for the moment, thus avoiding a more bloody repression for which the protesters were ill-prepared. The trade unions in Hong Kong, again built up by the British, have also joined the call for the “defence of democracy” alongside the protesters’ denunciation of the Hong Kong electoral process as “pseudo-democracy”. But again, all electoral and democratic processes from Europe to the Americas, from Africa to Afghanistan are “pseudo-democratic”, frauds and shams that keep the ruling class intact and the working class oppressed and divided. Another legacy of British rule is the division imposed by immigration and ghettos for the poor Mandarin-speaking workers with an estimated 50,000 of them living in little more than cages. There’s no concern for these workers in Occupy Central’s demand for “universal suffrage”.
On the libcom website there are three texts coming from Hong Kong: the first is called “Never Retreat, a Mong-Kok State of Mind” signed by Kristine Kwok and another from Mong-Kok called “Hotpot, Gods and ‘Leftist Pricks’: Political Tensions in the Mong-Kok Occupation” signed by a Holok Chen. The third text is “Black vs Yellow: Class Antagonisms and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement” signed by “an American ultra and some friends”. We can look at the third in more detail but first the two based in Mong-Kok: the two texts seem to be from a related unidentified group. They see themselves as “anarchist” – though terms like “anarchist”, “leftist”, “left communist” are impossible to understand here.
These anarchist elements were involved in fights with the police, the organised thugs and some local people that didn’t agree with them. They insist on a carnival-type atmosphere to their occupation, including hot-pot, ping-pong and other games trying to construct their own “eco-system” in the area. They are not affiliated to “Occupy Central” and pose themselves as an opposition to it. They appear to see the need for discussion and assemblies but make no bones about the prime aim being “universal suffrage” (which doesn’t include immigrants incidentally) and for every group to maintain activity in their own area. They seem extremely limited and make no mention of the working class.
The “Black vs Yellow...” text is something else and it’s not clear if it is in any way related to the previous group(s). Again some of terminology around the role of the “left” is difficult to understand, but there is much more weight and thought behind this long text which we will try to précis. The text clearly opposes the demand from the HKFS for democracy and universal suffrage and the author asks: what if such demands were met? The response is that it would mean participating in your own exploitation while giving rise to new bourgeois forces. The text criticises the group “Left21”, which expresses a commitment to the struggle for universal suffrage” and the establishment of a “participatory democracy” decided by the “people”. The participation in the democratic process is seen by “Left21” as a stage, a stepping-stone to the future where democratic reform can be superseded. We are familiar with these arguments about the justification of the democratic process as a means to a brighter future and it’s just as empty and dangerous in Hong Kong as it is in Britain and elsewhere. And the be-all and end-all of universal suffrage and democracy was also used against in the Indignados protest movement in Spain, in particular via the “Democracia Real Ya” (DRY), the main force for the democratic counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie. Indeed this text points to the realities of the democracies of Greece and the United States as an answer to those that demand it here.
Another thing that the author is clear on is the economic basis for the protests. The Hong Kong economy, with the busiest port in the world, became a key re-export and service centre, developing its economy during the 80’s. This was beneficial to both China and Britain until the colony was handed back to China in 1997. Many of the mainland Chinese factories were set up with capital from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. But underlining the student unrest today are questions of inflation, sky-high rents (an average of 40% of wages), food prices, inequality and public transport. And on top of this the relatively “better off” Hong Kong youth suffer desperate competition for university degrees for jobs that will not exist, or increasingly long hours for young workers or graduates – those lucky enough to be on the exhausting treadmill. The original protest movement of 2014, which also has the background of the “approaching doom” of China, has been re-branded in the west as a pacifist movement limited to constitutional alterations. But it was begun by the Occupy movement in 2011 which, though small and chaotic, made some criticisms of the demand for democracy, and many elements from this milieu were behind the beginnings of the current protest. The original Occupy movement was cleared out by the end of 2012; and in March 2013 one of the largest and longest strikes for decades broke out at the Kwai Tsing Container Terminal. The author says, and there’s no reason to doubt it, that the student and worker protest, if not allied, “was generated by the same economic stagnation and intensifying class antagonism”. Prior to this the text details the riots in the mid-50’s, and riots in 1967 that lasted for eighteen months and were “the largest domestic disturbances in the city-state’s history”. There were massive strikes and street fighting against the police; government buildings and media outlets were bombed and attacked and while we can say that some of this was stirred up by the mainland bourgeoisie which supported the riots against the “fascists”, there are also elements of class struggle. Around the same time the Portuguese army had intervened against the demands of the Chinese-backed protesters in its colony of Macau and then agreed to most of their demands as the colony fell under the de facto control of the mainland. The proletarian aspect to the 67/8 uprising in Hong Kong can be seen in the bourgeoisie’s response: post-68, after thousands of arrests and deportations, the British authorities responded with their post world war one and two “reform” programmes of building more affordable houses, increased wages and an expanded welfare system. There is little such room for manoeuvre today and the author emphasises the “no future” that capitalism holds for youth, the trap of democracy and nationalism and the need for the struggle to spread. There are some ambiguities and the author specifically doesn’t mention the need for assemblies but is relatively clear that the only effective struggle must both involve and be towards the working class. It is clear from the text that the only propensity for a real development of the struggle lies with the working class and first of all its spread to workers on the mainland. And it’s a fact that the majority of strikes have taken place in the Guangdong southern province adjacent to Hong Kong (though it’s also a fact that workers’ strikes on the mainland have spread to all workers and all industries to the interior). The text also makes references to the history of wildcat strikes in Hong Kong, the strikes and riots from the mid-80’s, the wildcat beginnings of the 1997dock strike and its subversion by the union (Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions – HKFTU). In September the union called for support for the students by calling a strike on a national holiday, and what few workers joined the student protest did so as individuals.
From October 20 to 23, under the auspices of Chinese president Xi Jinping, the 205 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party held its Plenum dedicated to establishing “a system of the strict rule of law” (Reuters. 30.9.14). Under Xi’s eighteen month reign thousands of “corrupt” party officials have been executed, jailed, sacked or demoted in a widespread purge and settling of internal scores. It could mean a hardening stance, moving away from the weiwen policy of the maintenance of stability that has existed up to now. Of late there has been a crackdown on journalists and dissidents; internet censorship has been intensified and protesters from the countryside in the capital, mostly peasants with grievances, have been beaten up, jailed or deported back to their regions. We also saw the incidents of the direct repression of workers in and around the Yue Yuen strikes earlier in the year and the suggestion is that the situation will become more volatile. This need to confront the “social question” is all the more important for the ruling class in China now that the economy is slowing down and debt and the housing bubble are reaching unsustainable proportions. The coincidence of protest in Hong Kong and what must surely turn out to be rising levels of class struggle on the mainland presents the Chinese bourgeoisie with still more potential problems to solve, with repression and “the strict rule of law” the only possible answer that it has. Based in Hong Kong and its legal circles is the so-called “non-governmental organisation”, the “China Labour Bulletin” which is all for the pursuance of democracy and Free Trade Unions for Chinese workers “through peaceful and legal actions”. The CLB has supported and was probably involved in the promotion of the claims for “universal suffrage” among the students and its general approach could either be useful for the ruling class or it could invite repression. Whatever happens the CLB and its backers remain a danger for the working class with its claims for ‘democratic, free trade unions’.
The “Black vs Yellow...” text is clear on the current weaknesses of the student protest and the capitalist nature of the demands for democracy that were imposed upon it. It surmises that the student protest has “few paths forward and many routes to defeat” and its critique of the democratic road to defeat, its analysis of “no future” and the necessity of a real extension to the working class as the only way forward are lessons that apply to all the “Occupy” movements across the globe.
We can say the indications are that after the heights of the Indignados movement in Spain, 2011/12, which had clear links with and possibilities for the class struggle, and the profound Occupy movements of Turkey and Brazil in 2012/13, that the movement has been checked first of all and then assimilated entirely into the framework of the bourgeoisie and its ideologies. Beginning in the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia), the more or less positive nature of this movement was expressed in Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, the UK, the US, Canada and Spain and now the international dynamic of this movement is at least on the wane. The Hong Occupy movement, as one example, seems to reflect this in that the vocal minorities of the original movement that were openly critical of democracy have been drowned out in the latest protests. Democracy, and its twin brothers nationalism and imperialism, have filled the vacuum left by a movement whose only possibility was to extend to the working class and for the working class in turn to give it a kiss of life. Another indication of the end of this wave is how the word “revolution” has been linked to elements of the “Arab Spring” and the Occupy movement. A revolution is a mighty event involving untold masses of class conscious workers acting on their own self-organised grounds. As positive as some expressions of Occupy were they never came anywhere near to this and, at best, could only be an element towards it. Instead we see these “revolutions”, in many cases supported by various anarchists, as completely bourgeois, nationalist and imperialist. The Ukrainian “revolution” in Kiev is a case in point where the working class was drowned and mobilised for war. Some anarchists still go on about the Syrian “revolution” by which they mean the US-backed gangs of the Free Syrian Army. And even today in the barbaric free-for-all in Syria, some anarchists, through their rose-tinted magnifying glasses, see “the best example of the ‘Arab Spring’ so far in the movement of the democratic society in Syrian Kurdistan”. These adjuncts to imperialist war define the “Democratic autonomy” of nationalist ideology in Syrian Kurdistan as a “revolution”.
Such forms of anarchism help obscure the way forward for the proletariat by assimilating imperialist war, nationalism and democracy with “revolution”. But the lessons remain the same for the working class in any protest movement or strike even if it’s only small minorities that have drawn them out: assemblies and meetings open to all; free discussion (contrast this to the personalities and leaders of the Hong Kong democracy movement lecturing passive crowds); extension to other workers and self-organisation. The Occupy movement may be done to death but it was a positive and international moment that was unable to go any further without a more profound proletarian turn.
Baboon, 29.10.14
Public meeting in Budapest on World War I
The Budapest bookshop Gondolkodó Autonom Antikvárium invited the ICC to hold in September 2014 a public discussion in the city, as we have already done in previous years1. The ICC suggested for this year showing the film on our website “How the working class brought an end to World War I”. 100 years ago, the working class – betrayed by its organisations, the unions and the socialist parties – was unable to prevent the outbreak of the most terrible war in history until then. Today, the commemorations of World War I are a further occasion for nationalist propaganda in its liberal-democratic or more populist-patriotic versions. What is left out in most of the expositions, documentaries and articles on World War I is the reality about the end of the war, and the causes of the armistice. As the film illustrates, the first revolutionary wave of the world proletariat is an example of a 'secret in plain sight'. The material for the film is from widely available sources on the internet; many of the photos come from Wikipedia and original film footage from youtube. The fact that there were strikes, mutinies and uprisings at the end of World War I is hardly a secret. The revolutionary turmoil that led to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the withdrawal of Germany from the war has been extensively covered by bourgeois historians. The connection between these events and the Russian Revolution is also widely known. But despite all this, the simple fact that there was a worldwide wave of workers' struggles, as the film says, “from Canada to Argentina, from Finland to Australia, from Spain to Japan”, and that these struggles were in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously, inspired by the example of the seizure of political power by the Russian workers in October 1917 - this is, in effect, still a secret, a fact that the world bourgeoisie is still very keen to keep hidden. Why? Because, again as the film says, for a few brief years these struggles shook the capitalist world to its very foundations, and the bourgeoisie today, despite all the difficulties of the proletariat, the apparent lack of struggles, the advance of the crisis and of decomposition, is still afraid of the example that the first revolutionary wave sets.
After showing the film we suggested a discussion not only on the historic events but also about the wars in the current phase of capitalist world order and about the role of the working class today. The proposed topics for the following debate were: nationalism vs. internationalism; is a further world war on the agenda of history? Do we face a future with less war? What kinds of wars are being waged today? What were the weaknesses of the first revolutionary wave of 1917-23? What are the difficulties for the working class and its revolutionary militants today?
The debate was, as always in Budapest, very lively and animated by the seriousness of the audience. There’s nothing self-evident about attending a public discussion about the perspectives of a classless society in a country whose inhabitants suffered 40 years of so-called Socialism (1949-89) and whose present government has and for a long time been openly based on Hungarian chauvinism. Taking an interest in such a meeting under these general political circumstances requires an attitude of being “against the current”. The economic situation in Hungary is worse than in most of the former “socialist” countries in Eastern Europe (Poland, Baltic EU members, Czech Republic, Slovakia) and the militancy of the working class is not more visible than in other countries. So the audience was rather politicised, politically and culturally “educated”, informed about the history of the workers’ movement and committed to clarification in open debate – from a proletarian point of view.
Questions about the revolutionary wave
The questions raised in the discussion at the beginning were about historical facts and the political assessment of events: about the Shanghai uprising in 1927, the Limerick workers’ council in Ireland 1920, the Slovak Republic of Councils in May/June 1919:
- The film says: “In 1927 more than half a million workers in Shanghai launch an armed insurrection and take control of the city. Again the uprising is brutally crushed by the nationalists in an orgy of bloodshed”. A participant wanted to know more about these events. The answer given by the ICC underlined the authentic working class character of the isolated but heroic Shanghai insurrection of March 1927.2 These struggles, which were still an expression of the ebbing wave, a “last gasp of world revolution” as we say in an article, took place in the huge expanse of China whose working class went through a phase of revolutionary ferment. The policy of the dominant Stalin faction in Russia towards the Chinese Communist Party consisted of establishing an anti-imperialist united front with the bourgeois Kuomintang to struggle for the ‘national liberation’ of China. Under Stalinist pressure the CCP ordered the workers to hand over their weapons to the Kuomintang who subsequently slaughtered the workers with these same weapons. So the Kuomintang brutally put an end to the Shanghai workers’ uprising, after the CCP had said to the workers to trust in the national army of Kuomintang leader Chang Kai Chek. What then followed and what the Maoists call the preparation of the “revolution” in 1949 was in fact only a long war between different bourgeois armies, leading to the seizure of power by Mao and the CCP in military uniforms.
- A comrade in the audience asked the question why there is nothing in the film about the Limerick soviet in summer 1920. In fact a 23 minutes film about the whole international dimension of the revolutionary wave cannot be complete, there are necessarily many struggles that can’t be mentioned, and many vital issues that can’t be covered – a film is not an article or a book. But it would certainly be worth drawing the lessons of this Irish example of a self-organised workers’ struggle – and about the role of nationalism (IRA, Sinn Fein) in the crushing of this movement.3
- The same could be said about the support given to the Slovak Republic of Councils in June 1919 by the Hungarian Red Army. These events are well registered in the memories of the politicised people in Eastern Central Europe, but not profoundly treated in the film. The ICC delegation could not refer to the concrete events in Slovakia in 1919 because of a lack of profound knowledge about the historical facts, but for the military aspect of the question it insisted on the principle that military means cannot replace the consciousness and self-activity of the working class, as the failure in 1920 of the (Russian) Red Army offensive in Poland showed.
Social democracy before 1914
A longer discussion evolved about the nature of social democracy before 1914 and during World War I. A comrade summed up a criticism of several participants of the ICC statement (also present in the film) about the “betrayal of social democracy”. The ICC defends the position that most of the member parties of the 2nd International betrayed the working class because these workers’ parties of the 19th century declared in different occasions before 1914 their attachment to the principle of internationalism (to defend the class, and not the nation state). However most of the leaders of the majority of these parties betrayed this principle by openly supporting their national bourgeoisie in the first days of August 1914 when war credits were voted in parliaments and the disaster began. Against this view of things the comrade speaking for a divergent position stated that the notion of betrayal does not make sense because “social democracy was never in favour of revolution”. According to this reasoning the parties of the 2nd International were workers’ parties, but not revolutionary ones since the working class in this pre-war period was not revolutionary; the social democratic parties were an expression of the weaknesses of the class in those days, and the latter was not only a victim of betrayal but part of it. Another comrade referred in the same discussion to the enthusiasm for war at the beginning of WWI and to the fact that the SPD (in Germany) was already tied to the capitalist state by its important parliamentary fraction.
There are different aspects to this discussion. The ICC defends the general framework of the ascendance and decadence of capitalism with different tasks for revolutionaries in the different periods. The social democratic parties of the ascendant period, ending with WWI, struggled for reforms within capitalism AND for revolution, as Rosa Luxemburg stated in 1899 in her polemic “Social reform or revolution ?” against party comrade Eduard Bernstein. Consequently the workers’ parties of this period hosted different currents, from openly reformist and statist ones to revolutionary currents like those around Luxemburg, Lenin, Pannekoek, Bordiga etc. In 1914 the leaders of most of the social democratic parties were effectively on the side of the national bourgeoisie – and then betrayed in theory and practice the internationalist principles of the Stuttgart and Basle Congresses of the 2nd International. During the war the revolutionary fractions prepared the formation of the 3rd International because the 2nd collapsed with the outbreak of the world war and because of the betrayal of most of its member parties.
Another aspect in this discussion is the question: to what extent do we consider ourselves to be part of the revolutionary tradition of previous periods? To what extent do we share a common heritage of principles and method, common concepts?
The comrades in the audience who did not share the historical framework of ascendance and decadence of capitalism insisted on the lack of a “communist programme” in social democracy, saying even without the betrayal of the leaders it would have been attached to reformism and the bourgeois/capitalist state. But despite this different historical framework there was a general concern in the discussion to see the working class and its revolutionary vanguard in their mutual relationship: the weaknesses of the class with respect to its self-organisation, but also the theoretical weaknesses of the communists and internationalist anarchists of the period. The role of unions and a lot of questions concerning the relationship between the class and its vanguard still needed to be clarified.
A young participant, referring to the situation of 1919 in Hungary, said that the seizure of power in the name of the working class was carried out by the social democratic and communist party leaders, and not by the spontaneous activity of the self-organized proletariat. Another particpant at the meeting underlined the fact that the Communist Party created in Hungary in autumn 1918 was formed by very different currents (Marxists, syndicalists, former prisoners of war returning from revolutionary Russia, and others) and was eclectic in its programme.
Today’s wars and class movements
In the last part of the discussion questions were raised about current issues. Most of the participants at the debate seemed to agree on the assessment about the increasing danger of war today. The expanding spiral of bloodshed in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine is all too obvious. One participant said that violence and war are stretching their grip from the periphery to the centres of capitalist power. If there was a divergence in this part of the discussion it was probably about the question of an economic rationality of these conflicts. Whereas the ICC comrades stressed the growing irrationality of today’s wars of decomposition, e.g. in the areas claimed by the Islamic State (IS), other participants replied that even these wars are profitable for some capitalists and even for capitalism as a whole. But here we are talking about two different kinds of rationality: on the one side the rationality of profits for some particular capitalists, on the other side the rationality of a species that needs to become fully human.
The last question raised in the discussion was: why didn’t the workers join the Occupy movement? Our reply was that even if numerous people gathering around this banner in 2011/13 belonged to the working class the movement as a whole did not think of extending their struggle towards the working class, except for some limited cases in Spain and in California. And most of the Occupy demonstrators did not conceive themselves as proletarian, although they often were. The difficulty of the class to develop a specific class identity was already a topic in the Budapest discussion in 2010. It is part of the consciousness within the class that must ripen. Without this self-consciousness of the revolutionary subject the jump to a new and really human society will not be possible.
It is – by the way – interesting that in the Budapest discussions one question that we hear often in Western Europe, i.e. the question of the existence of the working class, is never posed. Here the need for a class response is not questioned. It seems that there is a common concept of what the working class is, of its characteristics and responsibilities.
We want to thank again the bookshop Gondolkodó Autonom Antikvárium for the invitation to hold a public discussion and the audience for the debate which can only strengthen mutually our forces and capacities.
ICC, September 2014
1E.g. in November 2010: Réunion publique à Budapest : Crise économique mondiale et perspective de la lutte de classe [1224]
A hundred years ago, in August 1914, the First World War broke out. The human balance sheet of this planetary slaughter is officially 10 million dead and 8 million wounded. When ‘peace’ was signed, the bourgeoisie swore with hand on heart that this would be the ‘last of all wars’. A lie, obviously. In fact it was only the first bloody conflagration marking the opening of the decadence of capitalism. The history of the 20th century and of this young 21st century has been riddled by incessant imperialist confrontations. The First World War was followed by the Second, the Second by the Cold War, and the Cold War by the numerous and unending theatres of conflict which have been spreading across the planet since the 1990s. This last period, if it doesn’t have the same spectacular aspect of a confrontation between two blocs, between two super-powers, contains no less of a threat to the survival of humanity because its dynamic is more insidious, leading not to world war but to the generalisation of wars and barbarism. The war in Ukraine, which marks the return of war to Europe, the historical heart of capitalism, is a qualitative step in his direction.
After the Second World War with its 50 million dead, Europe was straight away torn by the brutal rivalry between the eastern and western military blocs. During the long and murderous period of the Cold War, the slaughter took place at the peripheries of capitalism, through proxy wars between the USA and Russia. The bloody war in Vietnam was a clear illustration of this. But as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, a new period of conflicts began.
In 1991, the USA, at the head of a powerful but reluctant coalition, used the pretext of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to launch a war. The main aim was to stop the tendency towards the break-up of its old bloc through a demonstration of military force that would reaffirm its global leadership. The idea was to ensure the birth of a ‘new world order’. At the cost of a human and material disaster (more than 500,000 dead), above all through massive aerial bombardments and the explosion of depression bombs that destroy the lungs, this so-called ‘surgical war’ was to bring a new era of peace and prosperity. But this lie was very rapidly exposed. Almost simultaneously, a new war broke out at the very gates of Europe, in ex-Yugoslavia. An atrocious conflict a few hours from Paris, an accumulation of massacres, such as the one at Srebrenica, carried out with the complicity of the French Blue Helmets, where between 6000 and 8000 Bosnians were murdered.
And today, once again, the gangrene of militarism has reached the gates of Europe. In Ukraine the bourgeoisie is being torn to pieces. Armed militia, more or less controlled by the Russian and Ukrainian states, confront each other with the population as their hostage. This conflict, based on nationalisms which have been cultivated for decades, is one for the vultures: the main actors, as always, are the great powers, the USA, Russia, France and other western European countries.
The dramatic situation in Ukraine clearly marks a qualitative step in the agony of this system. The fact that that this conflict is being pushed forward by divergent interests and is so close to Europe, the focus for the world wars of the previous century, shows the level of disintegration the system has reached.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the USSR shattered the old bloc discipline and opened a real Pandora’s Box. Despite the short-lived illusions that followed the first Gulf war, the USA has been forced to carry on intervening, more frequently and in more places, and very often on its own: Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. This imperialist policy is the expression of a historic impasse and has clearly failed. Each new display of force by this declining super-power has resulted in an increasingly open loss of control over the war zones in which it has intervened. With the master in decline, we have entered a realm of disorder, of growing imperialist appetites, exacerbated nationalisms, spreading religious and ethnic conflicts.
The centrifugal forces fuelled by these appetites have engendered conflicts which demonstrate the reality of social decomposition, resulting in the break-up of states, the rise of the worst kinds of warlords, of mafia-type adventurers engaged in all varieties of trafficking. This process has been incubating for several decades. In the second half of the 1980s, a succession of terrorist attacks took place in major European cities like Paris, London and Madrid. These were not the work of isolated groups but of fully-formed states. They were acts of war which prefigured the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York. The darkest expressions of barbarity, previously confined to the edges of the system, had begun to return to the centres, to the areas where the presence and civilising potential of the proletariat stands as the only obstacle to a real plunge into nightmare.
Every day, refugees fleeing from war-torn countries are dying in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean. Packed like cattle in unseaworthy boats, they are in desperate flight from the unspeakable. According to the UN’s Refugee Agency, the number of refugees and asylum-seekers, of people displaced within their own countries, has gone past 50 million for the first time since the Second World War. At the end of last year the war in Syria alone had produced 2.5 million refugees and 6.5 million displaced people. And all continents are affected by this.
Far from weakening the general tendencies of decadent capitalism, decomposition has strengthened imperialist ambitions and exacerbated their increasingly irrational aspects. The doors have been opened to the least lucid factions of the bourgeoisie, fed by the putrefaction of society and the resulting nihilism. The birth of Islamist groups like al Qaida, the Islamic State and Boko Haram are the result of this process of intellectual and moral regression, of unprecedented cultural devastation. On 29 June, IS announced the re-establishment of a ‘Caliphate’ in the regions under its control and proclaimed the establishment of Mohammed’s successor. Like its counter-part Boko Haram in Nigeria, it has distinguished itself by the murder of captives and the kidnapping and enslavement of young women.
These obscurantist organisations don’t obey anyone and are guided by a combination of mystical madness and sordid mafia interests. In Syria and Iraq, in the zones controlled by Islamic State, no new national state has any viability. On the contrary, the main tendency is towards the disintegration of the Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi states.
This frightening barbarism, embodied in particular by the jihadists, is now serving as a pretext for new military crusades and western bombing campaigns. For the big imperialist powers, this makes it possible to terrorise the population and the working class at low cost to themselves while posing as civilised peacemakers. But Islamic State was at the outset partly armed by the US and factions of the Saudi bourgeoisie, not to mention the complicity of Turkey and Syria. This Islamist organisation has now escaped the control of its masters. Today it is besieging the town of Kobane in Syria, a few kilometres from the Turkish border, in a manly Kurdish region. Unlike the first Gulf war, the great powers, with the US at the fore, are running after events without any long-term political vision, simply reacting to immediate military imperatives. A heterogeneous coalition of 22 states, with very differing interests from each other, has taken the decision to bombard the parts of the town taken by IS. The US, the top gun in this pseudo-coalition, is today incapable of sending in ground troops and of forcing Turkey, which has a deep fear of the Kurdish forces around the PKK and PYD, to intervene militarily.
All the hot spots of the planet are bursting into flame. Everywhere the great powers are being drawn blindly into the fire. The French army is bogged down in Mali. The ‘peace’ negotiations between the Mali government and the armed groups have reached a dead-end. There is permanent war in the sub-Saharan region. In the north of Cameroon and of Nigeria, where Boko Haram has its hunting ground, armed conflicts and terrorist actions have multiplied. If we take into account the growing power of China in Asia, we can see that the same tensions, the same mafia methods are spreading across the entire planet.
In the 19th century, when capitalism was flourishing, wars to form national states, colonial wars or imperialist conquests had a certain economic and political rationality. War was an indispensable means for the development of capitalism. It had to conquer the world; its combined economic and military power enabled it to achieve this result, as Marx put it, in “blood and filth”.
With the First World War, all this changed radically. The main powers in general emerged considerably weakened from these years of total warfare. Today, in the phase of the decomposition of the system, a veritable danse macabre, a plunge into madness, is pulling the world and humanity towards utter ruin. Self-destruction has become the dominant feature in the zones of war.
There is no immediate solution in the face of this infernal dynamic, but there is a revolutionary solution for the future. And this is what we have to patiently work towards. Capitalist society is obsolete; it’s not just a barrier to the development of civilisation but a menace to its survival. A century ago the communist revolution in Russia and its reverberations in Germany, Austria, Hungary and elsewhere put an end to the First World War. In the present historical period, it is still only the struggle of the proletariat which can finish with this rotting world system.
Antonin 5.11.14
“But German Social Democracy was not merely the strongest vanguard troop, it was the thinking head of the International. For this reason, we must begin the analysis, the self-examination process, with its fall. It has the duty to begin the salvation of international socialism, that means unsparing criticism of itself. None of the other parties, none of the other classes of bourgeois society, may look clearly and openly into the mirror of their own errors, their own weaknesses, for the mirror reflects their historical limitations and the historical doom that awaits them. The working class can boldly look truth straight in the face, even the bitterest self-renunciation, for its weaknesses are only confusion. The strict law of history gives back its power, stands guarantee for its final victory.
Unsparing self-criticism is not merely an essential for its existence but the working class’s supreme duty”.
Thus wrote Rosa Luxemburg in 1915, in The crisis in German Social Democracy, better known as the Junius Pamphlet, her searching examination of the betrayal of the majority of the German SPD, and other Socialist parties, faced with the supreme test of world imperialist war. In this passage she clearly lays out a central element of the marxist method: the principle of constant, “unsparing self-criticism”, which is both necessary and possible for marxism because it is the theoretical product of the first class in history that can “boldly look truth straight in the face”. During and after the First World War, this attempt to go the roots of the collapse of the Second International was a demarcating feature of the left currents which had been born out of the social democratic parties, but who now went on to form a new and explicitly communist International. And as the new International in turn slid into opportunism with the retreat of the post-war revolutionary wave – a regression most symbolically expressed in the policy of the United Front with the social democratic traitors - the same work of criticism was carried on by the left communist fractions within the Third International, in particular the German, Italian and Russian lefts.
In 1914, the anarchist movement also entered into crisis following the decision of the much-revered anarchist Peter Kropotkin and a group around him to declare their support for Entente imperialism against the bloc led by Germany, and the adoption of the same policy by the French ‘revolutionary syndicalist’ union, the CGT[1]. Within the ranks of the anarchist movement there were many who remained loyal to internationalism and who fiercely denounced the attitude of Kropotkin and other ‘anarcho-trenchists’. Probably a majority of the anarchists refused to participate in the imperialist war effort. But in contrast to the response of the marxist left, there was little attempt to undertake a theoretical analysis of the capitulation of a significant wing of the anarchist movement in 1914. And while the marxist left was able to call into question the underlying method and practice of the social democratic parties in the whole period before the war, no such capacity for “unsparing self-criticism” was displayed by the anarchists, who do not adhere to the historical materialist method but base themselves on more or less timeless and abstract principles and who are impregnated with the notion of being a kind of family united around the struggle for Freedom against Authority. There can be exceptions, serious attempts to go deeper into the problem, but generally they come from those anarchists who have been able to integrate certain elements from the theoretical method of marxism.
This inability to question itself in real depth derives from the original class nature of anarchism, which emerged from the resistance of the petty bourgeoisie, especially of independent artisans, to the process of proletarianisation which was disintegrating the class structure of the old feudal societies of 19th century Europe. The French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the clearest embodiment of this current, with his rejection of communism in favour of a society of independent producers linked by equivalent exchange. It’s certainly true that the Proudhonists also expressed a movement towards ‘going over’ to the proletariat by joining the First International, but even with the most explicitly proletarian anarchist currents, such as the anarcho-syndicalists who developed towards the end of the 19th century, the incoherent, idealist and ahistorical political conceptions typical of the petty bourgeois world outlook were never fully overcome.
The price for this failure to draw the real lessons of 1914 was paid in full in the new crisis which swept the anarchist movement in reaction to the events in Spain in 1936-37. Important elements of the anarchist movement which had not betrayed in 1914 – above all the Spanish CNT – now plunged into support for a new imperialist war, in which a conflict between two capitalist factions, the Republican regime dominated by the bourgeois left, and the right wing forces led by Franco, was part of a wider inter-imperialist battle, most openly between the fascist states of Germany and Italy and the newly emerging imperialism of the USSR. Under the banner of anti-fascist unity, the CNT rapidly integrated itself into the Republican state at all levels, including the Catalan and Madrid governments. Most importantly, the CNT’s central role was in diverting what had initially been an authentic proletarian response to the Franco coup, a response which had used the methods of the class struggle – general strike, fraternisation with troops, factory occupations and arming of the workers – into the military defence of the capitalist Republic. Given the strength of this initial proletarian reaction, not only the anarchists but also numerous marxist currents outside of Stalinism were also drawn into support for the anti-fascist front in one way or another; and this included not only the more opportunist tendency around Trotsky but important elements of the communist left, including a minority within the Italian Left Fraction. On the other hand, within anarchism there were certainly class reactions to the betrayal of the CNT, such as the Friends of Durruti Group and Camillo Berneri’s Guerra di Classe. But real clarity about the nature of the war only emerged from a small minority of the marxist left, above all the Italian Fraction which published Bilan. The latter was almost alone in rejecting the claim that the war in Spain was in any way a war for the interests of the proletariat: on the contrary it was a kind of dress rehearsal for the approaching world imperialist massacre. For Bilan Spain was a new 1914 for the anarchist movement in particular[2]. And in 1939, faced with the new world war which Bilan had predicted, it was now a majority of the anarchists, intoxicated by anti-fascism, which followed the road of capitulation to the Allied war effort, either as part of the ‘Resistance’ or directly as part of the official allied armies: at the head of the ‘Liberation’ parade in Paris in 1944 was an armoured car festooned with the banners of the CNT, which had been fighting inside the Free French army division led by General Leclerc. Again, there were anarchist groups and individuals who remained true to internationalist principles in 1939-45, but once again, there is little evidence that they carried out a systematic examination of the historic betrayal of the majority of the movement to which they still claimed adherence. The result has been that there has been, as after the betrayals of 1914, a failure to draw any class lines between the internationalists and the anarcho-patriots: in many cases, the latter were simply reintegrated into the “affinity group” which is the anarchist movement once things went back to “normal” after the war. Behind this incapacity to defend class principles in an intransigent manner is not only a profound intellectual weakness but also a lack of moral indignation: all is forgiven as long as you stay inside the family.
Today the question of war is once again facing the world proletariat. Not a world war around already constituted blocs, but a more general, more chaotic descent into military barbarism across the planet, as exemplified by the wars in Africa, the Middle East and the Ukraine. These wars are again imperialist wars, in which the bigger capitalist states vie against their rivals through various local or national factions, and they are all expressions of capitalism’s increasing descent into self-destruction. And once again, a part of the anarchist movement is openly participating in these imperialist conflicts:
There are of course elements within anarchism who have been very consistent in their rejection of this support for nationalism. We have already published the internationalist statement by the KRAS, the Russian section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers’ Association, against the war between Russia and Ukraine[8], and we have pointed out above that a member of the KRAS, who posts as foristaruso, has posted some very strong criticisms of the positions of the AWU on libcom (see footnote 3). In one of the main libcom threads about the situation in the Middle East, individual comrades have argued forcefully against the pro-PKK line, notably a member of the UK branch of the IWA (Solidarity Federation) who posts as AES. The collective that runs the libcom site has featured two articles on the PKK and Rojava written from a left communist perspective: the ICC’s ‘warning’ against the PKK’s new libertarian facelift (footnote 4), and the article ‘The Bloodbath in Syria: Class war or Ethnic war’[9] written by Devrim and first published on the website of the Internationalist Communist Tendency. In the comments that follow the latter article there are furious and slanderous replies by posters who seem to be members or supporters of the Turkish DAF.
At the time of writing the AF in the UK has published a statement which has no illusions in the leftist, nationalist nature of the PKK and shows that the turn towards Bookchinism and ‘confederal democracy’ was initiated from above by its great leader Ocalan, who has also made similar approaches to the Assad regime, the Turkish state and towards Islam[10]. The AF has the courage to admit that the position it is taking up will not be popular given the large number of anarchists being drawn into the support for the ‘Rojava revolution’. But here again we see a total incoherence within the same ‘international’ tendency. The AF statement contains no criticism whatever of the DAF or the IAF and in its list of ‘concrete’ actions proposed at the end of statement is the call to “provide humanitarian aid to Rojava via IFA, which has direct contact with DAF”. This seems to be a concession to the pressure of “we must do something now”, which is very strong in the anarchist milieu, even if the aid (whether military or humanitarian) organised by a small group in Turkey would inevitably play into the hands of bigger organisations, such as the PKK. And this is in reality what the DAF is proposing, since it has offered volunteers to fight in the PKK-controlled ‘Peoples Protection Units’ or YPG. The AF also writes that it aims to “encourage and support any independent action of workers and peasants in the Rojava region. Argue against any nationalist agitation and for the unity of Kurdish, Arab, Muslim, Christian and Yezidi workers and peasants. Any such independent initiatives must free themselves from PKK/PYD control, and equally from aid by the Western allies, from their clients like the Free Syrian Army, Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Turkish state”. But it could hardly do so without also arguing against the pro-PKK positions of the DAF itself.
It is certainly significant that the most consistent responses to the situation in Rojava have been written from within the tradition of left communism. What characterises the more general response of the anarchists is their total lack of coherence. When you look at the websites of the IWA, the CNT-AIT, or Solidarity Federation, they remain relentlessly focused on immediate and local workers’ struggles which they have been involved with[11] - rather in the style of the Economist current which Lenin criticised a hundred years ago. The great economic, political and social events in the world are hardly mentioned, and there is no sign of any debate about such a fundamental questions as internationalism and imperialist war, even when there are obviously profound differences within this current, ranging from internationalism to nationalism. This lack of debate, this avoidance of confronting differences – which we can also observe in the IAF - is far more dangerous than the crises which hit the anarchist movement in 1914 and 1936, when there was still a much greater reaction to the betrayal of principles within the ranks of the movement. Anarchism remains a family which can easily accommodate bourgeois and proletarian positions and in this sense still reflects the vagueness, the vacillation of social strata caught between the two major classes of society. This atmosphere is a real obstacle to clarification, preventing even the clearest, most firmly internationalist individuals or groupings from going to the roots of this latest example of anarchist collaboration with the bourgeoisie. To take their positions to their conclusion would demand a thorough re-examination of past crises in the anarchist milieu, above all the one in 1936 where, as we argue in our recent articles in the International Review, the fatal flaws of anarchism were revealed most tellingly. In the final analysis, it would demand a fundamental critique of anarchism itself and a real assimilation of the marxist method.
Amos 3/12/14
[1]. See the article on the CGT from our series on anarcho-syndicalism: https://en.internationalism.org/ir/120_cgt.html [1231]. The link for the whole series is here: https://en.internationalism.org/series/271 [1232]
[2]. See in particular these articles: https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2008/132/spain_1934; [1233] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/spain_cnt_1936; [1234] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201409/10367/war-spa... [1235]. A sequel to the last article, dealing with the dissident anarchists in Spain and elsewhere, will appear shortly.
[3]. See the threads on libcom started by foristaruso, a member of the Russian anarcho-syndicalist group, KRAS, section of the IWA: https://libcom.org/news/about-declaration-awu-confrontation-ukraine-2306... [1236] https://libcom.org/news/when-patriotic-anarchists-tell-verity-02072014; [1237] https://libcom.org/forums/news/ukrainian-crisis-left-necessary-clarifica... [1238]
[5]. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring... [1240]. A response by the ICT can be found here: https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-10-30/in-rojava-people%E2%80%99... [1241]. This text clearly defends an internationalist position against Graeber’s leftist ideology, but it does make a concession to anarchism: the idea that there was a “social revolution” in Spain in 1936. “The military coup of July 18 1936 against the Second Spanish Republic came after years of class struggle. The Popular Front government of socialists and liberals did not know how to respond but the workers did. When the liberal ministers refused to arm the workers they attacked the barracks of the regime and armed themselves. This unleashed a social revolution which in various parts of Spain was almost as Graeber describes it. However it did not touch the political power of the bourgeois Spanish Republic. The state was not destroyed”.
The last point is correct but the idea of a “social revolution” was not shared at the time by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left (which published Bilan and from which both the ICC and ICT claim descent) – rather it seems closer to the position of the minority of the Fraction who went off to fight in the militias of the POUM “in defence of the Spanish revolution”. Bilan certainly recognised July 1936 and May 37 as workers’ uprisings but never used the term social revolution to describe the events in Spain precisely because the bourgeois state had not be destroyed and the workers had not taken power or even established a dual power situation; the result being that all the “social measures” (collectivisations of farms and factories, etc) undertaken by workers and peasants were very rapidly integrated into a new form of war economy geared to serve an imperialist conflict, with the anarcho-syndicalist CNT being the principal instrument both for diverting the initial proletarian response into an anti-fascist front, and for administrating the war economy “under workers’ control”. The minority ‘Resolution on Spain’ submitted by Eiffel in the US group the RWL in 1937 - published in this issue – has the same starting point as that of Bilan.
This question is important because while there are many internationalists in the anarchist movement who have taken a clear position on the current war in the Middle East, left communists need to encourage these comrades to make a thorough analysis of why anarchism has so often failed the test of imperialist war, above all in 1936. The idea of a “Spanish revolution” in 1936 represents a kind of sacred icon for nearly all anarchists, but until they are prepared to go to the roots of why such a significant part of the anarchist movement crossed the class line at that time, they will not be able to consistently defend internationalist positions today and in the future.
[7]. AIT is the Association International des Travailleurs is French for International Workers Association.
[11]. The picture of the CNT-AIT banner featured in this article is typical of the style of many of these articles, which whenever possible show pictures of the IWA contingent or picket to show the crucial role they have played in the struggle – an approach consistent with their notion of organising the class into revolutionary unions.
Let us begin by looking at the effect on pay. Of course the Chancellor’s only direct announcements on pay concern the public sector, the 2 year freeze on pay we have already seen, followed by a 1% cap, means an ongoing cut in pay in real terms. In addition the cap on benefits makes lower pay feasible for employers. The success of this policy has led to workers in Britain suffering a continuous fall in real wages since 2008 and the largest fall in real wages of all G20 countries since 2010. New jobs have been mainly self-employed, part time or low paid to such an extent that there is a shortfall in expected tax receipts leading to this year’s government borrowing requirement being higher than expected. Result: more cuts are called for.
Cuts in welfare are a constant concern for the Chancellor – and for the whole ruling class – and it is no surprise that they feature prominently in the autumn statement. Given the promises to protect state pensions this will fall predominantly on working age benefits. “The welfare budget has already been cut by between £20-£25bn. [Osborne] wants to do half as much again as what’s happened in this parliament – which gives a sense of the scale of the cuts, and their likely impact. The working age welfare bill is currently around £95bn. He wants to cut that by a further £12bn.” (Andrew Hood, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies quoted in The Guardian 5.12.14). The aim is to tighten the cap on benefits from £500 a week to £440. Working age benefits do not only go to those out of work for whatever reason but also to those in low paid jobs – of whom there are now so many more that it is affecting tax receipts. For these workers the state essentially tops up their pay to prevent it falling too far below what’s needed given the cost of living and cultural level in this country. Already two thirds of children in poverty have at least one parent in work.
Over the last 5 years spending by government departments has been reduced by 9.5%. This was not a new invention by the coalition government as the majority of the cuts they announced in May 2010 had already been envisaged by the outgoing Labour administration. The autumn statement envisages a further cut in spending of 14.1%. The Office for Budget Responsibility has pointed out that this will reduce the share of GDP spent by the state to the level of the 1930s and the IFS said it would reduce the role of the state to the extent that it would have “changed beyond recognition” (The Guardian 5.12.14).
So is Osborne rolling back the state? Changing it beyond all recognition? Or is it the same state, carrying out the same functions while taking account of the depth of the economic crisis, and calculating what they can get away with before the working class responds?
Leaving aside the very pertinent question of whether the state changed beyond recognition in the 1940s, let us look at the nature of the cuts that have been announced. Of course as the IFS points out, the chancellor has not explained how the cuts should be carried out beyond the next financial year. If the NHS, education and overseas aid remain protected, other departments will have to face a 40% cut over the next 5 years. But in any case, protected spending in the NHS, for instance, does not mean it is spared ‘efficiency savings’ or cuts, since it is required to provide increased services for the aging population out of the same funds, and staff are currently required to look at what can be done to reduce hospital attendances and look after more sick people at home. In relation to this we can look at the one area of spending that has already suffered a cut in excess of 40% over the current parliament: community and local government. Here we can see what has happened to the non-medical services available to the elderly, disabled and sick who the state is desperately trying to keep out of hospital. Care services are cut to the bone; carers are on zero hours contracts and are often on sub minimum wages once their travel is taken into account; they are limited to a ridiculously short time to spend with each client, and their services are often paid for or topped up by the clients themselves. This is a cut in living standards, for both care worker and client, not a change in the nature of local government which will continue to carry out the same functions, including collecting council tax, even if there is a substantial risk of some of them failing financially or being unable to carry out all their current statutory functions.
The army has been cut from 102,000 to 82,500, but this does not mean the British state is going to cease to defend its imperialist interests abroad. On the contrary, not only is the MoD trying to build up the Territorial Army of part timers, it has also just announced the first British base East of Suez since the 1970s, a naval base in Bahrain. Cuts to the Justice department do not mean an end to state repression. So far they have meant a swingeing cut in legal aid, in other words greater difficulty for those who aren’t well off to get access to the courts. In line with the increased use of the TA the Policy Exchange think-tank has recommended a network of members of the public to help fight crime – it is not clear whether they have in mind special constables or Stasi-style informers.
Cuts to living standards are the only option for the ruling class. How quickly the new cuts are brought in may be an issue after the next election, but they are not any kind of rolling back of the state, they are the state policy of the capitalist class faced with the current economic crisis.
Alex 6.12.14
In all the noisy commemorations about the First World War, some things are more or less left in silence. In particular, that a crucial responsibility for the war lay with the ‘Labour’ and ‘Socialist’ parties who in 1914 voted for war credits and set about mobilising the workers for the war effort.
This recording, of the presentation to the first session of the ICC day of discussion on World War I held in September 2014, looks at how the majority of the parties of the Second International came to betray the fundamental principles of internationalism and integrate themselves into the bourgeois state. This treason did not come about overnight, but was the product of a long process of degeneration which still contains many lessons for today. It focuses in particular on the German Social Democratic Party, the great jewel of the workers' movement prior to the war, whose capitulation in 1914 was a decisive factor in the 2nd International's collapse.
The presentation is based on two articles to be found in our special page on World War I [1245].
Across the globe there is a ‘great debate’ about immigration. Mostly it consists of arguments about how to restrict it. Immigration is presented as having a harmful effect on vulnerable economies, as undermining a country’s culture, as making our lives worse.
Against these arguments there are those who say that economies always get a net benefit from newcomers, that cultural diversity is enriching, and that, in more affluent countries, there is a responsibility to welcome those who are fleeing from persecution, poverty and war.
Every day you can read new headlines that play with these themes:
The ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie are dominated by the idea of a foreign threat and the need to strengthen frontiers and deter invaders. As a form of nationalism it promotes the idea of a national home which risks impoverishment, alien influences, and cultural dilution. From the openly Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece to the rise of the UK Independence Party in Britain and the electoral resurgence of the Front National in France, there are a range of right wing parties which express racist ideas in ways that were not previously respectable in normal democratic discourse. In return, liberals and the left offer state repression (bans and restrictions on parties, criminalisation in some instances) and their own versions of nationalism. The Scottish independence referendum had international coverage and many of those who supported the proposed split-off of Scotland did so on the grounds of national self-determination. Over the last century this has proven to be just a left version of the same nationalist poison. Bourgeoisies across the world were envious of the way the UK bourgeoisie was able to stage this democratic confrontation between varieties of nationalism.
Admitting that there was a “certain amount of xenophobia” in the ‘debate’ on immigration, the Mayor of London said that “All human beings are prey to that feeling. … It’s part of human nature. It doesn’t mean people are bad people, ok?” While this is a typically off-the-cuff remark it does convey something that the ruling class wants us to believe. It’s supposed to be only ‘natural’ to have prejudices. The lie is that we’re born with suspicions of anything that’s different or unfamiliar.
In reality, while there have been periods when immigration has been actively encouraged by the capitalist state[1] – and even today the ‘talented’ or ‘hard working’ are still nominally welcome everywhere – the competition between national capitals in its current stage has prompted the capitalist class to step up the familiar campaigns against foreigners. Sometimes this takes the form of the immigration ‘debate’, sometimes blatant racism, and sometimes against the threat posed by other religions.
The arguments that point out the benefits of immigration are still made on the basis of the national economy. Immigrants are not a burden; they are of value to the capitalist economy.
Another aspect of the bourgeoisie’s campaign is the trick of ethnicity. While denouncing the nationalism of the capitalist state and its supporters, there are those who encourage people to take refuge within ethnic groups. In practice, most national censuses have questions about ethnic background, showing an appreciation that, while people will not necessarily declare their loyalty to the capitalist state, they are often prepared to declare an identity that separates them from others.
Anti-racism is another phenomenon that the bourgeoisie uses against the development of class consciousness. Anti-racism constantly calls on the state to curb racism, tackle racists, and uphold justice. Look at the protests in the US against the killing of black people by white cops. The call is always for justice. And yet the state remains the apparatus of the ruling capitalist class and it’s only a united working class that can confront and destroy it.
A classic example of the reality of state anti-racism was the UK Labour government of the late 1960s. People familiar with the period think of Enoch Powell and his 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech foreseeing future ethnic conflict. In reality the Labour government had come to power in 1964 with a manifesto commitment saying that “the number of immigrants entering the United Kingdom must be limited” – and showed what this meant in 1968 with draconian restrictions on Kenyan Asians fleeing persecution. Another commitment in the 1964 manifesto was to “legislate against racial discrimination and incitement in public places” which led to the 1965 Race Relations Act and the setting up of a Race Relations Board (subsequently the Commission for Racial Equality). The state could say that it was committed to dealing with racism, while at the same time practising racist policies against different groups of immigrants attempting to settle in the UK. The state could have its cake and eat it.
The idea that xenophobia is somehow natural goes against the actual experience of humanity. If you examine the tens of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer society before the advent of farming and social classes, it is clear that relations based on mutual solidarity were at the root of survival in primitive communist society. Furthermore, humanity would not have gone beyond the stage of the horde if particular communities had not developed ‘exogamic’ relations with other human groups.
But while a social instinct is at the heart of what makes us human, the fragmentation of humanity, the alienation, individualism and nationalism fed by the capitalist system have brought to the fore other aspects of the human personality. Marxists have rightly shown what capitalism is responsible for: a system of exploitation that has led to imperialist wars and genocide. But while we can show the revolts, rebellions and revolutions against capitalist class rule, we also have to recognise the weight of conformity, obedience and acceptance of capitalism and its ideologies. The propaganda campaigns around immigration do have an impact; people often do believe that there is a threat that must be confronted, and the ‘foreigner’ in our midst is often the first scapegoat blamed for our miserable conditions.
The working class is often deeply divided by these prejudices and ideologies. But this does not detract from its historically unique nature. It is a class exploited by capitalism and subject to the weight of capitalist ideology. It is also a revolutionary class with the capacity to overthrow capitalism and develop new relations of production based on solidarity. The revolution of the working class is not just a revolt compelled by deprivation and repression; if it is to succeed it must have a consciousness of the world we must leave and the prospect of communism. As such, the working class view is not just a critique of society; it is also a moral view, in which the immediate needs of sections of the class are subordinated to a wider and more historic goal. Both classic racism and the anti-racism of the bourgeois left create illusions and cause divisions within the working class. For the working class to make a revolution it needs a unity that comes from a consciousness of its common interests internationally. Against racism, nationalism and xenophobia the working class offers a perspective of communism, a society based on association, not on the enforcement of separation.
Car 6/12/14
[1]. For an in-depth article on many aspects of the question of immigration see ‘Immigration and the workers’ movement’ at https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/3448 [1248]
A hundred years ago the world was plunged into the cataclysm of World War I, a vast inter-imperialist conflict in which 20 million died. During the war there were many workers’ struggles that went against the spirit of national defence. In Britain the Shop Stewards movement originally appeared as an expression of these struggles, but because they never broke from the trade union framework, they were subsequently integrated into the apparatus for controlling the working class. The article that follows was first published in WR 4 in August 1975. Written nearly forty years ago there are inevitably some formulations that we would now qualify, change or omit, but we are republishing it as it first appeared because its essential argument remains as valid as ever.
The aim of this article is to clarify the revolutionary experience of the proletariat in relation to the trade unions. One of the crucial political positions of the International Communist Current is that the trade unions, in the epoch of capitalist decadence, have amply proven their reactionary, anti-working class nature. Their support for imperialist wars and their sabotage of revolutionary upsurges, and other genuine struggles of the class, has made plain their place as a wing of the bourgeoisie.
In Britain, the shop stewards’ movement, composed of rank and file trade union delegates may seem to represent a progressive alternative to the unions as a whole. To deepen an understanding of the real nature of the shop stewards, we must lay the basis for examining the apparent contradiction between them and the rest of the trade union apparatus.
We can best do this by looking at the growth of the Shop Stewards’ and Workers’ Committee Movement (SS&WCM) during World War I, when it played a part in the waves of revolutionary struggle sweeping Europe from 1917 to 1923. We must also briefly see its role in the subsequent counterrevolutionary period, which has lasted until today’s re-awakening of proletarian revolt.
It is first of all necessary to briefly examine the precise historical period in which the SS&WCM arose. World War I marked the definitive end of the ascendant epoch of capitalism; the finish of the progressive expansion of world capitalism, and the beginning of cycles of imperialist wars and reconstruction periods, which demonstrated that capitalism was now a decadent social system.
The tempo and character of class struggle changed in response to the closure of the ascendant period. Mass strikes occurred in Russia in 1905, and in Germany and other countries, in the decades preceding World War I. This indicated that the protracted sectional and reformist workers’ struggles of the ascendant period were over. The working class struggle started to break out of its factory confines, and began to confront the· capitalist system as a whole. The massacre of millions of proletarians in World War I, plus the rapid disintegration of working class living standards, accelerated the deepening class struggle into direct revolutionary outbursts throughout .Europe. They reached their highest point in October 1917 in Russia, where the class captured power through the soviets under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Other revolutions for example those in Hungary and Germany, proved abortive, and the revolution in Russia remained isolated, thus preventing the urgent extension, world-wide, of proletarian power. The Russian Revolution degenerated as a result and the Russian regime became itself integrated into capitalist decadence. All the waves of the period were bloodily crushed and for more that fifty years the class had paid dearly for the continuance of capitalist barbarism, from which it is only starting to recover today.
In Britain, the revolutionary waves of 1917-23 found a substantial reverberation. From 1910 onwards an unprecedented period of working class struggle began. In 1910-11 the Cambrian Combine Strike occurred, involving 26,000 miners, to which the bourgeoisie responded with the use of troops. The militancy of merchant seamen in 1911 sparked off a strike by railway workers, bringing out 250,000 men in total. The Dublin Transport Strike of 1913-14 attracted sympathy strikes in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. Altogether between January and July 1914, 9,105,800 working days were lost through strikes. The class struggle regained this intense militancy following a brief lull at the outbreak of World War I caused by the national patriotism in the class. In March 1915, 200,000 mineworkers struck illegally in defence of their living standards, and in 1916 an unofficial strike in Sheffield against conscription was successful. In May 1917, the most significant strike wave of the war erupted in opposition to the effects of imperialist carnage which involved at its climax 200 thousand engineering workers. The Clyde workers in 1919 staged a massive revolt in their attempt to secure a 40-hour week.
But the end of the ascendant period and the era of class struggle associated with it, which these and other struggles inaugurated, also demanded a change in the tactics and organisation previously adopted by the proletariat. The establishment of trade unions had originally been fought for by workers in order to defend and improve their conditions of life within the capitalist system. However, toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century the impasse facing world capitalism increasingly prevented the trade unions from achieving any real reforms on behalf of the workers. The unions were, as institutions, forced more and more to identify their interests with those of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the heightening revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat. The growing bureaucratisation of the trade unions, in response to capitalist decadence, accelerated the divorce between the trade unions and the proletariat. The mass workers’ parties, linked to the trade unions, and similarly dedicated to reformism, as expressed in the minimum programme, represented the proletariat within the institutions of the bourgeoisie, (particularly parliament), gave support to the decaying capitalist system against the deepening struggle of the working class.
In Britain, this capitulation to capitalism by Social Democracy was definitely and irrevocably marked by the support for World War I of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. In August 1914 the Labour Party and the TUC called for existing strikes to end and the prevention of any more for the duration of the war. This summons became lawful command (through the Munitions Act) after the Treasury agreements between the unions and the government in March 1915. Strikes were declared illegal; workers were tied to their place of employment; all restrictive practices were to be ended; objections to overtime, nightwork, and Sunday duty were to be rejected; the dilution[1] of labour was made acceptable; and many Factory Act safety and health prohibitions, successfully fought for by the class in the nineteenth century, were suspended.
In this way the organised expressions of the old workers’ movement not only helped mobilise the class for slaughter in the imperialist war, they also helped wipe out all the meagre gains the class had won in the previous epoch of reformist struggle. The offensive against the living conditions, and life itself, of the proletariat was not to last merely for the duration of the war, but was to become a permanent feature of the ensuing counter-revolutionary period. In 1914 the old workers’ movement definitively entered the bourgeois camp and became reactionary agents within the proletariat.
The most advanced sections of the world class, in this period, quite quickly created fundamentally new organisations to express the revolutionary interests of the proletariat. Workers’ councils emerged in 1905 and in 1917 in Russia, and in 1918 in Germany and elsewhere; the councils challenged the whole of the existing apparatus of capitalism and brought the class together to fight its independent struggle for social revolution. The role of revolutionaries in the new period of capitalist decadence was to help, and play a part in, the seizure of power by the workers’ councils, and no longer, as a mass party, to act on behalf of the proletariat, according to the old Social Democratic conception.
In Britain a period of militancy leading up to World War I had already provoked terror in the trade union machines. Following the outbreak of the War the unions had explicitly ceased to express proletarian interests. The class was clearly faced with the immense task of creating new organisations to express its new interests. The entire consciousness and organisation of the previous period was finished and the class had to rapidly develop a revolutionary praxis.
The long traditions of reformism and trade unionism within the British proletariat (which were unlike those of the Russian class for example) and the relative weakness of the revolutionary waves in Europe, prevented the British sector of the class from reaching its organisational expression in revolutionary workers’ councils. Instead, rank and file unionist and syndicalist organisations, the most important of which being the SS&WCM, were created in an attempt to answer the needs of the new period.
Tom Mann, who had been one of the leaders of the pre-war period of class struggle, helped form the Industrial Syndicalist Education League in 1910. He was a leader of the Seamens’ Union, which obtained substantial concessions from the shipping companies in 1911. He believed in militant reformism, was hostile to political struggle, encouraged unionisation along class lines and the amalgamation of existing competing unions. The SS&WCM was directly influenced by the ideas of Tom Mann and other syndicalist and industrial unionists.
Jack T. Murphy, a Sheffield engineer, and one of the leading theoreticians of the SS&WCM, described himself as a “syndicalist socialist”. He had been involved in the amalgamation committee movement before the war. He was strongly influenced by the ideas of the famous James Connolly, an industrial unionist and member of the Socialist Labour Party. Connolly saw the struggle for socialism as primarily a question of economic organisation. The organisation of the class within factories and workshops, according to him, would gradually develop and extend its power, and provide the basis for the proletarian revolution: “ .. the conquest of political power by the working class waits upon the conquest of economic power and must function through the economic’ organisation.”[2]
The SS&WCM was inspired by these theories. With the capitulation of the unions to the imperialist war effort, industrial organisation of the type described by Connolly was only really feasible at the level of the rank and file of the existing unions. According to Murphy: “all the trade unionists in any shop should have shop stewards, who should form themselves into a committee to represent the workers in that shop regardless of the trade unions they belonged to and thus make the first step towards uniting the unions.”[3]
This notion was derived from the amalgamation committee movement before the war. Similar committees to those envisaged by Murphy sprang up throughout Britain during the war years.
On the Clyde, in Scotland, where the shop steward movement first began, Willie Gallacher, chairman of the Clyde Workers’ Committee, echoed the theories of Connolly. He helped produce a pamphlet in 1917[4] which describes how rank and file industrial organisations of the class would undermine capitalism, merely by means of ‘contracts’, which would gradually help the class to take over the running of ‘industry’.
The stewards were not only averse to the political struggle of the class, they rejected the notion of leadership as such in reaction to what they saw as the ‘betrayal’ of union leaders. Rank and file miners produced a pamphlet, The Miners’ Next Step, which influenced the SS&WCM, in which they argued that “A leader implies … some men who are being led … self-respect which comes from manhood, is taken from the men, and consolidated in their leader… the order and system he maintains is based on the suppression of the men, from being independent thinkers into being ‘the men’ or ‘the mob’.”[5]
There is here a failure to account for the objective reasons why there existed a chasm between leaders and union members (ie the working’ class). The division between leaders and led had become in fact an expression of a division of class interests. The union leaders, as representatives of the unions as a whole were defenders of bourgeois interests against those of the proletariat. Without understanding the class nature of the unions, the rank and file miners were reacting to bureaucracy within the context of trade unionism. As an indirect result they were also rejecting the inherent ability of the working class to elect and mandate ‘leaders’ to defend proletarian interests within workers’ councils. Murphy sympathised with the abstract rejection of leadership held by the rank and file miners: “Government by officials … is steadily eroding trade union members’ rights whereas … real democratic practice demands that every member of an organisation shall participate actively in the conduct of business.” “If one man can sway the crowd in one direction, another man can move them in the opposite direction.”[6]
However the SS&WCM could not claim to have completely broken with the union officials. At the Manchester national conference of the SS&WCM in 1916, it was proclaimed: “We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them..” And their statement of aims included a further directly unionistic statement: (We aim at) “the furtherance of the interests of working class organisation as a partisan effort to improve the position in the present and to ultimately assist in the abolition of the wages system.”[7]
The SS&WCM’s consciousness and organisation, in essence, remained within the boundaries of trade unionism. It was undeniably a militant, proletarian reaction to the capitulation of the trade unions to capitalist barbarism, but it was severely limited. It did not fully appreciate the class forces and historical change in the capitalist system which had caused the degeneration of the old workers’ movement, and which required new, directly revolutionary tactics and forms of organisation by the proletariat.
The problem of the trade unions was not fundamentally that they were based on trade and craft rather than on the level of the whole class, although this did express the backwardness of the unions. The amalgamation of existing unions, for example, could not change their reactionary content, it rather expressed the tendency of capitalism to centralise and bureaucratise the trade unions; the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, for example, capitulated with little trouble to the war effort. The industrial unionist idea that the industrial organisation of the class could gradually prepare for the proletariat to assume economic power, which would then burst the political shell of the state, was a complete misunderstanding of the character of union organisation. The function of the unions had been to defend the workers’ immediate interests, not to engage in an economistic attempt to dismantle capitalism. The attempt by the SS&WCM to give the unions, or rank and file trade unionist organisations, a revolutionary content occurred in a revolutionary period when the immediate task of the proletariat was to seize political power, not to organise itself unionistically, in however radical a manner. The SS&WCM’s theories described an unconscious desire to channel the revolutionary aspirations of the class into forms of organisation which were completely unsuited to these aspirations. The above-mentioned pamphlet by Gallacher spells out the content of attempts at encroaching control over capitalist industry -a workers’ management of capitalism which would leave political and military power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, to be used whenever it became necessary to suppress this confused objective of the class.
Without fully understanding the reasons for the degeneration of the trade unions, the SS&WCM reacted on a formalistic level. This was one of the reasons preventing the SS&WCM from escaping the framework of unionism. The essence of the union question was not, as Murphy asserted, that they had leaders who were out of touch with the rank and file, because of their different surroundings to those of the shop floor workers. The reactionary leaders were a product of the reactionary organisation of the trade unions themselves. This resulted from the changing historical conditions of capitalism and the resulting change in the direction of the class struggle.
By making a fetishism out of abstract democracy, which remained within the context of trade unionism, the shop stewards prevented themselves from appreciating and expressing the new needs of the workers’ movement. ‘Democracy’ has never existed independently from material conditions; it always has a content which represents a particular class interest. The bureaucrats in the trade union leadership were not opponents of democracy in the abstract, but of proletarian democracy, which could only genuinely exist outside of and against the unions. They were on the other hand keen supporters of capitalist democracy.
The SS&WCM was thus restricted by these false premises and particularly by its support for many conceptions made obsolete by the imperialist war. The most significant symptom of such structural backwardness was the failure of the SS&WCM to oppose the war along revolutionary lines, ie to express the need of the class to use the war to take offensive against capitalism as a whole. Many shop stewards were ‘opposed to the war’ but they did not agitate against it in the factories and mines. They restricted their activity within the proletariat mainly to industrial matters and grievances. The attempt in January 1918 to answer the call of the Bolsheviks to force the ending of the war came to nothing partly because the SS&WCM failed to make a clear call to the class on the issue. It failed to live up to its responsibilities, as an advanced sector of the proletariat, to proclaim the vital interests of the class in a systematic and effective way.
Lack of political initiative by the SS&WCM was also to be seen in its response to the wave of strikes of May 1917, which demanded that dilution be banned from non-military work, and that the Trade Card system, exempting some workers from conscription be restored. The strike” … spread throughout England, factories in Leicester, Rugby, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Leeds, Newcastle, Rotherham, Derby, Crayford, Erith, Woolwich and London … Before the strike was over it had extended to forty-eight towns, involving over two hundred thousand men and a loss of one and a half million working days - more than the combined total of days lost in engineering and shipbuilding since the outbreak of war.” [8]
This wave, which was a revolt against the barbarism of the whole war, as well as a product of immediate causes, placed the shop stewards at its head. Yet a national conference of strikers’ delegates did not meet until at least two weeks after the strike wave began. And the outcome of the meeting was merely a “request that the Minister of Munitions should meet a deputation”.[9] Instead of such a conciliationist stance as this taken by the shop stewards a movement was needed to call explicitly for the extension of the strikes, and the deepening of their content. The objective of such class struggle should have been made explicit: an assault against the capitalist state, the extension of the revolution to the world arena, which were the only methods of linking up with the Russian proletariat. The strike was eventually defeated.
Obviously the failure of the strike to extend itself was not solely a result of the shop stewards’ inadequacies. It was the product of the immaturity of the whole class. The proletariat had been torn out of a long epoch of reformism, forced to confront capitalism in a revolutionary way, yet did not have the experience to fully comprehend or realise its objective tasks. The shop stewards, to a greater or lesser extent, expressed these inadequacies by their vacillations and indecisiveness.
Further negative characteristics of the SS&WCM were its localism and sectionalism. The movement was confined mainly to the engineering industries, which had been given importance by capitalism’s need for armaments. When the importance of these industries for British capital sharply declined after the war, followed by lack of demand for labour, employers were then able to throw militants out of the factories with impunity. One of the pillars of the stewards’ strength was thus knocked aside after the war.
The miners did not develop any independent rank and file unionistic organs, and although they militantly defended their living standards, their struggle was confined within the miners’ union. This helped prevent any linking up between miners and other sections of the class. An attempt to unify the SS&WCM and the rank and file committees in the miners’ and railwaymen’s unions at a March 1919 conference proved unsuccessful. The committees in the latter unions were content to work within the union structure, unlike the engineering shop stewards.
Although the shop stewards’ movement was nominally co-ordinated nationally by the National Administrative Council, there was little deliberate sympathy action between different sections of workers and little overall central direction. For example, during the May strikes, the Clyde workers remained at work. And paradoxically when the Clyde workers struck for a forty hour week in January 1919, the NAC proved unable to secure any sympathy action from English workers. Similarly in March 1917, wildcat strikes in Barrow involving 10,000 workers failed to bring out workers in other districts, and the strike was defeated.
We are not, however, criticising the stewards simply for lack of unification and centralisation, as leftist commentators on the shop stewards’ movement invariably do. To do so would be to criticise them within the terms of unionism and would therefore imply the need for more effective union struggles. Our criticisms are based on the conception that the shop stewards’ movement was in the main an historically obsolete organisational form, with a consciousness linked to the ascendant period of capitalism. Our criticisms aim at showing the weakness of the SS&WCM in the face of the revolutionary tasks of the class. The essential need of the British sector of the class at the time, was for its most advanced elements to develop an organisation capable of defending the revolutionary programme within the entire proletariat; a party which could, as the Bolsheviks were able to do, clarify the urgent fact that the international class would have to create revolutionary workers’ councils in order to mount an assault on the capitalist system itself.
It is true that the SS&WCM identified their workers’ committees with the Russian Soviets, supported the October Revolution, and sympathised with the Bolshevik regime. But the workers’ committees were organised on the level of the factory only, and primarily for reformist struggles. They were essentially a type of union structure. The Russian Soviets, although by no means perfect, revolutionary forms of class organisation, were clearly expressions of the proletariat’s new historic needs. The Soviets were class-wide political organs which grouped the class to challenge the whole capitalist order, in however confused a manner. The Soviets, under Bolshevik leadership, secured the political, social and military overthrow of the bourgeois state machine, the dictatorship of the proletariat and gave impetus to the extension of the world revolution. The workers’ committees, on the other hand, were radical trade union-like organs, with a reformist mentality and an economistic theory of revolution, based on the notion of ‘workers’ control’.
It is also true that the shop stewards were instrumental in the creation of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920: “Of the eight members of the National Administrative Council elected in August 1917, six, MacManus, the chairman, Peet, the secretary, Murphy, the assistant secretary, T. Hurst, W. Gallacher and T. Dingley, joined the Communist Party by the time of the Leeds Unity Convention in January 1921.” [10]
They therefore apparently helped create a revolutionary party, capable of linking up with the Communist International, to defend the revolutionary programme within the class. Yet, by this time, the revolutionary waves throughout Europe were ebbing and the Communist International, (Comintern), founded in Moscow in 1919, was compromising more and more with left factions of the bourgeoisie - the Social Democrats and the trade unions - in a desperate attempt to reverse the counter-revolutionary upswing. Ironically and tragically, the shop stewards were overcoming their limitations and taking part in a revolutionary regroupment just as the Comintern was ceasing to express the goal of world revolution. The Comintern was already encouraging work with1n the trade unions, ie supporting tactics from the ascendant period of capitalism which had now become completely reactionary.
In this way the SS&WCM and the advanced sections of the class in Britain were driven back into the trade unions. This took place through the Red International of Trade Unions, the British section or which was the Minority Movement. In the name of revolution, credence had been given to the most dangerous agents inside the working class, agents which had already helped mobilise the proletariat for imperialist butchery and which now proved decisive in defeating its revolutionary aspirations. For the British working class the 1926 General Strike proved to be the final nail in the coffin of its revolutionary potential. This nail had been hammered home by the TUC in collusion with the rest of the bourgeoisie. At the time, the CPGB called for “All power to the General Council” (of the TUC), providing an ‘extreme left’ cover for the reactionary manoeuvres of the trade union leaders.
While the SS&WCM was being physically smashed directly after the war, through unemployment and wide-spread dismissals from factories, the revolutionary current which animated the war-time movement was defeated by the Social Democrats, the trade unions and the Comintern in its period of counter-revolut1onary decline. It was only at the instigation of these capitalist factions that the shop stewards’ movement re-emerged during the late thirties, no longer to express an embryonic revolutionary upsurge of the class, as it had during World War I, but to try and contain the proletariat while a second imperialist slaughter was being launched by world capitalism.
The purpose of our analysis is not to dismiss the SS&WCM, despite our deep criticism of it. It was one of the most advanced elements of the proletarian movement in Britain during the 1914-23 period. Its mistakes were those of the working class trying to grapple with the enormous tasks facing it at the onset of the era of capitalist decadence. Its failure resulted from the weakness and inexperience of the whole international proletariat at that time. Our criticisms aim to identify the mistakes of that period from the point of view of the emerging revolutionary movement of the class today. Only by understanding the failures of the first revolutionary period during capitalist decadence, can we comprehend and express how the future revolutionary movement of the class can be victorious. Our criticisms themselves are only possible owing to the experiences of the proletariat, particularly those which were refracted through the clearest elements in the 1917-23 struggles. These elements perceived with the greatest lucidity the needs of the new period and could see the mistakes of other revolutionaries.
John Maclean, and his group in the British Socialist Party, who took a revolutionary defeatist position[11] against World War I, were critical of the Clyde shop stewards, particularly their ambitions of workers’ control: “We are not for the absolute control of each industry by workers engaged, for that would be trustified caste control … the final control and destiny of the products of an industry must be in the hands of humanity as a whole.”[12]
While this position implied an understanding of the international, political, primacy of the socialist revolution, Maclean was less clear on the need for revolutionary organisation, and was steeped, even during the war, in many old Social Democratic prejudices; for example he tended to overvalue workers’ education as an end in itself.
The Workers’ Dreadnought, a left communist paper, also had an understanding somewhat in advance of the SS&WCM. In its issue of March 9, 1918 it stated that: “It is our intention to make the Dreadnought the medium for nationally co-ordinating the (shop stewards’) movement.”[13]
The Dreadnought apparently was aware of the danger of sectionalism and localism in the SS&WCM. WF Watson, a shop steward, who was very critical of the failure of the SS&WCM to take action to end the war, worked closely with Syliva Pankhurst, leader of the Dreadnought group. These elements, like the more important Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD), provide an important historical link with the needs of today’s escalating class struggle, and with the present revolutionary minorities.
The absolute victory of the counter-revolution in the mid-twenties meant that the shop stewards could only re-emerge as a weapon of the left agents of capitalism: the trade unions, the Social Democratic Parties, and the Stalinists. The original ideology and practice of the shop stewards, expressed an abortive attempt to come to grips with the revolutionary period in the wake of World War I, but could only become, in a period of counter-revolutionary decline, a means of emasculating the class struggle itself. The fact that the shop stewards had once been expressions of working class interests became a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie as it subjected the proletariat to barbarism, by means of mystification as well as brute force.
The stewards’ movement first re-emerged immediately before World War II, when it was dominated by the Stalinists. When Russia entered the war against the Axis powers in 1941, shop steward groups formed joint production committees with the management of factories for the purpose of helping mobilise the class behind one imperialist bloc, and smashing nascent proletarian reaction to capitalist war: “It falls upon us to strain every effort to achieve the maximum production so that arms flow in greater quantity despite the fact that thousands of workers will be transferred from the factories to shipyards to build the vessels whereby our products will be delivered to the fighting front. That is the task of the trade unionist in the factory, that is the responsibility of every anti-fascist worker.”[14]
Thus the re-emergent shop stewards’ movement was instrumental in the practical and ideological mobilisation of the class for its bloody defeat, behind the mystification of anti-fascism. The shop stewards’ movement of this time shared nothing, in terms of its class content, with the movement of World War I, which reacted in an elemental proletarian way to the imperialist carnage - albeit in a confused way.
From World War II until today, the shop stewards’ movement has played an openly reactionary role in bourgeois industrial relations. This has been partly due to the decentralisation of wage bargaining during the post war years, which has given shop stewards an increased importance in contrast to trade union leaders. But the more profoundly true reason for their increasing role is the importance of the shop stewards’ movement in diffusing the revolt of the class.
The shop stewards are dangerous today precisely because they are embedded in the working class. They are usually elected by workers on the shop floor, they smooth out day-to-day grievances of workers, work in the same surroundings, and even lead strikes. But their task is to ‘represent’ the workers within the framework of trade unionism and legal relations with the bourgeoisie. As a corollary of this, they are also usually influenced by Social Democratic or Stalinist ideology, often being members of the Labour or Communist Parties.
The shop stewards are thus in an extremely good position to demobilise any real working class revolt in the factories, any revolt which threatens to go beyond a sectional framework, becomes autonomous, and starts to understand the real function played by the unions within capitalism. Their position within the rank and file gives them credence which can help divert and contain the struggle. In such a way, illustrated millions of times in the post-war period, the shop stewards’ movement has proved itself to be one of the surest guardians of the trade unions, although it may well criticise union leaders from time to time.
The reactionary role of the shop stewards’ movement does not mean that every individual shop steward is counter-revolutionary. Many shop stewards are elected because ‘no one else would take the job’, and could easily cease to be stewards and rejoin the mass of other workers. Many militant workers on the other hand become fodder for bourgeois interests (it is one of the tragedies of the counnter-revo1utionary period that most militant workers who emerge today are immediately swallowed up by the left agents of capital). The question of the role of the shop stewards, however, does not revolve around this or that particular individual case but is determined by the position of the whole movement vis-à-vis contending class forces. As a form of organisation embodying a specific ideology, the shop stewards’ movement is undoubtedly a weapon of capitalism today.
Leftist factions of the bourgeoisie also try inevitably to harness what was once a proletarian movement to reactionary ends. Trotskyists, libertarians, and ouvrierists of all kinds fawn on the shop stewards, and attempt to recruit and influence them, sensing their importance and power within the class. The International Socia1ists, for example, a popu1ist-trotskyist organisation, bases its main strategy within the class on recruiting shop stewards, and forming ‘rank and file movements’ within the trade unions. It grounds its policy on a false analogy with the SS&WCM during World War I. For IS the problems of this movement resided not in the consciousness and activity of the SS&WCM but rather in the lack of political direction from outside the movement: “It is too much to expect that, without the guidance of an interventionist revolutionary (sic) party, an industrial movement led by political militants (a reborn revolutionary shop stewards’ movement) can lead a revolutionary struggle to the point of challenging the government for power.”[15]
For such Trotskyists, the fact that the shop stewards remained within unionism was very acceptable; the ‘revolutionary’ party could thus have taken power on its behalf. (This quote also makes clear the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the party for Trotskyists which is to ‘challenge’ the ‘government’ for power. It thus struggles to obtain governmental office, not to destroy the whole capitalist system.) The Trotskyists are incapable of seeing that the working class has the ability to go beyond and destroy the unions by its own efforts, and to develop its own revolutionary organisations: workers’ councils and communist minorities.
The danger posed by the Trotskyists lies not in their ludicrous dreams of bourgeois governmental office, but in their avid support for all the left agents of capital, especially the shop stewards. Like them, the Trotskyists and others argue for the repetition of mistakes which the class made fifty or more years ago. However, to encourage and support the shop stewards’ movement today is not a mistake but brazen capitalist mystification.
In the present deepening crisis of world capitalism, the emerging class struggle is forcing the proletariat to confront the shop stewards, and other rank and file union delegates in other countries, as guardians of the existing order. After fifty years experience of counter-revolution, and after the lessons of the previous revolutionary period, the class thus has the capability of going beyond its previous mistakes.
One of the most fundamental lessons learnt by proletarian experience over these fifty years is that the class can have no permanent mass organisations grouping the whole class or sections of the class under decadent capitalism. The shop stewards’ movement, despite the fact that it is composed of thousands of workers, is a clear proof of this impossibility, because though it pretends to be the most militant defender of the c1ass, in fact it is a strong defender of bourgeois interests. Indeed any rank and file unionistic organisation which seeks to institutionalise itself in the class struggle becomes a brake on the real battles of the class. Only .those committees which are thrown up in the course of strugg1e.eg during a wildcat strike, existing to develop that battle independently from the unions, and disbanding after the struggle is over, can aid the development of proletarian class organisation and consciousness. Such committees are embryonic precursors of the workers’ councils, the historically discovered organisational form through which the whole class smashes the capitalist state and expropriates the bourgeoisie.
Temporary committees thrown up in the course of real workers’ struggles can express proletarian interests because these struggles inevitably tend to go beyond their sectional limits, and attack capitalism as a whole. Temporary committees can therefore be potentially embryonic revolutionary forms. Permanent mass organisations, however, inevitably conform to the everyday circumstances of wage slavery and participate in the exploitation of workers which cannot be ame1iorated during capitalist decadence. They are often swallowed up by the unions or leftist organisations.
The anti-working class role of permanent ‘workers’ organisations is made clear when workers’ committees stay in existence after the purpose of the struggle for which they were created has disappeared. These committees are then emptied of their content of autonomous struggle and become tools for regulating day to day exploitation within the factory, or for attempting to ‘mobilise’ the rank and file.
The Workers’ Commissions in Spain, originally created by workers in struggle, became permanent organisations, and rapidly ceased to defend proletarian interests, becoming left appendages of capital. Similarly the Base Committees of Italian workers, which had a parallel development to the Workers’ Commissions, have been integrated into the reactionary apparatus of the unions. Today both these organisations have to be fought when the class develops its autonomous struggle in these countries.
One of the main functions of revolutionaries is to systematically demonstrate to workers in the industrial centres the reactionary role of the trade union apparatus with all its factions - whether the shop stewards’ movement or the trade union bureaucracy. The task of revolutionaries is to show that the class struggle, if it is to be successful in the face of the crisis, must sooner or later deepen and develop autonomously against the trade unions and every other capitalist faction. This is the only way for the revolutionary proletariat, the way which leads to the seizure of international political power by the working class, and the preparation of the conditions for a classless society.
Frank Smith, August 1975
[1]. Dilution was the use of non-skilled or semi-skilled labour in jobs previously reserved for skilled workers.
[2]. Cited in Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900-21, Weidenfeld &Nicolson, London 1969, p.162
[3]. Ibid, p.153
[4]. William Gallacher and J. Paton, Towards Industrial Democracy; a Memorandum on Workers’ Control, Paisley Trades and Labour Council, 1917. Cited in Ken Coates and Tony Topham Eds, Workers’ Control, Panther, London 1970, p.l07
[5]. Cited in Kendall, p.161
[6]. Ibid, p.161
[7]. Ibid, p.156
[8]. Ibid, p.158
[9]. Ibid, p.164
[10]. Ibid, p.164
[11]. By revolutionary defeatism we understand: for the defeat of the imperialist war by mass revolutionary action. This was the position held by all the genuinely revolutionary elements which opposed the reactionary opportunism of the Send International. The opportunists in the Second International were known as defencists, because they defended their national bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie of other countries, or as social-chauvinists because they were “socialists in words and chauvinists in deeds” (Lenin), ie they supported the imperialism of their countries.
[12]. Quoted in Tom Bell, John Maclean. A Fighter for Freedom, Communist Party Scottish Committee, 1944, p.54. Cited in John Maclean, The War after the War, Introduction, p.iii, Socialist Reproduction, London, 1973.
[13]. Cited in James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement, Allen and Unwin, London 1973, Footnote p.268
[14]. Joint Production Committees, How to Get the Best Results, Engineering and Allied Trades Shop Stewards’ National Council, 1942, cited in Coates and Topham, p.172
[15]. Duncan Hallas, “The First Shop Stewards’ Movement”, International Socialism, December 1973, p.26
“The events in Spain have put every organisation to the test”. In 1936-7 the entire international revolutionary movement was faced with the necessity to affirm the absolute incompatibility between proletarian class struggle and imperialist war, since the one can only advance to the detriment of the other. The class struggle either prevents or disrupts imperialist war; the working masses can only be mobilised for imperialist war by renouncing the class struggle. As we argue in the article on anarchism and imperialist war in this issue, significant parts of the anarchist movement failed this test in 1914, and even more spectacularly over the war in Spain; and the same pattern of capitulation to capitalist war is being repeated today in relation to Ukraine and the Middle East today. But the war in Spain also precipitated a crisis in the Marxist currents which had initially tried to resist the Stalinist counter-revolution, and it was only a small minority which was able to remain loyal to internationalism during that dark period.
The text we are republishing below[1], written by Eiffel, was a resolution on the war in Spain submitted by the minority of the Revolutionary Workers’ League in the USA. It was published in the November 1937 issue of The Fourth International, the RWL’s journal. As we recount in our book The Italian Communist Left, the RWL was one of the groups to the left of official Trotskyism which the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left engaged in discussion following the Fraction’s own exclusion from Trotsky’s International Left Opposition. Its best-known militant was Hugo Oehler. It had rejected the 1934 ‘turn’ towards entryism in the Socialist Parties and with regard to the events in Spain again stood on the left of the Trotskyists. But it also retained key elements of the Trotskyist platform, such as the defence of the USSR, and it was never able to make a clean break from the opportunist methods and habits of Trotskyism. Eiffel’s resolution is aimed at the fatal ambiguities of the RWL on the question of Spain, since in the final analysis its position offered a variety of critical support for the Republican war effort against Franco.
Eiffel was the pseudonym of the German anthropologist Paul Kirchoff, who had been a member of the left communist KAPD until 1931. After arriving in the USA in that year, he was involved first in the milieu of the Left Opposition in New York and then became a member of the RWL, primarily because of his opposition to the entryist policy. Expelled from the USA in 1937, he went to Mexico and, following his break from the RWL, formed the Marxist Workers’ Group whose documents on the wars in Spain and China, and on the reactionary nature of the nationalisations carried out by the leftist government in Mexico, were warmly welcomed by the Italian Fraction. We have published some of the MWG’s key documents in the International Review[2].
The events in Spain have put every organisation to the test. We have to admit that we have not stood it. Seeing this, our first and foremost duty is to study the roots of our failure; our second duty is to admit our failure in all frankness before the national and international proletariat. Only thus can we hope to rehabilitate ourselves as a Marxist vanguard organisation.
The following resolution is very far from being a sufficiently searching analysis of the real significance of the events in Spain and of our attitude towards them. It aims to be nothing more than a first admission of our failure in the face of these events, and an introduction to the discussion which the whole organisation must at this late hour begin immediately.
The evolution of the position of our organisation with respect to the events in Spain has followed on the whole a line which seems to indicate that underlying all our mistakes there is a healthy and solid Marxist base; that line of evolution has steadily, although hesitatingly, moved away from the initial false position and has progressively approached a correct one. But this process has been exceedingly slow and to a large extent shame-faced or even unconscious. Not once during the past seven months, the most crucial months not only in the recent history of the proletariat, but of our organization as well, has the question of the correctness or incorrectness of our fundamental line on Spain been squarely posed by any of the leading comrades as the life or death question for our organization. Those who, like comrade Eiffel, had from the very beginning fundamental differences with the majority of the PC on this question, but did not make this difference the center of a principled struggle for a different line, have failed to carry out one of the most elementary duties of a leading member.
While the gradual evolution of our line on Spain seems to indicate that there is at bottom a really Marxist base in our organization, our initial failure and the false manner in which we have subsequently corrected it in part, are grave symptoms of the youth and immaturity of our organisation. If the organization pulls through this crisis, i.e. analyses to the bottom its failure to meet a historical test, and corrects it completely, it will be essentially a new organization, having outgrown the weaknesses of its childhood days. It will then be one of the very few organizations on an international scale that have weathered the Spanish storm. In fact it will be stronger than before, as are those who are capable of correcting themselves even when that correction touches the very essential of their position.
The essential significance of the events in Spain is this: the workers’ reaction to the attempt of the bourgeoisie, to shift from corruption to brutal oppression, induced the latter to embark upon a new road of driving the workers off their class line, a method never used before in such a thorough and systematic manner: WAR! The struggle in Spain began as a civil war, but was rapidly concerted into a capitalist, i.e. an imperialist war. The whole strategy of the Spanish and international bourgeoisie has consisted in carrying this transformation through without a change in the outward appearances and without the workers of Spain and the world noticing it. To achieve its end, the bourgeoisie had by all means at its disposal to keep alive the belief of the workers that they were fighting for their own class interests, i.e. that it was a civil war.
Those who did not recognise in time this transformation had already taken place (who saw it only after many months) or who did not radically change from the moment they recognized this (again we belong to this category), objectively played the game of the bourgeoisie. Radical workers’ organizations which combatted the open forms of class betrayal, but who at the same time prolonged the illusions of the workers that this war had anything to do with their class interests, that it was “at bottom” a civil war, were in fact indispensable to the plan of the Bourgeoisie. The most concise formula of this objective support to the Spanish and world bourgeoisie is contained in a leaflet published by the PC in the second half of February, that is in the seventh month of the war in Spain: “The Spanish working-class must march together with the People’s Front against Franco, but must prepare to turn their guns against Caballero to-morrow”.
To say this at a time when we had already understood and declared openly that civil war had been converted into imperialist war, is the very opposite of what Marxists have to tell the workers during imperialist war; sabotage! Fraternization with the “enemy”! desert! Revolutionary defeatism! Turn imperialist war into civil war! – It is only necessary to compare these slogans of Marxists during the world war with our slogans, to see the full depth of our failure to analyse the situation correctly and to draw the correct conclusions from it. To speak of imperialist war (beginning of article in January number of Fourth International) and then to end the same article with the statement; “It is necessary to fight at the front” – is proof what we really did not understand what “imperialist war” means in Marxist language. The following words (in that article mentioned) sound revolutionary, but in reality are left support to the schemes of the bourgeoisie, because they try to bring together what never can be brought together; class war and the imperialist war. (“… if power is not consolidated in the rear … the fight at the front is transformed into a fight to defend private property etc etc.”)
It is obvious that power can be won (for it is a question of winning, not “consolidating” it) only by strictly class methods, employed both in the rear and at the front; strikes, sabotage, fraternization, desertion, revolutionary defeatism. But not one of their (these) slogans was ever raised by us! Without them our slogans for the creation of soviets and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat (abstracting from the question of the existence of non-existence of a class party of the proletariat) objectively had the same effect as the slogan “Turn imperialist war into civil war” WITHOUT THE SLOGAN OF REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM, - a point we had well understood theoretically and even made a central point in our propaganda, but which we failed to apply in PRACTICE when the first historical test came. In fact we did not even raise the slogan “Turn the imperialist war into civil war”, which would probably have led to the logical conclusions: if this is the task, then we must be for the defeat of the People’s Front armies just as well as the armies of Franco.
Summing up we have to admit that we, just as those we have criticised, have fallen victims to the attempt of the world bourgeoisie to use the war in Spain in order to drive the proletariat off its clear class line and that in reality we have acted only as the leftest of the left in the camp of those duped by the bourgeoisie, forgetting during a period of months to mention even once the fundamental class weapon of the proletariat: STRIKE! We, who had built our whole PROPAGANDA on the question of the independence of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie, did not know how to concretize this idea in PRACTICE.
[1]. Our thanks to the comrade who signs as fnbrill on libcom, who sent us this and other texts written by the minority in the RWL. As can be seen from this thread on libcom (https://www.libcom.org/forums/history/us-bordigists-19092014 [1251] ), the comrade is currently researching the American ‘Bordigist’ group of the 1930s and 40s.
Cabu, Charb, Tignous, Wolinski, among the twenty killed in the attacks in Paris on 7 and 9 January, these four were a kind of symbol. They were the priority targets. And why? Because they stood for intelligence against stupidity, reason against fanaticism, revolt against submission, courage against cowardice1, sympathy against hatred, and for that specifically human quality: humour and laughter against conformism and dull self-righteousness. We may reject and oppose some of their political positions, some of which were totally bourgeois2. But what was being hit was what was best about them. This barbaric rampage against people who were just cartoonists or shoppers at a kosher supermarket, gunned down just because they were Jews, has provoked a great deal of emotion, not only in France but all over the world, and this is quite understandable. The way this emotion is now being put to use by all the licensed representatives of bourgeois democracy must not hide the fact that the indignation, anger and profound sadness which gripped millions of men and women, and led them to come out spontaneously onto the streets on 7 January, was a basic and healthy reaction against this despicable act of barbarism.
Terrorism is not new3. What is new is the form that it has taken and which has developed since the mid 80s to become an unprecedented global phenomenon. The series of indiscriminate attacks that hit Paris in 1985-86, which, clearly, was not carried out by small isolated groups but bore the signature of a state, inaugurated a new era in the use of terrorism that has reached hitherto unknown levels and claimed a growing number of victims.
The terrorist attacks by Islamist fanatics are not new either. The history of this new century has regularly witnessed this, and on a much greater scale than the Paris attacks of early January 2015.
The kamikaze aeroplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers in New York September 11, 2001, opened a new era. For us it is clear that the US Secret Service let it happen and even facilitated these attacks, which allowed the American imperialist power to justify and unleash the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, just as the Japanese attack against the naval base of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, foreseen and wanted by Roosevelt, had served as a pretext for the entry of the US into World War II4. But it is also clear that those who had taken control of the aircraft were completely delusional fanatics who thought they could gain entry to paradise by killing on a vast scale and sacrificing their own lives.
Less than three years after New York, March 11, 2004, Madrid was the scene of a terrible massacre: "Islamist" bombs caused 200 deaths and over 1,500 injuries in the Atocha station; human bodies were so mangled that they could only be identified by their DNA. The following year, on 7 July 2005, it was London that was struck by four explosions, also on public transport, killing 56 people and leaving 700 wounded. Russia also has experienced several Islamist attacks in the 2000s, including that of 29 March 2010 that killed 39 and injured 102. And of course, the peripheral countries have not been spared, especially Iraq since the US invasion in 2003 and as we saw again just recently in Pakistan, in Peshawar, where last December 141 people, including 132 children, were killed in a school5.
This attack, in which children were a deliberate target, shows, in all its horror, the increasing barbarism of these followers of "Jihad". But the attack in Paris on 7 January, although much less deadly and horrific than the one in Pakistan, expresses a new dimension of this slide into barbarism.
In all previous cases, however revolting the massacre of civilians, including children, there was some "rationality": it was to retaliate or attempt to pressure the state and their armed forces. The Madrid massacre of 2004 was meant to "punish" Spain for its involvement in Iraq alongside the United States. The same goes for the London bombings in 2005. The attack in Peshawar was aimed at putting pressure on the Pakistani military by slaughtering their children. But in the case of the attacks in Paris on January 7, there was not the slightest "military objective", even an illusory one. The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and their colleagues were murdered to "avenge the Prophet" since the newspaper had published caricatures of Mohammed. And this happened not in a country ravaged by war or ruled by religious obscurantism, but in France, "democratic, secular and republican" France.
Hatred and nihilism are always a key driver in the activities of terrorists, especially those who deliberately sacrifice their lives to kill as massively as possible. But this hatred that turns humans into cold killing machines, with no regard for the innocent they kill, has as its main target this other "killing machine" - the state. None of that on 7 January in Paris: here obscurantist hatred and the fanatical thirst for revenge could be seen in their purest form. Its target is the other, the one who does not think like me, and especially the one who thinks, because I've decided not to think, that is to say, to exercise this faculty proper to the human species.
It is for this reason that the killings of 7 January caused such an impact. In a way, we are faced with the unthinkable: how can human minds, educated in a "civilized" country, get drawn into such a barbaric and absurd project similar to that of the most fanatical Nazis with their burning of books and extermination of the Jews?
And that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is that the extreme act of the Kouachi brothers, of Amedy Coulibaly and their accomplices, is only the tip of an iceberg of a whole movement that thrives mainly in poor neighbourhoods, a movement that was expressed when a number of young people put forward the idea that "Charlie Hebdo had it coming for insulting the prophet", and that the killing of the cartoonists was something "normal".
This is also a manifestation of the advance of barbarism, the breakdown in our "civilized" societies. This descent of a part of the youth, and not only those who have been through the process of immigration, into hatred and religious obscurantism - this is one symptom among many of the putrefaction of capitalist society, but a particularly significant pointer to the gravity of the present crisis.
Today, all over the world (in Europe as well, and especially in France), many young people with no future, living chaotic daily lives, humiliated by successive failures, by cultural and social poverty, become easy prey to unscrupulous recruiters (often related to states or political expressions such as ISIS) that drain these misfits into their networks through conversions as sudden as they are unexpected, turning them into potential hit men or cannon fodder for the "jihad". Lacking their own perspective on the current crisis of capitalism, which is an economic crisis but also a social, moral and cultural one; faced with a society that is rotting on its feet and oozing destruction from every pore, for many of these young people life seems pointless and worthless. Their despair can often take on the religious colouring of a blind and fanatical submission, inspiring all sorts of irrational and extreme behaviour, fuelled by a suicidal nihilism. The horror of capitalist society in decay, which elsewhere creates huge numbers of child soldiers (for example in Uganda, Congo and Chad, especially since the early 1990s) is now giving birth, in the heart of Europe, to young psychopaths, professional cold blooded killers, completely desensitised and capable of the worst without expecting any reward for it. In short, this rotting capitalist society, left to its own morbid and barbaric dynamics, can only lead the whole of mankind towards bloody chaos, towards murderous insanity and death. As can be seen from the growth of terrorism, it is producing more and more totally desperate individuals, who have been ground down to the point of being capable of the worst atrocities. In short, it moulds these terrorists in its own image. If such "monsters" exist it is because capitalist society has become "monstrous." And if not all the young people affected by this obscurantist and nihilistic trend enrol directly in "jihad", the fact that many of them regard those who have taken this step as "heroes" or as agents of "justice” constitutes proof of the increasing weight of despair and barbarism invading society.
But the barbarism of the capitalist world is not expressed only in these terrorist acts and the sympathy they meet in a part of the youth. It is also expressed in the vile way that the bourgeoisie is recuperating these dramas.
At the time of writing this article, the capitalist world, headed by the principal “democratic” leaders, is about to carry out one of its most sordid operations. In Paris, on Sunday, January 11, a huge street demonstration has been planned, around President Holland and all the political leaders of the country, together with world leaders such as Angela Merkel, David Cameron, the heads of government of Spain, Italy and many other European countries, but also the King of Jordan, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel6.
While hundreds of thousands of people spontaneously took to the streets on the evening of January 7, the politicians, starting with François Hollande, and the French media began their campaign: "It’s the freedom of the press and democracy which are under threat "," We must mobilise and unite to defend the values of our republic. " Increasingly, in the gatherings that followed those of 7 January, we heard the French national anthem, the "Marseillaise," whose chorus says "water our furrows with the blood of the impure!" …"National Unity", "defence of democracy", these are the messages that the ruling class wants to get into our heads, that is to say the slogans which justified the dragooning and massacre of millions of workers in the two world wars of the twentieth century. Hollande also said it in his first speech: by sending the army into Africa, especially Mali, France has already begun the fight against terrorism (just as Bush explained that the US military intervention in 2003 Iraq had the same purpose). The imperialist interests of the French bourgeoisie obviously have nothing to do with these interventions!
Poor Cabu, Charb, Tignous, Wolinski! Fanatical Islamists killed them the first time. They had to be killed a second time by these representatives and "fans" of bourgeois "democracy", all these heads of state and government of a decaying world system that is responsible for the barbarism invading human society: capitalism. And these political leaders do not hesitate to use terror, assassinations, and reprisals against civilians when it comes to defending the interests of this system and its ruling class, the bourgeoisie.
The end of the barbarity expressed by the killings in Paris in January 2015 will certainly not come from the actions of those who are the main supporters and guarantors of the economic system that generates this barbarity. It can only result from the overthrow of this system by the world proletariat, that is to say, by the class whose association produces most of the wealth of society, and its replacement by a truly universal human community no longer based on profit, competition and the exploitation of man by man but based on the abolition of these vestiges of human prehistory. A society which will be "an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" 7 , communist society.
Révolution Internationale (11/01/2014)
The cartoon is by Wolinski, from 1968: the workers call for revolution, the union official replies: “you’re crazy – the government and the bosses will never allow it!”
1 For years, these cartoonists had regularly been receiving death threats
2 Didn’t the ‘soixante-huitard’ Wolinski work for the Communist Party’s paper L’Humanité for several years? Didn’t he himself write “we made May 68 so as not to become what we did become?
3 In the nineteenth century, small minorities in revolt against the state, like the populists in Russia and some anarchists in France or Spain, resorted to terrorist acts. These sterile violent actions have always been used by bourgeois against the workers’ movement to justify and legalise repression
4 See the article on our website: ‘Pearl Harbor 1941, the 'Twin Towers' 2001: Machiavellianism of the US bourgeoisie’. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/108_machiavel.htm [314]
5 And only a few days before the Paris attacks, the Islamist Boko Haram group in Nigeria carried out its worst ever atrocity, indiscriminately slaughtering up to 2000 residents of the town of Baga. This has received only minimal media coverage.
6 The call for the rally for "National Unity" was unanimous on the part of unions and political parties (only the National Front will not be present), but also the media. Even the sports newspaper L’Équipe called for the demonstration!
7 Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
The article that follows was originally published in 2006 in French, following the box-office success of the French film "Joyeux Noël". If we are publishing it now, it is because the 1914 Christmas Truce has become something of a media celebrity 100 years after the event with its own website, and even an advert for Sainsbury’s supermarkets taking the Truce as a theme. Needless to say, the ruling class presents it as a victory for "humanity" but one which had no future: "inevitably" the war went on, the idea that the simple soldiers could take matters into their own hands and bring the war to an end by overthrowing the entire capitalist system that engendered it. We are invited to remember the Christmas Truce, the better to make us forget the revolutionary potential of fraternisation.
"The 1914-18 war as you have never seen it before at the cinema". So begins the enthusiastic review in the magazine Historia of Christian Carion’s film Joyeux Noël,1 which came to cinema screens on 9th November 2005 and has been selected to represent France at the 2006 Oscars.
What is so great about this film that it should deserve such an enthusiastic reception?
The film’s producer has chosen to focus on a "special moment" in the vast butchery of the Great War: 24th December 1914, the first Christmas Eve since the outbreak of war the previous August. That evening, as Carion says in the novel inspired by his film, "the unimaginable happened". Despite the orders for mutual slaughter, despite the hatred for the "Hun" or the "Französe" taught them ten years before on the benches of their primary schools with just this war in view, the soldiers on each side of the front put down their guns, sang Christmas carols, then spontaneously left their trenches to shake hands and share wine, schnapps, bread and cigarettes. According to the military archives, in some places football matches were even organised for the following day. These fraternisations are the film’s subject-matter.
Obviously, the ruling class does not make just any film a candidate for an Oscar, especially when it deals with such a sensitive subject as the Christmas Truce. If it does so, then this is clearly a sign that Carion’s film suits it perfectly.
The scenes where we witness the soldiers’ fraternisation cannot help but leave us overcome with emotion. Nonetheless, the meaning – or rather the absence of meaning – that is given to the event itself comes as a slap in the face to the viewer, and is nothing less than a falsification of history.
In the end, the 1914 Christmas Truce is reduced to a mere, though beautiful, parenthesis in the war, quickly closed for "business as usual" must go on. The dialogue between the French, British and German officers is instructive in this respect:
"‘The war’s outcome won’t be decided this evening... Nobody could reproach us for putting aside our guns on Christmas Eve!’.
‘Don’t worry! It’s just for one night’ went on Horstmayer [the German officer], trying to ‘reassure’ his French opposite number".
In the novel’s epilogue, we can read the following conclusion: "Needless to say, the war reasserted itself (…) When Christmas 1915 came around, the General Staffs on each side had learned their lesson and left nothing to chance: they ordered the shelling of areas which they considered too peaceful. There were to be no more fraternisations as in 1914". End of story. To repeat the words of the French officer Audebert "the parenthesis was closed".
Even in 1914 the press, especially in Britain, was aware of the Christmas Truce and did nothing to hide it. On the contrary, the filled their columns with similar sentiments to those we find today in Merry Christmas. Thus we could read on the Manchester Guardian of 7th January 1915: "‘But they went back to their trenches’, a shrewd and inhuman observer from another planet might say, ‘and brutally continued to kill and be killed. Obviously there is nothing to be expected from such noble sentiments’. To which we would rightly reply that much remains to be done: Belgium must still be delivered from the terrible yoke that weighs her down and Germany must be taught that culture cannot be imposed by the sword".2
"The is still much to be done, so no more of this nonsense and let us return to our trenches" is precisely what Carion makes his soldiers say, for example when one of his main characters, the German soldier Nikolaus, refuses to desert as his girlfriend encourages him to do because after all "I am a soldier here! I have duties, obligations just like the others!".
It is in this cheap moralising that the film slides over into pure fiction, a fantasy of the ruling class which rewrites history to suit itself and so confiscates it from the working class.
The fraternisations of Christmas 1914 were no "miracles without a future", no "intermission before the next act of the terrible drama" in the words of the historian Malcolm Brown, joint author with Marc Ferro of Meetings in No Man's Land, which appeared in bookshops shortly before the film came out.
On the contrary, both before December 1914 and throughout the war, fraternisations took place repeatedly on all the fronts: on the Western front between German, British and French troops, on the Eastern front between Russians and Germans or Austro-Hungarians, or on the Italian front between Austrians and Italians. Everywhere saw the same scenes: sharing food, drink, or cigarettes passed between the trenches, the same attempts to exchange a few words (some deeply regretted their inability to speak the language of those opposite them). Soldiers would often agree to avoid killing each other (the historians speak of agreements to "live and let live"). Attempts at fraternisation were sometimes pushed to the point that officers were sometimes forced to ask the enemy’s artillery to force their troops back to their trenches.
The idea that the fraternisations had "no future" implies another untruth: the idea that they were "rare and limited". "Without a future" also means "without any hope of putting an end to the carnage". With the support of a whole army of historians, the film sets out to empty the events of any political content. As Marc Ferro says "They were a cry of despair against useless offensives, from soldiers at the end of their tether... But they were not a step towards a questioning of the war" and above all "they had no revolutionary content".
If there were a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, Marc Ferro would be a serious contender. It is surely obvious that when soldiers who have been ordered to massacre each other, put down their guns and shake hands instead, this calls the war into question de facto.
"The fraternisations had no political meaning". On the contrary, they expressed the international nature of the working class, the fact that workers have no interest in massacring each other for the interests of their exploiters and the nation. The fraternisations, and then the mutinies that came after December 1914 expressed a growing revolt within the working class, at the front and in the rear, against the suffering imposed by the war, which reached a crescendo in the Russian Revolution of 1917. There is no lack of examples of the implications of the Christmas Truce. The French corporal Louis Barthas writes in his war diaries3 that in the sector of Neuville-Saint-Vast the trenches flooded and French and German soldiers left them to fraternise. Later, after giving a short speech, a German soldier broke his rifle in a gesture of anger and "both sides applauded, and sang the Internationale". Another French soldier reports in January 1917 that "The boches [French slang for the Germans] made signs with their rifles that they would not fire on us and if they were forced to they would raise their rifle-butts in the air" (a well-known signal for mutiny). According to Barthas again, this time in the Vosges in 1917: "one [German] soldier took his rifle, waved its butt in the air, and finally aimed it not at us, but towards the German rear. It was very explicit and we concluded that he meant to say that they should shoot not at us but at those who led them".
The workers’ movement understands very well the value and the meaning of the fraternisations. In an article in Pravda (28th April 1917), Lenin expressed it very well: "The capitalists either sneer at the fraternisation of the soldiers at the front or savagely attack it (…) The class-conscious workers, followed by the mass of semi-proletarians and poor peasants guided by the true instinct of oppressed classes, regard fraternisation with pro found sympathy. Clearly, fraternisation is a path to peace. Clearly, this path does not run through the capitalist governments, through an alliance with them, but runs against them. Clearly, this path tends to develop, strengthen, and consolidate fraternal confidence between the workers of different countries. Clearly, this path is beginning to wreck the hateful discipline of the barrack prisons, the discipline of blind obedience of the soldier to “his” officers and generals, to his capitalists (for most of the officers and generals either belong to the capitalist class or protect its interests). Clearly, fraternisation is the revolutionary initiative of the masses, it is the awakening of the conscience, the mind, the courage of the oppressed classes; in other words, it is a rung in the ladder leading up to the socialist proletarian revolution.
Long live fraternisation! Long live the rising world-wide socialist revolution of the proletariat!"4
This is the reality that the film Merry Christmas obscures. It highlights the fraternisations of 1914 only to hide their content and their future significance in the outbreak of proletarian revolution in Russia 1917. For all its humanist and pacifist sentiments, this kind of film renders the fraternisations meaningless, to confiscate the working class’ memory, and so its revolutionary perspective.
Azel, 2nd January 2006
1Christian Carion’s own reflections on the making of the film can be found on the BBC web site.
2This quotation, taken from our article, has been translated back from the French. We hope to have rendered the spirit if not the exact words of the original.
3Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier, 1914-1918, Éditions La Découverte, 2003
4Pravda (28th April 1917), https://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/28e.htm [1262]
On 8th November 2014, a conference was held in Marseille on the subject of "The radical left of the 1920s, internationalism and proletarian autonomy".
Before we give an account of the meeting itself, we aim to provide our readers with some background information on the conference speaker, Philippe Bourrinet, presented in the publicity as "the author of various articles and books on the revolutionary workers’ movement and a member of the Smolny press collective".1 Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand either Philippe Bourrinet’s presentation or the discussion that followed.
One might paraphrase Marx’s famous polemic against Proudhon2 as follows:
"Philippe Bourrinet has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood. Among those who are interested in or claim to belong to the Communist Left, he passes for a serious and honest historian. Among historians, he passes for a defender of the Communist Left’s ideas and a connoisseur of its main organisation, the ICC, since everybody knows that he was a militant of the ICC for more than fifteen years. As militants of the ICC, and therefore attached to a serious and honest understanding of history (though we do not claim to be historians), we desire to protest against this double error".
As a foreword to our protest against the ignorance of which Philippe Bourrinet is a victim, let us revisit a few episodes of his political career, since this will allow us to refute many of the false ideas about him which are in circulation these days.
Philippe Bourrinet as a militant of the ICC
After a short stay in the ranks of the Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvrière, at the beginning of the 1970s Philippe Bourrinet entered the Révolution internationale group, shortly thereafter to become the section in France of the ICC. Since he had a ready pen and extensive knowledge, he was soon given the responsibility of writing articles for the organisation, under the name of Chardin. He also entered the ICC’s central organ shortly after its creation in 1975, one of the reasons for this nomination being his linguistic ability, notably in German.
Philippe Bourrinet had begun his studies in history, and it was agreed between him and the ICC that he should devote his Master’s dissertation to a study of the Italian Communist Left, so that this could be published by our organisation as a pamphlet. He received the fullest support for this work, which of course benefited his own university career, from our organisation: not only material support but also political support, since our comrade Marc Chirik,3 who had been a member of the Italian Left, provided him with an extensive documentation and first-hand information, as well as precious advice. As planned, his dissertation was published shortly afterwards by our organisation, in book format. Considered as a work of the ICC, and putting forward the ICC’s analyses, it was unsigned, like all our pamphlets.
After the book was published, we encouraged Philippe Bourrinet to undertake a similar study of the Dutch-German Communist Left for his doctoral thesis. The first chapters were published in issues 45, 50, and 52 of the ICC’s International Review. Once again, Philippe Bourrinet benefited from the ICC’s complete political and material support.4 He submitted his thesis in March 1988, and we then began the long work on the book’s layout, delivering it to the printers in November 1990; Philippe Bourrinet had left the ICC a few months beforehand. He gave no political reasons for his resignation, saying only that he no longer wanted to be a militant.
Philippe Bourrinet, member of the "Société des Gens des Lettres"
Two years later, we received in our PO Box, without the slightest accompanying letter, a copy of two surprising documents [1264]. The first, dated 21/08/1992, was the "Receipt for the submission by Philippe Bourrinet of a manuscript entitled The Dutch Communist Left 1907-1950". This receipt was issued by the copyright department of the Société des Gens des Lettres.5 The second document, dated 27th July 1992, was even more surprising. It was a typewritten text titled "Concerning the anonymous publications distributed by the International Communist Current group (ICC) in France and elsewhere".
In this document, we read that "The book titled THE DUTCH LEFT, signed ‘International Communist Current’, printed in November 1990 by the ‘Litografia Libero Nicola, Napoli’ and distributed in France and Belgium, was entirely written by Philippe BOURRINET, doctor at the University of Paris 1 – Sorbonne (22nd March 1988)". This was perfectly true. But there followed a series of allegations, accusing the ICC of "piracy", which we desired to clarify with Philippe Bourrinet. Accordingly, a delegation from the ICC met him in a café on the Place de Clichy in Paris, close to where he lived at the time. This delegation pointed out to Philippe Bourrinet the truth of the matter, none of which he attempted to contradict. The delegation asked him why, all of a sudden, he was making such a fuss about his name not appearing on the book on the Dutch Left, since he had never before made this demand. He replied that it would be useful for him to appear as the book’s author in view of an upcoming job application, and that he wanted his name to figure on future editions. Although in his statement, Philippe Bourrinet had made a series of outrageous attacks against the ICC, we decided not to hold it against him: we did not, for example, put anything in the way of his professional ambitions. We decided to accede to his demand, but since the French edition had already been printed we told him that it was too late for this version of the book, on which he agreed. We therefore undertook to publish in any future edition, the following brief statement: "This book, which first appeared in French in 1990, is published under the responsibility of the ICC. It was written by Philippe Bourrinet in the context of his work for his university doctorate, but it was prepared and discussed by the ICC when the author was one of its militants. For this reason it was conceived and published as the collective work of the ICC, without an author's signature and with his total agreement.
Philippe Bourrinet has not been in the ICC since April 1990, and he has since published editions of this book under his own name, with the addition of certain 'corrections' linked to the evolution of his political positions.
For its part, the ICC fully intends to continue its policy of publishing this book. It should be clear that our organization cannot be held responsible for any additional or divergent political positions that Philippe Bourrinet might integrate into the editions produced under his own responsibility."6
Philippe Bourrinet accepted this proposal.
For the ICC, the matter was closed and we no longer paid much attention to the career of Doctor Bourrinet.7 Our inattention was all the greater in that his later literary efforts were of incomparably lesser quality and interest than the two books on the Italian and Dutch-German Lefts. We did of course notice, on the Internet, that Doctor Bourrinet had republished the two documents, with a few modifications of the ICC’s original which brought the text closer to the positions of councilism. It turned out that in the Postface to the new edition of the Dutch-German Left, Doctor Bourrinet wrote: "The present edition contains defects inevitable in a work carried out within the university framework. There also appears the author's membership of the aforementioned group [the ICC], in the form of traces of ideology at a remove from a rigorous marxist analysis of the revolutionary movement and theory (…) I have tried as far as possible to remove or diminish the passages which contained too much ‘anti-councilist’ polemic, specific to the group whose influence I was under at the time".
In this passage, we learn several things. First, that Doctor Bourrinet had to leave the ICC to acquire at long last "a rigorous marxist analysis of the revolutionary movement and theory". He forgets to mention that it was the Révolution Internationale group (the future ICC section in France) which taught him the basics of marxism, when he had just left Lutte Ouvrière, a group which – whatever its claims to the contrary – has nothing to do with either marxism or the revolutionary movement. He also accredits the idea – so popular with university "marxism" – that one can remain a "marxist" while avoiding any form of political organisation fighting for the defence of proletarian principles. This idea is very close to degenerate councilism’s rejection of the need for such an organisation – which explains why so many "marxist professors" have such an affinity with councilism. We could answer Doctor Bourrinet’s viewpoint with these words of the ICC militant... Philippe Bourrinet: "Unlike the Otto Rühle variety of ‘councilism’ in the 1920s, or the Dutch variety in the 1930s, today’s councilist current has broken with the ‘council communist’ tradition of the Communist Left. It corresponds much more to the revolt of fractions of the petty bourgeoisie or of proletarian elements suspicious of any political organisation. The councilist danger of tomorrow will not appear with the defeat of the revolution, as was the case during the 1920s in Germany, it will appear at the beginning of the revolutionary wave and will be the negative moment of the proletariat’s coming to consciousness" (from the Proceedings of a study day on the danger of councilism, held by the ICC’s section in France in April 1985, p19).
"Workerism co-exists only too well, one can even say perfectly, with intellectualism. In this sense, we have seen a kind of petty-bourgeois anarchism, in the sense of the rejection of any form of authority or organisation, etc, etc; similar to the vision of the workerist intellectual already condemned by Lenin in What is to be done?" (ibid., p32).
And finally, we learn that at the time, the militant Philippe Bourrinet made these mistakes because he was "under the influence". Doctor Bourrinet, just for once you are far too modest!8 The militant Philippe Bourrinet was not "under the influence" of the ICC’s positions, on the contrary he was their determined and talented defender in the organisation’s struggle against the tendencies towards councilist positions in its midst. This is precisely why the ICC entrusted him with the article that took up the cudgels publicly against these tendencies (See International Review no.40, "The function of revolutionary organizations: The danger of councilism").
Having revised the two texts on the Italian Left and the Dutch-German Left, Doctor Bourrinet had new editions printed, which he put on sale on the Internet. These texts obviously had slightly more content and slightly fewer errors than those published by the ICC. Amongst other things, they expressed the good Doctor’s new theoretical line. And these changes were of considerable value: whereas the ICC sold its book on the Dutch-German Left for 12 euros, the good Doctor’s price was 75€ [1265]. Similarly for the Italian Left, the price was not 8€ but 50€ [1266] (40€ for the English edition [1267]).9 Of course, the good Doctor’s editions had colour covers! In a famous letter of 18th March 1872 to the French publisher of Capital, Marx wrote "I welcome your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital as a periodical. In this format it will be more accessible to the working class, and for me this consideration overrides all others". Clearly, this is not the kind of consideration that carries much weight with Doctor Bourrinet, whose methods are more like those of the private medical Doctors whose fees are ten times higher than those of the general practitioner, with the added benefit of allowing them to avoid any contact with the sweaty masses.
Is stinginess the explanation for the exorbitant prices of Doctor Bourrinet’s works? Not impossible, since the militant Philippe Bourrinet was known for his stinginess in the ICC, and got teased for it by Marc Chirik, at the time the treasurer of the ICC’s section in France. That said, it is unlikely that the good Doctor’s avarice, however obsessive it might be, has rendered him completely stupid. Even an idiot can see that the Doctor’s works are unlikely to find any buyers, even if the ICC were to put an end to its own distribution as the Doctor never stops demanding that we do.10 More likely, the Doctor’s elevated prices are no higher than his elevated esteem for his works and his own good self. To sell his literary production "on the cheap" (and it must be more valuable, in his estimation, than Capital), would be to minimise their value, according to the classic and contemptible bourgeois logic which we have already seen in his appeal to the "Société des Gens des Lettres". If our explanation is incorrect, Doctor Bourrinet need only supply his own, which we will gladly publish, as well as any reply he cares to give to this article.
Doctor Bourrinet, liar and slanderer
But all these examples of Doctor Bourrinet’s petty-mindedness and bad faith pale into insignificance beside the slander he directed at our organisation in 1992. We did not react publicly at the time; we intend to do so now, because since March 2012 they have been smeared across the Internet. On the site www.left-dis.nl/f/ [1268] there is now a title "Une mise au point publique (Paris, décembre 91) sur le parasitisme 'instinctif' de la secte 'CCI'. Mars 2012" ("Public statement (Paris, December 1991) on the ‘instinctive’ parasitism of the ‘ICC’ sect"). The title links to a PDF11 containing all the above-mentioned documents received by the ICC in 1992, to which we will now return.
In the "Statement" of 27th July 1992, we read:
"On the occasion of the publication of the author’s doctoral thesis, and of his previous Master’s dissertation on the Italian Communist Left (1926-1945), without the author's agreement, and with arbitrary additions and cuts made by this group, which thinks it owns the document under the pretext that the undersigned author was once a member of the ICC, the following clarification is necessary for the reader:
This work was published anonymously by the ICC in 1991, in French, without the author's agreement and without warning him in advance, and without his corrections. The author was confronted with a fait accompli, a veritable act of ‘piracy’.
[There then follows the passage quoted above in which we learn that Philippe Bourrinet is a doctor of the University of Paris 1, and another giving the circumstances in which he submitted his thesis.]
This book is a continuation of that on THE ITALIAN COMMUNIST LEFT 1912-1945, a Master’s dissertation by the same author (Paris 1 – Sorbonne, 1980, supervised by Jacques Droz).
This dissertation was published in 1981 and 1984, anonymously – in French and Italian – by the ICC group, with the tacit, and only the tacit, agreement of the author".
Let us begin with "the tacit, and only the tacit, agreement" that the militant Philippe Bourrinet gave for the publication of the work on the Italian Communist Left, without mentioning the author's name. What is this can of worms Doctor Bourrinet, you pitiful hypocrite? Did you or did you not agree that the text you wrote should be published as an ICC pamphlet? When you discussed at length with other militants of the organisation, about the layout and the cover for this pamphlet (where indeed, the author's name does not figure), did you do so "tacitly"?
As for the work on the Dutch-German Left, which was supposedly published without the agreement of the shiny new "Doctor" Bourrinet, we’re surprised your nose didn’t get in the way when you were writing: it must have stuck out further than Pinocchio’s! Really Doctor Bourrinet, you are the most arrant liar to pretend that you were confronted with a "fait accompli". And here is the proof that you are a liar, in an article published in our International Review no.58 (3rd Quarter 1989) and titled "Contribution to a history of the revolutionary movement: Introduction to the Dutch-German Left", where we read: "The history of the international communist left since the beginning of the century, such as we've begun to relate in our pamphlets on the ‘Communist Left of Italy' isn't simply for historians. It's only from a militant standpoint, the standpoint of those who are committed to the workers' struggle for emancipation, that the history of the workers' movement can be approached. And for the working class, this history isn't just a question of knowing things, but first and foremost a weapon in its present and future struggles, because of the lessons from the past that it contains. It's from this militant point of view that we are publishing as a contribution to the history of the revolutionary movement a pamphlet on the German-Dutch communist left which will appear in French later this year. The introduction to this pamphlet, published below, goes into the question of how to approach the history of this current".
Who then is the slimeball of an ICC militant, justifying in advance the "piracy" of Doctor Bourrinet’s thesis, the willing accomplice in a manoeuvre intended to confront the good Doctor with a "fait accompli"? The article is signed Ch, alias Chardin, alias... the militant, Philippe Bourrinet.
So here we have the militant Philippe Bourrinet ("under the influence" in all likelihood), who takes responsibility publicly and in writing for the ignominious crime that the ICC is about to commit on poor Doctor Bourrinet. But, at the moment that this article is written, he has already received his doctorate from the University of Paris 1 – Sorbonne. In other words, one of those most responsible for the infamous acts against Doctor Bourrinet, is none other than Doctor Bourrinet himself. Is Doctor Bourrinet a masochist? At all events, he is certainly an out and out liar, of that there is no shadow of a doubt. A contemptible liar and slanderer.
The threats of Doctor Bourrinet the shopkeeper
One might imagine that Doctor Bourrinet could not stoop any lower than he did in March 2012, with this publication of his 20-year old documents: if so, one would be mistaken. At the same time, several militants of the ICC received a registered letter dated 23rd March 2012 [1269], from the Legal department of the Société des Gens des Lettres. Here follow the main passages:
"We intervene in the name of Mr Philippe Bourrinet, member of the Société des Gens des Lettres, on the matter of his dissertation and his theses (…)
We are most surprised to discover that these two works are the object of systematic forgery, thus damaging both the property rights and the moral right of Mr Bourrinet.
We therefore ask that you immediately cease all use of these texts, either on the different Internet sites where they may be found, or in printed publications.
If he does not obtain satisfaction, the author reserves the right to take any action he deems appropriate".
In other words, Doctor Bourrinet "reserves the right" to set the law on certain ICC militants, should the ICC continue to distribute the books on the Dutch-German and the Italian Left. And the best of it is, that one of the militants targeted by this threatening letter was also one of those who was most involved in giving Doctor Bourrinet material support for his thesis, by using the photocopying services at his job (at the risk of getting into serious trouble with his employer, up to and including the sack), to copy hundreds upon hundreds of pages (drafts of Philippe Bourrinet’s work so that it could be proofed by other militants, collections of publications of the Communist Left that had been lent to him, copies of his dissertation and thesis for the University...).
Today, Doctor Bourrinet – with his characteristic cowardice, since he hides behind the Société des Gens des Lettres, who he has got on-board by lying to them – has the ludicrous pretension to lay claim to the heritage of the Communist Left, and to texts of the workers’ movement which belong to nobody if not to the working class, and of which proletarian organisations are the custodians, and the political and moral guarantors. This philistine thinks he can behave like any vulgar capitalist protecting his patents, putting it about that the product of the universal history of the exploited class is a commodity that can be reduced to the "intellectual property" of his own pathetic individuality. This is the merest swindle, a takeover bid worthy of Hollywood. The working class does not produce militants as individuals, but revolutionary organisations which are the product of struggle and a historic continuity. This is already contained in the 1864 Statutes of the IWA: "In its struggle against the collective power of the possessing classes the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself as distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the possessing classes." (Article 7a). Workers’ organisations defend principles which are the fruit of historical experience. In this sense, the work of their militants is part of a movement which is not and cannot be their "personal property". The ICC’s statutes state with the utmost clarity something which was once a morally self-evident fact within the proletariat: "every militant who leaves the ICC, even as part of a split, returns to the organisation all the material means (money, technical material, stocks of publications, internal bulletins etc.) which had been put at the militants disposal" (our emphasis).
Here then is Doctor Bourrinet’s true face! Grab his swag, and then turn to bourgeois justice out of personal vengeance and to flatter his injured vanity. This violation of his initial moral commitment, when he was a militant, is not merely pitiful, it is completely foreign to the workers’ movement. This pettifogging, petty-bourgeois legalism, fuelled by personal revenge, is something unheard of in the Communist Left that this fraud claims to defend. What terms should one use to speak of Doctor Bourrinet? So many spring to mind that we are left at a loss which to choose, so let us just say that he is "unspeakable".
Doctor Bourrinet slanderer of our comrade Marc Chirik
This is not the end of the unspeakable Doctor’s exploits. Not only is he ready to use the vilest methods to damage his one-time organisation, the ICC, he also sets out to attack the memory of a militant who played a determining role in its formation: Marc Chirik, deceased in December 1990.
To this end, he uses a biographical sketch published on his web site [1270], and which includes, amongst others, those published at the end of his new version of the book on the Italian Left.
In the biographical sketch published at the end of the book, he permits himself a petty attack on Marc Chirik: "For Jean Malaquais, the friend of a lifetime, he embodied a certain kind of political ‘prophet’". On Doctor Bourrinet’s web site, the sentence is longer and the attack more open: "For Jean Malaquais, the friend of a lifetime, he embodied a certain kind of political ‘prophet’, constantly trying to prove to others and to himself that he had ‘never made a mistake’".12 We recognise here the style of the two-faced Doctor Bourrinet. He starts with the "friend of a lifetime" the better to put over a negative image, without saying that while Malaquais was a great writer and a fine polemicist who shared the positions of the Communist Left, he did not have the personality of a communist militant, nor an understanding of what it means to be one. In the days when Malaquais lived in Paris and came frequently to our public meetings, he asked at one point to join the ICC; Marc Chirik had little difficulty persuading the other comrades that we could not accept his candidature, given his often haughty attitude both to our militants and to our activities.
This sketch of Marc Chirik is petty-minded sniping, but worse is to come. In an addition, Doctor Bourrinet repeats the vilest slanders put about against our organisation, in particular by the pack of hooligans and grasses that called itself the "Internal Fraction of the ICC":
"In 1991-93, very shortly after his death, Marc Chirik’s group was shaken by a furious ‘war of succession’ between the ‘leaders’ to put themselves at the head of the ‘masses’ of the ICC, in reality the most grotesque conflicts worthy of an asylum".
Doctor Bourrinet then passes the microphone to the "adversaries" of our comrade and our organisation, to heap a cartload of muck on both:
"For his political adversaries, Marc Chirik remained a figure of the past, attached to the worst aspects of the Leninist and Trotskyist current, a remote disciple of Albert Treint, stooping to ‘Zinovievist’ manoeuvres and not hesitating – during yet another split, in 1981, to carry out ‘Chekist raids’ against ‘dissidents’, to ‘defend the organisation’ and to ‘recover its equipment’.
Exercising a monolithic control over ‘his’ organisation, Marc Chirik thus helped to plunge it, from an early stage, into a sort of paranoid psychosis. A sombre reality which, in the eyes of many ex-militants, tore apart the ‘Chirikist’ organisation, whose most visible defects were: political dishonesty raised to the level of a categorical imperative, ‘police tactics of harassment’, a carefully cultivated atmosphere of ultra-sectarian paranoia using the ‘theory of the plot’ ad nauseam, and recommending, to resolve political divergences, the prophylactic eradication of the ‘parasitism’ of ‘enemy organisations’.
To conclude:
a triumphant (and accepted) return of ‘repressed’ Stalinism in ‘praxis’;
a superficial attachment to the ‘acquisitions of Freudianism’ where the ‘struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie’ lives alongside ‘the eternal struggle of Eros and Thanatos’, and between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the latter being the ‘proletarian morality’ of which the ICC is the custodian through its ‘central organs’;
a quasi-religious devotion to Darwinism, as a method for ‘selecting’ the most ‘adapted’ political species, under cover of the development of the ‘social instinct’ of which the ICC is the ultimate incarnation;
under the ‘virtuous’ mantle of ‘proletarian morality’, the triumph behind the scenes of political amoralism, the ‘eternal return’ of ‘Nechaev’s catechism’ where anything goes to destroy a political enemy".
As anyone can see, the accusations repeated by Doctor Bourrinet are not only aimed at Marc Chirik and the ICC when he was alive, but largely post-date his death. For example, the ICC never discussed Darwinism or published articles on the subject in Marc Chirik’s lifetime. Only since 2009, 20 years after his death, did the ICC deal with the question in our internal discussions or publish articles on the subject. In fact, Doctor Bourrinet’s intention is to kill two birds with one stone: to demolish both Marc Chirik and the ICC, whose principal founder he was.
In fact, this veritable inventory of accusations offers us a condensed version of the "Bourrinet method". He bows to the formal respect of historiographical standards by following his sketch with a bibliography where, indeed, we can find the sources for all these insanities. But so vast is this bibliography that the slanderous publications are drowned there. Moreover, it is difficult even for a "specialist" to access many of the texts referred to, such that most readers are unlikely to check "who said what". And this is precisely what counts. If one were to include, in a biography of Trotsky, a passage on what his political adversaries said about him, and if amongst the accusations were one claiming that he had been "an agent of Hitler", then the mere fact that the accusation came from Vyshinsky, the prosecutor at the Moscow trials, would be enough to discredit it. We have no intention of burdening the reader with a systematic refutation of all the slanders directed at Marc Chirik and the ICC in the articles so obligingly referenced by the good Doctor. Suffice it to say that for the most part they come from ex-members of the ICC who, for whatever reason, are eaten up by a tenacious hatred for our organisation. Some are still under the influence of anarchist ideas which have lead them to adopt the slogan "Lenin=Stalin". Others have felt that the organisation did not appreciate their true worth, or couldn’t face up to criticism and found that the defence of their hurt pride was more important than the defence of communist positions. Others have distinguished themselves by thuggish behaviour, while still being ready to call the police when the ICC visited them to recover equipment stolen from our organisation. Still others – or the same – continue to defend the dubious element Chénier, excluded in 1981, and who was shortly after to be found making a career for himself in the Socialist Party then in power.
If Doctor Bourrinet repeats certain accusations whose absurd, and even insane, character is obvious to anyone, it is probably not because he thinks that they will be believed as such, but because they make it possible to put about the idea that "there’s no smoke without fire", and that "even if it’s exaggerated, there must be some truth behind it". The Bourrinet method again: if you throw enough mud, something will always stick.
One final word on this. Doctor Bourrinet has written biographical notes of many militants of the Communist Left, but only Marc Chirik has had the privilege, of having not only his militant life, but also the accusations made against him, exposed in detail. All this without, needless to say, so much as a word about, or a reference to the texts (articles, interventions on forums, etc.) which refute these accusations, and all this in the name of "serious", "honest" historical research!13
Let us return then to the idea that Doctor Bourrinet is "a serious and honest historian". As Marx put it, we must "protest" against any such idea. In his 1989 article for our press, announcing the forthcoming publication of the ICC’s Dutch-German Communist Left, the good Doctor referred to several serious and honest historians of the workers’ movement: Franz Mehring, Leon Trotsky, both revolutionary militants, but also George Haupt, who was "far from being a revolutionary" to use Doctor Bourrinet’s words: "On this point it's worth again citing the historian Georges Haupt, who died in 1980, and was known for the seriousness of his works on the IInd and IIIrd Internationals:
‘With the aid of unprecedented falsifications, treating the most elementary historical realities with contempt, Stalinism has methodically rubbed out, mutilated, remodelled the field of the past in order to replace it with its own representations, its own myths, its own self-glorification(...)’".
The least one can say is that the same "probity" hardly characterises Doctor Bourrinet. As we have seen, he hesitates not a moment to proffer the most colossal lies when it suits him – whenever historical reality does not fit his own "self-glorification". When he was a militant of the ICC, Doctor Bourrinet produced work that was interesting, important, and honest. Since then, it is possible that some of his studies may have been honest, if not necessarily interesting or important. But what is sure, is that his honesty flies out the window whenever the subject concerns his obsessive pet hates: the militant Marc Chirik and the International Communist Current. After all, there are Stalinist historians who have produced excellent studies of the Paris Commune, but it would be too much to expect that they would be capable of doing the same for the history of the "Communist" Parties.
As far as the other illusions about Doctor Bourrinet are concerned – that he is "a defender of the Communist Left’s ideas and a connoisseur of its main organisation, the ICC" – here again, what we have said above shows that these are far from the truth. As a connoisseur of the ICC, we have seen better: either he takes the insane accusations of the ICC and Marc Chirik’s "political adversaries" at face value, in which case his "knowledge" is worthy of Hello! magazine or Minute,14 or he does not, which is worse. As for the defence of the ideas of the Communist Left, there is nothing to expect from someone whose overriding obsession is the defence of... his intellectual property, and who, to do so, has no hesitation in bringing in the bourgeois state. When one claims to defend certain ideas, the least that can be expected is that one does not act in flagrant contradiction to those ideas. There is nothing to be expected of someone who is devoured by hatred to the point where he can cover in shit the memory of Marc Chirik, one of the very rare militants of the Communist Left who, rather than remaining welded to his initial positions, was capable of integrating the essential insights of both the Italian and the Dutch-German Communist Left, and defending them to his dying day.
For Doctor Bourrinet, the ideas of the Communist Left are mere stock in trade, inherited from the days when he was a militant, and which he is trying as best he can to capitalise in the service of his need for social recognition (since he can’t make any money out of it).
Doctor Bourrinet, the petty-bourgeois democrat
To demonstrate this assertion conclusively, it is worth reading the biographical sketch devoted to Lafif Lakhdar (deceased July 2013), published on the site Controverses which presents itself as a "Forum for the Internationalist Communist Left" – a sketch signed Ph B (the good Doctor, in person no less).15 In the introduction, Lafif Lakhdar is presented as "an Arab intellectual, writer, philosopher and rationalist, a militant in Algeria, the Middle East and France. Known as ‘the Arab Spinoza’". In the sketch itself, we learn that "From 2009 onwards he took part, with the philosopher Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010), in UNESCO’s Aladdin project, an ‘intellectual and cultural programme’ launched with the patronage of UNESCO, Jacques Chirac, and Simone Weil". We also learn that "In October 2004, he co-authored, together with numerous liberal Arab writers, a Manifesto published on the web (www.elaph.com [1271], www.metransparent.com [1272]) calling on the UN to set up an international tribunal to judge terrorists, and organisations or institutions inciting terrorism". Frankly, we have great difficulty seeing what this biography is doing on a "Forum for the Internationalist Communist Left", and why someone who claims to belong to the Communist Left should write it. As far as one can judge from this, Lafif Lakhdar was probably a man full of good intentions and not without a certain courage in standing up to the threats of Islamist fanatics, but whose action was entirely within the framework of bourgeois "democracy", and in defence of the illusions thanks to which the bourgeoisie maintains its domination. For anyone who had anything to do with the Communist Left, it would be out of the question to call on the UN (that "den of thieves" to use Lenin’s expression about the League of Nations) "to set up an international tribunal to judge terrorists". Should we react to terrorist attacks by demanding that the bourgeois state strengthen its police and judicial arsenal?16 Indeed, amongst Lafif Lakhdar’s achievements, there is one that Doctor Bourrinet does not mention (did he forget, or did he hide it?): an open letter dated 16th November 2008 to the new President of the United States, Barrack Obama, suggesting that he "change the world in 100 days by concluding a reconciliation between Jews and Arabs".17 In the letter, we find the following passages:
"Solving this conflict, with its explosive mixture of religion and politics, would be an agreeable surprise from you to the peoples of the region and the world. It would have undoubtedly a positive psychological impact on all the other crises, including the world financial crisis.
How can this be achieved? (…)
Send an American peace delegation headed by President Clinton and the outgoing Israeli President Ehud Olmert,18 and made up of Prince Talal Ben-Abdul Al-Aziz, the symbolic representative of the Arab peace initiative, and of Walid Khalid and Shibli Talham as representatives of the Palestinian people.
And what is the solution?
First of all, the application of Mr Clinton’s parameters which give the Jews what they have been lacking since the destruction of the Temple in 586BCE, and to the Palestinians what they have never had in their history: an independent state. Then, the application of Ehud Olmert’s ‘advice’ to his successor, which would accord the Palestinians the major part of their demands...".
And the letter concludes:
"President Barack Obama, it is said that you have little experience; by solving, in your administration’s first hundred days, a century-old conflict which has provoked five bloody wars and two intifadas, you would demonstrate to the world that you are a competent and responsible leader, and make a gift to the 80% of the world population who prayed for your success and so celebrated your victory". Could the Communist Left do no better than that?
Doctor Bourrinet’s biographical sketch of Lafif Lakhdar is published on the site Controverses under the heading "Internationalists". But what exactly is an internationalist? Someone who not only denounces chauvinism and military barbarism, but who defends to the utmost the only perspective that can put an end to them: the overthrow of the capitalist system by the world proletarian revolution. And this necessarily involves the denunciation of all pacifist and democratic illusions, and all the bourgeoisie’s political forces that spread them, however "democratic", "enlightened" or well-intentioned they may be. Whoever has not understood this stands not on proletarian ground, but on that of the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie. Our eminent Doctor (just like the equally eminent publishers of Controverses) clearly does not know the difference between a democratic humanist bourgeois and an internationalist, in other words a revolutionary. And this is because Doctor Bourrinet’s viewpoint is not that of the working class but of the petty bourgeoisie. This is clear enough in our account of the Doctor’s behaviour since he left the ICC, but his sketch of Lafif Lakhdar confirms it in as striking a manner as you could wish.
In fact, Doctor Bourrinet’s frantic search for official social recognition, his use of bourgeois institutions, and the state, to defend his "copyright" and his "intellectual property", his pettiness, his bad faith, his lies, his cowardice, and to cap it all, his hatred for the organisation and the militants thanks to whom he was able to write his two books, all the Doctor’s contemptible behaviour since 1992, are not merely expressions of his personality. They are also, and much more, the expression of his belonging to the social category which most concentrates all these moral defects: the petty bourgeoisie.
As we shall now see, the conference where Doctor Bourrinet figured as speaker amply confirms everything we have said about his person.
A significant conference
Doctor Bourrinet began with a long and soporific introduction. But the lethargy that crept over the audience (including the chair) was not merely because the Doctor has all the charisma of an oyster. More fundamentally, it was the fruit of a speech without soul or fighting spirit, at the end of which the chair could conclude that "the past is past" and that "questions today are posed differently".
There followed logically a whole series of "new" questions from the audience, such as "the situation in the prisons" (very new!) and of "precarious labour", etc. In short, the sole effect of Doctor Bourrinet’s discourse was to present the tradition of the Communist Left as something without interest for the present or the future, something from a vanished past to be read about in books fit only to gather dust on the shelf, at the disposal of university researchers.
In other words, Doctor Bourrinet’s presentation confirmed what all his behaviour up to then had already revealed: that henceforth, for our good Doctor, the history of the Communist Left has become a mere academic discipline and has nothing to do with the words of the militant Philippe Bourrinet, when as Chardin he wrote that it was: "(...) first and foremost a weapon in its present and future struggles, because of the lessons from the past that it contains" (International Review no.58, ibid).
But there’s more to come! Doctor Bourrinet made the most of the soporific effect of his presentation to slip in, as is his wont, a few historical falsifications – in perfect conformity with his tendency to "rearrange" history to suit himself.
He thus described the different Communist Lefts (of Italy, Holland, and Germany) as if they were completely isolated from each other, as if they had no interaction with each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth! It is true that in 1926, the Italian Left refused a proposal from Karl Korsch (then member of a group in Germany around the review Kommunistische Politik) for a common declaration by all the Left currents of the day (cf letter from Bordiga to Korsch of 28th October 192619). But the Left Fraction of the Italian Communist Party, which published Prometeo in Italian from 1929, and then Bilan in French from 1933, not only had the firm intention to confront its positions with those of the other left currents, above all with those of Trotsky’s Left Opposition and of the Dutch-German Left, it also adopted several positions of the latter current. For example, the analysis of national liberation struggles worked out by Rosa Luxemburg within the German and Polish Social-Democracy, then taken up by the German Left, was integrated into Bilan’s positions at the end of the 1930s.
Better still, this "expert" of the Communist Left even managed to ignore completely the very existence of the French Communist Left (Gauche Communiste de France, GCF). Just as, in Stalin’s day, people disappeared from photographs at each rewriting of official history, so our good Doctor somehow "forgot" all about this group, created at the end of World War II, in 1944. And with good reason: the distinguishing feature of the GCF (which published Internationalisme) was precisely its profound synthesis of the Lefts of different countries, in continuity with the work of Bilan. By drawing its inspiration from Bilan’s theoretical advances, and still more from its vision of a living, non-dogmatic marxism, open to every expression of the proletariat internationally, the GCF prevented this little group from falling into oblivion, and made it on the contrary a bridge between the best proletarian traditions of the past, and the future of the proletarian struggle. In other words, when Doctor Bourrinet wipes the GCF from the whiteboard of history he also, in a sense, wipes out Bilan, he breaks the historic continuity between revolutionary groups, and he breaks the transmission of this precious experience of our illustrious predecessors. In a word, he disarms the proletariat before its class enemy.
All this is perfectly deliberate on Doctor Bourrinet’s part. He knows perfectly well the GCF’s existence and its place in history. This is not the fruit of an unfortunate forgetfulness, or of ignorance; it is a deliberate effort to hide a truth which he would prefer to ignore: that the GCF made a contribution of prime importance to the thought of the Communist Left.
Why so? The answer is simple. Purely out of hatred for the ICC, the only organisation which explicitly claims a descent from the GCF, and out of hatred for the militant who played a key role in the formation of the ICC and was the main thinker behind the GCF: Marc Chirik.
Doctor Bourrinet’s hatred, which we have already seen at work in his various writings, was laid out for all to see at this public conference.
When the ICC’s delegation tried to call out the good Doctor for his falsifications and his "intellectual property", he became perfectly hysterical (as everyone could see): "you are terrorists and cheats", he cried, "you have forced many militants to resign from the ICC by stifling them" – in other words, he repeated all the slanders of "Marc Chirik’s political adversaries" which he has reported so "objectively" in the biographical sketch published on his web site.
Up to now, our Doctor has spread his venom from the shelter of official bodies, "doctored" biographical sketches, and "statements" on the Internet. This time, for once, he has dared do so in public, before four militants of the ICC. Such a change in attitude calls for an explanation.
As we have seen, Doctor Bourrinet is the prototypical petty bourgeois: cowardly, dishonest, and little inclined to spit his bile in the light of day, except... when the wind of rumour swells the cries of hatred against the ICC. Then he gets drunk on "courage" and is ready to take his part in the vilest of slander and the lowest of threats against our organisation. Through the centuries, calls to pogrom have always been thus: each participant makes his own wretched contribution according to his own motives, all different but all equally shabby and full of hate. Almost every time, this kind of barbaric dynamic is started by some kind of provocateur – whether a professional or an amateur is really immaterial. It is precisely into this that our unspeakable Doctor has plunged, hook line and sinker. After reading the anti-ICC prose of the IGCL,20 that seedy bunch of police-like back-room plotters with its provocateur Juan, the good Doctor has perked up no end and is ready to answer the call to villainy and hatred.
On 28th April 2014, the IGCL21 published an article as bad as anything by a professional provocateur. This slanderous text was titled "A new (and final?) crisis in the ICC!",22 and announced with ironic delight the ICC’s disappearance... which turned out to be "thoroughly exaggerated".23 But however unfounded, the mere idea that the ICC is weakened, almost at death’s door, has galvanised all those who are obsessed with the hope of seeing us dead and buried. And it is in this "courageous" crowd that we find the Doctor Bourrinet, all hot and flustered at the idea that he too can now howl with the wolves against the ICC. But even the encouragement of the provocateurs of the IGCL was not enough to give him pluck; he needed the comforting company of an acolyte alongside him, small in brain but big in brawn, and above all with the mentality of the hoodlum ready for any underhand villainy against the ICC: none other than Pédoncule,24 always ready to reassure and motivate our Doctor should his courage fail him during the conference. This individual has an edifying, and violent, pedigree: physical aggression against one of our women comrades, aggression against another comrade threatened with the switch-blade he always carries on him, and threats to "slit the throat" of yet another.25
The association of the Doctor and the hooligan (which could have been made into a French movie with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Depardieu in the title roles) may seem paradoxical, but should come as no surprise. The alliance between the intellectual petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat is not new, and in general it comes when they confront a common enemy: the revolutionary proletariat. In 1871, the majority of French writers (with the noteworthy exceptions of Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Vallès, and Victor Hugo) lined up with the scum of Paris to cheer on the Versaillais who slaughtered the Commune: the former with the pen, the latter more concretely through grassing and assassination.26 In 1919, the "honorable" leaders of German Social-Democracy used the lumpenproletariat grouped in the Frei Korps (the predecessors of the Nazis) to assassinate thousands of workers, at the same time as they murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the German revolution’s leading lights. Today, the petty bourgeois Bourrinet, Doctor of the University of Paris 1 – Sorbonne, teams up with Pédoncule the Ripper: what could be more normal? Both share the same obsessive hatred of the ICC; both want to see the disappearance of the ICC, in other words of the main organisation defending internationally the positions of the Communist Left.
As far as we are concerned, we intend to continue distributing the two books on the Italian Left and on the Dutch-German Left, whether Doctor Bourrinet likes it or not. And we urge our readers to read these books, written by Philippe Bourrinet when he was a militant of the ICC. They have lost none of their value just because, since then, the militant has become a Doctor and betrayed the cause to which he had been committed in his youth. Nor we will we give up denouncing the Doctor’s infamy, his lies, his slanders, and his contemptible efforts to call the institutions of the bourgeois state to his aid to threaten our militants and satisfy his hatred. He need not, however, worry that we will send a commando to "slit his throat" – we will leave that kind of thing to his bodyguard, Pédoncule the Ripper.
The history of the workers’ movement is littered with militants who once defended revolutionary proletarian positions, only to change camp and capitulate to bourgeois ideology to put themselves at the service of the ruling class. We all know what happened to Mussolini, who was a leader of the Italian Socialist Party’s left wing prior to World War I. Plekhanov, who introduced marxism to Russia and was one of the foremost figures in the struggle against Bernstein’s revisionism at the end of the 19th century, turned into a dyed-in-the-wool social chauvinist in 1914. Kautsky, the 2nd International’s "pope of marxism" and Rosa Luxemburg’s comrade-in-arms up to 1906, in 1914 put his pen to serve, de facto, the imperialist war, and condemned the 1917 revolution in Russia, all the while proclaiming formally his attachment to marxism, right up to his death in 1938.
Today, Doctor Bourrinet continues to proclaim his formal attachment to the Communist Left and its positions. But this is a swindle. The Communist Left is not just a matter of political positions. It also means loyalty to principles, refusal to compromise, a will to struggle for the revolution, an immense courage – all qualities of which Doctor Bourrinet is utterly bereft. Read today The Italian Communist Left, and The Dutch-German Communist Left, not as Doctor Bourrinet’s "intellectual property", but in the spirit of Philippe Bourrinet a quarter-century ago: "It's only from a militant standpoint, the standpoint of those who are committed to the workers' struggle for emancipation, that the history of the workers' movement can be approached".
International Communist Current, 15/01/2015
1The Smolny collective is a publisher specialising in the publication of books on the workers’ movement, in particular of the Communist Left. See our article in French "Les éditions Smolny participent à la récupération démocratique de Rosa Luxemburg [1273]"
2"M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error." Marx, Foreword to Poverty of Philosophy, 1847
3See our articles published in International Review [1274] nos.65-66 [1274]
4This material support included the payment of much of the cost of his documentary research, including the purchase of large quantities of micro-films from the Amsterdam International Institute for Social Research.
5The Société des Gens des Lettres is a French organism dating from the early 19th century, and devoted in particular to the judicial protection of copyright on behalf of its author members. Copies of the documents in question are attached to this article.
6This appeared in the English edition, The Dutch and German Communist Left, published in 2001.
7We will henceforth accord the Doctor his official title. This cannot but satisfy his intense desire for social recognition.
8And, we would add, a hypocrite. But that is the rule rather than the exception.
9The price list can be found at left-dis.nl/f/livre.htm [1275]. Should the link disappear – one never knows! – we have of course kept a screen print as the site appeared on 15th January 2015.
10The ICC had decided to offer the English editions of the Dutch-German Left and the Italian Left on Amazon in order to maximise their distribution. In October 2009, we received a letter from Amazon informing us that these books had been withdrawn from sale following reception of a letter from Doctor Bourrinet, and that their sale would only be possible with the agreement of the latter. In a letter to Amazon dated 7th October 2009, signed "Doctor Philippe Bourrinet, Historian", we read that "My intellectual property is being violated by two items on the Amazon.co.uk site. It has to do with the commercial selling of two books of mine (my name has disappeared) by the so-called ‘International Communist Current’, which clearly is committing acts of intellectual piracy [there follow details of the two books]. These two books have been published (electronic and paper forms) under my own name on my own multilingual website in the Netherlands (…) They have since a long time ago (1989) been protected by the law on intellectual property (…) I am the true property owner of the two mentioned books and authorized to act – together with the SGDL in Paris – for the rights described above". The ICC wrote to Doctor Bourrinet on 24th October 2009. In our letter we said, "We have to say that we were rather surprised, first by the fact that you felt the need to write to Amazon on this subject, and second that you said nothing to us about it beforehand. We were under the impression that the question of the ‘intellectual property’ over the two books on the Dutch-German Left and the Italian Left had already been amicably settled between us at a meeting at the beginning of the 1990s (…) At all events, we don’t want this problem of ‘intellectual property’ to hinder the distribution of this history and these ideas. If you wish, we are perfectly prepared to publish the same notice [see above and note 6] (or whatever variation on it that might suit you) on the Amazon site (we can also include your name as the author) and on our own". This letter was never answered. Perhaps we should have offered to pay the Doctor an author's percentage on our sales. That said, we should point out that the English editions distributed by Doctor Bourrinet are identical (with the exception of his modifications since leaving the ICC) to the translations undertaken by the militants of our organisation. But let us reassure the good Doctor: we have no intention of claiming copyright on our translations.
11Documents sent to the ICC [1276]
12This translation into English is our own – which is more than Doctor Bourrinet can say of the English versions of "his" books.
13The heinous onslaught on our comrade Marc Chirik’s memory is nothing less than vile. Marc Chirik enjoyed a great respect among the vast majority of militants of the old Communist Left, despite their disagreements and the criticism he might have directed at them. The depth and the rigour of his thinking, his devotion to the revolutionary cause, his strength of character and at the same time the esteem and affection he had for those militants who had managed to resist the counter-revolution, were traits of his political character which commanded universal respect. When we read the insanities written about him by petty creeps whose pride has suffered a little scratch, or whose "intellectual property" has been ignored, we are frankly overwhelmed with disgust. This kind of campaign of denigration is all too reminiscent of the campaign of which Trotsky was a victim from the mid-1920s onwards, even before his exclusion from the Bolshevik Party, at the hands of the Stalinist clique, a campaign that was vigorously denounced by Bordiga (at the time the best-known figure of the Italian Communist Left), despite his profound disagreements with Trotsky. The servile scoundrels who, whether through cowardice or careerism, crawled in Stalin’s wake, provide the model for Marc Chirik’s slanderers today.
14 Magazine of the French far right.
16 Doctor Bourrinet sees nothing wrong with this. Hardly surprising, since he himself is prepared to use the bourgeois judicial system against revolutionaries.
17 Lafif Lakhdar writes to President Obama
18 Ehud Olmert. A close ally of Ariel Sharon (responsible for the massacre of Sabra and Chatila in September 1982), he was Israel’s Prime Minister from January 2006 to March 2009, and responsible for the July 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, which cost more than 1200 civilian lives. In September 2009 he was tried for "fraud", "breach of trust", and "concealing fraudulent revenue", and in September 2012 he was given a one year suspended sentence.
19 Bordiga to Korsch [1278]
20The "International Group of the Communist Left" (IGCL) was born in October 2013. it consists of a merger between two elements of the Klasbatalo group in Montreal, and elements of the self-proclaimed "Internal Fraction" of the ICC, who were expelled as grasses from the ICC in 2003.
21See our replies: The police-like methods of the 'IFICC' [1176], The ICC doesn't allow snitches into its public meetings [1177], Calomnie et mouchardage, les deux mamelles de la politique de la FICCI envers le CCI [1178]
22See our reply Communiqué to our readers: The ICC under attack from a new agency of the bourgeois state [1279]
23 We have answered this attack, as infamous as it is absurd, in our article on the Extraordinary Conference.
24 Like the Doctor Bourrinet, this Pédoncule is also a member of the Smolny collective. He was also a member, for several years, of the bunch of snitches and hoodlums that went by the name of the IFICC.
25 See our article in RI: Défense de l'organisation : Des menaces de mort contre des militants du CCI [1280]
26 Cf. Paul Lidsky, Les écrivains contre la Commune, La Découverte Poche, Paris, 2010.
On the 26th of September 2014, in the state of Guerrero in Mexico situated about 400 km south of Mexico City, a number of students from the teacher training college of Ayotzinapa went to Iguala, a town some 250 km away in order to prepare with others a demonstration taking place the following week on October 2; a demonstration in memory of the massacre of students on the “Three-Cultures” square in the capital (Tlatelolco) in 1968. This commemoration was taking place in parallel with a massive and spontaneous demonstration of students at the polytechnic school who were protesting against reforms of the education system which, among other things, particularly hit them by re-classifying their future professional qualifications, and thus their future wages, by reducing their grades from engineer to technician.
On their return, in order to pay for transport, the youth from Ayotzinapa “borrowed” a bus. They were then chased and fired on by the municipal police of Iguala. The fusillade killed 6 of the youths. Others were able to flee but 43 more were captured and immediately delivered to the mafia gang “Guerreros Unidos”[1] on the telephone orders of the mayor of Iguala, a member of the PRD[2] and under the cover of the state governor, also a member of the PRD. The narco-traffickers were thus made responsible for making the students “disappear”.
Around the area of the shootings some days later, recent burnt remains were discovered in a ditch containing about 20 bodies, some of whom had been burnt alive and others hideously mutilated – the skin torn off their faces and eyes gouged out – indicating that the victims had suffered acts of the most abominable torture and barbarity imaginable. Under cover of the long procedure to identify the bodies the bourgeoisie talked hypocritically about “looking for the missing” whereas the fate of these unfortunate youths – aged between 17 and 21 – was beyond doubt.
Since then there’s been a loud and sickening daily barrage: on the one side the government of Pena Nieto and his clique in power (the PRI), with his ally the PAN, alongside the public prosecutor who prompted the enquiry saying that “light must be shone” on events and “the guilty punished”, all posing as the real and sole defenders of justice (the supposed boss of the “Guerreros Unidos” was arrested a fortnight later with triumphant zeal!), while the mayor and local chief of police fled and a vast popular and media campaign was launched in order to demand the resignation of the governor. On the other side the parties of the left[3] including the PRD itself, the unions, the leftist organisations and a range of humanitarian organisations (from Human Rights to a whole range of NGO’s) are launching a vast campaign in the style of “clean hands” in Italy, demanding the dismissal of such and such a politician with close links to the cartels, or such and such corrupt policeman. Profiting from the indignation and emotion aroused by this odious massacre, a vast movement to polish up the image of the state is being launched, along with illusions in the clean, impartial state, the defender of justice above classes and guarantor of the “rights of the people” with the aim of drawing behind it the parents of the victims, all the students, a maximum of proletarians and the population in general. At the same time the leading bourgeoisies all over the world, with the whole media at their disposal, wax indignant and point their finger at their Mexican counterparts and the collusion that’s been established between the politicians and drug traffickers in order to better mask the degree of their own corruption and their own crimes.
Since this article was written the former mayor of the southern Mexican city of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, has been charged with the murder of six people who died in the initial police attack. It seemed he ordered his police to attack the students because he thought that they were going to disrupt the attempt of his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, to campaign to replace him as mayor in 2015. The couple’s close links to the “Geurreros Unidos” drug gang, as well as the gang’s previous joint murderous actions with the police have emerged (The Guardian, 14.11.14). Abarca is in jail where he faces charges and Pineda is under investigation with both of them still giving their services, if not voluntarily, to the campaign for the “clean”, democratic state.
In reality, this tragic episode is no aberrant manifestation or any sort of “slip up” of the local or national bourgeoisie but rather an illustration of another step taken in the decomposition of capitalism at the global level, a process dragging society into barbarity and a growing chaos. This is the same spiral that we see in the present exacerbation of imperialist conflicts between states who use torturers and militia armies, terrorist bands of religious fanatics, nationalists, separatists, rebels, etc. This is expressed in a generalised gangsterism of the state apparatus, of the bourgeoisie and all its representatives. Thieves, armed mafia gangs and narco-traffickers have become a regular force of the state as instruments of the violence of its domination and above all as organs for the bloody repression of social movements, just like the police and the army – a repression particularly exercised against the working class and its struggles. It’s quite significant that drugs and arms trafficking, which has taken a preponderant place in international commerce and the national economies, has led to these armed gangs of narco-traffickers becoming indispensable auxiliaries of all the fractions of the bourgeoisie in order to assure their power against their rivals or to exercise a pitiless repression against any threat to the existing order.
But this evolution also implies the absolute rejection of all moral values. Even in the sphere of thievery and gangsterism, there existed, even in clannish and reified forms, a sort of “code of honour”, certain moral taboos. Today these elements have disappeared .They have sunk under the process of social decomposition, of the putrefaction of capitalism dominated by the immediate interest of “every man for himself”, the “war of each against all”, in the unleashing of unlimited violence and terror. This social militarisation, this “banalisation of evil”, according to the expression of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, more and more tends to escape the control of the bourgeoisie itself and takes on an increasingly irrational character. Under the oppression and conditioning permanently exercised by the system it tends to express itself by the brutal explosion of instincts, of individual and collective “mad” slaughter, in a blind barbarity pushed to the extreme, of which Mexico and its thousands of “disappeared”, its hundreds of hidden graves filled with bodies is only one illustration.
We are publishing a leaflet distributed in Mexico by ‘internationalist communist proletarians’. We share their indignation and welcome their healthy and authentically proletarian reaction to the massacre.
The way in which the state has murdered dozens of people in Igualada is well known: the police of the “Progressive Movement” encircled and opened fire on the students from the training school of Ayotzinapa. The rest of the deed, which consisted of killing more than 40 students, burning and hiding their bodies, has been undertaken by an armed group linked to the state: the narco group supported by the police of the Iguala Commune. The indignation and rage over this atrocity is indescribable and immense but so too is the hypocrisy coming from all sides, from NGO’s to the official and unofficial bodies of the state.
The close collaboration between the police of the “Progressive Movement” and the armed groups of drug traffickers doesn’t mean that “organised crime” has penetrated the state. Rather it shows that the bourgeoisie, engulfed by the decomposition of capitalism and gripped by its internal rivalries, is compelled to resort to increasingly violent and criminal practices. Drug trafficking is not a separate sector of the bourgeoisie and the interests of narco-traffic have never ceased to be involved in the state apparatus, this superior form of class organisation against the working class.
The press, another arm of the bourgeoisie, is trying to reinforce the idea that the police of Iguala were the armed force of the “Guerros Unidos” and that from now, thanks to the army and the police, order is being returned to the streets. Proletarians, remember! The state is a machine for class repression, a machine to subjugate and exploit another class.
The left of capital is pursuing a determined strategy through the media with the aim of whitewashing the image of the PRD and PT of Morena of the “Movimiento Ciudadano” with a view to the next elections. While the families of the disappeared are expressing their suffering, these parties, real cogs in the assassination arsenal of the bourgeoisie, point fingers at such and such a bureaucrat, such and such a policeman while saying nothing about the state being part of and at the origin of the barbarity in which the exploited live day after day. All these political parties form part of the state, not only the PRI and the PAN but those that want to join up with them, trying to profit from social discontent while fighting it with blood, bullets and prison when the occasion is presented.
Les porte-parole de l'État et leurs officines à visage "démocratique", à la solde du gouvernement ou "indépendants", nous rebattent les oreilles sur les "exécutions illégales" pour inculper tel ou tel fonctionnaire corrompu mais, surtout, pour disculper la bourgeoisie comme classe sociale ayant en charge les tribunaux, l'armée, la police et autres bandes criminelles. Pour ces défenseurs de la loi et de l'ordre bourgeois, il suffirait que les exécutions soient prononcées "dans le cadre de la loi". Ils dissimulent ainsi que la violence et la terreur sont en eux-mêmes la manière brutale dans laquelle l'État garantit le bon fonctionnement des affaires de la bourgeoisie.
The mouthpieces of the state and its “democratic” offices, whether in the pay of the government or “independent”, are assaulting our ears with their noise about the “illegal executions”, accusing this or that corrupt state functionary; but the aim of all this is to give a bill of clean health to the bourgeoisie as a social class which is behind the army, the police and other criminal bands. For these defenders of bourgeois law and order it would be enough if such executions are pronounced “within the framework of the law”. They thus conceal the fact that the violence and terror are in themselves the brutal manner by which the state guarantees the good functioning of the business of the bourgeoisie.
What’s essential for the capitalist class is to maintain the “prestige” of the state. The comedy of the “commissions of enquiry” and investigations into “Human Rights” is following the same pattern as throughout the history of the criminal enterprises of the ruling class: enquiry – proceedings – appeal – sentences – strengthening of the state. Remember the massacre of the villagers of Dos Erres in Guatemala in December 1982[4], where the army killed 500 men, women and children? Here the conclusion of the bourgeois circus was a macabre sentence: a massive swindle. A “monument” was erected by the assassins to “preserve the memory”, some scraps of paper with the seal of the state were given in order to buy off, keep quiet and render complicit the parents of the deceased. A law was enacted called “National Reconciliation” with the participation of the whole range of organisms defending “Human Rights”. In short, law ensuring the submission of the parents of the victims to class collaboration and accepting the terms imposed by the assassins. It was a joke allowing the blood to be washed off the hands of the state and the class which it serves: the bourgeoisie.
Being bogged down in the misery and existence of bourgeois society is the cause of a greater decomposition of capitalism which also threatens to destroy those it exploits. Caught up in this situation, the proletariat has met enormous difficulties in developing its struggles, taking them into its own hands, spreading them and breaking with the whole political apparatus of capital. The latter is not limited to the “Rights” industry but integrates all the parties, official or “independent” unions, leftist groups who keep all expressions of struggle in the framework of the bourgeoisie, and who seek to tie the proletariat to nationalism, an ideological instrument based on collaboration with the bourgeoisie.
It’s the left of capital that the working class has to unmask. Its methods lead to a dead-end, keep the struggles of the workers in isolation and thus make them all the more vulnerable to repression.
The difficulty of recognising that student proletarians are part of the working class and need to develop their own forms of struggle which don’t isolate them and separate them from the rest of the class is another obstacle to be overcome.
Proletarian solidarity is not a blind following of demonstrations and slogans, but criticism without concession of everything which prevents the development of proletarian struggle – as one class on a world level – against the bourgeoisie, capital and the state. It is indispensable to recover these methods of struggle, which are foreign to minority violence and authoritarian and militarist organisation. It’s not a matter of whether demonstrations are “peaceful” or not. It is a question of their content: how they contribute, or not, to the development of an autonomous perspective of the proletariat and its generalisation. By autonomy we don’t mean the regional autonomy typical of the petty-bourgeoisie, but the autonomy of the proletariat faced with other classes. It is a question of retrieving from the history and world experience of the working class the forms of struggle and the methods which really develop solidarity with the rest of the working class, its capacity for serious reflection, its ability to struggle on a class terrain. It is consequently necessary to break with the ideology of martyrdom and blind discipline advocated by the FECSM[5]. Along with these, standing against a real struggle, are the social democratic parties and NGO’s, the tactics of isolation imposed both by the “official” unions and their “rank and file” counter-parts, and the elitist violence of groups pretending to give “an example” with their individual and minority actions to what is supposed to be a “passive and obedient mass of workers”. At the origin of all these practices is the thought of the petty-bourgeoisie and the general framework of the left of capital.
If the working class doesn’t organise itself, if from the outset all the causes of barbarity are not criticised, then all the indignation, all the rage, all the grief, all its force will be diverted towards the strengthening of the state and towards the strengthening of the bourgeoisie.
Justice won’t come from our executioners - the state and the multiple fractions of the bourgeoisie that comprise it.
We can’t demand justice from the state, it is necessary to destroy it!
We don’t ask for “Human Rights”, we call for self-organisation in order to satisfy our needs, and for the struggle against capitalism and its whole apparatus, on the left as well as the right!
For the exploited, the best solidarity begins by recognising ourselves as one and the same class: the proletariat.
With the few resources that we have we are making an effort to develop and make known a proletarian perspective. Read, discuss and reproduce this text!
On the perspective we defend see us on Facebook
Izquierda Comunista no es estalinismo ni trotskismo sino Revolucion Mundial[6]
[1] One of the drug cartels sowing terror throughout the region and already responsible for thousands of deaths in the settling of accounts between gangs which has raged with increasing intensity since 2006 and the era of the Calderon government.
[2] Partido Revolucionario Democratico, among the three big Mexican political parties this one has the reputation of being most to the left with a social-democratic inspiration.
[3] Outside the PRD, we find Morena (Movimiento Regeneracion Nacional) of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an old presidential candidate like the Left Front of Melanchon in France or Die Linke of Lafontaine in Germany, fulfilling the function of a more radical left in opposition in relation to the PRD, with the Movimiento Ciutadino (Citizen’s Movement) or the left-Stalinist PT which distinguishes itself only by it “anti-imperialist” phraseology, that’s to say a more virulent anti-Americanism.
[4] Editorial note: This is only one example among the 626 registered massacres of the civilian population perpetrated by the actions of the “anti-insurrectional” special forces (disguised as guerrillas) which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths in Guatemala between 1978 and 1983 and are still going on to this day.
[5] Federacion de Estudiantes Campesinos de Mexico (Student Federation of the rural region of Mexico, a union for students at the teacher training college since 1935)
[6] Left communism is not part of Stalinism nor Trotskyism but of the world revolution.
The ICC’s section in France recently held its 21st Congress which took place over two sessions. The first, devoted to debates about the organisational problems of the oldest section of the ICC, took place during our Extraordinary International Conference last May[1]. The second session of the Congress was devoted to two questions:
As shown by the article the ICC published on its third Extraordinary International Conference, ‘The news of our death is greatly exaggerated’, the ICC’s section in France was the epicentre of the ‘moral and intellectual’ crisis the organisation has been going through. This crisis (which hadn’t been identified at the time) came to the surface in the discussion on the activities resolution of the 20th Congress of RI, which insisted on the necessity for a marxist culture of theory and pointed to the weaknesses of the section in France and the ICC on the level of our internal debates. The diagnosis of a ‘danger of sclerosis’ and ‘fossilisation’, even of organisational ‘degeneration’ put forward in this activities resolution prompted the raising of a shield-wall on the part of a circle of militants linked by ties of affinity, along with personal attacks against one comrade who had supported and defended this orientation (which had actually been developed by the activities resolution of the preceding ICC Congress). Emotional and irrational approaches emerged, animated by a strong tendency towards the personalisation of political questions (with the absurd idea that this activities resolution was targeting certain young militants who had difficulties reading theoretical texts). Faced with this aberrant situation, with this open crisis, the central organ of the section in France, once it had identified the nature of this crisis, carried out a political fight aimed at the recovery of the section. Among the weaknesses of the section in France, the organisation identified the lack of any in-depth debate on the problem of the circle spirit, which had been analysed at length in the orientation text ‘The question of the functioning of the organisation in the ICC’, written in response to the internal crisis of 1993[2]. Given the predominance of good old common sense, of the ‘religion of everyday life’ and of the distrust which are the hallmarks of the circle and clan spirit, certain militants wrongly identified this text as a weapon against this or that individual, when in fact it was dealing with a political question which has a long history in the workers’ movement (in particular in the First International and in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903).
This lack of a culture of theory necessarily went hand in hand with emotional approaches and the conception of the organisation as a group of friends or a big family, linked by ties of affection and not by common political principles. The resurgence of the pogromist mentality of the clan which was to form the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’, whose apotheosis has been the police-type group ‘International Group of the Communist Left’, had its roots in the absence of any theoretical discussion of an orientation text submitted for discussion after the crisis of 2001, ‘The pogromist mentality and the fight against capitalist barbarism’. The idea that was prevalent in the wake of this crisis was of a ‘return to normal’, to the routine functioning of the organisation, with the illusion that the ‘evil’ had been eliminated with the exclusion of the members of the IFICC for behaving like informers. There was also the idea it was not necessary to expend any energy in discussing the question of pogromism, even though it is a phenomenon of decadent capitalism which, especially in its phase of decomposition, tends to invade all spheres of social life (not only in imperialist wars, as we have seen in Ukraine for example, but also among young people in the ‘banlieux’, in schools and even at the workplace).
The 21st Congress of the section in France thus had to take on the character of an extraordinary congress. The section had to draw up a balance sheet of the work of its central organ and of the struggle it had waged over the past two years, aimed at exposing the ‘familialist’ conceptions of organisation which still existed in the section in France and which are the most fertile soil for the development of a pogromist mentality (via the spirit the family vendetta or taking revenge on behalf of your gang of mates).
All the militants of the section took an active part in the debates to support and salute the work of the central organ which had made it possible to prevent this moral and intellectual crisis from leading to an explosion of the section or to the formation of a new parasitic group (motivated by the defence of wounded pride, which Lenin described as ‘aristocratic anarchism’). The attachment to the ICC as a political body, the will to reflect on and understand the underlying reasons for the serious errors made by certain comrades, loyalty to the organisation and a determination not to capitulate to the ‘invisible hand’ of capital (to use the expression of Adam Smith) made it possible for the militants of the section in France to engage fully in the orientations of the 20th Congress of RI, in particular the fundamental importance of the work of theoretical elaboration, of assimilating marxism. In order to be able to surmount this moral and intellectual crisis, the only away forward is to develop a marxist culture of theory against the ideology of the ruling class, against the alienation and reification which mean that in capitalist society relations between human beings become relations between things.
One of the weaknesses of the Congress was that it didn’t manage to develop a deep discussion of the two conceptions of organisation which have been co-existing for many years in the oldest section of the ICC, and which have repeatedly been the source of cleavages and fractures: on the one hand, this familialist conception in which the political positions that militants adopt are motivated by personal sympathies or loyalties, and on the other hand the conception that what holds the organisation together is the militants’ commitment to shared organisational principles.
If these two years of open crisis in the section in France didn’t end up giving rise to a new parasitic split, it is also thanks to the capacity of the central organ in France to push forward and animate the life of the section and to carry out the orientations of the 20th Congress, notably by organising days of study and discussion to combat the danger of sclerosis, the loss of the ICC’s acquisitions, and to develop a marxist theoretical culture within the organisation and among all the militants. This was a way of fighting against intellectual laziness, dilettantism, the loss of taste for reading and theory, along with the persistence of hierarchical and elitist ideas which see the work of theoretical reflection as the work of ‘specialists’. The section in France thus organised several days of study over the last two years on different themes connected to the organisational problems which have re-appeared in an even more dangerous manner than in the past:
The crisis which has shaken the section in France and sent shockwaves throughout the ICC was in this sense a salutary crisis, since it has made it possible to face up to a fundamental question of marxism and the workers’ movement which up till now has not been posed at the theoretical level by the ICC: the moral and intellectual dimension of the proletarian struggle.
The ‘news of our death’ triumphantly announced by the pogromist, jihadist appeal of the IGCL has thus indeed been greatly exaggerated.
The session of the Congress devoted to the analysis of the balance of forces between the classes had the aim of understanding the underlying causes of the social calm that has reigned since the movement against the pension reforms of autumn 2010, and the errors in the analysis by the section in France. These errors are reflected in certain articles in our press which we were able to critically review. In reality, the organisational crisis was already potentially contained in losing the marxist compass, in losing our theoretical acquisitions in analysing the dynamic of the class struggle. Impatience, immediatism, losing sight of the function of the organisation were expressed by activist tendencies which saw a focus on intervention in the immediate struggles to the detriment of an in-depth discussion about the social movements. The Congress drew out the fact that the movement of autumn 2010 against the pension reforms was in reality the result of a manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie which was able to revitalise its trade unions in order to inflict a serious defeat on the working class and push through with its attacks.
The social calm over the last four years has shown that the proletariat in France has not yet digested this defeat. To understand this manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie and the breadth of the defeat in 2010, the Congress pointed out that our impatience had led us to forget the ABC of Marxism: as long as a revolutionary period has not opened up, until there is a situation of ‘dual power’, it’s always the ruling class which is on the offensive, and the exploited class can only develop its defensive struggles, its resistance against the attacks aimed at it. To understand how the bourgeoisie has been able to carry out its economic, political and ideological attacks against the working class in France, the RI Congress had to take a step back from immediate events and re-examine the dynamic of the class struggle since the ‘turning point’ of 2003, placing it back in the historical and international framework determined by the collapse of the eastern bloc and the ideological campaigns about the ‘failure of communism’, the ‘end of the class struggle’ and the ‘disappearance of the proletariat’ as the only force capable of changing the world.
This ‘turning point’ of 2003, marked by the search for solidarity between the generations and in the struggle, showed that the working class in France and internationally was in the process of returning to the path of struggle after the deep reflux it had been through in the wake of the collapse of the eastern bloc and the so-called ‘communist’ regimes. Thus, in 2006, the struggle of the students against the CPE, which took the bourgeoisie by surprise, threatened to extend to other generations and the employed workers, forcing the ruling class to withdraw its project because of the real risk of the development of a wider solidarity, the danger of contamination of the mass of wage workers. This is why in 2007 the bourgeoisie went onto the counter-offensive. It could not tolerate this defeat and had to try to wipe out all traces of it: the attack on the special pension provisions was thus orchestrated with the aim of directly attacking this dynamic towards active solidarity within the working class.
The debates at the Congress also showed that the section in France had been a victim of the media campaigns about the ‘financial crisis’ of 2008, which was aimed at sowing panic throughout society, especially within the working class in order to make it accept sacrifices, trying to get it to believe that because this really was a financial crisis (i.e. one that could be fixed through a few reforms) and not a new convulsion of a historically condemned world system based on the production of commodities and the exploitation of workers’ labour power.
This wind of panic also affected the ICC, particularly its section in France, so the Congress had to restore the balance, notably by re-appropriating our analysis of the ‘Machiavellianism’ of the bourgeoisie, its capacity to use its tame media as a means of ideological intoxication to obscure the consciousness of the exploited masses. Since consciousness is the main weapon of the proletariat in the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a new society, it is inevitable that the ruling class will always try to disarm its moral enemy through ideological media campaigns.
The Congress noted that the disorientation of the section in France, its activist tendencies in the immediate struggles to the detriment of our long-term work contained the danger of dragging the organisation into dangerous adventures, in particular the traps of workerism and radical leftism. As we have often argued, immediatism is the royal road to opportunism and revisionism, towards the abandonment of proletarian principles.
The Congress underlined that losing sight of the acquisitions and method of marxism in analysing the class struggle is linked to an underestimation:
The resolution on the situation in France, adopted by the congress, could not integrate and develop all the questions examined in the Congress debates, which will have to carry on in the organisation (in particular, the discussion about the strengthening of state capitalist measures, which is not limited to France).
The report presented to the Congress on the defence of the organisation had the object of synthesising the experience of the ICC and its section in France in the face of attempts to destroy the organisation. Such attempts were identified by our comrade MC, a founding member of the ICC, particularly in the crisis of 1981, which obliged us to carry out an operation to get back material stolen by the ‘Chenier tendency’ (typewriters, etc). In the face of petty bourgeois hesitations and resistance in RI at the time (notably in the Paris section), MC won the support of the central organ of the section in France to recuperate its material and publicly denounce the gangster methods of this ‘tendency’ (with a communiqué on the expulsion of Chenier in order to warn and protect other groups of the proletarian political milieu against the activities of this suspicious element).
The revolutionary organisation is an alien body in bourgeois society, since as Marx put it the proletariat “is a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates”. What he meant by this is that the proletarians can never really find their place in bourgeois society. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are two antagonistic classes. This is why, as an organisation of the proletariat, we could never have taken our complaints about these thefts to the police (who would have laughed in our faces!). The material stolen was not the private property of an individual but belonged to a political group and had been bought with money from militants’ contributions. It was thus a duty, based on proletarian moral principles, to recuperate our material in order to reject the habits of gangsterism inside a communist organisation.
The debates at the Congress highlighted the fact that, in order to continue defending this body alien to capitalist society, the revolutionary organisation has to struggle against localism and make its international unity a living reality in the face of the attacks aimed either at destroying it or creating a ‘cordon sanitaire’ around it, aimed at preventing new elements searching for a class perspective from approaching it.
We know that the campaigns of slander against the ICC are not going to stop, even if they may be put under wraps for a while. These have been the classic methods of the ruling class against the revolutionary movement since Marx showed that the proletariat is the gravedigger of capitalism. From the slanders of Herr Vogt (an agent of Napoleon III) against Marx to the calls for a pogrom against the Spartacists, which culminated in the cowardly and bestial murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, history has shown that repression against revolutionary organisations has always been prepared by slander. The hatred directed against the ICC (in a small philistine milieu animated by a ‘fellowship of former ICC members’) is the hatred of the bourgeoisie for the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, the hatred of Thiers, Macmahon and Galliflet for the Paris Commune, of Noske, Ebert and Scheidemann for the threat of the Russian revolution spreading to Germany.
Faced with the real development of a pogromist mentality against the organisation, the 21st Congress put forward a clear orientation for the defence of the organisation in the framework of the moral and intellectual dimension of the proletarian struggle.
“…as Engels said, the working class alone has today preserved an understanding of and interest in theory. The workers’ craving for knowledge is one of the most noteworthy cultural manifestations of our day. Morally, too, the working-class struggle denotes the cultural renovation of society” (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Stagnation and Progress of Marxism’ 1903).
Révolution Internationale
[1]. https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201409/10330/news-ou... [1283], International Review 153
[2]. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_functioning [1284], International Review 109
In Greece the triumph in the January elections for the left-wing Syriza party produced a pleasing symmetry in the response of the right and left of the political spectrum. In the UK, from the right, the Times declared “Far-left firebrand races to victory”, joined by the Daily Mail’s “Shock waves across Europe as the far left sweeps to power in Greece”.
In contrast to the scaremongering of the right, leftist groups welcomed Syriza’s coming to office. In Germany Die Linke were delirious (26/1/15) “Greece has experienced a truly historic election day. We rejoice with you …It is a great achievement SYRIZA has accomplished. As a pluralistic and modern leftist party you’ve managed to become the voice of millions. People give you confidence because you are consistent and honest, and because you give them back their pride.” In France, the NPA (the New Anticapitalist Party) (10/2/15) agreed “The victory of Syriza is an extremely positive event. It will help to loosen the grip of austerity that caused a fall in living standards of the Greek population…. At the European level, it is a defeat for the governments of the right and left who keep repeating that there is no alternative to austerity and the destruction of social gains.” In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party (27/1/15) followed suit: “Voters in Greece delivered a resounding rejection of austerity … Radical left party Syriza stormed to victory while the mainstream parties were left humiliated.”
It’s true this Right/Left pattern of demonisation/celebration was not perfect as some right-wingers also queued up to salute Syriza (and not just for their coalition with the far right ANEL). Marine Le Pen of the French Front National was “delighted by the enormous, democratic slap in the face that the Greek people have delivered to the European Union”. Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party saw the election result as “a desperate cry for help from the Greek people, millions of whom have been impoverished by the euro experiment.”
The reason for citing this range of views is because this is a classic range of the different expressions of bourgeois ideology. The Right warns that a change in Greek economic policy will disrupt other economies in Europe, and maybe even have an impact on the functioning of capitalism beyond. The Left portrays Syriza’s ascendance as evidence that an ‘alternative’ capitalism is possible, and is glad that there is a newly emerged social force in which people have confidence.
One dissident voice on the left is that of the French group Lutte Ouvrière. In an article entitled “Showdown after the victory of Syriza” (18/2/15), while expressing some familiar sentiments (“workers expressed their anger by voting for Syriza” etc) it is also very critical. “Tsipras and Syriza have never questioned the capitalist order. They do not claim to fight, much less seek to overthrow it. They are completely on the terrain of the bourgeoisie.” Also, in a country where “anti-German sentiments are widespread … Syriza fights on the terrain of nationalism and emerges as champion of Greek national independence.” However, in the final analysis, LO do not reject the defence of Syriza: “There is an objective need to be in a position to fight in solidarity with the government of Tsipras when it sticks to the measures favourable to workers that it has promised and against it if it turns its back on its promises.” LO holds out the possibility that a capitalist government in Greece under Syriza could somehow act in the interests of a class other than the bourgeoisie.
The position that Syriza has taken is as part of the political apparatus of the Greek capitalist state. It is subject to the same pressures as bourgeoisies elsewhere, and it is no surprise that Syriza, very soon after coming to power, started to make many of the concessions that it had previously set itself against. As a coalition it started as the offspring from splits from PASOK and the KKE (both of which have had periods in power, the former over many years, and the latter once in coalition with the conservative New Democracy). As a party vying for power it was situated on a capitalist terrain, differing from others only in the manner in which it expressed its nationalism, in the particular emphasis of its state capitalist economic policies.
For the leftists to depict Syriza as some sort of alternative is utterly fraudulent. Just before the election, a group of 18 distinguished economists (including two Nobel Prize winners and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee) wrote to the Financial Times endorsing aspects of Syriza’s economic policies: “We believe it is important to distinguish austerity from reforms; to condemn austerity does not entail being anti-reform. Macroeconomic stabilisation can be achieved through growth and increased efficiency in tax collection rather than through public expenditure cuts, which have reduced the revenue base and led to an increase in the debt ratio.” The letter appeared under the headline “Europe will benefit from Greece being given a fresh start”, clearly seeing the advent of Syriza as potentially beneficial for European capitalism. As a commentator in the New Statesman (29/1/15) put it “Syriza’s programme … is mainstream macroeconomics. The party is merely planning to do what the textbooks suggest.”
And so, following the textbooks, Syriza negotiated with Greece’s European creditors, in the first instance to extend the bailout and its conditions until 30 June. While there were demonstrations on the streets of Athens against this, in the German parliament Die Linke were voting along with the government parties. Usually they have voted against the bailouts because of the austerity measures that have been imposed as a condition of funding. This time they claimed that it was ‘out of solidarity’ with Syriza. Die Linke’s leader told the German parliament that “Now you’ll see that a leftwing government can achieve anything.” Anything, that is, that fits in with capitalist socialist relations and the pressures of the economic crisis.
In a recent debate in London between a leading member of the SWP and Stathis Kouvelakis from Syriza’s central committee, the latter is quoted (Socialist Worker 3/3/15) as saying “‘32 general strikes and hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets haven’t succeeded in defeating a single measure.’ Syriza ‘provided the political imagination that was missing’ and translated these movements into a ‘challenge to power’. And while Syriza’s demands are moderate, Stathis reminded the audience that the Russian Revolution of 1917 began with calls for ‘Peace, Bread and Land’” It is true that the general strikes in Greece have been staged by the various union co-ordinations in Greece, and as such proved an outlet for workers’ anger against the austerity measures imposed by the ND/PASOK government. They ensured that opposition to austerity was contained and diverted. The ‘political imagination’ that Syriza has provided involves taking its place in the apparatus of the capitalist state. It is not a ‘challenge to power’ but a participation in the domination of capital and the exploitation of the working class.
References to 1917 are potentially risky for any leftists to make. The reality of revolution and the participation of revolutionaries within that process tend to expose the postures of such as Syriza. The Russian Revolution not only threw up demands such as those of ‘Peace, Bread and Land’, it was also characterised by Lenin’s theoretical work on marxism and the state, the April Theses, and State and Revolution. A cornerstone of marxism is that the state exists because of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. In this it is appropriate for Syriza to take its place in the capitalist state and for other leftists to conjure up illusions in what state capitalism can do. Car 5/3/15
The bloody and barbaric attacks in Paris last month gave rise to a massive indignation and disgust. All this was shown in the gigantic gatherings in all the major towns of France and in numerous cities of the world. Millions of people and hundreds of thousands of workers all wanted to express their total rejection of these barbaric terrorist acts. Solidarity spontaneously took hold in the streets and in the squares. But this healthy and necessary reaction was immediately confronted with calls for patriotism, “national unity” and the “sacred union” from almost all wings of the French bourgeoisie – a bourgeoisie shamefully profiting from the emotion which gripped a shocked population. To listen to the politicians and the media France was about “to go to war”. Only the state could protect us; it alone could provide “security for the French”, the defence of “democracy” and “freedom of speech”. And this same ideological poison widely infected the population of Denmark after the recent attacks in Copenhagen. The fear and worry cleverly distilled by all the media was such that inside the head of every terrified proletarian was the idea that the state was the head of the family proposing to the “good people” its benevolent and protective shadow.
Beyond these mystifications some real questions are posed to the proletariat. Who really profits from these odious crimes perpetrated against the journalists of Charlie Hebdo and the customers in the kosher supermarket? What does the soft talk of the government amount to? What is hidden behind the intense media propaganda on the famous “post-January 7”, likened to the “post-9/11”? The truth behind the bourgeois speeches must come out. The proletariat cannot naively accept everything that the state says, or it will pay dearly for it in the future.
The French bourgeoisie, from the time of the attacks, has displayed its unity. The permanent wars between its different cliques and competing factions have disappeared as if by magic. In the name of the defence of “the country under attack”, of the “French people in danger”, the “French nation” must “face up to the terrorist menace as one”. Dressed up in a humanist facade, hiding behind hypocrisy and lies, the imperialist wolf finds a democratic alibi in order to justify its more marked military engagement in the world, aimed at ensuring that France “takes up its proper rank”. Without hesitation, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle left for French outposts in this new crusade. We are no longer meant to be disturbed by the active military role that French imperialism is playing in a number of wars which are soaking the planet in blood and which it tries hard to cover up under the flag of “humanitarianism”. Erased is the role played by the French bourgeoisie and its army in the genocide in Rwanda during the time of another Socialist president – Mitterand. Forgotten are the declarations of the latter according to which the genocide, which led to over a million deaths in this country, was nothing really serious! The extreme barbarity of the attacks in Paris seems to give the French state the right to make war and restrict so-called “freedoms”. After the attacks, the bourgeoisie has thus dressed itself up, without any complexes, in the costume of the guardian of order and security. Faced with irrational, crazy murders, the ordinary barbarity of the democratic state must be presented as “normal”. Its zealous servants, the media, can now show on the TV screens a massive deployment of the forces of order on a war footing. Thousands of police, gendarmes and military can henceforth take over and carve up all the public spaces. And they pretend that this is for our well-being! Without at all holding back, one part of the French right asks for the setting up of a French Patriot Act on the model of what the US bourgeoisie put into effect after 9/11. This is something that the left and the government rapidly and hypocritically “reject” so as to actively prepare measures which are exactly like it. In fact, regarding the ideological and repressive response, there’s a great similarity between the Patriot Act and the policy adopted by the bourgeoisie in France this last month. Moreover, this security policy that the Socialist Hollande has prepared acts as a spearhead within the European Union which has already been seduced and conquered.
We should remind ourselves how the Patriot Act appeared! On September 11, 2001, two planes smashed into the twin towers in New York. Two others crashed in Washington and Pennsylvania. The outcome was terrifying: more than three thousand people killed. Doubts persist about the breadth of complicity of the US state in the attacks but one thing is certain: just like France, immediately after these attacks, the US political apparatus and its media were requisitioned to mobilise the population behind the establishment of a state of war on American soil. The imperialist aims of the United States were not at all absent from this cynical calculation and the orchestration of a war psychosis. For the US bourgeoisie, it had to profit from this dramatic event in order to wipe out the “Vietnam war syndrome”, and prepare its entry into Afghanistan and Iraq. Any terrorist attack of any scale on national soil is always used by the bourgeoisie for its nationalist and imperialist aims. Not only are the anti-terrorist measures of states powerless to stop the growth of terrorism but they are part of the further escalation of terror. They further feed the climate of suspicion towards others by generating divisions within populations. France is no exception to this rule. If terrorism is an arm of war of the bourgeoisie, of no matter which country and whatever religion, it is nevertheless equally a precious ideological weapon of the latter against the working class. Thus the crusade against “the Axis of Evil”, launched at the time by the Bush administration, allowed the implementation of this famous Patriot Act without even the need to pass it though the legislature. Then it becomes normal to have surveillance over e-mails, letters, telephone calls of each one of us and the power to shamelessly enter any dwelling including those where the occupants are absent. A group of people going to work can be stopped without any explanation. As to the police, they are provided with an almost total immunity. The more and more frequent assassinations perpetrated by the police against black people do not in general give rise to any sort of judicial pursuit. In fact what up to now have been punctual and exceptional measures have now become permanent. The exception has become the norm, as in Britain for example where this same pretext has allowed the justification of innumerable surveillance cameras practically everywhere. In democracy exceptional laws have become normal.
Of course in France the proletariat has had quite another experience to that of the United States. The Paris Commune of 1871 and May 1968 are not totally wiped out of the memory of the working class. The French bourgeoisie knows this perfectly well and it’s for this reason that despite everything it remains prudent. It advances in a more disguised way than its American homologue. But two weeks after the attacks in Paris that didn’t stop the office of Prime Minister Valls disclosing a whole series of measures which were supported by all the European bourgeoisies, and which even the American leadership wouldn’t have disowned. This same minister declared that faced with “the strong challenge facing France means that there will have to be exceptional measures”…. which we know will be permanent. The financial burden has gone up to 700 million euros, to be paid for by clear cuts in a public expenditure already in restricted mode. On the other hand the army will not now suffer the cuts previously imposed. And the forces of the gendarmerie and the police will be massively strengthened with men and material. Well-armed cops and soldiers will thus extend their patrols and not only in “sensitive” areas. The proletariat cannot be naive. A state which shows its force in this way is engaging in a direct form of intimidation. It is a warning given to the workers. Here it’s a question of the power of surveillance and repression “in all its republican legality”, not only against everything that bothers it and which it considers is outside the norm, but above all to arm itself against the proletariat and its struggle which it is necessary to criminalise. The laws of the Patriot Act are in fact an obsession of the entire democratic bourgeoisie. For proof, in France, even children of seven or eight at primary school can’t escape a very close surveillance. And beware those teachers who do not become informers in this dirty work. In the name of secularism, the government wants infants to receive a “civic” education, thus reinforcing their worship of the state and their total conditioning and subservience to it. This is training in bourgeois rules and values. If conscription is no longer conceivable for the bourgeoisie then it’s a good bet that a strengthened civic service will be soon adopted with total unanimity.
The dominant class, beyond its own internal divisions, has always understood the nature of its gravedigger. The history of this class abounds with examples of the means with which it has systematically provided itself in order to face up to its only real enemy – the proletariat. In a revolutionary period, the capitalist state will dispense with any legality in order to massacre a proletariat in struggle. The Cossacks during the revolution of 1917 or the Freikorps in social-democratic Germany in 1919 are sinister examples of this. But when the working class doesn’t directly threaten the power of the bourgeoisie, the latter hides its real exploitative nature behind a heap of ideological lies, behind a sophisticated democratic screen. It’s now nearly 150 years ago, at the time when the socialist parties were real revolutionary organisations, that the Chancellor of the German Empire, Herr Bismarck, who had had the help of the bloody republican attack-dog Monsieur Thiers, the executioner of the Paris Commune, promulgated his “Anti-Socialist Laws”. These were laws which banned socialist and social-democratic organisations and all their activities within the German Empire. This repressive law was accompanied by the reinforcement of the military and police presence within all the big German towns. But this policy of the “Iron Fist” was not the prerogative of the German Empire. In 1893-1894, in the very democratic French Third Republic, laws came onto the books under the name of the “villainy laws”. They were aimed, under the cover of the struggle against “evildoers”, at anarchist groups, but overtly threatened all workers’ organisations at the same time. Merely to be under suspicion for having sympathy with anarchism or the workers’ struggle became a crime. As today these laws equally encouraged informers. In 1894, on his way back from Carmaux where he’d supported the miners’ strike which had been violently repressed by the army and military, Jaures, in the Chamber of Deputies, spoke out against the villainy laws: “Thus you are obliged to recruit into crime, those who oversee crime, into misery those that oversee misery and into anarchy, those who oversee anarchy”. The real villains were to be found in Paris amongst those who promulgated these laws. At Carmaux, a certain Tornade, who was active in the strikes of 1892, offered funds from Paris to the striking miners to buy dynamite, thus directly opening the way to repression which was immediately justified in the name of “the struggle against terrorism”. Jaures had good reason to denounce the action against the workers’ struggle and the workers’ voices, which was really the aim here.
From this point of view, “free expression” or “freedom of the press”, much vaunted today after the attacks, have always been illusions knowingly maintained by the dominant class. Not only because the media and the official speeches are the emanation of capitalist property, but because straightaway they show their allegiance to the bourgeois state without it being necessary for anyone to ”guide” them or to systematically dictate the content of their propaganda. Nepotism and clientism are well known among a good number of journalists and the collusion of the media with leading politicians are thus only purely anecdotal consequences and not the cause of their docility. Any real, critical opposition, anything that calls the capitalist state into question, has no place in the media and it will not be accepted or disseminated by it. “Freedom of expression” is in reality summed up in speeches that are subordinate to the state, to the laws and values of capitalism.
The working class in France, as internationally, is going through a profoundly difficult period. But the proletariat is far from giving up its arms. In a situation where the economic crisis can only continue to get worse and living conditions are deteriorating more and more, the bourgeoisie knows perfectly well that there will come a time when it will have to confront widespread workers’ struggles. The more it prepares for it the better! The dominant class has known for a long time the danger that the revolutionary proletariat and its avant-garde organisations represent for it and its system. Its consciousness of this danger, its unity faced with it, in short its Machiavellianism has no limit. Machiavelli, who lived in the epoch of the Renaissance, has, in this area, been a clear precursor of the bourgeoisie. He declared that “Lies and deception are the means of governing that any Prince must know how to handle with a maximum of efficiency”. In a word the means used are defined by the aim to be achieved. There is no moral principle to be respected here and the current bourgeoisie has carried this method of government to heights never achieved before in history. Lies, terror, coercion, blackmail, scapegoats, pogroms, plots and assassinations are the usual methods of capitalist governance. The assassination of the revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 by soldiers on the orders of the social-democratic government of Ebert in Germany is one of the most symbolic expressions of it. As the assassination of Jaures in July 1914 was prepared by a whole hateful and patriotic campaign, this time by the French democratic republic, talking only of the sacred union and wallowing in the mire of the first world butchery. The Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie is not a perversion of democracy; it is the product of its nature as the most intelligent ruling class in history. Pearl Harbour is a terrifying example of the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie. In 1941, the United States wanted to enter the war against Japan and Germany. In order to justify it, being well aware of the imminent attack by the Japanese air force on the military base of Pearl Harbour, the American state didn’t for a moment hesitate to sacrifice its Pacific Fleet and thousands of unarmed and helpless soldiers. In this domain, examples are legion. The strengthening of control of police surveillance, the increase in the weight of the repressive arsenal announced by the government of President Hollande are only some expressions of the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie. The displays about protecting the French population, the “citizens”, are only a smokescreen, a simple alibi. Faced with the defence of its capitalist interests the bourgeoisie has always shown a complete contempt for human life. The militarisation of society is the direct strengthening of the totalitarian power of state capitalism and democracy is only an ideological mask for the dictatorship of capital. A terribly hypocritical mask, making it possible to ensure the monopoly of violence by the state and the maintenance of exploitation with its constant companions: bullying and daily humiliations at work, mass unemployment and a growing pauperisation. In brief, an unprecedented violence against which revolt is forbidden and which is necessary to for the “good citizen” to accept without flinching. Ignoring what’s behind the good will of the state and the humanitarianism of this exploiting class would leave the proletariat politically disarmed. The measures of Valls and Hollande today, like those deployed in the past, are a serious and active preparation for repression. Only the revolutionary proletariat, by affirming its communist perspective, can paralyse the strong arm of the bourgeoisie and its state. Cyril, 10.2.15
In Britain, the electoral season is upon us once again. And the ruling class is a bit worried that a growing number of people aren’t that interested. That’s why, along with the usual arguments about the personalities of this or that political leader, followed (usually in order of importance) by arguments about the policies of the different parties, we are hearing a great deal about voter apathy and even the threat to democracy that it poses. The scandal caused by Russell Brand in his interview with Jeremy Paxman in October 2013 summed it up quite well: after Brand’s shocking admission that he has never voted and never will, because he is sick of the lies and dishonesty of the entire ‘political class’, Paxman came back with the classic response: if you don’t vote, you have no right to say anything about the political system. And he was backed up in particular by various celebrities and commentators on the left, who sometimes threw in further arguments about the vote being something that workers and oppressed women fought for to make sure they would have a voice in society. So either you vote and take part in electoral politics, or you are shamefully advocating political indifference and apathy, and even betraying the memory of the fighters of the past.
Electoralism, the parliamentary system, is a central plank of bourgeois politics. We know of course that the capitalist class has frequently dispensed with it in times of crisis - fascism being an obvious example - or where it is congenitally weak, as in the stalinist regimes or various military dictatorships in the peripheral countries. But brute repression is not the most effective form of class rule, and in the most developed countries democracy is favoured because it upholds the illusion among the exploited that they really do have a say in how they are ruled. The democratic state is the more subtle mask of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the best framework for preventing class conflict from getting out of control.
But didn’t the working class fight for the vote in the nineteenth century, and didn’t support for this struggle distinguish the marxists from the anarchists in the workers’ movement? And what about the heroic struggle of the suffragettes? Surely we should honour their struggle by exercising the right they secured for us?
It’s true that Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg and others argued that the working class, as well as forming trade unions to defend its interests at the economic level, should organise political parties whose programme would include the right to vote and the fight, inside bourgeois parliaments, for laws that would back up the improvements won through the economic struggle. And when the anarchists attacked them for being reformists and demanded an all-out and immediate fight for revolution, they replied by arguing that capitalist society was still in the ascendant and that the working class was therefore faced with the necessity to develop its class identity and its historical programme inside the confines of bourgeois society.
It’s also true that this perspective contained serious pitfalls. If the workers’ movement got too attached to the struggle for immediate gains, it would lose sight of the long-term goals of revolution and communism, and thus ran the risk that its painfully created organisations would become a functioning part of bourgeois society. And this indeed is what happened – the trade unions and the mass social democratic parties were gradually integrated into capitalism, and a whole new current of thought emerged from within them, justifying this process by revising the fundamentals of marxism, which had always been based on the prediction that capitalism would sooner or later enter into a historical crisis which would make revolution a necessity.
The culminating point of this revisionist or opportunist trend was reached in 1914, when the epoch of crisis dawned and the workers’ organisations were faced with the choice: hold onto to what you have achieved inside capitalism by selling yourself to the bourgeoisie and supporting the war, or hold onto your principles by defending the international interests of the working class and opposing the war. In 1917-21, the choice was posed just as starkly: support the ruling class against the threat of revolution, or join the revolutionary struggle.
Revolution, by definition, demands a radical break with the past, and in the first great wave of revolutions provoked by the imperialist war of 1914-18, those who remained loyal to the working class were faced with the necessity to break with the old organisations – trade unions and political parties – that had become part of the capitalist war effort. They were obliged to reject the tactics of the previous period, focused on the fight for reforms, and to participate in the new forms of organisation created by the need for revolution.
The question of the vote and of parliament was a key element in this debate about the tactics appropriate to the epoch of revolution. After three years of futile slaughter, the working class had responded with truly revolutionary methods: mutinies and mass strikes. These movements gave rise to forms of organisation that would allow the working class to unite its forces and pose the question of political power: the soviets or workers’ councils, based on elected and revocable delegates from general assemblies of workers or soldiers. These organs were directly opposed to bourgeois parliaments, founded on the atomised citizen who votes for a party that can now assume the reins of state and oppress and defraud the population for the next four or five years. And everywhere the councils emerged – especially in Germany – the ruling class did everything it could to get them to hand over power to parliament, above all via the influence of the social democratic parties which still had the majority in the councils.
It was no accident that the right to vote was granted to the majority of the working class precisely when it had gone beyond the parliamentary form and affirmed in practice the possibility of a new form of political power, directly controlled from below and aimed at the complete transformation of society. In Britain, it was also symbolic that the vote was given to women (though still not all of them) in 1918, after the majority of the suffragette movement had pledged its loyalty to capitalism by supporting the war. Having initially opposed granting the vote to the exploited and the oppressed majority for fear that it would result in the overthrow of class rule, the bourgeoisie now rushed to grant universal suffrage as the best way of preserving its threatened system. This deception was denounced at the time by Sylvia Pankhurst, still often presented to us as a famous suffragette, but who in fact broke politically with the suffragette movement, including her mother Emmeline, for supporting the war; identifying herself with the workers’ revolution, Sylvia and her paper The Workers’ Dreadnought entered the battle for soviets against parliament and bourgeois elections.
Of course, this all happened a long time ago. The working class may have come close to revolution then, but today the working class hardly recognises itself as a class at all. For decades now it has been told that the attempt to build ‘communism’ in the USSR and the eastern countries was a total failure, that marxism has been refuted, that the working class doesn’t really exist anymore. Certainly the main parties contesting the next election no longer refer to class – including the ‘Labour’ party; and the ones that pretend to be a radical alternative to the established parties, such as UKIP on the right and the Greens on the left, call on us to vote on the basis of Britishness or as concerned citizens.
But capitalism is even more decrepit than in was in 1914 and the longer it continues, the more it threatens the very survival of humanity. In a world facing economic crisis, war and barbarism from all sides, the national solutions and reforms promised in bourgeois elections are more fraudulent than ever. And despite all the changes in its structure on a global scale since the first revolutionary wave, the working class is still the class that creates the wealth in this system, still the exploited class, and still the only force that can change society from top to bottom. What the working class lacks, above all, is a perspective, a sense not only of what it is today but of what it can become. And this perspective can only be a political one, because it is centred round the question of who will hold power - a minority of exploiters, or the majority made up of the exploited and the oppressed – and what they will do with power – defend their privileges even at the expense of the destruction of society and the natural environment, or create a new society based on solidarity and the satisfaction of human need.
All forms of bourgeois politics are a barrier to the self-organised, self-conscious movement we need if we are to challenge this social order. We are against participating in capitalist elections not because we favour apathy and withdrawal from political engagement, but because we are for proletarian politics and the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. Amos 5/3/15
1. The analysis of the class struggle in France, of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat, can only be understood in the context of the current world situation, even if, of course, the proletariat in each country faces economic, political and ideological specificities. In his sense, it is necessary to analyse the broad lines of this world situation, in particular to understand the difficulties encountered by the proletariat in France in responding to the increasingly violent attacks coming from the ruling class.
2. From September 1989, the ICC had been predicting that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes would strike a very heavy blow against the consciousness of the world proletariat:
“The disappearance of Stalinism is the disappearance of the symbol and spearhead of the most terrible counter-revolution in history.
But this does not mean that the development of the consciousness of the world proletariat will be facilitated by it. On the contrary. Even in its death throes, Stalinism is rendering a last service to the domination of capital; in decomposing, its cadaver continues to pollute the atmosphere that the proletariat breathes. For the dominant sectors of the bourgeoisie, the final collapse of Stalinist ideology, the `democratic’, ‘liberal’ and nationalist movements which are sweeping the eastern countries, provide a golden opportunity to unleash and intensify their campaigns of mystification.
The identification which is systematically established between Stalinism and communism, the lie repeated a thousand times, and today being wielded more than ever, according to which the proletarian revolution can only end in disaster, will for a whole period gain an added impact within the ranks of the working class. We thus have to expect a momentary retreat in the consciousness of the proletariat…While the incessant and increasingly brutal attacks which capitalism can’t help but mount on the proletariat will oblige the workers to enter the struggle, in an initial period, this won’t result in a greater capacity in the class to develop its consciousness. In particular, reformist ideology will weigh very heavily on the struggle in the period ahead, greatly facilitating the action of the unions” (‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in USSR and the eastern countries’, International Review 60[1]).
The quarter of a century which has gone by since then has amply confirmed this prediction and, in particular has confirmed that there is a very heavy weight of democratic illusions and a strengthening of the grip of the unions, which had been more and more put into question during the workers’ struggles of the 80s. Thus, the strikes launched by the unions in the transport sectors in France, Belgium and Germany in 1995 had clearly resulted, as we said at the time, in a revival of the influence of these organs for controlling the working class. Furthermore, the retreat in class consciousness was also accompanied by a very marked retreat in its militancy and self-confidence, of the sense of class identity, a phenomenon aggravated by the disappearance of many large industrial sectors which had traditionally been among the most combative in many western European countries (for example, steel, engineering and cars). Finally, the difficulties met by the working class, both in the development of its consciousness and in its self-confidence, were also aggravated by the growing weight of the decomposition of capitalist society which has instilled in an increasingly damaging way the sentiment of despair, the feeling that there is no future, the flight into ‘everyman for himself’ and atomisation.
3. In 1989 we also established that “the rhythm of the collapse of western capitalism… will constitute a decisive factor in establishing the moment when the proletariat will be able to resume its march towards revolutionary consciousness.
By sweeping away the illusions about the revival’ of the world economy, by exposing the lie which presents liberal’ capitalism as a solution to the historic bankruptcy of the whole capitalist mode of production - and not only of its Stalinist incarnation - the intensification of the capitalist crisis will eventually push the proletariat to turn again towards the perspective of a new society, to more and more inscribe this perspective onto its struggles” (ibid).
In effect, since 1989, the French bourgeoisie, like its European cohorts, has launched growing attacks on the working class, pushing the latter to resist and to throw off the dead weight that has been bearing down on it since the end of the 80s. One of the moments of this tendency for the proletariat to raise its head was constituted by the social movements which took place in 2003, in particular the struggles around the defence of pensions in France and Austria. These movements were marked by a revival of solidarity, especially in the car industry in Germany and in public transport in New York. These workers’ struggles were obviously only a small step, still very insufficient, in a dynamic towards overcoming the profound retreat suffered by the working class after 1989. The slow rhythm of this process of overcoming the reflux in the class struggle (there had been more than 13 years between the implosion of the eastern bloc and the strikes of spring 2003) can be explained to a large extent by the still slow rhythm of the development of the insurmountable crisis of the capitalist economy, in turn a result of the capacity of the bourgeoisie to hold back the historic collapse of its economic system. Furthermore, these social movements revealed the extreme skilfulness of the political and union apparatus of the bourgeois class, its capacity to push through attacks and to demoralise the working class, to drum into its head that “it’s not the street that governs” (as prime minister Raffarin put it in 2003) through a whole arsenal of sophisticated manoeuvres, based on a systematic division of labour and tight cooperation between the government which delivers the blows and the unions who sabotage the response of the working class.
Thus the strikes of spring 2003 in the public sector in France came up against a strategy of the ruling class which had been tried and tested in 1995: alongside a general attack on the whole working class, the bourgeoisie carried out a more specific assault on a particular sector which was thus destined to constitute a sort of ‘vanguard’ of the movement;
In the first case, after several weeks of complete blockage of transport and a succession of massive demonstrations, the government withdrew the measures aimed at the special retirement regime of the railway and RATP workers. With the return to work in these sectors, following a concession by the government which the unions presented as a ‘victory’, a fatal blow had been dealt to the dynamic of the movement, which enabled the Juppé government to push through the general attack on social security.
In the second case, the workers of national education, who had gone on strike massively and represented the ‘reference’ for the public sector, were led to carry on for weeks with a movement that had been exhausted in other sectors, and this with the encouragement of the most ‘radical’ unions. This produced a deep feeling of bitterness and discouragement, with a message for all workers: not only ‘it’s not the street that governs’ but also ‘there’s no point in struggling’.
4. This feeling or powerlessness was however, overcome three years later, in the spring of 2006, in the massive mobilisation of the young generations of the working class against the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE) introduced by the Villepin government. A mobilisation which, this time, was not planned in advance by the government and the unions. The latter had done the minimum possible to oppose a measure aimed at accentuating the precarious nature of employment for young proletarians (and which even the bosses thought was superfluous). It was the educated youth in the universities and high schools who embarked on the struggle, i.e. the huge mass of future unemployed and precarious workers. As we said at the time, this movement against the CPE was exemplary. It was able, thanks in particular to the daily general assemblies open to the whole working class, to massive street demonstrations which were not controlled by the unions, to deal with the different traps laid by the bourgeoisie. The movement threatened to draw in the employed workers, in particular those in industry. This is why, on the advice of Laurence Parisot (the boss of the bosses), the government ended up withdrawing the CPE. This retreat by the Villepin government was a striking refutation of Raffarin’s 2003 declaration because this time it was the street that had the last word. As well as the massive and sovereign general assemblies, this movement against the CPE highlighted another essential element of the proletarian struggle: solidarity between different sectors and generations of the exploited class. It was therefore imperative for the French bourgeoisie to wipe out all the lessons of this movement if it was to prepare the new attacks made necessary by the aggravation of the economic crisis.
5. This process of wiping out the ‘bad example’ of the anti-CPE movement was composed of two decisive steps that accompanied the attack on pensions:
In the first case, the unions played to the hilt the card of division within the Intersyndicale, a card which had already been played (particularly in 1995 when the CFDT supported the Juppé Plan on social security). This time, we saw an out and out destruction of the movement: initially, the government, while maintaining the whole of the attack, gave in to the demands of the highly corporatist union of the train drivers, which had voted for a return to work. Then, it was the CFDT which called for a return to work, followed by the CGT (which resulted in Bernard Thibault, a former railway worker, being called a traitor by the CGT rank and file). As for FO and SUD, their role was to call for ‘continuing the fight’ in order to tire out the most militant workers. This defeat was a real blow for millions of workers because the movement had won the sympathy of many sectors of the working class (especially because the railway workers had called not only for maintaining the 37 and a half years as a requirement for their own pensions, but for all sectors). But the bourgeoisie had to pay a price for this victory and for getting the attack pushed through: a powerful distrust with the unions who were widely seen as being responsible for the defeat because of their divisions and quarrels in the meetings of the Intersyndicale.
The second step, the most decisive one, in wiping out the lessons of the CPE, was the decision of the Sarkozy government to attack one of the most significant ‘gains’ won during the years of the Union of the Left under Mitterand: retirement at 60. For the French bourgeoisie it was a question of ‘unlocking’ this symbolic figure and making up for the delay in following the example of other European bourgeoisies in their attacks against the class (mainly because of the fear of returning to a social situation comparable to May 1968). What’s more, the French bourgeoisie had to cut the deficits of the state, which, like everywhere else, had been severely aggravated by the measures required to prevent the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and to face up to the very strong recession which had got going since that year. For the French bourgeoisie there were thus both economic and political issues at stake. The tactic employed by the ruling class to push through the economic attack was different from that used on previous occasions. It was above all important that the workers should not come out of the conflict with even more distrust towards the unions. This is why the latter, including the managers’ union, the GCG, played up the theme of ‘trade union unity’, raising the slogan ‘all together, all together!’. At the same time, calling successive days of action throughout the autumn of 2010, they polarised attention on an essential theme: the participation of several million workers in the street demos. In the end, the bourgeoisie did not retreat: it was able to carry out the whole economic attack (exchanging a few small improvements for workers who had very taxing jobs) as well as the political and ideological attack, getting across two essential messages:
This time, the unions succeeded in exhausting the militancy of the working class without losing any credibility. What’s more since even ‘struggling all together’ produced nothing, the very need for solidarity was put into question.
This was a heavy defeat at all levels for the working class in France at the end of 2010. The exhaustion of militancy and the demoralisation of the working class that followed this defeat partly explain the social calm of the last four years, and the very weak involvement of the young generation in France in the movement of the Indignados which took place a few months later in the whole of Spain and which also spread onto the international level.
Obviously, in this offensive against the working class in France, the bourgeoisie of this country was able to benefit from the full support of its European cohorts, particularly the German bourgeoisie, above all because they are all aware of the historic experience of the proletariat in France (June days of 1848, Paris Commune of 1871, and May 68).
6. As we have often pointed out, the Indignados movement was the main proletarian reaction to the convulsions of the world capitalist economy after 2008. This reaction did not take the ‘classic’ form of workers’ strikes or even of street demonstrations, with the exception of the European countries most violently hit by the economic crisis, like Greece or Portugal. This brutal aggravation of the capitalist crisis has led to a dizzying rise in unemployment, which has continued to act as a factor paralysing the strike weapon: what’s the point of stopping work when the enterprise has shut down? Furthermore, the ideological campaigns which accompanied the ‘sub-primes’ crisis were another factor in confusing the exploited and increasing their feeling of powerlessness. In fact, the wave of panic about the financial crisis in 2008-9, widely stirred up by the media and fuelled by the discourse of the economic experts, had the consequence, even when it was not its direct aim, of making the working class feel dumbstruck. The essential message was this: ‘you have to tighten your belts, accept sacrifices, because that’s the only way out of the crisis’. This went along with the key message that the real responsibility for the crisis lay with ‘international finance’ and not the capitalist system itself. Président Hollande, shortly before his election, put it like this: “my main adversary..is the world of finance” (speech at Bourget, 22/1/12). The Indignados movement, for all its democratic illusions and its confusions about the financial system being responsible for all evils, still contained within it a radical rejection of bankrupt capitalism and clearly raised the necessity to replace it with a new society (this is why the movement was prey to the ‘alternative world’ reformists like ATTAC with their mystifying slogan ‘another world is possible’). It expressed the fact that class consciousness and class identity are not exactly the same. The Indignados, with their call for another society, were not aware that this demand belongs to the only class capable of constructing this other society – the proletariat. The majority of them didn’t even feel that they belong to the working class. However, this movement was an important step on the road towards the world proletariat become conscious of itself, a step which has left traces in the minds of millions of young proletarians. And it was precisely this step which the proletariat in France was not able to take, given the defeat inflicted on it by the bourgeoisie and its unions through the days of actions and demonstrations in the autumn of 2010.
7. At present, the attacks descending on the working class in France, which are now being directed by a left government, are encountering practically no resistance, despite the existence of a very strong social discontent. This is also the case in nearly all countries. For the moment, the bourgeoisie is managing to conserve a certain control both over its economic apparatus and over the social situation, thanks to the unions recovering their grip and imprisoning the workers in fake, insignificant and highly corporatist struggles (which are often even extremely unpopular since they set one group of workers of against another, as in the case of last June’s SNCF strike for the defence of the railway workers’ status). There will have to be a serious degradation of general living and working conditions for the working class to be able to overcome its paralysis. With the aggravation of the economic crisis, new attacks are inevitable and so are new reactions from the proletariat. The working class has to confront some major obstacles, which are posed on the scale of the historic stakes facing today’s society. It has to face a bourgeoisie which is very experienced in confronting the working class; it has to overcome the democratic illusions which are still very strong in the class despite the fact that the official institutions of bourgeois democracy have been profoundly discredited as can be seen, among other things, from the increasing rates of abstention at elections, the miniscule popularity of Président Hollande and the success of the Front National at the last European elections.
The success of the FN is one of the expressions of decomposition, of capitalist society rotting on its feet, which is an added difficulty the proletariat as to confront on the road to its emancipation. The future is not written in advance: despite the enormous difficulties facing the working class, in France as everywhere else, it has not suffered a decisive defeat like the one it went through after the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Even if it is paralysed at the moment, it has not been dragooned behind bourgeois flags as it was in the 1930s when it marched under the banners of nationalism or antifascism. Furthermore, and more fundamentally, both the fight against the CPE and the Indignados movement have revealed that there is a process of reflection going on among the young generations of the working class, a maturation of consciousness about the failure of capitalism, which cannot offer them any perspective expect unemployment, the destruction of the environment, war and barbarism in all its forms. This reflection contains the search for another perspective for society, opening the way to the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness, even if the road ahead is still a long one.
Revolution Internationale
According to the media, the triumph of the Syriza coalition1 has made the big capitalist powers very nervous. This “nervousness” is apparently linked to the manoeuvres around the negotiations over Greece’s debt. But Syriza is on the same side as these powers, because it shares with them the defence of the nation, the banner behind which every national capital defends its interests against the proletariat and against its imperialist rivals.
At its last meeting, just before winning the election, Tsipras, Syriza’s leader, summarised very well what his party represents: “Beginning Monday, we will be finished with the national humiliation and with orders coming from abroad”. This programme is antagonistic to that of the proletariat, whose objective is the formation of the world human community and whose driving force is internationalism.
The triumph of Syriza is not that of the “people”, but of Greek capital whose needs it serves. Its policies will only bring new attacks against the whole working class.
The data about the Greek economy are terrifying. We will mention just two figures: national income has fallen by 25% in 7 years, and exports, despite huge wage reductions, are now 12% lower than in 2007. The ruinous state of the Olympic installations built at vast and wasteful expense for the 2004 Olympics are an eloquent symbol of all this.
However, the crisis Greece is suffering is not a local crisis resulting from the poor management of successive governments, but the expression of the historic impasse facing the capitalist mode of production, which has been in open crisis since 1967 – almost half a century. A crisis in which the ‘sub-primes’ of 2007 marked a new step, followed by the big financial panic of 2008 and the recession of 2009, which has been called “the Great Recession”.
The measures taken by the big capitalist countries have succeeded in limiting the most dangerous effects of these events, but have not overcome the underlying problem: the generalised overproduction which has plagued capitalism for nearly a century. The “solution” that they came up with – a massive dose of debt taken in hand by states directly – has only aggravated the situation despite patching over the puncture for the moment.
One of the consequences is that “It was now entire states which were confronted with the increasingly crushing weight of debt, ‘sovereign debt’, which affects their capacity to intervene in order to revive their respective national economies through budget deficits”2. This situation has become unbearable for “those countries of the Eurozone whose economies are the most fragile or the most dependent on the illusory palliatives put in motion during the previous period – the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain)”3
In Greece, the public debt has reached 180% of GNP; the public deficit was 12.7% in 2013. This burden is trapping the economy in a vicious circle: just to pay back the interest in the debt, it has to contract new debts and, in exchange, to impose draconian austerity measures which themselves hamstring the economy, demanding even stronger doses of debt and worse austerity measures.
The vicious circle facing in which the Greek economy is trapped is symbolic of the wider vicious circle in which the whole of world capital is turning. But “this does not mean however that we are going back to a situation similar to that of 1929 and the 1930s. 70 years ago, the world bourgeoisie was taken completely aback faced with the collapse of its economy, and the policies it applied, with each country turning in on itself, only succeeded in exacerbating the consequences of the crisis. The evolution of the economic situation over the last four decades has proved that, even if it’s clearly incapable of preventing capitalism from sinking deeper and deeper into the crisis, the ruling class has the ability to slow down this descent and to avoid a situation of generalised panic like on ‘Black Thursday’ on October 24th 1929. There is another reason why we are not going to relive a situation similar to that of the 1930s. At this time, the shock wave of the crisis began from the world’s leading power, the USA, and then spread to the second world power, Germany”4.
Today, unlike those times, the bourgeoisie – thanks to the systematic strengthening of state capitalism – has managed to “organise” the world economy in such a way that the effects of the crisis fall most heavily on the weakest countries and spares the strongest as much as possible. Germany and the US, which in 1929 were at the epicentre of the crisis, are today the countries which are coping the best and have succeeded in improving their position vis-a-vis their rivals.
The policies described above are allowing capitalism as a whole to resist further plunges into the crisis by concentrating on the defence of its nerve centres. They are also a means of dividing the proletariat, since “one of the major components of the evolution of the crisis escapes from a strict economic determinism and moves onto the social level, to the rapport de forces between the two major classes in society, bourgeoisie and proletariat”5. The economy is not just a blind machine functioning by itself, and the needs of the class struggle do have an influence on it. By displacing the worst effects of the crisis onto the weakest countries, the bourgeoisie gives itself the means to divide the proletariat.
This political management of the crisis means that this dramatic situation is seen by the Greek workers not so much as the expression of the impasse of world capitalism, but as the consequence of the “well being” of its class brothers and sisters in Germany. And, by the same token, the apparent prosperity in Germany makes it difficult for the workers of this country to grasp the gravity of the situation, making them vulnerable to the “explanation” that the threat to their “privileged” position comes from the “laziness and irresponsibility” of their Greek brothers and sisters and, in general, the waves of immigration lapping at their doors.
This political management of the crisis reinforces a deformed vision among the proletarians of each country: seeing the problems as something specific to “their” country, and thus having national solutions, when really the problem is world-wide and can only be solved at the world level. In Greece, unemployment has reached the intolerable level of 27% and public employees, who generally have had jobs for life, have been reduced from 900,000 to 656,000; a third of the population lives below the poverty threshold; around 40,000 people have abandoned the cities and have headed to the countryside in a desperate search to live by subsistence farming in the most precarious conditions. The minimum wage in Greece has gone down by 200 euros over the last 5 years; pensions by 5% a year….all this is the extreme expression of a situation which is developing to varying degrees in all countries, but appears to be a phenomenon strictly limited to Greece and caused by Greek problems. This helps the bourgeoisie to create a thick smokescreen which makes it hard to understand the prevailing general tendencies in world capitalism.
Syriza is a product of the evolution of the political apparatus of the Greek state and, in turn, of general tendencies appearing in the central countries of capitalism. As marxism has explained many times, the state is the executive organ of capital and a means of exclusion: it is always, however democratic its forms, the expression of the dictatorship of the ruling class over the whole of society and more particularly over the proletariat. In the decadence of capitalism, the state becomes totalitarian and this is expressed in a tendency towards a single party. But in the most democratic countries which have a sophisticated electoral game at their disposal, this tendency is expressed by what can be called “bi-partyism” - a two party system, with one inclined towards the right, the other leaning to the left, alternating their role in the exercising of power. This schema has functioned perfectly since the Second World War in Europe, America, etc.
However, with the unrelenting acceleration of the crisis and the weight of decomposition, this schema has suffered from a lot of wear and tear. On the one hand, the rival-partner parties have been more and more forced to manage the crisis, which has irredeemably discredited them; each time they occupy the seat of government, they have taken austerity measures which give the lie to the promises they made when they were in opposition; in the opposition, they say things they’ll never actually do and when they are in government, they do things they never said they would.
Furthermore, the decomposition of the capitalist system has caused a growing dislocation in the ranks of the major parties and an increasingly obvious irresponsibility, the most spectacular expression of this being record-breaking corruption, which is always outdoing itself in cynicism, dishonesty and indecency.
The two main traditional parties in Greece – New Democracy on the right and PASOK on the left – illustrate this to the point of caricature. For a start – and this is a mark of the archaic nature of Greek capital – they are led by two dynasties which have been at the head of these two parties for over 70 years, the Karamanlis family on the right and the Papandreou clan on the left. The funds coming in from Europe have resulted in a “perpendicular corruption”: with stupefying cheek, the two parties have been dividing up the goodies among themselves.
So where does Syriza come from? This is a coalition that became a party in 20126, and which picked up factions coming from Stalinism and social democracy, ingredients to which it added, to give itself a spicier flavour, Trotskyist, Maoist and ecologist groups. The founding nucleus of an important split from the Stalinist KKE party, following the collapse of the USSR in 1989, changed the formula of “really living socialism” to a more democratic version, more adapted to a liberal form of state capitalism. Tsipras himself made a career in this clique of rats who were abandoning the sinking ship of Stalinism.
This is why Syriza resembles, like two drops of water, other attempts to renew the bi-party political schema which have emerged in other countries like Italy for example, where the old model (based on Christian Democracy which, with the support of the social democrats, acted almost like a single party for 40 years) was replaced by another, on the right, the irrepressible Berlesconi and, on the other hand, the chaotic coalition whose spinal column is the former Communist Party converted into a “democratic” party. It is highly significant that Syriza has associated to its government Anel, a party of the far right.
Syriza’s partner, Anel, has a policy towards immigrants very similar to that of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. This xenophobic policy, which presents the immigrants as invaders stealing jobs and social benefits from Greeks, has two aims.
On the one hand, to drag the workers and the “popular” strata into this degrading policy of seeking a scapegoat personified in the blacks, the Arabs, the Slavs, etc – in sum, all those not born Hellenes. But on top of this, it obeys a political and economic calculation: to get the highest price for playing the role of gendarme which the European Union has assigned to those countries (Greece, Italy and Spain) who constitute the gate of entry of all those desperate masses of people fleeing from the most extreme poverty and from interminable wars. In the gangster struggle between the different thieves of the EU, the new Greek government knows quite well that having a hard policy towards immigrants is a trump-card in any negotiations.
The defence of the nation is the common patrimony of all parties of capital whatever political colours they adopt. One of the most sinister arguments that Syriza and Anel share with Golden Dawn is the idea of “Greece for the Greeks”, the fanatical pretension of closing yourself up in a supposed “national community” in which you can have a decent life. This is a reactionary utopia, but it is above all a frontal attack on the consciousness and solidarity of the workers, whose greatest force is precisely that it constitutes a community in which all nationalities, races and religions can be fused.
Nationalism and the defence of the interests of Greek capital is the real programme of Syriza. The programme of structural reforms is a show for the gallery, whose outlines have become more and more fluid and whose content has attenuated the closer Syriza approached government. We find in it the old worn-out recipes typical of the left of capital. Renationalising the banks, this or that privatisation put into question, a plan for guaranteed employment, some emergency measures to deal with extreme poverty, and a few other bits of patchwork.
These measures have been used thousands of times in capitalism and they have never succeeded in improving the workers’ living conditions. Capitalism, even its most right wing factions, is happy to “socialise the banks” whenever they are in danger. De Gaulle, Hitler, Franco and other champions of the right set up public banks. Former US president Bush, during the crisis of 2007-8, passed measures for the state to take hold of the banks – to the point where the Venezuelan president Chavez called him a comrade and deliriously compared him to Lenin.
Regarding the promise for a “plan to guarantee employment”, which got smaller in scope the nearer Syriza got to power (from creating 300,000 new jobs the promise went down to 15,000), we can see how serious this is when we consider the new government’s attitude towards the civil servants: the evaluation programme established by the previous government, which included a drop in wages, downgrading to lower positions or even going on to a “manpower reserve”, which is nothing less than a cover for lay-offs and unemployment, has not been abrogated: it will simply be “applied in a fairer manner” according to the new minister, who also announced that wages in the public sector will be frozen.
As for the payment of the gigantic Greek debt, Syriza is approaching this like a real poker player. To win over the electors, the party began with ultra-radical proposals. But even during the election campaign, it began moderating its discourse. As soon as its victory looked plausible, new figures appeared. Now, installed in government, it has watered down its wine to the point of making it completely colourless. For example, it has gone from refusing to pay the debt to a staggering of the debt after a partial payment and, finally, it proposed to exchange debt for perpetual bonds and other instruments of financial engineering. This now looks a lot like the Brady plan which, during the 1980s, was set up by the American government to deal with Argentine’s debt, a plan that is well known for involving grave attacks against the living conditions of the working class.
The proletariat today has to a large extent lost its sense of class identity and its self-confidence. This situation of profound weakness can’t simply be overcome through a wave of struggles. It has given rise, within the political apparatus of capital, to a series of “left wing” populisms coming along to complete the work of the “right wing” populisms. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Die Linke in Germany, the Front de Gauche in France, etc, are taking advantage of the difficulties of our class to put forward their slogans about “the people” and “citizenship” in order to defend the nation defined as the community of all those who live on the same territory.
With this kind of propaganda, these forces are not only, like real con-men, taking take advantage of the difficulties of the proletariat, but they are rubbing salt into the wound by creating barriers which make the recovery of class identity and self-confidence even more difficult for the workers. This is why we propose to denounce the lies of this new anti-proletarian apparatus and counter them with real class positions.
G, 15.2.15
1 In Greek Syriza stands for Coalition of the Radical Left
2 ‘Resolution on the international situation from the 20th ICC Congress [1212]’, International Review 152.
3 ibid
4 ibid
5 ibid
6 Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain present themselves as the heralds of a “new kind of politics”, which will be honest, devoted to the “citizens”, and far removed from the sordid manoeuvres we have come to expect from the two-party elite. One proof of the fact that these “good intentions” are a fraud is provided by Syriza which registered as a party in 2012 in order to gain the right to the gift of the 50 extra deputies which Greek law grants to the party winning the election, a gain which it will not grant if it’s a coalition which wins the majority. Here is an eloquent sign of the moral character of the gentlemen of Syriza.
The region around Crimea is crucial for Russian strategic interests, for the protection of its pipelines, an essential part of its economy, but more so for the Russian navy where the Black Sea is its only guaranteed warm-water port, the others being iced up for six months of the year. Crimea, which gives access to the Black Sea, has already been integrated into the Russian Federation. With this move the idea of Novorossiya that the Russian bourgeoisie has been talking about since Putin took the presidency in 1999, after his brutal and successful military operation in Chechnya, has become more of a reality. Novorossiya is an expression of Russian imperialism from its Tsarist days when it took the region north of the Black Sea from the collapsing Ottoman Empire.
Today its stamp is has also been marked in the breakaway Donbass region, in the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and the ‘Lugansk People’s Republic’. Donetsk airport is a smouldering ruin, littered with corpses. The railway hub of Debaltseve was fought over during the February ‘cease-fire’ brokered by France and Germany. The destruction continues with moves towards a land corridor to the Black Sea via the town of Mariupol. The Russian ruling class, with Putin at its head, has no qualms about using force in this region of vital Russian interest against the resistance of Kiev’s special forces. Russian imperialism’s retreat after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 is well and truly over
The German and French led Minsk cease-fire of 12 February has already broken down, like the failure of the cease-fire last September. To a certain extent, the separatist rebels in the East are a wild card, independent of Russia but, overall, and for the reasons above, it is Russia that is pulling the strings and providing the overwhelming fighting force and material. Latest reports suggest that much of the deadly artillery shelling comes from within Russian territory.
At the same time we have been seeing the manoeuvring of the western countries, particularly the US, to give backing the Kiev regime. The western leaders and their media gave their support to the Maidan ‘revolution’ which was nothing more than a military coup replacing the Russian-backed gangsters in Kiev with those supported by the west. Russia cannot allow this regime to be incorporated into NATO with its forces right up to its borders. The war could thus become a long-term affair, giving Russia a sort of buffer zone and providing it with the ability to turn it on and off, thus gradually destabilising the western-backed Kiev regime. It’s a dangerous game. The US threat to provide Kiev with lethal weaponry is more than bluff and, at any rate, these events tend to take on their own irrational dynamic. In respect of supporting Kiev with arms there have been contradictory statements from various western ministries which probably represent both a genuine uncertainty and a campaign of disinformation. What is clear is that NATO has begun arming Eastern European countries with more modern weapons and military systems along with the creation of a NATO rapid reaction force.
There’s a contradiction here: on the one hand this is a period marked by the overall weakening of US imperialism, but at the same time NATO forces rely very heavily on US military assets. There’s a contradiction too within the alliance of the western countries, because while there’s no such thing as a ‘European’ foreign policy and certain centrifugal tendencies hold sway, including a weakening of the ‘transatlantic bond’, even down to arguments over the meaning of NATO’s Article 5 on mutual defence, these events have nevertheless promoted a more unified response. Thus NATO is doubling its rapid reaction force to 30,000 with units stationed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. According to NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Staltenburg, this is “The biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War” (The Guardian, 5/12/15). Germany is taking the lead in NATO’s Response Force (NRF) in 2015, through the rotation system. And according to last November’s Die Welt, a paper well-connected with NATO intelligence circles, Germany is playing a particular role in organising elite response forces.
United States military instructors are due to arrive in Kiev in March in order to train local forces how “to defend themselves against Russian artillery and rockets” (The Times, 12/2/15, citing the senior military US commander in Europe). This is a far cry from ‘US disengagement’ that some parts of the press talk about. In relation to the question of disinformation raised above, it seems that the armies of the west are now using the Russian expediency of Maskirovoka, i.e., putting out general information through the media in order to mislead the enemy.
Russia’s strategy in Ukraine is based on exploiting the divisions and uncertainty within Europe and NATO. This was made clear by its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in a speech a couple of weeks ago: “The events in the past year (in Ukraine) have confirmed the reality of our warnings regarding deep, systematic problems in the organisation of European security”(reported in The Guardian, 13/2/15).
The present war is entirely different from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s which were more expressive of the imperialist tensions between western bloc countries and the US in the ‘New World Order’. These tensions, which translated on the ground into mass rape, massacres (Sarajevo, Srebrenica...) and the total fragmentation of ex-Yugoslavia and its provinces, were not a confrontation between Russia and the west but rather saw the imperialist interests of Germany, Britain, France and the US in a proxy war of each against all. A concrete example of this occurred at Pristina airport, June 1999 in the aftermath of the Kosovo War where Russian troops occupied the airport ahead of a NATO deployment. US overall NATO commander Wesley Clarke ordered the airport to be taken by British troops under his command. British military commander, Mike Jackson, refused Clarke’s orders saying: “I’m not going to start World War III”[1].
The current war is less like the Balkans of the 90s and more like the war in Georgia in 2008, where the latter, supported by the US, agitated to join NATO. Russia gained ground here and with the US engaged elsewhere the latter was forced to swallow the ‘European’ (i.e., dictated by Moscow) plan for a cease-fire[2]. Now it’s Russia v the others in continuity with its imperialist interests dating back to Tsarist days. Russia is pursuing this strategy with reduced means and ambitions compared to the Cold War, but it’s still pushing for a new front line in Europe. All this is very dangerous for the working class across this continent and beyond.
None of this is rational, even from a capitalist point of view. Russia and European countries are suffering enormously over US-imposed sanctions. Sanctions on Russia were introduced in March 2014 and compounded by Russian countersanctions banning food imports. Gas and oil price falls of 40% have also hit the Russian economy. While the Rouble has plummeted, many businesses ceased trading in Russia due to its volatility, and the working class and population as a whole is hit by soaring food prices. Meanwhile Putin calmly anticipates the next rise in oil prices! In reality, things will only get worse with new sanctions threatened following the breakdown of the latest cease-fire.
In Putin Russia has equipped itself with a sadistic leader prone to military adventures regardless. Regardless of the cost to the economy in the short term. Regardless of Russia’s capacity to make long term gains on the imperialist front, while its short term gains, as in the Donbass, can only be held by military force or occupation and corruption, and come at the cost of undermining its strength in the long term.
In Kiev large numbers of the population, egged on by the west and its media foghorns, voted for nationalist and fascist goons who then terrorised what genuine demonstrators there were in Maidan. Kiev’s new president, Poroshenko, already at his inauguration last June, promised war and austerity and he is now talking about introducing martial law and ‘reforms’ in order to pursue the war and further attacks on the population. The IMF, which has already given billions of dollars to Kiev, is talking about another $17.5 billion with $40 billion more over the next 4 years. This will be in exchange for ‘reforms’ such as cutting the social wage even further and substantially increasing basic prices. This will happen whether the war intensifies or not. And, particularly affected and caught up in all this, the working class is unable to provide any realistic opposition.
This is not to say that there has been no resistance to the war. In the East of the country, outside of the armed gangs of separatists and nationalists there seems very little support for the war. There was some action from miners in the Donbass at the beginning which seemed independent, but it was quickly recuperated by the ‘rebels’ who used as a show-piece for their ‘support’. In fact the rebel factions have complained about the lack of support from the population.
In the West of the country there has been more open resistance, particularly in the light of Poroshenko’s heavy hint about martial law and the proclaimed draft of 100,000 more soldiers from 16 to 60 years old – a mobilisation that is reminiscent of the Nazis in the last days of World War II, where the Volkssturm was enacted calling up the youth and old of similar ages. Documents hacked from the office of Kiev’s chief military prosecutor, Anotoli Matous, show a far greater number of war casualties than the official figure of 5,400 (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8/2/15, quotes German military intelligence as estimating 50,000 killed). The leaks also show over ten thousand desertions, the latter including senior military personnel and desertions from special military units and this to the point that the regime has set up special military units to track down deserters from the special military units – amongst others.
In Kiev-controlled territory there have been demonstrations and meetings in the provinces of Odessa and Zaphorizia where women particularly have been addressing crowds denouncing the war and the regime and getting a deal of support. But this resistance, though welcome, is by no means sufficient to spark a wider anti-war movement or anti-austerity fight. While generally not supporting the war, the working class of East and West Ukraine have not enough force, not enough political maturity to really oppose it on a class basis.
A frequently asked question, the answer to which is no... but. From the point of view of the attack on class consciousness and the rise of nationalism, feeding into the decomposition of the capitalist system in general, the all-pervading destructiveness could do almost as much damage to the prospects of communism as a world war. But for the latter, for a truly global conflict, there is a need for more or less coherent military blocs. Such do not exist. Even if they are against the renewed push of Russian imperialism there is little unity amongst NATO countries where centrifugal tendencies still dominate. All countries are wary of a German-dominated force as are many of an American domination and this gives an opening to Russia. As for the latter, it has taken steps to get China onside for its ‘Asiatic bloc’ and is making advances to other countries unwilling to bow to US pressure: Egypt, Hungary and Greece for example, but there is no prospect of a military bloc on the horizon.
On the other front, the social front, for a world war to be prepared the working class of the central countries needs to be mobilised and ready to give ‘blood, sweat and tears’ for the national, i.e., imperialist interest just as the proletariat was marched off to war and slaughter in 1914. Despite the present reflux in the struggles in the west, this is still not the case.
We should remember that in World War I, while anti-war movements broke out almost immediately, it took more years of destruction and carnage until 1917 bought a qualitative change in the working class that forced the ruling class to end the war. The conditions in Ukraine are very different today in that the war doesn’t entail mass mobilisations and the role of the big powers is more indirect and hidden. There is the danger of a ‘hidden’ war here, one that just rumbles on, becoming entrenched like other war zones in this period. In this key strategic area between Europe and Asia, with the direct participation of Russia and NATO forces, even if the latter are not totally united – along with other conflicts going on in the world – the catastrophic descent into decomposition is graphically illustrated.
This will tend to further demoralise the working class in the main industrial heartlands, just as the repression of the ‘Arab Spring’, with the knowing complicity of the bourgeoisie of the major powers, has been a factor of demoralisation and an opening for the nationalist left (e.g. Greece and Spain). But despite these considerable difficulties in the class, the task of revolutionaries, communists, around the world is to speak with one voice against imperialist war, something that they have singularly and pathetically been unable to do. For all their talk of ‘internationalism’ their responsibility in deeds towards it has been shamefully ducked, making it nothing more than one empty word amongst all others.
We have to bear in mind that it was only a very small number of revolutionaries, true internationalists, that stood up for the proletarian cause prior to and during World War I, just as more workers were being mobilised to massacre each other. We need to debate, come together and denounce the war highlighting the responsibility of the workers in the west. We need to maintain our analyses in the spirit of Zimmerwald and Kienthal and stand as a beacon against capitalist decomposition and imperialist war.
Boxer 18/2/15
[2]. https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/russia-georgia [1297]. Ex-Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the US’s man, on the run from authorities in Georgia, is now an official advisor to the regime in Kiev.
“In Syria, every day brings new massacres. The country has joined the other theatres of imperialist war in the Middle East. After Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, now it’s Syria’s turn. Unfortunately this situation immediately poses a very disquieting question: what’s going to happen in the period ahead? The Middle East seems to be on the verge of a conflagration whose limits are difficult to foresee. Behind the war in Syria, it’s Iran which is the focus of imperialist fears and appetites, but all the main imperialist brigands are ready to defend their interests in the region. This is a part of the world that is on a war footing - a war that could have irrational and destructive consequences for the whole capitalist system”. Thus began the article “The threat of an imperialist cataclysm in the Middle East” in International Review number 149, written nearly three years ago to the day. The situation, the militarisation and decomposition of the Middle East, has since worsened and the threat of a generalised conflagration has become even greater.
We are now five years into an imperialist war in Syria involving the major powers of America, France, Britain, and Russia along with local powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, etc. Rather than showing any end, this conflict is intensifying. War and instability are spreading wider and deeper and that particular expression of capitalist irrationality and decomposition, the Islamic State and its Caliphate is, if anything, becoming stronger. Just a couple of hundred of its fighters have been holding off thousands of Iraqi troops and Shi’ite militias attempting to re-take the Iraqi town of Tikrit – which according to the Pentagon on April 14 is still being “contested” (The Guardian, 15.4.15) - just as Isis becomes even more ensconced in Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria and spreads to other areas. At the end of March the jihadi forces of al-Nusra took Syria’s second provincial capital of Idlib, just days after al-Nusra in the south, with help from Israeli military interventions, which is de facto working with the jihadists, took the ancient Roman-Arab capital of Bosra al-Sham in the Daraa district. In some cases al-Nusra and Isis have cooperated to a degree but such cooperation is fragile given the general suspicion and ‘each against all’ conflict. Similar expressions have been taking place in the huge Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk on the outskirts of Damascus, with al-Nusra paving the way for a murderous Isis advance into an enclave already subjected to two years of siege and starvation in which itself represents a microcosm of the general decay. In Yarmuk strong counter-tendencies to any jihadi cooperation have been shown. These alliances within the various Sunni factions are themselves contingent and fraught with many Sunni factions often hating their own rivals more than they do the Shia. In Yarmuk a three or four-way fight is breaking out. Isis have withdrawn somewhat under military pressure from al-Nusra, pro-Assad Palestinian forces are involved as well as the anti-regime jihadi Sunni group of Aknaf Beit al-Maqdes (the Mujahedin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem – also active in the Sinai Peninsula) which is hated by both Isis and al-Nusra, and skirmishes have already broken out. The poisonous atmosphere of capitalist disintegration permeates the ground with the various religious factions and schisms generating hatred, distrust and the pogrom mentality.
Isis has also spread its wings to North Africa in the US/UK/French destabilised lands of Libya and the still unstable Sinai Peninsula, despite the intervention in both by Egypt’s military regime. All this means that there are further consequences for possible terrorist attacks in Europe and beyond – a question we will return to. In the meantime the spread of this tide of decomposition, aided in different parts by Libyan instability and weaponry, massive unemployment throughout the region and irrational religious ideology coming within a general breakdown of capitalist society, has reached down into the al-Qaeda linked groups of East and West Africa with both Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabab in Kenya spreading warfare and terror both internally and beyond their borders. Countries affected here are Somalia; South Sudan (where Chinese troops are present); Cameroon – whose Israeli-trained rapid intervention forces are fighting back; and Chad, whose Fort Carson, Colorado-based Special Anti-terrorist Forces are working with British trainers and French special forces. The forces of French imperialism have been increased here both before and after the Paris attacks, attacks reputedly instigated by Al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).
Already the consequence of the rise of jihadism is an unprecedented spiral of violence and destruction across the Middle East and Africa. In order to re-take the Syrian border town of Kobani from Isis for example, where fighting continues to this day in its surrounding villages, the west and its Kurdish fighters had to bomb the town flat and the same thing looks to be happening with Tikrit in Iraq: scorched earth and terror from Isis matched by scorched earth and terror from the west and its allies, and this is more and more becoming the story in this whole chain of war. The devastation across the region is almost beyond measure and while the hypocritical democrats of Britain, the US and France, as well as the UN den of thieves, denounce the destruction of ancient cultural sites by Isis, their own war planes or those of their “allies” are hardly less destructive. All this devastation in the Middle East and Africa, the breakdown or setting up of fortress-type borders, the misery of staggering numbers of refugees and displaced families which goes along with it, is too much to go into here and, as grim as it is, we will also have to return to this question in the future. Despite the bombing missions against it, and because of the way it fights, Isis is a formidable force and remains an expanding threat. The knowledgeable Patrick Cockburn writes in The Independent, 20.3.15: “The Islamic State is not going to implode because of mounting popular discontent within its borders. Its enemies may deride its pretensions to be a real state, but in terms of its ability to conscript troops, raise taxes and impose its brutal variant of Islam, it is stronger than many of its regional neighbours”.
The Tikrit example shows how difficult it will be to dislodge, let alone defeat, Isis. Here just a few hundred jihadists have held off a coordinated assault by thousands of Iraqi special forces and Shia militias for weeks, and despite Baghdad saying it has taken Tikrit (The Guardian, 1.4.15), Isis still controls parts of the city as well as the much wider provinces of Anbar and Nineveh. The assault appears to have caused some three-way problems between the Iraqi government, the US and the Iranian-backed Shia militias with the upshot being an increase in US air strikes and de facto assistance to Iranian forces[1]. And it is this relationship between America and Iran that is causing great consternation and alarm among the former’s allies – already estranged after the collapse of the two bloc system of the Cold War and the emergence of tendencies of each going their own way – not least within Israel and Saudi Arabia.
There already have been some elements of a rapprochement in effect in the war against Isis in both Iraq and Syria. The rise of Isis has driven the US war machine into an even greater dilemma. If the Assad regime had been beaten the road to Damascus would have been open to Isis. This was explicitly recognised by the Director of the CIA John Brennan recently when he said that he didn’t want a collapse of the Assad government (Middle East Eye, 14.3.15), words that were echoed a few days later by Secretary of State John Kerry, pertinently during the nuclear talks with Iranian officials. US tensions with Israel, the Netanyahu clique particularly, simmering for some time over still- ruined Gaza and increased settlement building, have boiled over publicly, reaching similar proportions as 1992 when President Bush fell out with President Yitzhak Shamir over settlement building. But this present situation seems much more serious with the Israelis feeling undermined and vulnerable as a result of what some Israeli politicians are calling the US “Pivot to Persia”. Assad or Isis, Israel or Iran, plague or cholera, these are the insoluble dilemmas facing US foreign policy, whose impasse is at root the impasse of the entire global network of imperialist alliances and rivalries.
If the Israelis are worried about a US/Iran rapprochement, which existed in fact up the late 70’s when the Shah of Iran was the US and British policeman of the region, then so too are the Saudis and this concern has been a major impetus in their present adventure in Yemen (see below). Iran’s 1979 Islamic “revolution”, which deposed the Shah, was a threat to Saudi Arabia with its “appeals to the oppressed” – a weapon of Iranian imperialism in order to gain an advantage over its local rivals. From that time Iran fell out of favour with the west and, independent of and alongside that, the Saudi regime promoted a hard-line Wahabi Islam in order to foster and encourage extreme anti-Shia sentiments and actions[2]. The House of Saud, concerned about a possible Iranian nuclear capacity, has made its own nuclear aspirations quite clear, and it seems that from talks that have already taken place Pakistan would be prepared to provide Saudi Arabia with a nuclear capability (The Guardian, 11.5.10: “Pakistan’s bomb and Saudi Arabia”). The Middle East plus a nuclear arms race! This is very much a possibility now.
Another factor in any US and Iranian “axis” – and we are still some way from that even if there is an agreement over Iran’s nuclear capacity – is that Russia, Iran’s main ally as well as Assad’s supporter, would suffer a serious setback. It would be further pushed back from what global presence it has, surrounded and squeezed into its heartlands, making Europe an even more dangerous place with a greater threat of Russian imperialism trying to break out in the longer term.
Even by the standards of the Middle East, its irrationality, the wanton destruction, the constant, intensifying imperialist machinations and wars, then the Saudi-led attack on Yemen in late March reaches new levels of surreal absurdity: the Saudis are leading a Sunni Muslim coalition of ten nations including non-Arab, nuclear-armed Pakistan in an attack on Yemen. Local gangsters like the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are involved but also the Egyptian dictator al-Sisi and the genocidal clique of Sudan’s al-Bashir. All these despots are backed by the USA and Britain, which has offered the coalition “logistical and intelligence” support. The strength of this coalition is unclear given that Oman has refused to join it, Qatar is wavering and Pakistan has apparently left.
The situation in Yemen is much more complex than a coalition of Sunnis attacking an Iranian-backed Shia ally – there are strong elements of this but there is more. This country, given its terrain, is another Afghanistan as British, Egyptian and other imperialist forces have found out to their cost in the past. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. There are an estimated ten million children on the edge of malnutrition and poverty and corruption is rampant. The bones of this country, which has no serious history of ethnic strife, have been picked by imperialism and war in recent years and that is set to continue. Last September President Obama called US drone action in Yemen an anti-terrorist “success” story, a “model” even[3]. Yemen, and its long-suffering people, is about to suffer a new layer of tension and destruction that will, in all probability, only strengthen the positions of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and Isis. While these two groups have co-existed or worked together elsewhere this alliance is purely contingent and in Yemen at the moment the Houthi’s, AQAP, Isis and the Saudi-backed Aden rump are all at each others’ throats. Each for themselves reaches new proportions here where even the jihadi “terrorists”, though sometimes backed by various states, are fighting among themselves – and there are and have been similar expressions of this happening now in Syria.
The Houthi rebels now gaining strength in Yemen come from the Zaidi sect – an obscure branch of Shia Islam from the northern al-Houthi clan where its people have lived for a thousand years. It started life in the early 1990’s as a reportedly peaceful revivalist movement called “Believing Youth”. It was radicalised, like so many others, by the western-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Iranians call it the “Ansarullah” revolution and they have certainly provided it with some assistance, but very little on the scale of things for the region and the Houthis are no simple pawns of Tehran. There are long-standing links between the Shias and Iran here and the Saudis with the Sunnis but it’s only of late that these divisions and their manipulation by states have coincided with such a rotting of the social bonds and the general breakdown engendered by capitalist decomposition.
The Houthi group had previously battled the government forces of US and Saudi-backed President Saleh as well as those of AQAP. President Saleh stood down in 2012 and he, his son and a hundred thousand of his soldiers now support the Houthi advance, an advance that has also been further facilitated by despair and distrust of the authorities. Newly-installed Yemeni President Hadi, backed by the Saudis and the west, has fled the Houthi advance to Aden, where some forces favourable to him remain, and he is now reported to be in Riyadh. Hadi’s particular Sunni affiliation is outlawed in Saudi Arabia, which is just another convoluted element to this story. Embassies were closed and US troops also fled the Houthi HouthiHHHHadvance, with the latter scooping up a reportedly half-a-billion dollars worth of abandoned US military hardware. A further factor of every man for himself here is that ex-President Saleh’s alliance with the Houthis is shaky at best and some of his troops have defected to Saudi leadership, fleeing the air bombardment on their quarters. This points to the possibility of his army turning against the Houthis and towards Saudi and his previous western backers.
Some journalists[4] who write about the Middle East have noted the complexity, as well as the dangers of the unfolding war in Yemen. They call it “multidimensional” which is a fair description of the breakdown. There are the Houthis, now well-armed courtesy not of Iran but of the USA; AQAP – whose branch has been deadly effective here against western and local targets for 15 years; Isis, which announced the opening of its Yemeni branch late last year and was behind the bombing of a mosque on March 21, killing over a hundred Houthi Shias; the declining rump of Saudi-backed Sunni forces and a western sea-board partly dominated by pirates and warlords. And into this inferno Saudi Arabia, well-armed by the west that supports it, wants to bomb and send in an invasion force! Saudi Arabia is apparently mobilising 150,000 soldiers and artillery in order to attack Yemen. The military, economic and geo-strategic dimensions of the conflict in Yemen have also not gone unnoticed by the same journalists, with the Red Sea and Suez at one end and the Gulf of Aden at the other, joined by the Yemeni Bab-el-Mandeb strait; another reason why this is such an important theatre for imperialist plays. Saudi jets have now started bombing Yemen, inevitably hitting refugee camps and civilian areas. The Saudis are also worried about their own population and the stability of their own country as the crisis deepens overall, and up to half of the Saudi army are reported to be from Yemeni tribes.
The Saudi proposed invasion of Yemen is reminiscent of, but different from, their invasion of Bahrain in 2011 during the “Arab Spring”. The repression of the anti-government protests by the Saudi-backed government had the support of the west down to its British armoured vehicles. The Saudis, like Israel, will be alarmed by the strengthening of Iran in Iraq and the necessary cooperation with the US. The Saudis have called their Yemeni war plans “Operation Decisive Storm”, echoing the USA’s 1991 “Desert Storm” in Iraq which involved, amongst others, the massacre of Iraqi conscripts and civilians on the famous “Turkey Shoot” on the road to Basra. Civilians are already being bombed in Yemen now as they have been, by one faction or another, for some time. Iran will not be happy with the move by Saudi Arabia and will be aware of the wikileaked Saudi plea to the Americans “to cut off the head of the snake” (Reuters, 29.11.10). Whether or not there is an American/Iranian rapprochement, tensions and war in this region can only exacerbate. This is the future that capitalism holds out for this region and ultimately for the whole world.
Boxer 15.4.15
[1] One can’t believe a lot of this stuff about “arguments”, etc., because its aim is to be misleading, Maskirovoka, i.e. deliberate lies for strategic purposes. At the beginning of the year, on Channel 4 News, the admiral of the US aircraft carrier, George H.W. Bush, in charge of US air strikes against Isis, openly admitted, to the surprise of the interviewer, to coordinating his actions with the Iranian High Command. It was, he said, a “professional relationship”. He later denied his comments.
[2] In other articles we will come back on the significance of religious fundamentalism and religious divisions in the Middle East. Clearly the imperialist powers in the region, and of course the various Sunni and Shia armed gangs, have played a significant role in stirring up the Shia/Sunni divide which has been a far less important issue in the past. But the exacerbations of these divisions are also “spontaneous” products of decomposition, of a society where all social bonds are cracking up and being replaced by the foul atmosphere of decay and of the pogrom.
[3] The Sunday Telegraph recently published an article on a UN report showing that in 2011 President Saleh, while backed by the west and Saudi Arabia, met high level representatives of AQAP and accorded them a safe haven in the south of the country where they would be immune from his troop movements. This is typical of the Machiavellian relations of capitalist decomposition. Like his ilk, Saleh and his clique also fleeced the country of billions of dollars.
[4] See for example Nussalbah Younis in The Observer, 29.3.15 and Robert Fisk in The Independent, 28.3.15.
Having read on the website of the Internationalist Communist Tendency the communiqué of 12 April 2015 entitled A proposito di alcune infami calunnie (‘Response to a vile slander [1298]’), the ICC expresses its total solidarity with the ICT and with those of its militants who have been particularly targeted in these attacks by former members of the ICT’s section in Italy, the Partito Comunista Internazionalista.
All those who see themselves as part of the communist left, or who are interested in this current, know the disagreements between the ICC and the ICT, on questions of general analysis (like the course of history), on how we interpret historical experience (like the work of the Italian Fraction between 1928 and 1945 or the foundation of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista in 1943-45) or – and for us this is the most important – on the relations that should exist today between the groups that consider themselves part of the communist left. We have never hidden these disagreements or renounced our vigorous criticisms of those political positions of the ICT (and of the IBRP in the past) which we judge to be negative for the struggle of the communist left. But in our eyes this cannot affect the expression of our total solidarity with the ICT or the firmness with which we condemn the slanders being aimed today at the organisation and certain of its militants. This is an attitude which belongs to the tradition of the workers’ movement.
The ICC does not know the identity of the elements who are today attacking the PCInt-ICT, nor the exact terms of their allegations. However, the ICC has complete confidence in the communiqué published by the ICT and considers that the information it contains is valid. This confidence is based on the following facts:
We cannot imagine that an organisation which has laid claim to the positions of the communist left and which has defended these positions for 70 years could invent the facts reported in the communiqué;
The experience of the workers’ movement (as well as the experience of the ICC itself) attests that former militants can fall into the basest ignominy when they develop resentments against their former organisation, when they abandon the fight for the communist perspective in order to engage in a fight for their petty personal concerns. Disappointment, frustration, wounded pride, rancour then become the motive force for their behaviour, and no longer the revolt against this shameful society of exploitation. As the PCInt communiqué puts it, the “hateful attacks” against their former organisation “has become their main focus of their politics, if not their lives”, rather than the combat against capitalism, whose allies they thus become, whether they want to or not;
One of the most insidious, but unfortunately, “classic” features of the destructive approach of these elements towards their former organisation is to make the most sordid accusations against its most prominent militants, in particular the accusation that they are “state agents”.
This kind of accusation has to be fought and denounced in the firmest possible manner, especially because it introduces suspicion within the organisation but also within the whole proletarian milieu. This is why the ICC declares its readiness to offer whatever help it can to the ICT, and which the ICT judges would be most useful to it, in order to unmask the slanders aimed at certain of its militants and to re-establish their honour.
The ICC calls on all elements and groups who fight sincerely for the communist revolution, and particularly those who see themselves as part of the communist left (especially those who refer to the current animated by Bordiga after 1952) to offer unfailing solidarity to the ICT against these sordid attacks. It is the honour of the communist left to have fought against these kinds of methods, in which Stalinism was the great specialist, in the darkest moments of the counter-revolution. Participating in the combat of the communist left does not only mean defending its political positions. It also means denouncing political behaviour such as rumours, lies, slander and blackmail, all of which are diametrically opposed to the proletariat’s struggle for its emancipation.
The ICC, 17.4.15.
70 years after ‘Victory in Europe’ day, we are republishing an article that first appeared in Révolution Internationale no. 15, in 1975.
This anniversary is always celebrated by the bourgeoisie and its media with an intense barrage of propaganda, aimed at preserving nationalist feelings and travestying what the Second World War really was: not a struggle between democratic humanity and fascist barbarism but a struggle between capitalist nations who, in the defence of their sordid interests, were quite ready to shed the blood of millions of proletarians, to whip up hatred and commit the worst kind of atrocities.
This is what is pointed out by this short text written by our comrade Marc Chirik, a militant of the communist left who, during the war, firmly defended the principle of proletarian internationalism, producing leaflets calling for the fraternisation of the workers of all countries.
In a whole number of countries, the bourgeoisie has made a big noise about the 30th anniversary of the victory over Germany. The left variety of this noise has been particularly virulent: in Eastern Europe, there were huge ceremonies marking the 8 May. In France, where the government has decided to remove this date from the official calendar, the guardian of the historic past of La Patrie, the so-called Communist Party, has thrown all its strength into a great national battle to annul this “scandalous”, “monstrous”, “ignoble and infamous” decision (cf L’Humanité 12 May 1975). Having stirred up chauvinism between the two world wars around the figure of Joan of Arc, the same party disputes with the rest of the bourgeoisie the right to speak for the nationalist cult and denounces the “anti-national policy of Giscard d’Estaing”. It is calling on all the “national and democratic forces” to fight this decision by Giscard “as a national duty for all patriots”. It reminds us that “the Communists fought in the Resistance alongside the Gaullists. They took the same risks. They shared a certain idea about France, its role, its future…” And it concludes that “the policy of M Giscard d’Estaing is leading to the betrayal of the common struggle that Communists and Gaullists waged against fascism for the independence and grandeur of France!”
Far more than the Gaullists, to whom it is extending its hand, the Communist Party is scaling the heights of the most repulsive nationalist hysteria.
For the bourgeois faction that displays the most virulent chauvinism, especially when it’s combined with antifascism, this is a time to remember. “Let’s remember”, it says to the proletarians, “how heroic you were in the defence of our interests”.
And indeed: let’s remember!
First, let’s remember the cause of this war, the crisis which began in 1929 and which plunged the whole world into unbearable poverty alongside stocks of goods which couldn’t be sold! Let’s remember the tens of millions of starving unemployed workers, going from town to town looking in vain for work!
Let’s remember the fascist barbarism with which the bourgeoisie responded to this crisis, as well as the antifascist hysteria, which both together led the workers of Spain, and then of the main countries of the world, to the slaughter.
Let’s remember the Stalinist and Hitlerite concentration camps, where tens of millions of human beings were exterminated!
Let’s remember the pact of September 1939 between the two brigands, Hitler and Stalin, between Nazi Germany and “socialist” Russia - the first clause of this pact being the dividing up of Poland, which directly resulted in the war.
Let’s remember the massacres between 1939 and 1945: 55 million dead, the greatest holocaust in the history of humanity!
Let’s remember the way this war ended: with the explosion of two atomic bombs which, in a fraction of a second, razed two Japanese cities to the ground, killing without distinction several hundred thousand individuals – either immediately or after atrocious suffering!
Let’s remember the “Liberation”, the purges and the sordid settling of scores, the slogans of the Communist Party: “á chacun son Boche!” – everyone should kill a German - “long live eternal France”, all the cries about freedom from fascism from the Trotskyists and the anarchists, the latter entering Paris with the Leclerc division, brandishing the image of Durruti!
Let’s remember the “Reconstruction”, the brutal super-exploitation for a crust of bread, with Stalinist ministers telling the workers “pull up your sleeves”, while the militants of the same party played the role of cops in the factories!
Workers, let’s remember the role the Stalinists played in the past as butchers, cops, torturers, exploiters, and be on guard against what they have in store for us tomorrow if we spring their traps, along with those of their fellow-travellers in antifascism and the Resistance, whether Trotskyists or anarchists!
Workers, let’s remember the past and look clearly at what awaits us if we leave our class terrain for the terrain of antifascism, of nationalism, of democratic illusions; if we are not capable of uniting on an international scale to confront and destroy the bourgeois state!
CM (May 1975).
On 12 and 19 April, two overloaded boats carrying migrants fleeing from the most extreme misery sank in the Mediterranean, taking with them up to 1200 lives. These tragedies have been repeating themselves for decades: in the 1990s, the well-guarded fortress of Gibraltar was already a tomb for many migrants. Since 2000, 22,000 people have disappeared while trying to get to Europe by sea. And since the Lampedusa drama in 2013, in which 500 perished, the migrations and their fatal consequences have been growing at an unprecedented rate. With nearly 22,000 crossings and 3500 deaths, the year 2014 broke all records. Since January 2015, the sea has already claimed 1800 migrants’ lives.
In the last few years, we have been seeing a kind of industrialisation in human trafficking. The testimonies paint an edifying picture of refugee camps, of people crossing war zones, of beatings, rapes, slavery…The brutality and cynicism of the smugglers seem to have no limits. And the migrants go through all this in order to be welcomed to humiliating conditions in Europe, where they are defined as a “burden”, to use the expression of the head of operations at Triton, which is supposedly there to save the migrants at sea.
If people are prepared to go through such ordeals, it’s because what they are escaping from is even worse. At the root of the increasing waves of migrations are the unbearable conditions of life in more and more areas of the planet. These conditions are not new, but they have been getting worse and worse. Hunger and disease, and above all a society that is rotting on its feet is what all these masses of people are running away from: the accelerating decomposition of Africa and the Middle East, with their intractable conflicts, permanent insecurity, the reign of armed gangs, rackets, mass unemployment….
The great powers, driven by the logic of an increasingly irrational and murderous capitalism to defend their imperialist interests by using the most sordid methods, have a major responsibility for the frightful situation facing so many parts of the world. The chaos in Libya is a caricatured example: western bombs have replaced a tyrant with the reign of lawless militias. As well as illustrating the only perspective that capitalism can offer humanity, the dislocation of the country has provided the soil for the flourishing of the unscrupulous gangs of smugglers who are often connected to various imperialist agencies: mafia cliques, jihadists and even the self-proclaimed governments which are engaged in a bloody struggle against each other.
Like the migrants crossing the Mediterranean, being uprooted is inscribed in the history of the working class. From the very beginnings of capitalism, part of the rural population formed in the mediaeval period was torn off the land to provide the first source of man-power for the process of manufacture. Often the victims of brutal expropriations, these pariahs of the feudal system, too numerous for nascent capitalism to absorb, were already treated like criminals: “Legislation treated them as ‘voluntary’ criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed” (Marx, Capital, Vol 1, chapter 28) . With the development of capitalism, the growing need for labour power gave rise to numerous waves of migration. In the 19th century, when capitalism was prospering, millions of migrants took the path of exile to fill the factories. With the historical decline of the system, which was marked by the First World War, the displacement of populations didn’t stop and even increased. Imperialist wars, economic crises, climatic disasters – there are plenty of reasons for trying to escape from hell.
And with the permanent crisis of the system, immigrants are constantly faced with capital’s problem of absorbing extra labour power. Administrative, legal and police obstacles have gradually increased, aimed at preventing migrants from reaching the territories of the most developed states: limited stay, deportation, harassment, police tracking, air and navy patrols at the frontiers, detention camps, etc. Before the First World War, when the USA was looking to expand its work-force, it was the symbol of the land of asylum. Today the American border with Mexico is guarded by a gigantic wall. Europe has not escaped this dynamic. In the 1980s, the very democratic European states have begun to deploy an armada of warships in the Mediterranean and didn’t hesitate about collaborating with the “Guide of the Revolution”, Muammar Gaddafi, and his esteemed equivalents, His Majesty the King of Morocco and Algeria’s president for life, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, with the aim of pushing migrants back towards the desert. While the bourgeoisie was triumphantly dismantling the Iron Curtain, other “walls of shame” have been going up on numerous frontiers. The hypocrisy about freedom of circulation in the European space covered by the Schengen agreement can be seen very clearly in all this. As for those who do survive the crossing, it’s another round of police harassment and humiliation, awful detention centres, etc. Behind their crocodile tears, the cynicism of the democratic states is as boundless as that of the smugglers.
Overcrowded boats capsizing, hundreds drowning – this has been going on for years now. The growing number of deaths in the Mediterranean doesn’t date from April. So why the media frenzy right now?
It responds to a logic of ideological intoxication which is mobilising all factions of the bourgeoisie. Parallel to the transformation of states into fortresses, a nauseating anti-immigrant ideology is being spread, seeking to blame “foreigners” for the effects of the crisis and to present them as hordes of criminals undermining public order. These often hysterical campaigns try to divide the proletariat by making it identify with the cause of the Nation, i.e. those of the ruling class. They are based on the pernicious idea that the division of humanity into nations is normal, natural and eternal. Furthermore, the hypocritical attempt to talk about “good” and “bad” immigrants is entirely part of this logic: those who are judged “good” are those who can be useful to the national economy, the “bad” ones being those judged to be a burden on it.
As can be seen from the expressions of solidarity by workers in Italy towards the migrants who finally reached the coast of Sicily, many proletarians are in fact indignant about the fate the bourgeoisie reserves for the immigrants. But who better to channel this legitimate reaction towards a dead-end than the patent experts in this kind of work – the left of the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus. These so-called “friends of the people” take advantage of real indignation to trap the workers in the talons of the capitalist state. The Non-Government Organisations, acting once again as scouts for imperialism, haven’t got words strong enough to demand a military response from the state, all in the name of human rights. After the “humanitarian war” in Africa, we now have the “charitable control of the frontiers”! What loathsome hypocrisy! In France, the Trotskyist group Lutte Ouvrière illustrate this approach very well in its article ‘Capitalist Europe condemns migrants to death’[1]: “By reducing the number and scope of the patrols, the leaders of the EU have made the choice to allow those who attempt the crossing to die. This is the policy of non-assistance to people in danger. The 18 warships and two helicopters which were sent to the place the drama took plac, but after the drowning, increases the ignominy”. In a word, this bourgeois party, which claims to be marxist, also calls for more warships to “save” the migrants. Thus, the bourgeoisie is instrumentalising the hecatomb to strengthen its means of repression against the migrants, increasing and developing the means available to the Frontex agency which is in charge of coordinating military deployment at the frontiers of Europe and the anti-immigrant operations inside its borders: patrols, raids, arrests. It seems that the bourgeoisie has organised everything to “help” the migrants. Air strikes in Libya are also envisaged! Behind all this, the bourgeoisie is trying to stoke up the threatening atmosphere which enables it to carry out its repressive policies against the working class.
Truth Martine, 5.5.15
“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism”. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917)[1]
January 15 1919, Rosa Luxemburg was assassinated, along with her comrade of combat Karl Liebknecht, by the Freikorps. These soldiers were under the orders of the minister Noske, a member of the SPD (German Social Democratic Party) who declared “If a bloodhound is necessary, then I will be it”! It was the Socialist party in power who orchestrated the bloody repression of the workers’ insurrection in Berlin and assassinated one the greatest figures of the international workers’ movement.
This odious murder was prepared for a long time through a series of slanders against Rosa Luxemburg. “Red Rosa”, “Rosa the incendiary”, “Bloody Rosa”, “Rosa the agent of Tsarism”... no lying attack against her was spared, culminating in the calls for a pogrom at the end of 1918/ beginning 1919, notably at the time of the “bloody week” in Berlin.
But just a few months after her murder, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists in the workers’ movement began to make her into an inoffensive icon so as to canonise her, empty her of revolutionary content, degrade her and take the edge off this trenchant revolutionary. Above all for them Rosa Luxemburg mustn’t remain the militant and exemplary revolutionary that she was; she had to be killed a second time, misrepresented into a sort of pacifist and feminist democrat. This is the real aim, in recent decades, of the work of “remembrance “which aims to “rehabilitate” (that’s to say recuperate) this great fighter for the revolution.
In the 1930’s in France for example, a whole current developed around Lucien Laurat, which increasingly ceded to the sirens of democracy and ended up arguing that from the very beginning of the “Bolshevik revolution”, the “worm” of Lenin was in the “fruit” of the revolutionary project. This argument logically became the apology for the Republican Army in the war in Spain of 1936-39 and for the dragooning of the working class into the second world butchery under the cover of the fight against fascism. It supported the POUM in Spain and the Trotskyists in the “heroism” of their national resistance. This nauseous democratic propaganda went into paroxysms after the Second World War through people such as Rene Lefeuvre, founder of the Editions Spartacus. The latter, in a collection of texts by Rosa Luxemburg[2], has a purely ideological preface and its 1946 title Marxism against dictatorship (a heading never used by Rosa Luxemburg!) presented this fighter for the revolution as radically hostile to Bolshevism, which is nothing other than a gross lie. In the introduction to the collection, Lefeuvre writes that: “all the great marxist theoreticians of renown: Karl Kautsky, Emile Vandervelde, Rodolphe Hilferding, Karl Renner, Georges Plekhanov – and ourselves in passing – denounced as much as Rosa Luxemburg the totalitarian doctrine of Lenin as absolutely contrary to the principle of marxism”.
Stalin mummified Lenin and perverted his thoughts into a terrifying dogma. “Bloody” Rosa Luxemburg became a sort of saint for democracy. The Stalinist counter-revolution rapidly generated two new putrid and complementary ideologies: attractive “Luxemburgism” on one side and repellent “Marxism-Leninism” on the other. Really just two faces of the same coin or rather two jaws of the same trap with the same result: reject the “bloodthirsty” Bolsheviks and admire the figure offered by a “pacifist” Rosa, like you admire a lion in a cage.
In Western Germany 1974 (the FRG), they even printed stamps bearing the image of Rosa Luxemburg!
After the collapse of the eastern bloc and the disappearance of the USSR, this vast ideological campaign was dug up again and amplified so as to feed the so-called “death of communism” zealously decreed by the bourgeoisie with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Official ideology here pursued the greatest lie in history, fraudulently assimilating communism with Stalinism. It is a particularly effective ideological weapon in the hands of the dominant class. Because if since the 1990’s the proletariat has had so many difficulties to see itself as a social force, to develop its consciousness and its organisation, it is really because it is cut off from its past, it’s lost its identity, it doesn’t know where it’s come from or where it’s going. If communism is Stalinism, this horror which has finally failed, then why fight for it? Why study the history of the workers’ movement when it will only lead to the Stalinist catastrophe? It is this logic and this poison that the bourgeoisie wants to put in our heads! And the presentation of Rosa as a pacifist and enemy of Lenin, the “dictator over the proletariat”, the “spiritual father of Stalin”, is one of the blackest chapters in this ignoble propaganda. Whether they are conscious of it or not, those who participate in this sham fight against the working class.
Today on blogs and forums, in bookshops and kiosks, throughout Europe and in the world, a new nauseous campaign has resurfaced in order to again distort the image of the militant Rosa Luxemburg. Thus, from television programmes, Rosa Luxemburg again appears under the sole traits of a “woman” and a “pacifist”. The very-well known and acclaimed paper, Le Monde, published an article in September 2013, written by a certain Jean-Marc Daniel, a professor of ESCP Europe, with the very evocative title: “Rosa Luxemburg, marxist-pacifist”. This association of the words “marxist” and “pacifist” is gob-smacking: for the ruling class the “real marxist” is one who abdicates from the class war, renounces the insurrection and the overthrow of capitalism.
Numerous books have now been published, including children’s literature, where Rosa Luxemburg is again presented as a relentless adversary of the Bolsheviks and of the “dictator” Lenin. Conferences and debate are also organised here and there, as was the case in Paris recently under the aegis of the “Luxemburgist” democratic historians of the group Critique Sociale. Even within the arts, the MAIF prize 2014 was awarded to the sculptor Nicolas Milhe for his project “Rosa Luxemburg”! This is a real ovation for Rosa ... on condition that she is opposed to her comrades in the fight, to the Bolsheviks, to the Russian revolution, in short opposed to revolution. The recuperation of Rosa Luxemburg in order to turn her into an “inoffensive icon” is a vast enterprise of ideological intoxication. It aims to inject the idea that the proletariat must fight to construct... not a global communist society but a “more democratic” society. After the odious propaganda of the Black Book of Communism, it is henceforth this idea of Luxemburg as the enemy of the Bolsheviks which is very seriously and officially taught in school programmes[3].
The stakes for the bourgeoisie today are to convince the most critical and recalcitrant elements that there is no other future than the defence of the democratic bourgeoisie. But behind this distortion there is also the campaign of the recuperation of Rosa Luxemburg by all sorts of democrats, with another unsaid objective, which is to discredit and demonise the real positions of revolutionary organisations.
Olga, November 7 2014
[1] This magisterial passage by Lenin is also valid for the fate reserved by the bourgeoisie for Jean Jaurès. See https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201409/9133/jean-jaures-et-mouvement-ouvrier [1304], which will be published in English soon.
[2] “Problems of socialist organisation”(1904), “The masses and the leaders” – (1903), “Freedom of criticism and freedom of science” (1899).
[3] See on our French internet site: https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/201409/9138/falsification-lhis... [1305]
Over the last 40 years, the ICC in Britain has maintained a regular analysis of the situation in Britain – economic crisis, political manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, the UK’s imperialist role, and in particular the class struggle and the history of the workers’ movement. We are republishing here one of our first efforts to develop an overall understanding of the class struggle in the country where capitalism initially had its most impetuous development (from World Revolution No7, July 1976). The text addresses one of the main problems which still confront the class movement today – how to pass from immediate struggles of economic defence to a more global and political struggle based on a perspective of revolutionary social change. The ‘Theses’ provide some solid arguments about why this problem has been particularly marked in the working class in Britain, while at the same time examining the connection between this difficulty and the relatively weak tradition of revolutionary marxism in the UK. Subsequently, we have published a number of further studies which go deeper into this issue[1], but the basic approach in the Theses remains valid. Indeed, point 9 of the Theses could still be confidently written about the political milieu in Britain today: “....Sectarian rivalries between the different revolutionary groups; attachment to outmoded social democratic and syndicalist conceptions; above all the inability to understand the need for centralised organisation and political coherence were to obstruct the efforts of the British revolutionaries....”
The text was written during one of the short periods of retreat in the class struggle which marked the period between 1968 and 1989. It predicts that the austerity measures then being introduced by the Labour government would provoke a strong reaction from the class – a perspective verified by the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1979, and confirmed by subsequent movements of the class against the continuation of these attacks on its living standards orchestrated by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. However, as with other analyses of the class struggle by the ICC during this period, there is a tendency to underestimate the depth of the problem which is precisely the main focus of the Theses – the problem of politicisation – and thus to end with the hope that the passage to a higher level of class struggle would be far closer than it has turned out to be in reality. This is why we intend to produce some sequels to this text, aimed at elaborating a balance sheet of the class struggle in Britain in the four decades since the Theses were written – a period which has been marked by even greater challenges to the working class (the conscious counter-attack on the class mounted by the ‘right in power/left in opposition’ manoeuvres of the 80s, the defeat of the miners’ strike, the dismantling of traditional centres of working class militancy, the ideological offensive around the collapse of the eastern bloc after 1989, and the onset of the phase of capitalist decomposition).
WR 23.6.2015
WR July 1976
[1] See in particular the book by Mark Hayes, The British Communist Left 1914-1945, a contribution to the history of the revolutionary movement, available from Amazon.co.uk; a complement to this book is the series ‘The Struggle for the Class Party in Britain’ published between 1997 and 2000. So far only the following article from the series is online but we intend to make the whole series available soon:
See also:
‘History of the workers movement in Britain’, covering the early phase of the movement
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/301_hwmb-01 [1308]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/304/chartism-1848 [1309]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/305/hwmb-03 [1310]
For the first decades of the 20th century
https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/sept/belfast-1907 [1311]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/267_rev_against_war_01.html [1314]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/271_rev_against_war_04.html [1315]
‘Notes on internationalist anarchism in Britain’:
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/344/brit-anarchy [816]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/345/brit-anarchy [1316]
Seventy years ago in Hiorshima,on August 6 1945, more than a hundred thousand of its inhabitants were atrociously pulverised, being used as a target in a grand demonstration of the new US nuclear force. According to official figures, close to 70,000 perished in the initial explosion and thousands of others suffered the same fate in the days that followed[1]. Three days later on August 9, a second bomb exploded above Nagasaki killing a similarly terrifying number of victims. The barbarity and suffering inflicted on so many people is hardly conceivable.
Thus, as we wrote in 2005, on the 50th anniversary of this event: “In order to justify such a crime, and to answer the legitimate shock provoked by the bomb’s awful effects, Truman - the US president who ordered the nuclear holocaust - and his accomplice Winston Churchill put about a cynical lie: that the use of the atomic bomb had saved about a million lives, which would have been lost had American troops been forced to invade Japan. In short, and despite appearances, the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which are still killing fifty years later, were pacifist bombs! But this peculiarly revolting tale is given the lie by numerous historical studies published by the bourgeoisie itself”.
When one looks at the military situation of Japan at the time when Germany capitulated, we can see that the former was already virtually beaten. Its aviation, an essential arm of the Second World War, was almost finished, reduced to a small number of machines generally piloted by a handful of adolescents who were as fanatical as they were inexperienced. The navy, merchant as well as military, was practically destroyed. Anti-aircraft defences covered only a small area of the sky, which explains why the B29’s were able to carry out thousands of attacks throughout spring 1945 with practically no losses. And Churchill himself admitted as much in volume 12 of his memoirs!
A study by the American secret services of 1945, published by the New York Times in 1989, revealed that: “Conscious of defeat, the Emperor of Japan decided on June 20 1945 to cease all hostilities and open up talks on July 11 with a view to the cessation of hostilities”[2]. And since in capitalist society cynicism and contempt have neither limits nor frontiers, we can only recall that the survivors of these explosions, the “hibakusha”, have only been recognised as victims by the state from the year 2000[3].
Concerning the real objective of these bombardments, here’s what we wrote in 2005:
“Contrary to all the lies that have been peddled since 1945, about the supposed victory of a democracy synonymous with peace, World War II was barely over than the new front line of imperialist confrontation was being drawn. Just as the Treaty of Versailles contained inevitably within it the seeds of another war, so Yalta already contained the split between the main victor of 1945, the USA, and its Russian challenger. Thanks to World War II, Russia had risen from being a minor economic power to world ranking imperialism, which could not but threaten the American superpower. In spring 1945, the USSR was already using its military strength to carve out a bloc in Eastern Europe. Yalta did nothing but caution the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist sharks. What one balance of forces could set up, another could undo. In the summer of 1945, the real problem facing the American state was thus not, as the schoolbooks tell us, how to make Japan capitulate as soon as possible, but how to confront and contain the imperialist drive of its ‘great Russian ally’”.
In reality it was on the basis of aggravated imperialist tensions that the nuclear arms race began before 1945. A great capitalist power worthy of the name could only maintain its ranking on the imperialist scene and be taken seriously by its rivals by showing them that it possessed, or better still showed that it could make use of nuclear arms. This is particularly true for countries that were “bloc leaders” which by then were made up of the United States and the USSR. Ranged behind one or the other, the other great powers could only fall into line. From 1949, the Russians started tests for their own bomb. In 1952, it was the turn of the British. In 1960, the very French “Gerboise bleue” showed in its turn its nuclear power at Reggane, in the Algerian Sahara. During this whole time one could say without exaggeration that there were hundreds of nuclear tests with consequences on the environment (and sometimes on surrounding populations) that the states have kept quiet about. Beyond this crazy race between the USA and the USSR to deploy a still-greater quantity of these types of arms, unrelenting research was undertaken in order to maximise their power of destruction. If the bombs of 1945 were a moment of intense cruelty in the history of capitalist barbarism, they are far from the culminating point of the destructive potential of existing arms.
Capitalist barbarism has no limits! As if the hundreds of thousands of deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn’t just a foretaste of what decadent capitalism is capable of producing, the Americans went to another level in 1952 with the explosion of “Ivy Mike”, the famous H-Bomb with a power of 10.4 megatons, six times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb! And who can forget the “Tsar Bomba” that the Russians exploded over the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya (Arctic Russia) in 1961. With a power of more than 50 megatons it literally vitrified the soil over a radius of 25 km and destroyed wooden buildings hundreds of kilometres away. The army was satisfied with the idea that the heat of the radiation produced caused third degree burns over a radius of more than 100km. From a formal point of view the big nuclear powers of the United States, Russia, the UK and France, signed a non-proliferation pact (NPT) in 1968. This agreement, which was supposed to halt the proliferation of nuclear arms, had only a very limited impact. It is just as hypocritical as the Kyoto Accords against global warming! Since the NPT came into effect in 1970 several countries have to be added to the list: India, China, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Further there’s a list of countries whose possession of nuclear weapons is a matter of discussion between bourgeois factions: Iran of course, but also Brazil which is suspected of developing a nuclear programme[4], Saudi Arabia and Syria whose nuclear reactor in Damascus was much talked about. In short, it is clear that “non-proliferation” is only a pious wish essentially aimed at masking the sordid reality of the trafficking of nuclear materials. In a system based on competition and relations of force, the idea of a return to reason can only be a pure mystification. Since the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the blocs in 1990, military instability has progressively gained ground in all zones of the planet. The international situation shows us this on a daily basis. It’s a real process of decomposition which generates still more barbarity and irrationality. It is within this framework that we should put the announcement by Putin on June 16, according to which: “Russia is going to strengthen its nuclear arsenal with the deployment of more than forty new inter-continental missiles from here to the end of the year (...). This announcement was made on the basis of the aggravation of tensions between Russia and the United States, whose plans to deploy heavy weapons in Europe revealed by the New York Times have provoked anger in Moscow”[5]. On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the nuclear holocaust, such a declaration is a significant marker of the putrefaction into which capitalist society is sinking[6].
The working class, the sole class bearing a perspective for the future of humanity, is thus also the only class capable of putting an end to the barbaric wars of the imperialist powers. The proletariat cannot let itself be panicked by the horror of which the capitalist class is capable and it cannot remain paralysed faced with the attacks from the latter. It’s true that the atrocity of August 1945 and of war in general generates fear. And for good reason! In the troubled game of capitalist competition, the bourgeoisie always wants to wipe out its rivals. The only real brake on this barbarity is the level of consciousness of the revolutionary class and its capacity for outrage at the horror of a decomposing society.
Finally, let’s remember that summer 2015 is also the 110th anniversary (June 27 1905) of the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, though the media is much more discreet about this. Here the Russian sailors, scandalised by the contempt shown to them by their officers and worn out by the war with Japan, turned their guns against them and stood up in one of the heroic moments of the history of the workers’ movement[7]. It’s not tears of despair, but rather outrage and the will to fight which bear the promise of the construction of a communist society.
Tim, July 2 2015
[1] In Japan, the “peace memorial” gives the number of victims of Hiroshima as 140,000.
[2] Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990. For more ample developments of the denunciation of this cynical fable, we invite our readers to look at the article “50 years after: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the lies of the bourgeoisie” in International Review no. 83.
[3] Previously these victims benefited from no help by the state. “In May 2005, there were 266,598 hibakusha recognised by the Japanese government” (according to an article of the Japan Times, March 15 2006, reprinted on Wikipedia).
[4] Lula signed an agreement in 2008 with Argentina for the joint development of a nuclear programme which could not be devoid of a military aspect.
[5] Le Monde, 16.06.2015.
[6] In a recent “breakthrough”, amid rising Sino-US tensions, China has announced that it has developed a multiple nuclear warhead delivery system capable of breaching US defences. https://uk.businessinsider.com/china-developed-multiple-warhead-missiles... [1318]
[7] It’s also important to remember that it was the workers’ movement, with the revolutionary wave of 1917, that put an end to the First World War at the beginning of the 20th century.
What is the significance, for the working class, of the first Tory majority government in 18 years? It is certainly going to mean even more draconian cuts in benefits, as we show elsewhere in this issue. On a wider scale the results of the election have reinforced the state’s offensive against the proletariat at the ideological level. This is as important as its actions at the economic level. The new political line up of the British state’s democratic facade has the aim of deepening the sense of disorientation within the working class in order to weaken its ability to develop its struggle, and above all its capacity to offer an alternative perspective to the hell of decaying capitalism. Thus the proletariat can expect a whole array of ideological attacks to be launched against it.
The central theme of the current democratic campaigns is the idea that each ‘citizen’ can contribute to the political process. This was exemplified by the election itself. There was the constant message that the outcome of the election was in the balance, could go either way, thus it was important to vote. The polls showed Labour and Tories nearly neck and neck; there was the idea that UKIP may make a break through; in Scotland the question was would Labour mobilize enough votes to stop the SNP decimating the number of Labour MPs? These questions were endlessly debated on the news. The whole message was this: voting could make a difference.
All the “surprise” at the results and the opinion polls getting it so wrong was guff. The secret polls carried out by the parties and the state showed the Tories would win. Also looking at the political situation made it clear the Tories would win. The Liberal Democrats signed their own death certificate when they joined the Coalition and agreed to rises in university tuition fees and other blatant attacks. The SNP’s crushing of Labour in Scotland was hardly a surprise, given that the SNP set itself up as the radical opposition to the austerity measures that Labour quietly accepted. As for UKIP, this populist bogeyman served its role in stoking up the anti-immigrant atmosphere during the election: the others parties used them as a justification for making their own contribution to this poison, but then cast Farage and Co. aside and left them in disarray. The BNP had suffered the same fate previously.
The election campaign has also served to continue the nationalist campaigns around questions such as should Scottish MPs vote on matters related to England, or should there be an English assembly like in Scotland and Wales? During the election itself the threat of the SNP forming an alliance with Labour was used to scare voters. The election, like the Scottish referendum before it, has reinforced nationalist illusions in parts of the working class. In Scotland, which has a long history of proletarian militancy, the working class is confronted with an openly nationalist party representing itself as the radical alternative, as the only real opposition to the Tories.
This democratic circus is not going to stop now the election is behind us. There is now the prospect of months of ceaseless campaigning around the referendum about European Union membership. Workers will be called on see their interests as the same as those of the ruling class and to throw their weight into this ‘decisive’ historical vote. This will add further confusion and divisions as we are told we have to choose a side in this referendum, which will also stir up a new hornets’ nest of nationalism and xenophobia.
The idea of democracy as a British value is also a central theme in the whole anti-terrorism campaign. The politicians were falling over themselves to take full advantage of the barbaric massacre of tourists in Tunisia to use the argument that in order to defend democracy it would be necessary to impose even more draconian anti-terror laws and measures.
The referendum on European membership is not simply a democratic circus. It is also an important part of the British bourgeoisie’s attempt to counter the efforts of its historical European imperialist rivals, France and above all Germany, to draw the EU under greater centralised control. The Eurozone crisis has seen German capitalism strengthening its dominant economic and political role in the EU. British imperialism on the other hand wants to use the referendum to reinforce its distinctive role in Europe – hence its drive to re-negotiate the rules of membership, aimed at undermining German and French efforts to strengthen them. It’s a mark of the confidence of the British ruling class, that it has called a referendum on the EU so quickly after the election. It would not do such a thing if it felt it would not get the right result. This demonstrates to those inclined to support British efforts to counter-balance Germany, such as Holland, that the British ruling class is not playing fast and loose with EU membership. The majority and strongest fraction of the British bourgeoisie is pro-EU, and it has reason to hope that the referendum will deliver a powerful defeat to the Eurosceptic fraction which crosses both Labour and Conservative Parties.
The new government is also seeking to take advantage of the growing chaos in Syria and the wider actions of Islamic State to regain the confidence of the population about military action abroad. Recent parliamentary debates about whether Britain should join in the bombing of Islamic State in Syria, rather than just in Iraq, have cleverly used the idea that the government has learnt the lessons of the debacle over Iraq. One of the central tasks of the Coalition government was to overcome popular distrust in the state’s military actions following the Iraq war and the blatant lying about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The last government defeat two years ago over the bombing of Assad in Syria is being presented as a lesson learned, as proof that the new government’s proposals for action will take much more account of the democratic will of parliament. Again we see the bourgeoisie cynically using the bloodbath in Syria and the rise of Islamic State to further its own imperialist aims, above all its efforts to mobilise the population behind its military actions.
As with the previous government and the Labour government before that, the new team is making every effort to whip up a climate of fear in the population. The murders in Tunisia and the cases of British citizens running off to join IS in Syria are the most recent excuses for strengthening the state’s repression of the population. The government instruction that teachers must test children for signs of ‘radicalisation’ and inform the police and social services if they have any suspicions is another step in the integration of teachers, social workers and health workers into the work of the secret police. All such workers have to attend education classes about extremism and the defence of “British values”, and are expected to cooperate with the police and security services. This is an integration of the “social” face of the state into the repressive apparatus that would impress the old Stalinist and fascist regimes.
These anti-terrorist measures fit in with the state’s need to keep control of elements who might link up with hostile imperialist forces, but they will be unleashed on the working class and its revolutionary minorities in the future. Already the new guidelines for identifying ‘extremists’ includes anyone opposed to the bourgeoisie’s democratic apparatus and in favour of its forcible overthrow.
The right has emerged from the election with renewed strength, whilst Labour is in a “historic crisis”, or so we are told. Labour is engulfed in a leadership campaign between Blairites and one hard left candidate in the shape of Jeremy Corbyn who is not seen as a serious contender. The other candidates talk mainly about the need to reconnect with the “core vote”, to deal more realistically with the question of immigration, to be open about the necessity to make more cuts, to be the party of the Centre etc. At a time when the working class is suffering huge attacks it seems strange that the left face of the capitalist state is seeking to distance itself even further from the class, but this is a well thought-out strategy to reinforce the proletariat’s loss of confidence in its ability to struggle against these attacks and to be able offer an alternative. The whole New Labour project was based on reinforcing the disorientation in the working class following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, with its rejection of Labour’s old-fashioned “socialist policies”, and its emphasis on the democratic citizen and ‘the people’.
Since the election there have been some small expressions of discontent, such as the unexpectedly large “anti-austerity” demonstrations called by the leftist Peoples’ Assembly umbrella group in June, but these were well controlled events. Such discontent will mount but it will be trapped in the idea that the Tories are to blame for cuts in living standards, not the capitalist system. This new anti-Toryism, which was so powerful in the 1980s and early 1990s, leads nowhere but to looking to Labour and the trade unions to defend the working class, offering the working class a false choice between the left and right faces of British state capitalism.
Phil, 4.7.15
Tory Chancellor George Osborne is set in the July Budget to announce details of the new phase of the Spending Review which will undoubtedly continue the vicious attacks on benefits which have continued to hit the very poorest sectors of the working class under Labour and Coalition governments.
David Cameron has hinted at a plan to raid Working Tax Credit Benefits. He justified these cuts by wanting to abolish the ‘merry-go-round’ of benefits paid to people in work. Cameron has had the gall to make low pay part of his case for cuts. He argued, “We need to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society.”
We cannot say precisely where the cuts will fall but the Tory election manifesto gave some important indications of the areas they are aiming at:
In a leaked exposé leaked before the election, Danny Alexander, the former Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, said that in June 2012, members of an inner group of senior cabinet members were sent a paper by the Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith that involved:
The director general of the right-leaning Institute for Economic Affairs think-tank supports the need for making savings in the welfare budget, but has said that the composition of the proposed cuts “looks set to be extremely unfair on the working age population […] simply salami-slicing the value of tax credits will hit certain households hard”[1].
Another area where the axe is due to fall is incapacity benefits. ‘Reforming’ incapacity benefit, crystallised in the notorious fit-for-work tests carried out by Atos, was a major PR disaster for the Coalition. Today, Atos has been replaced with a new agency – Maximus - but this body still has the function of throwing as many claimants off benefits as possible. The Tories promise to push on with this, and with parallel reductions in the numbers of people receiving disability benefits, “so that help goes to those who really need it”.
This list of attacks planned by the new government could be greatly extended, but they already demonstrate that the Tories will ruthlessly accelerate the attacks on working class living standards carried out under the Coalition.
But just in case anyone should think that these attacks are the invention of the Tories, let’s recall that the Coalition merely kept up the attacks of the previous Labour governments of Blair and Brown:
“The consequences of Labour’s welfare reforms were devastating. 52,399 benefit sanctions were inflicted on Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants in March 2010. This was twice the number from just two years earlier and more than the 51,142 sanctions handed out by the Tories in September 2014…
“In March 2010 the number of people on sickness benefits who had their benefits stopped for failure to carry out work related activity hit a high of 3,673. This is just slightly below the 3,828 sanctions handed out to this group in September 2014.
“To hear the current rhetoric from the TUC, you would think that mass benefit sanctions were a Tory invention. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady recently released a statement saying ‘Under this government the sanctions system has become a cruel maze in which it is all too easy for claimants to lose cash for minor breaches of rules and random decisions’. This was in response to a report showing the desperate toll that sanctions were taking on lone parents and most importantly their children. As far back as 2008 the government’s own experts, the Social Security Advisory Committee, recommended that lone parents should not face sanctions. The Labour government rejected this advice”. (Johnnie Void, 8/3/15, posted on the The Void)
Cutting working class living standards, subjecting proletarians to increased surveillance and repression, is not an ‘ideological’ choice of this or that bourgeois party. It is a remorseless necessity for the state in its defence of the profitability of the national economy in the face of an irresolvable economic crisis and the fierce competition of other nation states. Capitalist profit and human need are irreconcilably opposed.
Melmoth 28/6/15
When the Greek government decided at short notice to call a referendum it was clear that the differences between the Syriza-led coalition and the IMF/ECB/EC Troika were minimal. When it came to the referendum campaign the differences between No and Yes sides, despite much melodramatic language, were, therefore, also limited.
Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis accused the Troika of trying to “humiliate” Greece. “Why have they forced us to close the banks? To frighten people. And when it’s about spreading terror, that is known as terrorism.” (El Mundo 4/7/15) Syriza claim that the purpose of the referendum was to improve the negotiating position of the Greek state. Meanwhile, the proponents of the Yes vote warned of the disastrous consequences of an exit from the Eurozone and the possibilities of leaving the EU.
Both sides mobilised the population as so many atomised individuals blindly following the campaigns of the bourgeoisie. A Greek professor quoted in the New York Times (3/7/15) said “There is no discussion of the real issues … They are exaggerating the feelings of fear and agony and creating an atmosphere that makes it impossible for anyone to think clearly.” Thinking clearly is something that the bourgeoisie discourages at every opportunity. What it needs are millions trooping into polling stations to express their passivity in the face of the bourgeoisie’s economic attacks.
When the coalition led by Syriza assumed office after January’s election it claimed that it would end austerity. Many naively believed that this was possible. The negotiations with the Troika were undertaken in an atmosphere of charge and counter-charge. However, as the June 30 deadline approached, when Greece would default if there was no agreement producing new funds, it seemed as though agreement was imminent. But the Greek government walked out of talks a few days before the deadline. Even after the deadline Syriza continued to make concessions on the measures proposed by the Troika.
In the end the sticking points were matters of detail. The Greek government accepted most of the proposed changes to VAT, with the exception of the special treatment of the Greek islands. It accepted most of the attacks on pensions, but not all. On defence cuts there were initially no concessions made by Syriza at all. After all national defence is one of the central concerns of every capitalist state, whether led by a party of the left, right or centre. In the end what was offered by the Greek state was close to what was demanded by the Troika.
As far as the austerity experienced in Greece over the last five years is concerned the prospect is only for the situation to worsen. The US and the IMF might speak more of restructuring debt relief, the EC/ECB more of the particular measures that must be introduced, and Syriza more about the suffering of the Greek people. No one can offer any improvements in the actual conditions of life of those living in Greece. Both Yes and No campaigns, apart from describing the impossible horrors of supporting the other side, insisted that following them would restore Greek pride. Both sides posed things in terms of the Greek nation, the Greek people and the Greek economy. Nationalists tell us that Greek workers should be proud of the fact that the Greeks work among the longest hours in Europe, despite the fact that this shows them to be among the least productive. The quality of Greek agriculture is often extolled, and yet 70% of food consumed in Greece is imported. In the final analysis Greek capitalism has proven uncompetitive and has lost out to larger and stronger economies. The problems of the Greek economy are not due to the particular Hellenic problems of corruption and the non-payment of taxes (widespread though they are), but are an expression of the international crisis of decadent capitalism.
In reality in Greece there is no prospect for a reduction in unemployment, many taxes rise, wages and pensions will be further reduced, the age of retirement will go up to 67, and further public services will decline because of a lack of viability. In practice, for all their talk of opposition to austerity, Syriza have shown themselves in continuity with the governments of New Democracy and Pasok that preceded it.
If the population in Greece has suffered the rigours of sustained austerity, it is not unique. The economic crisis of capitalism, as it worsens, always means the capitalist class will make the working class, and other non-exploiting strata of the population, pay … in reduced wages, lost jobs, higher prices, cut services, and ultimately in imperialist war. The anti-austerity rhetoric of parties such as Syriza is exposed as just so many words as soon as they are part of government.
But the working class does not only suffer from privation and pauperisation, it also faces capitalism’s ideology and its apparatus of democracy. In Greece, in the past there have been many general strikes ‘against austerity’, but these have been very much initiated, controlled and divided by the rival union federations. Far from developing any sense of class identity or the possibility of autonomous action, the unions have pulled the workers into relying on factions in parliament and supported the parties of the left. In the past this meant the social democrats Pasok and the Greek Stalinists (KKE), more recently it’s meant Syriza.
The fierce polarisation of Greek bourgeois politics continues to draw in the working class. Coups and counter-coups in the 1920s and 30s, the dictatorship of Metaxas, the Civil War in the 1940s, the regime of the colonels (1967-74), the emergence of Pasok and New Democracy – all these past expressions of divisions within the ruling class have found workers rallied behind factions of the bourgeoisie rather than against it.
Although the question posed in the referendum was of Byzantine complexity, the answer was reduced to a choice between ΝΑΙ or ΟΧΙ (Yes or No). ΟΧΙ is not a neutral term in modern Greek culture. Every 28 October in Greece is ΟΧΙ Day, a national holiday celebrating the refusal of Metaxas of an ultimatum from the Axis powers and the entrance of Greece into the Second World War. In Greece today the political parties of the bourgeoisie compete to display their nationalist credentials. None of them can offer anything but further austerity and war.
It will be a great step forward for the working class when it realises that its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. In the past there have been political minorities in Greece that have defended the perspectives of working class revolution. During the 1940s the group around Agis Stinas defended an internationalist position against the Second World War. More recently there were internationalist voices during the social movements of 2009-2011 The way forward for the working class in Greece, even if it is not an immediate prospect, is to link its struggles with those of the world working class and to develop a truly internationalist and revolutionary perspective.
Car 4/7/15
The British economy is growing. The latest GDP growth was 2.9% with a predicted growth of 2.4% for 2015 (The Economist, 4.7.15). At the same time average pay has increased faster than inflation in the year to March, in other words the fall in real wages has been halted. However, this does not tell the whole story and the economy in both the UK and the world, despite having emerged from the deep recession of 2008, remains fragile.
“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”[1]. Britain has become a low productivity economy, with output per worker per hour lagging behind Italy and Canada, and way behind France, Germany and the USA. A US worker can do in 3 weeks what will take a worker in the UK a month. It was improving at approximately 1.75% a year, or slightly faster than the rest of the group of 7 countries, until the start of the recession in 2007, since when productivity has stagnated in Britain although not in the other advanced countries, widening the gap. The loss of the improvement in productivity has been across the spectrum of economic activity particularly in manufacturing, but not excluding services. These sectors have seen either a very significant fall in productivity improvement, or a loss of productivity, since then. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has noted a 0.3% increase in hourly productivity in the first quarter of this year, or 1.3% in the year to the end of March.
Whether or not this improvement is sustained, 8 years of stagnation has left productivity approximately 16% lower than it would have been if it had continued improving at the previous rate. This does not mean workers would be an average of £5,000 better off if productivity had continued to grow as before – it was the recession that caused the stagnation in productivity because capital could no longer produce and sell so many products or services profitably. In fact some employers kept workers on through the recession, often at reduced pay, in the expectation of future growth so that unemployment did not rise so fast or so high as in previous recessions, which contributed to the initial fall in productivity at the start of the recession. This was accompanied by the cut in investment during the recession, leaving workers using fewer and more out of date machines.
Low productivity in Britain is also a long term problem that dates back to the start of the open crisis of capitalism at the end of the post World War 2 boom nearly 50 years ago. “Prof Haskel [of Imperial College] admits it is impossible to pin point one factor to explain why the economy has all of sudden become less efficient. Instead, he makes several conjectures. One is the slowdown in the amount of research and development undertaken by companies and the state since the 1970s compared with the immediate postwar period. As R&D’s affect on productivity has a long lag, what happened forty years ago may help to explain the productivity problem Britain faces today.”[2]
Productivity is a problem for British national capital[3]. It is something of an interminable mantra imposed in the public sector, in the NHS and in our schools, and predicted to be an important concern in the budget. It makes it harder to complete internationally. And it is driving down wages. There are dangers for the ruling class in imposing conditions of low pay, poor working conditions on a working class with strong traditions of struggle for too long – even while politicians of left and right have had some success with blaming these conditions, and unemployment, poor housing, etc. on immigration.
British national capital relies on its international trade for its survival and therefore on the health of the world economy. “In 2015, the IMF says, for the first time since 2007 every advanced economy will expand” (The Economist, 13.6.15) but hazards remain such as Greek debt and China’s shaky markets and slowing growth, as well as the Brazilian and Russian economies likely to shrink this year. “The danger is that, having used up their arsenal, governments and central banks will not have the ammunition to fight the next recession”. It’s not that The Economist is predicting a recession on the horizon, but that they tend to come along regularly in capitalism and there are all sorts of fragilities in the world economy. Including Europe’s debt and dependence on exports. The EU is Britain’s most important partner accounting for approximately 50% of its trade in goods (imports and exports) and a substantial proportion of its trade in services. While any particular business may have a greater or lesser interest in the EU, the UK cannot grow indefinitely while the Euro area lags behind, with only 1% growth according to the latest figures and 1.5% predicted for this year.
What The Economist is most concerned about is the ability of the various economies to respond to a new crisis by increasing borrowing, manipulating the Government budget balance and interest rates. After the debt accumulated since 2007 and the exceptionally low interest rates – for instance in Britain Bank Base Rate never fell below 2% until 2007, and is now at 0.5% – you can see their concern. But when base rate is close to zero “Central banks’ capacity to conduct QE [quantitative easing] is theoretically limitless … markets will tolerate much more QE than economists had thought” (The Economist, 13.6.15). Lenders remain confident that the British government can repay loans despite a £1.5 trillion debt equal to 80% of GDP.
While average pay has gone up a little higher than inflation after several years of falling real wages, some of the poorest have done very badly such as care escorts averaging £7,400 with a loss of 3.3% or retail check out staff on around £9,160 down 3.4%[4]. The income gap has only widened as the working class is made to pay for the crisis.
The government response is to continue to impose more attacks on the working class (see page 2) with cuts and restrictions in budgets for social services, schools and health and particularly on benefits. These measures, like the restrictions on immigration, are also being used to paint sections of the population as scapegoats for the problems in the economy. This is particularly the case for the attacks on working age benefits for those in work, out of work or unable to work.
Any attempt to follow the evolution of the economy naturally uses the statistics produced by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes: to help manage state policy to defend the national capital, to provide information for capitalists trying to make profitable decisions whether the economy is doing well or badly. On the other hand we are trying to follow the evolution of a decadent system, one in which the exploitative relations of production are in conflict with the forces of production, and most importantly the working class. It is not just a question of the fall in production with each recession – capitalism has always experienced that even when it was vigorously expanding across the globe – but also the fragile and anaemic recoveries or the various bubbles that follow in which the productive forces continue to be hindered. And all the while it is doing so in ways that damage both the environment and the health of the population and the working class in particular through pollution.
Alex 4.7.15
[1]. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist quoted https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41be9e38-e521-11e4-bb4b-00144feab7de.html#axz... [1322]
[3]. In this article we are taking the statistics produced by the bourgeoisie at face value. However productivity is a complex problem that goes back to the 19th century and one we will need to come back to in future articles.
As the Greek government – almost immediately after the victory of the ‘No vote’ which it had campaigned for - agreed to the intensification of austerity measures, there was genuine sympathy from workers internationally for their Greek comrades. The extent of the attacks on jobs, incomes, pensions and a whole range of essential services has struck a chord because this is not something restricted to the workers in Greece. But at the same time every part of the bourgeoisie’s political spectrum felt confident to use the situation for its own benefit, and against the consciousness of the working class, above all by distorting the real meaning of class solidarity.
The various right wing factions try to show how harmful the EU is for the defence of national interests and demonise the German government, while others continue to blame the ‘lazy Greeks’ for living beyond their means. The left, after supporting Syriza and the No vote in the referendum, still claims that capitalism can function without austerity and that their campaigns will have a different outcome to Syriza’s. At the same time they tell us that solidarity with the Greek workers means solidarity with the Syriza government against the EU.
In fact the ‘Greek crisis’ is part of a crisis facing the whole working class and is indicative of the future for all of us. Instead of following the nationalists of right and left, workers need to grasp that their interests come up against all factions of the bourgeoisie, and their struggles can only develop if they take on an internationalist, and therefore revolutionary perspective.
The soap opera which has gone on since the latest cycle of negotiations began in February has partly obscured a situation of economic catastrophe and increasingly terrible living conditions for the proletariat in Greece. The brutal pauperisation, mass unemployment and the mind-boggling fall of wages and pensions, the delays and threats of non-payments, the terrible decline of hospitals, the collapse of care and services, the drastic rationing of medicines, the proliferation of suicides and depression, the nervous tension, the dramatic spread of homelessness and even hunger and rationing following the closure of banks, all this feeds a terrible backdrop, that of the descent of capitalism into its ultimate phase, the phase of decomposition.
On the basis of the chronic economic crisis, where for the first time a western state finds itself in default of payment, we see the use of this event indecently transformed into a great theatrical spectacle with multiple twists and turns. We are once again held in suspense over this famous ‘Greek debt’ where the rivalries of the great powers are further strained and where each country tries to defend its own sordid national interests. All TV channels drag out the suspense about the possibility of ‘Grexit’ up to the fateful moment, that of the symbolic hour when the great clock is going to strike midnight: Tuesday June 30. And afterwards? Is the Greek fairy godmother going to turn into a pumpkin? No! The IMF has ‘learned’ that the Greek state could not repay 1.5 billion euros demanded of it. More acrobatics and it’s then necessary to spice up the drama even more with the referendum initiated by Tsipras and his government: are the Greeks going to vote Yes or No?
Finally, on Sunday July 5, after a series of polls carefully staged before the count, it’s No that has it.
Contrary to the exaggerations of a ‘storm of panic’ conjured up by some elements of the media in order to try to frighten the population, the better to enslave them and carry forward the attacks, the reality is rather that of a degradation of the Greek economy that’s already been bled dry for years, aggravated by the anti-working class measures of the Syriza government itself.
The result of the referendum changed nothing about that. It is for this reason that the game of the negotiations engaged in on the basis of the crisis between on the one side, the IMF, the political forces of the EU, the ECB, and on the other, the Greek government (defending its national interests) was reminiscent of the arm-wrestling which accompanies such politico-media circuses that go beyond the sphere of the economy. Faced with the gravity of the situation, the bourgeoisie has already been led to adapt and organise itself by anticipating the economic difficulties of Greece and the euro zone, as it had to do faced with the shocks and consequences of the preceding financial and banking crisis, the so-called ‘sub-primes’ of 2008. It had to react in a concerted manner so as to avoid the worse consequences of the fall of the markets.
By taking measures at the level of capitalist states and the central banks (European Central Bank or the US Fed), they supported the markets and avoided a too brutal drying up of liquidity. In fact, they are well on top of the situation of Greece. It is evident that the banks (notably the ECB) and the capitalist states have very largely anticipated events in order to organise themselves and take measures faced with the difficulties of Greece. Tsipras didn’t so much see a break with the past in the No vote as “the strengthening of our negotiating position”.
The historic decline of capitalism has, for a century now, generated a universal tendency to state capitalism, pushing this latter to the central stage at the heart of the economy. This tendency, initiated both by the necessities to face up to the growing contradictions of the system and to the need to mobilise for total war, was strongly accentuatedafter the stock market crash of 1930 and has never let up since. A whole experience has been accumulated by the setting up of Keynesian measures and perfected during the great economic convulsions of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, 1990s and ‘globalisation’, still more complex mechanisms are put to work and all sorts of palliatives and trickeries with the law of value have allowed the most powerful capitalist states to slow down the most disastrous effects of the economic crisis and, above all, to push back the most devastating effects onto weaker rival capitalist states.
In some ways Greece is already on the periphery of the EU. It is situated on the southern margins of Europe and shows all the weaknesses paradoxically and hypocritically exploited by their predatory rival states that are looking out for themselves. Well before the case of Greece, the IMF had already faced up to other catastrophic situations, as was the case in Argentina at the beginning of 2000. Let’s add however that preoccupying as the case of Greece it is, in reality it has only 1.8% of the GDP of the euro zone, which limits the ‘risks of contagion’. Moreover the private banks are largely relieved of the burden of this ‘Greek debt’ to the profit of the ECB and of the principal public actors that are the capitalist states. All this shows that the essential stakes in this whole set up have quite another political dimension.
The main reason for all the media masquerade exploiting the gravity of the situation is essentially to mystify the proletariat, to cloud its consciousness, notably to try and mask the bourgeois and nationalist nature of Syriza and the Tsipras government. It is also to give credence to the idea of a possible credible ‘alternative’ of the ‘radical left’ which is gradually emerging in Europe (the examples of Podemos in Spain, Die Linke in Germany, the NPA and the Left Front in France, etc.). This is offered as an alternative to the traditional Socialist Parties, judged as ‘traitors’ who have supposedly abandoned the ‘the values of the left’. Also the essential aim is naturally to facilitate the swallowing of the pill of austerity and the attacks on all the workers, and not only in Greece! To bring to power a fraction as ‘radical’ as the extreme left of the bourgeois political apparatus can only bring discredit to the leftist ideologies necessary for the political control of the proletariat. Much more so now that these ideologies have already been weakened since the collapse of the Berlin Wall by virtue of their support, over several decades, for the Stalinist regimes (certainly in a “critical” but none the less zealous manner for all that).
The whole set up, expressing in passing some real divergences and rivalries between the protagonists involved in the negotiations, constitutes in essence a means to preserve the radical left image of Syriza. Even if that appears paradoxical, the attitude of all involved has only consolidated the ‘intransigent’ image of the Greek government and established its will to ‘refuse the diktats of Brussels’ – an image which is also strengthened by the victory of the No. The very firm position of Angela Merkel contrasted to the will to maintain more open negotiations on the part of those European authorities with a more ‘understanding’ attitude, such as President Hollande, more ‘open to the left’ regarding Greece while remaining firm, ultimately allows the Greek government to be presented as ‘faithful to the people, categorically refusing ‘austerity’. In short, Syriza and Tsipras are confirmed as ‘heroes’ and ‘victims’ of the ex-Troika which is presented as ‘wicked capitalists’[1].
Thus, despite the brutal and growing attacks directly led by the Greek state, they are made to appear as if imposed from the ‘outside’. The Greek government which represses and pressures the proletarians as ever, this real hangman at the head of the bourgeoisie state, here finds the status of a real ‘fighter’ standing toe to toe with the capitalists to supposedly limit the ‘suffering of the Greek people’. Syriza, strengthened by this helping hand and its ‘popular support’, can thus benefits from a ‘working class’ image. And this mystification is much more efficient in that it’s been largely disseminated and supported by leftists of all types in Europe who applaud the victory of the “No” in order to back up their arguments about a so-called possible alternative to austerity: “Since January 25 2015 and the electoral victory of Syriza in Greece, the EU/ECB/IMF Troika has used unprecedented brutality in order to make the government of Tsipras capitulate, so that the popular choice to finish with austerity is ridiculed”[2].
Another major consequence of all these ideological manipulations is the accentuation of divisions within the working class. Firstly by presenting Greek proletarians as pariahs and victims, whose fate is ‘foreign’ to the other ‘well off’ workers in Europe, the media try to cut off the Greek workers from the rest of the working class. In this analysis, only the Greek workers have a ‘valid reason’ to struggle, although they are strongly recommended to accept the ‘necessary sacrifices’ in order ‘to come out of the crisis’. This perversion is all the more potent when it’s accompanied by the completely noxious addition of solidarity by the leftists who reduce the question to a simple electoral support in favour of No: “Massive mobilisations of solidarity are needed in order that confidence is increased so that a No is secured in Greece” (ibid). Such is the ‘solidarity’ of the leftists, nothing more nor less than support for the Greek government, a government which defends its sordid, capitalist, national interests! Finally, through this democratic ideology the referendum is framed and motivated; the divisions within the Greek proletariat are strengthened through the Yes/No division, even if the No carries a majority.
In the final account, as we said in one of our preceding articles:
“For the leftists to depict Syriza as some sort of alternative is utterly fraudulent. Just before the election, a group of 18 distinguished economists (including two Nobel Prize winners and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee) wrote to the Financial Times endorsing aspects of Syriza’s economic policies … As a commentator in the New Statesman (29/1/15) put it: ‘Syriza’s programme … is mainstream macroeconomics. The party is merely planning to do what the textbooks suggest.’ And so, following the textbooks, Syriza negotiated with Greece’s European creditors, in the first instance to extend the bailout and its conditions”
Syriza and the leftists who defend it, the famous Troika and its consorts, the media setting the scene, all of them are continuing their mystifications after the referendum. They all belong to the same world and that world is that of decadent capitalism. They are the political commissars, defenders of the state, and defenders of bourgeois order at the service of the most brutal exploitation.
WH. 6/7/15
[1] Ex-minister Varoufakis accused the bankers of being “terrorists”! In quitting following the referendum despite the No victory, he allowed the political apparatus to preserve a left wing faced with inevitable new measures of austerity from the Tsipras government, which makes it possible to build up its ‘real’ radicalism.
[2] According to the French leftist group the New Anti-capitalist Party
The ICC has contributed to the first Korean edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet, written 100 years ago in response to the carnage of the First World War. We are publishing the introduction written for the new edition here. In its 100 year ‘commemorations’ of the war, the ruling class and its propaganda machine offers us so many forms of apology for the massacre; revolutionaries on the other hand can take pride in celebrating the moral and intellectual courage of those internationalists who stood against the war and for the proletarian revolution.
The Junius Pamphlet was written as a first major theoretical-political analysis of the First World War which had inaugurated a world historic change. A machine of destruction was set in motion, massacring human beings on a scale never seen before. For example in the north of France and in Flanders (Belgium) within a few weeks hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed through the use of new weapons such as mustard gas. Some 20 million dead were counted by the end of the war. And immediately after the war an epidemic which later became known as “the Spanish flu” provoked the death of another 20 million exhausted and often undernourished people.
On 4 August 1914, the parliamentary group of the German Social Democratic Party voted in support of war credits. For the first time, the leadership of a proletarian party, and in this case one of the oldest and most influential parties of the Second International, betrayed the most crucial principle of internationalism: workers have no fatherland. A group of the few remaining internationalists in Germany came together in the apartment of Rosa Luxemburg and began to organise the defence of internationalism against the traitors. A year later a first international meeting of internationalists was organised in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald[1]. In response to the unleashing of the war and the betrayal of the leadership of Social Democracy revolutionaries started to put forward an analysis of the roots of the war and its consequences. Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet The Crisis of Social Democracy and the Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy which she drafted were part of these international efforts to understand the new situation for humanity and to draw out the perspectives for the work of revolutionaries. She wrote her text only a few months after the beginning of the war in April 1915, producing it in prison under the nom de guerre “Junius”. Due to the conditions of war the text could not be published immediately; only in January 1916 could it be published outside of Germany. In view of this new world historic situation her slogan was first of all: understand in depth what happened, why the war could begin and above all learn from our own mistakes. It was necessary to make a ruthless and fearless self-critique.
In several chapters of her pamphlet she analysed the historic development of capitalism. She showed how and why capitalism in its world-wide expansion had to constantly conquer new markets and how those countries which “arrived (too) late” had no other choice but to snatch away conquests from “those who had arrived first” by means of violence, i.e. war. These chapters on the ascent of imperialism illustrate the role of war in the capitalist system. She unmasked the imperialist ambitions of all states and recognised that this development was not triggered off by a single country alone. “(…) Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole” (Chapter 7).
The analysis she had put forward in the 1890s, arguing that Poland could no longer become an independent state and revolutionaries could no longer support the demand for national self-determination, was confirmed by the events of the world war. Rosa Luxemburg was amongst the first in the revolutionary camp to reject any support of national wars of defence. “Every socialist policy that depends upon this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies in the world whirlpool from the point of view of a single nation, is built upon a foundation of sand.” (Chapter 7)
The few months of war helped Rosa Luxemburg to grasp the new characteristics of this war, which would lead to the economic ruin of most of the participating countries.
After having analysed the new historical conditions, this qualitatively new phase rooted in the laws and contradictions of capitalism itself, she underlined the subjective conditions for the unleashing of war. Her conclusion: without the betrayal of the leadership of Social Democracy, the oldest and strongest workers’ party, and without the proclamation of social peace (i.e. the prohibition of strikes) in the factories, a pact which the trade unions signed with the capitalists, in short without the mobilisation of the working class for war through Social Democracy and the trade unions, the war could never have been begun.
While Social Democracy in Germany called for support for the fatherland, Luxemburg insisted on the crucial role of the working class for the ending of the war. And she warned against the pacifist hope that capitalism might eliminate its own drive to war and destruction. She recognised the danger that if capitalism continued to exist the very survival of humanity would be at risk. Humanity was faced with the alternative between socialism and barbarism.
Faced with the betrayal by the SPD leadership, the determined internationalists in Germany around Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring and others did not want to let the SPD leadership bring the whole party under its control, because the party leadership did not have the majority of the party behind it. The group round Luxemburg stood for the regroupment of all internationalist forces in the party and the preparation of a new International on a new basis. Luxemburg drafted the “Theses on the tasks of International Social Democracy” which were published as an annexe to the Junius Pamphlet and adopted with a few changes by the newly founded Spartacusbund as the guidelines of the group.
As well as offering a historical-theoretical framework for understanding the qualitatively new step taken by capitalism, Luxemburg’s pamphlet offered a political framework for the activities of revolutionaries. Its main ideas (the historical development of imperialism, the perspectives of capitalist society in its decadent phase, socialism or barbarism, the question of internationalism in the workers’ movement and the task of revolutionaries) and its method (go to the roots and clarify the principles of each question, a ruthless self-critique, the long-term view for the task of revolutionaries) are all points of reference valid not only for the period of the First World War but to this day.
The theoretical-historical foundations of the Junius Pamphlet can be found in another text, which Rosa Luxemburg wrote before World War One (The Accumulation of Capital). In this text she outlined the driving forces of capitalism, its basic contradictions and why the accumulation of capital from a certain phase on inevitably leads to war and destruction.
In the same way as the publication of The Accumulation of Capital had already provoked considerable controversy in the workers’ movement, the publication of the Junius Pamphlet also gave rise to passionate debate amongst internationalists. In particular, Luxemburg's conclusion that with the development of capitalism imperialism had become the cancer of all countries, whether big or small, and that thus the call for ‘national self-determination’ was no longer on the agenda, caused a big controversy. In the midst of the war a thorough-going debate started amongst internationalists, in which Lenin was one of the strongest critics of Luxemburg.
However, it is important to underline that this debate took place within the framework of a common internationalist standpoint, a shared perspective of proletarian revolution. The discussion about the deeper roots of the development of imperialism, of the betrayal of internationalism and the perspectives of the struggle, never prevented them from pulling in the same direction - fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist system, under the most adverse conditions of repression and exile.
In the face of this historic disaster for humanity, this betrayal by the former workers’ party, Rosa Luxemburg gave an example of the revolutionary spirit, of an unwavering, determination and a capacity to carry out theoretical-political analysis with a long-term view.
The unfolding of this unheard of level of barbarism and the betrayal of the party was a true shock for revolutionaries and led to a feeling of depression amongst some of them. Many revolutionaries in Germany were thrown into jail or driven into exile. Rosa Luxemburg herself was detained in jail for most of the war. Altogether she spent 3 years 4 months in jail during the 4 years 4 months of war. After having been thrown into prison in order to break her determination and to silence her, the reaction of Luxemburg was to fight back with the weapon of theory. She wrote the Anticritique, a reply to criticisms of her book The Accumulation of Capital. During her activities as a teacher at the German Social Democratic party school she had given courses on political economy. Now, in prison she wrote her Introduction to Political Economy using the initial material she had used as a party teacher. And she also dealt with questions of literature and culture. She wrote a foreword to the book of the Russian author Korolenko History of my Contemporary and translated his book into German. And it was from prison that she also wrote her first analysis of the Russian revolution, On the Russian Revolution, developing some first important points for a critique of the errors made by the revolution in Russia.
Of course Luxemburg suffered from being locked-up in jail, but this could never break her will or undermine her morale. It is highly inspiring to read her notes and correspondence during her time in prison. The large variety of issues that she dealt with in prison and the series of letters on art and literature give testimony to an untameable, creative spirit. “Often I do nothing else but read and write from 6 in the morning until 9 in the evening”[2].
Faced with the moral bankruptcy of capitalism and the perspective of socialism or barbarism she not only flung herself into the most determined struggle, but she also maintained her courageous spirit even after the terrible loss of people who were very close to her. She preserved her strength through her theoretical efforts, her capacity to follow other passions (such as for drawing and for botany) and through a large network of support from outside. She received food from outside of the prison (because of the bad health of her stomach, which required a special diet). Her writings were repeatedly smuggled out of prison (sometimes with the connivance of the prison guards). While in prison she corresponded with a lot of comrades, gave them advice and supported them as best as she could from behind prison walls. No prison cell could be thick enough to silence her and to prevent her from offering her support to individual people, to her comrades and to the working class as a whole. Thus her voice could be ‘heard’ outside of the prison – politically and as a human being. The day she was released from prison some 1000 workers (many of them women) waited at the prison gate for her and accompanied her home.
Her time in prison was in continuity with her whole life.
Rosa Luxemburg was born in Zamość [1326] (Poland) in March 1871 as the fifth and last child of a Jewish family. 1871 was the year of the Paris Commune and the time of the struggle within the First International against the conspiracies of Bakunin. As a 17 year old young woman the repression in Poland forced her to emigrate to Switzerland, where she studied several subjects (amongst others botany, mathematics, economics, history, and law). In 1897 she presented her doctorial thesis on “The industrial development of Poland”. Already during the 1890s, together with other comrades from Poland, she put into question the old doctrines of the Second International. She had the intellectual capacity to detect a new development in capitalism and she had the courage to conclude, against the resistance of the Second International, that Polish self-determination was no longer on the agenda. This position was at odds with the dominant position of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and in particular with Lenin
In 1898 she moved to Germany, where she joined the ranks of the SPD. Within the SPD a current had emerged, whose main representative was Bernstein, which defended the idea that capitalism had become more or less crisis free, that the transition to socialism would be possible by peaceful means. In fact Bernstein was ready to abandon the goal of the movement. Rosa Luxemburg wrote her reply, “Reform or revolution” (1899). Already during that period she was in the vanguard of the struggle against opportunism
In 1903 in her text “Stagnation and Progress of Marxism” she deplored a stagnation in the Marxist movement since the death of Marx and Engels and insisted on the need of renewed theoretical efforts, stressing that Marxism itself needed to be further elaborated.
This is why she wrote “Marxism is a revolutionary view of the world, which must constantly strive for new insights, which despises nothing so much as the fossilization of forms which are considered to be valid once and for all, and which through the intellectual weapon of self-critique and in the thunderstorms of history can best preserve its living force.” (1916)
Following the war between Japan and Russia in 1904 the first big wave of mass strikes erupted in Russia. Rosa Luxemburg was one of the first to discover the new dynamic of the class struggle in the 20th century, where the workers’ initiative becomes the distinguishing feature, and where the class struggle cannot be ‘planned’ by the apparatus of the trade unions or a party. Although she did not yet understand the role of the workers’ councils, in her book The Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions, she insisted on this mass activity. This new dynamic of the class struggle was fiercely combated by the trade unions and growing layers within Social Democracy. In close cooperation with the trade union apparatus the Social Democratic leadership issued a ban on debates about the mass strike within the party. In 1906 Rosa Luxemburg had to go to jail for 2 months, convicted of “incitement to class hatred”, after her book on the mass strike was published. The former leading figure of Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, who was known as the orthodox “Pope” of Marxism, increasingly took a position against Rosa’s radical course. During these years there was an intensification of smear campaigns and calumnies against Rosa Luxemburg as a “Jew”, “foreigner”, and “spinster”, creating trouble in the “peaceful”, “harmony-loving” Social Democracy.
At the 1907 Stuttgart congress of the Second International which was organised in response to the growing danger of war, Luxemburg, Lenin and Martov fought for a common orientation of “hastening the abolition of capitalist class rule” if the war broke out. In 1912 in her book The Accumulation of Capital she had the courage to point to the limits and contradictions in Marx’s works. Her book offers a basis for understanding the role of extra-capitalist markets and the specific function of militarism. Written barely two years before the unleashing of World War One the book offers an indispensable insight into the basic contradictions of capitalism.
As mentioned above, immediately after the betrayal of the SPD leadership in August 1914 Luxemburg became a leading figure in the struggle against war. The Junius Pamphlet was thus in direct continuity with her struggle since the early 1890s for understanding the new conditions, for offering an explanation of the political, social and economic conditions for the run up to World War One and the challenge facing the proletariat..
In 1917, still in prison, she offered a first analysis of the importance of the revolution which had just started in Russia. It was clear to her that in Russia the question of revolution could only be posed; it could not be solved in Russia itself. When Luxemburg was released from prison in November 1918 the ruling class feared her more than ever. Social Democracy above all made her the target of their campaigns against the working class. In December 1918, at the Berlin Workers’ Council she and Karl Liebknecht, the most famous of the leaders of the working class in Germany, were not allowed to participate, under the pretext that they were not workers. At the founding Congress of the German Communist Party, the KPD, at the end of December 1918, in a speech on the programme, she highlighted the historic dimension of the proletarian revolution and insisted that the revolution cannot resort to terror, but must mobilise to the full the energy and consciousness of the working class as a whole. She was one of the very few who spoke up against any immediatist illusion of a quick and easy victory against a very cunning enemy. Finally, the smear campaign and calumnies against her reached a peak in the first days of January 1919. After the crushing of the so-called Spartacus-rising in the second week of January 1919, when thousands of workers were massacred, Rosa Luxemburg was also assassinated. The ruling class finally managed to wipe out one of the most courageous and clear-sighted revolutionaries of the time.
The Junius Pamphlet remains one of her greatest works, an indispensable tool for understanding the growing barbarism of capitalism throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and for developing the perspective for its revolutionary overthrow by the exploited class.
D
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_zimmerwald.html [1327] and https://en.internationalism.org/node/3154 [1328]
[2] letter from Rosa Luxemburg to Clara Zetkin, July 1,1916
By starting a new heading of ‘Readers’ Contributions’ on our website, and occasionally in our paper, we hope to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view. The following article is a good example of what we mean: as an attempt to explore the historical origins of Islam and to situate the actions of the current ‘Islamic State’ against this background, it raises questions which are of general concern to marxists but which can also give rise to a fruitful confrontation of ideas.
Recently there have been fresh reports of the cultural destruction wrought by the IS thugs in Iraq as these ‘brave monotheists’ cast down long dead idols of past civilisations. In the process destroying links to the time when Iraq was the cradle of civilisation while making a handy profit on the black market with what they didn’t destroy. This cultural destruction and the attendant attitude of contempt for the past is not only reactionary but also completely in sync with wider trends within bourgeois society and culture both Western, ‘modern’ and ‘secular’ and in the backward view of religious fundamentalism. After all no civilisation in history has been more culturally destructive than capitalism which has destroyed almost every other culture and social form in existence.
These ‘Islamic’ gangsters want to depict themselves as modern day heirs of Moses and Mohammed, casting down pagan idols, ignoring the fact that no one worships these idols anymore and haven’t done for over a thousand years. In actuality ISIS do nothing and can do nothing to oppose the real problem of idolatry in the modern world, because they serve the very same idols as the rest of the world bourgeoisie.
Many Marxist writers including Marx himself have pointed out the connection between our concepts of alienation, fetishisation and reification with the older concept of idolatry. Erich Fromm, in his book Marx’s Concept of Man, makes the point particularly explicit when he says:
“The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols” (Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, 1961, page 39)
This is true of things which are not directly created by man as well, for example a natural object such as a tree; even an idea or experience such as success or love can become idols. This happens when they are fetishised and separated off from their true being which is always in connection with other beings and with being as a whole. This is the essence of reification, the giving of independent power and existence to something which is in reality a part of a whole or one aspect of a dialectical relation. ‘Reification’ is therefore fundamentally the same as ‘deification’ because it involves cutting off and turning a partial aspect of reality into a ‘god’.
By this reckoning modern capitalism is perhaps the most idolatrous society to date, as it is pre-eminently the society of the ‘thing’. Not only in the sense of its worship of commodities and its elevation of Profit as the jealous God of the whole human race, but also in the way that this effects its entire worldview and its whole mode of consciousness. This is not altered by the fact that this idolatry is a repressed, unconscious idolatry; in the spirit of typical bourgeois cynicism the idea that people worship things like greed, success, their own ego or any other expression of reified modern power is denied by all or at least turned into a minor criticism of ‘popular’ culture; the extent to which this ‘worship’ is hard-wired into the system itself is vehemently denied.
All three monotheistic religions began as a rebellion of the oppressed. There are numerous theories about what the true origins of Judaism were; the official founding myth of Judaism is the rebellion against slavery led by Moses. However historians disagree on how much historicity can be lent to this tale. Norman Gottwald[1] put forward a theory in the 1970s that was at first derided among mainstream historians but has gained more traction even in these circles since then: that Judaism in fact started as a ‘peasant revolt’ which aimed to ‘re-tribalise’ society (i.e. to go back towards primitive communistic ideals and practices), to avoid the necessity of the state and to create a more egalitarian and free society than the Cannanite society he claims they lived in prior to this. Whatever the case might be, it is almost certain that a rebellion of some oppressed strata was fundamentally involved. Christianity starts as a rebellion not just of ‘the Jews’ against Rome but was fundamentally a movement of the most oppressed and exploited of the time (Kautsky in Foundations of Christianity refers to the proletariat of the day, although its nature was very different from the proletariat under capitalism). This can be seen in the explicit communism of the early Christians (as well as other Jewish groups of the time such as the Essenes) which is more pronounced in Christianity than all other religions, although it is present in nearly all religions to some extent.
Islam was not a movement of the most dispossessed alone, of an equivalent to Kautsky’s proletariat. However it was certainly a movement of the oppressed; in particular it was a movement of the oppressed tribal groups, those who had not emerged to take control of the power and wealth of the newly emerging economic and social reality of 6th and 7th century Arabia. It was a movement which drew in support from all the oppressed strata of this social reality: the poor, women, orphans and widows, unprotected foreigners and slaves, and which attacked the power and the sources of wealth of the leading tribes such as the Quraish (the tribe Muhammad, although an orphan, belonged to).
Islam painted itself from the start as a return to a previous way of being. Firstly this meant that Arabs should remember their own moral codes that had been lost in the rush towards individual success and economic ruthlessness. A ‘pagan’ morality of self-interest and prideful contempt for the ‘weak’ became widespread as the emerging relations of private property eroded the tribal principles based on caring for all members of the community. War and blood feuds had also gotten out of control. This is where the newness of the Islamic morality really comes into play. The shifting influence of moral responsibility from the tribe collectively as in the traditional Arab worldview of the time to an ‘individualistic’ morality which saw the individual as alone being responsible for his/her actions in Islam reflects many contradictory historical tendencies. Firstly, it can be said to represent the growing alienation of the individual from the community; however it is a community by this point which has already degenerated and no longer fits the new historical circumstances. This expresses itself in the way that this ‘individualistic’ morality was able to help combat the prevalence of blood feuds in which one life from a tribe was seen as being interchangeable for another.
Islam was also a movement of a growing merchant class and it would be wrong to obscure or diminish this fact. Marx and Engels, in the little writing they did dedicate to the history of Islam, make the accurate observation that Islam was the ideological basis which expressed and gave body to the movement towards Arab unification and an early kind of ‘nationalism’. This unification was made possible and could only be made possible at this time through the growing importance of trade and the merchant class in general.
The fact that Islam was less radical than Christianity in its rejection of money and possessions is not only connected to the fact that Christianity was a more ‘proletarian’ movement and was therefore expressing the views of people who could see firsthand, to an extent the majority of Arabs of this time could not, the inherent problems and injustices that money and trade create. It reflects also a difference in ‘temperament’ between the two movements; Christianity was a movement of a class which, as rebellious they might have been, had no realistic way in which to establish their ‘kingdom of God’ on earth and could only imagine it coming through an apocalyptic struggle with the aid of divine intervention; the early Muslims on the other hand had a realistic programme of social reform and saw the ‘end times’ and the perfect age of righteousness as still firmly in the future, not as an immediate goal. This was why the revolution of Islam in taking power and giving rise to a new society (even if it immediately disappointed the most radical of the followers of Muhammad such as Abu Dharr, for following wealth and status and becoming like all the other kingdoms) was successful while Christianity could only be co-opted and sanitised by its enemies in the form of the Roman empire.
This is not to say that the civilisation that was established and came to dominate much of the world throughout the medieval period, as progressive as it was in many respects, would not have been a huge disappointment to Muhammad. The degree of this disappointment can be glimpsed at in particular by considering the example of one of his most radical followers, Abu Dharr, who did live to see the beginnings of this process. Abu Dharr, who was likened to Jesus in his humility and way of life by Muhammad, was a proto-communist who was exiled by the second Caliph Uthman for preaching against the slide back towards the ‘old ways’ of ostentatious and luxurious living of the powerful at the expense of the poor. Abu Dharr declaimed against this stating that: “This capital, wealth, gold and silver which you have hoarded must be equally divided among all Muslims. Everyone must share in the others' benefits in the economic and ethical system of Islam, in all blessings of life." (https://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/once_again_abu_dhar1.php#sthash.9xmYwI2A.dpuf [1329])...
The question to be posed then is what was it about monotheism that allowed it to be so closely connected to revolutionary movements. Firstly monotheism in its original sense implied a rejection of the worldly powers. The connection between ‘having power over’ and being the ‘god of’ someone was much clearer to those living in the ancient world than it is today in our so called ‘secular’ world; and in declaring that there was no ‘god but God’ as in the Islamic Shahada (declaration of faith) the early Muslims, like the early Jews and Christians, were directly challenging and rejecting the existing power structures of their times. It is obvious as well that monotheism in the case of Islam was a rebellion against the economic and social power connected with the worship of these idols. Control of the holy site of the Kaaba and the markets connected to it for example was central to the social-economic power structure of the day. This connection between ‘theological’ ideas and concrete economic and social questions was also much clearer in the ancient world than it appears today when the idolatry inherent to capitalism is hidden behind a veil of repression and ‘common sense’ and monotheism has long since been accommodated to worldly power.
Therefore not only did monotheism originally entail a rejection of the power structures, but also an attempt at a critique of the increasingly alienated economic structures and practices of the time. If we look at this question historically we see that the idea of a ‘Supreme Being’ is extremely common throughout the world and in all stages and forms of human society; and indeed Allah was just such a ‘Supreme Being’ recognised by the pre-Islamic Arab peoples as well as the Muslims. Why then does monotheism as such, i.e. a conscious and vehement denial and denunciation of all other gods, only emerge at a certain point in history? It is precisely because it is only when the economic break up and fragmentation of the tribal community had reached such a level that a symbol of a higher unity, one that goes beyond the tribal conception in that it aims to incorporate all of humanity, while also harking back to it in terms of its emphasis on solidarity and equality, can emerge.
So where do IS stand in all this and how do they relate to idolatry? How do they relate to the ‘gods’ of our times? They like to portray themselves as being the only true heirs to the original followers of Muhammad and paint their current struggle almost as a re-run of the original struggles of Muhammad. While we must denounce these claims it is also necessary to analyse them from a historical perspective in order to really understand the differences and similarities between the two movements. This is the only way to avoid the bourgeois right wing/left wing or moderate/extremist dead ends. The problem with IS and their ilk is not, as the ‘moderates’ (both Muslim and non-Muslim) claim, that they are ‘extreme’ or ‘radical’. It is precisely the opposite- it is that they are not radical at all. They do not understand let alone offer an alternative to capitalism and in fact simply represent capitalism in its most raw, undisguised gangster form.
One key similarity between IS and the original movement of Muhammad lies in the historical context. Both are expressions of the disintegration of ‘great civilisations’ and a vacuum left by the collapse or non-existence of state power; as well as the desperate search for new ways of thinking and being which these historical situations at all times produce in those living through them. However this is where the similarity ends and the key differences in the two movements is most clearly illustrated.
Whereas the early Muslims aimed to unite all of humanity into one community and in practice their movement led to an enlarging of the community and allowed massive strides forward in various fields of life, not least morality, medicine and science, IS can only offer bloodshed, oppression and a shrinking and dividing of the community to a greater and greater extent. Early Islam saw itself as not starting a new religion but as the renewal and fulfilment of all the prophets sent to all the nations of the earth through time. IS on the other hand do not even recognise fellow Muslims as belonging to their community; extreme sectarianism and xenophobia have replaced the ideas of universal brotherhood and equality which gave early Islam its impetus. IS’ ‘takfiri’ policies of denouncing all other Muslim groups and communities as well as all non-Muslims as non-believers, and hence legitimate targets of their brutal violence, are the polar opposite of the original Islamic conception and practice. IS therefore can clearly be seen to worship the idols of ‘their’ religion and ‘identity’ serving the most deadly and corrosive idol of our times in the form of nationalism (albeit disguised with a veil of hypocritical talk of the Umma, the world community of Islam)....
Norman O Brown made an accurate enough observation when he said that Marxism and Islam agree on one proposition: “there will be one world or there will be none” (The Challenge of Islam, Norman O. Brown, 2009,p 12 – a collection of lectures first given at Santa Cruz university in 1980). In the past this uniting of humanity was envisioned in many traditions including Islam as a result of the actions of a conquering hero/ prophet/messiah establishing a kingdom of peace and justice. This vision is flawed and can only be seen as a symbolic view of a change which for most of history was impossible to achieve in reality but now can only be achieved by the united self-determined force of the workers of the world. The Caliphate even in its most exalted sense cannot be a programme of progress in the present epoch for this precise reason. IS’ vision is the most extreme example of the purely negative aspect of this vision and this is reflected in the fact that despite the fact that the Quran clearly states that there can be ‘no compunction in religion’, their only hope of achieving their insane ideal is to force the whole world at gun point (including even the vast majority of Sunni Muslims whom they supposedly represent) to bow before them...
It is no coincidence that IS derives a lot of its support from ex-gang members and was actually created by an ‘ex’ gangster in Al Zakarwi. Their entire world view and practice is gangsterism; from the protection money, black market trading and intimidation which are the keys of their ‘economic model’ to their celebration of brute force, extreme violence and misogyny which make up their ‘teachings’.
This shows not only that the first and foremost god they serve, just as every other capitalist ‘nation’, gang, or individual company, is the world-eating god of profit; it also illustrates the most important difference between the present historical moment and that of early Islam. Unlike with the collapse of Roman and Persian civilisation, the collapse of capitalism will not result in any new progressive civilisations such as the Islamic (even if the eventual civilisation established under the banner of Islam would have been a massive disappointment to Muhammad himself and was an immediate disappointment to his most radical followers) or feudalism in Europe. The barbarity capitalism will produce will not be related to any organic growth coming out of any other social strata for the simple reason that capitalism has destroyed all other societies and social relations bar its own.
In contrast to this, both European feudalism and the Islamic civilization created after the life-time of Muhammad could develop tribal social models and the surrounding ‘civilized’ but collapsing societies into a new synthesis of the two, creating a new civilization and a higher form of culture.
This should remind us that there is one truth which IS and their ideology has at least an intimation of, however perverted that insight is, and that is the sheer extremity of the situation facing the world in the current epoch. The idea that these are the Last Days has much truth to it. Humanity stands at a cross-road between world revolution and the creation of a world-wide communist community or the gradual (or not) destruction of huge swathes (if we are lucky) of life on earth. Those proletarians who have been fooled by IS are not all simply ‘mad’ or stupid as they are portrayed in the bourgeois press. They are having their real insights and healthy instinctive opposition to and will to fight against this situation corrupted and led into a dead end by one sect among thousands of bourgeois ideologues. The simplistic claim by ‘the moderates’ of all stripes that ‘Islam is a religion of Peace’ hides the truth that IS corrupts; that the movement of Muhammad and the prophets before him were movements of struggle; a sometimes violent struggle against oppression and alienation and against the false gods which support them. We do not aim to re-fight their battles nor make a fetish of the past as all religion does to some extent; but we are the inheritors of the dreams of the past, charged with the task of making them flesh; and to do that we need to understand them.
Jaycee 3/7/15
[1] The Tribes of Yaweh, A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050BCE, New York, 1979
After four years of the war in Syria and around a year since the establishment of the “Caliphate” of the Islamic State, a new turn by Turkey, fully backed by the forces of NAT0, sees it enter the war, dumping its previous jihadi allies and turning its fire on its Kurdish “partners in peace”. Up to now Turkey has, at the very least, been extremely tolerant of the jihadi forces, allowing them to travel through its border to fight its enemy, the Assad regime in Syria. Isis leaders have been seen openly swaggering around Turkish cities and resorts. Its wounded fighters have received hospital treatment and sent back to the battlefields (as Israel does for al-Nusra[1]) and Turkish cops that have arrested high status Isis members have themselves been thrown into prison. Also, going back years, there were credible reports that, with the assistance of Turkish intelligence (MIT), planeloads of jihadis and heavy weaponry from Libya organised by the CIA were landing in Turkey and crossing its border into Syria to fight Assad’s troops and its Hezbollah proxies. Though all this rarely came out into the open there is no doubt that it caused considerable tensions within NATO, of which Turkey is a member, and greatly strained Turkish/US relations even though US agencies were also involved in supporting the jihadis. A number of questions are raised by Turkey’s new front: why this turn now by Turkey? What does this mean for the Turkish/Kurdish “peace process” and its two-year old “cease-fire”? Are there any elements within the forces of Kurdish nationalism that represent the interests of the working class in any way? Will this move lead to any sort of halt or alleviation in the descent of the whole region into instability and war?
On July 20 a suicide bomb attack in Suruc, close to the Turkish/Syrian border killed 32 young activists and injured many others working for or in liaison with the leftist group, the Federation of Socialist Youth. The suicide bomber, a jihadi-supporting Kurd, was rapidly identified by the MIT and it is quite possible that Turkish intelligence itself was involved in the bombing. It has a track record in such (Reyhanli, 2013) and while “who profits from the crime” doesn’t always work out, it does most times. And there is no doubt that, whoever was behind it, the ruling AKP clique of President Recip Erdogan has used the bombing in order to bolster its internal position and the defence of Turkish imperialist interests as it sees them. Erdogan’s AKP, like any nationalist gang, is trying to protect its own interests within the state; but it seems to very much have the backing of the Turkish military and the secret services, both vital for its continual position of power. Clearly Isis is not a stable ally but talks between the Turkish state and the US administration about a serious confrontation with an expanding Isis began soon after the Turkish election in June when the AKP was shocked to see its overall majority lost and the rise of the Kurdish-friendly People’s Democratic Party (HDP) which received 13% of the vote and appeared to be on a political roll. Further tensions have been growing in Erdogan’s party, along with the Turkish military, while it has watched the Kurdish army of the YPG[2] (the “People’s Protection Units”, the fighting wing of the PYD[3] and PKK in the Byzantine organisation of Kurdish nationalist forces) acting as the closest ally of the US in its attacks on Isis. It is probably a combination of these two elements: the domestic electoral problems of the AKP and the rise of the YPG and the strengthening of its positions along the Turkish/Syrian border, that has concentrated Turkish minds and directed it into some sort of understanding with the US over the availability of its air-bases to US fighter-bombers and armed drones, particularly the air-base at Incirlik, in order to pursue its bombing missions against Isis in Syria.
In the days after the Suruc bombing, Turkish fighter-bombers and artillery hit one or two Isis positions and scores of PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) positions inside Turkey, northern Iraq, as well as YPG positions on the Syrian border (BBC World News, 3.8.15). The ferocity of Turkish attacks against the Kurds, and their disproportionality in relation to attacks on Isis, show the real intentions of the AKP. Overall, the whole situation is a complete can of worms and expressive of the decay of international relations and the weakness of US imperialism: a NATO member openly supporting the Isis Caliphate; elements of a branded Kurdish terrorist organisation being the American’s closest ally in fighting Isis; for the umpteenth time US-trained and equipped forces (see note 4) taken over by the ever-growing jihadi forces; Turkey allowing Isis free-range both sides of the border with Syria here, while Turkey and the US “advisors” train anti-Isis forces elsewhere in the country. And within this the divergences and tensions between the various (and many) Kurdish factions – the PKK, the YPG and the northern Iraqi government of Masoud Barzani’s Iraqi Kurdistan among others. There is an utter absurdity to the whole situation which is the hallmark of much of imperialism today.
Like any capitalist “cease-fire” or “peace process”, the one between the Turkish state and the Kurdish PKK are just moments of pause in the intensification of imperialist war and further violence. This was confirmed in the fact that just after the Suruc attack the Turkish authorities arrested just a handful of Isis fighters and launched just a few air assaults against Isis positions, while its attacks on Kurdish interests and the general repression that this entailed against the population was widespread. Just a few days after the Suruc attack, Turkish military helicopters launched a scorched earth policy against Kurdish/PKK areas in southern Turkey, burning crops, livestock and houses, while setting up military checkpoints and arresting anyone considered suspicious (The Times, 5.8.15). For its part the forces of Kurdish nationalism immediately launched attacks against the Turkish military. These included sabotage actions which killed at least one Turkish railway worker in the eastern province of Kars (AP, 31.7.15). And, like any “resistance” force, these sorts of attacks are intrinsically divisive and invite general retribution onto the Kurdish population. Under the cover of an attack on Isis, the real target for the Turkish authorities is an attack on Kurdish interests which, amongst other things, it calculates could raise the force of Turkish nationalism and increase the chances of a probable AKP majority in the case of a new election, thus giving an open mandate to the ruling clique. At any rate, the last thing that the Turkish state wants in the longer term is the proclamation of a new Kurdish state, which would turn out to be another ethnic “Caliphate”; another nationalist abomination, another peculiar statist structure expressive of the ambient decomposition around the region. Ethnic clans and religious clans have their own specificity certainly, but they are also much the same thing: capitalist bodies which crush the interests of the working class. And this generally applies well beyond the Middle East and throughout the whole capitalist world. Look at the latest nation state of capitalism, the Republic of South Sudan which gained its independence in 2011. The local gang, its leadership, was backed and set up with considerable support, intelligence, military assistance and funding from the major countries of the west and has, almost immediately, collapsed into a heap of warfare, internecine strife, corruption and gangsterism.
There are major implications in these latest events for NATO. Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO at 700,000 strong and its turn against “terrorism”, Isis and the PKK, has been welcomed by the US-dominated force knowing the assistance that Turkey can give, not only in making its bases available but in freeing the Isis-controlled area between the Turkish border and Aleppo in Syria[4] as well as weakening Kurdish influence along the border. Turkey is acting here from a certain position of strength in dealing with the US with the latter running out of options. NATO, despite some differences and misgivings inside it, welcomed Turkey’s moves with open arms in an Extraordinary Meeting in Brussels on July 28. Despite some lukewarm words about laying off the Kurds, words subsequently completely ignored by Ankara, the NATO Secretary General summed up the sentiments of the meeting of 28 ambassadors:”We all stand united in condemning terrorism, in solidarity with Turkey” (Jens Stoltenberg, Independent, 29.7.15). The immediate quid pro quo for Turkey could well be more Patriot missiles, intelligence and logistic assistance from the US. A further concession from the US that looks on the cards, after being resisted by the latter for some time, and one that would boost the AKP, would be the establishment of a “safe-zone”, a “buffer-zone” across the Turkish/Syrian border which is presently largely controlled by the YPG. The actual proposed territory would split YPG-held territory in half and would be entirely occupied by the Turkish military. This would be a “no-fly zone” in everything but name. It would represent an invasion of Syria and a further escalation of the war as well as a possible stepping stone to further Turkish “activity” in Syria. From this potential annexation of Syrian territory (in actual fact a country called “Syria” no longer exists) it would be possible to launch further attacks, though this is not immediately on the cards.
Just as workers’ cooperatives and self-management of the factory, with the best will in the world, cannot escape the laws of capitalist production, just as national liberation “struggles” immediately fall into the maws of imperialism, so any nationalist, proto-nationalist or ethnic movement can only take on functions of a capitalist state. And this very much applies to the “libertarian” turn of the PKK and its ideas of a federalisation of “mini-states” representative not of any coherence but, on the contrary, of the global capitalist process of breakdown and fractionalisation. As such it can only be detrimental to any independent expression of the working class.
On the libcom website on a thread about Turkey[5], a supporter of the ethnic Kurds, one Kurremkarmerruk, asks where is there any demand or anything that the Kurdish liberation movement has made that calls for a state. We’ve already looked at the question of any new states in a wider context but in the late 80s the PKK moved from a “proletarian orientation” (by this Kurdish nationalism meant Stalinist-type organisation) from a model “of the national state with its own government” to a form of “communal social life with the freedom of women”. Leaving aside the sexual predation of women rife in the PKK, the new-found “freedom of women” is largely expressed in their equality as cannon-fodder in Kurdish involvement in imperialist war. The new Kurdish “anti-authoritarianism” and “communalisation in which the individual is paramount” within a federation is nothing but another form of capitalist relation with an anarchist tinge – perfectly compatible with an ethnic or national liberation movement[6]. There is nothing at all here that questions class society or imperialist war; on the contrary, both are strengthened by Kurdish nationalist desires for a place in the “international community”. Since World War I Kurdish nationalism and ethnicity has made its people pawns and cannon-fodder in wider imperialist Great Games. This ethnic framework certainly has nothing to do with marxism, nor any element of the workers’ movement. The PKK is based on terror, not least against its own population. It is based on ethnic exclusion and has often played a role on the imperialist chessboard. Like so many “national liberation” movements it was completely undermined both materially and ideologically by the collapse of Stalinism in the late 80s and nothing of this has changed given that the “socialist” YPG element was until very recently the closest ally of US imperialism in the region. In the past ethnic Kurdish interests have been used by Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Germany, Britain and Greece. It has also embraced and extended the capitalist values of democracy and pacifism. Any nationalist or ethnic movement, even or especially “federalised”, is essentially and fundamentally a statist organisation working within capitalism and its imperialist forces. The defence of Kurdish ethnicity, like any other, is based on exclusion. Whatever the leftist mystifications and language, the “common homeland”, an entirely capitalist structure, remains the aim of Kurdish ethnicity.
It now seems that the Erdogan/AKP clique, with the military behind it, has had enough of the “peaceful and democratic” rise of the Kurds within the “international community” (i.e., the imperialist chessboard) and decided to go onto the offensive against it while strengthening the position of his party within the state. And Kurdish forces in their turn will present this as an attack on its so-called “socialist principles” and take further part in its “war of self-defence” thus acting as a further division of the working class.
For the working class of the major capitals both inside and outside the region, the generalisation of this war and its expressions are a great cause for concern, not least from the involvement of their “own” states and the spread of militarism generally. Overall for the local populations of the Middle East and around it is grim with the certainty of more war, violence, chaos and instability. Isis is extending its Caliphate, and like forces are coming to meet it, while, at another level, the weakening of US imperialism persists and it is this which has allowed Turkey to take this new, aggressive step. It was a weakness in the first place for the US to rely on Kurdish forces, a development which to some extent precipitated this present stage of the crisis. And, in the immediate, Turkish attacks on the Kurds can only weaken the fight against Isis. There are further dangers here. After a year of coalition bombing up to this July, 5000 airstrikes, 17000 bombs dropped and, at least, hundreds of civilians killed to add to the carnage and Isis relatively unscathed and further entrenched, Obama has now authorised blanket air coverage for its ground forces in Syria (World Socialist Website, 4.8.15). The problem for the Americans is that the ground forces that they can rely on in Syria are currently non-existent. The further complication in this respect is that the Assad regime has a very sophisticated, Russian-made, air-defence missile system.
Into this mix of irrationality, ethnic and religious rivalry overseen by imperialism and the development of each for themselves, the weakening of US influence and reach has helped force the latter to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran that has much wider consequences and implications. This deal will impact on Turkey, the other regional powers, Russia and much wider afield. We will return to the elements of the US/Iranian deal and its implications at a later date.
Boxer, 8.8.15
[1] Last October, Middle-East analyst Ehud Yarri talked about Israel’s relationship with al-Nusra -www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/tough-dilemma-in-southern-syria [1331].
[2] The Wikipedia website of the YPG paints a rosy picture of “socialists” and tolerance. The honeyed words are belied by its ethnic coherence and its military “cleansing” of Arab areas, such as the town of Tal Abyad where 50,000 were forced out by the military advance of the YPG in June this year and have now joined the millions of refugees made homeless by the war. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/7/2/kurds-lead-campaign-to-displace-arabs-in-tal-abyad [1332]. The YPG is clearly part of an imperialist army and, as such, has ethnic cleansing as part of its job description.
[3] Like the war in Ukraine, many elements of anarchism supporting the YPG and the so-called “Rojava revolution” show their backing for imperialist war. See https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201412/11625/anarchism-and-imperialist-war-nationalism-or-internationalism [1333]
[4] The particular hope for “independent” US-trained forces undertaking this has already suffered yet another setback with a US-trained, Turkey-based non-Jihadi, anti-Assad force of fighters, Division 30, kidnapped by the forces of al-Nusra (Independent, 31.7.15). No doubt to be traded to Isis, interrogated, tortured and then their fate is sealed.
The International Communist Current is organising a day-long public meeting in London on October 10 2015. There will be two sessions:
Venue: The Lucas Arms, 245A Gray's Inn Rd, London, WC1X 8QY
The event is free but we welcome contributions to the cost of the room and food.
By starting a new heading of ‘Readers’ Contributions’ on our website, and occasionally in our paper, we hope to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view. The question of art is clearly such an issue, and we welcome Boxer’s effort to deepen our understanding of the marxist approach to humanity’s creative productions.
The main purpose of this article is to bring the work of Max Raphael into the field of contemporary marxist attention and discussion where it belongs. The bourgeoisie calls many of its intellectuals “marxist”, which not only serves to give them a sheen of credibility but usually helps to debase genuine marxist contributions. Many learned individuals have important things to say around the various ideological spheres that have grown up around society and this is to be expected. But unlike the bourgeois “marxists” who pronounce on the ideologies of the ruling class, the views of Max Raphael are very clear on the necessity of the revolutionary overthrow of a corrupt and destructive capitalism by independent working class action, and this fact alone leads us to express an interest in trying to understand his works. Raphael wrote dozens of books and many more papers on art, mostly in French and German with a few in English. He said that if one wanted to understand his views on art then all of them should be read. We can’t do that or even approach it, but we can draw out some elements in order to give us a deeper perspective on art within a framework of the workers’ movement.
Art is a difficult question for marxists and this is reflected in the lack of positions from the political sphere in general, often in the face of much more pressing necessities. It is difficult and complex but it is an important part of society and elements of it have been covered by marxism, including Trotsky, by the ICC drawing out some salient points in its “Communism” series and in the excellent text by MH on this website, “Notes towards a history of art in ascendant and decadent capitalism”[1] which also refers to these previous contributions. In fact a short quote from Trotsky’s “Art and Politics in our epoch”[2], mentioned in MH’s text, indicates how Raphael approaches the question of art. The framework of the quote from Trotsky, quite correctly, is the drive towards destruction by decaying capitalism of everything that’s been built up within it, including art; an art, according to Trotsky, which will be destroyed “as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture based on slavery”. Now while the content of the quote is apt in the framework of decay, it’s obviously not the actual case that Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of Greek society. On the contrary, it persisted with strength, became incorporated into artistic developments and was revived again and again and still fascinates us today. Trotsky himself points to the complexity of the issue in his 1923 Communist Policy Towards Art: “...art must make its own way by its own means”. This begins to point to the nub of the problem: what is the relationship of this ideological sphere which is art to the economic substructure of society[3]? This is the question that Max Raphael addresses over all his works; it is his mission to try to address it in all its glory. In his text MH clearly shows the relationship between an ascendant capitalism that used art to decorate and promote the consolidation of its dictatorship, and its decay which turned what art there was mostly into trash.
Marx, in a profound quote below, puts the whole question of the relation of the ideology (art) to the economic and political substructure (the productive basis) to the test and Raphael takes up the problem posed from here applying the marxist method to it with some rigour.
Max Raphael was born in Germany in 1889 and studied philosophy and art at university. He also studied some of the writings of the workers’ movement including Marx and Engels. He was conscripted into the German army for the First World War and there are reports that he deserted in 1917. He led an austere and difficult life, suffered racial and political persecution and held no official academic position in the art world from whose cultural hierarchies he was completely isolated. In the 1920’s he was kicked out of Berlin’s Volkshochule after the directorate heard that his unofficial lectures on art included dialectical materialism. Despite, or rather because of, the unparalleled contribution that he was making to a critique of art and society he, as one later art commentator described, “scourged” the art institutions of both the democratic west and The Palace of Soviets. All sides treated him with suspicion and it was just a small group of friends and unofficial pupils that kept his work alive. He fled persecution in Germany in the 30’s for France where he met Picasso, Matisse and Rodin in Paris, but he never owned a work of art. He made visits to Sicily and Greece, where he studied Doric architecture and visited many art galleries, which he described as “mausoleums”. He was interned twice in France in camps for Jews and dissidents and after the second time fled to America where, living on his wife’s wages as a cleaner in New York City, he committed suicide in 1952. Some of his statements could be taken as support for anti-fascism but he was pursued by the Nazis in Paris and his critique of Picasso’s Guernica, an artist whom he called “the greatest of our time”, by no means follow the anti-fascist narrative. His study of Guernica, when it was on loan to New York, took days and he literally studied it from every angle. He was daring and thorough in his analyses and his starting point was both the general historical conditions, what was the weight of their application to the art produced and, from another direction within the ideology, what is the intrinsic nature of the artist, the effect of society on him, his materials and the work of art itself?[4]. Going from the single artist, the weight of society on the individual and the original “idea” for a work, how do you also factor in the developing altered state of consciousness that grips the artist? On the ferment within the artist, Raphael, in his The Demands of Art, quotes Paul Cezanne, an artist who pretty much had his feet on the ground, on his state of mind when painting: “I am in such a state of cerebral agitation, in an agitation so great, that at one point I was afraid it would engulf my reason” (Letter to Emile Barnard while painting the landscape of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Cezanne, incidentally, despised capitalism and talked of the future emergence of “a truly revolutionary art”. How do you square all this? How do you take all these factors, subjective and objective, into account? The answers to these questions lie in the complexity of their dialectical relations. Art won’t change the world and Raphael is clear that this task belongs to other forces. But the struggle to understand art is for him part of “the struggle for a social order in which everyone will have the fullest opportunity to develop their creative capacities”[5]. At the end of the section on Picasso, in his book Proudhon, Marx, Picasso[6], Raphael talks about the inability of the modern artist to be able to express any revolutionary content in an “... epoch torn apart by contradictions” -and how could they when stuck within a bourgeois framework? Raphael is referring to Picasso in this next quote from the same work but his words here have a much wider resonance: “Thus, what has not yet been born is in a sense already outmoded, for the motive force of history is already on the other side of the barricade. The mere fact that there is a proletariat conscious of its class and struggling for it – however little this fact has entered the artist’s consciousness and sphere of experience – already today deeply influences the subconscious of the intellectual worker. The need for a new, integral work of art adapted to a new social order, makes itself felt in all his creations. But all the convulsions and all the individual sufferings of a bourgeois genius will be inadequate to meet this need”.
With Trotsky’s quotes above, which Raphael is unaware of as far as I can see, there’s a certain ambiguity towards art: that Greek art is “buried” but that art must also “find its own way”, the latter implying some sort of independent existence. This, I think, is representative of the fitful approach that, by necessity, marxism has taken towards the development of art. Engels recognised the problem of the question of the relations of the superstructure, art in this case, to the economic core. To make the issue more complex – and ultimately more rewarding – then the superstructures, the ideologies of society do not have the same relationship to the base but, further, have complex relationships between themselves. Raphael quotes Engels in this respect: “... In the first instance we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from economic facts. But at the same time we have on account of the content neglected the formal side the manner in which these notions, etc., come about”[7]. Engels regularly returns to this question in the 1890’s in his correspondence with Paul Ernst, Joseph Bloch, W. Borgius and Conrad Schmidt – all quoted by Raphael in the section on Marx in Proudhon, Marx, Picasso. For Engels the relationship of art to the political economy is one that cannot be charted easily and mechanically. There is a relationship but it doesn’t take a parallel course: it diverges, moves in zigzags, can be far apart or closer but, generally, over the course of time the relationship exerts itself. The nature of this relationship, the relationship between subject and form, matter and spirit, the levels that they reach in the totality of their relations, their interdependence or not, is the question that Max Raphael deals with in some detail.
He quotes Marx in respect of the above: “In order to examine the connection between spiritual production and material production it is above all necessary to grasp the latter itself not as a general category but in its definite historical form. Thus for example different kinds of spiritual production correspond to the capitalist mode of production and to the mode of production of the Middle Ages. If material production itself is not conceived in its specifically historical form, it is impossible to understand what is specific in the spiritual production corresponding to it and the reciprocal relationship of one on the other. Otherwise one cannot get beyond inanities”[8].
From what I’ve read of Raphael he was greatly motivated by the statement from Marx in his introduction in Grundrisse where the problem is posed more clearly (in a sense): “But the difficulty lies not in understanding that Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as the norm and as an unattainable model.
A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in a child’s naivety, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the underdeveloped stage of society on which it grew...”[9]. There’s a great deal in this quote but in relation to art this follows on from Marx’s statement a couple of paragraphs earlier in his introduction explaining that, in certain periods, the flowering of art is out of all kilter with the material foundation of society and its general development. “...certain periods of the highest development of art stand in no direct connection with the general development of society, nor with the material basis and skeletal structure of its organisation”. He further talks about the different elements in the domain of art itself and how they influence one another, and predates Raphael in saying that within this domain whatever hasn’t yet been born is already outmoded.
There was very little motivation (and time) to move Marx and Engels in the direction of art but what they did say about the question takes us forward in leaps and bounds and particularly on the way we approach it. Idealist philosophy a la Proudhon is of no use here, relying as it does on its fundamental a priorism. In relation to the problem posed by Marx and the “eternal nature” of Greek art, founders of historical and dialectical materialism were not impelled to delve further into the question of art. Raphael writes in The Marxist Theory of Art: “Moreover, those who wanted to treat these problems empirically had no exact science available to help them. Aesthetics was unusable, consisting as it does of a mixture of metaphysical deductions and empirical findings which are determined by the deductive method rather than by objective laws; on the other hand, the history of art, to the extent that one may be said to have existed, was concerned with a host of external manifestations rather than with the phenomenon of art itself”. Raphael himself finds aesthetic values useful for art in general with its “normative values” and the “aesthetic values” of play (and sexuality) in relation to art.
the study of the mind, right up to today, remains crude and the line between subjective emotion and scientific method difficult to draw. You could say that art developed in a certain aloof, autonomous manner “away” from society – in fact in one of his letters Engels uses the term “the relative autonomy of art”. More than that, art also has certain relationships with other ideologies as well as relationships within the different domains of art itself. Again Raphael quotes Engels: “Political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause and solely active, whereas everything else is only passive effect. On the contrary, interaction takes place on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always exerts itself”[10].
The “eternal charm” of Greek art in Marx’s 1857 introduction to Grundrisse, is a long way from, a lot more complex than Trotsky’s idea of Greek art being interred under ruins. And it is from this passage of Marx that Max Raphael sees the most important tool for building up a marxist theory of art. This passage from Marx is no simple statement but the posing of a fundamental problem and from it Raphael attempts to show that dialectical materialism can provide the way for going forward in the face of all the apparent contradictions. For him a detailed analysis of the statement by Marx “... will show that dialectical materialism, providing it is applied correctly, supplies us with the means for successfully overcoming all such initial obstacles as arise from social and individual factors, and for going forward to a theory and sociology of art. This method also enables us to eliminate the almost inevitable drawbacks of the initial situation, namely the fact that art and the pseudo-scientific method for dealing with it serve as a metaphysical refuge for the reactionary bourgeoisie and, at the same time, afflict all superficial, and hence dogmatic, Marxists with a kind of anxiety neurosis”[11]. If an “eternal charm” exists, despite changed historical, social and economic conditions, then there must be an eternal source to it. So the task for marxism is to produce something of an accurate analysis of the spiritual process that connects historical conditions with “eternal charms”; that is, according to Raphael, “the values created by mankind transcending the limits of a given epoch”. The problem remains unsolved. Marx excluded religion from communism because it sets limits on the creative ability of mankind and diverts action away from class struggle by preaching class collaboration. But he certainly saw art as part of a new society, because while it could also have an opiate effect it could also be a powerful weapon. Art is a synthesis of nature (with history) and the human mind and in its expression it acquires a certain autonomy from both.
Following Marx and Engels, there’s no vulgar “art comes from the economy” from Raphael. For him there are three important questions posed by the quote from Marx above:
Mythology is a force created by mankind in order to try to subdue, control and affect the forces of nature. This is especially true of Greek mythology where the myths were accepted by the same people with the same cultural background, from the same economic order expressing a single collective character of the beginnings of the unconscious process from which art arises. Marx also said that mythology was an intermediate historically determined link which disappears when mankind gains mastery over nature; and in the section on Marx in his book Raphael goes into great detail about mythology. Greek mythology was a generally understood product of a single people’s imagination and its symbolic power is a bridge to a generally shared understanding. The symbol, for Raphael in The Demands of Art, “...for all its visible finitude, points to the infinite: it is a sensory synthesis of the finite and the infinite and hence has a character of necessity. Allegory (such as used by Picasso in Guernica for example, B) is merely a metaphor for the gulf between the two and hence always arbitrary. It leads to dogma rather than a dialogue between the self and the world”. Because of its specifics here this could be expressed with Greek art and not with Egyptian art for example, because the latter’s mythology was produced and mediated by a priestly caste. Later on, according to Raphael, Christianity and Christian art tried to join the forces of natural, popular development and priestly organisation. There’s no doubt about the assimilation and use of barbarian (i.e., non-civilised) art by Christianity and expressions of Christian art.
All we’ve done here is taken a superficial view of Max Raphael’s analysis but they are nevertheless very important steps for beginning to develop a marxist view of art. I hope to return to these questions above, particularly the deeper elements of his book Proudhon, Marx, Picasso. But for now Marx saw Greek art as an expression of the “Historical childhood of humanity... its beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return” expressing an “eternal charm”. How much more then does this apply to a much earlier “childhood” expression of art that Marx and Engels knew nothing about: Upper Palaeolithic cave art. We will look at this particular expression and Raphael’s analysis of it in the next part [1337] of this series.
Boxer, 4.2.15
[3] An explanation of the word “ideology” is necessary here. Raphael uses the term in relation to the domain of art in the same way that Marx and Engels use the term: ideology, in this case the ideology of art, is a superstructural element coming from the economic base in the same way that science, law, politics, philosophy, etc., are ideologies possessing elements of their own laws and history, affecting spheres within themselves, other ideologies and, to some extent, the economic base in a dialectical process. For Raphael, there is, following Marx, a relative independence of these ideological expressions and Engels talks of the “relative independence and relative autonomy of art” whose relationship to the economic base is neither mechanical nor linear but one which does ultimately assert itself as one of dependence.
The origins of art are obscure and inaccessible but it is very likely that they lie very much in the basic productions of society: clothes, shelter, food, etc. Art is part of humanity’s spiritual production with its dialectical relationship to material production.
For Marx the problem raised in this case is the dependence of spiritual production upon material production and Raphael (in Proudhon and the Sociology of Art says that “(for) Marx ideologies reflect material production in the human mind, the more or less illusory character of this reflection being ultimately determined by the class struggle”. The essential question posed by Marx in Grundrisse, and the one that Raphael begins to address, is that if there is an “eternal nature” to Greek art then what is its essence given that the economic basis of that society has long since passed?
Ideology in the marxist sense equals superstructure . The Italian communist left sometimes referred to marxism, historical materialism, as “ideology”. But what’s distinct about the ‘ideology’ of marxism - so distinct as to make the term ideology inadequate to describe it - is that it is the theory of class which has no need to mystify reality, and thus has a unique capacity to approach the relationships between ideology, ideologies and the economic base; and this is the work undertaken by Raphael in relation to art.
[4] In his book The Demands of Art, Raphael spends some 50 pages and six plates analysing one painting by Cezanne.
[6] Proudhon, Marx, Picasso Three Studies in the Sociology of Art, first published in 1933 in Paris and in English by Humanities Press in the US and Lawrence and Wishart in England, 1980.
[7] Frederick Engels, “Letter to Franz Mehring (July 1983), Selected Corresponence.
[8] Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1, Moscow, 1963, p. 285.
[9] Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Penguin Books, 1973, p. 111.
[10] Engels, “Letter to Borguis”, Selected Corresponence, pp 442-3.
[11] Max Raphael, Proudhon, Marx Picasso, p. 76.
A few facts are enough to show the horror of the situation facing the migrants:
These were both cases of migrants from Syria fleeing the nightmare of four years of war. This phenomenon of refugees has now been globalised on an unprecedented, going well beyond the exoduses of the worst years of the 20th century.
One thing about this is striking. The media are not trying to hide the unbearable horror of the situation. On the contrary, they are headlining it and are coming up with more and more shocking images, like that of the little boy on the beach. Why?
In fact, the bourgeoisie is exploiting, for the purpose of its propaganda, both the barbarism for which it is itself responsible, and the feelings of indignation it provokes, and the spontaneous expressions of solidarity between local working people and migrants which in the last few months has begun to develop in several parts of Europe. The propaganda is aimed at strangling at birth any possibility of independent thought and to instil nationalist ideology in a more insidious way. In the eyes of the ruling class, left to themselves, proletarians in Europe are acting in a curious and even irresponsible way: they are helping and supporting the migrants. Despite the permanent ideological bombardment, we find that very often when these proletarians are in direct contact with the refugees, they bring them what they need to survive - food, drink, blankets - and sometimes even take them in to their homes. We have seen such examples of solidarity in Lampedusa in Italy, Calais in France and a number of cities in Germany and Austria. When, after being hassled by the Hungarian state, train loads of refugees have arrived at the stations, the exhausted migrants have been welcomed by thousands of people offering them support and material aid. Austrian rail workers have worked extra hours to transport the refugees towards Germany. In Paris, thousands demonstrated on 5 September to protest against the treatment of the refugees. They raised slogans like “we are all children of migrants”.
Faced with such massive and international expressions of solidarity from the civil population, when the main concern of the state has been to intimidate the refugees and keep them under control, the ruling class has had to react. Almost everywhere the bourgeoisie has had to modify the anti-immigrant discourse of the last few years and adapt to the situation. In Germany, the turn-around of the bourgeoisie has helped it to strengthen the image of the country as a very advanced democracy, to exorcise the ghosts of the past in response to those of its rivals who never miss an occasion to refer to Germany’s dark history. What’s more, it’s the trauma of the Second World War which explains the sensitivity of the German proletariat to the question of refugees. The German authorities have had to suspend the Dublin agreement which calls for the deportation of asylum seekers. In the eyes of the world’s migrants, Angela Merkel has become the champion of Germany’s openness and a model of humanity. In Britain, David Cameron has had to modify his hard line stance, along with the worst right wing tabloids which up till now have been describing migrants as a threatening and sub-human horde. For the bourgeoisie, one of the key issues has been the need to hide the fact that there are two totally antagonistic logics at work here: capitalist exclusion and ‘every man for himself’ versus proletarian solidarity; a dying system sinking into barbarism versus the affirmation of a class which bears within itself the future flourishing of humanity. The bourgeoisie cannot avoid reacting to the real feelings of indignation and solidarity which are appearing in the central countries.
The situation is not totally new. In 2012, the High Commission for Refugees (HCR) was already counting 45.2 million “displaced” people and was ringing the alarm bells about this growing human disaster. In 2013, 51.2 million were fleeing various kinds of horror. The threshold of 50 million had thus been crossed for the first time since the Second World War. The HCR explained this as the result of “the multiplication of new crises” and “the persistence of old crises which never seem to die down”. The year 2015 is about to mark a new record: 60 million refugees for Europe alone. Since January, appeals for asylum have increased by 78%. In Germany, according to the minister of the interior, these appeals have quadrupled, reaching the record figure of 800,000. Macedonia has declared a state of emergency and closed its borders. Officially, more than 2800 of these exiles, men, women and children, have drowned in the Mediterranean in the last few months. In Asia, the phenomenon is also massive. For example, a growing number of people have been fleeing repression and persecution in Myanmar and desperately seeking refuge in other southeast Asian countries. In Latin America, criminality and poverty have reached such levels that hundreds of thousands of people are trying to get to the USA. A goods train which goes from the south of Mexico to the north, nicknamed ‘The Beast’, has been regularly carrying thousands of migrants. They run the risk not only of falling from the carriage roofs or being thrown off in the tunnels, but also of being assaulted by the authorities; they are above all at the mercy of the drug gangs or other bandits who ransom them, rape them, kidnap women for prostitution, and as often as not kill them. And for those who have the fortune to get through all this, all along the US frontier they face a wall of barbed wire policed by armed guards who don’t hesitate to shoot at them.
In fact, the hypocritical and civilised speeches of the democratic states go very well with the nastiest and most xenophobic rants. The first encourages feelings of powerlessness, the second of fear. Both obstruct any real reflection, any real development of solidarity.
Entire zones of the planet are being devastated and made uninhabitable. This is particularly the case for the regions linking Ukraine to Africa via the Middle East. In certain of these war zones, half the population is in flight and are being held in gigantic camps, at the mercy of the most unscrupulous traffickers, organised on an industrial scale. The real cause of this hell is the decay of the world system of exploitation. The breadth of the refugee phenomenon is a clear expression of the downward spiral of capitalism, which brings in its wake pogroms and violence of all kinds, growing pauperisation linked to the economic crisis, and ecological catastrophes. Of course wars, crises and pollution are not new. All wars have led to people fleeing to save their lives. However, the intensity of these phenomena is growing all the time. Up until the First World War, the number of refugees remained relatively limited. The war then brought the beginning of massive displacements, ‘population transfers’ etc. This spiral took on a whole new dimension with the Second World War, when the number of refugees reached unheard-of levels. Then, during the Cold War, the numerous proxy wars between east and west generated a significant number of refugees, as did the famines in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 70s and 80s. But since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 a veritable Pandora’s box has opened up. The antagonism between the two imperialist blocs imposed a certain order and discipline: most countries obeyed the diktats of their respective bloc leader, the US or Russia. The wars of this period were inhuman and murderous, but in a sense they were ‘ordered’ and ‘classical’. Since the collapse of the USSR, growing instability has given rise to a multiplication of local conflicts, to all sorts of shifting alliances. Conflicts have gone on and on, resulting in the disintegration of states and the rise of warlords and gangsters, in the dislocation of the entire social fabric.
In addition, the contradictions between the imperialist powers (marked by the development of ‘every man for himself’, in which each nation plays its own imperialist card with increasingly short-term objectives), have led the latter to make military interventions in an increasingly regular, almost permanent manner. Each of the big powers support this or that mafia clique or warlord, this or that increasingly irrational band of fanatics, in the defence of their imperialist interests. What dominates in capitalist society today is the disintegration of entire regions, where the most crying expressions of social decomposition can be seen: whole regions controlled by drug gangs, the rise of Islamic State with its barbaric atrocities, etc.
The states which bear the main responsibility for all this social, ecological and military chaos have at the same time become real fortresses. In a context of unemployment and chronic crisis, security measures are being stepped up to a drastic degree. States have become ‘bunkerised’. Only the most qualified migrants are allowed in to be exploited, to lower the cost of labour power and create divisions within the proletariat. The majority of refugees and migrants, the ‘undesirable’ ones, those reduced to misery and starvation, are cynically enjoined to stay where they are and die without inconveniencing anyone. The northern states have literally chased them into a corner, as in the case of France with its ‘Jungle’ near the Channel Tunnel at Calais. Gangrened by a crisis of overproduction, capitalist society can no longer them any perspective. Instead of opening up, the doors are being closed: states are barricading their frontiers, electrifying fences, constructing more and more walls. During the Cold War, the time of the Berlin Wall, there were about 15 walls defending frontiers. Today more than 60 have been built or are being constructed. From the ‘apartheid wall’ raised by Israel in the face of the Palestinians, to the 4000 miles of barbed wire separating India from Bangladesh, states are falling into a real paranoia about security. In Europe, the Mediterranean front is littered with walls and barriers. Last July, the Hungarian government began construction of a four meter high razor wire fence. As for the Schengen space in Europe, and the work of the Frontext agency or Triton, their industrial-military effectiveness is formidable: a permanent fleet of surveillance and war ships there to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean. A similar military machine has been set up along the Australian coastline. All these obstacles seriously raise the mortality rate among refugees, who are forced to take more and more risks to get past them.
On the one hand, the bourgeois state is barricading itself in. It feeds to the maximum the warnings of doom coming from the most xenophobic populist parties, sharpening hatred, fear and division. Themselves facing deteriorating living conditions, the weakest sections of the proletariat are hit full on by this nationalist propaganda. In a number of countries there have been anti-migrant marches, physical attacks, arson attack on refugee centres. The refugees are the target of campaigns against ‘foreigners who threaten our way of life’. The state legitimises all this by setting up internment camps (over 400 in Europe), deporting those it can, patrolling the frontiers.
On the other hand, this same bourgeoisie fakes its indignation through the voice of politicians who talk about the ‘moral challenge’ posed by the refugees and offers them token support and assistance. In short, the capitalist state, the arch-criminal, poses as their saviour.
But as long as capitalism lasts, there can be no real solution for the migrants and the refugees. If we don’t fight against this system, if we don’t go to the roots of the problem, our indignation and solidarity will not go beyond the stage of basic aid, and the deepest and most noble human feelings will be recuperated by the bourgeoisie, turned into heavily publicised acts of charity which will be used to fuel a more hidden form of nationalism. Therefore, we must try to understand what’s really happening. The proletariat has to develop its own critical and revolutionary point of view on these questions.
In future articles, we will return in more depth to this historic issue.
WH, 6.9.15
“Nothing is so striking today, nothing has such decisive importance for the whole shape of today’s social and political life, as the yawning contradiction between an economic foundation that grows tighter and firmer every day, binding all nations and countries into a great whole, and the political superstructure of states, which seeks to split nations artificially, by way of border posts, tariff barriers and militarism, into so many foreign and hostile divisions” (Rosa Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy, in The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume 1, Verso, London 2013, p 121)
Borders as a demarcation of the ownership of land are as old as the existence of property itself. There simply is no existence of property without the demarcation and defence of it. With the advent of major empires such as the Rome or China, gigantic fortified borders were set up: Hadrian’s Wall, Limes, the Great Wall of China. So the existence of such borders to defend an empire against the invasion of rivals is nothing new.
However, as long as the planet was not yet “divided” amongst the major capitalist rivals, the demarcation of borders still remained mostly at low levels or could even be settled at the negotiation table through treaties. For example in 1884 at the Berlin Conference, borders in Africa could still be drawn on a map; in the early 19th century a territory as big as Alaska was sold by the Russian Czar to the USA. At the turn of the 19th century the Mexican-US border almost had no guards. And at the time of World War One, borders in Europe still were not heavily guarded.
Only once the world had been divided amongst the major capitalist rivals at the turn of the 20th century did the defence of territories become a battle on a different scale. But even though WW1 contained large battles for territories – such as the trench war in Belgium and France, with their terrible cost in human lives and material - the borders remained remarkably ‘open’ after the war. The reparations imposed on the defeated countries by the Versailles Treaty were either a relatively minor loss of territory (the German Saarland, ‘lost’ to France, or the former German colonies, which changed owners) or were made up of big financial payments. However, there was not yet any partition of entire countries, and there were not yet any fortifications of borders as would occur after World War Two.
With the intensification of imperialist rivalries, the defence of borders and territories has changed qualitatively. A fierce fight over every inch of territory set in. After WW 2 a number of countries were divided (Germany, Korea, China, Vietnam, India-Pakistan), all of which set up the most militarised borders, equipped with mines, fences, walls, armed guards and dogs. The formation of the state of Israel in 1948 meant the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the need to entrench itself behind the most sophisticated walls. This has now led to one of the most heavily guarded border walls in the world. “Symbolically, the wall in Palestine is this century’s Berlin Wall, albeit four times as long as that hated Cold War icon and more than twice as high – 8 m.. Under construction since 2002, it is expected to eventually extend for 709 kilometres through the West Bank. A series of concrete slabs, barbed-wire ‘buffer zones’, trenches, electrified fences, watchtowers, thermal-imaging video cameras, sniper towers, military checkpoints and roads for patrol vehicles have dismembered the cities of the West Bank and segregated them from occupied East Jerusalem (…) The wall has cost over $2.6 billion so far, while the cost of yearly maintenance is $260 million”[1].
In sum: since WW1 all countries are imperialist and have to obey the law of defending their interests also through the most obnoxious border defence systems.
And the recent series of wars across the planet has meant that frontiers have been fortified to prevent the infiltration of enemy forces- often terrorist gangs with various states behind them.
A whole system has been set up to screen any person in need of a visa, and Orwellian surveillance institutions like the Homeland Security Authority in the US have been developed to track down possible enemies and prevent them from entering the country.
At the same time while migration in the 19th century was not so much hampered by a complex legislation and a sophisticated police system, the 20th century meant that the borders have now also taken on a second function in addition to the ‘traditional’ military one: to prevent the entrance of labour power that is not needed. Contrast this with the USA’s demand for labour at the end of the 19th century – the real reason for the appeal to “send us your poor, your huddled masses”. Today the USA has joined the race to seal off its southern borders against waves of Latin American proletarians in flight from poverty and criminality in Central and South America.
In the 1960s another new phenomenon appeared. Many of the countries dominated by the Russian bloc had a shortage of labour, in particular East Germany. Thus the East German State erected the Berlin Wall which had to prevent its work force from leaving its territory. The economic underdog closed its borders to keep its citizens inside.
So now more and more we have a simultaneity or double function of borders: in addition to the classical military function of defence of territory, the most sophisticated walls are constructed to prevent refugees from entering and preventing or filtering unwanted “economic migrants”.
So although the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1989, the disappearance of the confrontation between the old blocs did not mean a new borderless world. On the contrary!
“Between 1947-1991 eleven walls were built, which survived the end of Cold War (South-Africa-Mozambique, Zimbabwe, North-South Korea, India-Pakistan, Israel, Morocco-West-Sahara, Zimbabwe-Zambia). Between 1991-2001 seven walls were erected: Around the exclaves Ceuta, Melilla, USA-Mexico, Malaysia-Thailand, Kuweit-Iraq, Uzbekistan-Afghanistan/Kirgizistan). 22 walls were erected since 2001: Saudi-Arabia-United-Arab Emirates, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Burma-Bangladesh, Botswana-Zimbabwe, Brunei-Malaysia, China-North-Korea, Egypt-Gaza-strip- United Arab Emirates-Oman, India-Bangladesh, Burma-Pakistan, Iran-Pakistan, Israel-Jordan/West-Bank, Jordan-Iraq, Kazakstan-Uzbekistan, Pakistan-Afghanistan, Thailand-Malaysia- Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan, Israel-Egypt.
(www.dandurand.uqam.ca/evenements/evenements-passes/440-fences-and-walls-... [1341] also Chaire Raoul-Dandurand _ Fences and Walls in International Relations.html, Berlin Wall is Gone but Separation Walls are a Growth Industry _ Burning Billboard.org.htm)
Between the almost 200 countries of the world there are some 250,000 kilometers of borders. An entrenched society![2]
This shows the totally irrational character of the capitalist system. While capitalism can only ‘prosper’ if there is free mobility of goods and labour, the movement of human labour is submitted to the most ruthless checks and obstacles. This means not only an unknown level of violence along the borders, but also totally lunatic financial costs. The massive border protection system between Mexico and the US costs a fortune: “But that has come at a cost. Most estimate inspection, patrol, and infrastructure set taxpayers back somewhere between $12 billion and $18 billion per year. That's up about 50% from the early 2000s, according to the Journal, which says spending has included ‘everything from 650 miles of fencing to military aircraft, marine vessels, drones, surveillance equipment, infrared camera towers and detention centres’. More generally, border security costs totalled $90 billion between 2002 and 2011, a Freedom of Information Act request conducted by the Associated Press shows. The news outlet reports that annual expenses vary from drug-sniffing dogs -- $4,500 each -- to National Guard troops -- about $91,000 per soldier”. (Source https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/06/the-migrant-crisis-could-cost-billions-but-border.aspx [1342])
If you imagine the total number of guards all along the borders in the world, their cost would be the most absurd figure – and it shows graphically what this society wastes its resources on! [3]
We should add that, along with the most sophisticated border controls, within each country more and more “gated communities” are set up, fences and often armed protection systems for the privileged. Entire neighbourhoods have become “no-go-areas” for non-residents.
But the industrial countries are not only becoming real “bunkers”. They are also the biggest “deporters” of labour-power. While the total number of slaves who were taken by force mainly from the African continent amounts to some 10-20 million during period 1445-1850, the deportation policy by the industrialised countries and even other states will probably reach a similar number in a much shorter span of time. A few examples: more than 5 million ‘illegal’ immigrants have been deported from the US - under G.W. Bush around 2 million, under Clinton almost 900,000, and under Obama more than 2 million. In Europe the measures are tougher and tougher, and there about 400 detention centres for ‘illegals’ awaiting deportation. Mexico itself deports 250,000 foreigners a year to Central America. Saudi Arabia is to deport more than one million people who live and work illegally in the kingdom.
Faced with the recent wave of refugees from the war torn areas of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Northern Africa... the system of border protection has reached a new scale. The authorities deploy ever more troops and material to detain and deport refugees. More than a quarter of a century after the “opening” of the Iron Curtain in Hungary, Hungary has sealed its border with Serbia with barbed wire to prevent “Les misérables” from reaching “safer havens”, and it is planning to set up another Iron Curtain along the Romanian border. Similar measures are being taken in other European countries. The previously “open” Schengen borders are now controlled by border police; “hotspots” (refugee ‘selection’ centres are to be set up in Greece and Italy, with the possibility of sending back refugees to the inferno where they came from. Or outposts for holding back refugees are extended to Africa itself, where arrangements are made to set up border controls at the refugee transit routes in Africa.
The pictures of refugee treks and thousands of detained or repulsed refugees on the Balkans and elsewhere, left without food and shelter, remind us of the way the Jewish population was treated under the Nazi regime or the fate of the refugees at the end of World War Two. They show the continuity of barbarism in this system. A century of war refugees, of camps, of deportations, of Iron Curtains, of illegal migration and deportation of those who have the cheek to come only to fill their bellies.
We now have the highest and longest walls ever to prevent war refugees and desperate ‘economic’ migrants from entering – but they still cannot stem the tide of victims of the combined effects of capitalism’s inexorable decomposition.
By creating a global economy, capitalism has created the conditions for a world wide human association. But its total inability to realise it is illustrated today by the universal fortification of its frontiers. Calls for ‘no borders’ by well-meaning activist groups are thus entirely utopian. Borders can only be abolished through international proletarian revolution, which will dismantle the anti-human prison of the nation state.
Dv. 09.09.15
[2] Worldwide 500,000 tonnes of barbed wire are produced every year. This is good for 8 million km of barbed wire, i.e. 200 times the circumference of the earth.
[3] And the amount of money refugees have to pay to human traffickers has also reached unheard of proportions.
On August 12th, at 22.50 (China local time), there was a warning of a small fire in one of the industrial warehouses in the district of Bihai, in the port city of Tianjin, China. Some firemen rushed to the scene. Some 40 minutes later, there was a tremendous explosion equivalent to 3 tons of TNT, and some seconds after that another brutal explosion, equivalent to 21 tons of TNT, which could be seen even via satellites surrounding the earth.
Why was this explosion so terrible? These warehouses are not just the usual ones; they were warehouses of dangerous products with more than 3 tons of products potentially harmful to any human being. All of them were situated in an industrial zone where only workers are living.
It seems that the calcium carbide that was stored could have reacted with the water that was used by the firemen to extinguish the fire, transforming itself into an explosive acetylene. An explosion of acetylene would have been enough to detonate a chain reaction of other products that were stored there, causing an even far bigger one. At the moment there are 114 deaths and initially 720 people have been treated in hospitals. We should add that the warehouse had also stored 700 tons of sodium cyanide, a highly toxic substance for human beings; and there is fear that it might have intoxicated the whole zone.
Behind all these facts and figures one thing is hidden: the inhuman logic of capital, a new infliction on the working class, paid for in blood, a new offensive against everything that is human on this planet. In 1915, in his pamphlet ‘The enemy is in our own country’, the revolutionary Karl Liebknecht said: “The enemies of the people are hoping that the masses will forget… We fight this with the following means: Verify everything, don’t forget anything! Don’t forgive anything!”.
This slogan is still valid today. Why was there a warehouse stuffed with such material, if not for the need to reduce costs, to maintain the accumulation of capital? Why have workers been living so close to these monstrous piles of explosives, if not because the Moloch of capital needs to maximise the use of space filled by the exploited and humiliated population?
We need to remember that those accidents are not isolated cases, but a chronic problem of capitalism in general and Chinese capitalism in particular. In its Sunday edition of 23rd of August, the Spanish newspaper El País titled its report: ‘Industrial insecurity: an endemic problem in China’. There we are told that between January and May 2015, industrial accidents caused 16.000 deaths and there were 26 explosions like the one in Tianjin, with a total of 65 deaths. China is not an exception according to the ILO (International Organisation of Labour), because in 2014 2,300,000 people died as a result of industrial across in the world.
In its phase of decomposition capitalism loses its capacities for a ‘healthy’ coordination and functioning, what little was there in the first place. For this reason they sent firemen to extinguish a fire in a warehouse that was full of substances that reacted violently when they came into contact with water. So they lost their warehouse, their industrial infrastructure and the port activities came to a standstill in a port which is a transit point for 40% of all imported vehicles. The mining giant BHP Billiton suspended all its port activities. Renault lost 1,500 cars and Hyundai 4,000. Toyota and John Deere halted their production. 17.000 buildings are damaged…. Capitalism's crazy drive for accumulation is turning against itself, like a gigantic fist. Capitalism is demonstrating that its survival generates monstrous contradictions, which are increasingly difficult to control and which lead to ever more dangerous waves of destruction.
But if the bourgeoisie suffered losses with this self-inflicted catastrophe, the proletariat has lost more. What does all the industrial production of Toyota, John Deere and BHP mean, compared to the life of one single worker? To all those workers who lost their home or even worse, to the workers which this infamous government wants to relocate to this zone, even though is poisoned with cyanide? Nothing!
Against this cruel reality, against these continuing humiliations imposed by the bourgeoisie and the Chinese government, there have already been some small protests.
But these protests seem to be sunk in the swamp of democratism and legality: “they did not know about the content of the warehouse when they should have known it…it was too close to habitations according to the existing law…”
A real proletarian voice is still needed in China, a voice that says clearly: no to the assassination of our class brothers, no to the servile and inhumane factory-cities and no to the shameless logic of capital. There has to rise, finally, a voice that speaks for what is human in man. In the meanwhile we all want to be that voice:
Verify everything, don’t forget anything! Don’t forgive anything! Tianjin is murder!
Comunero 24.8.15
This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC in Spain.
We are publishing an appreciation of the recent telephone technicians' struggle at Movistar. This arose out of a widespread discussion amongst comrades close to the ICC. This debate was started with the contribution of one comrade; this provided the bones for this article, and others added contributions and they were incorporated into the final draft.
The immediate struggles to defend the living conditions of the workers are one of the factors in the process of the coming to consciousness, of developing solidarity, unity and determination within the proletariat. Revolutionaries follow very closely these struggles and participate in them as far as they are able. They put lots of work into supporting them and are never dismissive of economic gains they achieve, because these are necessary for the daily survival of workers; because they result from the courage and the spirit of initiative of proletarians in asserting themselves against capital; and because they are a declaration of war against the logic of the market and the national capital.
This logic tells us we should sacrifice ourselves on the altar of the imperatives of capitalist accumulation and, therefore, that we should work harder, with less pay, agree to lay-offs, worsening conditions, the loss of social benefits and so on, so that capitalist profits can prosper and especially so that the nation – whether it be Spanish, Greek, German or Catalan - is respected in the international arena and is "recognised" for its "seal of quality".
Against such logic, in struggling to defend their living conditions, the workers highlight implicitly that human life is not for production - this is the logic of capital - but that production of use values is part of human life – that is the logic of the new communist society that the proletariat carries within itself. [1]
But to restrict ourselves to such an implicit response is not sufficient, since most of these struggles will not get results. Their main contribution comes from the lessons - often negative - linked to the historical struggle for a new society. Also, we have to consider these struggles critically to be able to develop and deepen the theoretical, organisational and moral acquisitions of the proletariat.
The strike is the traditional starting point for the coming to consciousness of the workers about the reality of their situation, because it throws light on all the elements of the class struggle and the diametrically opposed interests that underpin it: the struggle against the economic attacks of capital, the perception, or at least the immediate intuition, that all employees must defend themselves and, sooner or later, begin to fight against the social relations imposed by capitalist production.
But what is the essential meaning of a strike? Formerly, during the ascendant phase of capitalism, with the whole world to conquer, there could be real and more or less lasting economic improvements for the proletariat. But even at that time, the revolutionaries insisted on the need to understand what strikes really meant, that workers learn from them, examine all the questions they raise, gain from the experience they provide in fighting together and in the strengthening of political consciousness.
Today, for a mode of production in decomposition, there is little margin for a real and lasting improvement in the situation of the workers, if any. If revolutionaries defend the self-organised strike, it is because it brings into play the best conditions for building solidarity and confidence between workers and because no other action pushes this forward as much as the widest debate, as organised mass assemblies in which every aspect of this society is subject to scrutiny through criticism and discussion.
So it is not a matter of defending the strike because it is "harmful" to this or that capitalist, because it impedes production and prevent the capitalists from filling their own pockets. For us, what is important is the debate, the assemblies, being politically independent of the state and capital, the fact that the strike pushes the workers forward, into taking control of their struggle, breaking with their individual atomisation and reconnecting with the historical methods of struggle outside of the influence of the bourgeois politics of the State.
The strike is a part of the whole of the means available to the proletarian class struggle. It combines economic struggle, political struggle and ideological struggle, all three forming a unity that nourishes proletarian consciousness.
The Movistar technicians' strike, of indefinite duration, had two sides almost from the beginning: the most negative was, from what we know about it, that the strike was called by the unions, the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) and the UGT, which have been able to reinforce a strong tendency to corporatism that was very present in this strike.
However, its most encouraging and promising side was the notable effort by the workers to hold assemblies outside and separate from these major unions and to organise themselves to try to move forward. That's why we can say that the struggle had, for some time, a real prospect of self-organised proletarian struggle and a certain potential.
These assemblies express, firstly, a tendency towards unification within the working class; secondly, a battle to take control of the struggle and to wrench it free from the hands of the capitalist state organisations which, in controlling it, can only bring defeat. Thirdly, it heralds a new mode of social organisation – communism - based on the associated decisions of humanity freed from all forms of exploitation. We have been able to see that such general assemblies constituted one of the most prominent vital and dynamic elements at the time of the Indignados movement and also in the struggle at Gamonal.[2]
Every struggle should be seen in its historical and international context, because otherwise, we would be looking at them with opera glasses distorted by empiricism and immediatism, which would prevent us from seeing the broader picture. Thus, we should take into account that the struggle at Movistar comes at a historic time of great weakness of the proletariat with a loss of its class identity, characterised by a significant lack of confidence in itself as an independent social force.
This struggle is part of a series of struggles which, despite what they bring, are well below what the gravity of the situation imposed by capitalism demands. In recent years, there have only been, on the one hand, some relatively important strike movements in some companies in the Asturias (2012), in Bangladesh, China, South Africa, Vietnam, and more recently in Turkey. On the other hand, there have been occupations in the centres of some towns and cities or mass assemblies, notably with the anti-CPE movement in France (2006) and with the Indignados movement in Spain (2011), also in the course of more recent examples, but these have had weaker international echoes, in Brazil and Turkey (2013) and Peru (2015).[3]
The political and trade union forces of the bourgeoisie, in their desire to divide and counter the proletarians in struggle, oppose these two types of movement, whereas, even with their differences, they are driven by a profound unity. It is this unity, especially the effort of self-organisation, that is expressed in the struggle at Movistar.
We have seen attempts at solidarity. There is a strong sense of solidarity among the workers... but it does not extend to being a class expression, that is, solidarity "going outside" to workers in other sectors, and is not expressed as a practical recognition of being part of the same struggle, but as sympathy and support (which is still sincerely welcomed); so there is a significant lack of consciousness of belonging to the same world-wide class struggling for the same interests. Leftists, who in their verbiage gladly borrow the language of the workers, promote this distorted view highlighting "immediate action" by making an appeal to good old "common sense" that claims it should deal only with what is "urgent" in the narrowest and most trifling sense of the term.
The struggle itself has nonetheless revealed a remarkable effort of unification, even more commendable in the case of Movistar, a company where the nature of the work of the technicians is atomised, with no concentration in work centres, with a fragmented workforce and where many of them do not appear, on legal grounds, as workers, "working on behalf of someone", but are falsely considered to be "self-employed".[4]
But the struggle has shown that the main trap was corporatism, resistance expressed in an isolated and desperate manner: this is what happened to Coca-Cola workers but also those at Panrico. There is a reaction against the major unions on close examination, but this reaction does not necessarily challenge the union logic. There has been and there is still a strong tendency in the struggles, not towards explicitly seeking unification, extension and debate inside the assemblies, but retreating and taking a stand inside the company or the industry until a judicial verdict or a hypothetical favourable agreement has been reached.
These reactions, that lead everyone to be a prisoner in his hole, his sector, his company or his corporation, have several causes. The first is clear, we just raised it: the loss of class identity that fuels a sense of emptiness, not knowing who to contact to seek solidarity, a desire to desperately cling to the imagined protective refuge of the small space and alleged "intimacy" of the company, corporation and "work mates" ...
It bears the stamp of a historical situation that we characterise as that of the decomposition of capitalism, which marks all components of society with a dangerous tendency to dislocation, to "every man for himself ", to dispersion. As we have said in our Theses on Decomposition: “"every man for himself ", marginalisation, the atomisation of individuals, the destruction of family relationships, the exclusion of older people, the destruction of emotions and their replacement with pornography, commercialised sport and media coverage, mass gatherings of young people in the collective hysteria of song and dance, a sinister substitute for solidarity, with the social ties completely absent. All these manifestations of social putrefaction today, on a scale unknown in history, invade every pore of human society, expressing only one thing: not just the dislocation of bourgeois society, but the annihilation of every principle of collective life within a society that is deprived of any project, from any perspective, even in the short term, even the most illusory".[5]
This is fertile ground for the penetration of trade union and leftist organisations, always ready to bring workers' struggles to the "safe area" of bourgeois legality "for their own good" or "for the struggle" as a pure abstraction. In an atmosphere of isolation, of lack of reflection and debate, of lack of contact between strikers and the workers of other sectors, union and reformist logic finds its breeding ground that opens the way for organisations who seek only to control the workers and to attract their votes.
These organisations say they defend the workers, but we could see, with Syriza for example, what they do when they take on government responsibilities. But we must also understand their nature when they are not in government, when they do not stop pressing for solutions from the legal institutions of the exploiters, from the State, and above all try to prevent workers from learning, from reflecting, from debating in the heat of the struggle, and instead try to get us to entrust the solution to conflicts to the very forces that represent the mode of production that every day and everywhere lies behind these same conflicts. A significant example is that of the Trotskyist tendency 'El Militante' that wildly applauded the fact that the workers of Coca-Cola had ended the struggle by appealing to the Supreme Court to demand suspension of the closure of the plant in Fuenlabrada, chanting slogans such as ''Make the courts see justice.''
In the case of Movistar, the suspension of the strike for "other forms of struggle" was a clear statement that the struggle was over. For several weeks now, we have seen that the loss of a desire to unify and to extend the struggle has created disarray, with the entry onto the scene of 'new players' such as Cayo Lara, leader of Izquierda Unida, or Pablo Iglesias, of Podemos, although we did see a small group of workers expressing dissent through ironic interjections of the word “Presidente” during one of his speeches to a demonstration of strikers.
It is clear that the current struggles are still far away from achieving some key elements: what appears almost intuitively (solidarity and self-organisation) demands further elaboration to deepen what is essential: class identity, class consciousness (historical and international), the extension of the struggle, which help us to move towards the re-appropriation of revolutionary theory by the masses themselves.
The intervention against every effort to give credibility to the bourgeois state is a first requirement, against its democracy and its representative bodies that act to overcome the conflicts between the workers and their exploiters, and against trade unionist notions, which are openly reformist and belong to a bygone period, and which the leftist organisations instil into workers continually. This work is particularly pernicious in countries where the bourgeoisie has been able to equip itself with a well-oiled democratic system, with a long and deep political experience facing situations like this kind of struggle. The intervention of revolutionaries in these strikes and participation as an active factor in the coming to consciousness means a struggle against reformist conceptions and their representatives, democratic or not, which always will have an influence and a presence in the struggles of the proletariat, and which are themselves an active factor in the opposite sense – towards disintegration, dislocation and demoralisation, physical or ideological.
It is important to develop criticisms and balance sheets and to publicise them inside the struggles in expressing our solidarity, not as outside groups, but as part of the same class struggle. It is important to be present in these movements because they express the living reality of the class struggle in its immediate level; they bring us elements for deepening our theoretical work; they help us to put the immediate struggles in the context of the revolutionary struggle and to highlight the historical perspective of our class.
[1] It goes without saying, though it is better said, that communism is nothing to do with the capitalist society of the state and of work-camps that existed in the old USSR and which, today, continue to exist in some countries where capitalist exploitation rules such as North Korea, Cuba and China.
[3] For all the struggles and movements mentioned here, there are some analyses on our website: https://en.internationalism.org [1346]
[4] For readers outside Spain, you should know that in this country there are workers allegedly "self-employed" who work for a company. Legally they are considered "independent" and even as "small entrepreneurs": they are the workers who typically carry out the work of a hired worker but each in his own corner and, as highly skilled technicians, they are required to manage their schedules and their work more "freely" and in a falsely "autonomous" manner. This legal and social situation that provides a confused sociological categorisation is indicative of an ideological tendency that generally leads the proletariat to the loss of view of its class identity.
Refugees and other migrants wanting to come to Britain congregate in the ‘Jungle’, a shanty town near Calais. For over a decade several thousand people have been living there, or prior to that in the official Sangatte camp that was destroyed in 2002 at the request of the UK. They are there in the hope of being able to get into the UK through the Channel Tunnel. This is where Britain, like so many other countries, has built a barbed wire fence to protect its borders and keep out refugees, except that it only needs to defend the entrance to the Eurotunnel and not a land border. The refugees around Calais returned to the news over the summer when striking French ferry workers blocked the entrance to the Eurotunnel, causing queues of cars and lorries that people desperate to get to the Britain tried to climb onto. Others risked their lives trying to walk through the tunnel. Some nights up to 2,000 people were trying to get through the police lines and fencing. Although the strike and blockade has long finished the media continue to report delays on Eurotunnel and Eurostar due to migrants breaking into their terminal. The UK media in general give greater prominence to the delays than to the deaths of migrants – 13 since late June – taking such a dangerous route, and there is very much less coverage of the utter misery suffered by thousands in the camp.
PM David Cameron responded to the situation created by the ferry strike by talking of “swarms” of people trying to “break into Britain”, the answer being to “show that Britain is not a soft touch on asylum”. Landlords will have to check tenants’ documents proving their right to stay, and evict those living illegally - a policy already piloted in the Black Country. The withdrawal of all financial support from failed asylum seekers will be extended from adults to families with children, except for an appeal to the Home Office with evidence they are unable to leave the country. Now families with children will be forced into the kind of destitution already suffered by single adults denied asylum. Plus the government is tendering an estimated £500 million contract to return failed asylum seekers, which could include some from Calais. 12,460 were forcibly removed last year.
On 20 August home secretary Teresa May visited Calais to organise the increased security with French minister of the interior, Bernard Cazeneuve: Britain is investing in fencing, CCTV, floodlighting, and infrared detection; France is putting in extra police search teams with dogs; Eurotunnel is increasing its guards; and a new integrated control room will coordinate all this security.
According to one view common in the media, it is those who really don’t get democracy yet, having grown up under Eastern European Stalinist regimes, who do not understand their responsibilities to the refugees: “The very worst of Europe has been seen in Viktor Orban, the pocket-Putin who serves as Hungary’s prime minister. Ignorant of history, Mr Orban sees the refugees as a threat to European civilisation. His answer is to build a 175km razor wire fence. Sadly, he is not alone in such bigotry. The Slovakian government says it will accept only non-Muslim refugees. There is something truly dispiriting about former communist states recently welcomed into the EU slamming the door against refugees from other forms of tyranny.”[1] Britain’s own razor-wire response, coming from the country that boasts the “Mother of Parliaments”, and from the mouths of politicians who would never fall into any such “politically incorrect” bigotry about non-Christians or non-Europeans, makes it harder to maintain this argument, except by saying Cameron is letting down the British tradition of generosity.
On 3 September, when the photograph of a dead toddler appeared on the front pages, one of 12 Syrians drowned trying to reach Kos, Cameron was still saying that Britain cannot take more people fleeing from war: “we think the most important thing is to try to bring peace and stability to that part of the world. I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees” (Guardian 3.9.15).
Shortly afterwards he announced that Britain would take a paltry 20,000 vulnerable Syrian refugees directly from the Middle Eastern countries over the next 5 years, and make use of the UK opt out of the EU system of quotas for those arriving in Greece and Italy. Last year Britain had only 31,260 asylum applications, only half the number received by France or Italy, a sixth as many as Germany, and less than Hungary!
In fact the first Westminster politician to suggest that the UK could take some more Syrian refugees was Yvette Cooper, at the time one of the Labour leadership candidates. Pointing to the scale of the humanitarian crisis she said “we seem paralysed to respond. We cannot carry on like this. It is immoral, it is cowardly and it is not the British way. It is a test of British values, too — of whether we will again be able to reach out to the rest of the world and help as we have done in previous generations, or whether we will turn inwards and turn our backs instead.”[2] Her proposal for help was similar to the prime minister’s – 10,000 distributed throughout the country.
The winner of the leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn, sounds even more positive: “There’s a very large number of people going over to Calais to take aid and support to them … Our health service, our education service, much of our industrial development in Britain, has been greatly enhanced by the work done by people who have made their homes here, paid their taxes here, worked very hard here…”[3]
In fact, Britain has been welcoming or resistant to immigration according to the needs not of the migrants or refugees, but of the national capital. After World War 2 immigration was greatly encouraged to make up for a shortage of labour. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, on the other hand, when a huge mass of Asians were expelled from East Africa, it was Labour home secretary Callaghan who rushed through the Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1968 so that people with British passports no longer had the right to settle in the UK unless they could show a personal connection with the country. Nor should we forget how the last Labour government campaigned about “bogus” asylum seekers. Right now Britain’s population is expected to rise by more than 10% in the next 20 years, and less than 15% of firms have difficulty filling vacancies, so it has less need of immigration. Germany, by contrast, which has been much more welcoming to refugees, has a falling population and more than 45% of firms report having difficulty filling their vacancies (The Economist 19.9.15).
When we look at the number of refugees fleeing war, or even the economic migrants who are seeking somewhere to earn a living, we are presented with a barrage of propaganda and opinions that can be roughly divided between those that say we have to defend what we have, and those who say since we are better off we should be generous with our resources when others are in such a desperate situation. The former is represented by the present conservative government as well as UKIP and similar right wing populist organisations in Europe eg Pegida in Germany, although as the Labour government showed in 1968 they can carry out the same policies. The latter more welcoming attitude is today, more or less weakly, expressed by the Labour Party. However the 1951 Conservative government carried on the same policy of encouraging immigration as the previous Atlee government, because it was required. Both these views take it for granted that we are fortunate to live in stable, free, democratic European countries, surrounded by these dangerous unstable regions that threaten us, and then put forward a policy to cope within the system as it is.
As we show in the series of articles on the problem of refugees starting in this issue (page 4 and 5) capitalism is continually causing both economic migration and waves of refugees from imperialist war. It is the same capitalist system that has created both the better conditions in Europe and the wars elsewhere, just as it was responsible for WW2 and the waves of refugees that followed, and profoundly affected Europe. There is no way out within capitalism so we cannot afford to get drawn into either side in this campaign. It is perfectly true that some of the more xenophobic comments are completely revolting, such as Sun journalist Katie Hopkins likening refugees to cockroaches. Much more dangerous is the hypocrisy of the politicians who pretend compassion for refugees when it suits them while equally prepared to put up fences or change the law to keep them out when they are not needed. No less dangerous is the attempt to turn individual acts of kindness and solidarity shown to refugees, whether in Calais or arriving at German railway stations, into a symbol of patriotism: “we British” are kind hearted, “we Germans” understand the problems faced by refugees. General feelings of solidarity with migrants and refugees can only have a future if they become part of a growing class solidarity among all those that capitalism exploits and oppresses.
Alex 3/9/15
On the 10th October, 2015, the ICC is organising a day-long public meeting [1351]in London. In order to facilitate discussion, we are publishing the article that will form the basis of the afternoon presentation. We hope this will give a flavour of the topic of the meeting and also give participants the opportunity to prepare comments and counter-arguments in advance.
1915, 1945: two rather contrasting anniversaries. On 1915, the ruling class and its mouthpieces don’t have anything like as much to say as they did on 1914. The unutterable slaughter of the Somme might come in for a mention: regrettable for the right, but part of the necessary sacrifice for king, country, or resistance to German aggression; for the left, proof of the futility of this particular imperialist war.
1945 is also an anniversary of horrors: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the opening of the Nazi death camps. But on this particular imperialist war, both left and right are in agreement. After the scandal of not singing the National Anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial, Jeremy Corbyn hastened to say, in a statement issued by Labour HQ, that his parents, “like that whole generation….showed tremendous courage and determination to defeat fascism”. This was a Good War, not only toppling Hitler, but also bringing us post-war “socialism” in the shape of a Labour Government and the NHS.
For revolutionaries, these dates have a rather different significance. 1915 was the beginning of proletarian resistance to the imperialist massacre, opening the road to the revolutions of 1917 and 1918 and ultimately forcing the bourgeoisie to bring the war to an end. This resistance was expressed both through mass actions such as demonstrations against the war in Berlin and strikes on the Clyde, and through the revival of the political organisations of the working class, which had been hit hard by the shameful betrayal of mainstream social democracy at the outbreak of the war[1].
1945, by contrast, was a year that indeed brought horror and not hope, because it was a low point in the defeat of the international working class after its revolutionary attempts at the end of the first war. The “victory over fascism” in 1945 also meant the victory of the Stalinist counter-revolution in the east and the democratic counter-revolution in the west.
In this discussion, we want to recall what has made it possible for revolutionaries today to defend a proletarian position on both theses wars and on all the innumerable wars that have ravaged the world since 1945. In other words, we want to focus on the combat waged by internationalist political organisations in the two world wars, which was certainly connected to the mass struggles of the class, but which also has its own dynamic and importance.
In 1915 there were two highly significant moments in the revival of marxist political organisation: the Zimmerwald conference, and the publication of Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet.
Zimmerwald is a small town in Switzerland, and it was host to a small conference: 38 delegates from 12 countries - all the internationalists transported there in a couple of coaches, as Trotsky joked. And even among these few, only a small minority defended a really revolutionary position against the war. The “classic” centrist tendency, incarnated in the likes of Kautsky and the future leaders of the USPD, was on the right at Zimmerwald[2]. Kautsky had argued that the International, which had indeed collapsed in 1914, was not an instrument that could be used in war, but only in peacetime, so for him and his ilk the priority was to call for peace, appealing to the good sense of the world’s rulers rather than the class struggle. The centre here was represented rather by Trotsky and by Luxemburg’s comrades in the Spartacus group, who were for the methods of class struggle to end the war, but who also called for peace without annexations as the goal of the struggle. Only the Bolsheviks around Lenin and some of the other German groups stood for revolutionary methods and revolutionary goals: transformation of the imperialist war into civil war, the destruction of capitalism as the source of all wars.
The result of the fierce debates at Zimmerwald was a manifesto to the proletarians of the world which was in many ways a compromise between the left and the centre, since it did not take up the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary slogans. Nevertheless its ringing denunciation of the war and its call for class action against it still enabled it to articulate and politicise the anti-war sentiments that were growing among the mass of the working class. And within two years the theoretical standpoint of the left was to be put into practice by the workers of Russia, whose revolt against the war led them to seize political power through the soviets.
But if Luxemburg lagged behind Lenin on the question of the goals of anti-war action, she had leapt ahead of him when it came to providing a more general theoretical understanding of the origins of the war, and its consequences for certain key elements of the revolutionary programme. In a series of works published around 1915 or the year after, all the revolutionaries were agreed – unlike the former “pope of marxism”, Kautsky – that imperialism was not a policy, whether good or bad, freely decided on by capitalism, but a historical necessity, a whole new epoch in the life of the bourgeois economy, which had unified the planet under the reign of capital, but in doing so had brought not peace and harmony but war and catastrophe. Lenin’s Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism and Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy were both important landmarks in the elaboration of this outlook. But just before the war Luxemburg had already published The Accumulation of Capital, which went deeper than either of them in locating capitalism’s imperialist drive in the historical conditions of accumulation, and it was on this theoretical foundation that Luxemburg, writing from prison, was able to put forward the most thorough-going analysis of the motives behind the different imperialist antagonists in the push towards war. And at the same time she was able to draw the most radical conclusions from an understanding that imperialism “is not the creation of any one or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will." (The Junius Pamphlet). In sum: all nations are imperialist: every small nation acts under the aegis of a larger power but has its own imperialist appetites. Hence the epoch in which revolutionaries could support struggles for national independence was over once and for all. Even then this profound breakthrough was not entirely without limitations: Lenin, who continued to hold on to the old slogan of the “rights of nations to self-determination” criticised the Junius Pamphlet for its curious concessions to the idea of national defence, which he understood was impossible in the context of this war. But for the whole of the coming century, which was to witness an endless proliferation of proxy imperialist conflicts fought under the slogans of national liberation, it was above all Luxemburg’s approach that has made it possible for revolutionary minorities to maintain an internationalist stance against these wars.
The example of Zimmerwald demonstrates that, for revolutionaries, the struggle against war takes place at three distinct but interconnected levels:
In 1915 the working class was beginning to throw off the heavy weight of its ideological defeat in 1914, which had been prepared by decades of growing opportunism in the movement. By 1917 the period was directly revolutionary. This rapid shift in the historic course was, however, also reversed very rapidly: by 1923, the post-war revolutionary wave was over and the Russian revolution was sinking into isolation and internal degeneration. By the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 30s the counter-revolution was triumphant all along the line: Stalinism in Russia, fascism in Germany and Italy were its most evident forms, but as the world lurched towards another war, the ideology of democracy and anti-fascism was to prove indispensable to the bourgeoisie in mobilising the working class for a second world war within 20 years.
Class struggle did not cease during this dark period, and there was still a proletarian political opposition to the advancing counter-revolution. But it was extremely weak, facing police repression and endless defections and betrayals. It was weak above all at the theoretical/political level, with the majority of forces within Trotskyism and anarchism more and more succumbing to the siren calls of anti-fascism and thus incapable of standing against the march towards war. Rather than seriously examining the balance of forces between the classes and the programmatic changes demanded by the new epoch, Trotskyism in particular threw itself into an unprincipled quest for growth at any cost, culminating in the formation of an abortive Fourth International in 1938.
This process of degeneration left the clearest elements of the political movement – the heirs of the left communists who had first begun to recognise the decline of the Russian revolution and the opportunist course of the Third International – extremely isolated. The capacity of the groups of the German/Dutch left to maintain political activity was further undermined by the drift towards “councilism”, the denial of the necessity for political organisation – in effect a concession to anarchist ideology. This mean that the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left was almost alone in advocating a course of activity appropriate to a highly unfavourable historical juncture, where the priority was to draw the lessons of past defeats and prepare the programmatic basis of the party of the future.
The most decisive test for the political milieu of the day came with the war in Spain in 1936. The initial military coup led by Franco in July was halted by a real working class uprising, but this was almost immediately led onto the terrain of anti-fascism and the defence of the bourgeois republic; with the intervention of the fascist powers and Stalin’s USSR, the conflict was also transformed into a rehearsal for the next imperialist world war. The Trotskyists and anarchists, with a few exceptions, threw themselves into the anti-fascist camp, leaving a minority of left communists denouncing the war for what it truly was: not a civil war, but an imperialist war, not a revolution, but a new step in the world-wide counter-revolution. The Italian Fraction distinguished itself by its ability to situate the war in its real historical and global context, and to remain loyal to the needs of the class struggle against both capitalist camps. And even then the pressures of the period did not spare the Fraction, which suffered a serious split soon after the war began, with a minority enrolling in the militias of the POUM in Spain.
The outbreak of the world war in 1939 increased these pressures, not only because of the brutal repression that revolutionaries faced under conditions of military occupation, but also because the enormous force of imperialist ideology strengthened confusions within their own ranks: the Italian Fraction, for example, was thrown into disarray when the war began because some its leading figures had developed the revisionist “theory of the war economy” which in the late 30s suddenly began to argue that world war was not on the agenda, and, when the war in fact began, insisted that it proved the social disappearance of the proletariat and thus the impossibility of any organised political activity. This theory was vigorously opposed within the Fraction and in particular by comrades in France who managed to regroup and carry out organised, clandestine work in both the “Vichy” zone and the area directly occupied by the German army. This work involved both internal debates about the theoretical problems posed by the war, and political propaganda calling for class struggle against both warring blocs, with no concessions to the patriotic ideology of the Resistance.
The definitive betrayal of internationalism by the Trotskyist organisations and many of the anarchists had already been prepared by the events in Spain, although there were some important minorities in both who rejected the ideology of the anti-fascist war: for the Trotskyists, the Stinas group in Greece, Munis in Spain and Mexico, the RKD in Austria and so on. In Britain, while the Trotskyists almost unanimously declared for participation in the war to defend democracy and the “workers’ state” in Russia, small groups of revolutionaries from the councilist and anarchist traditions stuck to their internationalist principles.
Before and during the war, many revolutionaries had clung to the hope that the end of the war would bring about another revolutionary situation, as in 1917. And indeed there were some important class movements towards the end of the war, most notably in the factories of northern Italy in 1943, which led the ruling class to drop the Mussolini regime like a hot potato. This created a wave of short-sighted optimism among revolutionaries, especially comrades of the Italian left, many of whom returned from exile to join the Partito Comunista Internazionalista which was formed in considerable haste from different oppositional groupings.
In a situation of considerable confusion it was again the French Fraction of the Communist Left (constituted in 1942) which was best able to carry on the political tradition of the Italian Fraction, now dissolved into the PCInt. Having initially thought that the strikes in Italy announced a change in the historic course, they soon understood that the bourgeoisie had learned the lessons of 1917 and was well-prepared to prevent any re-run of the revolution at the end of the Second World War. The terror bombing of German cities, Churchill’s policy of “letting the Italians stew in their own juice” in 1943 – halting the advance of the allied armies from the south of Italy to allow the Nazis to crush the class movement in the north – expressed the ruthless determination of the bourgeoisie to wipe out the least sign of resistance to its rule in the potentially dangerous closing phase of the war.
The French Fraction was able to understand that the formation of a party – in one single country, and in conditions where the defeat of the working class was being further exacerbated both by repression and the ideological poison of “Liberation” and the “victory of democracy” – was an opportunist error that could only result in a programmatic regression in relation to the gains made by the Fraction in the previous period. This was demonstrated by the concessions made by the new party – especially after the fusion with the groups in the south led by Bordiga in 1945 – on such vital issues as the nature of Russia, the trade union and national questions, and even electoralism.
Against the activist attitudes of the new party, the French group (which took the name Gauche Communiste de France following the split with a tendency that aligned itself with the Italian party) understood that the need for theoretical elaboration was still paramount, and in the post war period produced a considerable body of work analysing such issues as the function of war in the epoch of capitalist decadence, the development of state capitalism as a worldwide phenomenon, the role of the party, and the problem of the state in the period of transition to communism.
Obviously the scale of the activity of revolutionaries during and immediately after the Second World War, and the perspectives for the growth of its influence within the class, was considerably reduced in comparison with the groups that met at Zimmerwald in 1915 and were to meet again at the formation of the Third International in 1919. But the essential dimensions of this activity – organisation, theory, intervention – were as relevant in 1945 as they had been 30 years earlier.
One of the clearest signs that capitalism has outlived its usefulness for humanity is the near permanence of war over the last century. Even before the end of the Second World War, the battle lines for the Third were already forming: the primary motive for the atom bomb being dropped on an already defeated Japan was to issue a warning against the imperialist ambitions of the USSR in the east. The ‘Cold War’ was mainly made up of a series of proxy wars between the new superpowers, but as we said earlier they were often fought under the banner of national independence. A number of the groups of the communist left today were born in the period of the Vietnam war, and they found themselves having to fight against the dominant trend, among those who considered themselves to be revolutionaries, which advocated support for North Vietnam as the “little guy” against the US bully, when in fact Vietnam was backed by the “big guys” of Russian and Chinese imperialism, and this “national liberation” struggle was in reality yet another inter-imperialist confrontation. In the period after the break-up of the two imperialist blocs, marked by a more chaotic series of conflicts, the need for a principled and coherent position on war is as vital as ever: the recent rush of elements within the anarchist milieu to line up with Kurdish nationalism (and the USA) against ISIS in Rojava is proof of that. But a principled and coherent position can only be maintained and developed on the basis of the acquisitions we have inherited from the revolutionaries of the past, those who faced the ultimate test of loyalty to the proletarian cause.
Amos
[1] Anarchism also split in 1914 between those like Kropotkin who called for support for Anglo-French imperialism, and those who remained true to internationalism. This rupture was to reproduce itself throughout the 20th century. But whereas in the first war the majority of anarchists were internationalists, only a small minority were by the time of the second. It would take a separate article to trace this evolution in any depth.
An ex-member of the ICC, Devrim, who left some three years ago, has subsequently made a number of criticisms of our organisation.
Devrim’s ‘My experience in the ICC’ first appeared on the anarchist web forum Libcom in 20121. It was, by definition, a personal account , based on impressions and anecdotes of life in the ICC rather than a general critique of the ICC’s political principles as a whole. Since there can be no argument about personal taste we tended to let the criticisms lie, particularly as Devrim declared he did not want to engage in a debate about this account. He had in any case left the organisation without politically justifying his departure.
We now believe that these personal criticisms need a reply because the issues they raise have taken on a general interest today, when the fundamental conditions of revolutionary militancy are being put in question, including amongst those who consider themselves part of the ‘Communist Left.’
We have come to realise that his personal account of the ICC is supposed to be a self-standing political analysis itself: a personal interpretation is seen as sufficient to judge the ICC to be an organisation that has outlived itself.
Devrim’s critique has thus led him to repeat on several occasions the belief that the ICC will die. In an email to a member of the ICC in 2013 he wrote, in reply to the criticism that he should be taking up the political principles of the ICC:
‘I think that the point that you have to address the political positions of an organisation belongs to the thinking of a bygone age. The ICC will die, and it will, not because people engage with and refute its political positions, but precisely for the opposite reason; because people can’t be bothered to do even this. Of course this points to a more general problem of depoliticisation within society, but to an outside observer, it would seem that the ICC is actively trying to complete the circle of its isolation.’
The ICC will die, the argument goes, not because its political positions or principles are wrong or have become outmoded and need to be replaced by those that correspond to the evolution of the needs and objectives of the working class struggle. It will pass away instead from a general disinterest in political positions themselves. The failure of the ICC to adapt to this disinterest and the current boredom with politics in the population and even amongst would-be revolutionaries, and to insist by contrast on defending and elaborating its political principles, will lead to its complete isolation and demise. This is the essential thinking of Devrim.
In his account ‘My Experience…..’ Devrim, true to his vision, does not ‘address the political positions’ of the ICC, but gives a series of mostly negative impressions and opinions about life in the organisation, on its process of integration of new members, on its mode of centralisation and on its debates. We will come on to some of these questions in a later part of the article. But first we want to look at how important political positions and principles are in the marxist concept of revolutionary organisation.
In the past marxist revolutionary parties and organisations have often died, even at a relatively young age. The most obvious example is the sudden collapse of the 2nd International in 1914, after its main constituent parties betrayed their internationalist political principles, joined their imperialist bourgeoisies, and helped send millions of workers to the mutual slaughter of the trenches. The 3rd International also perished after the adoption of the slogan of ‘Socialism in one country’, as it became an instrument of the Russian state and prepared the working class for the imperialist carnage of the 2nd World War. 2
In these two major instances of the marxist revolutionary movement, organisations disappeared because of a progressive abandonment of political principle, in particular the most important one for the working class - international unity and action in the face of imperialist war or in face of their preparation. These marxist organisations therefore died (at least as far as working class interests were concerned) not as a result of a failure to adapt to the general mood of society, but because they did adapt to it and gave into the pressure of the imperialist bourgeoisie and abandoned proletarian political positions. So we think the reality runs diametrically counter to Devrim’s logic. In fact, if we use revolutionary history as a guide, the ICC would be more likely to disappear if it abandoned or lessened the importance of its political positions as a way of accommodating itself to the prevailing disinterest in politics and failed to stand firm and theoretically develop these and other fundamental principles out of a fear of isolation. So we draw the opposite conclusion to Devrim.
If the marxist revolutionary movement has known periods of betrayal and organisational death like those just mentioned, it can also offer magnificent examples from these periods where marxist minorities suffered the most brutal isolation in order to uphold political positions and create a life-line to new revolutionary organisations. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who went to prison (hard labour in the case of Liebknecht) and were later murdered because of their internationalist fight against the First World War, helped to inspire the October Revolution and the formation of the Communist International . Or the hardly known militants of the Communist Left, who risked (and often fell victim to) the terror of the Gestapo or the Partisans, in order to defend internationalist principles in the Second World War, keeping alive a tradition that we uphold today.
Today’s revolutionary organisations would hardly merit the appellation ‘Communist Left’ if they weren’t able to withstand the relatively soft conditions of isolation that they can experience today in the face of the general distaste for politics. Surely they can bear the ridicule and ostracism that can be directed to revolutionary militants today, when one measures the terrible conditions their antecedents have faced in the past?
The ability to preserve and develop revolutionary political thought in the face of often extreme isolation is an important measure of whether a revolutionary organisation deserves to exist.
The ICC therefore would deserve to die as an authentic current of the Communist Left … if it followed the criticism of Devrim and underestimated the importance of political positions as ‘the thinking of a bygone age’. The ICC thrives on the ability to hold onto and develop the political positions that are relevant to the working class in the current and coming period. We will come on to the present conditions of working class struggle below. First some general observations about the importance of political positions.3
Marx, following Aristotle, the Ancient Greek philosopher, defined man as a political animal:
“Man is a political animal in the most literal sense: he is not only a social animal, but an animal that can be individualised only within society”.
(Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1857)
By extension the term ‘political’ has a general meaning (and therefore goes beyond the description of the corrupt machinations of the parties of the bourgeois state): man’s attempt to determine the direction of society as a whole and thus his own future.
In the long history of class-divided society the exploited masses have been completely excluded from its political direction. However in capitalism, the last form of class society, the working class has been able to force itself onto the political stage and form political parties. This capacity to express its interests in a political form is ultimately a result of the fact that unlike previous exploited classes the working class is a revolutionary class that bears within itself an entirely new mode of production to replace capitalism.
The working class struggle in capitalism, when fought to a successful conclusion, leads to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This supreme political act, the coming to political power of the working class, is the condition for the ultimate establishment of a classless society - communism. The development of the self-consciousness of the proletariat is the recognition of its historical/political interests as a class, expressed by, though not exclusively, the formation of political parties. The working class, having an innate need to take society into socialism has to unify around these political definitions of what it is, and what it must do, as a class. Political positions are the constituent elements of the platform of the revolutionary political organisation - what distinguishes the perspective of the working class from the objectives of the bourgeoisie, and other classes in society. The precise nature of this political party, when it can be formed, the role it plays in the proletarian seizure of power, etc., has evolved dramatically in the course of the last two centuries. But the marxist conception of the revolutionary organisation as a fundamentally political entity remains.
This is all the more crucial considering that the working class, unlike previous revolutionary classes, cannot build up an economic power base in existing society, so the theoretical elaboration and adoption of proletarian political positions becomes all the more vital.4 The formulation of political positions must for this same reason precede the actual seizure of political power.
The working class therefore is not simply an economic or sociological category within bourgeois society, an exploited class like the slaves or the serfs, but above all a historical class with a revolutionary purpose and therefore a political class in the deepest sense of the word.
The disdain for the central importance of politics in the working class struggle, and in the organisations which claim to defend its interests, cannot however avoid or escape political pressures, since the struggle between the classes over the direction of society is invariably a political fight that is imposed on the combatants whether they like it or not. Apoliticism, despite its illusions, inevitably becomes political… but not necessarily in a good way. Rather, because of its lack of clear and developed proletarian political positions and principles, the apolitical approach comes under the sway of the dominant political forces of the ruling class.
This is nowhere better exemplified than in the history of anarchism and its attempted revolutionary apoliticism. In the great political tests of history anarchists have in the main been unable to resist the pressures of the politics of the ruling class and capitulated to them, most famously by Peter Kropotkin in the First World War:
Kropotkin, Tcherkesoff and Jean Grave were the most eager defenders of France: "Don't let these heinous conquerors wipe out the Latin civilisation and the French people again... Don't let them impose on Europe a century of militarism" (Letter of Kropotkin to J.Grave, 2 September1914). It was in the name of the defence of democracy against Prussian militarism that they supported the Sacred Union: "German aggression was a threat - executed - not only against our hopes for emancipation but against all human evolution. That's why we, anarchists, we, anti-militarists, we enemies of war, we passionate partisans for peace and fraternity between peoples, we line up on the side of the resistance and we have not thought of separating our fate from that of the rest of the population" (Manifesto of Sixteen (the number of signatories) 28 February 1916).”5
The main representatives of anarchism lined up behind the politics of the ruling class, as did the opportunist leadership of the main Social Democratic parties. The latter abandoned the internationalist political positions of the working class; the former, largely dismissive of these positions, found that their own nice-sounding but empty phrases about democracy and emancipation, human evolution, against war, for peace and fraternity, could be recuperated by the imperialist politics of the bourgeoisie.6
The scorn for political positions amongst revolutionaries can also be harmful in other, less decisive periods, like today’s, tending to reflect, rather than counter, the present disorientation of working class.
Devrim says that there is a problem of depoliticisation in society. True, as far as it goes. But what are the particular characteristics of de-politicisation today which affect the working class and its tiny revolutionary minorities?
Since the resurgence of class struggle on a historical scale in 1968, ending the long counter revolutionary epoch, the working class has found it very difficult to develop its struggle onto its own political terrain. It has remained largely on the defensive, and under the sway of social democracy, Stalinism and trade unionism. The ruling class, for its part has been able to phase in its growing economic crisis, and manoeuvre politically and intelligently against the threat from below. The resulting stalemate between the two main class adversaries in capitalist society has opened up a period of the social decomposition of capitalism, which has led to a profound disorientation within the working class.7
The definite opening of the period of decomposition was marked by the collapse of the USSR, and this has been deliberately used by the ruling class to reinforce this disorientation. The enormous ideological campaigns by the international bourgeoisie since 1989 about the “death of communism”, of “marxism”, and “the end of the working class” as a political force in society are not accidental. Marxist minorities like the ICC, even if they were not tainted in any way by Stalinism, nevertheless have suffered the full force of this attempt by the ruling class to de-politicise the working class, and thus use the social decomposition of its system to inflict a profound blow on its class adversary.
Devrim in his personal testimony ‘My experience…’ expresses agreement with the ICC’s analysis of the social decomposition of capitalism which we have briefly outlined above:
"Personally I think that a lot of what it has to say is a good description of the new period that began with the fall of the Soviet Union, but it has to be understood also as a way to justify the mistakes present in the stuff about the years of truth" (a reference to the analysis the ICC had made to describe the stakes of the 1980s).
Devrim doesn’t elaborate on what parts of the Theses on Decomposition he agrees with or what parts that he doesn’t disagree with, or the nature of the mistakes we are supposed to have made in the analysis of the 80s, nor does he explain what is faulty in the analysis of the Theses on Decomposition which apparently proves they are a way of justifying this earlier analysis.8
Nevertheless we can infer that Devrim doesn’t follow the most important conclusions of the Theses that this new period would create new difficulties for the proletariat and therefore its revolutionary organisations:
“13) In fact, we must be especially clear on the danger of decomposition for the proletariat’s ability to raise itself to the level of its historic task. Just as the unleashing of the imperialist war at the heart of the ‘civilised’ world was ‘a bloodletting which [may have] mortally weakened the European workers’ movement’, which ‘threatened to bury the perspectives for socialism under the ruins piled up by imperialist barbarism’ by ‘cutting down on the battlefield (...) the best forces (...) of international socialism, the vanguard troops of the whole world proletariat’ (Rosa Luxemburg, The crisis in Social-Democracy), so the decomposition of society, which can only get worse, may in the years to come cut down the best forces of the proletariat and definitively compromise the perspective of communism. This is because, as capitalism rots, the resulting poison infects all the elements of society, including the proletariat" (Theses on Decomposition).
Devrim hasn’t drawn from this analysis the conclusion that the revolutionary organisation, as an emanation of the working class, must resist this process of de-politicisation and explore in the deepest theoretical way all the implications of the new period for the proletariat as a political class to prepare for its future reawakening, which is still possible in spite of the negative weight of decomposition.
He rather draws the opposite conclusion: if society and the working class have in this period been de-politicised, revolutionaries should adapt to this trend to reduce or obliterate the significance of the historic interests of the proletariat, and thus reduce their preoccupation with its related political positions and theory and adjust their language to suit. But wouldn’t this be a return to the worn-out fashions and muddled theory of anarchistic apoliticism?
We should remember that this trend to de-politicisation in the working class today is not permanent nor complete, nor has the putrefaction of capitalism reached its ultimate conclusion. The contradictions of world capitalism will continue to oblige the working class to think again in political terms no matter how difficult and lengthy such a process of reawakening may prove.
Which is why there continue to be a small minority of individuals who are attracted to marxist politics. So we don’t think Devrim speaks for all people or all ‘outside observers’ of the ICC who he suggests are all repelled or bored by political positions.
It would be tragic if the revolutionary organisation failed today to meet the challenge of this trend, albeit still minuscule, towards working class political positions, and failed to give the latter a historic context, a global consistency and coherence, and their deepest theoretical basis.
In this sense Devrim’s prediction of the demise of the ICC because of its preoccupation with proletarian political principles, expresses instead, in his own way, the present trend of decomposing capitalism, toward the destruction of class consciousness and consequently of the revolutionary minorities who are trying to preserve and enrich it.
Devrim’s personal account ‘My Experience in the ICC’ doesn’t address the political principles of the organisation, its platform, and touches only very briefly on certain key ICC analytical texts like the Theses on Parasitism and the Theses on Decomposition.
This belittling of the framework of the existence of the ICC is a logical consequence of his idea, expressed in the email to an ICC member which we quoted at the beginning of this article, that the addressing of political positions of the platform expresses the thinking of a bygone age. Instead Devrim’s memoir focuses on his experience of the internal life of the ICC. Here again he doesn’t address the political principles behind the internal functioning of the ICC, but bases his critiques on impressions and personal anecdotes and hearsay evidence (such as ‘a member of the central organs told me….’ or ‘I’ve heard of cases where integration took years’ etc)9.
Nevertheless a number of basic themes emerge from his critical account which would be of general interest to discuss. We will look at three of them and then reply:
1) The ICC’s conditions of membership are too tight, and the process of integrating new members is too long and exhaustive.
“The process of joining the ICC is a drawn out and tedious one. ….. Basically to join the ICC you have to agree with the platform and statutes. I have heard of incidences within the ICC when this process has taken years. With us it was quicker, but still a very long extended process….
…..it seems that the ICC actively tries to avoid recruiting10 new people by making it as difficult to join as possible. The feeling that I got was that the centre felt that we had been integrated too quickly, and that part of the problem was that we hadn't agreed with them on certain issues before joining, particularly the 'Theses on Parasitism', but also many others. This presents a dichotomy for the ICC because although officially membership relies upon adherence to the platform and statutes, the desired level of political agreement is actually much higher. When we were originally discussing the platform, there were numerous 'supplementary' texts that it was also suggested that we discuss. My feeling is that in the future the ICC will insist on even more of these texts, which will have the dual effect of not only making it more difficult to recruit people but also mean that there are less fresh ideas within the ICC itself.
2) The ICC is ‘too highly centralised’
“The ICC sees itself as a single internationally centralised organisation, and not as a collection of different national sections. This said the amount of intervention of the central organs into the everyday running of the various sections seemed to me to be not just excessive, but absolutely overbearing.
On the subject of the relationship between the members and the organisation, I feel that the one that exists within the ICC serves to diminish the initiative of the individual members, and also of the sections by encouraging an organisational culture, which, in my opinion, is too highly centralised.
Despite what I would consider an extremely high level of political agreement as a criteria for membership, it still seems to me that in the ICC the orders come from the top, and are transmitted downwards. This process, I feel, acts to discourage initiative coming from the membership of the organisation as a whole and despite the ICC's protests to the contrary tends to mirror the hierarchical relations prevalent in society as a whole”.
3) There is too much internal discussion in the ICC, demanding too much political commitment….
“There is so much 'debate' within the ICC that it tends to make any real discussion impossible.
This leads to a problem where just to keep up with the internal business of the ICC requires an amount of time which I would imagine that most people in political organisations put into their entire political activity.
…..
Everything must be discussed endlessly internally before it can be presented to the outside
…..
I think that it presents the impression that the ICC is composed of a bunch of robots who all parrot the same line. However, true or untrue this may be, it is certainly an impression held by many outside the ICC, which the ICC does very little to dispel. The second is that the ICC generates an immense volume of texts, many of which, as has already been discussed, don't even get read by all of their own members. Surely there must be some people out there who might be interested in some of them”.
…..while the theory of the ICC is ‘too coherent’.
“The theory of the ICC is an impressive body of work, more so because of its deep coherence. It all fits together perfectly with every block having its place in the entire structure. Certainly for those looking for theoretical coherence it can seem very attractive, especially for new groups, as we were at the time, the adopting of a theoretical whole in one go can seem deeply attractive rather than going through the painstaking theoretical work that is the alternative. The problem is though that it is a house of cards where each part is dependent on the others to stop the entire edifice from collapsing.
Taken as a whole, if you strip out the disparaging personal impressions and derogatory metaphors and quite a few fibs in his personal account, Devrim is criticising the ICC for being too much of a revolutionary political organisation: the required political agreement for being a member is too high, it is too centralised on an international scale, it has too much internal theoretical debate, it demarcates itself too much from other political tendencies; it demands too much political passion from its members; and finally it is too theoretically coherent.
Altogether this is too complimentary to a political organisation! The history of the ICC shows it has had many difficulties. Nevertheless, despite all the mistakes and insufficiencies of the ICC, for a revolutionary organisation to be able to hold onto, for 40 years, a lineage from the marxist left (in the Communist League, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Internationals and the Communist Left itself); to provide an extensive analysis of the historic period (the decadence of capitalism) as well as capture the main features of its last phase of decomposition; to provide a platform which outlines the communist perspective in these conditions; to maintain independence from the bourgeoisie including from its extreme left wing; to furnish regular analyses of the evolving international situation in its dimensions of the economic crisis, the imperialist conflicts and the class struggle; to intervene with one voice across continents (despite its small numerical size); to generate the level of internal discussion needed to present its debates in a clear way to the outside; to survive and prosper from internal political crises…. all this at least shows that the preoccupation with political principles tends to sustain a revolutionary organisation rather than lead to its demise.
But this political tenacity is not our exclusive achievement. In the end the capacity the ICC has shown is a reflection of the latent potential in the working class as a revolutionary political class, its capacity to become highly conscious of its historic goals and to unify around these interests in the face of all the obstacles that have been and will be put in its way.
Nevertheless it’s these very political capacities which Devrim thinks are antiquated and will lead to the demise of the ICC, a fate which he implies should be accelerated. Principled politics supposedly destroy individual and local initiatives, discourage the development of fresh ideas from such initiatives, and isolates the organisation from outside sources of inspiration and thus prevents growth. In short the ICC restricts personal liberty, the individual freedom necessary for a vibrant and growing organisation as Devrim puts it. The integration process of new members, the role of the central organs, the framework of internal debate, and its theoretically coherent goals and its attitude to other parts of the political milieu, are, in a word, authoritarian.
In order to answer this false idea that marxist revolutionary political organisation restricts the freedom of the individual, we need to try and clarify a few questions in order to give a certain coherence to the problem.
The desire for freedom, for the ability to shape one’s own destiny and be true to oneself is one of the oldest human needs, an intrinsic one for a species which has the capacity for self-consciousness and which must live communally. The interplay between the innermost desires of the individual and the needs of others has always been a fundamental aspect of human existence.
For a large part of pre-capitalist human history, dominated by classes and the exploitation of man by man, the individual’s spiritual need for personal freedom and control of his destiny was largely turned against him by the spectre of ‘God’ and by the latter’s self-appointed representatives on earth, who, not coincidentally, happened to belong to the class of slaveowners. The producing mass of the population was shackled on earth by the ruling class and in the imaginary heavens by a celestial tyrant.
The secularisation and therefore politicisation of personal freedom and destiny, in the bourgeois revolutions - particularly in the French Revolution 1789-1793 - was a fundamental step in the progress toward the real-world solution of human freedom. Not least because it opened the way for the working class to force itself into the political arena and define itself politically. However, in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, the bourgeoisie presented its own newly won freedom as a universal achievement that benefited everyone. This deception resulted partly from its own illusions and partly from the bourgeoisie’s need to enroll the whole population behind its banner. The concept of freedom remained within a mystified abstract form, hiding the fact that in capitalist society the producers, while legally free and equal to their masters, would now be enchained by a new form of exploitation, a new dictatorship. The victorious bourgeoisie had brought with it the generalisation of commodity production which had accentuated the division of labour, tearing the individual away from the community. The various forms of the social texture confronted the individual as external necessity, and turned his fellow man into a competitor. From this atomisation and isolation came, paradoxically, the mystique of individual freedom in capitalist society. In reality only capital was free:
“In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois abolition of individuality and freedom. And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at”.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto
The living, historically concrete development of individual freedom therefore depends on the solidarity of the proletarian struggle for the abolition of classes and exploitation. Real freedom is only possible in a society of free labour, that is a communist mode of production, where the abolition of the division of labour permits the all-round development of the individual.
The promotion of proletarian political freedoms on which this revolutionary transformation of society depends, and which the communist political organisations must defend, necessarily involves the struggle against the ferocious demands for bourgeois political freedom that capitalist society continually generates.
1) ’Too tight conditions of membership’
To paraphrase the Communist Manifesto: The stringent conditions of marxist militancy are reproached by the bourgeoisie for restricting the freedom of the individual and his initiatives. And rightly so. The prohibition of bourgeois individual freedoms and bourgeois initiatives is undoubtedly aimed at.
The political principle of opposition to parliamentary participation, which the ICC holds in common with the rest of the tradition of the Communist Left, in large measure prevents the sort of careerism and hierarchical decision-making which infected the parties of the Second International and which is typical of bourgeois political life. The principled independence from the bourgeois state apparatus precludes the sort of personal ambition and adventurism fuelled by the expectation of easy money which animates the participants of bourgeois politics.
The struggle for proletarian political freedom against bourgeois freedoms doesn’t end here. There are those who are disgusted by the rotten world of bourgeois politics, left and right, and who want to fight it inside a marxist revolutionary organisation. But they haven’t given up, at root, the abstract and empty slogan of ‘individual freedom’ which serves as the ultimate ideological cover and justification for the capitalist world.
Unchecked, these residues of bourgeois thought lead, inside the organisation, to an attitude of surreptitious combat against
the alleged rigidity of proletarian political principles, the supposed hierarchy of centralisation, the ‘dogmatism’ of proletarian debate, which are felt to be so many restrictions on personal rights, even if superficially these very principles -centralisation and the culture of debate - are agreed with. This attitude has no precise alternative, no distinct positive outlines, but is mainly characterised by being against, of rejecting what is. It demands the right to not abide by collective, centralised decisions, the right to take local initiatives counter to those of the rest of the organisation without explanation, the right not to be coherent and above all not to be held responsible for any inconsistency.11
This anarchistic attitude retains the bourgeois belief in ‘individual freedom’. It rejects the authority of capitalist politics and exploitation but also ends up rejecting the authority of the Marxist alternative to it as well.
The marxist revolutionary organisation therefore must struggle against and protect itself from this more diffuse and empty defence of bourgeois political freedom as well as its open obvious expressions that are found in parliamentary and leftist parties. .
It’s not accidental that in the history of the marxist movement the question of who is, and who is not, a member of the organisation has assumed vital importance. At the Hague Congress of the 1st International the first days were spent verifying the eligibility of the delegates, particularly because there was a secret cabal within the organisation: Bakunin’s Brotherhood.
At the fateful 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 one of the principle divisions between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was over the definition of a member in the proposed statutes of the party.
The tight conditions of membership are a vital means of excluding both the classic expressions of bourgeois political freedom like adventurism and careerism, and the more diffuse concessions to them that take the form of opportunism on matters of general political principle and the formation of personal cliques that resist the consistent application of principles on questions of organisation.
A lack of rigour in the process of integration of militants is a good means of establishing a hierarchy within the organisation between ‘those who know and those who don’t know’ the positions and analyses of the latter. Obviously it is never possible to completely eliminate the inequalities and differences of capacities between militants, but the ‘recruitment’ on insufficient bases are the best means to reinforce rather than attenuating them.
2) Centralisation and the non-hierarchical conception of delegation.
All organisms need a given amount of unity in order to maintain their existence. This is true in the political sphere as it is in the natural world. Centralisation is the essential means of ensuring any complex unity. This expresses a fundamental, universal premise: the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Unity is not the simple result of the collection or aggregation of the different constituent elements of the whole. Unity requires another quality: the capacity to centralise and coordinate these otherwise disparate elements. An orchestra requires a conductor to bring all the musicians together, who in return recognise and respect his indispensable role in creating a unified work of art that is qualitatively more than the sound of each instrument taken separately.
A revolutionary political organisation is likewise more than a collection of individuals who happen to agree - it also requires, in order to sustain itself, a will to unity and therefore a will to centralisation by every militant.
The high degree of centralisation needed for proletarian political organisations reflects the fact that the proletariat has no separate economic or political interests within itself, unlike other classes. It also expresses an important need of an exploited class: to combat the process of division and atomisation which wage labour and generalised commodity production imposes on the proletariat and to compensate for the absence of any economic power to solidify its combat.
Centralisation is necessarily restrictive on certain individual initiatives - those that resist the process of centralisation and instead pursue their own independent direction that leads to a loss of cohesion and ultimately the dissolution of the whole. But by contrast, it is entirely dependent on the individual initiatives and diversity of the whole political organism. The protracted nature of centralisation is precisely a result of the need to collectively resolve these differences, synthesise the disagreements - the only way to bring the whole together and enrich it into a higher unity.
The marxist concept of centralisation is therefore not monolithic. It allows for, in fact demands, the expression of minority positions - with the objective of winning over the majority so the whole organisation can take the right path. The de-centralised or federalist conception that the minority should not be open to criticism, and not subject to the unity of the organisation while the debate continues, is in fact authoritarian since it means the arbitrary imposition of a part over the whole.12
Centralisation always appears to be hierarchical to the adepts of ‘personal freedom’ because it involves the principle of delegation. The Congresses for example which formulate the general goals of the organisation cannot possibly sit permanently and deal with the huge amount of daily functions of the organisation and in particular its intervention within the working class. It has to delegate responsibility to central organs to translate its orientations into the daily life of the organisation. The mandating of central organs and their return of mandate to the next congress to be verified is a hallmark of revolutionary marxist political organisation.
The principle of delegation and of the maintenance of unity during the debates over differences is not too much centralisation, it is centralisation: the lifeblood of the revolutionary organisation. The hostility to these principles means in the end the assertion of the will of the individual or a minority over the interests of the whole. It is this, not centralisation, that is authoritarian.
3) Debate, diversity and the search for coherence.
An interesting aspect of Devrim’s personal account is that he criticises the ICC for having too much internal debate, therefore too much diversity and individual initiative on the one hand, while on the other he criticises the organisation for being too theoretically coherent, where nothing is out of place so that no room for individual initiative remains.
Devrim is not concerned with reconciling this apparent contradiction in his account: that an organisation can be both intensely self critical and intensely cohesive at the same time. 13 In fact there is no contradiction between these two opposites - we think they are complementary and interdependent.
The tradition of the marxist left, which the ICC belongs to, has always been characterised by a critical spirit that is not just directed to the bourgeoisie and capitalist society but also to itself, to its own parties, and their concessions to the bourgeoisie, to theoretical errors, and theoretical insufficiency in front of the changes of events and historical periods. The political principles that the ICC defends are the fruit of long efforts to question principles, or conceptions of these principles, that have been found wanting in the light of the constant unfolding of social reality and the creation of new situations, which require new answers and analyses. The ICC’s vision of the role of the party or the state in the period of transition for example is the product of a long and tortuous theoretical development within the Communist Left, requiring decades of debate and confrontation after the defeat of the October Revolution.
And in the history of the ICC itself internal debate has led to the rejection of once axiomatic analyses of the marxist tradition such as Lenin’s theory of the weak link - the concept that the revolutionary socialist transformation would emanate from the peripheral countries of capitalism. The ICC countered that it was in Western Europe with the most experienced sectors of the working class and with the most intelligent bourgeoisies, where the central impetus for proletarian revolution lay. 14
A constant critical stance towards the acquisitions of the marxist tradition in the light of the new problems thrown up in the evolution of events is therefore a necessary aspect of marxist theory.
It implies that every militant takes this critical approach to heart, recognizes the need to think for him or herself and refuse to accept things at face value.
At the same time marxist criticism can only be severe enough if it involves the search for new coherence. Only the quest for new syntheses that either enrich or even overturn the old can go to the roots.
The marxist objective is always to create or recreate a theoretically and politically unified vision that traces the ‘general line of march’ of the working class struggle as the latter evolves over time and through changing conditions. The need for the unified theoretical conception of the interests of the proletariat is a vital counterpart to organisational unity. Theoretical unity or coherence, like centralised organization, is not the same as conformity or uniformity. Every coherence contains potential contradictions. And these latent oppositions point toward new debates and, necessarily, new conclusions.
Diversity is not therefore a goal in itself, the celebration of difference for its own sake, as the anarchists believe, but the means to the greater self-consciousness of the proletariat as a unified revolutionary class.
Likewise the goal of the debates within the organisation is not to reinforce the authority of any ‘leaders’ but to allow the greatest clarity, the most homogeneity within the organisation, that is, to fight against the conditions which engender the need for ‘leaders’.
The power of the ideas of the revolutionary organisation in the working class, which must be measured in the long term, is not through the dilution of its principles and analyses or the abandonment of coherence, as Devrim thinks, but through the greater concentration and depth of its theory.
All this places particular theoretical demands on the revolutionary militant. One of the most important is that they have to see beyond their own personal impressions and feelings.
But Devrim’s whole account of his negative experience in the ICC stays at the first stage of personal impressions which are never raised to the level of a debate over the political and organisational principles which are the essence of marxist revolutionary organisation.
Consequences
There is no detailed alternative conception of revolutionary organisation in Devrim’s critique. But by implication his criticism of the ICC means the alternative should be less stringent in its integration of new members, less centralized, leaving the different parts of the organisation more autonomy. It should spend less time on internal theoretical debate, less time demarcating itself from other political tendencies. There should be less importance given to the collective development of coherent political positions and more weight to personal impressions and feelings. In brief, the revolutionary organisation should be less a political expression of the working class and more a reflection of the personal inclinations of its individual members.
Since Devrim gives no historical models or reference points for what such an organisation should look like, or how it would avoid previous failures based on the same lack of parameters, his alternative seems extremely hazy, its contours indeterminate.
In the end Devrim’s critique expresses a completely different vision of revolutionary militancy to the marxist one. Whereas the latter sees the free development of the militant as a process of interaction with his comrades, that is, as a question of organisational solidarity, Devrim sees the revolutionary as someone who must retain his personal autonomy at all costs even if it means the desertion of the organisation and thus his comrades.
In a period when the working class needs to regain its identity as a political class, the suggestion that an existing revolutionary political organisation, one that can provide a valid communist political perspective, is obsolete, and should be replaced by a vaguely conceived alternative which is indifferent to political positions - well, this is derisory. Not only derisory but harmful.
Today there are groups and individuals who deliberately set out to destroy revolutionary organisations and the ICC in particular. While Devrim does not agree with our definition of these elements as ‘parasitic’, he nevertheless once rejected their behaviour and objectives as anti-working class - one of the reasons that originally drew him to the ICC. But his present attitude, expressed in his personal critique, which now implies the ICC is not worth defending in the face of such attacks, can, irrespective of his own intentions, only whet the destructive appetites of the parasites.
The preoccupation with ‘personal liberty against authority’ finds itself caught in a no-man’s-land between two alternatives: the political determination of marxism on the one hand and the hostile political power of the bourgeoisie, and those who have put themselves at the latter’s service, on the other. In reality there is no neutral middle ground between these two political poles.
It’s clear which of these two camps genuine revolutionaries must choose.
Como
2 We mean that they died as organisations of the proletariat, not necessarily disappeared entirely. The Social Democratic Party of Germany for example, which joined the imperialist war effort in 1914, continues to exist today as one of the main parties of the German state. We are not here making complete comparisons between the ICC with its small influence and the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. But the centrality of political positioning for the life or death of revolutionary organisations remains at root entirely apposite in these historical references. We don’t have room here to go into other, lesser known examples.
3 None of this is to imply that Devrim has abandoned an internationalist political position or any other of the fundamental positions of the Communist Left. But he hasn’t seen fit to reaffirm them in his memoir - probably just because he sees such a statement as relatively unimportant. Our purpose is rather to criticise this idea that the preoccupation with such political positions is the product of a bygone age.
4 Because theory "becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses": Marx in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right speaking about the masses of the working class.
5 en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1
6 Other anarchists of course rejected and fought the imperialist war largely on the basis of these same phrases. This only shows that the latter are not sufficient to elaborate a definite class position on imperialist war: in order to elaborate one marxism and marxist revolutionary organisation was and is necessary.
7 See the ICC’s Theses On Decomposition, International Review 62, 1990. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
8 We are not implying that Devrim is personally incapable of developing such an explanation but that, from his political point of view, he doesn’t consider it a worthwhile effort since it would mean an antiquated concern with political positions.
9 It would be too tedious to counter them here. And in any case it would lead us to reveal even more everyday and personal details of the internal life of the ICC which would only interest gossips… or the police.
10 In fact, we do not “recruit”: this is a military or a leftist vision. Becoming a militant is one of the most personal, voluntary decisions in one’s life!
11 This negative conception of individual freedom is not unconnected to the view of the ultilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill who defined liberty as essentially due to an absence of constraints. Marx countered in The Holy Family that man is not free "through the negative power to avoid this or that, but through the positive power to assert his true individuality" that depends on the social scope for doing so ('Critical battle against French materalism'.
12 See 'Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation' point 3en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR033_functioning.htm
13Devrim’s account is candid enough to belie the old slander that the ‘ICC suppresses internal debate’.
14 en.internationalism.org/ir/1982/31/critique-of-the-weak-link-theory
For thousands of years people have been forced to flee from war, persecution, famine and forces of nature such as floods, droughts, volcanoes etc. But these movements were not a permanent phenomenon and they mostly involved only a small part of the population. After the beginning of agriculture, with the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals, humanity lived for thousands of years on the same spot. Under feudalism the peasantry were attached to the land and serfs stayed, from the moment they were born until their death, on the same land, which belonged to their feudal lord. But, with the onset of capitalism around the fourteenth to fifteenth century this changed drastically.
Capitalism spread by conquest, by intense and massive violence across the globe. First in Europe, where enclosures drove self-sufficient peasants from communal land into the cities to work in factories. Marx described primitive accumulation as the process of “divorcing the producer from the means of production. … great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and ‘unattached’ proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process” (Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter 26: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation). This separation of the peasant from the soil, from their means of production, meant uprooting millions of people. Because capitalism needs “the abolition of all laws preventing labourers from transferring from one sphere of production another to and from one local production centre to another” (Marx, Capital Volume 3, Chapter 10.)
At the same time as capitalism in Europe was compelling the peasants to sell their labour power, it began to spread its colonial rule by invasion and conquest around the globe. And for centuries slave-hunters kidnapped millions of people, mostly from Africa to supply cheap labour for the plantations and mines mainly in America. When slavery ended many slaves working on plantations were replaced with indentured labour (1). All along its expansion capitalism uprooted and displaced people, either from the countryside forcing them to sell their labour power to a capitalist, or by robbing labour power and turning them into slaves to be sold on another continent. In the same way as capitalism needs the biggest, if not unlimited mobility for its commodities and free access to markets, it also imposes the biggest mobility and access to the work-force. Capitalism “must be able to mobilise world labour power without restriction in order to utilise all productive forces of the globe – up to the limits imposed by a system of producing surplus value. This labour power, however, is in most cases rigidly bound by the traditional pre-capitalist organisation of production. It must first be ‘set free’ in order to be enrolled in the active army of capital. The emancipation of labour power from primitive social conditions and its absorption by the capitalist wage system is one of the indispensable historical bases of capitalism.” (The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 26; Rosa Luxemburg). Mobility has a particular significance within capitalism. “Capitalism necessarily creates mobility of the population, something not required by previous systems of social economy and impossible under them on anything like a large scale” (Lenin The Development of Capitalism in Russia “The ‘Mission’ of Capitalism”).
The proletarian is thus forced to move incessantly, always in search for an opportunity, for a place to sell his labour power. Being a wage earner means being forced to move large and small distances, or even to move to another country or continent, wherever a worker can sell his labour power. Whether in violent forms or through ‘mere’ economic coercion capitalism from its beginning has drawn its work-force from the entire planet, it has been global, international from the start. In other words: the working class – by the nature of the conditions of capitalism, is a class of migrants – and this is why workers have no fatherland. However the distances a worker has to migrate depends on the economic situation and on other factors such as famine, repression or wars.
During the nineteenth century, the ascendant phase of capitalism, this meant migration occurred mostly towards the areas with expanding industries. Migration and urbanisation went together. In many cities in the 1840-80s in Europe the population doubled within a period of 30-40 years. Within a few decades or, often, within an even shorter period, small towns centred on coal mines, iron mines or new factories, swelled into huge cities.
At the same time, since capitalism always runs into economic crises, a ‘surplus’ of labour power regularly crops up with masses of unemployed workers looking for jobs. In the ascendant phase of capitalism economic crises were mainly cyclical. When the economy entered into a crisis, many workers could emigrate, and, when a new boom phase began, additional workers were needed. Millions of workers could emigrate without any major restrictions - mainly because capitalism was still expanding - in particular to the USA. Between 1820 and 1914 some 25.5 million people from Europe emigrated to the USA; altogether some 50 million left the European continent. In every year between 1820 and 1915, more than half the increase in the British population simply emigrated (2). But these waves of mainly economic migration slowed down considerably with the First World War, when the global historical conditions changed and in particular when the economic crisis was no longer just cyclical but became long-lasting, if not permanent. From massive and almost unhampered, migration became filtered, selected and more and more difficult, if not illegal. From World War I a period of stricter border controls began to be imposed on economic migrants.
And yet we need to distinguish economic migration from wars: every refugee is a migrant, but not every migrant is a refugee. A migrant is someone who leaves his residence in search of a place where he can sell his labour power. A refugee is someone whose life is at stake in an immediate way and moves elsewhere to find a safe place.
Wars and pogroms are not new phenomena. Any war means violence, forcing people to run away from the confrontations to save their life. Thus war refugees are as old as wars themselves, and war refugees appeared a long time before capitalism forced workers into economic migration. However, the number of wars also took on a different size and quality with the First World War. Up until then the number of war refugees was relatively small. And also the number of victims of pogroms as the ones against the Jews in Russia (or elsewhere) began to change with World War I. In earlier centuries the refugee problem was mainly a temporary and limited phenomenon. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the onset of the decadence of capitalism, with each world war and, after 1989, with the period of ‘local’, ‘regional’ but often endless wars, the question of refugees has taken on a new dimension. Both the number of war refugees and economic migrants depend on the respective historical conditions – whether there is an economic crisis and how much war has become dominant.
We plan to publish a number of articles on the question of refugees and migration, which look at the questions from different angles. We have already published an article on migration [1354] and plan to take up this question in more detail soon. We begin this series with the development of the spiral of violence in the twentieth century and the consequences for the scope of flight from wars, taking up in more detail the different phases from the First World War to the Second World War, and its aftermath, before taking up the period from the Cold War up to the present day. In another article we will also look more closely at the policy of the ruling class and what consequences flow from this for the struggle of the working class.
Heinrich 3/10/15
“One thing is certain. The world war is a turning point…The tempo of development has received a mighty jolt from the eruption of the volcano of imperialism. The violence of the conflicts in the bosom of society, the enormousness of the tasks that tower up before the socialist proletariat – these make everything that has transpired in the history of the workers’ movement seem a pleasant idyll”. Rosa Luxemburg, Junius Pamphlet, 1916
The brutal and violent impetus inherent in decadent capitalism, evoked here by Rosa Luxemburg, has been strikingly confirmed by the tragic fate of the civilian populations in the 20th century who have been subjected to imprisonment in camps, to displacement, deportation and liquidation en masse. The combined effect of wars, economic crisis and oppression in declining capitalism gave rise to an irrational dynamic of blind violence, of pogroms, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and unbridled militarism. The 20th century was one of the most barbaric in history.
The year 1914 and its chauvinist hysteria opened a whole spiral of violence. In the past of course wars led to massacres and oppression, but this was usually on a local scale; they didn’t result in massive exoduses, the displacement of whole populations and the near- paranoid obsession to control them on the part of the state. Modern warfare has become total war. It mobilises, over a period of years, the entire population and the economic machines of the warring countries, reduces to ashes decades of human labour, sacrifices the lives of tens of millions of human beings, hurls hundreds of millions into famine. Its effects are no longer limited to mere conquests, with their train of rape and pillage, but gigantic destructions across the whole globe. On top of the uprooting, the rural exodus brought about by the introduction of capitalist social relations, total war adds the militarisation of the whole of civil society in the service of the battle fronts. This was a real qualitative step. Populations of entire countries, and above all the youth, are forcibly displaced to become soldiers, compelled to engage in a mutual bloodbath with those from rival countries. The civilians at the rear are bled dry by the war effort and the first camps are made up of the prisoners from enemy nations. Although during the First World War there were no extermination camps, we can still talk about mass imprisonments and deportations. Any foreigner immediately became a suspect. In Britain for example foreigners were stuck in the Newbury race course or on the Isle of Man. In Germany, the camps at Erfurt, Munster or Darmstadt were used to imprison masses of civilians. In France, 70 internment camps were in service between 1914 and 1920 on the west coast (in the vicinity of Brest for example) and in the southern departments. At first they were existing buildings or perimeters surrounded by barbed wire and closely guarded. Transfer from one camp to another was done with cattle wagons and any revolt was met with violence. Useless to point out that any communist militant was subject to imprisonment as were women who had “compromised with the enemy”. A camp like the one in Pontmain was made up of Turks, Austro-Hungarians and especially Germans. This was indeed a prefiguration of the concentration camp universe that was set up in the 1930s and reached its summit during the Second World War. At the same time as xenophobic prejudices were being whipped up, the indigenous inhabitants of distant countries were dragged towards Europe by the recruiters, enrolled as sacrificial lambs in the war. From 1917-18, under orders from Clemenceau in France, 190,000 North Africans were sent to the front. 170,000 West Africans, the famous “Senegalese sharpshooters” were for the most part mobilised by force. Chinese people were also mobilised by France and Britain. Britain also sent Africans and Indians to the slaughter (1.5 million from the Indian sub-continent alone). The belligerent powers – and this also included the Russians with their “savage divisions” from the Caucasus – used all these “natives” as specialised cannon-fodder for the most dangerous military operations. As well as the soldiers displaced, more than 12 million Europeans were compelled to flee from the war, to become refugees.
This was the case for the Armenian populations, one of the most striking tragedies of the war, and seen as the first real genocide of the 20th century. Even during the 19th century, Armenian aspirations for independence, like that of the Greeks, resulted in persecution by the Ottomans. A political movement known as the “Young Turks”, which adopted an extremely nationalist Pan-Turkish ideology, prepared the massacre. Having become scapegoats during the war, especially after the defeat by the Russians, the Armenians were subjected to a well-planned massacre between April 1915 and the autumn of 1916. Having initially arrested a number of intellectuals, the rest of the Armenian population was systematically deported and decimated en masse by the Turkish state. Women and children were transported in boats and many drowned around the coasts or were sold like slaves. The Baghdad railway was used to carry out massive deportations to the desert or to camps, some of which were already being used to exterminate people, A large number of Armenians died of thirst in the Mesopotamian desert. Those who managed to escape the slaughter became impoverished refugees, including thousands of orphans. They were to make up a real diaspora (many for example went to the US where a sizeable community still exists). All this of course was very quickly forgotten by the ‘great democracies’ not long after this tragic event. And yet over a million Armenians had been killed!
The collapse of the last great empires during this terrible war gave rise to a multitude of nationalist tensions which had equally disastrous consequences for other minorities. The formation of nation states after the First World War was the result of the fragmentation of the old moribund empires. This was particularly the case with the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires that had been composed of a mosaic of populations that were preyed upon by the hungry vultures that were the European imperialist powers. By struggling for their own survival, these ruined empires had tried to fortify their frontiers, conclude desperate military alliances and carry out population exchanges which gave rise to sharpened divisions and forms of “ethnic cleansing”. The Greek-Turkish conflict, which is often presented as the consequence of the spontaneous reaction of crowds of Turks, was highly orchestrated by the new state run by its modern leader Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. The new state he founded was to wage a long and murderous war against the Greeks. During this conflict, the Greeks also engaged in pillaging, with armed civilian bands burning Turkish villages and committing all kinds of atrocities against their inhabitants. Between 1920 and 1923 the Turkish forces also carried out a whole number of cruel massacres against Greeks and Armenians. From the beginning there were wholesale transfers of populations, of Greeks who had been living in Turkey and vice-versa (1,300,000 Greeks left Turkey and 385,000 Turks left Greece). In 1923, the Lausanne Treaty put the seal on these violent measures with a number of administrative procedures. Thousands of Greeks and Turks were expelled through this official exchange and good number of them died during the course of this exodus. More generally, in such conditions, with the displacement and concentration of hungry populations across the continent, it was not surprising that pathogenic infections proliferated. Central and eastern Europe was soon hit by typhus. But more spectacularly, the world was swept by the “Spanish flu” which claimed 40 to 50 million victims in populations weakened by the years of war. Before that the worst epidemic had been cholera in the 19th century. You would have to go back to the Middle Ages and the Black Death to find an epidemic on such a scale (30% of the European population was wiped out by the plague).
This whole barbaric reality was only possible because the working class had been dragooned by nationalism and soiled by patriotism. But faced with these atrocious conditions, the proletariat did raise its head, demonstrated that it alone was capable of blocking the war machine and putting an end to the carnage. It was after the mutinies of 1917 and the revolutionary wave which began in Russia and with workers’ uprisings in Germany (the sailors’ mutiny at Kiel and the revolts in big cities like Berlin) that the main belligerents were forced to sign the armistice. Faced with the threat of world revolution, the war had to be brought to a rapid end.
The ruling class had one obsession faced with the problem of desertions, demobilisation, and above all the risk of social conflict: it was vital to crush the focal points of the communist revolution. The Entente Powers, driven by powerful class hatred, encircled Bolshevik Russia. The terrible civil war was launched by the “White” armies, backed up by the armies of the capitalist states of Europe and the USA. All this resulted in countless victims. An economic blockade provoked a major famine in Russia. But to crush the proletariat, a new wave of violence had to be unleashed. The proletariat had become the common enemy of all the capitalist powers. Faced with the proletarian danger, they had to cooperate. But in contrast to the victorious countries, the bourgeoisie and especially the petty bourgeoisie in the defeated countries like Germany was to develop a deep feeling of having been “stabbed in the back”, of having been humiliated by the “enemy within”. The drastic conditions of the Versailles Treaty precipitated the hunt for scapegoats, leading to the development of anti-Semitism and a real man-hunt against communists, who were also made responsible for everything that had gone wrong. The culminating point was the crushing of the Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 and the series of savage massacres that followed: “The butchers set to work. Whole buildings collapsed under artillery fire, burying entire families in the ruins. Other proletarians fell in front of their homes, in schools, in stables, shot dead, beaten to death with clubs, pierced by bayonets, most often denounced by anonymous informers. They were put up against the wall singly, in twos, in groups of three or more, or finished off with a bullet in the back of the neck, in the middle of the night, on the banks of the Spree. For weeks, the river was throwing up corpses.” (3)
A succession of defeats for the working class was punctuated by the murder of great figures of the movement, the most celebrated being Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In the 1920s, ferocious repression against any form of opposition was made all the easier because the Stalinist counter-revolution was carrying out expulsions and murders, creating labour camps and prison camps, the Gulags, hunting down revolutionaries and systematically locking up workers suspected of “sedition”.
In the framework of decadent capitalism and of the counter-revolution, hatred of communism and its assimilation with the rootless Jew led to a qualitative change in anti-Semitic pogroms. In the 19th century, there had already been a series of pogroms against the Jews, especially in Russia after the annexation of Poland. Outbursts of violence against the Jews had already been recurrent in Odessa in the early part of the 19th century. But between 1881 and 1884 pogroms led to real massacres. Local populations were incited and encouraged to pillage, rape and murder. In 1903 a terrible series of pogroms struck the city of Kishinev. In a totally irrational and obscurantist manner, the Jews were accused of practising ritual murders. Between 1879 and 1914 nearly 2 million Jews became refugees. At the beginning of the 1920s, there was a new upsurge of pogroms. During the civil war in Russia, thousands of Jews were massacred by the White Armies, especially those led by Denikin. Following these pogroms, our comrade MC, for example, had to take refuge in Palestine with part of his family (see International Review 65 and 66). During this period, pogroms in Russia resulted in 60,000 deaths.
The defeat of the proletariat in Germany generated growing tensions against the Jews, as in other parts of Europe, producing a fresh wave of refugees. The programme of the Nazi party, dated 24 February 1920 had already stated that “To be a citizen, you must have German blood, religious denomination is not important. Thus no Jew can be a citizen”.
With the preparation and entry into the war, a new epoch had opened up: that of capitalism in decline and its universal tendency towards state capitalism. From now on, each state, led by its executive and its armed wing, would exert a bureaucratic control over the whole of social life. As a result of the war and in the name of the military needs or security of the state, there was a tightening of border controls and increasing control over and exactions against exiled populations and refugees. Unlike the period before the First World War, migrations were now subject to restrictions. It was at this moment that the main tools of administration were put in place. The displacement of populations during the war led states to establish a real police control over identities, to systematically place all foreigners under suspicion and to search hem. In France for example, “the creation of identity cards in 1917 was a real reversal of previous police and administrative habits. Our mentalities have today taken on board this individual stamp whose police origins are no longer seen as such. It is not however neutral that the introduction of identity cards first concerned foreigners, with the aim of surveillance in a full-on state of war” (PJ Deschodt and F Huguenin, La République xenophobe, ed JC Lattès). From the start, armies recognised that the displacement of civilians – whether spontaneous or provoked – was a real threat, an “encumbrance” for troop activity and military logistics. States thus tried to give evacuation orders, instrumentalising civilians and refugees to use them as weapons of war, as was the case during the Greek-Turkish conflict concluded by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. The “solution” that was resorted to more and more was the multiplication of internment camps, as we saw above. When refugees had to flee from combat zones (as was the case with the Belgians in 1914 when the country was invaded by Germany), even though they sometimes benefited from the help of voluntary associations, a large number of civilians were directly placed under the control of the authorities and ended up in camps. Prisoners were divided up according to nationality and “dangerousness”. These were decisions of states out to defend their sordid capitalist interests, with the most “democratic” ones to the fore, and ready to take entire civil populations hostage.
In the aftermath of the war, following the physical and ideological defeat of the proletariat, the spirit of revenge took a new step and an even more murderous and barbaric conflict was being prepared. Facing a pile of ruins, the states of Europe were in a difficult situation with so much labour power having been destroyed. Accords were signed to allow economic emigration. In the 1920s, France for example recruited Italian, Polish and Czech immigrants, the prelude to new xenophobic campaigns brought about the economic crisis and the terrible depression which followed, opening the course towards a new world war.
WH 28/6/15
The outbreak of a second world holocaust would take barbarism to unheard of levels for civilian populations and refugees. We will look at this tragic development in the second part of this article [1355].
(1) Frölich, Lindau, Schreiner, Walcher, Révolution et contre-révolution en Allemagne, 1918-1920, Ed Science marxiste
(2) Indentured labour means an emigrating worker signs a contract in his county of migration, according to which for a period of 5 or 8 or 10 years he has to work in that country. The wages are fixed, he cannot ask for an increase and he cannot cancel the contract. Between 1830 and 1930 this involved around 5 million Indians and 5-6 million people from other Asian countries – so as many as 12 million people were indentured labourers.
(3) A passage for a European migrant to the USA cost relatively little because it was not illegal,
This article is contributed by a close sympathiser who has participated in a number of recent online debates about the question of capitalist decadence.
The ICC has commented more than once on the persistent tendency in the proletarian milieu – especially that part influenced by anarchism – to reject the Marxist theory of capitalist decadence.[1]
Since the main conclusion we draw from this theory is that capitalism today is a socially regressive system, and that its overthrow is therefore both possible and necessary for humanity, you might be forgiven for thinking there would be some common ground on this; especially today, with the daily images of millions of people desperately trying to flee the barbaric wars of capitalism in the Middle East; wars which increasingly reveal the lack of any rational economic motive even from the point of view of imperialism...
Instead, if a recent online discussion on libcom’s forum is anything to go by,[2] at least some in this milieu display outright hostility to the whole Marxist theory of decadence, arguing that it is at best unnecessary to explain capitalism as a historically transitory mode of production, and at worst a purely ideological construct or pseudo-religious belief.
This goes to prove that ‘decadence-denial’ is a real phenomenon in the proletarian milieu today.
Online discussions certainly have their weaknesses and this one generated as much heat as light at times, so rather than go back over ‘who said what’ instead we want to focus on what seem to us to be the key questions to address: to re-state, as clearly and simply as we can, the Marxist position on these questions; to briefly look at the arguments of the ‘deniers’, and pose some key questions for them to answer, so at the very least we can identify common ground where it exists and try to avoid false arguments in the future.
From the beginning of the discussion, the onus was firmly placed on the supporters of “decadence theory” to prove that capitalism has been decadent since 1914.
But before we can answer that we have to decide what theory we’re going to use to determine it; after all, as Einstein said: it is the theory which decides what we can observe.
Our starting point is the Marxist method of understanding history, and like all scientific methods it must be firmly based on the verified discoveries of those who have gone before.
Contrary to popular belief, the main discoveries of the Marxist movement are not the existence of classes or of the struggle between them, or even of the labour theory of value; all of these concepts had already been advanced by bourgeois historians and economists at a time when the bourgeoisie was still a revolutionary class struggling against decaying feudalism.
The first key development in the work of Marx and Engels is that the existence of classes and of the struggle between them is merely a historical phase in the development of the productive forces; capitalism is only the last in a whole succession of modes of production which creates the conditions for its own abolition and – after a successful proletarian revolution – for the abolition of all classes and the creation of a communist society.[3]
This is in a nutshell is the materialist conception of history and the core of historical materialism, which is simply the method we use as Marxists to understand the laws involved in this coming into being and passing away of successive modes of production and to analyse the change from one to another.
The second key development in the work of Marx and Engels is the discovery of the specific way these laws express themselves within capitalism. Based on their theoretical framework, Marx and Engels were able to identify, even in the crises of youthful capitalism when it was still expanding rapidly across the planet, the seeds of the fatal contradictions that would eventually create the conditions for its abolition:
“The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means by which crises are prevented.” (Communist Manifesto)
As a dynamic mode of production driven solely by the extraction of profit, capitalism has a built-in tendency to produce too many commodities relative not to social need but the purchasing power of society. It must therefore seek ever-larger outlets for its products, extending its market across the whole world. But as it extends its mode of production throughout the world it progressively reduces the outlets it needs to grow. The trajectory of capitalism is therefore inexorably towards “more extensive and more destructive crises” which it is increasingly unable to prevent[4].
At several times during the 19th century Marx and Engels overestimated the speed of capitalism’s trajectory and even thought capitalism was entering into its final crisis. But they were able to revise their perspective and clarify their framework for understanding how and why capitalism would prove to be historically transitory. As long as it had not definitively reached the limits of its progressive expansion a world revolution of the proletariat was not yet possible. Only when the further development of the productive forces came into conflict with bourgeois relations of production (ie. with wage labour, capital and the nation state), would the conditions for capitalism’s abolition exist. When this point was finally reached a whole era of social revolution would be opened, characterised by acute contradictions, crises and convulsions.[5]
It still took several more decades of capitalist development, and in particular the rise of imperialism, to clarify exactly how capitalism’s era of crises, convulsions and class struggles would finally be ushered in. But we can see from the theoretical framework developed by the Marxist movement in the 19th century that “decadence theory” is simply the concretisation of historical materialism in the analysis of capitalism as a historically transitory mode of production. It is therefore indispensable for understanding the historical period we are living in, and how to act as revolutionaries.
For the deniers on the other hand, the theory of decadence is at best unnecessary to explain capitalism as a historically transitory mode of production, and at worst ‘teleological’, a purely ideological construct imposed by Marxists, or even a mystical, pseudo-religious belief…
The main argument of the deniers seems to be that capitalism is essentially a cyclical system and that the manifestations of decadence today can therefore be understood as the symptoms of its ‘normal’ functioning. In other words, rather than having any built-in tendency towards increasingly devastating and irresolvable crises, capitalism is in a sort of stasis where each crisis simply irons out temporary problems and results in a new phase of growth.
But it became very clear in the discussion that this disagreement is not about “decadence theory”, or even the history of capitalism: it’s about the whole materialist conception of history as a succession of modes of production which go through a phase of ascent and decline.
The online discussion was prompted by a question about growth in the so-called ‘developing countries’ in Asia. How can we say that capitalism is ‘decadent’ when there are so many signs that capitalism has continued to grow since 1914?
There are certainly phenomena to be explained – for example the spectacular growth of China since the 1980s – but in general we can say that because capitalism is a global system, it enters into its epoch of decay as a global system and not on a country by country basis; no national economy or region can escape from capitalism’s trajectory.
There is a strong tendency among our critics to see any sign of growth since 1914 as a refutation of decadence and to offer a whole list of new developments to show that capitalism has in fact continued to grow vigorously in its epoch of decay: telecommunications, consumer goods, aviation, computers, data/web services...
But decadence has never meant a total halt to the growth of the productive forces, even in previous modes of production, and capitalism is the first mode of production to be based solely on the extraction of profit; if the growing accumulation of capital cannot be ensured then the whole system would simply grind to a halt.
Flowing from the Marxist theory of capitalism as a historically transitory system, the real question we need to answer is: are the productive forces definitively and irreversibly in conflict with bourgeois relations of production? In other words, does capitalist growth since 1914 demonstrate that it is now a socially regressive system?
At the quantitative level, it is possible to show the braking effect of bourgeois relations of production since 1914 by comparing the growth of industrial production in the period of capitalist decadence with what it would have been without this braking effect. Taking the rate of growth in the last phase of capitalist ascendancy and applying it to the whole of the period of decadence, industrial production in decadence reaches only 60% of what it could have been, although even this is likely to be an overestimation.[6]
But this still doesn’t show the crucial qualitative changes to growth in decadence. Since the conditions for capitalism’s abolition already exist, this growth is increasingly characterised, in Marx’s poetic phrase, as “development as decay”.
Having reached the geographic limits of its expansion, with remaining extra-capitalist markets insufficient for its further progressive growth, capitalism’s hereditary disease of overproduction becomes chronic and irreversible. As Marx forecast in the 1848 Manifesto, it is forced to destroy parts of its own body and adopt a series of increasingly drastic palliatives to prolong its life and ensure growing accumulation.
We can see this process at work since 1914:
So if capitalism in decadence at certain times or in certain areas has still been able to display impressive growth rates, this still disguises the increasingly ‘drugged’ nature of this growth, which is at a mounting cost for the future of humanity and the planet itself, and the gigantic waste of the productive forces entailed in these palliative measures.
In other words, it is the growth of a socially regressive system.
All the palliatives adopted since the entry of capitalism into decadence are now themselves exacerbating its mortal sickness. Capitalism has no choice but to launch a frontal assault on the wages and living conditions of the working class to try to make it pay for its crisis. But even this provides no ‘solution’; on the contrary, it can only reduce demand and intensify its chronic crisis of overproduction.
This is the context in which we must analyse the spectacular development of the East Asian economies since the 1980s, especially China which has managed to achieve the most dramatic growth rates in the entire history of capitalism – even during a period of worsening crisis internationally.
A full examination of China’s development is clearly beyond the scope of this article,[7] but based on our theoretical framework for understanding the nature of growth in decadence we are led to conclude that the growth of the East Asian economies is not the indication of a new period of capitalist expansion as in the 19th century, but rather a temporary upturn within a global decline; and in fact we have recently seen China’s growth rates fall to their lowest level for 25 years, leading bourgeois pundits to warn of the shock waves hitting an already weak global economy.[8]
But we should be cautious about making any forecasts. The return of capitalism’s open crisis in the late 1960s dramatically re-affirmed the Communist Left’s analysis of the decadence of capitalism and the inability of the system to overcome its fatal contradictions. But the evolution of the crisis over the last five decades is testament to capitalism’s extraordinary capacity to adapt and survive – even if this can only mean storing up more problems for itself in the longer term. Just as Marx and Engels at times mistakenly believed capitalism was entering into its final crisis, revolutionaries have on occasions underestimated this capacity of capitalism or to foresee the possibility of an under-developed country like China industrialising quite so spectacularly.[9]
We have now passed the milestone of 100 years of capitalist decadence. Despite massive waves of struggles especially in the late 60s and early 1970s, the proletariat has not yet been able to destroy decadent capitalism. But this failure of the working class to meet its ‘appointment with history’, especially in the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, does not in any way invalidate the Marxist theory of capitalist decadence.
There seems to be common ground that capitalism today is a socially regressive system – although we probably disagree on whether it was ever progressive in the first place – and that a proletarian revolution is both possible and necessary.
There also appears to be broad agreement that capitalism is a historically transitory system. But it is entirely unclear what theory the deniers use to determine this, given that they appear to reject the whole materialist conception of history as a succession of modes of production which go through a phase of ascent and decline.
If there are no limits, then it’s hard to see why capitalism is not, as the bourgeoisie itself proclaims, essentially an eternal system.
So in conclusion we think the onus is on the deniers of decadence to demonstrate how they prove that capitalism is not, as the bourgeoisie argues, the final finished product of the class struggle that contains no fatal contradictions.
For ourselves, having tested all the links of our theoretical framework, we’re confident that the Marxist theory of capitalist decadence remains absolutely valid.
MH 26.9.15
[1]. See ‘Decadence of capitalism part XIII: rejection and regressions’, 2012, https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201206/4981/decadenc... [972].
[2]. https://libcom.org/forums/theory/icc-position-decadence-bourgeoisie-deve... [1356]. See also these threads on the ICC website: https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/link/13200/issues-decadence-t... [1357] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/pierre/13423/how-does-century... [1358]
[3]. See ‘The theory of decadence lies at the heart of historical materialism, part 1’, 2004, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/118_decadence_i.html [1359]
[4]. ICC note: MH, like the majority of the ICC, defends the particular interpretation of Marx’s crisis theory developed by Rosa Luxemburg and summarised in this paragraph. But accepting that capitalism is decadent does not depend on adherence to Luxemburg’s theory. In particular, within the revolutionary movement and the ICC itself there are those who have focused on the tendency for the rate of profit to fall as the key contradiction that has inaugurated the phase of decline.
[5]. See Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/pr... [1360]. [1361] See also https://en.internationalism.org/ir/134/what-method-to-understand-decadence [1362]
[6]. See ‘Understanding capitalism’s decadence, Part 4’, 1988, https://en.internationalism.org/ri/054_decadence_part04.html [1363]
[7]. The ICC has published a substantial study of this question for discussion (‘The sources, contradictions and limitations of the growth in Eastern Asia’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/china/part-1 [1364].
[8]. See for example, The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-gdp-growth-is-slowest-in-24-years-142... [1365].
[9]. Much was made by some in the discussion of an ICC text from 1980 which refers to the ‘impossibility’ of new industrialist nations emerging in decadence. This requires revision in the light of 100 years of decadence. But we can still say the saturation of markets relative to the needs of capitalism to expand makes it extremely difficult for the under-developed nations to raise themselves to the level of the developed economies.
In the struggle to form a Communist Party in Britain during the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 it was the Left, led by the small group around Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Dreadnought, that was clearest about the danger posed by the Labour Party to a workers’ revolution.
After some initial hesitations in 1914 the Labour Party had joined the ranks of the ‘social patriots’ and became a supporter of British imperialism in the slaughter. This excerpt from an article written by Pankhurst in 1920 still refers to Labour as ‘reformist’ rather than a capitalist party but it is very clear in denouncing its counter-revolutionary role for the capitalist state.
In opposition to the programme of the social patriotic Labour Party the Dreadnought group defended the need for the overthrow of capitalism and the dictatorship of the working class exercised through the soviets as a step towards the abolition of the wages system and communism.
“The social patriotic parties of reform, like the British Labour Party, are everywhere aiding the capitalists to maintain the capitalist system; to prevent it from breaking down under the shock which the Great War has caused it, and the growing influence of the Russian Revolution. The bourgeois social patriotic parties, whether they call themselves Labour or Socialist, are everywhere working against the Communist revolution, and they are more dangerous to it than the aggressive capitalists because the reforms they seek to introduce may keep the capitalist regime going for some time to come. When the social patriotic reformists come into power, they fight to stave off the workers’ revolution with as strong a determination as that displayed by the capitalists, and more effectively, because they understand the methods and tactics and something of the idealism of the working class.
The British Labour Party, like the social patriotic organisations of other countries, will, in the natural development of society, inevitably come to power. It is for the Communists to build up the forces that will overthrow the social patriots, and in this country we must not delay or falter in that work.
We must not dissipate our energy in adding to the strength of the Labour Party; its rise to power is inevitable. We must concentrate on making a Communist movement that will vanquish it.
The Labour Party will soon be forming a Government; the revolutionary opposition must make ready to attack it.”
Excerpt from ‘Towards a Communist Party’, Workers’ Dreadnought, 21 February 1920.
Why are millions fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and other countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa? Because the population there is desperate to escape a permanent state of war, an infernal spiral of two, three, even five way conflicts between equally murderous antagonists, whether official government armies or terrorist gangs. Syria is the most ‘advanced’ expression of this descent into chaos. The Assad government, which has shown itself ready to bomb Syria to ruins rather than relinquish power, now only controls about 17% of the country. Whole areas of the north and east of the country are under the control of the fanatical jihadis of Islamic State. Other areas are in the hands of what the western media sometimes calls “moderate” oppositionists, but which are themselves increasingly dominated by jihadi forces like al-Nusra, which is an affiliate of al-Qaida: the “secular and democratic” rebels of the Free Syrian Army, which has been noisily supported by the US and Britain, seem to have become increasingly marginal. Between the anti-Assad forces themselves there is a never-ending game of alliances, betrayals and armed battles.
But Syria, like the other wars in the region, is also a confrontation between international powers, a fact brought home by the direct intervention of Russian war planes. From the start, Russia has backed the Assad regime with arms and “advisers”. Today its fighters are bombing “terrorist” targets because the Assad regime has its back to the wall and there is a threat that IS will overrun Russia’s base at Tartus, its only naval outlet to the Mediterranean. But for Russia, all the opposition forces, including those backed by the US, are terrorists, and its recent strikes have hit more of the non-IS rebels than IS itself. The US, which might have welcomed Russian aid in its bombing campaigns against IS in Syria and Iraq, can see very clearly that Russia’s number one aim is not to beat back IS but to prop up Assad. So the two powers are acting in the same country with opposing ends, even if they are not yet confronting each other head on.
Russia’s actions in Syria clearly mark an escalation, but they are an escalation in chaos. They go against any possibility of the big powers coming to some kind of settlement to the 4-year war in Syria, and thus any hope of stemming the tide of refugees fleeing the country. Like the US invasion of Iraq, the great powers are not bringing stability to the region, but a mounting instability, and their lack of options opens the door further to the ambitions of the regional powers. In Yemen, for example, where the Saudi- backed government has been fighting the rebels supported by Iran, which in turn has sent forces to Syria to support Assad. On the Turkish-Syrian-Iraqi frontier, where Turkey has used the pretext of opposing IS to step up its attacks on the Kurdish PKK; Turkey also supports the Ahar al-Sham group in Syria, while Qatar and Saudi have their own Islamist protégés, some of which have also received CIA support.
For decades after World War Two, the world lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation by the two imperialist blocs controlled by the US and the USSR. But this “Cold War” also brought with it a certain discipline, a certain order, as the majority of lesser countries or nationalist forces had to obey the diktats of one bloc or the other. The break-up of the Russian bloc at the beginning of the 90s led to the rapid unravelling of the US bloc, and subsequent attempts by the US to impose order on the resulting centrifugal tendencies only accelerated them further. Its failures in Afghanistan and Iraq are clear evidence of that, above all today as the Taliban, ousted from power by the 2001 US invasion, grow in strength in Afghanistan, and whole swathes of Iraq fall to IS or are under the influence of Iran, which is no friend to the US despite recent attempts to find a rapprochement. After these very negative experiences the US is reluctant to intervene with “troops on the ground” but the rise of IS has obliged it to resort to air power and to step up proxy support for forces like the PKK – previously considered a terrorist group - which has proved most effective in fighting IS. But this in turn has goaded Turkey to raise the stakes in its war on the Kurds. Attacking IS in Syria also runs the risk of indirectly boosting the Assad regime and thus Russian ambitions in the region. The contradictions mount up with no solution in sight.
In sum, there are no forces of order on the planet. The irrationality of capitalist war is becoming increasingly apparent: the wars ravaging the planet bring short term profits to a minority of capitalists and gangsters, but overall they are a total drain on capital, and carry with them no prospect of any post-war reorganisation and reconstruction, as was the case after World War Two. And yet, none of the capitalist powers, from the mighty US to the smallest local war-lord, can afford to stay out of this headlong plunge into militarism and war. The underlying drive of capitalist and imperialist competition is too strong. The financial cost of intervening militarily may be formidable, but the worst thing of all is to lose ground to your rivals. And there will always be rivals.
For the population of these regions, the cost is counted in flesh and blood – in the civilians bombed, raped, beheaded by government armies or opposition militias, in the ruin of their homes along with the historic and cultural products of centuries, in the choice between starvation in refugee camps on the edges of the war zones or the perilous journey to the “safety” of Europe. For humanity as a whole, the prospect is the spread of military chaos across the world, dragging us towards a fateful point of no return.
But that point has not yet been reached. If Europe still looks like a haven of prosperity to the refugees of the world, this is not because of the kindness of the European bourgeoisie. It’s because the working class in these countries is still a force to be reckoned with, and the ruling class is not able to grind it down to utter poverty or mobilise it for war as it was in the 1930s when it faced a defeated working class. Syria gives us a picture of the barbarity of the ruling class when the working class is weak and unable to resist the brutality of the state. The problem for the working class in the more central countries is that it doesn’t know its own strength, doesn’t understand its capacity to fight back, doesn’t have an independent perspective that can offer a future to all the world’s exploited and oppressed. But this perspective – of class struggle across all frontiers with the goal of creating a new society – remains the only real hope for humanity.
Amos, 4.10.15
We are publishing here a letter written by the ICC in response to an article published on the website of the Communist League of Tampa, a group which has appeared recently in the USA ("Why we need a world party"). In the interests of public debate among revolutionaries, the comrades asked us to publish our letter on our website and informed us that they are working on a reply which will in turn be published on their site.
To the Communist League of Tampa
From the International Communist Current
22.8.15
Dear comrades,
We have been following your site with interest. We are encouraged by the appearance of a group which in some way identifies itself with the positions of left communism and which states plainly the need for revolutionaries to organise politically.
We think it would be fruitful to begin a political dialogue with your group and – given the importance of the organisation question for revolutionaries - that a useful starting point for this dialogue would be the text ‘Why we need a world party’ . We understand that this does not represent a ‘programmatic’ statement of the group and that it may well be the subject of disagreements among you: all the more reason, we think, to offer our own thoughts on this text and contribute to the discussion.
As already mentioned, a text which calls for a world party seems to go against the stream in a milieu dominated by anarcho-syndicalism, councilism, communisation theory, and all the varieties of individualism which flourish in a world increasingly ruled by the bourgeois principle of ‘every man for himself’. The open affirmation of the need not only for revolutionaries to come together and organise in a distinct political organisations, but also to prepare the ground for a worldwide revolutionary party in the future – this appears as a bold stance given the enormous weight of suspicion about the marxist conception of revolutionary organisation. From the mainstream media to the anarchists, we are ceaselessly informed that revolutionary political organisations can only be outmoded sects and that they are irrevocably tainted by the poisonous experience of Stalinism. We should not be surprised by this: just as the working class is a “class of civil society which is not a class of civil society”, so the revolutionary organisation which is a product of this class is essentially an alien body in capitalist society, and its militants cannot be deterred by the inevitable hostility they encounter from the representatives of the ruling ideology in all its forms. So we see a key area of agreement in the very title and theme of this text, as well as in the criticisms it makes of the anarcho-syndicalist and councilist arguments against political organisations and the political party. We have some disagreements with its formulations about the possibility of forming “revolutionary unions”, but that is an issue we can return to elsewhere, perhaps in a discussion about the Tampa group’s ‘Points of Unity’
Equally important – because the working class is an international class and its revolution can only win on an international scale - is the fact that the text sees the party as a world party, and that it must be prepared today through a process of common discussion and activities among revolutionary groups in different parts of the globe. Thus while, as you say, it is perfectly true that “forming a world party is not an immediate task at hand”, neither is it a purely abstract goal that will come about of itself sometime in the future: what revolutionaries do and say today plays an active role in the process that will lead to the formation of the party (or, negatively, in the failure to form it, which is certainly a possibility and a danger). That doesn’t mean that we are necessarily in agreement about the kind of organisation we need to develop now – we will return to this later.
Before that, we want to take up some questions about the text’s view of the party which seem inconsistent to us. First of all, the text uses the term “mass party” as opposed to the idea of a “vanguard party” based around a “tight ideological/theoretical line imposed on members”. In our view, the idea of a mass party which developed in the workers’ movement in the late 19th century was tied up with the notion of the party as a kind of government in waiting which would take over the running of society - probably through the medium of parliamentary elections, but similar ideas persisted in the revolutionary movement which broke from official social democracy during the First World War. The most obvious example is the Bolshevik party in the Russian revolution, which saw its role as forming a government after winning a majority in the soviets.
Would you not agree that the mass party idea that developed in the 19th century was also connected to the rise of opportunism in the workers’ movement? That the attempt to build a mass base as rapidly as possible led to the dilution of principles and to compromises with the ruling class, both in the parties of the Second International and in the Communist Parties after 1920-21? And we would argue that it was not accidental that the principal opponents of opportunism in both Internationals were currents who had begun to elaborate a critique of the idea of the mass party: first the Bolsheviks , following the famous debate about ‘who is a member’ at the 1903 RSDLP congress, and then the Italian and German left communists in the Third International, who took up the best in Bolshevism by arguing that, in the new epoch of proletarian revolution, the party had to be made up of committed revolutionaries on the basis of a voluntary – not “imposed” – adherence to a high level of programmatic unity. In the period up to and even during the revolution, such an organisation would necessarily be formed around a minority (a “vanguard” if you like) of the proletariat.
It also seems to us that the text’s commitment to the idea of a mass party results in a regression to social democratic ideas about the relationship between the party and the councils, or at least to a very ambiguous position about the taking of power by the party. The text makes several references to the party taking power, to the idea that “council rule is still essentially party rule”. Although the danger of substitutionism is recognised, the text appears to see the main remedy to this in the fact that the party “shares power with the entire revolutionary movement as well as other revolutionary tendencies it may be in alliance with”.
For us, this vision does not escape the parliamentary vision of council rule which hamstrung the movement in 1917. We certainly agree with the text that the aim of the party is to fight for its programme1 within the councils, which will be a battle-ground between political standpoints that, in the final analysis, represent different class interests, or encapsulate the confusions which will still weigh heavily on the proletariat during the revolution. But the party’s role is not to take power or to confuse its own functioning with the actual organs of power, the councils. Would you not agree that a central lesson of the Russian revolution was that the identification of the Bolshevik party with the state, and its tendency to substitute its decisions for those of the councils, led to the degeneration not only of the Soviet power but of the party itself? We think that clarity on this question is now a key point in the platform of the revolutionary organisation, and thus eventually of the party itself. We refer you to a polemic we had with the Communist Workers’ Organisation [1367] on this question in the 1970s and would be interested in your response.
Turning to the text’s conception of the kind of organisation that needs to be built today to prepare the ground for the party: since we don’t see the party as a mass party, but as a minority organised around a clear programme, we think that the organisations which can serve as a bridge to the future party also need to have a high level of political and theoretical coherence, based around an agreed platform that is more than just a series of minimum points. This does not mean that such organisations, any more than the future party, can be monolithic; on the contrary, a living marxist organisation is one that engages in permanent debate both internally and with other tendencies in the proletarian movement. But we do think that such organisations are more than just discussion circles and need to be imbued with what Lenin called the ‘party spirit’ even if they are not the party. Furthermore, they need to be built from the start on an international scale because the future party is not (as was conceived in the past, even in the Third International to some extent) a federation of national sections but a single worldwide organisation. The experience of organising in this manner will be essential to the functioning of the future party.
This view of the present organisations as a bridge to the future party is strongly influenced by the concept of the Fraction as developed by the Italian left in the 1930s. The notion of the Fraction is, first of all, founded on the conviction that revolutionary organisations don’t come from nowhere but are part of a tradition in the workers’ movement, a tradition without which they would not exist and which needs to be assimilated in depth; at the same time, this must always be a critical assimilation based on new lessons drawn from the experience of the proletarian struggle and the practice of the revolutionary organisations of the past. The aim of this work is to prepare the programmatic and organisational principles which will be the basis for the new party. We think that a weakness of the text on the party is precisely that, except for a few lines at the end, it does not situate itself sufficiently in relation to the experience of the past and, most crucially, to attempts by previous generations and organisations of revolutionaries to address the same question as those posed in the text: how do revolutionaries today organise in order to prepare the terrain for the party of the future?
We have recently republished what we think is an important text on the party produced in 1948 [1368] by a group that was heir to the tradition of the Italian left: the Gauche Communiste de France. Again, we would be very interested in your views on this text, and of course to the comments and criticisms contained in this letter. We sincerely hope that this letter can be the basis for a fruitful discussion between us – one that will clarify issues not only between our organisations, but also for the proletarian political movement in general.
Communist greetings
Alf
For the ICC
1 Regarding the question of the programme of the party, the comments by various posters at the end of the article indicate that some confusion has been caused by the idea in the text that measures like the destruction of the bourgeois state and the creation of a new proletarian power are part of a “minimum programme”. Surely the latter term evokes memories of the old social democratic parties with their programme of demands to be implemented within capitalist society? However we don’t think the issue of terminology is the most crucial one here: the real question is the content of the measures (which seem to us to be correct) and the fact that they would indeed be part of a programme that the party defends inside the assemblies and councils.
Despite it being anticipated in all the preceding polls, there were still many expressions of ‘surprise’ at the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party. Previous leaders Kinnock, Blair and Brown had all warned that the election of Corbyn would mean that Labour would lose the 2020 general election and could be out of power for a generation. After Corbyn’s speech to the Labour Party Conference he was accused of only speaking to the ‘activists’ and it was widely claimed that, under his leadership, Labour would only be a party of protest.
The elevation of Corbyn was not an accident, but it can only be understood in terms of the overall political needs of British capitalism.
In the General Election in May the distinction between the varieties of austerity on offer from the major parties was even less clear than usual. Against the policies undertaken by the Conservative/LibDem Coalition, Labour offered little more than ‘Austerity Lite’. After the election Labour in parliament proceeded to support new cuts in welfare introduced by the new Tory government. It was against this background that Corbyn stood as an opponent of austerity who puts forward fairness and equality, along with growth and state intervention, as an alternative to the brutality of a government that favours the few, not the many.
Comparisons were justifiably made with the Greek populist government of Syriza. Syriza also advertises itself as being against austerity, although it should be recalled that, after winning a clear majority against the bailout conditions proposed by the ‘troika’, Syriza then accepted an even more stringent programme of austerity than had been agreed by previous governments of right and left. However, the idea that Corbyn’s emergence expresses a similar rejection of austerity as that trumpeted by Syriza, and by Podemos in Spain, remains popular. It is tied up with the notion that austerity is a political choice, and not something imposed on all capitalist governments by the reality of the capitalist economic crisis.
While state capitalism is at the heart of the governing regime of every country in the modern world, Corbyn and the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell have made explicit their commitment to the strengthening of the role of the capitalist state in all aspects of economic and social life in the UK. Plans for state investment, for ‘peoples’ quantitative easing’, for the nationalisation of banks, the re-nationalisation of the railways, and similar policies, show that the domination of capital in Britain is safe in their hands. It’s true that the shadow energy minister has said that Labour “don’t want to nationalise energy. We want to do something far more radical. We want to democratise it.” But this apparently means that “There should be nothing to stop every community in this country owning its own clean energy power station” - which still seems to be a populist green variation on the same basic theme.
To prove that they are not ‘deficit deniers’, the new Corbyn leadership has signed up to Chancellor George Osborne’s fiscal charter and insists that Britain must ‘live within its means’. Corbyn and McDonnell have also appointed an economic advisory panel including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, fashionable author Thomas Piketty, and former Bank of England monetary policy committee member Danny Blanchflower, to provide ideas for the reforming of the role of the capitalist state. This can only mean minor modifications in an economic system that is based on the exploitation of the labour power of the working class.
At the level of British imperialism Corbyn has been much criticised for saying that, if he were to be Prime Minister, he would not use nuclear weapons. This should be put into context. In his speech to the Labour Conference he did say that “Britain does need strong, modern military and security forces” and that “British values … are the fundamental reason why I love this country and its people.” There can be no challenging his patriotism. His support for “the authority of international law and international institutions” demonstrates a support for the imperialist set-up that is the basis for international relations. As for nuclear weapons, his favourable words towards the policies of US President Obama reveal no antagonism towards the Commander in Chief in charge of the greatest nuclear force on the planet.
However, opposition to nuclear weapons is, at root, as important a part of Corbyn’s appeal as the ‘opposition to austerity’. All the attacks on the new Labour leader from mainstream media, saying how ‘dangerous’ his policies are, only go to boost his radical image. This is reinforced by the claims of the left. At the Labour Conference Matt Wrack, the leader of the Fire Brigades Union, said that Corbyn and McDonnell “represent a serious challenge to the establishment, in reality to the British ruling class” and that “MI5, Special Branch and the CIA are all watching this conference, and watching what is going on in the shadow cabinet, with the aim of undermining it.” Socialist Worker (15/9/15) agreed that “Corbyn faces opposition from the vast majority of his fellow MPs as well as from the ruling class and the majority of the media. They will do anything to bring him down.” Left and right agree that Corbyn is a threat to the status quo. And many people have been attracted to the Labour party, or persuaded to return to it, because of illusions that somehow Corbyn is a refreshing change or represents a return to socialist basics, rather than being a typical conformist product of the Labour Party machine.
In reality a Corbyn-led Labour Party will perform a useful function as part of capitalism’s political apparatus. In the face of deepening cuts in services and other attacks on living standards, the ruling class is aware that there is the possibility of discontent from those who are most affected. This does not need to be on the scale of widespread unrest for it to be a concern for the bourgeoisie. Labour will be able to present itself as a radical alternative for those who are the victims of a continuing programme of austerity and impoverishment. At this stage the existence of a ‘party of protest’ (which doesn’t challenge the fundamentals of the capitalist system, only points to its impact on ‘the many’) will serve British capitalism well.
Over the last hundred years the Labour Party has shown itself to be an essential part of capitalism’s superstructure, both in government and opposition.
In 1914, alongside social democratic parties across Europe, Labour, along with the unions, came to the aid of British imperialism, acting as a recruiter for the bloodbath of the First World War and standing against workers’ actions that would undermine the war effort. In the face of mutinies and the unrest that followed the war Labour acted as a pole of responsibility; and in 1918 it adopted a constitution with the explicit commitment to nationalisation and other state capitalist measures that had already characterised the management of social life during wartime. Against the aspirations of those who had been inspired by the revolution in Russia it offered stability, state control and opposition to social upheaval.
Throughout the inter-war period Labour offered ‘socialist planning’ against the anarchy of capitalist competition. In the 1930s, alongside Conservative mavericks like Winston Churchill, it stood against the policy of appeasement and for preparation for a war against German imperialism. During the Second World War Labour was a key constituent of the war-time Coalition which meant it slipped naturally into government in 1945.
The government of Clement Attlee from 1945-51 is often presented as a golden age for the Labour Party. In practice it presided over a period of great austerity, where troops and states of emergency were used against striking workers, when the role of the state was reinforced in many areas of economic and social life, when British imperialism continued to deploy its military forces and tried to develop nuclear weapons, and when Britain was a loyal lieutenant in the American-dominated imperialist bloc.
The subsequent Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan were able to replace Conservative administrations at key points in history. The 1974 Labour government was brought in against a wave of struggles, promoting illusions that it would be different to its predecessors. In fact, in the 1970s, Labour and the unions held down wages with the imposition of their Social Contract. Under Callaghan began the monetarist policies, the programme of cuts in public spending, that were later taken up by Margaret Thatcher. The strikes and demonstrations of the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978-79 were against a Labour, not a Conservative government.
In the 1980s Labour in opposition made ‘radical’ critiques of Thatcherism, providing a so-called ‘alternative’ at a time when workers were embarking on waves of massive struggles. Subsequently, the governments of Blair and Brown played their part in the management of the capitalist economy; at the level of international relations the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were further evidence of Labour’s commitment to the militarist core of imperialist conflict.
This is the history of the Labour Party’s defence of British values over the last century, as a party of government and as a party in opposition. In the period to come, when attacks on the working class could lead to a questioning of the very basis of society, and not just the policies of particular governments, Corbyn’s Labour Party will prove a valuable weapon for the bourgeoisie in Britain.
Car 3/10/15
Our comrade Bernadette died on Wednesday 7 October, after a long and painful illness: lung cancer. Bernadette was born on 25 November 1949 in the south west of France. Her father was a skilled worker in an engineering factory and her mother didn’t have a paid job because she had to look after her 8 children. In other words, this was a family of modest means, an authentically working class family. Bernadette thus had a direct experience of the reality of the workers’ condition from a very early age. Also from a very early age she was animated by an ardent intellectual passion, a desire to understand the world and society. She was drawn to literature and loved reading in general. After graduating from the lycée, she entered the University of Toulouse and obtained a master’s degree in linguistics and literature. She then got a job as an office worker in the ministry of national education.
She was still a student when by chance she met a militant of the ICC, in the mid 70s. This comrade, seeing what concerned Bernadette, told her to read the Communist Manifesto. For her this was a kind of revelation: for the first time she found a clear and coherent response to the questions she was asking. “That’s it, that’s exactly it” is how, 40 years later, she described the way she felt when reading this text. Reading the texts of the ICC, which she then wanted to acquaint herself with, made a similar impression on her.
She decided very quickly that the ICC - unlike other groups who called themselves revolutionary and even communist, like the Maoists and Trotskyists whom she also encountered – was a true heir of the marxist tradition, and once she made the commitment to fight inside its ranks, she never deviated from her conviction that revolutionary militancy, dedicating oneself to the construction of the revolutionary organisation and of the ICC in particular, was an absolutely essential factor in the liberation of the working class. Bernadette was present as a member at our second international congress.
Bernadette contributed to the life of the ICC at many levels. She had a sharp perception of the international situation, the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, and the advances and retreats of the class struggle, and her ability to write about them, and her mastery of the French language, led her to work on the publications commission for the French section. She was also accomplished in explaining our ideas at the most basic level, “on the streets”, but also to people she met in various circumstances, such as the ambulance drivers who, each week, took her to hospital for her chemotherapy sessions, and who told us “Bernadette doesn’t have an easy character, but it’s extraordinarily interesting to discuss with her”. At demonstrations, she amazed comrades selling alongside her by the number of publications she managed to sell, since she always found the words and the tone needed to convince demonstrators that it was worthwhile reading our press.
But her greatest strength was undeniably her grasp of the organisational principles of the ICC, and in particular of the need to to defend our organisation from all the attacks and slanders aimed at it. Bernadette was always convinced that the revolutionary organisation is a foreign body within capitalism. This was why she was intransigent when it came to respecting the statutes of the organisation and in particular to the question of security.
Bernadette was one of the comrades of the old generation who was most open to the political heritage of comrade MC, our living link to the communist fractions of the past. Although perfectly capable of posing her questions and disagreements with MC, she had no interest in the petty bourgeois ideology of contesting the “older generation”, which was a particular weakness of the student movement that came out of May 68. What she took from him was an awareness of the central importance of the organisational question as a political question in its own right, and of the necessity for adherence to rigorous principles – to a proletarian morality in fact – in the relations that had to be built up between militants and the organisation and between the militants themselves.
Bernadette militated in several sections of the ICC: Toulouse, Paris, Marseille, London, as well as working closely for a while with the Swiss section. But she always saw herself first and foremost as a militant of the ICC, and comrades in Switzerland and London can testify to her ability to chase out the dust of localism by opening a window on the ICC as an international organisation.
Like all human beings and all militants, Bernadette of course had her faults which could exasperate some comrades, especially when her critical faculties seemed to get out of control and function like a machine gun firing in all directions, an expression of her fiery and passionate character. But her faults were also her qualities: her stubbornness, the iron determination which led one of the doctors caring for her to describe her as a “force of nature”, also made her extremely tenacious in her fight against the cancer which finally claimed her life. In the past two years, Bernadette amazed the medical staff by staying alive far longer than they had thought possible, and with all her awareness, her capacity for reflection and her will to understand. She was fighting her illness not only to continue her militant struggle but also to benefit from the greatest gift offered to her by her son: her little grand-daughter. The birth of her grand-daughter, the latter’s attachment to her grandmother and her joie de vivre was an enormous help to Bernadette in putting up with the pains of her illness.
Bernadette never saw her militancy as something narrowly political in the “common sense” use of the term. Instead, she brought to other areas of her life the same passion and commitment. She took on the name “Flora” as her nom de guerre in the ICC, reflecting her love for flowers and also because she was a great admirer of the books of Flora Tristan. She had an artist’s sensibility: she loved painting, literature, poetry. She was equally devoted to the art of cooking which she loved to share with the comrades of the ICC and her personal friends, who she always welcomed with warmth and generosity. She had a natural eye for beauty, which was reflected in the way she organised and embellished the space she lived in and in the gifts she chose for her family, friends and comrades.
Throughout her illness, Bernadette sustained her love of reading, and this in turn helped her to cope with the pain of cancer and the very taxing treatments she went through. Up to the end of her life, she continued to read the classics of the workers’ movement, Marx and Rosa Luxemburg in particular, and tried for as long as possible to assimilate the texts and contributions generated by the ICC’s internal debates, taking position on them, even if briefly, when her strength allowed.
Bernadette had a very deep sense of solidarity. Even though she suffered so much from the cancer and knew that there was no cure, she continued to be concerned for the health of all the comrades, offering them advice, urging them to be tested and not to neglect their health. So it was only fitting that comrades from all sections of the ICC should mobilise to express their solidarity throughout her illness, writing to her, visiting her, giving all the support she needed to leave life as serenely as possible.
Bernadette was not afraid of her own death, even if she loved life with a passion. She knew that every human being is a link in the long chain of humanity and that those who remain will continue the combat. She gave clear directives to the doctors caring for her: she wanted to die in physical, intellectual and moral dignity and refused any relentless therapy aimed at merely keeping her alive. She wanted to end her days peacefully, surrounded by her comrades in the struggle, and by the affection showed her by her son and grand-daughter. Her wishes were respected. Bernadette left us in full consciousness, Three weeks before her death, she forced herself to read the newspapers and follow the international situation. It’s because she felt in her bones all the sufferings of the proletariat that she said to the doctor looking after her at the end of her life: “it’s necessary to end my pain and it’s necessary to end the barbarism of capitalism”.
Until the end, Bernadette demonstrated an exemplary courage, militancy and lucidity. She really was a force of nature. And this force she drew from the depth of her militant conviction, her devotion to the cause of the proletariat and her unshakeable loyalty to the ICC. To her son and granddaughter, to her niece and all her family, the ICC sends all its sympathy and solidarity.
ICC 15.10.15
A deliberate attempt to kill as many as possible. A carnage. On Friday 13 November the streets of Paris and its suburbs were turned into a macabre theatre of bloody and barbaric acts carried out by a handful of terrorists, armed with Kalashnikovs and suicide vests. Their target? All those “prostituted” by the “western way of life”1, and young people in particular2.
On 11 January, by executing the cartoonists from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Daesh wanted the kill the ‘dads’3 of a libertarian tendency marked by the social movement of May 1968. This time, by attacking places of festivity and entertainment (Stade de France in Saint-Denis, the bistrots and restaurants of the 10th and 11th arrondissements of Paris, the Bataclan concert hall4, Daesh deliberately targeted young people who had committed the crime of liking to get together, to discuss, to have a drink, to dance and sing, in other words, who liked being alive (which the bourgeoisie, profiting from the emotional atmosphere and the media brainwashing, tries to identify with patriotism!). This is the same generation which had dreamed of reigniting the torch of May 68 during the social movement in France in 20065 and which in January had quite rightly expressed its solidarity with the murdered Charlie Hebdo artists by coming out in massive demonstrations6.
These new crimes, coldly planned, motivated by an obscurantist and morbid ideology worthy of Nazism, are not the fruit of a few “monsters” who simply need to be eradicated7. That is the way the bourgeoisie presents things. It’s an argument that serves only to justify war and engender even more hatred and crimes. At the root of these evils lies the whole capitalist system, a system with no future, no perspective, which is decomposing bit by bit and is dragging the whole of humanity into its murderous descent.
Daesh is a particularly revealing manifestation of the suicidal dynamic of capitalism. It is a pure product of decadence, a direct secretion of its final phase of decomposition.
In this framework, the aggravation and multiplication of imperialist conflicts, the accelerating break-up of social bonds, are rooted in a society which has no historical perspective. Neither of the two fundamentally antagonistic classes in society, bourgeoisie and proletariat, have been able to impose their historical project, world war on the one hand, communist revolution on the other. Since the mid-80s, the whole of society has been trapped in the immediate, looking increasingly devoid of any future and little by little rotting on its feet8. The collapse of the USSR in 1991, a product of the dynamic of this last stage in the decline of capitalism, exacerbated all of capitalism’s contradictions. The expressions of this phase are multiple: individualism and every man for himself, gangsterism, a retreat into different kinds of identity, obscurantism, nihilism, and above all the accentuation of the chaos of war. To the point where the weakest states have been destabilised and pushed to the edge of collapse, while military conflicts ravage whole regions of the planet. In this process the main imperialist powers bear a central responsibility, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. A glance at the history of the conflicts in these regions in recent decades illustrates this reality very well. Over this period, the USA has found it harder and harder to impose itself as the world’s cop. It may seem paradoxical, but the existence of the Russian enemy forced all its adversaries to seek protection behind the USA. The nations of the western bloc were obliged to accept Uncle Sam’s bloc discipline. As soon as the USSR fell, the western bloc also broke up and all its components started playing their own imperialist cards. The USA tried more and more to impose its leadership by force. This was the meaning of the huge military display of the 1990 Gulf war, a moment in which the American bourgeoisie managed to oblige all its allies to rally behind it. But the situation for the USA continued to deteriorate, and they were increasingly isolated when it came to the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and the result of these adventures was to completely destabilise both countries. We foresaw this dynamic in 1990:
“The war in the Gulf shows that, faced with the tendency towards generalized chaos which is specific to decomposition and which has been considerably accelerated by the Eastern bloc's collapse, capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different components, than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging”9.
Thus, the American intervention in Iraq in 2003, quite apart from the 500,000 deaths it caused, brought down the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein10 without being capable of replacing it with a stable state. On the contrary, the exclusion from power of the Sunni faction and its replacement by a Shia faction has created a permanent state of chaos. It’s on the basis of these ruins, of this void left by the failure of the Iraqi state, that Daesh was born. It goes back to 2006, when al-Qaida, together with five other jihadi groups, formed a “consultative Council of the Muhajadeen in Iraq”. And on 13 October 2006, the Consultative Council proclaimed the “Islamic state of Iraq”, which considered itself to be a real state. Many ex-Saddam generals, militarily competent and haunted by the spirit of revenge against the west, joined the ranks of what was to become Daesh. The destabilisation of Syria then provided the opportunity for Islamic State to develop further. In 2012 it began to spread to Syria and on 9 April 2013 it became “the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”.
Each new imperialist conflict, in which the great powers all played a crucial role, would provide Daesh with the occasion to widen its grip, growing on the fertile ground of hatred and revenge. Several jihadi groups have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, such as Boko Haram in the northwest of Nigeria, Ansar Shuras Shabab al-Islam in Libya, Jund al-Khalifa in Algeria and Anar Dawlat al-Islammiya in Yemen. Undeniably, Islamic State has been fed by imperialist war. This is a phenomenon which has grown and extended since the mid-80s: under the weight both of internal economic and political contradictions and of the effects of imperialist war, the weaker states are tending to collapse. In the east in the 1990s, particularly in the Balkans, this took the form of a splintering of nations and of bloody conflicts, such as the explosion of Yugoslavia. From Caucasia (Chechnya) to central Asia (Afghanistan) or Africa (ex-Zaire, the Horn of Africa etc), state instability gave way to the appearance of parallel and uncontrollable proto-states, directed by war lords. Daesh is a new expression of this gangrene, but on a much bigger geographical scale than before.
But let's get back to the responsibility of the great powers, who don’t stop at merely destabilising whole regions for their strategic and military interests. They are also directly involved in the creation of these murderous obscurantist cliques and have tried to make them their instruments. Islamic State is made up of the most 'radical' Sunni factions and their main enemy is thus the great country of Shia Islam: Iran. This is why all the enemies of Iran (Saudi Arabia, the USA11, Israel, Qatar, Kuwait...) have at some point all supported Daesh financially and sometimes militarily. Turkey has also supported Islamic State with the idea of using it against the Kurds. This circumstantial and heterogeneous alliance shows that religious differences are not the real ferment behind this conflict: it is indeed imperialist interests, national capitalist interests which above all determine the lines of scission and transform the wounds of the past into today's hatreds.
But in any case, all of them have had to think again. Saudi Arabia has now forbidden any financial aid to Daesh and jailed all those who continued to act as its advocates; the USA has officially initiated a certain rapprochement with Iran in order to fight against Daesh. Why this turnaround? The answer says a lot about the putrefaction of the capitalist system. The religious obscurantism and above all the destructiveness of Daesh are such that the group has escaped anyone’s control. Such states with no future and dominated by Sharia law have already existed, in central Africa for example, but they have always been limited to a particular region. The Daesh phenomenon is affecting a much wider area, and above all the highly geostrategic region of the Middle East12.
The incessant changes of alliances, this short term outlook, this increasingly destructive approach, like the existence of the Islamic proto-state itself, reveal the dead end that capitalism has reached, the absence of any lasting solution or perspective for all nations.
Here again the compass of marxism enabled us to understand, in 1990, that the whole social order had reached this impasse: quote.
“In the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of "every man for himself" will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterized the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force”13.
The latest turn around: France, through its rapprochement with Russia, is ready to support Bashir el-Assad (officially responsible for 200,000 deaths since the beginning of the civil war!) against Daesh even though since 2011 it has been putting all its diplomatic weight behind the “Syrian opposition”. Putin, with all his shameful crimes in Chechnya then in Ukraine, has become someone you can do business with again.
By waging all these wars, by sowing death and desolation, by imposing terror with their bombing raids and stirring up hatred in the name of 'self-defence”, by supporting this or that killer regime, by offering no other solution than more and more confrontations, and all this to defend their sordid imperialist interests, the great powers have the greatest responsibility for the accentuation of global barbarism, including the barbarism of Daesh. This so-called Islamic state, with its holy trinity of rape, robbery and repression, which destroys all culture (the same hatred of culture as the Nazi regime14), which sells women and children, sometimes for their organs – this is no more than a particularly blatant and 'honest' expression of the capitalist barbarity which all states, all nations, are capable of committing. “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it in reality. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form”15.
It is thus first and foremost the great powers who are unleashing their own barbarism on the planet and above all in the weakest capitalist nations. And now his barbarism is escaping their control and is hitting the heart of the system like a boomerang. This is the real significance of the November 13 attacks in Paris. They are not just one more terrorist act: they show that there is a new step in the exacerbation of imperialist tensions and in the decay of capitalist society. In effect, while such actions regularly decimate the populations of Africa and the Middle East16, the fact that they are reaching the heartlands of capitalism is particularly significant. At the time of the bombings that hit Paris in 1985 and 1986, we wrote:
“What the current wave of terrorist attacks shows is that this decomposition of capitalist society has reached such a level that the great powers are less and less shielded from its most barbaric manifestations, that they are finding it harder and harder to contain to the Third world these extreme forms of the convulsions of a dying system. Just as in an initial period the capitalist metropolitan centres were able to push the most catastrophic effects of a crisis whose origins lie at the very heart of the system, so they pushed to the peripheral countries the most barbaric forms of the convulsions this crisis engenders, above all armed conflicts. But today just as the crisis is hitting with renewed force the central countries of capitalism, so it also brings back with it some of the barbarism which has been unleashed in the Third World”17
With the November 13 attacks, this process which opened up in the mid-80s, and above all since the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, has got wider and wider. But it has just reached a qualitative new level even in comparison to the outrages in Madrid (2004), London (2005) or Boston (2013). At the time of writing, the number of dead stands at 130 and the number of wounded at 351, 98 of them very serious. This frightful hecatomb is one of the worst in the centre of Europe since the Second World War, even though it would have been much bigger if the attempt to bomb the Stade de France hadn’t failed18. But the real difference isn’t just at the quantitative level – the Madrid bombings also killed many people (200 dead, 14 wounded). But his time, it wasn’t a brief, isolated act: Islamic State succeeded in multiplying the number of places attacked and prolonged the slaughter for three hours in the middle of Paris. Thus, in western Europe, for a whole evening, people experienced the war atmosphere which the population of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria live through on a daily basis (and which so many of them are trying to flee from).The “meticulously”19 prepared scenario engendered a real wave of shock and panic. The direct transmission of the events, of these images of urban warfare, by all the world’s television services, the uncertainty about the number of victims, the number of attacks and of terrorists involved…all this created an unbearable climate of terror. Millions of powerless spectators remained glued to their screens and then were unable to sleep during the night.
Islamic State has managed to prove that a great economic and military power like France is incapable of preventing such actions; even though it had every reason to expect such attacks it couldn’t stop the killing.
Worse still, Daesh was able to use men and women born and living in France and Belgium, capable of committing the worst crimes in the name of a morbid, sickening ideology. In other words, it is above all the decomposition of society at the very heart of capitalism which has given rise to such an atrocity.
Many of those who saw the terrorists at close hand and lived to tell the tale, expressed their astonishment at the banal appearance of the killers: young people between 20 and 30 trembling with fear and sweating profusely20, justifying their murderous actions with the pretext of “avenging the crimes committed by the French army in Syria”. These monstrous acts were not carried out by monsters but by human beings who have been totally ground down and indoctrinated. The majority of these terrorists were born and grew up in “civilised” Europe. Many of the European jihadis now in Syria have come from the petty bourgeoisie which, in the absence of any perspective, jealous of the model up set by the big bourgeoisie, and above all foreign to any project of an alternative society, is deeply infected by nihilism. It’s this same layer of society which in the 1930s and 40s formed a large part of the shock troops of Nazism.
Another considerable part of the army of Daesh has come out of the poor suburbs, street kids with a chaotic history, humiliated by a system which has refused them entry to most forms of economic activity, as well as any social and cultural life. Here again, the wish for revenge on the one hand and nihilism on the other are probably the main driving forces behind their journey. Through these cowardly, shameful and absurd massacres, these elements finally have a sense of their own existence. It matters little to them whether they die as long as they have the idea that they are getting back at the system which has excluded hem. A final part, especially among the kamikaze elements, has been directly recruited from petty criminals. They are often people who have already carried out robberies or acts of aggression and who find themselves a few years later with a Kalashnikov in their hands, now killing with a pseudo-religious pretext.
In sum, in Europe and the Middle East, as in the rest of the world, the absence of any perspective for society, and its consequences – social putrefaction, gangsterism, the development of a lumpenised morality - supply the soil for this toxic growth. The encounter between these young people who have been born in Europe and the Syrian and Iraqi obscurantist gangs who have a real military savoir-faire is not at all an accident.
To summarise: imperialism and decomposition are the two parents who, by getting together, have given birth to today’s terrorism. War, no-future, fear and hatred, moral collapse, terrorism… then war again. It’s an endless vicious circle. Capitalism will drag the whole of humanity towards ruin if it’s not destroyed and replaced with another society.
But what was the reaction of all the grand nations on the very night of the attacks of 13 November? The words of the Socialist prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, pronounced the day after on the biggest TV channel, gives us the tone of it: “there must be a will to annihilate Daesh”; this is a war which “could take months and maybe years”, and which will call for “exceptional measures”, adding “I will do this so that national unity will be preserved”, and finishing by a call to arms: “let’s be patriots in order to crush terrorism”. And all the national newspapers joined the chorus: “Now it’s war!”, “France is under attack!” This patriotic campaign has been relayed on an international scale, orchestrated around the Red, White and Blue and the Marseillaise. All over the world, on all the monuments, on all social networks, in sports stadiums,, the French flag has been displayed; the words of the Marseillaise were published in all the English newspapers so that the public could join in the singing at the England-France game at Wembley on 18 November. There is obviously no real solidarity from the other great powers towards France – all of them are engaged in pitiless competition, economically and sometimes militarily. No, each national bourgeoisie has simply used the 130 deaths in Paris, and the fear they have created, to put across the putrid idea that national unity is the highest and most beautiful possible unity, allowing us to “live together” and to protect ourselves from the “outside”. In reality, national flags are always flags of war! The national flag is the symbol of an ideology which pulls together the different classes of the nation against other nations. Fundamentally, it’s the same ideology as the ideology of Islamic State. And in France today it’s the Socialist party in power which is spearheading this warlike spirit. Result: French military HQ has already carried out reprisals against the outrages, dropping dozens of bombs in a few days and dispatching its aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle in order to treble the strike capacity of the French army in Syria. These attacks can be added to the 4111 targets hit by the Russian army in the last few weeks. Although every day the press relates the “collateral” victim of these massive bombings21, it is impossible to access the real figures. This is true of every war waged by the great democratic nations who intervene in the name of peace, humanitarian, safeguarding the people, etc. And each time, the human balance sheets published some years later are really terrifying. According to a very serious report: Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 years of the ‘War on Terror’22 the war launched by the US after the attacks of 9/11 2001 had in 12 years caused the deaths of at least 1.3 million people in three countries (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), with the report making it clear that this was a “low estimate” which didn’t take into account other conflicts (Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria). It’s Iraq that has paid the heaviest price for the war on terror, with around a million deaths, contrary to the 11,000 claimed by the US media and the 30,000 by ex-President George W Bush. The report speaks of a “crime against humanity close to genocide”. This is the real face of imperialist war. This is the real meaning of so-called “surgical” strikes!
The current air strikes in Syria will perhaps do damage to Daesh, which will make it even more desperate and suicidal, but above all they will sow fear and hatred throughout the region. The phenomena which gave rise to Daesh will in the end be strengthened. The “response” of the big powers to terrorism is part of the escalation of barbarism, part of the spiral of irrational violence.
Drawing the lessons from the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo on 7 January, when the bourgeoisie, surprised by the spontaneous demonstrations, was obliged to rapidly leap onto the train and take charge, the French state this time prevented the same spontaneous impetus towards solidarity, which might favour reflection and discussion and contains the possibility that people might see “the street” as a political force. On the contrary, everyone was urged to stay at home and identify with “la patrie”, to accept the logic of war. The idea of national service and a “national guard” is resurfacing. The Socialist party in France has taken advantage of the situation to step up its arsenal of surveillance and repression. The state of emergency was prolonged by three months for the first time since the war in Algeria (in 1958 and 1961) and it applies to the whole mainland and the overseas departments as well (Gaudeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, la Réunion and Mayotte). This state of emergency is a special situation, based on exceptional measures which restrain “freedoms”. It “confers on the civil authorities, in the zones it applies to, exceptional police powers”23, such as the possibility of carrying out raids without a warrant. It’s all about getting the population used to the drastic reinforcement of repression which, as the bourgeoisie knows perfectly well, it will have to use against the working class in the future. A whole array of new laws to tighten “national security” is under discussion, and the same campaign about security is being carried out across the world.
The state thus profits from terrorism, presenting itself as the guarantor of peace in order to wage war; as the protector of human rights to strengthen the control of the population; and as the guardian of social unity in order to exacerbate hatred. Hatred of foreigners, hatred of Muslims, and all the other divisions which allow the capitalist order to rule over the exploited, are being stoked up daily. Actions against immigrants are multiplying, as in Germany, where refugee camps have been set on fire. In France, the discourse of the Front National and right wing politicians like Nadine Morano play on the same reactions as Islamic State: fear, exclusion, the hatred of the other.
In such a social context, the few expressions of real solidarity appear heroic. Despite the risks and the danger, people immediately came to help the wounded. In the neighbourhoods under attack, residents didn’t hesitate to open their doors to give refuge to people panicking in the streets. Almost everywhere, a momentary tendency to come together in solidarity and indignation was quickly smothered. All this shows that the indifference and ignorance of the person next to you, which in normal times prevails in capitalist society, can be overcome when there is a conscious wish to express solidarity, to help people facing real danger. We’ve seen this in the last few months when a significant part of the working class welcomed the refugees, especially when they first arrived in Germany. But the present situation also shows that this fragile impetus, given the serious weaknesses of the working class today, can easily be derailed onto the false ground of patriotism and nationalism, behind which lies the murderous and in the end xenophobic logic of the most democratic states. The climate of fear and terror, along with the propaganda barrage after the Paris attacks, will weigh heavily on the consciousness of the working class: the call for national unity behind the nation and the state in danger can only reinforce the influence of deadly illusions about defending democracy and strengthening security, and this on an international scale. And this will make it even harder for a real perspective to emerge, further strengthening the suicidal tendencies of this rotting system.
Real working class solidarity can only be expressed in an independent manner, outside the influence of all forms of bourgeois ideology, and above all during workers’ struggles. The generation which was the prime target of the 13 November attacks was, in the social movement of 2006, able to generate a great wave of solidarity throughout the working class. And when young people from the poor suburbs came to rob people taking part in the demonstrations, this generation of students and precariously employed workers refused to fall into the trap of division. They sent delegations to these neighbourhoods to try to win people to the general struggle. If they had the understanding to do this, it was because the social movement had been able to organise itself through general assemblies which allowed for reflection, discussion and collective elaboration, in other words, the raising of political consciousness. This is the only way to go forward in the face of the worst effects of decomposition: solidarity in the struggle, open and frank debate, the development of class consciousness. In the end, only this logic, contained in massive struggles of the working class, can permit the emergence of a political class identity, the development of the historical perspective of a new society. This is the perspective of a world without classes, without wars and frontiers, a human community based on the satisfaction of human need and not the needs of profit.
“The madness will cease and the bloody demons of hell will vanish only when workers….finally awake from their stupor, extend to each other a brotherly hand, and drown out the bestial chorus of imperialist war-mongers and the shrill cry of capitalist hyenas with labour’s old and mighty battle cry: Proletarians of all lands, unite!”24
ICC, 21.11.15
1 According to the terms used by the Daesh communiqué claiming responsibility for the attacks
2 A large number of the victims were aged between 25 and 35. See for example, ‘A Paris, une generation visée’ (Le Monde) or ‘La jeunesse qui trinque’ (Libération 15.11.15)
3 Eg Cabu, 76, Wolinski, 80, Bernard Maris, 68
4 Where “hundreds of idol worshippers had gathered in a profligate prostitution party” (Daesh communiqué)
5 See the article on our website ‘Greetings to the new generation of the working class’, https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students [1371]
6 On this, see ‘Les portraits poignants des victims du 13 novembre’ on the Libération website
7 “If all the countries together can’t eradicate 30,000 people who are monsters, nothing has been understood” Laurent Fabius, minister of foreign affairs of the Socialist government in France (declaration on the radio station France Inter, 20 November).
8‘ Decomposition, final phase of capitalist decadence’, International Review 62, May 1990, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
9 ‘Militarism and decomposition’, IR 64, https://en.internationalism.org/node/3336 [1372]
10 Let’s also recall that it was the same USA which had contributed significantly to Saddam coming to power in Iraq in 1979, as an ally against Iran.
11 “Daesh has at its disposal a veritable ‘treasury of war’ (2 billion dollars according to the CIA) of massive and autonomous revenue – there’s no comparison with what al-Qaida had access to. Daesh has all kinds of military equipment, some of it rustic but also some heavy and sophisticated weaponry. Rather than a terrorist movement, we are confronted with a real army led by professional officers. Who is the Doctor Frankenstein that created this monster? Let’s say it clearly, because it has consequences: it is the USA. Through short term political interests – some of which are shared by its friends in the west – other actors have thus, by complicity or deliberately, contributed to building and strengthening it. But the prime responsibility lies with the USA” (speech given by general Vincent Desportes, an associated professor of political science in Paris when interviewed by the French Senate regarding Operation ‘Chammal’ in Iraq. Available on the Senate website.
12 The Caliphate which it claims to want to conquer by force of arms thus comprises: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Kazakhstan, the Gulf countries, Yemen, the Caucasus, the Maghreb, Anatolia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, the whole Horn of Africa, Andalusia and part of Europe. This unrealisable project is totally suicidal but no less devastating for that.
13 ‘Militarism and decomposition’
14 Another point in common with the Islamic State is that the Nazi regime had the same unrealistic and suicidal policy of conquest. This is why the term Islamo-fascism is indeed appropriate to describe the ideology of Daesh.
15 Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet
16 The list of attacks throughout the world since the toppling of the Twin Towers is September 2001 is endless. One recent example: the attack and hostage taking against the international clientele and local people at a hotel bear the centre of Bamako in Mali by a group linked to al-Qaida a week after the Paris massacres, adding at least 27 more deaths.
17 ‘Terrorist attacks in France: an expression of the barbarism and decomposition of the capitalist system’, Révolution Internationale 149, October 149
18 The scale of slaughter caused by the suicide bombings which regularly plague market-places in the Middle East gives us an idea of the terrible carnage that would have taken place had the terrorists managed to get inside the stadium.
19 The term used by the Daesh communiqué
20 These kamikazes are also often heavily drugged to assist their actions, as was the case with the young man who carried out the massacre at the Sousse hotel in Tunisia in June.
21 An example among many: “Yesterday, at least 36 people, including 10 children, were killed and dozens injured during more than 70 raids carried out by Russian and Syrian forces against several locations in Deir Ezzor”, according to Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (L’Express, 20.11.15)
22 Published by the following organisations: Association Internationale des Medécins pour la Prévention de la Guerre Nucléaire (IPPNW, Nobel peace prize in 1985), Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Global Survival
23 Senate, Étude de legislation comparée no. 156, January 2006, ‘L’état d’urgence’
24 Junius Pamphlet
In January 2015, the members of the ICC’s section in Turkey announced their resignation from our organisation: their explanation of their departure was published a couple of months later under the name of a new group calling itself "Pale Blue Jadal", with the heading "On our departure from the International Communist Current [1374]". Our aim in the article that follows is to address what, in our view, are the main issues posed by the departure of these ex-comrades.
The editorial to the first issue of our International Review, published in 1975, lays out clearly the goal that the fledgling ICC set itself: “In this period of general crisis, pregnant with convulsions and social upheavals, one of the most urgent and arduous tasks facing revolutionaries is that of welding together the meagre revolutionary forces that are currently dispersed throughout the world. This task can only be undertaken by beginning straight away on an international level. This has always been a central preoccupation of our current”. For such an organisation, to lose one militant is a misfortune. To lose an entire section is a failure. We therefore owe it to ourselves, to all those who identify with the tradition of the Communist Left, and to the working class in general, to examine this failure in a ruthlessly critical spirit, and to lay our conclusions before our readers.
This necessity is all the more pressing given the nature of the text written by our ex-comrades from Turkey, who we must now call “Pale Blue Jadal”. There are points in this text with which we can agree, and yet overall it is such a welter of half-truths, distortions, recriminations, and general confusion that it is only barely recognisable to those of us who lived through the events it attempts to describe, and must certainly be completely unintelligible to anyone outside the ICC. This will not, of course, prevent PBJ’s text from having a certain effect: the faint-hearted will find further cause to doubt, and our enemies (some of whom bear us a hatred that lies more in the domain of psychopathology than politics) will read in it what they have been longing to hear.
To answer every one of PBJ’s accusations, we would have to undertake something like Lenin’s dissection of the 1903 RSDLP Congress in One step forward, two steps back, but over a period of almost ten years: we would have to quote in detail from a mass of conference and congress minutes, not to mention correspondence and the minutes of meetings and conferences. This would take too long, it would try our readers’ patience, and moreover it would lay the internal workings of our organisation open to the public gaze, something which no revolutionary in his right mind would do today. We will therefore limit ourselves to stating our case as clearly as possible, and to correcting, in passing, some of PBJ’s more egregious errors and insinuations.
Let us begin with one point where we agree with PBJ: that our integration of the EKS group as the ICC’s Turkish section was a process infested with opportunism. We do not propose here to go into the reasons for this: suffice it to say that we tried to force the pace of history, and this is a classic recipe for opportunism.
“Forcing the pace”, of course, was at our own small level; principally, it meant the decision to “fast-track” the discussions with the EKS group which was to become our section in Turkey. In particular we decided:
To drastically reduce the time spent on organisational discussion with the members of EKS before their integration, on the grounds that the art of building an organisation is learnt essentially from experience.
To integrate EKS as a group, not as individuals. Although our statutes provide for this, it holds the danger that the new militants will see themselves, not first and foremost as individual militants of an international organisation but as members of their original group.
With hindsight, our cavalier approach to the organisational question was both unpardonable and incredible. What was EKS, after all? As PBJ says, it was “just a collection of politicised circles of friends”, and moreover circles drawn from the politicised petty-bourgeois student milieu. In other words, it was precisely the kind of circle that Lenin had described in 1903. Given all our past experience, not to mention our awareness of the way our own failings derived from much of the ICC’s origins in the student movement of the 1960s-70s, how could we fail to see that one of the biggest questions facing us with the integration of the EKS group would be precisely that of passing on our own organisational experience? How could we lose sight of our own critique of the futility of hasty, opportunist integrations [1375] as they have been practiced in the past by the TCI? As it is, our experience with the section in Turkey only serves as further confirmation – if any were necessary – that this critique is fundamentally correct and applies to ourselves just as much as it does to others.
The forthcoming article on our 21st Congress gives a general answer to these questions: "The Congress emphasised that the ICC has always been affected by its ‘youthful error’ of immediatism which has repeatedly caused us to lose sight of the the historical and long-term framework which is the setting for the organisation’s function". Such failings are all the more difficult to overcome inasmuch as they were present in the organisation from the outset.1 Concretely, this laid us open to an illusion particularly prevalent among some members of EKS, that our difficulty in getting across our positions among the newly politicised younger generation (especially in the relatively new medium of the Internet forum) was essentially a matter of presentation,2 and that we could therefore increase our influence by watering down our insistence on organisational principle (this is what PBJ calls “recognising that our traumas posed problems”). As a result, we lost sight of the historical, materialist, foundations of our organisational practice as embodied in our Statutes which can only be understood historically, as political principles,3 and as the result of both the past workers’ movement (Internationals and Fractions) and our own experience. We treated the Statutes as mere "rules of behaviour", and the "discussion" on the subject was rushed through in a day (contrast this with the months of correspondence and discussion with EKS on the positions embodied in the Platform). There was no discussion on the "Commentaries on the statutes" (a text which places our Statutes in the context of the historical experience of the workers’ movement and of the ICC itself) nor on the basic organisational texts. Nor did we insist that these texts be translated into Turkish.4
For all this, let us repeat, the ICC – not the members of EKS – bears the entire responsibility.5
But the result was that the Turkish section’s attitude to the Statutes was not that of militant marxists who seek to understand and put into practice the principles behind them – or if necessary to argue that they should be changed, with all the international debate within the organisation that this would imply: it was more the attitude of the pettifogging taproom lawyer whose only interest is to seize on the surface of words to his own advantage.6
This, in the end, is PBJ’s justification for their departure: "we had to leave". But what exactly is meant by this? After all, the Turkish members were not expelled, either collectively or individually, nor were any sanctions applied against them. Their "minority positions" were not suppressed – on the contrary, they were constantly being pressed to express their positions in writing so that these could be published and brought to the knowledge of the organisation as a whole.
If we try to extract the main points from PBJ’s text, the overall picture that emerges is something like the following:
The ICC suffers from “a culture of agreement” which makes debate difficult. With this at least we can agree, up to a point.7 We will come back to the "culture of agreement" within the Turkish section itself.
The "old" militants tried to impose a "unilateral transmission" of experience on the young.
“The section was dissolved”.
In short, therefore, “We had to leave”.
PBJ, to summarise, is the “critical left” of the ICC, better than that they are the “youth” who refuse to accept the “unilateral transmission”, the “dictatorship” of the old whose “traumas” “pose problems”.
Indeed, barely months before their resignation, the section confronted the organisation with a grandiloquent statement of position in which they declared that they were "the left" within the organisation. Let us take them at their word and consider for a moment what that means: what does it mean to be "the left" in the context of the ICC?
The ICC very consciously claims to derive its origins from the Communist Left, but more explicitly, as far as organisational questions are concerned, from the tradition of the Italian Communist Left. What did it mean to be a "left fraction" in the days of the Italian Left, the days of the Communist International’s degeneration? "The Left Fraction is formed as the proletarian party is degenerating under the influence of opportunism, in other words its penetration by bourgeois ideology. It is the responsibility of the minority, which upholds the revolutionary programme, to conduct an organised struggle for its victory within the party (…) It is the responsibility of the Left Fraction to continue the fight within the party as long as there remains any hope of redressing it: this is why, during the late 1920s and early '30s, the left currents did not leave the parties of the IC, but were excluded, often by means of sordid manoeuvres".8
The left, in short, fights for its organisation to the limit:
to convince, to win over the organisation as much as possible;
to save as many militants as can be saved;
for clarity about the reasons of the organisation’s decline, for themselves, for other militants, and for the future.
Finally, the Left does not run away at the first sign of disagreement and opposition. It does everything possible to stay in the organisation and defend its ideas – and is excluded. It does not play the rabbit in wolf’s clothing by running away.
The Italian Left Fraction was formed as a reaction against the degeneration of the Communist International towards the integration of its constituent parties into the political apparatus of the ruling class. Whatever our defects, this is not the situation for the ICC, nor indeed did the members of the Turkish section make any such claim. There was not, therefore, any reason to suppose that the various disagreements voiced by or in the section could justify the formation of a "fraction" in the ICC; on the contrary, we could hope that open discussion within the organisation would make it possible to clarify these disagreements, perhaps leading to a clearer position for the organisation as a whole.
Nonetheless, the underlying point remains valid. It is the responsibility of any minority within a revolutionary organisation, to defend its positions for as long as it is able to do, to try to the utmost to convince the rest of the organisation of their correctness. Nobody will pretend that this is easy – but it is the only way to build an organisation.
Why did the Turkish comrades so signally fail in this respect? We can point to two main factors:
The first, we already highlighted in 2007, in a text on "The culture of debate",9 which posed the absolutely vital necessity for debate within the organisation, for its own internal health: “The second major impulse for the ICC to return to the question of a culture of debate was our own internal crisis at the beginning of the new century, characterised by the most malignant behaviour we had ever witnessed within our ranks (…) One of the conclusions we came to was that a tendency towards monolithism had played a major role in all the split-offs that we suffered. As soon as divergences appeared, certain members began to assert that they could no longer work with the others, that the ICC was becoming a Stalinist organisation or was in the process of degenerating. These crises broke out in relation to divergences which, for the most part, could be perfectly contained within a non-monolithic organisation, and in all cases should be discussed and clarified before any separation takes place”. The Turkish comrades fell victim to this same "monolithism of the minority".
The second, is that a precondition for accepting the demand that the Left should fight to the limit rather than quit the organisation in haste, is the conviction that the organisation itself is a vital necessity. This is precisely the problem in the political milieu today, which has no experience of Party life (as it existed, for example, in the Bolshevik Party in Lenin’s day), no experience of revolutionary agitation by a Party with real, determining influence in the class struggle, and moreover is infested not just by the old councilist opposition to the Party but by a much broader, profound suspicion of any form of organised political activity beyond that of the circle, as such. In fact, PBJ does not really take organisation seriously. This is why PBJ is so shocked by "positions which developed in the organization that if the ICC somehow ceased to exist the party couldn’t be founded, the proletariat couldn’t make a revolution and the world would face unavoidable ruin, [and] expressed that we hoped we wouldn’t be alone in continuing communist activity in case a situation like this took place". We should ask PBJ: do you believe (as you supposedly did when you joined the ICC) that the existence of an international, centralised, political revolutionary organisation is critical to the success of any future revolution? Unlike some, we have never pretended to be "the Party", nor to be the only group in the world to defend proletarian internationalism. There are two few revolutionaries in the world, in all probability this will be the case for a long time to come, and the proletariat needs to gather all the forces it can: the existence of a revolutionary organisation is not a matter of individuals but the product of the proletariat’s own historically revolutionary nature. As Bilan pointed during the war in Spain in the 1930s, if there is no Party – no political organisation recognised by the international working class as its own – then there is no revolution. And yet such an organisation will not come into being by some mystical process of self-generation. Building an organisation is immensely difficult, it takes years of painstaking effort, and yet it will always remain so fragile that it can be demolished in a matter of months or even weeks. If the ICC, which is today much the largest organisation of the Communist Left10, finally fails, what will be there to take its place? How and on what basis will the international organisation be built? To these questions, PBJ can only answer "we hope we won’t be alone". "Hope springs eternal", as the saying goes, and in the meantime superficiality reigns supreme.
We want to conclude this point by responding to the supposed "dissolution of the Turkish section". There is no doubt that mistakes were made on both sides in the process that led to the section’s departure; there is no doubt either that a certain mistrust built up, which we were unable to dispel.11 It is untrue, however, to suggest that the section was "dissolved". This claim is based on two points:
First, that the section was asked by a resolution of the central organ, to replace its own meetings with the participation of all its members (via Internet) in the discussions of other ICC sections.
Second, that the section was asked to translate all its articles into English and submit them to the IB before publication.
Let’s take these in order.
As PBJ’s own text says, the participation of its members in other section meetings was an attempt to break down the localism in which the section was entrenched – and which they cannot deny. What they fail to mention, is that the same measure was applied in other sections in the run-up to the ICC’s Congress. The purpose was to open up the local life of the sections to international discussion, to try to let in some air and allow all comrades to have an idea of the life of the organisation as a whole beyond their own immediate preoccupations before the delegations arrived at the Congress. The measure was not originally intended to last beyond the Congress itself. Not only that – what PBJ fails to tell its readers is that, once it became clear that the Turkish section did not agree with – because they did not understand – the proposed measure, it was withdrawn by the central organ: communist discipline is not something that can be imposed bureaucratically.
As far as the press is concerned, our Statutes state unequivocally that (even in Turkey) "The territorial publications are entrusted by the ICC to the territorial sections and more specifically to their central organs which can nominate editorial committees to this end. However, these publications are the emanation of the totality of the Current and not of particular territorial sections. Because of this, the IB has the responsibility for orientating and following the contents of these publications". Given that the IB as a whole does not speak Turkish, and that the section – as PBJ would hardly deny – was not in complete agreement with the rest of the ICC on a whole series of points (including for example, the analysis of the "social revolts" in Spain, Egypt, Turkey, and Brazil), it was surely not unreasonable for the IB to ask that articles be submitted to it before publication: at all events, the IB was entirely within its statutory rights to do so. Just how right the IB was, the reader can judge for themselves on the basis of the very article about the Soma mine disaster of whose non-publication PBJ makes so much. In this article we read, for example, that "the deaths of the workers in shipyards, construction sites and wars happen because the bourgeoisie consciously wants them to happen; the massacre in Soma which is called an accident has been consciously conducted", and it goes on to say that "In war or in the workplace, workers are valuable if they die for capitalism". Even for the most vulgar marxist (and the members of the Turkish section did, at the time, claim to be marxist, regaling us at length with ill-digested lessons on "the law of value"), this is arrant nonsense: workers are valuable for capital if they produce surplus value, something they can hardly do if they are dead.
Far from "dissolving" the section, the organisation had every interest in its participation in the international life of the ICC, including and especially its international Congress. One could expect that "the Left" would jump at the chance to express themselves at the Congress, all the more so inasmuch as our Statutes explicitly require the over-representation of minority positions. But not so PBJ: not only did they resign precipitately before the Congress, they rejected our organisation’s invitation to appear, and speak, as an outside group. They had too much "important work" to do – we leave our readers to judge for themselves the results of PBJ’s "important work" on their own web site. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" after all.
PBJ makes much of the so-called "conservative comrades",12 who "emphasized that the 68 generation needed to transmit its experience to the youth one-sidedly. This emphasis presupposed that the young comrades were bereft of any experience on the question of organization". That "the young comrades were bereft of any experience on the question of organization" is merely a statement of fact,13 but it is worth taking up this question in a little more depth than PBJ bother to do.
“Each generation forms a link in the chain of human history. Each one is confronted with three fundamental tasks: to receive the collective heritage from the previous generation; to enrich this heritage on the basis of its own experience; to pass it on so that the next generation can achieve more that it was able to.
These tasks, far from being easy, represent a particular challenge. This also goes for the workers movement. The older generation has its experience to offer. But it also bears the wounds and traumas of its struggles, has had to learn to face up to defeats, disappointments, and the realisation that the construction of lasting acquisitions of collective struggle often requires more than one lifetime. It needs the energy and élan of the following generation, but also its new questions and its capacity to see the world with new eyes.
But as much as the generations need each other, their capacity to forge the necessary unity is not automatically given. The more society distances itself from traditional natural economy, the more incessantly and rapidly capitalism "revolutionises" the productive forces and the whole of society, the more the experience of one generation differs from the next. Capitalism, the system of competition par excellence, also pits the generations against each other in the struggle of each against all”.14
Schematically, we can say that there are three possible reactions to this need for the transmission of experience inherent in every human society:
The Master’s authority is unquestionable, each new generation has merely to appropriate and repeat the lessons of the previous one. This is the attitude characteristic of old Asiatic societies, and which has infected the proletarian movement in the form of the Bordigists’ caricatural devotion to the untouchable works of the Master.
The contestation that dominated the 1960s youth movement, condemned – because it failed to learn from its predecessors – to repeat their errors in boring detail.15
Finally, we have the scientific – and marxist – critical appropriation of past experience. As a previous article16 pointed out, it is this ability to appropriate the work and the thinking of previous generations, and critically develop it, that characterised the emergence of scientific thought in Ancient Greece.
Examples of such critical appropriation by a new generation of militants are not lacking in the workers’ movement. We can cite that of Lenin with regard to Plekhanov, or more strikingly still, of Rosa Luxemburg with regard to Kautsky and the SPD in general, as well as to the theories of Marx which she both criticised and developed in The accumulation of capital. These examples show us that a precondition for criticism is, precisely, the appropriation of our predecessors’ ideas, in other words the ability to understand them – and an ability to understand is dependent on an ability to read (since half the section did not read any language other than Turkish, this was clearly a physical impossibility). Having understood the ideas, you can only criticise them, especially in the context of an organisation where the aim is to convince other comrades, by engaging with them, which the members of the Turkish section signally failed to do. PBJ claims this is untrue.17 Yet they would be hard put to point to a single text on organisational issues (other than the "infamous" position on parasitism) which engages with any of the ICC’s basic documents, either internal or external. If our readers need convincing of the vacuity of PBJ’s organisational understanding, we can only invite them to consult a text by Jamal [1376] (a frequent contributor to the ICC’s forum) which PBJ have published on their web site without a word of critical comment: it reads like some kind of manager’s manual produced by the HR department of a new start-up.
At this point, we want to take a step back and return to the words we quoted at the beginning of this article. "One of the most urgent and arduous tasks facing revolutionaries is that of welding together the meagre revolutionary forces that are currently dispersed throughout the world". Confronted with the ICC’s failings (and none are more aware of them than we), it is all too easy to forget how difficult, how ambitious such a task is. To bring together militants from all across the world, from utterly different cultures and backgrounds, into a single international association capable of taking part in and stimulating the reflexion of a world proletariat billions strong, to unite them not in a lifeless homogeneity but in a whole where unity of action is founded on the diversity of debate within an accepted political framework – this is a gigantic undertaking. Certainly, we fall short of our ambitions – but we only need declare them to see how different they are from the circle mentality which dominated EKS, as its members recognise themselves.
In fact, the members of the Turkish section never understood the fundamental difference between being a circle and being militants of a revolutionary organisation, especially an international one. This is not entirely their fault, since we failed in transmitting our organisational conceptions to them – in part because we had, up to a point, lost sight of them ourselves.
We have already dealt extensively with the question of what Lenin called the "circle spirit".18 Here we will just recall some of the main points.
First, the circle is characterised by a membership based on a mixture of personal friendships and political agreement; as a result, personal conflicts and political disagreements are conflated – a sure recipe for the personalisation of political argument. It is hardly surprising that the life of the Turkish section was marked by a series of bitter personal animosities leading to splits and periods of "paralysis".
To maintain its cohesion, the circle closes like an oyster against the outside. This in turn is a recipe for personalised antagonism between the circle and the rest of the organisation: "Under the name of the ‘minority' heterogeneous elements are regrouped in the Party who are united by the desire, conscious or not, to maintain the relations of a circle, previous organisation forms to the party".19 The circle spirit in the organisation leads to an “us and them” attitude, the circle against the “central organs”; the circle completely loses sight of the organisation as a whole, to become obsessed with the "central organs". One example we can cite amongst many is a text written by one member of the section titled “Is there a crisis in the ICC?”; the critique voiced in this text was taken up and both answered and developed by another section, yet this response was completely ignored. Only "the central organs" are deemed worthy of consideration.
The circle maintains its cohesion by opposing the rest of the organisation en bloc, while at the same time avoiding any debate within the circle of its own divergences. This was clearly apparent in the debate on ethics and morality engaged within the ICC: where one comrade developed a critical argument which (cf the note above) was to some extent directly inspired by the organisation’s own texts, another put forward a position which owes more to Hobbes than to Marx – and yet never a word of critique did we hear from the Turkish comrades.20
A more striking case of this closure to the rest of the organisation came with the debate over the events around the massive Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul. According to PBJ, "It was claimed that the section failed to inform the organization of its disagreements during the Gezi process whereas within the heat of the events the section had a meeting with the comrades from the secretariat trying to explain its disagreements". It is certainly true that there was a lengthy discussion between members of the International Secretariat and members of the Turkish section over the editorial modification of their article concerning the events at Gezi. It is also true that the members of the IS had difficulty making head or tail of these "disagreements", and for good reason: at the section’s conference held shortly afterwards it became apparent that there were at least two, if not perhaps three, different positions within the section itself. The members of the section committed themselves to writing down their different positions to carry the discussion into organisation as a whole – our readers will be astonished to learn that these documents have still to see the light of day.
The ex-comrades from Turkey remain silent on yet another of their internal disagreements, on the "tone" of our "Communiqué to our readers: The ICC under attack from a new agency of the bourgeois state [1279]".. According to PBJ, "Nevertheless, the members of our section in the central organ of the ICC didn’t fail to criticize the extremely angry tone of the communiqué written in response to this attack". Perfectly true. But the text fails to mention that two other members of the section found the communiqué perfectly appropriate, and said so unambiguously during a meeting held in July 2014 with members of the section in France.
We have already mentioned (cf note 6), the insistence of Leo and Devrim on carrying on their forum debates without any restrictions. This calls to mind, once again, Lenin’s words: "Certain eminent militants of the most influential old circles, not having the habit of organisational restrictions that the Party must impose, are inclined to mechanically confuse the general interests of the Party and their circle interests which can coincide in the period of circles". They "...naturally raise the standard of revolt against the indispensable restrictions of the organisation and they establish their spontaneous anarchism as a principle of struggle (...) making demands in favour of ‘tolerance' etc".21
“An image is worth 1000 words” as the saying goes, and certainly this holds good for PBJ. Thanks to the technical wizardry of the Internet, we discover that the image that Pale Blue Jadal have chosen to represent their group comes straight from the world of sentimental hippiedom.22
Their "political principles" are devoid of any reference to the Communist Left, or indeed to any past heritage at all. PBJ thus declares itself a new group based solely on itself, on ignorance and an assemblage of resentments, discontents, and personal loyalties.23
There is no mention either of capitalism’s decadence, which for the ICC that they have just left is the materialist foundation-stone of its political positions. PBJ has no criticism to make of this theoretical foundation, nor have they any alternative to offer. PBJ may be unaware of it, but by jettisoning any reference to the past and any attempt at giving a materialist grounding to their positions, they are already compromising the process of "political discussion" to which they claim to be committed.24 In for the list of discussion topics proposed in PBJ’s "road map" (which should keep them occupied for the next 20 years at least), it is worth remarking the presence of "The National Question in the Middle East"... and the complete absence on PBJ’s site of the least comment on the concrete situation in Turkey, the renewal of Erdogan’s war on the Kurds, the resurgence of Kurdish nationalism and the Syrian refugee crisis, the bomb attack in Suruç, etc etc.
We have said above that the existence of an international revolutionary organisation is a precondition for the successful overthrow of capitalism. If the proletariat does, one day, prove itself capable of "assaulting the heavens" (to use Marx’s expression) then its decisive strength will be found in those countries with a strong working class and a certain historical experience. Turkey, at the gateway between Europe and Asia, is one of those countries and a rising proletarian movement will necessarily produce a political expression which can only be based on the heritage of the Communist Left. By turning their backs on this heritage, the members of PBJ disqualify themselves from participating in any such political expression, and this is their tragedy.
Let us end on an optimistic note however. All our past experience indicates that PBJ is condemned to go the way of previous circles – those who refuse to learn from history (and you cannot learn from history if you know nothing about it) are condemned to repeat it. But let us remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong, and that PBJ despite all appearances to the contrary may yet produce something worthwhile for the proletariat and the revolution. To do so, they will have to find their way back to the revolutionary theoretical and organisational heritage of the Communist Left.
ICC, November 2015
1The TCI (ex-IBRP) offers another striking illustration of this extreme difficulty of overcoming failings which are, so to speak, set in the organisation’s genes: its origins in the profound opportunism that presided at the creation of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista in 1943 [1377], have haunted it ever since.
2This, of course, is not to deny that we have made mistakes in this domain also, largely as a result of our own tendency towards schematism.
3This is why our Statutes explicitly form part of our Platform, and are part of the basis on which militants are integrated into the organisation.
4The lack of Turkish translations only became critical when the section (without asking anybody else’s opinion on the subject) integrated new members who were unable to read English.
5The attentive reader will have noticed that our view of the ICC’s organisational opportunism is very different from PBJ’s. At the risk of trying our readers’ patience, we want to answer briefly one of PBJ’s little "myths" (to borrow their expression): that "the most obvious example of the opportunism in the section’s integration process, that comrades who disagreed with the platform and the statutes were accepted to the organization". What exactly does this refer to? In fact, there were two potential disagreements raised in the process of the discussion. The first was Devrim’s disagreement on our Statutes’ ban on trade union membership (interestingly, PBJ apparently sees nothing dishonest about accepting integration into an organisation with whose positions one disagrees...), the second refers to a woman comrade’s disagreement on the Statutes’ ban on belonging to any other political organisation. Let’s take these one by one.
The ban on trades union membership is aimed at any concession to "entryism" (the idea that it would be possible to influence trades unions positively from within, or even that one could intervene "more effectively" by being a trade union member), or to "red trade unionism" of the Bordigist variety, or to its cousin revolutionary syndicalism. The Statutes however, allow for exceptions due to "professional constraints". This provision was included to take account of workers in "closed-shop" industries where trade union membership is a condition of employment – a situation very common in 1970s Britain, but also in some industries in other countries (the French printing industry was then completely dominated by the CGT, for example). Devrim’s objection was that workers’ might be forced, though not in a closed-shop, to rely on union membership for access to social security, insurance, or other critical benefits such as legal representation in a personnel dispute; at no time (to our knowledge) either then or since did Devrim argue in favour of either entryism or revolutionary syndicalism, and we considered (as we explained to him) that the cases he cited, in the conditions of the 2000s, fell under the heading of "professional constraints".
In the second case, the comrade in question participated in a women’s group and was reluctant to give this up. We asked what sort of a group this was. She explained that it was a group of women who met to discuss specifically women’s problems (both social and political) and preferred to do so without the presence of men – perfectly understandable in the conditions of a country like Turkey. This group – as far as we could understand – had no political platform, indeed no political agenda as such; on this basis, we concluded that this was not a political group as defined in the Statutes but rather a discussion group and that consequently we could not only see no objection to her participation but on the contrary would consider it part of the organisation’s intervention.
6We will limit ourselves to one example. According to our Statutes, debate within the organisation is made public only when it has reached a degree of maturity such that, first, the whole organisation is aware of the debate and its implications, and second, it is possible to express it with sufficient clarity that it contributes to clarification and not confusion. These provisions, let us recall, are in the same Statutes that all the members of EKS signed up to. Two of them, however, continued to debate between themselves in public on the various Internet forums they are in the habit of frequenting, without at any time thinking it necessary to keep the rest of the organisation informed either of their intervention or their disagreements. When it was pointed out to them that this directly contradicted both the letter and the spirit of the Statutes, they replied that the Statutes having being written before the existence of the Internet, they could only apply to the printed press.
Now of course, one could perfectly well argue this point – but what you cannot do, when you accept the Statutes of an organisation like the ICC, is simply ignore them when they don’t suit you and then try to justify yourself afterwards by quibbling over the difference between the printed and the electronic press.
7The article on the Congress speaks of the "intellectual dimension" to the ICC’s crisis and the necessary struggle against "routinism, superficiality, intellectual laziness, schematism...". But can the members of PBJ honestly claim to be free of these defects themselves?
8International Review n°90, "The Italian Fraction and the French Communist Left [1378]". See also the forthcoming "Report on the Fraction" addressed to the ICC’s 21st Congress.
9International Review n°131, "The culture of debate: a weapon of the class struggle [1379]".
10More importantly, the ICC is the only organisation today which derives its positions from a synthesis of the main advances of the different currents of the Communist Left, other groups identifying themselves exclusively with either the Dutch-German or the Italian Left.
11PBJ mentions a meeting of the International Bureau at which the right of the Turkish section’s delegate to attend the meeting was called into question by one of the other delegations. This was undoubtedly a serious mistake on the delegation’s part, and indicative of precisely that atmosphere of distrust that had built up within the organisation – but as PBJ themselves point out, the idea that the Turkish delegate should not be admitted was decisively rejected by the IB as contrary to our statutes and our conception of the organisation.
12PBJ is very exercised by the "personalisation" which supposedly characterised our approach. Yet throughout their text, militants are described as being "expansionist" or "conservative" completely irrespective of the political arguments involved. Let PBJ take care of the beam in their own eyes before worrying about the mote in other peoples’.
13Some of the Turkish section’s militants had a long organisational experience prior to joining the ICC... in leftist sects. But whatever may be the conscious intentions of their members, these groups are fundamentally bourgeois and as such wholly imbued with bourgeois ideology: it is our unvarying experience – confirmed to the letter by PBJ – that for an ex-leftist to be a militant in a communist organisation means first of all unlearning all the attitudes and practices acquired in leftism. This is far more difficult than coming to communist politics without previous experience.
14"The culture of debate", 2007, op.cit.
15In the Belgian singer Jacques Brel’s song "Les Bourgeois", three students mock the stuffiness of the provincial "bourgeois"... until they themselves have aged and find themselves complaining to the police about the intolerable insolence of the young students. Brel could have been writing for Joschka Fischer, Dany Cohn-Bendit and all the other ministerial leaders of the 1968 students’ movement.
16"Reading notes on science and marxism [1380]".
17According to PBJ, "The claim that an internal text written by a member of the section on ethics ignored the texts written by the organization on this subject previously was another legend since the said text was in fact written in response to the organization’s orientation text on this question". In reply, let us quote from a response to the text in question, which PBJ left too precipitously to read: "A precondition for the ‘culture of debate’ is that there should be a debate: this means that opposing positions must answer each other. Although L's text begins with a brief quote from E&M [the text on Ethics and Marxism, cf https://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/marxism-and-ethics] [1381] on the definition of morality and ethics, and tells us that ‘from these definitions stem a series of confusions, overestimations, relapses to idealism, divergences from the marxist method, and a variety of other errors’, this is the only place in his text where he makes any reference at all to E&M, we are left in the dark as to what exactly these ‘errors and confusions’ are, and in what way they are the result of the ideas advanced in E&M. Moreover, it is clear to us that parts of L's text are in agreement with, or even directly inspired by E&M, and yet these areas of agreement are never made clear either".
18Notably in "The question of organisational functioning in the ICC [1284]", International Review n°109.
19Lenin, One step forward, two steps back, quoted in the text on organisational functioning.
20To give some idea of this text’s Hobbesian inspiration, we offer this brief passage: "The relationship between human beings is an unequal one. This inequality stems from the use value and exchange value produced by human beings [apparently the author here is unaware of the tens of thousands of years of human history where exchange value did not exist]. This real material basis determines human relations all the time and completely [the classical bourgeois objection to the possibility of communism]. And this inequality produces a tendency to dominate. This tendency emerges for human beings to survive in natural conditions. Primitively, it is the tendency for one to secure his or her own survival". Man is a wolf for man, human society is the war of each against all, à la Hobbes, etc., etc.
21Lenin, op. cit.
22Those interested can find the original here: markhensonart.com/galleries/new-pioneers. It is accompanied by the following edifying text: "The epic drama of life, death, war, peace and the inalienable right to choose is depicted in a huge panorama. Refugees climb out of a war zone, a pioneer comes to a graffiti wall where the choices are scratched out. We all want to live in peace but somehow many are attracted to values that are so dissimilar, war seems to be the only option for a humanity gone berserk. The pioneers and refugees make it to a new world of awakened consciousness".
23It is worth noting that one comrade, in his letter of resignation, expressed no political differences with the organisation at all.
24Our readers can judge how committed PBJ is to discussion and clarity from their refusal of our invitation to attend the ICC’s last congress, whether in the organisation or out of it.
The morning session began with a showing of two videos:
A short presentation then made the following points to focus discussion on the question of war and decadence:
The discussion immediately focused on the post-war reconstruction, raising more general questions about wars, decadence and growth: WW2 gave capitalism a new lease of life, but does this refute the concept of decadence? Capitalism today seems to be at a new impasse but it also seems more in control and more difficult to destroy...
In response it was emphasised that the post-war reconstruction needs to be seen in the context of the destruction of WW2, which destroyed decades of human labour. More generally, our understanding of decadence is that capitalist relations become a fetter on the productive forces; not that they stop growing altogether. The real question is whether growth constitutes a progressive factor for humanity or a regressive one. Capital can only ensure growth by destroying itself, increasingly threatening humanity and the planet. Capitalism has already created the conditions for communism and is now eroding these conditions; this is why it is decadent. Marx talks about a whole epoch of wars and crises; Luxemburg talks about a period of a long agony of decline.
For the comrade from the CWO there was a problem with the use of the concept of decadence by the ICC, which kept being redefined until it became a moral view. The Third International was clearly wrong to announce in 1919 that capitalism was in its death throes. Capitalism has found answers to its problems and has continued to grow, especially in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. Capitalism can only survive by cannibalising itself to increase the rate of profit; world wars have become the equivalent of the economic crises of the 19th century. But it is not true to say that it faces insuperable barriers. Marx says that no social formation will disappear before all the productive forces of which it is capable have been developed; we can still see capitalism is finding ways around its problems, eg. the Internet, cheapening of labour power, exploitation of China, South America, etc. In the immediate period after 1914 it was still possible to talk about curtailing the life of this system but it is now 100 years since the revolutionary wave and we have to query this.
In answer to the CWO, it was argued that the legacy of the Third International is not so easily dismissed; it’s true that capitalism will not simply disappear and will only be definitively ended by the revolution of the working class, but this was also the understanding of the International, which announced the beginning of a whole epoch of wars and revolutions; it’s true that there has only been one revolutionary wave and many wars, but this does nullify their perspective.
Today’s revolutionary movement historically came out of the struggles after May ’68 which signalled an end to the post-war boom. In fact the boom itself appears as an exception; for the majority of decadence we’ve seen war, stagnation, crisis. But the ICC has now recognised that we were wrong to expect that the re-opening of the crisis would lead to a revolutionary outbreak. We were over-optimistic. But it’s only since the end of the 80s that we’ve seen apparently difficult to explain growth, particularly of China and India. It’s this growth that revolutionaries have been slower to understand and to explain in the wider context of decadence. Capitalism may appear to be getting stronger today because we are not seeing mass movements of the working class, but the fact that the working class has failed to destroy decadent capitalism during the last 100 years does not invalidate the concept of decadence.
The CWO comrade felt that there was a tendency to deny growth in decadence, but insisted that it was a fact, for example there is more steel being produced than ever. He went on to say that for the system to reconstitute itself after a phase of open crisis, capital needs total world war to destroy constant capital. The opening up of India and China created 2 billion new workers, bringing with them very little constant capital, which provided a basis for accumulation up to 2007. Now we are now seeing tremendous signs of crisis: negative interest rates, quantitative easing, lowering of wages and conditions. But this has only had modest results for the bourgeoisie, putting war or revolution on the agenda.
The rest of the morning session developed various points about growth and decadence:
There was also a discussion about the ideological mystification of WW2 as a ‘Good War’, which the film addressed, and is still strong today. WW2 is not questioned in the same way as WW1. Unlike previous wars, the anti-fascism of WW2 is still necessary for bourgeois propaganda - even though it was not used as a rationale at the time.
The discussion continued after lunch and further developed points about growth and decadence.
In summary, there has been growth in decadence but it has been much lower than capitalism claims. In decadence growth has been the result of state capitalism, epitomised by Keynesianism. In the 19th century if the economy declined, the bourgeoisie cut state expenditure but in the 20th it’s the opposite. Laissez-faire no longer works.
The ICC has revised some of its ideas about decadence, for example, the notion of a kind of automatic cycle of ‘crisis, war and reconstruction’; there was no real crisis before WW1, in fact a boom, and the boom that followed World War Two could not be explained simply by the reconstruction of war-shattered economies.
The example of China is an expression of the historic crisis of the system; the relative stagnation of the west is concomitant to the rise of China. That doesn’t mean that the rapid pace of growth in China is not real, and it needs to be explained theoretically. But this growth, based on brutal levels of exploitation, the devastation of nature and China’s increasing role as a player in the imperialist free for all, does not constitute a factor of progress for mankind.
Human labour in decadence becomes increasingly unproductive and unrelated to any real need (eg. advertising, call centres, arms production etc). The present use of technology is of no real use to humanity but on the contrary works against it, and the revolution in the west will have to involve the working class resurrecting productive industries or looking for new ways to produce things for human needs.
In conclusion, firstly it was noted firstly that no-one had defended the idea of WW2 as a “good” war.
Different points of view on the question of decadence had been expressed, eg. on what we still defend from the perspectives of the Third International. The economic growth in China is something we still need to study. Similarly, the causes of the post-war boom are a discussion that continues.
We also need to look at the level of the capitalist crisis in relation to the level of the class struggle and the state of the working class. This poses some basic questions, for example about the role of revolutionaries and this was the subject of our second presentation.
The presentation closely followed the article 1915, 1945: the Development of Internationalist Opposition to Imperialist War [1384] (see World Revolution No371).
The discussion tended to concentrate on:
1: Was the 3rd Communist International correct in its 1919 assessment of the epoch opened up by WW1 as that of ‘Wars and Revolutions’? The comrade from the ICT had earlier said subsequent history called this into question. All agreed there had been plenty of wars but only one international revolutionary wave (1917-1923). So what was the balance sheet? For the ICC and sympathisers the CI had been correct in its characterisation: the new epoch was indeed that of the decadence of capitalism. 100 years was not a long time in the decadence of any class society and it was no surprise that the proletariat, lacking an economic base within capitalism, found difficulty in demonstrating its revolutionary nature. As for capital, its trajectory of two world wars, the continuing wars of decomposition (Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq x 2, Libya, Syria, etc); two major economic crises, plus the development of state capitalism, the integration of organs like the unions and the use of former workers’ parties to control the class, etc, clearly show a society in ossification, confirming the perspective of socialism or barbarism. This perspective is not contradicted by apparent bursts of growth – or, rather, what the ruling class includes as a measure of economic activity, including the production of the means of destruction, waste production like advertising, etc, etc - all financed by historically unprecedented levels of global debt. Such diseased reproduction (not to mention the environmental degradation) coupled with quasi-constant war is decadence.
At a time when many in the proletarian political milieu were abandoning or denying decadence, where did the ICT – which had once published a discussion paper refuting the concept – stand? Decadence was not a prominent, unifying factor linking the political positions printed on its publications today! The ICT comrade replied that the organisation saw decadence as a reality, but one rooted in the process of capital accumulation and its blockages, rather than in a ‘moral’ sense like the ICC. For its part, the ICC confirmed that decadence was indeed rooted in the inherent contradictions between society’s growing productive capacities and the way capitalism was organised – its relations of production. The tendency for dead labour to dominate living; of the rate of profit to fall – as well as the relative saturation of markets and a growing difficulty of the valorisation of capital – was indeed the basis of decadence. However, decadence had its own history and (increasingly irrational) dynamic which amounted to more than an economic base but which permeated every aspect of social life.
2: Decadence above all means war, but what of the response of proletariat and its political minorities? Superficially, the periods following the outbreak of WW1 and WW2 were similar: disarray within the proletariat and a corresponding confusion in the ranks of its parties and minorities. But in reality, the two moments in history held within themselves different perspectives (see Presentation [1384]).
In this context, argued the ICC, the declaration of a ‘Party’ (the Partito Comunista Internazionalista – PCInt) by comrades in Italy in 1943 was an error which has profound repercussions for how revolutionaries understand the questions of where we are in history and how we organise today.
For the ICT, the need for the proletarian party is a constant and in Italy 1943 there was a massive development of strikes and struggles during and against the war. With the Communist Party banned since the mid-1920s, but with militants now returning to Italy, there was thus a real need for intervention, leadership and political direction to avoid the trap of fascism/anti-fascism. The real question here was why did the ‘French’ fraction of the international communist left (fore-runners of the ICC) not contribute to this process?
In answer the ICC agreed that the main axes of the interventions of revolutionaries in Italy at the time were correct but the perspective was deeply flawed. It’s not a question of a constant need for a party, any more than the constant need for communism or revolution. The question was of the material conditions and the subjective balance of class forces. And neither favoured the creation of the party in ’43. The party is not the product of a balance of force in one country but at an international level. The period from the 20s to the 40s saw a growing theoretical confusion in the ranks of communists, a betrayal of principles and a diminution of their numbers. The task of the hour was not just intervention and certainly not the voluntarist declaration of a party but the preservation of previous theoretical acquisitions and the development of new appreciations: the work of a fraction acting as a bridge from the International of yesterday to that of tomorrow.
The mistake that was the formation of the PCInt in ’43 was revealed very quickly: the initial influx of thousands of militants – some of them very ill-informed about what the party actually stood for; the opportunist integration, without any real calling into question of their past errors, of elements who had previously been excluded from the Fraction, like the minority which went to Spain to fight in the POUM militias and Vercesi, who had organised an anti-fascist coalition of Italians in Belgium at the end of the war; the more or less rapid decline in numbers from many thousands to a few hundred, a split in the ‘Party’ in 1952, an absence of international echo, and a tendency to abandon previous clarity on questions like work with the Partisans, national liberation and the class nature of trade unions. It took a great deal of strength and courage for the ‘French’ fraction to insist against the tide that this was still a period of counter-revolution, not a period of revolution like that following WW1, with all that this implied for the work of revolutionaries.
In fact, misjudging the period is a constant problem for revolutionaries. The PCInt in 43; the left communists of in France in 52 who wrongly thought a new world war was imminent and dispersed; the slowness of the PCInt/Battaglia Communista to recognise the recovery of class struggle after 1968; the foreshortened perspectives of many ICC comrades who tended to think that the rapid evolution of both the crisis and the class struggle meant ‘revolution in our time’; while the CWO in the 1980s thought that unless the workers made a revolution, another world war was imminent, betraying a misunderstanding of both the immediate period and the course of history. The ability of capital to adapt, to subdue, to persist, albeit in ever-more life-threatening forms, has in general been underestimated.
A further area of disagreement between the ICT and ICC concerned the role of the party. Did it take power ‘on behalf’ of the workers or not? The ICT insisted that this was not the case – “we would criticise the Bolsheviks for degrading work of soviets till they were empty shells and the state was run by the party” - but said the ICC held a ‘propagandist’ view of the party’s role, while the ICT saw it had a place in organising the revolution. However, the ICC had moved closer to the ICT’s conception since various splits had removed councilist elements from its ranks, the ICT believed.
The ICC acknowledged that its birth following 1968 was marked by many illusions of the time and difficulties in understanding the role and importance of centralised organisation – problems which persist. However, the ICC said the ICT’s vision on the role of the party remained ambiguous in the literature of the ICT and that the concept of the party taking power was once defended by the CWO. In addition, the federalist approach to party work of the ICT was contrasted to the internationalist development of the ICC – a method which must organisationally prefigure any party. The prospect of future joint work between the two organisations was raised but not developed.
3: Finally if, as had been said, that ‘anti-ISIS’, was the new ‘anti-fascism’, what was the internationalist response to ISIS today?
An ICC comrade replied that in every war the proletariat was subjected to propaganda insisting that it was necessary to fight the ‘barbarism’ of the enemy, that ‘the other side’ must be defeated to preserve freedom. In WW1 there was German propaganda against the ‘knout of backward Czarism’; in Britain and France, agitation against ‘German militarism’, etc. Today, we’re being told that ISIS is a nasty, revolting, regressive faction in the Middle East – not the only one, to be sure, but one worse than all the rest and against whom we must ally with anyone in order to rid society of this aberrant scourge. Here lies the comparison to anti-fascism.
So the main role of revolutionaries today is their theoretical understanding, the clarity they can shine, on this question: the method they use. If we’re talking about capitalism being a decadent social system, there isn’t going to be one faction better than another, or one which we can support. We must insist ISIS and other such groups are products of the decomposition of capitalist social relations, a creation of barbarous capital itself. They came out of the war in Afghanistan, before the collapse of the Russian bloc, because they were being used by the West as proxy weapons to fight the Russians. These groups have gone on from there to develop a dynamic of their own. So we don’t have a particular strategy for fighting ISIS or similar phenomena but use our theoretical tools to analyse them, to understand them from a proletarian point of view, to ask who is putting out propaganda for or against them and why; to accelerate a consciousness of what these things represent and to analyse them to permit a greater understanding of the totality of capitalism and what each fragment represents.
2015 has seen the high profile mainstream film Suffragette, as well the announcement of a new biography of Sylvia Pankhurst.[1] The article we’re reprinting here originally appeared in World Revolution in 1980. At that time, very little was written about the life and politics of Sylvia Pankhurst and her own writings were difficult to obtain. As the article notes, those books that did deal with Sylvia tended to leave a large and unexplained gap from 1914 to the early post-war years; in other words, the period of her break with the Suffragette movement and her internationalist opposition to the war, which led her to enthusiastically support the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution and to call for soviet power in Britain.
With the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and with the ensuing campaigns of the bourgeoisie about the ‘end of communism’, Sylvia’s enthusiastic support for Bolshevism and a soviet revolution became even more unpalatable. Instead we saw an effort by the liberal left to appropriate Sylvia as a feminist, a radical, a rebel, an anti-fascist, anti-colonialist and campaigner for world peace and social justice… Since the 1990s there has been a veritable wave of biographies and books about various aspects of her life and politics.[2] 2007 saw a festival in London to celebrate her life as a “crusader, artist and feminist”, with guest speakers including a former Labour MP, the celebrity academic Germaine Greer and the Ethiopian ambassador.[3] There was even a campaign, supported by Labour baronesses and former union bosses in the House of Lords, to erect a statue of her outside the Houses of Parliament (!)
The new biography by Rachel Holmes, with the title Sylvia Pankhurst: Feminism and Social Justice, must be seen in this context.
As we said in our article [1385] on the 2007 ‘Sylvia Pankhurst Festival’: “To the bourgeoisie, Sylvia Pankhurst is to be remembered as a feminist, a leftist or a liberal. To the proletariat, while not disguising the facts of her abandonment of revolutionary politics and subsequent betrayals, she is someone who, under the influence of the class struggle, broke with bourgeois politics and was won over to communism (…) Thanks to the stubborn determination of Pankhurst and other, less well known working class militants (many of them women), the weak but authentic voice of left-wing communist opposition was heard in this country, leaving behind a body of writing that was to become a source of strength and learning for a new generation of revolutionaries fifty years later, of which the ICC remains an organisational expression today. This is the real legacy of Sylvia Pankhurst; this is the legacy communists defend today; and this is why we say to the left and liberal servants of the bourgeoisie: hands off Sylvia Pankhurst!”
This article was first published in 1980, in WR 33 and 34. We think that the essential arguments in it remain valid today, even if certain approaches and formulations might be different if we had written the article more recently. Where terms or phrases seem to be more clearly erroneous, we have appended “Editor’s notes”
This series of articles [4] is an attempt to counter the distortions of the present day feminists and leftists who conveniently ignore the politics of Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Dreadnought, preferring the more respectable vision - in today’s terms - of heroic suffering in the cause of women’s rights.
It’s very noticeable how books dealing with Sylvia, or the Pankhursts in general, leave a large gap in her life over the war and post-war years. The Socialist Workers’ Party has even had occasion to try and claim Sylvia’s politics as part of their own tradition! (see Revolutionary Perspectives 16, the magazine of the Communist Workers’ Organisation). But Sylvia’s break with the suffragettes should not remain buried, for it shows a clear revolutionary critique of feminism. In these articles then, we want to draw out the implications of the rather fragmentary criticisms she made in her history The Suffragette Movement: an intimate account of persons and ideals (1931) and show the development of her politics.
In early 1914, Sylvia and the East London Federation of the Women’s Social and Political Union were expelled by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst from the Women’s Social and Political Union, the basic reason being the working class orientation of the ELF:
“You have a democratic constitution for your federation, we do not agree with that!”. Moreover she (Christabel) urged that a working women’s movement was of no value; working women were the weakest portion of the sex, how could it be otherwise? Their lives were too hard, their education too meager, to equip them for the contest. “Surely it is a mistake to use the weakest for the struggle. We want picked women, the very strongest and most intelligent!” (Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement).
It was a split Sylvia had always tried to avoid and very much regretted at the time. However with the beginning of World War I it became clear to her how necessary it was. Although a thorough examination of the Suffragette movement is outside the scope of these articles, it is nevertheless necessary to look briefly at some of the important features of the movement, to see what this split was about and to see what the rejection of feminism meant for Sylvia Pankhurst.
“However in their demands for political equality, our feminists are like their foreign sisters, the wide horizons opened by social democratic learning remain alien and incomprehensible to them. The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society; in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for the prerogatives and privileges. We do not accuse the representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement of failure to understand the matter, their view of things flows inevitably from their class position” (Alexandra Kollontai, The Social Basis of the Women Question)
That Kollontai’s framework applies to the WSPU was made amply clear by its enthusiastic support for the war effort. In fact Emmeline and Christabel took to strongly criticising the British government for not putting enough effort into the fight against Germany, particularly over the use to be made of women. In their desire to further the cause of British imperialism they demanded the widespread placement of women in industry and the service sectors in order to free more workers for the trenches!
The origins of the WSPU stand in marked contrast with this blatant chauvinism that developed as the war years approached. Emmeline had in fact severed her connections with the Fabian Society because of its refusal to oppose the Boer War. The fact that the Pankhurst family had been involved in the Independent Labour Party in the late 19th century, and in the struggles of workers in the Manchester area, illustrates even more clearly the negative development undergone by the WSPU. It began to make explicit an opposition to the socialist movement and to the workers’ struggles; for example, citing its own harsh treatment at the hands of the state, the WSPU complained that the government, “instead of arresting the leaders (of the miners) were trying to come to terms of peace with them” (Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, 1914). Another example is the campaigning it began in 1915, financed by industrialists, against the ‘Bolshevik’ shop stewards’ movement.
The WSPU was formed in 1903 while Emmeline was still in the ILP and indeed remained a very active member; even the name she chose for the organisation is indicative of her wider concerns at that time. However, with the subsequent concentration on the situation of women (as a sexual division of society rather than as one aspect of a class division), and on parliament as the means of social change, this relationship became more and more stormy, and in 1907 the final break occurred. Coinciding with it came a reorganisation of its members. From then on the WSPU’s activities were firmly controlled by Emmeline, Christabel and a select band, who demanded of its members an absolute adherence to its policies. This meant concentration on one object only - the vote. No member was allowed to fight for other social reforms or work for any other political party or even question the correctness of WSPU policies. The WSPU was to be “a suffrage army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army and nobody is obliged to remain in it.” (Emmeline Pankhurst: My Own Story).
Its aim was simply political equality with men as it stood at that time and it even opposed the concept of full adult suffrage. This was not just a tactic, for while it sought to involve working class women, it also followed a conscious policy of attracting wealthy, middle, and upper class women to its leadership. Essentially the WSPU’s intentions were to use working class women to establish the rights of the “ladies” of society. This is how Christabel expressed it: “… the immediate hope of the nation is in those women who have managed to secure for themselves education and some economic independence and strength. Florence Nightingale, a woman of that class, did more for her country than the entire Labour Party has achieved or is likely to achieve. In this good day that has already dawned, we have not one Florence Nightingale alone, but a multitude of such women, happy in their own life and equipped mentally, morally and economically for the service of their country. It is they who are extending to the poorer and less fortunate women, the helping hand that will enable them to escape from the morass of poverty. It is they who can conceive a better social order and will show by what practical and constructive action that better order may be achieved.” (Christabel Pankhurst, The Suffragette, December 1913)
Bourgeois politics without a doubt! This overt support of capitalism and the development of “sex war” politics followed naturally from the rejection of and opposition to a class understanding of society.
While the simple fact of a conflict with the state may prove nothing more than that bourgeois ideology can never produce a single view of the world, it is nevertheless obvious that a movement that took on such mass proportions as the “votes for women” movement cannot be written off purely because of the politics of the WSPU. It is clear that the basis of its strength lay not in the ideas of the WSPU, but in the general conditions imposed on women, and the intransigence of British capital in its refusal to accede to demands to improve the lot of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois women, let alone working class women. That the WSPU became the focus of this struggle is really a criticism of the workers’ movement for its failure to provide a clear political alternative.
There did exist, under the umbrella of the Suffragette movement, a few groups with a distinct working class orientation. But their preference for the false unity of all women and the “votes for women” slogan allowed the WSPU to become the figurehead and allowed its anti-working class ideologies to become so influential. That compromise for the sake of such unity is destructive is a lesson that Sylvia understood only after her expulsion from the WSPU, and is perhaps highlighted by the rapid development of her politics after 1914.
The first steps in the rejection of this sort of compromise came in October 1912 when Sylvia began her activity in East London. Initially it was part of a bye-election campaign and a “Working Women’s Deputation” over a suffrage reform bill, but it so soon lost the full backing of the WSPU. By February 1913 the finance had been withdrawn but the ideas and the practice had been established and in May of that year the East London Federation of the WSPU was formed. Although it was a union of several branches of the WSPU, it had a definite and genuine orientation towards working class women and pursued a radically different practice to the mainstream of that organisation. The Federation began to establish links with organisations in the workers’ movement, in particular with the ILP, and supported and participated in mass demonstrations of the class. It was the very success of this work and the escalation of social conflict in the east end, amply portrayed in The Suffragette Movement, that made the break with the WSPU inevitable. In the end it is irrelevant that it was forced on the ELF by Emmeline and Christabel: the chains of compromise were being shattered anyway. In August 1913 Sylvia had called for the formation of a “People’s Army; an organisation men and women may join in order to fight for freedom and in order that they may fit themselves to cope with the brutality of government servants”. If this organisation was never of major importance, the recognition of the class conflicts to come and the basic questioning of the existing social order prefigured the direction she was to take as the politics of the Women’s Dreadnought and Workers’ Dreadnought developed.
The first part of this article looked at the basis of Sylvia Pankhurst’s split with the official Suffragette movement, the WSPU. This part will look more closely at the development of her politics with most emphasis on issues relevant to feminism. (After the split her organisation was renamed the East London Federation of Suffragettes. This was the first of several name changes, but rather than dating and referring to all of them we will simply call the organisation by the more distinctive name of its paper, the Dreadnought.)
In March 1914 the first issue of The Women’s Dreadnought appeared. In it there is a long explanation of the group’s activity in the east end of London, from which the following shows the main ideas behind this activity:
“The essential principle of the vote is that each of us shall have a share of power to help himself or herself and us all. It is in direct opposition to the idea that some few, who are more favoured, shall help and teach and patronise the others. It is surely because we suffragists believe in the principle that every individual has a right to share both in ruling and in serving, and because we have learnt by a long and bitter experience that every form of government is tyranny - however kindly its intention - that we are fighting for the vote.” (Sylvia Pankhurst, WD, 8 March 1914)
It is unfortunate that Sylvia never made a thorough critique of the WSPU, for it means we must rely upon indirect criticisms such as in the first part of this quote. Nevertheless it makes clear the totally different orientation of the Dreadnought. Despite its initial illusions in the Suffragette movement (or rather the ‘power of women’) and the idea that the vote equals self-government, the important point is the emphasis on the goal of self-government. This is in total opposition to the views of the WSPU as seen in the first part of this article and to the fact that the latter only advocated illegal action because women were denied the vote (ie. denied constitutional action).
When World War I broke out Sylvia quickly denounced the chauvinist response of the WSPU. She regarded its support for the war as a betrayal of all the movement had fought for, but more importantly the significance of the division between women who opposed the war and those who supported it was not lost and was to be one of the factors which, over a period of time, cemented her break with feminism. While Emmeline Pankhurst wrote about the joys of seeing women at work, the Dreadnought opposed the war; and, although it saw no clear, practical way of stopping it, went beyond Emmeline’s superficial observations, and devoted much space in its paper to exposing the real and terrible conditions, at home and at work, that working class women were suffering.
In its early days the Dreadnought seems to have been very much influenced by the Independent Labour Party (ILP); its politics were basically pacifist and avowedly reformist, and the concentration on achieving votes for women remained. However, the Dreadnought rapidly became involved in wider social issues, mainly with the idea of helping women protect themselves against the conditions the war was imposing (indeed its activity in this field make quite an impressive list. including running a ‘Women’s Hall’ for meetings etc, running distress centres, a mother and babies’ centre and day nurseries). It was represented on local council relief committees but found these so unsatisfactory that it also ran its own relief schemes. This broadening of its activity certainly aided the radicalisation of its politics in the sense that the vote could no longer be seen as the only issue. The core of this radicalisation however came because of the group’s increasing opposition to the war and the strength of its working class orientation: it clearly pointed out that the situation of working class men and women was the same in Germany as in Britain and although its work was concentrated on women, it understood the fight as not against working class men but with them against the system. Unsurprisingly it soon dropped the slogan of votes for women and began to call for votes for all men and women.
On this basis then, the socialist leanings of the group’ s politics came more and more to the fore as the war progressed and forced it to search for a better understanding of existing society and how to change it. It increased its links with the main socialist organisations and reported international workers’ struggles in its press. In fact its links with individuals and groups from other countries and the concern to report on what was happening abroad was evident throughout its life and was a great strength both for the development of the group’s politics and for the growth of its influence in Britain (other organisations in Britain suffered from rather a narrow-minded outlook in this respect). As early as 1914 the paper was quoting the anti-war writings of the Bolsheviks, Liebknecht and so on. When, from 1916 onwards, the workers’ struggles began to escalate internationally, the Dreadnought was able to learn much from these events and to respond positively. The revolutions in Russia in 1917 in particular were a tremendous stimulation.
The Dreadnought supported them because it could see a positive attempt by workers to take control of society, to stop the war, and fight for a more rational and human society. The February Revolution quickly affected the group’s politics in two basic areas: firstly in the recognition of the importance of the mass strike, ie. the collective and aggressive struggle by workers in the factories and the streets, as the only way to put an end to the war and to bring down capitalism; and secondly, the significance of the soviet form of organisation as the means by which the working class can express its own interests and organise itself effectively for the class war. This also had further consequences in that the Dreadnought began to draw a more definite line between itself and the mainstream of the Labour Party (LP) and social democracy in general. Sylvia’s experiences with the suffragettes had obviously led to many criticisms of the LP but now these criticisms had been strengthened by the LP’s active support for the war, and when the ILP opposed the unilateral withdrawal of Russia from the war, the break between the ILP’s politics and its own was clearly made. In fact by then the group associated itself with the minority internationalists and revolutionaries in the old Second International. It was beginning to make much stronger political criticisms of social democracy, even before the end of the war, suggesting the LP’s role of defusing and opposing a workers’ revolution. Another consequence was that the Dreadnought began to define itself more clearly as a political organisation and to lose its character as a social welfare group. Partly this was because its support for Russia and its general radicalism drove away many helpers and financial sources, but it was also a conscious decision, for as Sylvia wrote later on: “... everyone of us would prefer to possess comfort and well-being as a right, than to have a modicum of it conferred as a charity, however gently, however sympathetically given.” (SP, ‘Autobiographical Notes’)
In just over three years the Dreadnought grew up from a workerist, reformist suffrage society into a fully-fledged socialist organisation. And if members were lost through this change, the group nevertheless grew from three or four branches in East London to almost forty throughout the country (although it’s true that its strength was always in London and Manchester).
These changes in its politics were reflected by the change of the paper’s name to The Workers’ Dreadnought in June of 1917. During the next year or so the group, whilst rejecting the Labour Party and Parliament as means to make the revolution, held to the necessity for revolutionaries to participate and propagandise within these institutions. But the continuing development of its understanding of the way the working class revolution grows and the role of revolutionaries in this process led to the rejection of such activity.
The most important factor in the period The Workers’ Dreadnought existed was its involvement and relations with the Third International and its British wing, the Communist Party of Great Britain. The Dreadnought was an important voice, and indeed politically the clearest and most consistent group, in the attempt to create a united communist party. Unfortunately its relatively late development hindered its role in the unity discussions and its greater clarity could not achieve the level of political influence over the other organisations that it deserved. It is interesting to note here that although the Dreadnought was relatively small in comparison to the British Socialist Party (which was the largest group at that time), its paper outsold the BSP’s The Call. By the time the CP was finally cobbled together in early 1921 the Dreadnought was already well established on the left-wing of the International, but it was also at this time that the views of the left were coming under more and more attack and indeed outright suppression. The political and organisational immaturity of the majority of the CPGB made it particularly heavy-handed, and eight months later Sylvia was expelled and most of the ex-Dreadnought membership left with her. The formal reason for her expulsion was her refusal to stop the publication of the Dreadnought independent of party control. The rights and wrongs of this dispute are not really important; what does count is that underneath it was a refusal to capitulate to the development of opportunism in the Comintern.
Following this split the CP continued its practice of repressing the Left’s views, whereas the Dreadnought showed its concern for the communist movement as a whole by bringing the political differences to the fore. It explained and clarified its criticisms of the CP’s positions, showing the contradictions in them and pointing out the negative results of its increasing emphasis on tactics, as well as the more general analysis of the decay of the Russian Revolution. This aspect of the Dreadnought’s history will be dealt with in more depth in the next issue of WR.[5]
In the rest of this article we want to look more closely at other issues, more or less related to feminism, that are central to its experiences. We looked at details of the early years of the Dreadnought because of our concern to make the facts known, but also to look at things that are still relevant today. With hindsight the strengths that led the group to develop so positively are clear, but the ideas and practice that it rejected later on also hold lessons for all those who desire the emancipation of the working class. These facts are needed not in order to justify say, welfare work today, as a way to this emancipation but to understand the limitations of such ideas. Given what has just been said about Sylvia’s criticisms of the path taken by the Third International it is immediately clear that they did not lead her to reject Marxism and the whole experience of the Russian Revolution but rather to search for an even clearer understanding of the way forward. So too today, condemning what Russia is now does not mean it should be equated with the original aims of the revolution. Many individuals have become involved in the feminist and libertarian movements out of a reaction against Russia (and also the CPs and Trotskyists) but in reality this is not because the latter are Marxist but because they are bourgeois. Their behaviour should not lead anybody to reject the potential of the working class.
Sylvia Pankhurst’s involvement in the WSPU before 1914 and her activities during the war years obviously meant she built up a vast amount of experience of working in Parliament, and of the struggle for reforms. In the end it did not lead her to be sucked once and for all into this circus. On the contrary, it led to a total frustration with the uselessness of it all.
“We know that the breath of the Parliamentary intrigue, the breath of the Parliamentary Committee room, the entire atmosphere of the House of Commons and the jugglery of political parties, is antagonistic to the clean white fire of revolutionary Communist enthusiasm. Comrades who have not lobbied and sat in the gallery, hour on hour, day on day; who have not year by year, poured over the daily verbatim reports, and drafted and engineered amendments to Government Bills, cannot know the devitalising pettiness, the hideous imposture of the Parliamentary machine.” (SP, WD, 24 September 1921)
The rejection of parliament was not just out of boredom however;
“... those who have chosen the way of Parliamentary action reply that great masses of unconscious workers still have faith in Parliament. Quite so we answer, then we must undermine that faith; but appalled by the magnitude of the task of creating a body of conscious workers strong enough to effect any changes, the Communist opportunists propose to accomplish the revolution with crowds of unconscious workers. We, who believe that the revolution can only be accomplished by those whose minds are awakened and who are inspired by conscious purpose, have decided to shun the administrative machinery of Capitalism. We have decided this because of the clear unmistakable lead to the masses which this refusal gives, a lead, surer and more effective, because it is a lead given by action, not merely by words.” (ibid.)
This last point really is very important: it is the core of abstentionism, because the fight for a new society is a fight for a new way of living and it means a new way of organising, a new practice. To reject the ways of capitalism must lead to a search for a better practice.
This leads us to the question of reforms and here lies the relevance of the above to feminism because for this movement so much emphasis is given to the apparently positive aspects of the bills that come through parliament. But if, as the Dreadnought did, you reject parliament as a means of change then the struggle for reforms must also be rejected.
This rejection was based on the practical experience of militants like Pankhurst, but must be placed in the context of the definitive end of the period of relative capitalist prosperity which had made lasting reforms possible. The clearest revolutionaries always fought against the corrupting influence of reformism on the workers’ movement, but more and more they were able to see that only revolution was on the agenda in the new period of decadence.
The following quote shows this link between parliament, reforms and feminism very clearly. It answers why women (partially anyway) got the vote during World War I. Dismissing the legends about the usefulness of women during the war and the militancy prior to it, Sylvia goes on:
“Does not Parliament begin instinctively to know itself a doomed machine? ‘Bolshevism’, only Socialism under another name, but actual Socialism, entailing transformation – not a mere patching up – of the social system, looms on the horizon. When they are in trouble men call for the help of those they flouted. Outside the party game, the more active, independent women remain a discontented crowd of rebels; inside, is it not hoped that they will settle down in conformity with the rules? In every country Parliaments are threatened and that mysterious unaccountable thing, the mass people’s will, surely and with growing velocity, move onward towards a newer social organism. Realising this the old fogeys of Parliament, and the powers behind them are saying: ‘We must do something to popularise the old institution; let us bring in the women’’’. (SP, WD, 2 November 1918)
There are two points worth emphasising here. Firstly, this remains exactly the use capitalism makes of ‘reforms’ in this period. Whether it is the voting qualifications as in this case, or the National Health Service or more recently the Equal Rights Amendment, they always involve to some degree the necessity of keeping the population, and especially the working class, passive. They are only a pretence of change, and the Dreadnought rightly condemned all ‘reforms’ as mere tinkering with a system that really requires destroying. This is true a hundred times over today. Secondly there is also an implicit rejection of any supposed ‘special qualities’ of women as a separate group. The ‘power of women’ apparently shown by the struggles of the Suffragettes was not a decisive factor, little more than an irritant: it’s when the men and women of the working class go on the move that capitalism begins to shake, because it’s the struggles of the working class that threaten the basis of the whole system.
In its early days the Dreadnought believed the remedy for every evil in society to be simply giving the vote to women. It is exactly the same idea that motivates the feminists today (even if the vote is clearly no solution): if only women had more power then society would be a better place. But really what evidence is there for this belief? Despite all the supposed ‘reforms’ since World War I that have affected the situation of women and apparently allowed or achieved more freedom for them, are not the conditions of women still basically the same?
“Give a man £5,000 a year to be Minister of Health, create a staff with £500 a year each, to throw the likes of us a few quinine pills! What’s the good of a Ministry of Health, while we live under the capitalist system?” (quoted in WD, 2 November 1918)
Perhaps not a comprehensive reply to this question but surely a revealing one!
When the Dreadnought came to reject this idea it did so because it saw the idea of sisterhood simply covered over the very real material divisions between different groups of women. Not just between those who supported and those who opposed the war, but on every issue these groups have different interests at heart, ie. differing monetary and social ambitions. With this in mind the best that can be said about an attempt to unify women is that it is doomed to frustration.
“Women do not constitute an economic group; and for that reason they cannot under present conditions act together on world or national issues; for such issues involve economic considerations. In the onward sweep of human society, it is those that are swayed (directly or indirectly) by the same economic motivation that eventually find themselves marching under the same banner” (F. Connor, WD, 13 August 1921)
Certainly there are some aspects that cut across class boundaries and affect all women but without the cement of common economic conditions there can be no real unity. The basic truth is that bourgeois women and working class women live lives that are worlds apart and their reactions to this society are completely opposing.
It should be clear by now that when the Dreadnought embraced revolutionary politics it by no means ignored the question of women. Rather it took great pains to ensure that an intervention towards working class women was seen as an important part of the overall intervention of the revolutionary movement. On this question its concern was much the same as with its rejection of activity in parliament, the Labour Party and the unions: the rejection of reformism and reformist aims, and the establishment of a revolutionary practice. Its emphasis was on the self-organisation of the workers. For an example of this intervention, in an article entitled ‘Soviets of the Street’, Sylvia Pankhurst compared the peace parties, which had sprung up on the ending of World War I and spread street by street throughout London, with the participation of Russian women in the soviets. The state tried to ban these parties but had been unable to prevent them spreading. The Church and the charity workers (today’s social workers?) who normally like to make themselves responsible for anything of this nature, were left “looking on in amazement”:
“The Soviet Revolution is coming, but working women ought not to wait until it is here to set up their street committees. These are the workshop committee of the mothers, for the streets and the houses are their workshops. They should start the Soviets of the streets as soon as possible ... The women must organise to protect themselves and their families and to help in the general struggle of the working class to conquer the power of government and to put an end to wage-slavery and poverty and the rule of the rich ... The first thing for working women to do is to organise; to hold their own street meetings and to set up their own soviets”. (SP, WD, 27 March 1920)
Today soviets are not an immediate possibility, but we are in a revolutionary period[6] and recently there has been a tendency for social struggles to escalate and indeed to form part of the massive strike waves that have taken place. So the call for working class women to actively participate in the self-organisation of the proletariat, outside of leftist and liberal leadership, remains a very important one.
Finally, at no time did Sylvia Pankhurst suggest the necessity for a separate women’s organisation. She recognised that working class women were confronted by their own specific situation, but this was part of the general class division of society, and if they took part in struggles resulting from this situation, overall their place was “marching alongside their working class brothers” towards the communist revolution. To reach this aim the need is for conscious men and women that are united. This is a consciousness of the entire social reality, not simply of sexual divisions. What lies behind this is her recognition that women’s emancipation can only come about with the communist revolution. Today’s leftists and feminists haggle over whether women’s liberation can come before or after the ‘revolution’, but let’s be clear, it’s not endless theorisations that change relationships.[7]
Look closely at the major workers’ insurrections and waves of struggle, and the change in the way proletarians treat each other is obvious. Collective participation in such struggles calls for new relationships because it is the success of the struggle that is the vital issue, and the need for effective organisation tends to overcome the sexual divisions that capitalism promotes. Liberation for working class women and men is first and foremost a practical problem which is solved only by participating in the practical steps towards communist revolution, and creating a world human community.
The Workers’ Dreadnought disappeared in 1924. The fact that in her later life Sylvia Pankhurst did not remain part of the left communist movement should not lead anybody to dismiss the criticisms she made of feminism in this period of her life. The existence of the Dreadnought between 1914 and 1924 corresponds closely to the period of the revolutionary wave, a period when revolutionaries were at their strongest and clearest. By the mid-twenties the revolutionary struggles of the class were on the decline and the choice for revolutionaries was more and more capitulation to the counter-revolution or disenchantment with politics. Very, very few revolutionary groups survived the twenties. If it is regrettable, it is also understandable and was in fact inevitable.[8]
DS
[1] Suffragette is an interesting film in that it focuses on the experience of a group of working class women in the East End of London rather than middle class supporters. It powerfully portrays the brutal violence meted out by the democratic state against peaceful protesters and hunger-striking prisoners as well as its sophisticated surveillance of anyone suspected of political activity.
And yet, despite its setting, there is no mention of the wider workers’ movement or its struggles at the time, while Sylvia Pankhurst, who founded the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, is mentioned only once, and then only for her disagreement with the leadership’s policy of ‘direct action’, leaving the inference that she was either conservative or a pacifist. Crucially, by ending with the high profile death of the suffragette Emily Davidson in 1913, the film avoids dealing with the whole question of the war and the split in the Suffragette movement.
[2] An incomplete list includes: Sylvia Pankhurst - Sexual politics and political activism [1386] by Sheila Rowbotham and Barbara Winslow [1387] (1996); Sylvia Pankhurst: A Life in Radical Politics [1388] by Mary Davis [1389] (1999); Sylvia Pankhurst: The Life and Loves of a Romantic Rebel [1390](2003) and Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebellious Suffragette [1391] (2012) by Shirley Harrison, and Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire [1392]by Katherine Connelly (2013).
[3] See the ICC’s write-up of this event, Hands off Sylvia Pankhurst! [1385]
[4] The original plan was to produce three but only two appeared, in WRs, 33 and 34. They are presented here in a slightly edited version as a single article.
[5] Editor’s note: In fact this third article never appeared, but the role of the Workers’ Dreadnought group in the negotiations to form a Communist Party in Britain, and as part of the left-wing opposition within the Third International, is dealt with more fully in the ICC’s book The British Communist Left.
[6] Editor’s note: This was written in a period when massive struggles were taking place in Britain and elsewhere, giving the appearance of a continually growing and developing wave. As it began reflecting on the balance of forces between the classes, the the ICC subsequently changed its characterisation of the historic course from a “course towards revolution” to a “course towards class confrontations”, in order to make it clear the revolutionary outcome was by no means fated in advance. But it is also in the process of criticizing remaining ambiguities which have left the door open to a linear, schematic vision of the class struggle and did not sufficiently recognise the difficulties, defeats and periods of retreat experienced by the proletariat since May ’68 and above all since the onset of the phase of decomposition at the end of the 1980s.
[7] Editor’s Note: This is true, but the real issue here is not so much theorisation per se but the bourgeois nature of such theorisation by leftists and feminists.
[8] Editor’s note: The disappearance of groups of revolutionaries in the period of the capitalist counter-revolution was not inevitable and some tiny groups did survive, even in Britain (see The British Communist Left). The real problem was the failure of Pankhurst and the Dreadnought group to recognize the depth of the defeat suffered by the working class in the revolutionary wave and of the need to work as a fraction in order to draw the lessons.
The brutal slaying of 130 people in Paris on 13 November 2015 was used to justify the stepping up of British imperialism’s involvement in the living hell that is Syria. Even as the massacre was taking place the faction of the ruling class in Britain that for some years has wanted to escalate military action against Islamic State was calling for the overturning of the 2013 parliamentary vote against the extension of British involvement in this campaign from Iraq to Syria. This cold-blooded manipulation of the revulsion at the Paris slaughter was whipped up into an almost hysterical campaign which culminated in Labour’s Hilary Benn’s speech comparing the fight against the “fascists” of IS to the Second World War. The subsequent vote to bomb IS in Syria was presented as Britain once again taking up its rightful place in the world as a moral force.
In reality, British imperialism’s increased military role in Syria will only pour more oil onto the barbaric fire of militarism, sectarianism and banditry that is consuming Syria and Iraq and threatening the whole region.
This decision also does not however resolve the deep divisions within the British bourgeoisie over the best policy to pursue in order to defend the national interest. Only weeks before the vote was taken the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report that contained the following warning: “we believe that there should be no extension of British military action into Syria unless there is a coherent international strategy that has a realistic chance of defeating ISIL and of ending the civil war in Syria. In the absence of such a strategy, taking action to meet the desire to do something is still incoherent....We consider that the focus on the extension of airstrikes against ISIL in Syria is a distraction from the much bigger and more important task of finding a resolution to the conflict in Syria and thereby removing one of the main facilitators of ISIL’s rise.”(‘The extension of offensive British operations in Syria’, 29 October 2015)
There may have been some pretence of pursuing such a strategy at meetings of world and regional leaders following the Paris killings, but the reality is that the war in Syria is a cauldron of tensions between the different imperialist powers: “The fact that there are few reliable counterparts on the ground is a reflection of the extraordinary complexity of the situation on the ground in Syria. Our witnesses described a chaotic and complicated political and military scene. After over four years of civil war, there are thousands of fighting forces in various coalitions and umbrella organisations, with unclear aspirations and shifting alliances. The complex nature of the situation makes it hard to guess the consequences of tackling just ISIL, or to predict what group would take their territory if they were defeated....The situation in Syria is complicated still further by the multiple international actors involved on the ground, to the extent that many observers now consider the civil war a proxy war as much as an internal conflict. These include Russia and Iran (on the Assad side), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the US (on the sides of various different parts of the opposition), creating what one witness called a ‘multi-layered conflict’. The much more substantial Russian intervention on the side of the Assad regime that started at the end of September 2015 has complicated even further any proposed action in Syria by the UK”(op cit). Clearly the committee was not going to include Britain itself as part of this multi-layered conflict, but it was already deeply involved, whether through direct military action against IS across the non-existent border with Iraq, or through less direct support (money, weapons, military advice, etc) to rebel forces inside Syria itself. The faction that opposed direct military involvement in Syria presented itself as a force for humanitarian concern, but their actual concern was that such involvement would not serve the national interest, and would undermine the British bourgeoisie’s ability to act as a mediator and to use its diplomatic power. This was summed up by the Foreign Affairs committee’s report: “Several of our witnesses suggested that by participating in military action against ISIL in Syria, the UK would actually compromise its diplomatic capability and its capacity to put pressure on its national and international partners to create a route to a solution to the inter-related problems of ISIL and the Syrian civil war”.
This division within the British ruling class over such a fundamental question as the national interest is an expression of the dilemma that it has been confronted with since the end of the Cold War: how to best pursue the national interest in the absence of clearly defined blocs? There is a general agreement on the need to maintain its independence through playing its special relationship with the US against its relations with European states. The problem has been how to do this. Just how problematic is clearly expressed by the present situation in Syria.
Syria’s descent into chaos cannot be separated from the hardly less messy situation in Iraq, which has been a poisonous thorn in the side of British imperialism ever since the invasion of 2003. Britain’s involvement in the Iraq debacle was a profound blow for the British ruling class. The loyal following of US policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan failed to secure British imperialism’s international position either though its military power or its diplomatic ability to play the US and the EU at the same time. Its pretense to moral authority in bringing about a ‘democratic transformation’ of these countries was exposed as a fraud. Finally, it was reduced to scurrying away, with its tail between its legs, from the chaos it had helped to create. The Cameron government has tried to overcome the trauma of the Blair years, but as the 2013 vote showed, an important part of the ruling class was not willing to risk another ‘foreign adventure’, particularly one in the chaos of Syria. This has, as we said at the time, left British imperialism looking weak, unable to overcome its own divisions[1]. The recent vote does take steps toward overcoming this division, at least publicly, but the ruling class is still faced with the question of how its involvement will play out.
There is already cynicism about the role of the British military, which has only, to date, carried out 11 bombing raids since the vote, as well as a real fear of mission creep as British special forces are deployed to support and train rebel forces. The so-called ‘moderate’ forces supported by Britain are in reality fundamentalist warlords and gangsters, as the above report admits.
As for boasting about precision bombing and how concern for civilians is so important to Britain ... 6 of the missions flown have been against oil plants that are manned by workers. Oil workers, and oil truck drivers (over 100 oil trucks were destroyed by the US in two days) are clearly not considered civilians by the British ruling class. But in any case as General Tommy Franks of the US army said early in the Iraq war, “we don’t do body counts”; and any reports of civilian deaths from within IS held areas will be brushed aside as accidents or IS propaganda.
The problems faced by British imperialism in Syria are only part of the growing imperialist chaos in the Middle East and North Africa.
There is the continuing sore of the collapse of Libya into a series of warring regions, cities and even neighbourhoods, including areas controlled by IS, following the ‘liberation’ of Libya by the British and French in 2011. The sight of the British ambassador fleeing Tripoli before advancing rebel factions was hardly a good advertisement for British imperialism as potential backing for any army or clan trying to seize state control.
The involvement of British imperialism in the war waged by a coalition of Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and Pakistan in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels is another difficulty. This proxy war between two regional powers, a war also taking place in Syria, threatens to spiral out of control as their struggle to control Yemen becomes increasingly intractable. Saudi imperialism is particularly concerned about the agreement between Iran and the US over nuclear weapons, and also the role of Iran in Syria (where Saudi Arabia was initially one of the main backers of IS and other Islamist warlords). Britain is supplying weapons and military advisors[2] to the anti-Houthi coalition and has direct links with the military of all these countries, many of whose officer corps received training in Britain. The Saudis’ recent public execution of 47 Shia Muslims has further sharpened regional tensions. It highlighted the hollow nature of British imperialism’s claim to be fighting extremism whilst at the same time arming and making very nice profits from the Saudi state which is the main promoter of Wahabism, the ideological foundations of IS and jihadism.
The implication of British imperialism in the growing fragmentation of the Middle East has deep historical roots. It was the dividing up of the old Ottoman Empire between British and French imperialism, following World War I, that set up the artificial system of states that make up the Middle East (see the other article on the Middle East in this issue). Britain also has a history of promoting fundamentalism in order to maintain its rule and role in the region. The emergence of the Saudis as the rulers of present day Saudi Arabia, along with their fundamentalist ideology, was promoted by the British as well as the Americans. Western support for fundamentalist regimes and groups in the period of the Cold War included, to cite only two examples, the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt against Nasser, and the promotion and arming of jihadist groups in Afghanistan and beyond to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Thus today British imperialism is faced by the challenge of trying to assert itself in the growing chaos of the Middle East, a chaos it has done much to cause.
Phil 16/1/16
“The City of London’s most vocal ‘bear’ has warned that the world is heading for a financial crisis as severe as the crash of 2008-09 that could prompt the collapse of the eurozone.
Albert Edwards, strategist at the bank Société Générale, said the west was about to be hit by a wave of deflation from emerging market economies and that central banks were unaware of the disaster about to hit them. His comments came as analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland urged investors to “sell everything” ahead of an imminent stock market crash”[1].
Of course we should take such predictions with a pinch of salt. Even though the financial crisis of 2008 was very serious indeed, there was also an element of exaggeration in the propaganda of the ruling class at the time. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, which acted as a kind of trigger for the crisis, was to some extent allowed to happen by the US government as an example to others, and the message of “we’re on the brink” certainly helped to ram home austerity measures as the “only alternative”. We shouldn’t underestimate the capacity of the bourgeoisie, with the whole apparatus of the state and the financial system at its disposal, to use all kinds of tricks and manipulations to prevent the economic crisis running out of control – that’s an unforgettable lesson it learned from the great crash of 1929.
But none of this means that the economic crisis is something superficial, just part of the regular business cycle with its ups and its downs. The current economic difficulties have very deep roots indeed – going back at least a hundred years, and ultimately reaching the very basis of capitalist production, the wage labour system and the contradictions that are inherent in capitalist accumulation. We may not be in a “final” economic crisis right now, but in a more long term sense we are at the final stage of capitalism’s obsolescence as a social system.
The real problems facing the system can be gauged by the fact that the current stock market jitters were to a considerable extent provoked by the slowdown of the Chinese economy, which has played such a key role as a market and a target for investment for “developed” and “developing” countries alike. For years now, western economies have been displacing production and capital to fuel the Chinese “miracle”, which could then send out a stream of cheap commodities back to the west. The result? China’s economy has been “overheating”, or to use marxist terms, it is facing the same crisis of overproduction, the same falling profit rates that have plagued the central countries throughout this century, and in particular since the end of the post-war boom in the 1960s.
All units of capital, whether individual companies or major national economies, are driven to accumulate, to expand, or risk annihilation by rival companies and national economies. But the more they produce, the more they tend to outstrip the available market, which is ultimately limited by the restricted buying power of the masses; the more they invest in new technologies to boost production, the less living labour – the only source of surplus value – is incorporated into what they produce.
The penetration into new areas of the globe, the integration of previous forms of production into the orbit of capitalism, has long provided a lifeline to capitalism, a means of postponing its in-built tendency towards breakdown. The Chinese economy, for example, though already capitalist under Mao, had at its disposal a vast mass of peasant labour available to be transformed into wage labour, considerably reducing the costs of labour power on a global scale. This process now is reaching its limits and China’s slowdown - along with that of other BRICS like Brazil and Russia – is indeed a sign that the temporary solutions found by capitalism over the past few decades are also reaching their limits. Seen from a historical standpoint, the world capitalist economy has indeed reached an impasse.
The mounting panic in the stock markets at the prospect that China and other BRICS – not to mention the economy in the US and Europe – are heading for another recession, highlights another irresolvable contradiction of capitalist production. A few weeks ago, at the environmental summit in Paris, much play was made of the fact that an agreement had been reached to place a limit on carbon emissions over the next few decades. The threat of global warming running amok was thus, we were told, averted by the wise counsels that have prevailed among the world leaders. And indeed, in the extremities of the crisis, the bourgeoisie does become intelligent. In the wake of 1929 it was able to push aside the objections to state intervention coming from its more backward-looking factions, and to hold back the unfolding economic disaster through the application of state capitalist remedies. Today, in the face of mounting evidence that man-made global warming is not only real but is already becoming a major “cost of production” (as in the case of the floods in the UK, the droughts in the US and Australia, etc), the ruling class now has much less time for those die-hards (many of them financed by the big energy concerns who have most to lose through pollution controls) who insist that global warming is a hoax or has purely natural causes. The wise leaders have understood that something needs to be done.
But the bourgeoisie is caught in a cleft stick. It is seeing the ecological impact of its need to accumulate, to grow without limit. And at the same time it panics when economic growth stutters or goes into reverse. In this sense the die-hards are right: if you restrict “our” national production for the sake of the environment, other national economies will profit. So the measures it adopted at the Paris summit to reduce the impact of accumulation are extremely feeble – no more than a vague promise to curb pollution and cut emissions, without any legal sanctions. If the planet is a forest reserve, it has been entrusted to unscrupulous loggers, for whom the trees are not a source of oxygen, a “sink” for carbon dioxide, or a barrier to floodwaters in the hills, and certainly not a factor of human well-being or an inspiration for artists. They are a valuable commodity, most valuable when they are converted into timber.
On these counts alone – the management of the production of life’s necessities, and the protection of the natural environment on which all this depends – the ruling bourgeoisie has proved that it is no longer fit to rule. But the final proof of its incapacity to provide humanity with a future lies in the omnipresence of war.
War has always been part of capitalism. In the days of its ascent, wars, however brutal, were part of its expansion across the world and its replacement of outmoded forms of society. But once the world had, to all intents and purposes, been conquered by capitalism, war increasingly became an end in itself, and even when it brought temporary triumph for the victors, the overall balance sheet for humanity has been negative: the destruction of decades of human labour, the exacerbation of hatred and division, the prospect of new and even more destructive wars. The great rash of wars now spreading from Africa to central Asia, with their focal point in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which has engendered the desperate flight of millions of human beings to the “haven” of western Europe, is a sign – like the two world wars and the nuclear arms race which marked the 20th century – that capitalism’s drive to accumulate, when it comes up against insuperable barriers, turns into a drive towards self-destruction.
The longer capitalism continues, the more it undermines the possibility of replacing it with a human society – a society based on solidarity and cooperation. But at the same time, every aspect of its descent into barbarism adds further proof that such a society is both necessary and possible. If the capitalist economy is in crisis because it can’t sell all the commodities it produces, if it can’t generate enough profit from its production, then we need a society where people produce not for the market and not for profit, but for need. If national economies are driven to plunder nature in order to outdo their rivals, or if the same nation states can only advance their interests through war and destruction, we need to replace competing national states with a unified world community. In short, we need communism.
For us, communism and socialism are the same thing, and they are international or they are nothing. But if the word “communism” has fallen into disrepute because it has been so horribly besmirched by the nightmare of Stalinism, there are any number of politicians selling a new brand of “socialism” and claiming that they are carrying on the great traditions of the workers’ movement of the past. In Britain there’s Corbyn and the Labour left, in Greece Syriza, in Spain Podemos. But none of these “socialisms” ever put into question the need to defend the national economy, not one of them advocates the abolition of the capitalist wage relation and production for the market. All of them offer an updated version of the same state capitalism which has for decades now been the last rampart of the bourgeois mode of production.
These politicians and parties claim that the new society can come about through the existing institutions – through parliament and elections, through strengthening the trade unions and other official bodies. And what they call socialism can indeed be introduced from above, through organs which are an integral part of the present-day state. But genuine communism is, as Marx put it, “the real movement that abolishes the present state of affairs”. It can only come from below, from the unification of the exploited and the oppressed in defence of their own needs, from the bursting asunder all the state bodies which have been maintained to keep them passive and disunited. In short, if we are to have communism, we must have a revolution, the deepest, most far-reaching revolution in the history of humanity.
Amos, 16.1.16
“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us” (Engels, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man).
Floods, caused by a series of severe storms that battered the Northern British Isles this December, have brought the misery of repeated flooding to thousands, not just in the North of England but also in Scotland, and Ireland. They are one of a number of phenomena to hit the world this winter, including unseasonably mild weather on the East coast of North America, Western Europe and the North Pole; El Nino and flooding in South America, with the latter inundating 130,000 homes in Paraguay alone. Equally striking is the fact that the media are not passing it off as an ‘Act of God’ or a purely natural disaster, but apportioning blame to government policy on flood defences and considering the contribution of climate change. They do not, however, recognise the role of capitalism itself.
About 16,000 homes in England flooded; Cumbria faced in the third winter in a decade with the sort of flooding that is only supposed to happen once in 100 years; power cuts affecting a similar number of homes and businesses. There have been plenty of people willing to help each other out, including Syrian asylum seekers who volunteered to help the temporarily homeless. Help from the local or national state has been lamentable. The volunteer asylum seekers were set filling sandbags when they were no longer any use as the floods had already ruined homes. When they could have been useful many councils were unable to provide them. In Leeds and York their response was largely restricted to evacuation. Environment Agency spending on flood defences was cut by one fifth after 2010-11, although the fall in the North West of England was much steeper, to about 25% of the previous year’s total. Although the spending has risen since 2011-12 it has not yet reached the previous level. How fortunate for the ruling class that the Environment Agency chairman Sir Philip Dilley should have been on holiday in Barbados during the worst of the flooding and therefore able to become a scapegoat and resign – whatever he personally did or neglected to do, the cuts to the budgets of the very institutions responsible for flood defences and relief show that it is not a priority for the British state.
Insurance firms do not even pretend it is a priority: after all, as private businesses their responsibility is to make a profit. Many households in flood prone areas cannot get insurance against floods, and those that are insured often have to wait weeks for a claims assessor to visit, causing delay in cleaning up their homes.
It is not just a question of how much is spent on flood defences but also of what sort of defences and what sort of land use. First of all the Environment Agency is only responsible for protection against sea and river flooding, while 60% of damage to houses comes from surface or ground water (The Economist, 2.1.16). Secondly, the type of flood defence tends to treat nature as an enemy to be subdued and regulated. Walls are built, although clearly not high enough for this winter’s floods. These can be important, but are not the only approach, as was demonstrated in Pickering in North Yorkshire. There, unable to afford £20 million for a wall high enough to protect against flooding, and aware that the wall would be an eyesore and bad for tourism, they chose to work with nature building 167 leaky dams above the town, plus smaller obstructions, planted woodland and built a bund to store up to 120,000 cubic metres of floodwater. As a result they remained dry while neighbouring towns were flooded.[1] This is not a panacea to be applied everywhere, nor a guarantee against floods, but shows the possibility of a different approach based on understanding the local geography.
There is also the question of land use, and measures taken to support it that make the problems in the towns on lower ground worse. Farmers are permitted by internal drainage boards to dredge the rivers on the hills, straighten them and build up their banks, protecting their fields at the expense of those living downstream. Similarly grouse moors require land drained and heather burned, meaning that it can no longer soak up floodwater. This attracts an agricultural subsidy, as does clearing land of scrub, woodland and ponds even if no actual agriculture takes place on it (Guardian 30.12.15). All these measures increase the likelihood and severity of floods lower down.
These decisions are not down to ignorance since the dangers were already well known in the 19th Century: “When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes … they had no inkling … that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy season” (Engels, op cit). So why does the ruling class take such decisions? Why for that matter are they building 10,000 homes a year on flood plains, i.e. on land liable to flooding? Why are they not able to take account of the danger to the homes, and potentially the lives, of thousands of people? Engels went on to say “individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must be taken into account. … In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, most tangible result; and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different…”
A far more remote effect of capitalist production than flooding downstream is global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless this is now so widely accepted that there have been articles discussing whether it is behind this winter’s storms and heavy rain. Science cannot prove climate change based on this or that meteorological event and is therefore not able to state that this or that storm is, in itself, due to such changes. But it would be equally wrong to try and dissociate any particular event from it. Thus, it has been estimated that storms such as Desmond are 40% more likely now than in the past using climate models at global, regional and local levels (see New Scientist 9.1.16); and from another report we learn that “Atmospheric thermodynamics explain that the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere is largely influenced by temperature and pressure, and that warmer atmospheres have larger saturation vapour content. The median intensity of extreme precipitation increases with near-surface temperature at a rate of 5.9%–7.7% per degree”[2]. In very technical language this is telling us that warmer air will carry more water vapour and so cause heavier rain. However the relationship between global warming and storms does not end there, since they are actively redistributing heat and moisture across the globe. Storm Frank, before it crossed the Atlantic and received its name, started in North America where it caused flooding that drowned 13 people, and after it hit the British Isles it turned north to carry yet more heat to the Arctic (The Economist 2.1.16). So the weather systems causing these floods were also contributing to the frighteningly high temperatures at the North Pole at the end of December, more than 30oC above the usual, and above freezing point.
For capital this Arctic warming is first and foremost an opportunity bringing not just the hope of ice-free shipping lanes but also the opportunity to extract yet more oil from the area. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie’s political representatives have been at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris, wringing their hands about the danger of global warming. While we will deal with this conference in a future article, we can just note the views of James Hansen, a NASA scientist who was silenced by the US government from 1988 when he started to warn against greenhouse gasses until he retired: “It’s a fraud really, a fake… It’s just worthless words…. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”[3] We also note the actions of the British state in cutting the subsidy for solar power and in its enthusiasm for shale gas, which speak much louder than any words on the COP21 agreement.
So far we have looked at several examples of short term decisions taken regardless of consequences such as flooding on lower ground, and the hypocrisy of governments in the climate change talks. Many think the answer is to campaign against such decisions and demand that states put in place measures such as a carbon tax to create an incentive to use alternatives to fossil fuels, in other words to demand that the capitalist state effectively reform itself. We think this is impossible. It is not just a question of this or that measure, but of the nature of capitalism. Hansen is quite right to point to the fact that the cheapest fuels, fossil fuels, will continue to be burned – no business competing with others, no-one on a wage or other limited income, will be able to afford to do otherwise. He says they only “appear” to be cheapest, but for capitalism the products of nature, and the pollution of it, have no cost. If polar bears go extinct, if small islands are submerged, if pollution in Delhi and Beijing is injurious to health, this does not appear on the bottom line. Those who, like Hansen, recommend a carbon tax to give a financial incentive to reduce emissions, point to British Columbia which has had one since 2008 although the evidence is equivocal at best. Sales of petrol have fallen, although there is evidence of those who can crossing into the USA for cheaper petrol[4]. Total emissions have fallen no faster than those in the rest of Canada[5], and as a tax on goods, compensated for by cuts in other taxes it has a tendency to be regressive, hitting the poor hardest despite a tax credit system designed to compensate for this.
In capitalism the ruling class only acts on the pollution it creates when its effects are direct or at least not too remote, and that usually means something to do with the economy. The UK Clean Air Act of 1956 was not due to the fact that dirty air causes deaths, known about since the previous century, but to the fact that the great smog of 1952 not only caused 12,000 deaths but also brought London to a standstill. The populations of Beijing and Delhi can only hope for a similar incentive to clean up their cities. Right now the bourgeoisie has something much more direct and immediate on their minds, the danger of a new financial crisis caused by phenomena such as “the collapse in demand for credit in China”[6] – in other words the slowing down of its (extremely polluting) growth is a real problem for the economy, and this will carry much more weight in capitalist decision-making than the danger of greenhouse gas emissions.
Engels again: “… by long and often cruel experience and by collecting and analysing historical material, we are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our production activity, and so are afforded an opportunity to control and regulate these effects as well. This regulation, however, requires something more than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order.” (op cit). Since he wrote this, science has become much more aware of the “remote effects” of our production on the natural world and the danger this poses to many populations as well as to the world’s ecosystems, while at the same time science and technology have become much more powerful, and the most polluting industries have spread to new geographical regions. The management of economy and ecology remains in the hands of a ruling class whose vision is generally limited to a fast buck, whose states apply all the arts of deception recommended by Machiavelli, in an atmosphere that dumbs down history and theory. We simply cannot afford to leave such productive power in the hands of this ruling class.
Alex 14.1.16
[2]. Asian Development Bank report, https://www.adb.org/publications/global-increase-climate-related-disasters [1398]. The bank is particularly concerned by “Climate-related disaster risk is defined as the expected value of losses” since its zone of investment is at particular risk from the effects of climate change, and the conclusion of its report states “the danger of climate change presents a greater threat than the current global economic malaise. … we need to build disaster resilience into national growth strategies”.
Militarism and war, central manifestations of capitalism for around a century now, have become synonymous with the decay of the economic system of capitalism and the necessity to overthrow it. War in this period, and into the future, is a central question for the working class.
In the ascendant period of capitalism, wars could still be a factor in historical progress, leading to the creation of viable national units and serving to extend capitalist relations of production on a global scale: “From the formation of the citizen’s army in the French Revolution to the Italian Risorgimento, from the American War of Independence to the Civil War, the bourgeois revolution took the form of national liberation struggles against the reactionary kingdoms and classes left over from feudalism..... These struggles had the essential aim of destroying the decaying political superstructures of feudalism and sweeping away the petty parochialism and self-sufficiency, which were holding back the unifying march of capitalism: (ICC pamphlet Nation or Class). As Marx said in his pamphlet on the Paris Commune, The Civil War in France: “The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war”.
By contrast, war today and for the last one hundred years, can only play a reactionary and destructive role and is now threatening the very existence of mankind. War becomes a permanent way of life for all nation states, no matter how big or how small; and while not every state possesses the same means to pursue war, they are all subjected to the same imperialist drives. The impasse of the economic system means that a policy of state capitalism is forced on nations new or old, adopted by all on pain of death; and this dynamic can be implemented by bourgeois parties from the far right or extreme left. State capitalism is the refined defence of the nation state and a permanent attack on the working class.
In the ascendant period of capitalism, war tended to pay for itself both economically and politically by breaking down barriers to capitalist development. In the phase of its decay war is a dangerous absurdity, becoming more and more divorced from all and any economic rationale. Just looking at the last 25 years of the so-called “wars for oil” in the Middle East shows that it would take centuries for any profitable return, and that’s assuming that they stop tomorrow.
Devoting a vast percentage of national resources to war and militarism is now normal for all states, and while this has been the situation since the early 1900’s, it has only intensified today. This phenomenon is directly linked to the historic evolution of capitalism: “Imperialism is not the creation of any one or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an increasingly international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will”[1]. The position you adopt on imperialist war determines which side of the class divide you are on; either support for the rule of capital through the defence of the nation and nationalism (compatible with both Trotskyism and the leftist wing of anarchism), or the defence of the working class and internationalism against all forms of nationalism. National “solutions”, national identities, national liberation, national “struggles”, national defence; all these serve only imperialist and thus capitalist interests. These are diametrically opposed to the interests of the working class whose class war will have to do away with imperialism, its frontiers and its nation states.
In 1900, there were 40 independent nations; in the early 1980’s, there were just fewer than 170. Today there are 195, the latest of which, South Sudan, recognised and supported by the “international community”, has immediately collapsed into war, famine, disease, corruption, warlordism and gangsterism: another concrete expression of the decomposition of capitalism and the obsolescence of the nation state. The new nation states of the 20th and 21st centuries are not expressions of youthful growth but have been born senile and sterile, immediately enmeshed in the webs of imperialism, with their own inward means of repression - interior ministries, secret services and national armies - and outward militarism, with pacts, protocols, agreements for mutual defence, the implantation of military advisors and military bases by the bigger powers.
“Today the nation state is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialist rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon-fodder in imperialist wars”[2]. Since Rosa Luxemburg wrote these words there have been no bourgeois revolutions in underdeveloped countries, but only reactionary contests between bourgeois gangs and their local and global imperialist supporters. The military state and war become the mode of survival for the whole system as every nation, every proto-state, every nationalist expression, and every ethnic or religious identity become direct expressions of imperialism.
We can look a bit closer at the reactionary role of the nation state through a necessarily short overview of the important region of the Middle East over the last century.
The capitalist nation has been preserved, quadrupled even, over the last 100 years. But its bourgeois democratic programme, its unifying tendencies are dead and buried; and henceforth its “peoples” can only be subjected to its repression or mobilised to defend its imperialist interests as cannon-fodder. Also “... it should be said that the new nations are born with an original sin: their territories are incoherent, made up of a chaotic mixture of ethnic, religious, economic and cultural remnants, their frontiers are usually artificial and incorporate minorities from neighbouring countries. All of this can only lead to disintegration and permanent conflict”[3]. An example of this is the anarchy of nationalisms, ethnicities, and religions that exist in the Middle East. The three major religions are here further sub-divided into a myriad of sects, many in conflict with themselves and others: Shia, Sunni, Maronite, Orthodox and Coptic Christians, Alawite and so on. There are large linguistic minorities and many millions of stateless peoples: Kurds, Armenians, Palestinians and now Syrians.
In World War One it was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its treasures, as well as the strategic position of the Middle East (between east and west, between Europe and Africa, the Suez Canal, the Dardanelles strait) that attracted the major powers. Even before oil was discovered in the region, and well before the extent of its oil reserves were realised, Britain mobilised 1.5 million troops in the region. Having resisted the threat from Germany and Russia, and despite rivalries between themselves, most of the region was carved up by Britain and France: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, a Palestine “Protectorate”, all with borders drawn up by the victorious imperialist powers with a wary eye on each other and on their former antagonists. These absurd “nations” became permanent breeding grounds for further instability and war, not only through the rivalries of the bigger powers but also through regional conflicts between themselves. This often resulted in massive displacements of populations, justified by the need to form distinct national entities: in short they provided the soil for pogromism, exclusion, violence between religions and sects that not only live with us today but have become much more widespread and dangerous: Sunni/Shia; Jews/Muslims; Christians/Muslims and much older sects that were previously left alone but who are now pulled into the imperialist maelstrom. The region has become a violent fusion of totalitarian regimes, religion, terrorism and warlordism - a decay indicative of the fact that there is no solution to capitalist barbarity except the communist revolution. With the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Britain supported the setting-up of a Jewish homeland in Palestine which they planned to use as an ally both locally and against major rivals. It was in this militaristic framework of bloody struggles with the Arab rulers that the Zionist state was born[4]. The USA, the main beneficiary of World War One, was now beginning to supplant Great Britain as the world’s major power and this would be evidenced in the Middle East.
The Stalinist counter-revolution of the 1920s and 30s, aided and abetted by the western powers, only increased the imperialist machinations over the Middle East, up to and including World War Two. In this period the Turks, Arab factions and the Zionists wavered between the camp of Britain or Germany, with the majority eventually choosing the camp of the former. The region was important for both sides[5] but it was relatively spared from the destruction, with the major battlefields of the war being mainly in Europe and the Far East. Overall, and the war’s end was to confirm it, both Britain and Germany were fighting a losing battle here (and elsewhere) as the whole imperialist pecking order was overturned by the emergence of the American superpower. This is further emphasised by the creation of the Zionist state, which was heavily supported by the US (and also initially by Russia) to the detriment of British national interests. The establishment of the nation state of Israel signalled a new zone of conflict whose very birth saw the creation of a huge and intractable refugee problem, and which has grown up in a state of permanent military siege. The existence of Israel is probably one of the most glaring examples of how a country formed in capitalist decadence is framed by war, survives by war and lives in constant fear of war.
Another chapter of imperialism was opened when the Middle East inevitably became a factor in the Cold War between the American and Russian blocs which solidified somewhat after World War Two and led to a number of proxy “engagements” in the region between the two major powers. Thus the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1973 were at one level proxy wars between the two blocs, and Israel’s crushing victories greatly reduced the USSR’s ability to maintain the footholds it had established in the region, especially in Egypt. At the same time, already in the 70s and early 80s, we could see the germs of the chaotic, multipolar conflicts that have characterised the period since the fall of the USSR and its bloc. Thus the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 resulted in the formation of a regime which tended to escape from the control of both blocs. Russia’s attempt to capitalise on the new balance of power in the region – its attempted occupation of Afghanistan in 1980 – embroiled it in a long war of attrition which contributed greatly to the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, by encouraging the development of the Islamist Mujahadeen, including the kernel of what became al-Qaida, to lead the opposition to the Russian occupation, the US, Britain and Pakistan were themselves constructing a monster that would soon bite the hand of its creators. Meanwhile US imperialism also had to retreat from its own defeats in Lebanon, largely at the hands of forces acting as proxies for Iran and Syria.
It is during this period that we see the beginnings of the loss of power of the US that is both an expression of and contribution to the ambient decomposition of today. After the breakdown of the Russian bloc came the disintegration of the US directed “alliance” and the centrifugal tendencies towards every nation for itself. The US responded forcefully to this situation, attempting to cohere its allies around it by launching the Gulf War of 1990/91, which resulted in an estimated half-a-million Iraqis being killed (while Saddam Hussein was left in place). But the counter-tendencies were too great and US leadership was irrevocably undermined. Post-9/11, the Evangelical Neo-Cons then acting for US imperialism started further wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that gave the appearance of a crusade against Islam and have further fanned the flames of Islamic fundamentalism.
In the 1979 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now, the renegade US Colonel asks his CIA-appointed killer what he thought of his methods. The assassin replies: “I don’t see any method at all”. There is no method in today’s wars in the Middle East except a great free-for-all. There is no economic rationale - trillions of dollars have gone up in smoke from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone - just a further descent into barbarism. Fictional character though he is, Colonel Kurtz is symbolic of the export of war from “the heart of darkness”, which is actually in the main centres of capital rather than the deserts of the Middle East or the jungles of Vietnam and the Congo.
In Syria today there are around 100 groups fighting the regime and each other, all of them to a greater or lesser extent supported or directed by local and major powers. The new “nation”, the Caliphate of Isis, with its own imperialism, its cannon-fodder, its brutality and irrationality, is both an independent expression of capitalist decay and a reflection of all the major powers which, one way and another brought it into existence. Isis is currently expanding to all points of the compass, gaining new affiliates in Africa, including Boko Haram in Nigeria, and is also competing with the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are themselves threatening the Helmand region which was for so long the mini-protectorate of the British army. But if it was eliminated tomorrow it would immediately be replaced by other jihadists, such as the al-Qaida affiliated Jahbat al-Nusra. The “War on Terror” Part Two, like Part One, will only increase the terrorism that exists in the Middle East and its export back to the heartlands of capital.
One of the features of the growing number of wars in the Middle East today is the re-emergence of Russia which has taken place on the military, state capitalist level with the ideological cover of the “values” of the old Russian nation. During the Cold War, Russia was kicked out of Egypt, and the Middle East generally, as its power waned. Now, Russia has re-emerged, not in the form of a bloc leader as before – it has only a few weak ex-republics allied to it – but as a decomposition-shaped force that must assert the imperialism of its national “identity”. The weakness of Russia is clear in its desperation to hang onto its bases in Syria – its most important outside of Russia itself. Another factor that will affect much, including Russia, is the present rapprochement between the USA and Iran linked to the 2015 nuclear deal. This deal also expresses a fundamental weakness of US imperialism and is the source of considerable tension between the US and its other main regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Wherever you look, the imperialist mess in the Middle East gets increasingly impossible to untangle. There is the position of Turkey, which has not hesitated to pour oil on the fires of war; there is no end to its war with the Kurds and its actions have consequences for the US, Russia and Europe whose interests it plays one against another. Its relations with Russia in particular have hit a low point following the shooting down of a Russian fighter jet, while it has transparently used the pretext of striking back at Isis to hit Kurdish bases. There is the involvement of Saudi Arabia, which although supposedly an ally of the US and Britain has been a major backer for various Islamist gangs in the region, not only through the export of its Wahabi ideology but also with arms and money.
As far as the nation states of decadence go then Saudi Arabia must be one of the worst historical jokes you could find[6]. Undermined by falling oil prices, which Iran has done everything to facilitate (showing oil not as a factor of economic rationale but as a weapon of imperialism), and fearful at the prospect of the rival Iranian theocracy becoming the region’s policeman once again after its recent agreement with the US, the Saudi regime struck a blow against Iran with the execution of the well-known Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and further beheadings and crucifixions which have hardly been mentioned in the western media. This planned provocation towards Iran shows a certain desperation and weakness of the Saudi regime as well as more dangers of things sliding out of control. The actions of the Saudi regime here again reveal the centrifugal tendencies of each nation for themselves and the weakness of the major powers, particularly the USA, in controlling them. One thing certain from the current episode of Iranian/Saudi rivalry will be the aggravation of war, pogroms and militarism throughout the region with multiple tensions and uncertain alliances gaining ground. There were already related strains further afield in Egypt – which Saudi Arabia has bankrolled in its anti-Muslim Brotherhood fight – that will now only worsen.
The nation state of Lebanon was already being pulled apart in the 1980s; tensions will become greater now and the consequences of the breakup of this fragile state would be disastrous not least for Israel, whose low level war with the Palestinian factions and Hezbollah rumbles on.
Finally, we should mention the increasing role of China, even if its main points of imperialist rivalry – with the US, Japan and others – are located in the Far East. Having arisen as the subordinate ally of the USSR in the late 40s and 50s, China began to follow a more independent course in the 60s (the ‘Sino-Soviet split’), which led in the short term to a new understanding with the USA. But since the 90s China has become the world’s second biggest economic power and this has vastly increased its imperialist ambitions at a more global level, most notably through its efforts to penetrate Africa. For the moment, it has tended to operate alongside Russian imperialism in the Middle East, blocking US attempts to discipline Syria and Iran, but its potential for disrupting the world balance of power - and thus accelerating the plunge into chaos - remains to a large extent untapped. This offers us further proof that the economic take-off of a former colony like China is no longer a factor of human progress, but brings with it new threats of destruction, both military and ecological.
We began by looking at the reactionary nature of the capitalist nation state, a once progressive expression that has now become not only a fetter to the advance of humanity but a threat to its very existence. The virtual breakup of the nations of Syria and Iraq, forcing millions to flee the war and avoid fighting for any side, the birth of the Caliphate of Isis, the national project of Jahbat al-Nusra, the defence of the ethnic Kurdish homeland – these are all expressions of imperialist decay that offer the populations of these areas nothing but misery and death. There is no solution to the decomposition of the Middle East within capitalism. Faced with this it is vital that the proletariat maintains and develops its own interests against those of the nation state. The situation of the working class in the main centres of capitalism is key here, given the extreme weakness of the proletariat in the war zones themselves. And although the bourgeoisie is subjecting the working class in the heartlands of capital to constant ideological attacks around the themes of the refugees and terrorism, it does not yet dare to mobilise it directly for war. Potentially, the working class remains the greatest threat of all to capitalist order, but it must begin to transform this potential into a reality if it is to avert the disaster that this system is heading towards. Understanding that its interests are international, that the nation state is finished as a viable framework for human life, will be an essential part of this transformation.
Boxer, 13.1.16
This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC.
[1]. The Junius Pamphlet, The crisis in Social Democracy, 1915, Rosa Luxemburg
[2]. Ibid.
[3].‘Balance sheet of 70 years of ‘national liberation’ struggles, part 3: the still-born nations’, International Review 69, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/069_natlib_03.html [1402]
[4]. See ‘Notes on Imperialist Conflict in the Middle East’, part one, International Review no. 115, Winter 2003.
[5]. See part 3 of the above in International Review, 118, Summer, 2004, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/118_mideast_iii.html [1403]
[6]. We will return to this area in a future article.
At the beginning of the 1930s the proletariat had been defeated physically and the world revolution completely crushed. The successive bloodbaths in Russia and Germany after the defeat of the proletariat in Berlin in 1919, the search for scapegoats, the humiliation caused by the Versailles Treaty and the need for revenge, would all give rise to an increase in the spiral of capitalist horror during the twentieth century.
By proclaiming “socialism in one country”, the new Stalinist regime in Russia was preparing a race to industrialise with a view to catching up with the more advanced economies. Planning for heavy industry and the manufacture of weapons would increase the extreme exploitation of the working class. Up until the terrible depression of the 1930s, the conquering Western countries had also sought a low cost workforce to ‘divide and rule’ over. But with the economic crisis and mass unemployment, migrants and the refugees became more openly unwelcome. The flow of migrants would be quite brutally slowed down from 1929, including to the United States [1]
The latter adopted quotas to filter out the migrants, dividing and separating them from other proletarians. In this context, with whole populations displaced, the deportees and refugees were forcibly moved on and experienced terrible conditions (during and after the war): they often ended up in concentration camps that began to appear pretty much everywhere.
With the crises and the imperialist tensions escalating, a defeated working class was not able to pose any resistance. This would find expression in Spain, in 1936, with the proletariat beginning to be recruited into the war in the name of “anti-fascism”. This new total war mobilised civilians (women, the young, the old) much more brutally and massively than the first Great War. It would prove to be much more destructive and barbaric. The state, by intervening more directly on the whole of social life, opened up a kind of concentration camp era. It would spawn deportations, ethnic cleansing, famines and mass exterminations.
The violence of Stalinism, as brutal as it was unpredictable, was a prime example. At the time of the purges the state did not hesitate to arrest genuine communists, to execute 95% of the leaders from one region, to deport entire populations so it could control and manage its territory effectively. In the years 1931-1932, Stalin would chillingly use hunger as a weapon in attempting to break the resistance of the Ukrainians to the forced collectivisations. This terrible, deliberately caused famine led to 6 million deaths in total. In Siberia and elsewhere, millions of men and women were sentenced to hard labour. During 1935, for example, 200,000 prisoners were digging the Moscow-Volga-Don Canal and 150,000 the second Trans-Siberian route. The brutal collectivisation campaign, in which many millions of kulaks were deported to inhospitable re-settlement areas, the plans for heavy industry and the exploitation by forced-march where workers were killed at work (literally), served Stalin’s obsession of wanting “to catch up with the capitalist countries”[2]. Before its entry into the war, in 1941, the Stalinist state was carrying out a real “ethnic cleansing” on its borders, with the aim of strengthening its security. Different populations were suspected of collaboration with the German enemy and so were subjected to large collective displacements. In 1937, the deportation to Central Asia of 170,000 Koreans on simple ethnic grounds, leading to heavy human losses, was a foretaste of what was ahead. Amongst all the displaced that would follow, 60,000 Poles were dispatched to Kazakhstan in 1941. Several waves of deportations then took place after the breakdown of the German-Soviet pact, especially for people of Germanic origin, notably in the Baltic republics who openly became “the enemies of the people”: 1.2 million of them found themselves exiled overnight to Siberia and Central Asia. Between 1943 and 1944, it was the turn of the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens, Ingush ...) and the Crimea (the Tatars) to be brutally displaced. Many of these victims, hungry, criminalised and banished by the “socialist” state, would die during transportation in cattle wagons (through lack of water, food, or from diseases such as typhus). If local people generally showed great solidarity towards those unfortunate exiles, the official propaganda against these new slaves continued its climate of hatred. During transportation, they were often faced with stone-throwing along with the worst possible insults. Upon arrival, according to a report from Beria dated July 1944, “some presidents of the collective farms organised beatings, designed to justify their refusal to hire physically damaged deportees”[3].
In these extreme conditions, there were eventually “ten to fifteen million Soviet citizens” sent into “re-education camps to work”, camps that were officially created by the regime in the 1930s[4].
In Germany, when the Nazis came to power, well before the extermination of its enemies was on the agenda, the concentration camps that would multiply across the land and especially in Poland were initially labour camps. This tendency for the development of camps for prisoners or refugees, that would blossom almost everywhere, even in the democratic countries like France and the United States, had the purpose, besides controlling the population, of exploiting an almost “free” labour power. Traditionally, in selling his labour power, the proletarian allows the capitalist to extract surplus value, that is to say, profit. The terms of the contract ensure that exploitation can achieve the maximum productivity whilst guaranteeing, through the low level of pay, the simple reproduction of labour power. In the concentration camps, labour power was exploited almost absolutely. In Germany, the deportees worked more than 12 hours a day, in any weather, on the orders of “kapos”. Secret arms factories or subsidiaries of large German companies were found in the concentration camps or nearby. These war industries enjoyed almost free, abundant and easily replaceable labour. The reproduction of labour power was reduced to mere survival of the worker / prisoner, the very low productivity of this workforce being partially offset by the very low maintenance costs. The food was limited to a subsistence minimum, and the transport likewise, often reduced to the single trip to a remote and isolated place, that of the camp. In the democratic states, the camps would also be used as part of the strengthening the state’s social control of the prisoner populations and / or the exploitation of their labour power. Thus, faced with the influx of Spanish refugees (120,000 between June and October 1937, 440,000 in 1939), the French Government was responding to these “undesirables” liable to engage in “revolutionary actions”[5]. In North Africa, 30,000 of them were used as forced labour. The Spanish refugees living on French soil were herded into internment camps (the authorities themselves spoke of “concentration camps”) erected in a hurry in the south of the country (especially on the Roussillon beaches). There were, for example, as many as 87,000 refugees in Argelès, exploited as slave labour in appalling conditions, sleeping on the sand, supervised by the “kapos” of the Republican Guard or Senegalese riflemen. Between February and July 1939, about 15,000 Spanish refugees died in these camps, most of them from exhaustion or victims of dysentery.
Later, during the war, among many other examples, we could refer to the United States which also interned more than 120,000 people from March 1942 to March 1946. This was theJapanese-American population, penned in concentration camps in the north and east of California. These victims of state xenophobia were treated terribly, just like the worst criminals.[6]
We have pointed out that concentration camps in Germany began as labour camps. The largest forced population movements took place in the direction of Germany, through measures such as STO (Service de Travail Obligatoire) in France. Jews were plundered, rounded-up and subjected to mass deportations nearly everywhere in Europe. In factories, agriculture and mining, one quarter of the workforce was forced labour, notably under the Generalplan Ost. Between 15 and 20 million people in total were deported by Nazi Germany to run its war machine! Such a policy increased the number of refugees fleeing the regime and its manhunt. In the 1930s, there were about 350,000 refugees coming from Nazi Germany, 150,000 from Austria (after the Anschluss) and Sudetenland (after its annexation to Nazi Germany).
From 1942 and the plan for the “Final Solution”, the concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Maidaneck ... would be transformed into death camps. In atrocious conditions, many victims among the six million Jews were transported in convoys and massacred, most gassed and incinerated in large ovens. The worst loss and largest quota of victims was provided by Poland (3,000,000) and the USSR (1,000,000). The extermination camps like Auschwitz (1.2 million) and Treblinka (800,000) were running at full capacity. This barbarism is well known because it was extensively publicised and exploited ideologically ad nauseam after the war by the Allies, thus serving as an alibi to justify or hide their own crimes.
The infernal Nazi propaganda machine was indeed a terrible extension of the pogrom mentality that had been introduced in the 1920s, a mentality which sanctioned the bloody defeat of the proletariat and its great revolutionary figures who were equated with “Jewry”: “even though many Jewish revolutionaries such as Rosa Luxemburg or Trotsky considered themselves to be non-Jews (...) the Israelite appears as the harbinger of subversion, as a destructive agent vis-à-vis basic values: homeland, family, property, religion. The enthusiasm of many Jews for all forms of modern art or for the new means of expression such as cinema, still justifies their reputation for a corrosive spirit”[7]. In fact, the defeat of the revolution allowed the great democracies to see Hitler as nothing more, nothing less, than an effective bulwark against “Bolshevism”. For all states at the time, the amalgam between Jews and communism was very common. Churchill himself accused the Jews of being the leaders of the Russian Revolution: “There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and the emergence of the Russian Revolution by these internationalist and mainly atheist Jews”[8]. The idea of a “Judeo-Marxist” plot was first spread by the “white troops” and cultivated on the basis of a widespread anti-Semitism: “is it necessary to point out that Hitler was not the source of this anti-Semitism (...) after the First World War, this anti-Semitism was found in most European countries”[9]. So the Jews would be systematically stigmatised, marginalised and become scapegoats without this being too much of an embarrassment to the democratic leaders, some of whom, like Roosevelt, already had openly xenophobic and anti-Semitic tendencies. Many of the Jews who were in Poland, the USSR and in ghettos, had already often been forced to flee the democratic countries because of this anti-Semitism (contrary to what one would have us believe, the anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime, for example, was not a spontaneous phenomenon, nor was it limited to his particular regime). Consequently, the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were, not surprisingly, introduced almost unnoticed. By isolating and marginalising Jewish citizens, their property would be plundered with impunity, in good conscience, since they were seen as very degenerate beings. It is in fact this whole dynamic, this nauseating breeding ground, that lay behind the hygienicist and eugenicist propaganda of the Nazis. From January 1940, the programme “Action T4” (forced euthanasia) in Germany already foreshadowed the Holocaust, methodically programming the elimination of the physically and mentally handicapped. Faced with the tragedy that was to follow, the Allies refused help to the Jews “in order to not destabilize the war effort” (Churchill). It is well established that the Allies were co-sponsors and accomplices in a genocide that was primarily a product of the capitalist system. Very early on, the democratic countries were firm in refusing to provide assistance to the Jews who were seen as outcasts and were unwelcome[10]. Faced with the Nazi repression and persecution, the Popular Front government in France, for example, would show itself intractable. Thus, behind a democratic veneer, a circular from the hand of Roger Salengro, dated August 14, 1936, noted: “we shouldn’t let (…) any German émigré into France and should start removing all foreigners; German subjects, or those arriving from Germany after the August 5 1936, will not be provided with the necessary documents ... “[11]
During the Second World War, all the actions and administrative measures to deport, expel and exterminate the populations were far more imposing and notably had more dramatic consequences than in 1914 to 1918. The number of refugees / migrants was on a much larger scale. The violence used – from the concentration camps and the gas chambers, the carpet bombing, the phosphorous gas, nuclear bombs, the use of chemical and biological weapons - had claimed millions of lives and caused lasting suffering and trauma after the war. The balance sheet is terrifying! The destruction killed in total nearly 66 million people (20 million soldiers and 46 million civilians) compared with 10 million in 1914-1918! At the end of the Second World War, 60 million people had to be relocated, ten times more than in the First World War! At the heart of Europe itself, 40 million died. In East Asia, in China, more than 12 million people died in direct military confrontations and there were nearly 95 million refugees in China. During the war, a number of sieges and military battles were among the bloodiest in history. To give some examples: at Stalingrad, almost a million men died on both sides in a hellish inferno. In a siege that lasted nearly three years, at least 1.8 million died. The battle to capture Berlin killed 300,000 German and Russian soldiers and more than 100,000 civilians.
The famous Battle of Okinawa killed 120,000 soldiers but also 160,000 civilians. Japanese troops slaughtered 300,000 Chinese in Nanking. The atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to historian Howard Zinn, reportedly left up to 250,000 dead. The terrible American bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 caused 85,000 deaths. In the USSR, there were 27 million victims. Ukraine would lose 20% of its population, Poland 15% (mostly Jews). Hundreds of cities in Europe were partly ruined or virtually destroyed. In Russia, 1,700 towns were affected, in Ukraine, 714, and nearly 70,000 villages were destroyed. In Germany, incendiary phosphorous carpet bombs dropped by the Allies and Bomber Command claimed a huge number of victims, razing the cities of Dresden and Hamburg (nearly 50,000 dead). A city like Cologne was 70% destroyed. It was subsequently estimated that there were between 18 and 20 million homeless at the end of the war in Germany, 10 million in Ukraine. The number of war orphans was equally significant: two million in Germany, more than one million in Poland. Some 180,000 children were reduced to the status of vagabonds in the streets of Rome, Naples and Milan.
The appalling suffering caused by this destruction was very often accompanied by terrible vengeance and acts of barbarity against terrorised civilians and refugees. This was true of the Allies, although they were portrayed as the “great liberators”: “hubris, lightning revenge befalls the survivors; the discovery of the atrocities committed by the vanquished only fuels the good conscience of the conqueror”[12].
The accumulation of violence generated by decadent capitalism, once released, produced the most atrocious scenes, those of “ethnic purification” and acts of unimaginable cruelty. During and after the war in Croatia, nearly 600,000 Serbs, Muslims and Jews were killed by the Ustasha regime wishing to “clean up” the entire country. Greek communities were massacred by the Bulgarian army; Hungarians did the same to the Serbs in Vojvodina. During the war, defeats were always accompanied by tragic migrations. Thus, for example, five million Germans would flee before the Red Army. Many would die, often lynched by the roadside. This was one of those heroic episodes for the “liberators”, for these “knights of freedom”, who would cynically assume the role of prosecutor after the war despite their own unpunished crimes: “the terrible plight of populations in eastern Germany during the advance of the Red Army is still unforgettable (...) The Soviet soldier became the instrument of a cold will, of deliberate extermination (...) Columns of refugees were crushed under the treads of the tanks or systematically strafed from the air. The population of whole cities was massacred with refined cruelty. Naked women were crucified on the doors of barns. Children were decapitated or had their heads crushed with rifle butts or were thrown alive into pig troughs (...) The German population of Prague was massacred with a rare sadism. After being raped, women would have their Achilles tendons cut and were condemned to die bleeding in agony on the ground. Children were machine-gunned at the school gate, thrown onto pavements from the floors of the buildings or drowned in fountains; in total, more than 30,000 victims (...) the violence did not spare the young auxiliary signalmen of the Luftwaffe, thrown alive onto burning haystacks. For weeks, the river Vltava (Moldau) carried thousands of bodies; some whole families were nailed onto rafts”.[13]
It is difficult to say how many women were raped by German soldiers during the war. What is certain is that with the forces of the Allies advancing and occupying the “liberated” territory, another test awaited them. There were a million women raped in Germany by Allied troops; Berlin alone had around 100,000 cases. The estimates for Budapest lie in a range from 50,000 to 100,000 raped.
What we especially want to emphasise is that far from intervening in “defence of freedom”, the involvement in the war of the Allies and the great democracies was aimed at defending purely imperialist interests. The fate of populations and refugees did not concern them until they were in charge and they could be used as exploited labour. They never made mention of the fate of Jews in their propaganda during the war, even denying them help and abandoning them into the hands of the Nazis. The Allies’ motive for entering into the war had nothing to do with a desire for “liberation”. For France and Britain, it was actually about defending the “European balance of power”. For the United States, it was about countering its Japanese rival in the east and blocking the threat of the USSR, and for the latter, it was to extend its influence within Western Europe; in short, for purely strategic, imperialist and military reasons. What else can we expect? It was absolutely not to “free Germany” from the “brown plague” that they acted. This fable is nothing but a diabolic fabrication invented at the time of the liberation of the camps. It was all prepared by the Allied staff and politicians, anxious to hide their own crimes (let’s not be so naïve to think that the military and politicians in the democracies never make propaganda!). If the “liberation” was able to end the practices of the Nazi occupiers, this was primarily an indirect consequence of achieving a purely military objective and not for “humanitarian” reasons. The best proof of this is that the major democratic powers continued to defend their imperialist interests, creating new victims, colonial massacres and new divisions after the war that also produced new waves of refugees and destitute people.
WH 18 July 2015
In the next article [1406], we will continue dealing with the same question, from the Cold War until the fall of the Berlin wall and into the current period.
[1]. ‘Immigration and the workers’ movement’, International Review no.140, 1st quarter 2010.
[2]. Note that Stalinist Russia itself was actually a capitalist country, a caricatured expression of the tendency towards state capitalism in the decadence of this system.
[3]. Isabelle Ohayon, La déportation des peuples vers l’Asie centrale. Le XXe siècle des guerres, Editions de l’Atelier, 2004.
[4]. Marie Jégo, Le Monde, March 3rd, 2003.
[5]. P. J Deschodt, F. Huguenin, La République xénophobe, JC Lattes, 2001
[6]. According to one veteran from Guadalcanal: “The Japanese cannot be regarded as an intellectual (...), he is more an animal” and a Marine General also said: “To kill a Japanese, it was really like killing a snake”. See Ph Masson, Une guerre totale, coll. Plural.
[7]. Ph Masson, op. cit.
[8]. Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, quoted by Wikipedia.
[9]. Ph Masson, op. cit.
[10]. Read our pamphlet Fascisme et démocratie, deux expressions de la dictature du capital.
[11]. P. J Deschodt, F. Huguenin, op cit,
[12]. See Ph. Masson, op. cit.
[13]. See Ph. Masson, op. cit.
When Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in Britain he stepped down from being chair of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), while continuing to support its activities. Opponents of Corbyn have used this continuing connection to attack Labour and its leader. The ensuing arguments have pursued familiar lines with Corbyn and friends accused of being ‘anti-West’ and ‘pro-jihadi’ and his detractors portrayed as ‘bombers’ and Blairites.
In reality the strand of thinking represented by the Stop the War Coalition is just one set of options on offer for British imperialism. For example, opposition to British membership of NATO is among the military options open to the British bourgeoisie. The dominant strand in the British ruling class is for continuing participation in NATO, but a minority (including StWC) favour British military independence (presumably with the possibility of temporary alliances with other powers if such are deemed to be in the interests of British capitalism).
Opposition to NATO goes along with a determination for Britain to leave the EU, which is the policy of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Britain (two significant parts of the StWC – Andrew Wilson of the CPB was/is chair before and after Corbyn). They might complain that they should not be lumped in with the usual right wing anti-EU little Englanders, but there’s no logical reason why not. In the Libyan war of 2011, for example, leftists were divided over whether to support the Gaddafi regime or the opposition backed by a variety of powers, in particular France and Britain. The StWC backed Gaddafi’s status quo and they were joined by the likes of Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, who did so in the name of political stability in the region.
But the area where the Stop the War Campaign is currently most under attack is over Syria. It is not surprising that those who voted for British bombing in the area should make accusations about those who voted against. If you say that ISIS is the new Hitler then anyone who says any different is bound to be labelled an appeaser. But some of those who had previously supported StWC have said it has effectively taken sides in the conflict. In a letter from a number of activists to the Guardian (9/12/15) we read that “StWC has failed to organise or support protests against the Assad dictatorship …Nor has it shown solidarity with the … millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and displaced by Assad’s barrel bombs and torture chambers. It portrays Isis as the main threat to Syrians, despite Assad killing at least six times more civilians. StWC has … one-sidedly failed to support demonstrations against the escalating Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah military interventions in Syria.
As well as systematically ignoring war crimes committed by the Assad regime, StWC often misrepresents the opposition to Assad as being largely composed of jihadi extremists and agents of imperialism”.
These remarks are not all at the same level. The ‘respectable’ opposition that the critics have in mind, for example, would be potential replacements for the current regime, not challengers to Syrian capitalism. But criticism of Hezbollah is not to be expected from factions that have so consistently supported it, most notably in its war with Israel. With the campaign over starvation in the besieged western Syrian town of Madaya, the United Nations reports that there are some 450,000 people trapped in around 15 siege locations across Syria, including areas controlled by the government, ISIL and other insurgent groups. Madaya is under siege by the Syrian government and Hezbollah. Inside Madaya there are anti-Assad militias, the al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria) and the pro-US Free Syrian Army. In the Morning Star, the paper that puts forward the view of the CPB, it was reported (12/1/16) that “Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel … accused anti-government fighters of hoarding humanitarian assistance that had entered the town in October and selling the supplies to residents at exorbitant prices.” Whatever the truth in the specific details in Madaya, the reality for the population in Syria, in Iraq, and in other conflicts across the region and the world, is one of death from starvation, from war, or in the attempt to flee the area. The policies of StWC focus on the relations between capitalist states at the imperialist level, with recommendations for policies that British imperialism can follow, predicated on the continued existence of British capitalism.
Corbyn (in a 4/6/15 post on https://www.stopwar.org.uk/ [1407]) announced, while still StWC chair, that “The 21st century is shaping up to be possibly the most warlike century ever. By comparison the last decade of the 20th century was a time of serious discussion about long-term disarmament and arms conversion, as conflicts, while not expiring completely, were certainly reduced in their intensity.” This turns reality on its head. Following the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the imperialist blocs headed by the US and Russia, there was in Europe a certain amount of military restructuring which included a reduction in the size of a number of armies and some changes in military focus. However, in the 1990s, with the end of the blocs there was a proliferation of conflicts: the Gulf War, in Rwanda, Burundi, the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, across the Caucasus, in Sierra Leone, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Wars extended and developed in their intensity and have done so further in the 21st century. Discussions among the bourgeoisie about ‘disarmament’ and ‘arms conversion’ are entirely fraudulent manoeuvres as powers great and small have been compelled to strengthen the military dimension of their intervention on the imperialist stage.
Against the lying claims of the Stop the War Campaign (and its opponents), the world is not just so many brutal military conflicts in which the population must choose between its exploiters and oppressors, it is a world in which social classes have different interests and different dynamics. The bourgeoisie’s world is one of imperialist conflict; the working class, with common interests internationally, has the potential to destroy capitalist nation states and create a society based on solidarity.
Car 16/1/16
A century ago, on 1st of May1916, at the Potsdam Platz in Berlin, the revolutionary internationalist Karl Liebknecht pointed to the working class answer to the war that was devastating Europe and massacring a whole generation of proletarians. In front of a crowd of some 10,000 workers who had been demonstrating in silence against the privations that were a necessary consequence of the war, Liebknecht described the anguish of proletarian families facing death at the front and starvation at home, concluding his speech (which was also reproduced and distributed at the demonstration in leaflet form) by raising the slogans “down with the war!” and “down with the government!”, which provoked his immediate arrest despite the efforts of the crowd to defend him. But the trial of Liebknecht the following month was met by a strike of 55,000 workers in the arms industries, led by a new form of workplace organisation, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards. This strike was in turn defeated, with many of its leaders being sent off to the front. But this and other struggles fermenting inside both warring camps were the seeds of the revolutionary wave that was to break out first in Russia in 1917 and then crash back into Germany a year later, forcing the ruling class, terrified of the spread of the “Red” virus, to call a halt to the killing[1].
But only a temporary halt, because the revolutionary wave did not put an end to decaying capitalism and its unavoidable drive towards war. The predatory “peace” accord imposed on Germany by the victors already set in motion a process that would – under the whip of the world economic crisis of the 1930s – plunge the world into an even more destructive holocaust in 1939-45. And even before that war was over, the battle lines for yet another world war were already being joined, as America on the one hand and the USSR on the other established rival military blocs that for the next four or five decades would jockey for position through a whole litany of local conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, the Israeli-Arab wars…
That period – the so-called Cold War that was not so cold to all the millions who died under the banner of “national liberation” or the “defence of the free world against communism” – is history, but war itself is more widespread than ever. The disintegration of the imperialist blocs after 1989 did not, despite the promises of the politicians and their paid philosophers, bring about a “new world order” or the “end of history”, but a growing world disorder, a succession of chaotic conflicts which carries as big a threat to humanity’s survival as the shadow of a nuclear-armed Third World War which hung over the previous period.
We thus find ourselves in 2016 faced with a whole swathe of wars from Africa through the Middle East to Central Asia; with growing tensions in the far east as the Chinese giant pits itself against its Japanese and above all American rivals; with a seething fire in Ukraine as Russia seeks to regain the imperialist glory it lost with the collapse of the USSR.
Like the war in former Yugoslavia, one of the first major conflicts of the ‘post bloc’ period, the war in Ukraine is taking place at the very gates of Europe, close to the classical heartlands of world capitalism, and thus to the most important fractions of the international working class. The streams of refugees seeking to escape from the war zones in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, or Afghanistan provide further proof that Europe is no island cut off from the military nightmare engulfing a large part of humanity. On the contrary, the ruling classes of the central capitalist countries, of the “great democracies”, have been an active element in the proliferation of war in this period, through a whole series of military adventures in the peripheries of the system, from the first Gulf war in 1991 to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq at the start of the 21st century to the more recent bombing campaigns in Libya, Iraq and Syria. And these adventures have in turn stirred up the hornet’s nest of Islamic terrorism, which has again and again taken bloody revenge in the capitalist centres, from the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 to the Paris killings of 2015.
But if the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks are a constant reminder that war is no “foreign” reality, Europe and the USA still appear as ‘havens’ compared to much of the world. This is shown by the very fact that the victims of wars in Africa and the Middle East – or of the grinding poverty and drug wars of Mexico and Central America – are prepared to risk their lives to get to the shores of Europe or across the US border. And certainly, for all the attacks on working class living standards we have seen over the past few decades, despite the growth of poverty and homelessness in the big cities of Europe and the US, the living conditions of the average proletarian in these regions still seems like an unattainable dream for those who have been directly subjected to the horrors of war. Above all, since 1945 there have been no military conflicts between the major powers of Europe – a striking contrast with the period 1914-45.
Is this because the rulers have learned the lessons of 1914-18 or 1939-45, and have formed powerful international organisations that make war between the major powers unthinkable?
There have indeed been important changes in the balance of forces between the major powers since 1945. The USA emerged as the real winner of the Second World War and was able to impose its terms on the prostrated powers of Europe: no more wars between western European powers, but economic and military cohesion as part of a US-led imperialist bloc to counter the threat from the USSR. And even though the western bloc lost this crucial reason for its existence after the downfall of the USSR and its bloc, the alliance between the former bitter rivals at the heart of Europe – France and Germany – has held relatively firm.
All these and other elements enter into the equation and can be read about in the work of academic historians and political analysts. But there is one key element that bourgeois commentators never talk about. This is the truth contained in the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto: that history is the history of class struggle, and that any ruling class worthy of its name cannot afford to ignore the potential threat coming from the vast mass of humanity that it exploits and oppresses. This is particularly relevant when it comes to waging war, because capitalist war more than anything else demands the subjugation and sacrifice of the proletariat.
In the period before and after 1914, the ruling classes of Europe were always concerned that a major war would provoke a revolutionary response from the working class. They only felt confident enough to take the fateful last steps towards war when they were assured that the organisations the working class had built up over decades, the trade unions and the Socialist parties, would no longer adhere to their official internationalist declarations and would in fact help them march the workers off to the battle fronts. And as we have already pointed out, the same ruling class (even if it had in some cases to assume a new shape, as in Germany where the “Socialists” replaced the Kaiser) was obliged to end the war in order to block the danger of world revolution.
In the 1930s, a new war was prepared by a far more brutal and systematic defeat of the working class – not only through the corruption of the former revolutionary organisations that had opposed the betrayal of the Socialists, not only through the ideological mobilisation of the working class around the “defence of democracy” and “anti-fascism”, but also through the naked terror of fascism and Stalinism. And the imposition of this terror was also taken in hand by the democracies at the end of the war: where the possibilities of working class revolt were seen in Italy and Germany, the British in particular made sure it would never rise to the heights of a new 1917, through massive aerial bombardments of working class concentrations or by allowing the fascist executioners time to suppress the danger on the ground.
The economic boom that followed the Second World War and the displacement of imperialist conflicts to the margins of the system meant that a direct clash between the two blocs in the period from 1945 to 1965 could be avoided, even if it came perilously close at times. In this period the working class had not yet recovered from its historic defeat and was not a major factor in blocking the war-drive.
The situation changed however after 1968. The end of the post-war boom was met by a new and undefeated generation of the working class, which engaged in a series of important struggles announced by the general strike in France in 1968 and the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969 in Italy. The return of the open economic crisis sharpened imperialist tensions and thus the danger of a direct conflict between the blocs, but on neither side of the imperialist divide could the ruling class be confident that it would be able to persuade the workers to stop fighting for their own material interests and give up everything for a new world war. This was demonstrated most forcefully by the mass strike in Poland in 1980. Although it was eventually defeated, it made it clear to the most intelligent factions of the Russian ruling class that they could never rely on the workers of eastern Europe (and probably not of the USSR itself, who had also begun to struggle against the effects of the crisis) to take part in a desperate military offensive against the west.
This inability to win the working class to its project of war was thus a central element in the break-up of the two imperialist blocs and the postponing of any prospect of a classic Third World War.
If the working class, even when it has not yet become conscious of a real historical project of its own, can have such an important weight in the world situation, surely this must also be taken into account when we consider the reasons why the tide of war has not yet broken over the central countries of capitalism? And we must also consider the question from the other side of the coin: if there is so much barbarity and irrational destruction sweeping through Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, is this not because the working class there is weak, because it has little tradition of struggle and independent class politics, because it is dominated by nationalism, by religious fundamentalism – and also by illusions that achieving “democracy” would be a step forward?
We can understand this better by looking at the fate of the revolts which swept the Arab world (and Israel…) in 2011. In the movements which, even though involving different layers of the population, had the strongest imprint of the working class – Tunisia, Egypt and Israel – there were important gains in the struggle: tendencies toward self-organisation in street assemblies, towards breaking out of religious, ethnic and national divisions. It was these elements which were to inspire struggles in Europe and the US that same year, above all the Indignados movement in Spain. But the weight of ruling class ideology in the form of nationalism, religion, and illusions in bourgeois democracy was still very strong in all three of these revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, driving them into false solutions, as in Egypt where, following the fall of Mubarak, a repressive Islamist government was replaced by an even more repressive military one. In Libya and Syria, where the working class is much weaker and had little influence on the initial revolts, the situation rapidly degenerated into multi-sided military conflicts, fuelled by regional and global powers who sought to advance their chosen pawns (as described here [1409] and here [1410]). In these countries society itself has disintegrated, demonstrating very graphically what can happen if a senile capitalism’s tendencies towards self-destruction are not held back. In such a situation, all hope of a proletarian answer to war has been lost, and this is why the only solution for so many has been to try to get out, to flee the war zones at whatever risk.
In period between 1968 and 1989, class struggle was a barrier to world war. But today the threat of war takes a different and more insidious form. To dragoon the working class into two great organised blocs, the ruling class would have needed both to break all resistance at the economic level and to pull the majority of the working class behind ideological themes justifying a new world conflict. In short it would have required the physical and ideological defeat of the working class, similar to what capitalism achieved in the 1930s. Today, however, in the absence of blocs, the spread of war can take the form of a gradual, if accelerating, slide into a myriad of local and regional conflicts which draw in more and more local, regional and, behind them, global powers, ravaging more and more parts of the planet and which - combined with the creeping destruction of the natural environment and of the very fabric of social life – could signify an irreversible descent into barbarism, eliminating once and for all the possibility of taking human society onto a higher level.
This process, which we describe as the decomposition of capitalism, is already far advanced in places like Libya and Syria. To prevent this level of barbarism spreading to the centres of capitalism, the working class needs more than just a passive strength – and more than just economic resistance. It needs a positive political perspective. It needs to affirm the necessity for a new society for the authentic communism advocated by Marx and all the revolutionaries who followed in his wake.
Today there seems little sign of such a perspective emerging. The working class has been through a long and difficult experience since the end of the 1980s: intensive campaigns by the bourgeoisie about the death of communism and the end of the class struggle have been directed against any idea that the working class can have its own project for the transformation of society. At the same time the remorseless advance of decomposition gnaws away at the entrails of the class, undermining confidence in the future, engendering despair, nihilism, and all kinds of desperate reactions, from drug addiction to religious fundamentalism and xenophobia. The loss of illusions in the traditional ‘workers’ parties, in the absence of any clear alternative, has intensified the flight away from politics or has given an impetus to new populist parties of left and right. Despite a certain revival of struggles between 2003 and 2013, the retreat in class struggle and class consciousness, which was palpable in the 90s, now seems to be even more entrenched.
And these are not the only difficulties facing the working class. Today the proletariat, in contrast to 1916, confronts not a situation of world war where every form of resistance is obliged to take on a political character from the start, but with a slowly deepening economic crisis managed by a very sophisticated bourgeoisie which has up till now succeeded in sparing the workers in the centres of the system from the worst effects of the crisis and above all from any large-scale involvement in military conflict. Indeed when it comes to military intervention in the peripheral regions, the ruling class in the centres has been very prudent, using only professional forces and even then preferring air strikes and drones to minimise the loss of soldiers’ lives which can lead to dissent in the army and at home.
Another important difference between 1916 and today: in 1916, tens of thousands of workers struck in solidarity with Liebknecht. He was known to workers because the proletariat, despite the betrayal of the opportunist wing of the workers’ movement in 1914, had not lost touch with all its political traditions. Today revolutionary organisations are a miniscule minority virtually unknown within the working class. This is yet another factor inhibiting the development of a revolutionary political perspective.
With all these factors seemingly stacked against the working class, does it still make sense to think that such a development is at all possible today?
We have described the present phase of decomposition as the final phase of capitalist decadence. In 1916, the system had only just entered its epoch of decline and the war had intervened well before capitalism had exhausted all its economic possibilities. Within the working class there were still profound illusions in the idea that if only the war could be brought to an end, it would be possible to return to the era of the fight for gradual reforms within the system – illusions that were played upon by the ruling class by ending the war and installing the social democratic party in a key country like Germany.
Today the decadence of capitalism is much more advanced and the lack of any future felt by so many is a real reflection of the impasse of the system. The bourgeoisie patently has no solution to the economic crisis that has dragged on for over four decades, no alternative to the slide into military barbarism and to the destruction of the environment. In short, the stakes are even higher than they were 100 years ago. The working class faces an immense challenge – the necessity to provide its own answers to the economic crisis, to war and the refugee problem, to provide a new vision of man’s relationship with nature. The proletariat needs more than just a series of struggles at the workplace – it needs to make a total critique of all aspects of capitalist society, both theoretically and practically.
No wonder that the working class, faced with the perspective offered by capitalism and the immense difficulty of finding its own alternative, falls back into despair. And yet we have seen glimpses of a movement that begins to look for this alternative, above all in the Indignados movement of 2011 which opened the door not only to the idea of a new form of social organisation – encapsulated in the slogan “all power to the assemblies” – but also to educating itself about the system it was calling into question and needs to replace.
No doubt the new generation of proletarians which led this revolt is still extremely inexperienced, lacks political formation, and does not even clearly see itself as working class. And yet the forms and methods of struggle that emerged in such movements – such as the assemblies – were often deeply rooted in the traditions of working class struggle. And even more importantly, the movement in 2011 saw the emergence of a genuine internationalism, expressing the fact that the working class of today is more global than it was in 1916; that it is part of an immense network of production, distribution and communication which links the whole planet; and that it shares many of the same fundamental problems in all countries in spite of the divisions that the exploiting class always tries to impose and manipulate. The Indignados were very conscious that they were carrying on from where the revolts in the Middle East left off, and some of them even saw themselves as part of a “world revolution” of all those who are excluded, exploited and oppressed by this society.
This embryonic internationalism is extremely important. In 1916-17 internationalism was something very concrete and immediate. It took the form of fraternisation between the soldiers of opposing armies, of mass desertions and mutinies, of strikes and anti-war demonstrations on the home front. These actions were the practical realisations of the theoretical slogans raised by the revolutionary minorities when the war broke out: “the main enemy is at home”, and “turn the imperialist war into a civil war”
Today internationalism often begins in more negative and seemingly abstract forms: in the critique of the bourgeois framework of the nation state to solve the problem of war, terrorism and the refugees; in the recognition of the necessity to go beyond competing nation states to overcome the economic and ecological crises. But, at certain moments, it can take on more practical forms: in the international links, both digital and physical, between participants in the revolts of 2011; in spontaneous acts of solidarity towards refugees by workers in the central countries, often in defiance of the bourgeoisie’s xenophobic propaganda. In some parts of the world, of course, direct struggle against war is a necessity, and where a significant working class exists, as in Ukraine, we have seen signs of resistance to conscription and protests against shortages caused by the war, although here again the lack of a coherent proletarian opposition to militarism and nationalism has seriously weakened resistance to the war drive.
For the working class in the central countries, direct implication in war is not on the immediate agenda and the question of war can still seem remote from everyday concerns. But as the “refugee crisis” and the terrorist attacks in these countries already show, war will more and more become an everyday concern for the workers in the heartlands of capital, who are best placed, on the one hand, to deepen their understanding of the underlying causes of war and its connection to the overall, historic crisis of capitalism; and on the other hand to strike at the belly of the beast, the central headquarters of the imperialist system.
Amos 16.1.16
[1]. For a more in-depth treatment of these events see International Review 133: ‘Germany 1918-19. Faced with the war, the revolutionary proletariat renews its internationalist principles’ https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/germany_1919 [1411]
“And if time didn’t exist?” is the title of the book[1] by physicist Carlo Rovelli[2] posing a question which could seem first of all to be very strange, absurd even. Every day we see, experience the passage of time. Clocks, alarms, omnipresent watches count off the seconds. For example, the frustration one feels when you miss the train by arriving too late; children that grow up or the wrinkles in the corner of the eye. Everything, absolutely everything seems to justify beyond any possible doubt the implacable existence of time and its effects.
Really? For those who travel little the earth doesn’t seem flat, decorated with swellings and depressions as it is. The idea of a round earth with an “underneath” where people walk “upside-down” without “falling off”, isn’t that also contrary to intuition? And to say that this earth goes around the Sun whereas we see each and every day the Sun “rise” in the east and “set” in the west?
The history of science has confirmed what the Greek philosophers had already understood more than 2,500 years ago: our senses can be mistaken; it is necessary to go beyond the immediate impressionable sensations to get to the truth. So perhaps the hypothesis of Carlo Rovelli is worth some serious consideration. For what reasons does this scientist affirm that time is fundamentally an illusion?
Since Einstein humanity has known that there is a snag in the ticking of our clocks: time is relative. It doesn’t pass at the same rate everywhere. The more the speed of movement is greater or gravity stronger, the more the passage of time slows down. Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s very successful 2014 film, correctly put this scientific discovery at the centre of its story: the protagonists age differently depending if they are on Earth, or if they travel through space, or if they stay on this or that planet provided with a different gravity. The hero, a cosmonaut sent into space at the beginning of the film, returns at the end of the adventure to find his daughter who remained on earth a very old woman, while he had only aged a few months. If this example is a case of science fiction, it is nevertheless accurate, and the relative nature of time has been experimentally verified. For example, if two atomic clocks (the most precise at the present time) are started simultaneously with one remaining on the ground and the other on a flight 10km above the earth and its gravity, then the readings show two different results: the one at a distance would have “lived” less long by some nanoseconds than the one on the ground.
Time is thus not a regular ticking, fixed and implacable. But Carlo Rovelli goes further by advancing the hypothesis that time doesn’t really exist: “...we never measure time itself. We always measure the variable physics A, B, C ... (oscillations, pulsations, and many other things), and we always compare one variable with another. But it is useful to imagine that there exists a variable t, the real time that we can never measure, but which is found behind everything (...) Rather than any resort to an abstract and absolute ‘time’, which was a thing invented by Newton, one can describe each variable in relation to the state of other variables (...) Just like space, time becomes a relational idea. It only expresses a relation to the different states of things”. And thus: “Space and usual time quite simply disappear from the framework of basic physics, in the same way that the notion of the ‘centre of the universe’ disappears with the scientific image of the world” (pp.100 to 103). Time does not fundamentally exist but comes from an illusion due to our knowledge or to our limited perception of the Universe: “... time is an effect of our ignorance of the details of the world. If we understood perfectly all the details of the world, we would not have the sensation of the passage of time” (pp. 104-105).
In other words, the universe is made up of constant, permanent interactions of an infinite complexity of cause and effect. A modifies B which modifies C in its turn but also perhaps A itself, etc. Thus the universe is in movement, ceaselessly modifying itself, and these are the changes and interactions that we perceive. Alone, our existence unfolds with few fundamental variables, always on Earth or near to it and at extremely modest speeds compared to the speed of light, with all these interactions appearing to us as dictated by a physical component of the universe that man calls “time”. At our level the swing of the pendulum is imperturbable; we never see the difference of some nanoseconds which could happen here or there on Earth according to the speed of our movement or our altitude. Newton himself integrated this notion of “time” as a fundamental component of his physics. Only what Carlo Rovelli says is that when we observe the swing of a pendulum we have the illusion of the passing of “seconds” whereas we are only measuring a concatenation of interactions within the mechanism of the clock. And that is why modern physics can do without the notion of “time” within its equations: “... instead of predicting the position of a falling object ‘at the end of five seconds’, we can predict its fall after ‘five oscillations of the clock’. The difference is weak in practice, but great from a conceptual point of view because this approach frees us from all constraints on possible forms of space-time” (p. 115).
It’s neither in the competence of the author of this article nor the role of a revolutionary organisation as the ICC to validate or invalidate a hypothesis during the course of a debate in the scientific world. On the other hand, beyond the necessary interest for the advancement of thought in general, the method and the scientific approach which underpins these advances are also a foundation that needs to be assimilated in order to try to understand the world and society. Does time exist? We can’t settle that, but the approach of Carlo Rovelli is a source of inspiration for reflection. Because there appears a treasure much greater than the result of his research and that is the road that it’s necessary to take: thought in movement.
From the conception of a universe in constant evolution, constituted by a series of interactions of an infinite complexity, follows a dynamic vision of science and the truth. If the universe is in movement then to understand it thought must also be in movement: “With science, I have discovered a mode of thought which first of all establishes rules to understand the world, and then became capable of modifying these same rules. This liberty in the pursuit of knowledge fascinated me. Pushed by my curiosity, and perhaps by what Frederico Cesi, a friend of Galileo and a visionary of modern science, called ‘the natural desire to know’, I find myself, almost without realizing it, immersed in problems of theoretical physics” (p. 5). Carlo Rovelli disputes the validity of a fixed vision of a science which is supposed to lay down absolute and eternal truths. On the contrary, for him, “Scientific thought is the very consciousness of our ignorance. I would even say that scientific thought is the very consciousness of our great ignorance and thus of the dynamic nature of knowledge. It is doubt and not certainty that pushes us forwards. There of course lies the profound heritage of Descartes. We must have confidence in science not because it offers certainties but because it has none” (pp. 70-71).
Carlo Rovelli thus shows us that the evolution of scientific thought is absolutely opposed to the scientific approach of the 19th century. It was believed during this period that science was in continuous evolution towards the complete knowledge of the laws of the universe. Thus in the second half of the 19th century, the majority of scientists thought that all the fundamental laws of nature had essentially been discovered. It only remained to determine some universal constants in order to make the definitive turn of the physical sciences. Hardly five years after the turn of the century two fundamental theories swept away this almost perfect edifice: the special theory of relativity (completed by that of general relativity) of Einstein, and quantum mechanics which was still more profound in terms of calling into question our understanding of the world. Carlo Rovelli shows us that the scientific method always begins by taking into account and calling into question the bases of the old theories in order to elaborate new, wider, more profound and more general ones. Advances made by the new theories allow progress. This progress leads us into a new context which itself becomes contradictory in its development. Thus quantum mechanics and general relativity have opened the possibility of better understanding the dynamics of the universe, an understanding that was inaccessible through classical physics, since the latter was only able to describe a stable and definite state. But these two great theories have not brought us to a final point in physics or to a total and definitive answer to the mysteries of the universe. Quite the contrary. New contradictions have appeared: “Quantum mechanics, which describes very well the microscopic level, has profoundly overturned what we know about matter. General relativity, which explains the force of gravity very well, has radically transformed what we know about Time and Space (...) But these two theories lead to two very different ways of describing the world, which appear incompatible. Each one of them seems to be written as if the other didn’t exist. We are in a schizophrenic situation with partial and intrinsically inconsistent explanations. To the point where we no longer know what is Space, Time and Matter (...) one way or the other it is necessary to reconcile the two theories. This mission is the central problem of quantum gravity (pp. 10 to 13). And if the theory of quantum gravitation one day attains its historic mission, thus offering humanity the possibility of understanding “the end of the life of a black hole or the first moments of the life of the Universe” (p. 11), then new questions emerge for human consciousness. And it’s really the very existence of these infinite contradictions which has led Carlo Rovelli in his passion for science, this immense and perpetual enigma: “I think that it is precisely in the discovery of the limits of the scientific representations of the world that the force of scientific thought is revealed. It’s not through experiments, neither ‘mathematics’, nor in a ‘method’. It is in scientific thought’s own capacity to always question. Doubt its own affirmations. Don’t be afraid to deny its own beliefs, even the most certain of them. The heart of science is change” (pp. 56-57).
But this relative approach of truth and science doesn’t at all mean that Carlo Rovelli falls into relativism. On the contrary: he shows what aberrations relativism leads to by taking the example of the United States where Creationism has done enormous damage. In particularly in terms of education: “These deformed visions of science consequently lead to a diminishing of its aura and irrational thought gains ground... In the United States for example (from ‘rural’ Kansas to much civilised California) teachers are not allowed to talk about evolution in schools. The laws forbidding the teaching of the results of Darwin are justified by cultural relativism: they know that science can be mistaken, and thus a scientific knowledge is no more defendable than a biblical knowledge. A candidate for the presidency of the United States, recently asked about the subject, declared that he didn’t know if human beings and the apes really had ‘common ancestors’. Does he even know if the Earth goes around the Sun or the Sun around the Earth?” (pp. 53-54).
More generally: “The scientific obsession with calling all truth into question doesn’t lead to scepticism nor nihilism, or to a radical relativism. Science is the practice of overturning absolutes, which doesn’t mean a fall into total relativism or nihilism. It is the intellectual acceptance of the fact that knowledge evolves. The fact that the truth can always be questioned doesn’t imply that one can’t be in agreement; in fact science is the very process from which one can arrive at agreement” (p. 71).
In order to “agree with each other”, in order for our knowledge to have a “dynamic nature”, it is imperative that hypotheses are confronted one against another, that a debate of ideas with the sole aim of advancing the truth animates all of the sciences. That’s why throughout his book, Rovelli berates the scientists who sabotage the debate, preferring to defend their own interests by not sharing their work and hypotheses, conceiving research as some sort of race towards individual fame, by being animated by the spirit of competition with all the baseness, bad faith and other dishonest procedures that that implies: “The world of science as I discovered with sadness, including at my own expense, is not at all like a fairy tale. Cases of the stolen ideas of others are permanent. Many researchers are extremely concerned to be the first to formulate ideas, leave others trailing behind them who did not manage to publish or to re-write history attributing to themselves the most important stages. That generates a climate of distrust and suspicion which makes life bitter and seriously hinders the progress of research. I know very many who refused to talk about this or that idea on which they are about to work before publishing them” (p. 44).
The approach of Carlo Rovelli is quite different. When he was a student in Italy in the 1970’s he was involved in the revolt against the injustices of this society before thinking, like a large part of his generation, that the revolution wasn’t yet on the agenda, he choose not to abdicate, not to renounce his dreams, but to invest his aspirations in the changes in science: “During my university studies at Bologna, my confusion and my conflict with the adult world joined with a common route of a great part of my generation (...) It was a time where one lived one’s dreams (...) With two of my friends, we wrote a book which talked of the Italian student rebellion at the end of the 70’s. But the dreams of revolution were rapidly smothered and order retaken from above. The world can’t be changed so easily. Mid-way through my university studies I found myself more lost than before with the bitter feeling that these dreams shared by half the planet were already evaporating (...) Join the rat race, make a career, get some money and grab some crumbs of power, all that seemed much too sad to me (...) Scientific research then came to my rescue – I saw within it a space for unlimited liberty, as well as an adventure as ancient as it was extraordinary (...) Also, at the moment when my dream of building a new world came up against hard reality, I fell in love with science (...) Science has been a compromise allowing me not to renounce my desire for change and adventure, to maintain my freedom of thought and to be who I am, while minimising the conflicts with the world around me that this implied. On the contrary, I was doing something that the world would appreciate” (pp. 2-6). According to Carlo Rovelli, the subversive spirit, the desire for change and science are thus constantly intermingled: “While I was writing my book with my friends on the student revolution (a book that the police did not like and got me the third degree in the police headquarters of Verona – ‘Tell us the names of your communist friends!’), I immersed myself more and more in the study of space and time” (p. 30): “Each step forward in my scientific understanding of the world is also a subversion. Scientific thought always has something subversive and revolutionary about it” (p. 138).
What particularly attracted Carlo Rovelli was the international and cosmopolitan dimension of the scientific “community”, sometimes showing the dream of a world association, disinterested and enriching itself through the discussion of differences. At the Imperial College, London, “I met for the first time the multi-coloured and international world of researchers of theoretical physics: youths in suit and ties mixing in the most natural way possible with researchers in bare feet and with long hair tied back with coloured bands; all the languages and physiognomies intersecting, and one could glean a type of joy of differences, in the sharing of the same respect for intelligence” (p. 34).
However, islands of paradise cannot exist in barbaric capitalism. If it reveals a profound aspiration for a really human world, united and solid, this vision is idealist, as Carlo Rovelli himself recognises in his book.
And thus to take knowledge and the truth further, he advocates open and frank debate and the healthy and disinterested confrontation of hypotheses:
“Galileo and Newton, Faraday and Maxwell, Heisenberg, Dirac and Einstein, to name only some of the most important examples, were nourished by philosophy and would never have accomplished the immense conceptual leaps that they made if they hadn’t also had a philosophical education.” Indeed! And Carlo Rovelli himself has an approach to science that is strongly “nourished with philosophy”. That’s why he doesn’t adopt a static vision in order to understand the world as it is (as in a snapshot) but, on the contrary, he adopts a vision in movement to understand the world in its becoming. The first approach sees things existing independently from each other, for themselves and forever; here lies one of the sources of mysticism. The second sees things in terms of contradictory relations and thus in their dynamic, their becoming, which opens the way to the dialectic.
Carlo Rovelli attempts to use this same method in order to also understand human society. In talking of his youth at the beginning of the book, his revolt against the injustices of this society, and calling himself “revolutionary”, he demonstrates that he doesn’t believe in an eternal capitalism: “My adolescence was more and more a period of revolt. I didn’t recognise myself in the values expressed around me (...) The world that I saw around me was very different from that which seemed to me just and good (...) We wanted to change the world, to make it better” (pp. 2 and 3). We do not share the concrete political positions that Carlo Rovelli then advances in his book. Moreover, on this level and as he himself affirms, he tends to go down the road, not of a rigorous scientific approach, but according to his “dreams” and “fantasies” (p. 146)[4]. But that alters nothing of the importance of his research and contributions. To use the scientific method in order to understand humanity and its social organisation is certainly a lot more difficult: all reflection on science, its history and method is thus for this reason also an extremely precious treasure. Here’s what astronomer, astrophysicist and militant of the Dutch Communist Left, Anton Pannekoek (1973-1960) had to say on the subject: “Natural science is correctly considered as the field in which human thought, through a continual series of triumphs, most powerfully develops its forms of logical conceptions... On the other hand, at the other extreme, a vast field of human actions and relationships are found in which the use of tools doesn’t play an immediate part and which acts at a far distance, like profoundly unknown and invisible phenomena. Here thought and action are determined by passion and impulses, by arbitrariness and improvisation, by tradition and belief; here no logical methodology leads to the certainty of knowledge (...) the contrast which appears here, between on the one side perfection and on the other side imperfection, signifies that man controls the forces of nature or will increasingly do so, but doesn’t yet control the forces of will and passion that exist within him. When he stops advancing, perhaps even regresses, it is at the level of an evident lack of control over his own ‘nature’ (Tilney). It is clear that this is the reason that society is still so far behind science. Potentially man has mastery over nature. But he still doesn’t possess a mastery over his own nature”[5]. And this is not the only reason for the difficulty in understanding the human soul and society; what must be added is the permanent ideological pressure exerted in order to justify the status quo of the world such as it is. Capitalism has need of science for the development of its economy and thus to encourage it in a certain measure (in a “certain measure” only because scientific research doesn’t escape the spirit born out of competition and particular interests). But the advance of thought regarding man and his social life immediately and frontally comes into conflict with the interests of this system of exploitation, particularly since this system has become decadent and obsolete with the interests of humanity demanding its disappearance. Thus the science of man is always held in check by the dominant ideology which tends to impose its own blinkers on it. This is also why humanity has need of researchers and scientists like Carlo Rovelli because they furnish us with the arms of criticism and their works constitute part of the flames of the promethean fire. This work (as his previous one) takes its part in the development of an indispensable knowledge of the history of science and philosophy and thus allows us not only to spend some worthwhile “time” but also nourishes our revolutionary reflection and critique.
Ginette (July 2015)
[1] And if time doesn’t exist? Editions Dunod, 2012. We’ve already published an article on the preceding book of Carlo Rovelli, Anaximandre de Milet ou la naissance de la pensee scientifique . This article was published in RI 422 and is available on the French website. A discussion in English of the book and others appears on the English website under the title Reading notes on science and marxism [1380]. Carlo Rovelli has also published a new essay: Beyond the visible: The reality of the physical world and quantum gravity, according to Odile Jacob.
[2] Carlo Rovelli is the principal author, along with Lee Smolin, of the theory of loop quantum gravity. This theory proposes a unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Behind these names, as tough as they are for beginners, is hidden the most fundamental problem in science now: how to overcome the present incompatibility between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
[3] Underlined by us.
[4] “Dreams”, as an artistic approach and a number of other aspects of the activities of human thought, are an integral part of the sources of inspiration of those who want to change the world. But they cannot be the point of departure and the point of arrival of revolutionary consciousness; they are and can only be integrated into and come into resonance with the scientific approach. That’s when dreams become possible.
[5] Anton Pannekoek, Anthropogenesis, A Study in the Origin of Man [1412], 1944. This is referred to in the ICC article Marxism and Ethics [1413].
The following article is a contribution on the question of refugees as it is posed today in Germany. Certain aspects are not easily transferable to other countries of Europe. For example the demographic problem treated in the article doesn’t exist in countries such as France, Spain or Italy, given that a high youth unemployment rate exists in these countries despite a low birth rate. However, because of the economic and political weight of Germany in the EU and in the world this article has an importance that goes beyond its national borders.
When, surprisingly and suddenly last September, Chancellor Merkel opened the doors wide to the Promised Land of Germany (and has more or less kept them open since) to thousands of refugees camping in shameful conditions in the Central Station of Budapest and its environs, when she defended with speeches full of emotion (unusual for her) the opening of the frontiers to Syrian refugees, facing considerable criticism from her own camp, and then declared that despite the more and more open protests from municipal authorities that couldn’t cope with the influx, that there was to be no upper limit to the welcome of political refugees, the entire world asked itself why Merkel, who is reputed “to reflect on consequences”, to weigh up everything before acting, could engage in such an “adventure”. Because in fact this is an equation with a good number of unknowns which is facing Germany’s Grand Coalition. The question is also posed of how to stop the wave of refugees. A little while ago it was a matter of 800,000 refugees arriving in Germany this year; predictions are even saying that it will be at least a million-and-a-half. Merkel equally seemed, which is also unusual, to have badly calculated the effect of the policy of the helping hand on the local population; for the first time in a long while, she has, according to the opinion polls, gone backwards in the eyes of the electorate and has even been overtaken by a Social-Democrat (Minister of Foreign Affairs Steinmeier). She has not done well here in keeping the populism of the extreme-right at bay; endless waves of refugees, the majority of them Muslims, are grist to the mill of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD)[i] which has been rising in the polls as least in Thuringia as a third force catching up with the SPD.
Why has the Coalition government under the leadership of Merkel and minister of the Economy Gabriel engaged in such a perilous game? Could it be a product of the Merkel-bashing that came out of the Greek crisis, an attempt to brighten her image, or is it some form of sentimentalism? Perhaps the pity of Merkel at her “town-hall meeting” regarding the fate of a young Palestinian girl threatened with expulsion, or the outward emotion of Gabriel regarding the no less cruel fate of a Syrian family in a refugee camp that he visited in Jordan, are really sincere? Even bourgeois politicians have an emotional life…
In our opinion the open door policy has far more material causes. It has motives which are not as altruistic and disinterested as the numerous acts of kindness we’ve seen from the German population, without which the chaos which reigns in the receiving centres for asylum-seekers would be much greater. The objectives of the policy have an importance which largely go beyond the risks and effects involved in such a policy. Let’s examine in some detail the secret objectives pursued by “the policy of opening up the frontiers”.
For some years now the theme of the “demographic problem” has haunted the media. According to the Federal Institute of Statistics, the Federal Republic is threatened with the ageing and lowering of the national population which decreased by 7 million inhabitants to fall to around 75 million around 2050. Already, since the reunification of 1989, the population of the whole of Germany had fallen by 3 million, in particular with the dramatic fall in the birth rate in East Germany. As much literature referring to this issue these last years has shown, it is clear to the German bourgeoisie that if this process isn’t checked and continues, it will in the long-term turn into a considerable loss of influence and prestige of German capitalism on the military, economic and political levels.
Already today, the lack of well-trained workers constitutes a brake on the necessity for Germany to remain a strong economy. In about a sixth of all professional branches there is a lack of qualified personnel which is so serious that according to some managers it badly affects the competiveness of a good number of enterprises. According to a study of Prognos AG (Arbeitslandschaft 2030) “.. in 2015 a good million higher diplomas were lacking -180,000 more than the number expected by economists for this same year before the arrival of the refugees. Concerning professionally qualified workers the gap is still estimated at 1.3 million. And there is even a lack of some 550,000 unqualified workers in 2015”( Handelsblatt, October 9 2015 ). In eastern Germany the lack of qualified personnel is already creating the following vicious circle: the flight of young workers towards western Germany at rates constantly above those of arrivals leading to the closure of small to medium-sized firms, which in their turn accelerate the process of departure.
In this situation the flux of numerous war refugees is manna from heaven for the German economy. The latter has recognised this: Telekom offered its help with lodgings and provisions for the refugees as well as personalised support towards some cases. Audi has spent a million euros in initiatives favouring refugees. Daimler and Porsche aim to create places for apprenticeships among the young refugees; Bayer supports the initiative of its employees in favour of the refugees. It goes without saying that the “personal responsibility” on which these firms pride themselves serves their real interests. It is quite simply a question of drawing a profit from the potential for exploitation that the refugees hold.
The Syrian refugees in particular represent an interesting source of human capital, for which many enterprises now have a pressing need. Firstly, the great majority are young; they can thus contribute to rejuvenating the age of workers in firms and – in general – lower the average age of society. Secondly, the Syrian refugees are clearly better educated than other refugees, as the enquiries from the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge – the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees - show. More than a quarter of them had higher levels of education and represent a particularly lucrative source of labour power, including engineers, technicians, doctors, care workers among others - all categories which are most eagerly looked for. German businesses even profit from the refugees from a double angle: first of all, it allows them to fill in the gaps in the workforce; then, German capital draws advantage from the effect (called the “brain drain” in the 70’s) of siphoning off highly-qualified workers from the Third World, allowing the saving of a considerable part of its costs of reproduction (that’s to say the cost of education, school, university, etc.).
On to the third advantage offered by refugees of a Syrian origin which is attractive to the German economy. It is the extraordinary motivation of these human beings which fascinates the bosses of the economy such as the President of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche. The mentality of these people has been forged by the experience of being rendered powerless by Assad’s incendiary bombs and the horrors of Islamic State, of losing everything they had and going through the terrible experience of the flight to Europe. And it’s precisely this which makes them recognisable prey for the system of capitalist exploitation. Escaping from Hell, they are ready to work hard for little wages, thinking that for themselves things will only get better. It’s exactly the same mentality that the Trummerfrauen (“the women of the ruins”) had after World War Two: rather than submit to fate and do nothing, they swept and cleaned up the ruins of the devastated German towns with their bare hands, thus taking a decisive role in the reconstruction and the German “economic miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder) after the war, something the bourgeois economists deliberately forget.
This energy and this remarkable spirit of initiative seen among the refugees offers the German bourgeoisie a source of promising human capital full of profits. In addition, just as with the immigrants from the 1960’s and 70’s, in the short-term they can be used to serve capital’s efforts to maintain or even increase the pressure on wages.
But the refugees also form an area of manoeuvre for German imperialism, as it turned out in the past days and weeks in the context of the aggravation of the war in Syria; and for more than one reason. The Federal government used the refugee question not only on the moral level, but also on the political level by pillorying other countries, which as it happens include the country of immigration par excellence, the United States, for their hesitations about welcoming the refugees. Just lately, we have been able to see clear indications showing Germany giving a new orientation to its policy towards Syria. Knowingly linking the refugee drama to a so-called solution to the Syrian crisis, the main representatives of German foreign policy (Steinmeier, Genscher, among others) have underlined the necessity to integrate Russia, Iran and even, temporarily, the butcher Assad into the Syrian peace process. Moreover, Berlin and the Kremlin are acting together in putting the war in Ukraine to one side so all of their forces are concentrated on the question of the situation in Syria. Not even the move by Putin to deploy additional military forces in the Syrian town of Latakia has caused any particular irritation to the Federal government. The Minister of the Economy, Gabriel, even called for the end of economic sanctions against Russia, affirming that:”...sanctions couldn’t be maintained in the long term on the one hand, and on the other hand, what is needed is (...) collaboration”.
With this political reorientation Germany is again moving, for the first time since the war in Iraq, towards an open confrontation with the United States. The latter, via the State Department, has lately upped the tone against Assad and have shown themselves far from amused by the latest diplomatic offensive of Putin at the last UN General Assembly. On the other hand the US has a very ambivalent attitude towards IS to say the least; its role towards the Islamic State has been extremely dubious, and the half-hearted way in which the US has attacked it poses a whole series of other questions as to the real intentions of American imperialism towards this terrorist organisation.
The change of course in German foreign policy seems to be partly the result of interventions and pressure from German industry. Within the latter criticisms towards the sanctions against Russia are growing as it becomes clear that it is the German economy that is bearing the brunt, while the big American enterprises such as Bell and Boeing continue to do major business with Russia despite the sanctions. Whereas the volume of German economic trade with Russia has fallen by 30%, in the same period trade between the US and Russia has increased by 6%. And further to these economic reasons political arguments also come into play for German capitalism in its opposition to the maintenance of the economic embargo against Russia. Not having a military potential to threaten and dissuade comparable to that of the United States, German imperialism has to have recourse to other means in order to validate its influence on a global scale. One of these is the economic and industrial power that German policy can use to force and constrain the development of commercial relations. One aspect that shows the mixture of politics and business as well as the political use of economic projects are official state visits to countries like China, Brazil, India or Russia, where the Chancellor is systematically accompanied by a whole suite of influential German business leaders and even representatives of small and medium businesses for the construction of machine-tools. In this sense, the policy of sanctions deprives the German bourgeoisie of more than a contract and thus goes against its general imperialist interests.
The mass of Syrian refugees welcomed by Germany must also be considered as another means of compensation for military weakness – and here, the circle is complete. In this context we shouldn’t underestimate the way that the profound human need for recognition and gratitude can be manipulated in the relations between countries. The evident sympathy for the refugees, expressed by the attempts at assistance by the greater part of the local population, is a point that the German bourgeoisie can profitably use. This debt of thanks towards Germany by a good number of those stranded there can in the longer-term become an opening for its imperialist interests in relation to the Middle East; it can bring about the rise of pro-German factions who through their lobbying could act for the profit of German interests in their country of origin.
What immediately strikes us is the change of appearance in German nationalism. Up until just recently the Greek crisis saw Germany described abroad as the “IVth Reich” and its representatives caricatured, decked-out in Nazi paraphernalia, heartless and merciless. But this is being repaired by its newly-acquired glory as the saviour of the wretched of the earth. Globally the Germans are the “good guys”. Never since its foundation has the reputation of the German Federal Republic been so good as it is today. And as well as this external effect, it also spreads inwards, in the form of democratism. At this moment the German state has provided itself with the bearing of a paragon, tolerant, close to its citizenry, open to the world, thus animating a process that is actually deadly for the working class – the dissolution of social classes into a national unity. Chancellor Merkel, the cold scientist, clearly finds a growing pleasure in her new role as the Holy Mother, the saint of the asylum-seekers. How did she put it? “If we now have to begin to excuse ourselves for showing a friendly face in a situation of urgency, then that is not my country”.
You couldn’t put it better. In fact it’s simply a question of showing a sympathetic front; and behind this friendly face they continue to hunt down and divide. Thus, in parallel to this “culture of welcome” a cynical division is put in place between refugees from war and the “false asylum-seekers”, a merciless selection of “economic refugees”, mostly young people from the Balkans with no perspective but pauperisation. Very quickly the federal state and the Lander have agreed to deliberately declare Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro as safe countries, thus preventing any asylum for people coming from those regions. However even the “real” asylum seekers are themselves not spared from the venomous attacks of the political world or the media, as was shown by the Federal Ministry of the Interior De Maiziere against recalcitrant refugees.
Moreover, some parts of the media, despite the diehard rhetoric from the Chancellor (“we ourselves are going to succeed, we will get there”) are tireless in stirring up worry and panic within the national population. They talk about entire peoples coming towards Europe, denouncing the threat of terrorist attacks by Islamic “moles” coming with the army of refugees and asking when the atmosphere is going to “change”. But above all, the chorus of those hysterically warning about Germany being “overwhelmed” by masses of refugees and shouting that the place is full up are getter louder.
It’s not very difficult to foresee how the two routes, the opening or closing of frontiers, will end up. To be sure the policy of “open frontiers” has only been an exceptional intermission, unique in time: the near future will be marked by a new locking-up of the frontiers, as much on the national level as by EU as a whole. In the future its plans propose that the selection of asylum-seekers “useful” to Germany must directly take place at source in the country of origin. The campaign against smugglers is particularly perfidious: it is not solely aimed at the mafia gangs but also those who professionally help the refugees in flight without profiting from it. “The European Union, which says it is a place of liberty, security and rights, as well as its member states, have created a system making it almost impossible for people being pursued, tortured and oppressed, who have need of urgent help, to find protection in Europe without having recourse to professional smugglers. To bring these people in front of courts and put them in prison is hypocritical, contradictory and profoundly inhuman” wrote the Republikanische Anwaltinnen-und Anwaltevein (RAV) in its Information Letter “Praise to the smugglers”.
It’s incontestable that the world sees in the present wave of refugees a drama of a dimension that they have never known before. In 2013 there were 51.2 displaced persons, by the end of 2014 their numbers reached 59.5 million – being the most important increase in the space of a year and recorded by the UNCHR: these are unprecedented figures. After Syria, Libya threatens to slide into a civil war – with all the consequences identical to Syria. In the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey where the great majority of refugee from the Syrian war have found asylum, the threat is shaping up of a new mass immigration towards Europe following drastic reductions in aid from the UN, with hunger now adding to the desperate absence of perspective.
However, the media is deliberately over-dramatising the already dramatic conditions and adding another layer to them. Thus for some time now the spectre of immigration of entire peoples haunts the greater public, television broadcasts the frightening scenario of millions of Africans, waiting with bags packed, for the least chance to set out and try their luck in Europe. Such assertions serve only to sow worry and fear in the population and – to say the least – do not correspond to the facts. If one examines the movement of refugees closely one can see that the greater number of them in the world look for shelter close to their countries of origin; it’s only when all hope of a return has disappeared that those refugees who have the financial means to move can make the long and perilous trek towards Europe, North America or Australia. The rumours of a mass exodus coming from Africa has no basis at all up to now; migrations from the continent are largely less chaotic than the scare stories in the media would have us suppose. Often entire village communities sell their goods and belongings and club together to finance the voyage to Europe for a single young man chosen by the whole of the community and who is given the responsibility to then support the village – this is the model for the search for work tested over decades.
However, startled by the growing number of refugees, the Federal government has been compelled to act on the profound causes of the refugee drama, as it said. But the mountain gives birth to the molehill. Everything coming from the minds of Merkel & Co in relation to solving this basic global problem is only fine words and hundreds of millions of euros out of the coffers to finance the refugee camps of Turkey and Lebanon. Not a word of responsibility of the major industrial nations in the destruction of the foundations of human existence in the Third World. Let’s look once again at the words of Republikanische Anwaltinnen-und Anwalteverein (RAV) who come close to the real causes of the misery in the so-called developing countries, even if they inevitably lack precision (what do they mean by “the Europeans”, who is “us”?): “For many reasons, Europe has created the causes and continues to still make them today. The political relations that the European colonial powers left behind after their retreat, including the tracing of arbitrary frontiers, are only part of it. From the 16th to the 18th centuries the Europeans invaded South America, wading up to their thighs in blood, robbing gold and silver by the boatload which served as start-up capital for an economy about to flourish. The Europeans turned about 20 million Africans into slaves and sold them throughout the entire world. Through the vampirisation of their raw materials, overfishing to death of their waters, the exploitation of their workers for the least costs of production and the export of highly subsidised provisions which wiped out local agriculture, it turns out today that the population of the majority of the countries of emigration are still on the hook”.
The formation of nation states in the industrial countries of the 19th century rested on two fundamentals. The first of them – economic centralisation – was very rational; on the other hand the other was by its nature completely irrational. The constitution into nations of the 18th and 19th centuries took place on the basis of founding myths containing all sorts of narratives but one fundamental idea, one common fictitious myth united them – the fable of a great national community, of a family even, defining itself by a common origin (“the blood line”), culture and language. It was characteristic of the bourgeois nation to turn inwards and close in on itself in relation to the outside on one hand, while on the other hand the outward tendency of each capitalist power aspired to the conquest of the planet, forming one of the contradictory principles inextricably gripping capitalism.
The present refugee crisis shows to what point it is difficult to reconcile these two principles. If one solely takes the economic point of view, the flow of refugees of good working age should, if possible, never cease. A million people arriving every year pose no problem. However what makes sense at the economic level can have fatal consequences politically because within capitalism refugees are not just poverty-stricken but at the same time competitors for lodgings, social benefits, jobs. What isn’t a problem for the capitalists is one for the authorities, wages are lowered and the locals uprooted.
It is of course not the first time that a wave of refugees has broken over Germany. In the five years after the war (1945-1950) more than 12 million were expelled from the eastern provinces of Bohemia-Moravia, making their way towards a ruined Germany whose population suffered from deprivations. It’s evident that at this time there could be no question of “a culture of welcome”; on the contrary these refugees came up against resentment, hatred and massive rejection from the local population. Finally, the social integration of all the deported was achieved with much less difficulty than it was feared. This was down to two conditions: firstly the fact that the deported came from the same linguistic and cultural space, secondly, it took place in the context of the reconstruction, which was starting up in West Germany with the creation of the monetary union. The need for available workers was such that it was the bosses who were in competition for the dwindling numbers. Today, on the other hand, the masses of refugees almost without exception come from a foreign cultural and linguistic zone, and come up against a society which for a long time has suffered a constantly worsening economic crisis where competition for work, lodgings, education has taken on an unexpected scale, while catapulting important layers of the population into pauperisation.
When a general economic crisis is added to a lack of perspective and the absence of a social project to counter capitalist misery, then political populism is on the rise, nourishing a phenomenon that Marx called “The religion of daily life”. It’s the “little person’s” mentality which refuses to recognise that capitalism, contrary to past social forms, is a depersonalised, objectified system in which the particular capitalist isn’t a sovereign actor on the move but on the contrary is moved by the latter. As Engels said, the capitalist is dominated by his own product, and the representative of the political class is animated by “necessities” and not his own predilections. Populism is the philistine outrage of the petty-bourgeoisie which confronts the dominant class and blames “its” representatives, but ends up throwing itself into the arms of those it still calls “traitors to the people” in the hope of finding protection against “foreigners”. It is a completely reactionary mentality celebrating conformism as a supreme ideal, and is quite capable of leading pogroms against those that think otherwise, those who have another colour, against everyone who is different.
The Pegida movement[ii], principally established in the east of Germany is a striking, as well as abject, example of this spirit of the extreme right. Intolerant and hypocritical, its war-cry is “We are the people” completely ignoring the working class: the people (to use its jargon), have never, in Germany nor elsewhere – and today still less – been the homogenous collective which this movement fantasises about. Its boycott of the “lying press” as well as its shrill fury against the established parties (going towards death threats against politicians) only illustrates its disappointments over the “betrayal” by politicians and the media, as if the aim of these profoundly bourgeois institutions was to restore or represent the “will of the people”. In reality their unbridled hatred doesn’t confront the ruling class but the weakest layers of society as shown day after day by their rallies in front of the lodgings of refugees, as well as their cowardly attacks against them and foreigners. What is completely typical of pogromism is that it is the parts of the population that are least able to defend themselves which serve as the scapegoats and are made to pay the added costs of their already perilous existence.
The problem of populism and pogromism is that it forces the established parties, particularly the governing parties, to play with fire. In their actions they resemble the famous sorcerer’s apprentice who lets the (bad) genie of panic and hatred of strangers escape from the bottle, thus risking a loss of control. Up until now, contrary to the majority of other European states, the German bourgeoisie has prevented the emergence of a populist party, of the left or right, the reason being that its deadly past is a particularly important preoccupation. It will depend on the way the refugee crisis is treated if things remain thus. Everything seems to indicate that it’s particularly the populist milieu of the right which has profited from the policies of Merkel. The AfD, as we mentioned earlier in the introduction, is presently moving up in the opinion polls, the Pegida movement, quoted above, seems to have the wind in its sails. The “Monday demonstration” at Dresden was again accompanied by crowds of more than 10,000 people, whose potential aggression was sharpened by the speeches into real acts of violence.
How has the German bourgeoisie dealt with this problem? Firstly we should note that a part of the political class is not fundamentally opposed to the attacks of the extreme right. This is shown by the way the seriousness of these attacks has been minimised up till very recently. Now however those who carry out the attacks are being labelled as “terrorists”. That’s important inasmuch as the term “terrorism” provokes certain reflexes and associations of ideas linked to the Second World War where large numbers of so-called saboteurs were immediately executed; or else it evokes the memory of the “German autumn” of 1977 where the terrorists of the RAF were raised to the rank of Public Enemy Number 1. Moreover, by using the accusation of terrorism, the state can call on a number of instruments to prevent the torments and harassments getting too far out of hand. At the same time the AfD is divided. Finally one can see how desperate the politicians and media are by the way they place the Pegida movement close to neo-Nazism, which has always constituted a tested means to socially isolate movements of protest, whatever their colour.
On the other hand the established parties are working to give the impression that they understand the preoccupations and worries of the population. Thus the Federal government tries with financial inducements and moral pressure to relieve Germany of the burden of a part of the Syrian refugees onto other countries of the EU, so far without success. The Great Coalition has quickly concocted a law for a fast-track return to the borders and has begun to strongly enforce it even before it becomes law, solely with the aim of being able to preach to the electorate that it will protect them against Überfremdung or “foreign super-colonisation”[iii]. Within the government there is already a question of returning 50% of the refugees arriving in Germany back across the borders. This essentially comes from the President of the CDU Seehofer and General Secretary Soder who, as part of a division of labour, assume the role of the “bad guys” by vehemently asking for the closure of the frontiers as well as the limitation of the right to asylum written in the Constitution.
In a certain sense these different conceptions within the Coalition reflect the diffused state of spirit in the population, that’s to say among the wage-earners and unemployed of this country. There’s a very loud and growing minority within the population in general and the working class in particular, composed of its least qualified part, often socialised in the context of the old GDR and/or those living on state benefits, who form an open terrain for the anti-Muslim campaigns orchestrated in the world of politics or culture (Sarrazin, Broder, Pirincci, Buschkowsky, etc.) who appear as the spokesmen of the CSU and of certain sectors of the CDU[iv]. There is a silent majority, which up to now left it to young activists, those mainly coming from the anti-fascist milieu, to respond to the racist harassment by blocking roads and counter-demonstrations, feeling obliged to act by the images of misery coming from the Balkans. They are also strongly expressing their protest against the inaction of European states and their indignation over the exactions against foreigners at Dresden, Heidenau and Fretal, by demonstratively applauding the refugees when they arrive, or getting involved by the thousands in helping the masses of refugees, inundating the relief centres with all sorts of assistance and donations.
The spontaneous solidarity of significant parts of the population has surprised the ruling class and wrong-footed it; it wasn’t disposed to promote sympathy towards the war refugees but rather to create an atmosphere of panic and isolation. However, Merkel once again showed her infallible flair for sensing the moods and feelings within society. Just as after the serious nuclear accident at Fukushima, when the principles of maintaining atomic energy were practically got rid of from one day to the next, Merkel took the same abrupt turn regarding asylum policy, annulling a passage in the Dublin Agreement which up to then gave permission to the German bourgeoisie to rid itself any responsibility towards refugees stranded in Italy and in other parts of the EU’s ‘exterior borders’.
We have already mentioned some of the motives which have pushed Merkel to adopt her “policy of open borders”. It is however possible that another motive has played a role in this risky policy. Since the Bundestag elections of 2005, where the expected victory was lost because the then Chancellor Schroder managed to use against her the liberal turn that she had taken at the Leipzig Congress of the CDU in 2003, Merkel learnt something about the consequences that can come from not taking into account the feelings of the “rank and file”. Just imagine what the impact of images of hundreds of thousands of refugees abandoned at the Hungarian border, as well as the endless headlines, would have today on the electoral behaviour of those wishing to give a welcome to the refugees from war in Syria.
According to all appearances two groups in the population are particularly implicated in solidarity with the refugees. On one hand the young, who have been involved in other movements in other places, participating in the anti-CPE movement or that of the Indignados. On the hand, older people who, either from their own experience, or else through the experience transmitted by their parents about the mass expulsions at the end of the Second World War, know about the fate of refugees and so cannot be indifferent to the camps, the barbed wire and the new wave of deportations. Having grown up in the dark decades of the 20th century, this generation is impulsively pushed to act differently today. The important participation of retired workers reveals something else as well: the profound desire for the rejuvenation of society, expressed in the combination of children and adolescents with older people. This demand for rejuvenation can be distinguished from the need for younger workers for the German economy. The ageing of society constitutes a central problem not only for capitalism but for humanity, quite simply because the absence of youth doesn’t only mean a deprivation of a source of joy, life and a vitalisation of the old but is above all a negative setting for one of the most important functions in the evolution of humanity: the transmission of the treasures of experience to the generation of grandchildren.
Finally, the question posed is: does this wave of solidarity constitute a class movement? We don’t think that it possesses any of its characteristics. What’s immediately striking is its completely apolitical character: solidarity takes the form of charity. There is almost no discussion, no exchange of experiences between young and old, between natives and refugees (with the language difficulty in respect of the latter). Any point of departure for any self-organisation outside of the state isn’t there: instead of that, hundreds of thousands of volunteers become casual labourers for a state which, despite the gestures to the gallery by Merkel, provides very little; a state whose representatives, having led the volunteers to exhaustion by their own inaction, are now talking about the “limits of capacity”.
Once again: the wave of solidarity across Germany these last weeks is not unfolding on a class terrain. The working population, the principle subject of this solidarity, is dissolved almost to non-existence into the “people”. This was also the case with the solidarity towards the victims of the Tsunami in 2004. Then as now the solidarity was emptied of all class character and expressed itself in the framework of an inter-classist campaign. However, the difference with the Tsunami was that it happened far away in Asia whereas the misery of the refugees is happening right here under our eyes, so much so that solidarity and everything that concerns it takes on quite another dimension.
In fact this refugee crisis, which has only just begun, can become a decisive question for the working class. It is not yet determined how the working class, or rather its preponderant parts at the national as international levels, will react to the stakes: through the development of solidarity or though demarcation and exclusion. If our class aims to recover its class identity, solidarity can be an important means of unification in its struggle. If, on the contrary, it only sees in the refugees competition and a threat, if it doesn’t form an alternative to capitalist misery, to a system which forces millions to flee under the threat of war or of hunger, then we will be under threat of a massive extension of the pogromist mentality and the proletariat at the heart of it will not be spared.
FT, 7.11.15
[i] The Alternative for Germany is a Eurosceptic party created in 2003, following the “no-alternative” policy in response to the debt crisis in the Eurozone. It is nicknamed the “party of professors” because counted among its founding members are numerous professors of the economy, public finances and the right. It presents itself as anti-euro but not anti-Europe; its main demand is the progressive dissolution of the Eurozone. Its party members (who claim to be neither of the right nor the left) are united in the feeling that Germany has paid too much for the other states, notably in the relief funds for the Eurozone, and call for the return of the Mark. It doesn’t so much insist that Germany leaves the Eurozone but that those who don’t respect its discipline do so (according to Wikipedia).
[ii] Abbreviation of the “Patriotische Europaer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes” (European Patriots against the Islamification of the West), a movement of the extreme-right against Islamic immigration into Germany. The movement was launched on October 20 by Lutz Bachmann and a dozen other people. Bachmann was a petty criminal who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for a number of burglaries he made in the 1990’s. He fled to South Africa and took a false identity before being extradited. He was later sentenced for drug trafficking. Since October 2014, the Pegida movement has demonstrated each Monday at 18h30 in a Dresden park against the government’s asylum policy and the “Islamification of Germany”.
[iii] A difficult term to translate that, in bourgeois political language, has taken on a palette of nuances since the 70’s. Today it seems to mean “an excessive proportion of foreigners” and a colour prejudice.
[iv] The CDU/CSU is the political force formed in Germany at the Federal level by the two “brother parties” of the conservative, Christian Democrat right. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) is present in the all the Länder except Bavaria and the Social Christian Union (CSU) in Bavaria only.
Water is vital to life, to humanity. Two-thirds of the planet is covered by water. However... potable water is becoming a rare, precious commodity, including in some of the most developed urban zones. To live and survive by drinking a simple glass of water is no longer an easy thing! And there is also drought linked to climate change and desertification in Africa, Asia and Australasia.
The reasons for this are not just industrial or agricultural pollution in themselves. The corruption of the ruling class is also a powerful factor.
The scandal of the polluted water of Flint, a small town in Michigan USA, is the latest example of this problem. The facts: in 2014, in order to reduce costs, the municipality of Flint, rather than continue buying water from the town of Detroit, decided to draw its supply from a local river of doubtful quality. After the discovery of bacteria, the local authorities started a chemical treatment process which ended up leaching lead from the pipework and into the distribution network supplying households. For a year-and-a-half, between April 2014 and autumn 2015, the inhabitants of this town of 100,000, the majority black and poor, used and consumed this lead-contaminated water. Many ongoing complaints were ignored and there were 87 cases of Legionnaires disease, ten of whom died; thousands of children are affected with risks of irreversible damage to their nervous systems by lead poisoning.
The scandal which followed forced Barack Obama to declare an emergency, the President himself affirming with hand on heart: “If I was responsible for a family there, I would be outraged that the health of my children could be in danger”. The political mobilisation then unleashed is almost an example of unanimity! The state governor and the Flint municipal administration are accused of negligence and having knowingly closed their eyes for months. There was a clamour for resignations, including from the film-maker Michael Moore, himself a native of Flint: “It is not only a water crisis. It is a crisis of race, a crisis of poverty”, he said, intimating that such a scandal wouldn’t have happened in a comfortable and white part of Michigan. Because Flint, an industrial centre in the shadow of Detroit, has suffered a total collapse of the automobile industry, in particular that of General Motors (founded in Flint in 1908). In fifty years, Flint has lost half its population. The unemployment rate today is close to twice the national average and 40% of its inhabitants live below the poverty level.
So there it is: all you need to know! Those that are responsible for the water crisis have been found: they are racists and profit from the misery of the poor in order to make economies on their backs! Here are the guilty, the “bad guys”!
Is it that simple? That these local and regional authorities bear a heavy responsibility is beyond dispute. And good capitalist managers that they are, all these administrators must balance their books faced with economic crisis. And they are not always in agreement on this. But the American state, like all states, wants to reinvent itself with a good account: the guilty must be punished and the situation has to return to “normal”. “Never again!” we are told (yet again). This sort of language has already been heard with each financial, health or ecological scandal for years and years and applied to this or that barbaric act of war and terrorism over the whole of the planet. From Bhopal to Fukushima, from the contaminated blood scandal in the NHS in the 1970s and 80s to the Amoco Cadiz, to the recent factory explosion at Tianjin in China and thousands of other episodes, we see the same story: the prosecution of the guilty is called for in order to pacify indignation and prevent any reflection on the underlying causes of these scandals.
In the circumstances, the American state, with Obama at its head, puts itself forward as the guarantor of public health faced with all the crooks or politicians greedy for profits. They want to look like champions of morality or knights in shining armour protecting the quality of life. Dream on... or rather, put up with the nightmare! It is the same state that reduces its working and social budgets, establishes austerity programmes, reducing the population to mass unemployment and tipping people into permanent precariousness. Never mind: sacrifice the guilty and above all keep the states and the capitalist system as a whole out of any responsibility.
In fact this logic hides what’s essential and this is the aim of the manoeuvre. Behind each scandal or catastrophe, there is usually the search for profits. But the principle of profit is not the privilege of this or that badly-intentioned or corrupt bourgeois: it is the permanent logic of a system at bay, a barbaric system, of a bourgeois class which only lives by competition for profit. These are the implacable laws inherent in capitalism.
Engels already declared in 1845: “I have never seen a class so profoundly immoral, so incurably rotten and so corroded within by egoism as the English bourgeoisie and by this I mean especially the bourgeoisie proper (...) With such avarice and greed it is impossible for a sentiment, a human idea to exist which is not soiled (...) all the conditions of life are evaluated by the criteria of what can be gained and everything that doesn’t bring forth money is idiotic, unrealisable, utopian (...)”[i]
Nothing has fundamentally changed since then. On the contrary. After a century of capitalism’s decadence, which has now reached the stage of outright decomposition, the quest for profits pushes the war of each against all to the planetary level just as it does at the local level. Capitalism is a permanent catastrophe. And to survive it must find in each spectacular and disastrous episode someone responsible, a scapegoat: a “bad political choice”, a “rotten leader”, a case of “human error”, or it blames “the climate”, “bad luck”, “madness”. The bourgeois states, with the USA at their head, thus try to smarten up their image in order to preserve their rotting society.
Let’s be clear: we are not defending a fatalist analysis of history, or saying that everything is written in advance, or that each catastrophe is banal and ineluctable. It’s exactly the opposite! It’s the bourgeoisie itself with all its various ideologies which defends the inevitable existence of the capitalist world and demands that we resign ourselves to it. All that’s needed is a little more individual “good will” or for us to be confident in a “really democratic” state in order to attenuate the effects of these catastrophes, to make our “fate” more tolerable.
The left parties of the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus present themselves as champions of the “democratic solution”. The democrats in power and the movements on the left never stop telling us that with a state that listens to the needs of the people everything will be better and scandals will finish! The end of war! The end of exploitation! But the very reason for the state is precisely the preservation of the interests of capital, the profits of which are at the centre of all sorts of health scandals. With the idea of “democratic renewal” the capitalist left hopes to anesthetise the working class, render it docile and reinforce its impotence.
The Flint scandal, following many others, is the occasion for new political manipulations by the democratic bourgeoisie. But it’s their whole world which scandalises us and we reject its deadly logic altogether. It is this entire system which must be overthrown, from the roots, and at the global level. Despite appearances, despite the real difficulties and feelings of impotence which dominate the working class, the latter remains, as Engels said, the only social class able to take on this task. The affirmation of the collective international force of the proletariat has in fact been demonstrated by history and it is still able to overthrow the established order and launch itself against the dictatorship of capital.
Stopio, 21st February 2016
[i] The Condition of the Working Class in England
Much has changed in the nearly forty years since 1978 when this article was first published. The disappearance of the USSR dealt an all but fatal blow to many of those “bourgeois factions” around the world which in the past resorted to marxist phraseology to justify their crimes. The Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998 by the governments of Britain and Eire set up an Assembly for Northern Ireland where the one-time mortal foes Sinn Fein and the DUP share power on the backs of Northern Irish workers. The IRA and the UDA occupy themselves with more “normal” gangsterism: drug-running and protection rackets.1
One thing has not changed: nationalism in all its forms remains the working class’ mortal enemy. The positions set forward in this article thus remain essentially valid: and, one hundred years after the Dublin Easter Rising, it still stands as an answer to all those who would hijack the memory of James Connolly, an Irish revolutionary socialist shot down by the British army, for the cause of Irish nationalism.
“The Labour movement is like no other movement. Its strength lies in being like no other movement. It is never so strong as when it stands alone” (James Connolly from “What is Our Programme”, published in the Workers' Republic, 22 January 1916).
Ever since the outbreak of World War I, desperate factions of the bourgeoisie, determined to survive, have resorted to marxist phraseology and claimed a continuity with the workers' movement in order to save their own skins. In Ireland, the Republicans and their leftist followers have laid their hands on James Connolly in order to justify their dirty work. In equating “Lenin and 1917” with “Connolly and 1916”, they try to sell their nationalist garbage to the workers.
The bourgeoisie has been telling us what has been happening in Northern Ireland since 1969.2 On the one hand we have been told about the brave and disinterested attempts of the democratic British state to keep the Irish from tearing each other to pieces. On the other hand we have heard much about the struggle of the Irish nation for freedom and independence. In 1969, the leftists declared that in Ulster, the oppression of the Catholics (who in every other country in Western Europe, including Britain, are free men, unless they happen to be wage slaves) was the very basis of capitalism and imperialism in Ireland. And they declared that the workers of Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, should support the IRA in the fight for national independence, because until such time as this all-Ireland State of Republican and Stalinist butchers has been established, the Irish working class remains too sectarian, too bigoted and ignorant to fight for its own class interests. Today, evidently, the patriots of the IRA are in retreat and disarray, hammered to the ground by the British Army. Ten years of bombings, mutilated corpses found in back alleys, a decade of massacre in which the British and Irish states, the Republican and the Protestant Extremists have all taken part, appears to be coming to an end. But we have seen that under decadent capitalism there is no peace, only the reorganization and reorientation of the slaughter. The workers of Belfast and Derry have certainly had enough of the politicians of Left and Right, of Orange and Green, who wipe the red blood of the workers from their hands in order to respectfully commemorate the dead. The conflict of factions of the bourgeoisie, their struggle for survival in a capitalist system locked in permanent crisis, leads inevitably, as it has in Ulster, to a terrorisation of the working class. We condemn all of these factions of the bourgeoisie, not simply as brutes and maniacs (of which there is of course no shortage), but as our class enemies.
When we consider the question of nationalism in relation to the workers’ movement of the last century, we do so in order to show the absolutely anti-proletarian nature of the PLO, Polisario, the IRA and all the imperialist gangs of today. Marx was analysing capitalism in its period of emergence and development, when the bourgeoisie was declaring war on reactionary modes of production. For the advanced workers' movement of his time, it was clear that nationalism – wars of unification to create nation states – was the economic and political means by which the bourgeoisie could crush feudalism and create an industrial society, an industrial proletariat. The creation of nation states meant the securing of particular areas of the globe for the development of capitalism. Communists at that time supported nationalist revolutions directed against feudalism, not out of patriotic feelings – on the contrary, the Communist Manifesto already announces that the workers have no fatherland – but because feudalism as such represented a threat to the development, indeed to the very existence not only of the bourgeoisie but of the proletariat as well. Therefore, support for national struggles is dependent upon the conviction that capitalism remains a progressively expanding system. In the last century the progressive role of capitalism remained obvious and indisputable. Today, however, only capitalism's biggest supporters can find anything progressive about it.
In the period when Connolly was developing his analysis, towards the turn of the century in Ireland and the USA, it was becoming clear to revolutionaries that capitalism could no longer develop as before, in the days of headlong economic growth. Connolly concluded that there was no longer any place for an independent, industrialised Irish capitalism in this world:
“...the thoughtful Irish patriot will throw rant aside and freely recognise that it is impossible for Ireland to do what other countries cannot do, with their greater advantages, viz. to attain prosperity by establishing a manufacturing system in a world-market already glutted with every conceivable kind of commodity. It is well also to remember that even under the most favourable circumstances, even if by some miracle, we were able to cover the green fields of Erin with huge ugly factories, with chimneys belching forth volumes of smoke and coating the island with a sooty desolation, even then we would quickly find that under the conditions born of the capitalist system our one hope of keeping our feet as a manufacturing nation would depend upon our ability to work longer and harder for a lower wage than the other nations of Europe, in order that our middle class may have the opportunity of selling their goods at a lower price than their competitors” (Erin's Hope, 1897).
Despite the confusions which Connolly held concerning nationalism, and which we shall examine in a moment, and despite the lack of clarity of the entire workers' movement at that time concerning the possibility of a transition to socialism taking place within national or continental boundaries, for Irish revolutionaries at this time the reactionary character of Irish capitalism was already obvious. The revolutionary wave of 1917–23 and its defeat proved the impossibility of a transition to socialism except on a world scale, just as the fifty years of barbarism since then have shown that no country can escape the ever narrowing circle of economic chaos and imperialist slaughter. Today, the Republican/Left, blabbering about the nationalism of Marx and Lenin are about as marxist as the West German3 Maoists who propose a national war of German unification because Marx did likewise in 1848 (when Germany consisted of over 30 petty principalities and before the capitalist system had even been created on a world scale):
In 1898, Connolly wrote in the Workers' Republic:
“Every war now is a capitalist move for new markets, and it is a move which capitalism must make or perish.”
With regard to the situation in China at that time, he added:
“...if this war cloud now gathering in the East does burst, it will be the last capitalist war, so the death of that baneful institution will be like its birth, bloody, muddy and ignominious.”
But how did it come about that this marxist who denounced his own bourgeoisie so clearly, and who denounced the entry of the Socialist Deputy Millerand into the French Cabinet as a compromise of the 2nd International with the class enemy, continued to put forward the struggle for national independence in Ireland as a struggle to be supported by the proletariat? Historically we can situate the growth of confusion on the national question within the context of the period of reformist activity leading up to the imperialist war of 1914-18. This was a period when the permanent organs of the working class were tending more and more to find a place for themselves within capitalist society. Connolly's schema of an Irish Republic as a stage along the road to socialism is absolutely typical of the epoch in which he was writing.
“Since the abandonment of the unfortunate insurrectionism of the early Socialists whose hopes were exclusively concentrated on the eventual triumph of an uprising and barricade struggle, modern Socialism, relying on the slower but surer method of the ballot box, has directed the attention of its partisans towards the peaceful conquest of the forces of government in the interests of the revolutionary ideal.”
And in the same article, written in 1897, he concludes:
“Representative bodies in Ireland would express more directly the will of the Irish people than when those bodies reside in England. An Irish Republic would then be the natural depository of popular power; the weapon of popular emancipation, the only power which would show in the full light of day all those class antagonisms and lines of economic demarcation now obscured by the mists of bourgeois patriotism.”
In other words, whereas within Ireland a majority might be found who would vote for socialism, this Irish majority for Irish Socialism would vanish if the votes were counted within the Empire as a whole. Therefore, the need for an Irish Republic. Socialism in Ireland becomes purely an Irish affair. Years of reformist struggle within national boundaries were trapping revolutionaries inside a nationalist and parliamentary framework. The theoretical work, of clarification undertaken by revolutionaries like Lenin, Trotsky, or indeed Connolly, was part of a bitter fight against the degeneration of the 2nd International. Their stand on the national question was a reaction to the brazen chauvinism and imperialist policies of the “Labour leaders”. In the case of Connolly, we find real encroachments of bourgeois ideology in his writings, which show that he never grasped the capitalist nature of the nation so clearly as Marx did. It was clear that under imperialism, nationalism would have a different significance than in the days of ascendant capitalism. Whether this new significance would be positive or negative for the proletariat remained to be seen. Lenin and Luxemburg debated this question in one of the most important attempts to come to terms with decadent capitalism.4
In Labour in Irish History, Connolly describes capitalism as being something alien to Ireland, whereas capitalism is no more “alien” in Ireland than in the USA. Connolly had always insisted upon the necessity for the proletariat to defend its class autonomy against the bourgeoisie. But the basis of organisational and 'military' independence is political autonomy – class consciousness. Because revolutionaries in Ireland were unable to break with nationalism after 1914, when capitalism's progressive role had clearly come to an end, they were unable to firmly defend the class autonomy of the proletariat.
The final collapse of the pre-war workers' movement in 1914, and the mobilisation of millions of workers for the imperialist slaughter, came as an enormous shock to revolutionaries. These events precipitated immense confusions: Liebknecht of the German Social Democratic Party failed to oppose the first war credits because he accepted party discipline; many Bolsheviks called for an end to the war through “pressure” on the governments. In Ireland, Jim Larkin, the hero of the 1913 Dublin lockout, at first spoke about the possibility of conditionally supporting the British government. One of the most magnificent proletarian responses to the war was Connolly's A Continental Revolution, published on 15th August:
“But believing as I do that any action would be justified which would put a stop to this colossal crime now being perpetrated, I feel compelled to express the hope that ere long we may read of the paralysing of the internal transport service on the continent, even should the act of paralysing necessitate the erection of socialist barricades and acts of rioting by Socialist soldiers and sailors, as happened in Russia in 1905. (...) To me therefore, the Socialist of another country is a fellow-patriot, as the capitalist of my own country is a national enemy!”
These hopes for a continental revolt were not fulfilled in Connolly's lifetime. In face of a total mobilisation of the European proletariat, and the apparent lack of any possibility of a class solution to the crisis, Connolly began to abandon any class perspective. Because Ireland was under the control of the British state, opposition to that state was indeed the first duty of any revolutionary in Ireland. But only the proletariat can stop the war, just as only the proletariat can smash the system which produces such barbarism. The path which Connolly took after 1914, which led him to the barricades in the company of the petty bourgeois nationalists, was a total abandonment of what he had previously fought for. On 8th August he pointed out the conflict of interests between the workers on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie and the farmers within Ireland on the other; and he called for armed struggle in the streets, in order to “set the torch to a European conflagration”.
Nonetheless, the increasing importance of the nationalist perspective leads him to write: “Should a German army land in Ireland tomorrow we should be perfectly justified in joining it if by so doing we could rid this country once and for all from its connection with the Brigand Empire that drags us unwillingly into this war” (“Our Duty in This Crisis”, 8th August 1914).
The position which he develops, that the British Empire alone is responsible for the war – for a "war upon the German nation" opens the way for a military alliance with other imperialist powers. This reaches an absolute zenith of confusion in the spring of 1916, where he holds up the patriots of Belgium (who were after all the cannon fodder of Belgian and British imperialism) as models to be emulated in Ireland.
The nationalist opposition to the war crystallised in Ireland around the Irish Republican Brotherhood whose petty bourgeois madness was well expressed by their leading luminary, Patrick Pearse. He announced in December 1915:
“The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth (...) the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.”
Because the workers were evidently not prepared to fight for the Irish Nation in 1916 the way they had fought for their own class interests in 1913, Connolly, in turning his back on the proletarian solution, was forced to join forces with such people as Pearse, despite his profound mistrust of them. Even while workers in Dublin were striking, Connolly and his Citizens Army of the 1913 lockout,5 were negotiating for a putsch with the nationalists, to be armed by German imperialism and which would declare the erection of precisely the kind of parliamentary-democratic state as would soon be used to crush the German workers. For the Easter Rising, the Citizens Army was dissolved into the Volunteers of the nationalists. All pretence of class autonomy had to disappear. The Easter Rising of 1916, staged in the middle of the war (“England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity”) was quickly and savagely crushed by the British Army. The promised German aid, insufficient in any case, never got through. Just as to this day the IRA lacks a serious backer.
The workers' movement in Ireland collapsed after 1916; its traditions obliterated in a half century of nationalist and sectarian counter-revolution. 1916 paved the way for the War of Independence which was the last hopeless attempt of the Irish bourgeoisie to assert a measure of independence. And when, in response to the world-wide proletarian upsurge which followed the war, the Irish workers began to struggle on their own class terrain, the bourgeoisie of Belfast and Dublin turned their weapons against them. In Belfast, the class solidarity of the workers, Catholic and Protestant, culminating in the strikes of 1919, was repeatedly sabotaged by Loyalists and Nationalists. In Limerick the patriotic unions, forced to call a general strike, kept it with the help of the IRA and the local bourgeoisie in Limerick within the bounds of an "anti-British" movement, before abruptly breaking it off, after the intercession of the local bishop. In early 1922 the Republican government in Dublin smashed the strike and occupation movements of the railway workers in Cork, and the mill and creamery workers in Mallow. The workers were turned out by the local IRA commandant on the orders of the cavalier guerrilla, Michael Collins, and by the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, the proud “followers” of Larkin and Connolly. In addition, IRA troubleshooters were moved in to prevent the outbreak of “disorder”.
Regarding these events, the Workers' Dreadnought wrote: “The Transport Workers' Federation had entered into an agreed national compromise from which the Mallow workers had dissented, we think, not only because they objected to any decrease of wages whatsoever, but because they are prepared to stand forth as rebels against the existing social order. They are fighting for a Workers' Republic and opposing the policies of the bourgeois Republicans, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and the others who at present hold the reins of power in Southern Ireland. The Mallow Workers' Council, whether a temporary example which they knew could not be sustained, or as an attempt to put the match to the tinder of revolt for all Ireland, deliberately raised the Red Flag of proletarian rule.”
The participation of Connolly in 1916, which would never have happened had the European proletariat risen earlier against capital, is hailed by the bourgeoisie as the “fitting climax” to Connolly's political career. Once again the dispossessed class is to be robbed of its own experience, the memory of its own class fighters, who are now presented as calculating capitalist politicians on a par with bloody functionaries like Mao or Ho.6 The October Revolution showed that the real way out of barbarism does not involve fighting for nation states which are now so many barriers to the development of the productive forces. And so it remains the historic task of the world proletariat today: the global destruction of capitalism, the abolition of nations.
RC
1Sinn Fein is essentially the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, the Democratic Unionist Party is that of the various Protestant para-militaries like the Ulster Defence Association.
2This was the year that the British Army was sent into Derry and Belfast in response to serious violence between Catholics and Protestants.
3In 1976, Germany was still divided into a Western zone occupied by the American, British, and French armies, and an Eastern zone occupied by the Russian troops of the then USSR.
4 The First World War did not drag all parts of the world into the conflict, so that proletarian elements could be confused about the nature of the war and the period. The possibility of “independent” bourgeois development in the colonies or the concept of the imperialist war was seen as a manifestation of the decadence of the metropolitan capitalist countries rather than of the decadence of global capitalism. Despite the confusions within the Bolshevik Party on this question, this did not at this time lead them to identify with their own national capital. On the contrary, their views on this subject threatened to dismember the Russian Empire. Whereas for Connolly, his position led him into direct alliance with his own bourgeoisie.
5The 1913 Dublin strike and lockout was one of the most important struggles of the working class in the last years before the war. The vast majority of the workers of Dublin were involved, but they suffered a serious defeat in part because of the failure of unions in Britain to offer them sufficient support.
6Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, the leaders of the Stalinist state capitalist regimes in China and Vietnam respectively.
By starting a new heading of ‘Readers’ Contributions’ on our website, and occasionally in our paper, we hope to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view. The question of art is clearly such an issue, and we welcome Boxer’s effort to deepen our understanding of the marxist approach to humanity’s creative productions.
In part one [1417] we blew a bit of dust off the surface of the question of art by taking up some of the marxist analyses of Max Raphael in relation to a ideological domain of art, which he said included the “sovereign nature of architecture” and the “importance of folk-poetry”. We attempted to look at the relations between different expressions in the domain of art, the relations between the domain of art and other ideologies, and also to the economic base from which these ideological expressions spring. Using an intriguing quote from Marx in Grundrisse we looked into the question of the “eternal nature” of Greek art, a seeming contradiction if art is linked to an economic base that’s since disappeared. Part of the answer to this question lies in the integral nature of Greek mythology which was generally shared in an immediate and pressing way due to the historical conditions. But it is with the cave paintings, engravings (and portable art) of the twenty-five-thousand-year long expressions of the Upper Palaeolithic that we are once again confronted with an “eternal nature” of art from a people whose magic and mythology would have been even more pressing and widely shared in their spiritual production than that of the Greeks. Raphael has bought all his artistic and marxist criticism to bear on the question of Upper Palaeolithic art, on its possible meanings and spiritual depth. We will look at this below but first a slight diversion entirely in keeping with Raphael’s marxist approach to the period.
From the long “procession” on the Lion Panel at Chauvet Cave. Discovered in 1994, the paintings are around 33,000 years old and described by its discoverers as seeing “time stand still”. The paintings confirm Raphael’s analysis that detailed compositional art would date back to the Aurignacian, a period much earlier than the caves he studied. While there is powerful realism here there are also strange and human-like lions in the pride. The bison are shown in a typical pose and many other paintings over thousands of years indicate that the bison clan would have been the one that was composed of shamans and sorcerers.
Around thirteen thousand years ago in a cave called Roc-aux-Sorciers of the Magdalenian period in Vienne, France, there were on the wall, amongst other profound expressions of art, three life-sized depictions of women deeply etched into the rock face in a natural and harmonious pose. Despite the damage done to them over time, they appear like floating, erotic goddesses. There are obvious similarities with these once-painted figures and the Classical and Renaissance trio of Graces, “But by far the most extraordinary thing about these figures is the mastery of perspective and the three-quarters view, as they half turn like dancers in a line”[i] as if they are ready to peel off and join the dance. In the same period, on a cave wall in Tarn, France, there are reliefs of two reclining women, which again despite the damage, have “... caused a great deal of astonishment because of the mastery of perspective and easy freedom of pose with its foreshadowing of Classical and Renaissance art” (ibid). At Osatrava Petrkovice, in the Czech Republic, there is a small figure of a woman’s torso carved in hard, shiny black haematite. The piece comes from the Gravettian period some twenty-five thousand years ago, and draws these remarks from Nancy Sandars above: “In a setting that gives a weird foretaste of the Industrial Revolution with its coal and iron, the artist has produced a figure of touching naturalism and truth. The rugged quality in the work is probably due to the material but the slim, youthful figure has the proportions and even equilibrium (the weight on the right leg) of the late Classical Venus or of the three Graces”. I agree that the ruggedness of the latter carving is due to the material but the cubist appearance of this portable work also enhances its expressive nature and has similarities to the cubist appearance of the symbolic Acheulean “hand-axes” of at least half-a-million years ago, one of the first expressions of art. The works of art on the walls of the Franco-Cantabrian caves studied by Raphael includes Les Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume in France and Altimira and Covalanas in Spain are expressed in the context of compositions that include certain animals and abstract “signs”, but their aesthetic qualities, their similarities and links with classical art are undeniable.
However, we do have to be careful here because a classical symmetry is not the rule on the cave walls; on the contrary asymmetric expressions abound. And animals, not classical human figures, are at the centre of Upper Palaeolithic art. I make this point about aesthetics because very recently the idea was still being put forward, in much the same way, of the “savage past of humanity”, of a development to a finer art from ignorant childlike beginnings. This view that has been soundly contradicted by the analyses of Max Raphael despite the greatly limited access of his sources and it has been further contradicted by many later discoveries since his book was written in 1945. Raphael wrote seventy years ago: “... the dogma that Palaeolithic paintings belong to so-called primitive art gained favour. It has been said that Palaeolithic artists were incapable of dominating surfaces or reproducing space: that they could produce only individual animals, not groups and certainly not compositions. The exact opposite of this is true: we find not only groups, but compositions that occupy the length of the cave wall or the surface of a ceiling; we find representations of space, historical paintings and even the golden section! But we find no primitive art”[ii].
Even apparently random patterns of squiggles, doodle-like appearances (sometimes called “macaronis”) that are widespread in the Upper Palaeolithic caves of Europe have a depth and expression of their own that’s not at all related to some sort of “primitive” expression as a basic stage in a linear development of prehistoric art[iii]. This finger-fluting – sometimes the areas of the soft cave walls have also been incised by some stone or other instrument – relate to hand prints and compositions of animals, with studies showing that in some cases under the “random” patterns lie representational images[iv]. Whatever we are looking at in these caverns at any time during the period of the Upper Palaeolithic, it is not “primitive” art. As abstractions alone there is a depth and consistency to these “doodles” that suggests a spiritual relationship to the cave wall and the cosmos which was believed to lay behind it. There’s no doubt that, along with the development of society, forms of art have suffered advances and regressions with some distinct expressions during the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods clearly being overthrown and superseded, with cave paintings being deliberately defaced and megalithic stones literally overturned, making way for new expressions. This is to be expected in art forms that, amongst other things, represent social organisation, spiritual belief and conflict as well as, as I’ll suggest below, the possible mediation and resolution of conflict, paving the conditions for advance in a situation which is dynamic rather than static. The reverse is also true in that the dynamics of art can turn to the status-quo which in its turn favours regression. Artistic techniques and the more cosmopolitan use of materials have certainly seen major developments over thousands of years, but the fundamentals of art are profoundly embedded in the prehistoric period of humanity and particularly in the Upper Palaeolithic whose peoples Raphael called “history-makers par excellence”[v]. Intuition would suggest that the roots of this art lie in Africa and our understanding of the global geographic dispersion that had its source in this continent would tend to support that view; the fundamentals appear in cave paintings in Australia and Salawasi, Indonesia around the same time and similar expressions occur at different times throughout Africa and into the Americas as it was colonised by humanity.
The cave paintings of Chauvet in the Ardeche region of France, discovered 20 years ago and dating back to 33,000 years, and the paintings discovered last year in Salawesi, Indonesia dating back 40,000 years show, at least, the paucity of those who dismiss the artistic strength of early Palaeolithic artists - already underlined by the virulence and abuse of their arguments[vi] . Against these pernicious ideas the discoveries of Chauvet, Salawesi, Cosquer, Costlllo and many others, made decades after his book, confirm and strengthen the analyses of Max Raphael and, looking at them, can’t fail to again bring up the question of Marx’s “eternal charm” in a period whose specifics were totally unknown to him.
The “birdman” from the depths of the Shaft at Lascaux. The painting is on a wall in a hardly accessible place with many spent lamps on the floor. Only one person could have possibly got in here at a time. The bison is wounded and an accompanying rhinoceros and horse looks fit. Surrounded by “signs” it seems some sort of magic is at work here and, while it’s very difficult to say what’s going on, the ithyphallic figure appears elsewhere at Trois-Freres, Ariege France with similar figures appearing elsewhere in the Magdalenian period. Birds are regular but unusual in Upper Palaeolithic art, appearing much more in later, Neolithic barbarian art. Also found in this “apse” were flint blades, ivory spears with signs on them, sea-shells from the 200 km distant Atlantic Coast which have been stained with red ochre.
We are not looking for the origins of art because these lay much deeper. What we want to look at is a particular expression within the domain of art: the Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings, etchings, engravings, scrapings and doodles, collectively called parietal art (as opposed to sculptured mobile art). These expressions, while the artist is also something of a magician, are not, in the main, solitary specialised functions (though they definitely are in places), but they belong to the whole of society and were no doubt recognised by the peoples of the time as such. Max Raphael says that these paintings tell us little about the functioning of society but then, as usual, very methodically, he tells us a great deal about just that: the clear relationship of the artistic superstructure to the economic base of hunter-gatherers, the organisation in families, the material means of production, the spiritual production, the importance of magic, the differentiations and conflict within a society that was by no means an idyll: “Upper Palaeolithic art shows faith in all natural beings and their affinity and the existence of an organisational force capable of translating magic into reality. This was the magic of the Palaeolithic age and its art. In the best Palaeolithic paintings are shown charges of energy that comes from an objective supernatural character and these charges are perpetrated through the existential intensification of the object.... (The) artist as a magician had all the powers of society at his[vii] disposal, inspired by the group who believed in and took magic and resurrection seriously... the physical and ideological forces of the social group were always there to translate the magic into actual or imagined reality”.[viii] Today, these paintings look modern but there is no art that is more alien and distant from us. Just as symmetry and balance is unusual in these works, then so is the depictions of individuals. We’ve already mentioned that, like the Greeks, the integral and generalised nature of prehistoric mythology favoured the development of an art form that was timeless: “Today, mankind, amidst enormous sacrifices and suffering is, with imperfect awareness, striving for a future in the eyes of which all our history will sink to the level of ‘prehistory’. Palaeolithic man was carrying out a comparable struggle. Thus the art most distant from us becomes the nearest; the most alien to us becomes the closest”[ix]. The basis of this art and its animal compositions is an expression of the conscious break from the animal kingdom and a drive forward to new and wider conditions of existence from a much earlier stage of humanity, involving the identification of obstacles in order to overcome them and move onto a new stage. As in many areas of anthropology, we can’t mechanically reconstruct this period from ethnology – we’ve seen this danger elsewhere in ideas about the “primitive killer savages” of the past from today’s examples of isolated tribes that have descended into pure superstition.
For example, the totemism of today’s “primitive” peoples is nothing like that of prehistory. In this case, any resemblance between the “primitive” tribes of the 20th or 21st century and the Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, struggling against their clear and present dangers as well as their own internal conflicts, has to be treated with care, even if ethnological evidence can be a useful pointer and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. See for example the work of Jerome Lewis among the ‘pygmy’ tribes in the Congo which doesn’t point in the direction of “killer savages”[x]; and there are further examples, some of which are quoted below.
Raphael’s work consists of trying to understand the importance of the group: the interpretation of the parts in relation to the whole; the drawing out of the meanings of the groups and individual animals, because in art form and content tend towards the same expression. The groups of animals relate to social organisation and this social nature is essential to Max Raphael’s analysis. In these compositions of animals the paintings acquire a greater significance. In the caves that he examines (and in many others that he knew nothing about) certain animal species dominate; there’s antagonism and conflict in various compositions. These expressions are much more than hunting magic, probably pre-date it, and the same animals appear almost everywhere, though their frequency varies with the caves and in the main they are not the ones that served as a food source. There are the carnivorous animals that were not hunted, shown in the most meticulous detail with their associated behaviours (Raphael wouldn’t have known about most of these from the caves he knew about): “The character of each animal seems to be as limited as the subject matter, everywhere the reindeer live a bright cheerful idyll, just as the bison live a stormy drama, the horses display playful sensitivity and the mammoths (painted long after they were extinct in places) unshakeable dignity and gravity”[xi]. The force of these compositions is a combination of naturalism, magic and totemism. Some animals form pairs taking up certain positions in relation to others to the point of “crossing” one another, and even the same or different animals merging into one hybrid form; these are also different from the anthropomorphic sorcerer figures. Horses take in different breeds of horses and there is a clear relationship of horses and hinds to mammoths. Later discoveries of earlier works also show the rhinoceroses living a “stormy drama”. There appears to be a “transference” of one animal to another (lions and horses for example) and “processions” of animals. Larger groups appear as spectators, in what Raphael says seems to be a “chorus”. There are vulvas and sexually excited animals demonstrating the magic of fertility and the sexual overtones of some of the compositions. Sometimes the struggle of groups is separated as at Les Combarelles in France where on the left wall conflict dominates and on the right the scene is peaceful and the conflict seems to evolve into a united group. These are obviously not cast-iron interpretations from Raphael but they are based on a sound methodology that has been confirmed and validated by later finds.
“Palaeolithic man knew no magic without action, nor could he imagine action without magic; to him theory and practice were one”[xii]. And this unity maintained all its force to the very last expressions of this art over a period of twenty-five thousand years. In fact, with later evidence unknown to Raphael, we can clearly see that strong elements of this art were maintained and developed into barbarian society for over a further fifteen millennia as expressed in the stone, ceramics and metal workings of this universal barbarian culture(s). Raphael saw this himself in the early Egyptian pottery that he studied. Before and outside of civilisation, and in continuity with their ancestors, these barbarians were another “history-making peoples”. In the Upper Palaeolithic, magic was the “science” of its time: it included the totality of all existing knowledge and took into account the means of production through which society was to be transformed. This knowledge certainly included a detailed study of animal behaviour and nature, and confirmed mankind’s conscious superiority over the animal which embraced a developing mythology. Mankind in this period was very much social and according to Raphael the animals symbolised the clan [xiii]. The social unity of society was represented by the groups of animals but this art also represented social tensions, conflict and confrontation: it represented an arena of struggle. There are also clear expressions of catharsis and reconciliation. Within his marxist analysis Raphael uses his structuralist strengths to counter-pose and differentiate sides of oppositions, even evoking the Wagnerian theme of Liebestod “Love Death” as one of many[xiv].
As with many other aspects of this society we can’t know very much for certain and this applies to the question of magic as the “science” of its time. But there are many aspects to this very detailed pictorial record that point us in this direction. Raphael looked at the paintings on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira – which had compositions just like the earlier paintings at Chauvet, as well as contemporary with the caves of Niaux, Castillo, Les Combarelles, etc. It was probably the shaman, the distinctive member of society, who was in most cases the artist. Behind the apparent disorder of the bison and hinds on Altamira’s ceiling, Raphael detects the magic of the eye and magic of the hand – action at a distance. These compositions, along with “signs”, will stand a great deal of examination The scene here is a battle, one where reconciliation takes place. Raphael uses ethnological evidence to explain the unequivocal positions of propitiation and atonement that some of the animals, the bison particularly, take up. There’s clearly a power at work here and this expression of atonement has been seen in much later “primitive” societies such as the Siberian Kamchatkans and Ostiaks, as well as the Nootka Indians of British Columbia. Raphael gives some time to the study of these societies in the work of James George Fraser[xv] . As elsewhere, Raphael warns that we have no way of knowing exactly the mind of this prehistoric period, in relation to magic as to anything else. But the pictorial record, the sheer force of the art, and the analysis given to it, as well as decent and relevant ethnological evidence, suggests we are on the right track.
The aurochs and horse clans represented on a pendent wall at Chauvet. There’s ambivalence over the positions of the rhinoceroses with animals “crossing” one another. The horses have expressions of undoubted feminine tenderness while the aurochs show some masculine bulk. There are also indeterminate animals and signs and this particular painting shows additions over a period of some thousands of years.
The family group is expressed in this art again through animals and not by human figures. Sometimes the male figure is at the centre of the group and sometime the female figure. Woman as Being is expressed in the female deer and horses; clans with their femininity and “combined wisdom and a warlike spirit and from which derive the Amazon, Hagia Sophia and the witch”[xvi], later finding their way into barbarian art and Greek mythology. Raphael rejects a simple form of totemism: “But whatever the social organisation may have been in each case, however tenaciously each group clung to its own as best, all these groups express and embody the consciousness of their unity in the shape of an animal. This is the fundamental expression of totemism”. Just as Jews and Muslims were forbidden to make images of their God so too did the peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic adopt a similar approach with the animal figures representing humans – taboo plays a part here and a wider part in general. Not only are human forms rarely expressed but there even seems to be a taboo on full-face representations of animals – they are mostly asymmetrical and this is also related to motion. This totemism did not remain static but developed into a “realism that transcended nature itself”. One of its developments is into monumentalism – the mammoth, you might say, is the elephant in the cave. Only the mammoth follows a general pattern and is a source of stability, reconciliation and power. The mammoth clan, if such a thing existed, must have been greatly respected. In Chauvet alone there are some 60 plus depictions of mammoths; their appearance is similar to everywhere else and this includes here the “embracing” of other animals. Magic was the means of art and it drove the synthesis between naturalism and monumentalism as expressed by the symbolism of the mammoth. The decorated ceilings of Altamira and Lascaux are works of monumental proportions. The same is true of the cave walls of Chauvet where along one panel (there are several different panels) there’s a “procession” involving felines, bison, various canids, rhinoceroses, ibex, horses and indeterminate animals in states from a powerful calm to frenzy, following each other in a staggering “occasion of state” overlooked by a half-bison, half-woman sorceress painted onto a large pendent rock. The “procession” is broken by a large inverted natural “V” shaped undulating cleft in the wall from which emerges a mammoth, a horse, a rhinoceros and a bison. Unlike the animals and “signs” in the procession, which are all painted red, these animals are all in black. Beneath these figures there is a shallow blood-red pool formed through the drips permeating the walls and stripping out the ochre. There’s no reason to think that the morphology of the cave has changed much in 33,000 years so this is probably an original feature. The sexual tension is apparent and the whole composition, like others in the cave, can only be described as theatrical. Magic was socialised and society became a magic force. This is beyond the punctual expressions of hunting magic and has a more profound basis than assistance to the kill, i.e. it’s more than predators and prey. It was in the social observation of nature, of cause and effect of animal behaviour, in its conscious assimilation, that society advanced: “At Les Combarelles the scenes that have social significance are so solemn and include so many participants that they impress one as state occasions. At the same time, both morally and politically, Palaeolithic ideology reaches universal human dimensions, and some of the scenes have the grandeur of Aeschylian tragedies”[xvii]. From the observation of nature magic endowed this art with life without detracting from the unity of the image. And despite the many different depictions of animals, bison, hind, horse, lions, mammoth, bear, stags, aurochs and so on, none are identical, they are all different.
Totemism not only developed into monumentalism with the ubiquitous depictions of the mammoth and “state occasions”; it also expressed itself in abstract symbolism where truncated versions of the concave and convex curves of the animal’s bodies and legs were reduced to “signs” and “motifs”. Later research has further shown that the curves and features on some of the animals were painted or incised along or on natural fissures and features of the cave wall. Along with the hand prints pressed against the wall this indicates that the wall itself had a meaning as a way into the spiritual world. Some of the paintings at Chauvet (and elsewhere) show great use of the natural features of the cave, with animals appearing to emerge from the wall itself. There are also offerings, bone, antler, quartz, roots, etc., that have been pushed into cracks in the wall, all of which tends to reinforce its importance for access to the “other world” (for more on this see The Mind in the Cave, by David Lewis-Williams, Thames and Hudson, 2002. This was research that Raphael would have been unaware of). And it’s important to remember here - and Raphael was well aware of this - that the caves were not dwelling places, certainly not the areas where the paintings were done: they were often not on flat, accessible walls, these being deliberately ignored. These were places of festivity and spirituality where tensions and conflict could be confronted. The wealth of the art on display at Chauvet, and its age, tend to support many of the points made by Raphael: the duality and continuity of the human and animal world, the oppositions and antagonisms of the compositions, the anthropomorphic figures, the animals with human expressions; and in Chauvet, the spiritual link between the two worlds. It’s also necessary to mention here the importance of the choice of surface and the sophistication of the preparation, the range of materials and the techniques used. At Chauvet, where the different and autonomous morphology of the various cave walls are linked together by decoration of both representations and “signs”, there appears to have been few “visitors”, though there are signs of adolescents having been taken there. Bears inhabited the cave before and after humans: this is evidenced by the paintings over and under their scratch marks, with at least one claw mark incorporated into a painting.
The “Hall of Bulls”, early Magdalenian at Lascaux in France. There’s a number of aurochs and deer coming from the opposite direction in some sort of confrontation and/or meeting-up. The panel is 9 metres long and scaffolding would have to have been used. Some of the depictions are very large and were possibly painted by a number of people. There are a few signs around the animals and black and red dots and dashes.
Raphael talks a lot about the “force” and “motion” of these paintings, the “Being” “that has divested itself of all mere relationships and yet includes the individual not as an accident but as an essence”. This Being doesn’t transcend the world but expresses its constancy. The present sense of danger in the Upper Palaeolithic world could only accentuate this sense of Being, bringing forth the “self-assertion, self-revelation and self-creation of its substance... in general the Upper Palaeolithic artists achieve the same objectivity, the same freedom from purely subjective elements and even from human consciousness... The artist’s ability lies in its reproduction of the social world in materials that speak to our senses”[xviii]. Here is part of its eternal charm and timeless quality[xix]. And if the artist can rise above his time, and the evidence here is that he clearly can, and produce such works, “his will nevertheless remains the social slave of the compulsions of his time”. The anthropomorphic figures, which are everywhere, can express fertility but are more concerned with the motion of magic; there are those that appear at the beginning of a composition, there are those right in the centre and those that are actors in the whole. Movement and motion was fundamental to this society from the appearance, agglomeration and dispersion of the herds. It must have been conceived in a way we can’t imagine. These shaman-type figures are also found alone in the recesses and the deepest and most difficult places to in the cave. The spiritual journey and communication via the animal and into the cave wall are evident here. The historical record of the different clans, which include the shamans, sorceresses and the like, could include the specific artist. Raphael says that it looks like the sorcerers posed the question: ‘Who are you?’ famously answered by Odysseus, ‘Neither man nor animal: No one’. “The main task of a history of art is to show that these forms, forms and not contents! – must necessarily arise from definite economic, social, political, moral, religious, etc., roots, that these forms express them, manifest them; vice-versa, that they react on these roots and play a part in their transformation”[xx]. Given our knowledge of this period and its art we can only do this in a fragmented way, but we can attempt it.
For the purveyors of the idea of unbroken progress, there’s a gulf between the primitive “signs” and later animal representations that further develop into the “proper” art of civilisation. For them it is inconceivable that Upper Palaeolithic artists could express a synthesis of geometric figures and animal representations, a unity in diversity. Some “signs” came from truncated versions of animal figures, possibly expressions of magic, and others have been universally demonstrated to come from various forms of altered states of consciousness – in this respect see The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams already mentioned above. The dashes and dots, usually at the beginning of the artistic presentations of the cave, are a short-hand for something. They appear on their own, usually equidistant, sometimes over long distances, they make up animal figures entirely, link them or are superimposed over them. Sometimes they are contrasted to continuous lines. What they mean is by no means sure but hunter-gatherer existence is separated by motion through space that must have been particularly immediate and relevant to them in following the herds and in their closeness to nature. These signs are possibly representative of a motion of a distinct and energising kind. Just looking at one bison on the Altamira ceiling shows connections between continuous lines and discontinuous dashes that seem to point to a sense of movement and this is expressed many times elsewhere. The contradiction between Being and motion could possibly be addressed by the artist through a series of patterns, of dots and dashes. If we don’t know what they are saying it is still quite possible that, overall, these signs represent some sort of written language. Some of these signs and compositions make their way into general barbarian art prior to and during the Neolithic. Raphael himself points to some similarities with these signs and the some of the letters of the Latin alphabet.
From one side of the world to the other around forty thousand years ago, hand-prints were used as an artistic expression and in Chauvet and elsewhere they make up entire expressions. Raphael doesn’t underestimate the importance of the hand, seeing it representing superiority over the animal kingdom, driving forwards man’s spiritual, physical and productive forces. There’s symbolic meaning to the hand and the fingers in some major religions: “In Upper Palaeolithic art the hand was laid on the animal both magically and artistically”, underlining a further stage in human evolution. But while humanity was “... no longer dominated by animals (it was) still subjected to its own spiritual means of domination over the animal world”. Like the great majority of animals depicted, the hand is asymmetrical and this is emphasised when it is spread. In the Upper Palaeolithic the animal was everything and it was such through the intermediary of the human hand.
Part of a mammoth procession in a typical monumental pose in the Rouffiignac cave in the Dordogne from the Magdalenian period in France. The wider drawing shows Capricorn hinds and other animals accompanying the mammoths. There’s both gravity and lightness in the depiction. In the 8 km of underground caves there are 150 mammoths depicted, 70% of the total animals shown.
The counter-posing of different structures and compositions, what could be argued as its dialectical nature, is a major feature of prehistoric cave art and it is expressed in almost every cave that has been surveyed. As elsewhere the ceiling of Altamira shows both the stillness and concrete nature of the animal and the infinite possibilities of movement. The effect of movement/stillness here, as at Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles, Lascaux and Chauvet is palpable. The magic also changes the movement of sexual passion into the stillness of exhaustion. Struggle and death is represented in the animal and it’s the genius of the artist that brings out the universal meaning in a transcendence of reality. These clear oppositions expressing the inner and outer worlds, and the tensions behind them allowed “... the artist to rise above the historically given and limited magic totemism into the sphere of timeless aesthetic object and this translation is in turn a condition for the formal development of the theme into an artistic whole”. The oppositions are between nomadic and sedentary, masculine bulk and feminine tenderness, totemism and magic, magic and political power, agglomeration and dispersion, spirituality and physical force, divergence and convergence, unity and diversity. These works of art are attempts to overcome and synthesise these tensions. The paintings of the herds and prides at Altamira and Chauvet are compositions of a whole range of elements: processions, a “chorus”, crowds and dispersion, parallel steps with the focal point at Altamira being the bison/shaman figure confronted by a very large hind with the crucial distances between the animals, along with the definitely placed signs and the expression of a definite concrete content.
Upper Palaeolithic art is as distant as it is as close and, for the most part, we are unable to read and interpret its expressions. We’ve seen the “scientists” who brand this art “... with the mask of primitiveness, the laziest excuse of humanistic science in the period of monopoly capitalism, intended to conceal the lack of ideas and their deterioration in a whole historical period”. Max Raphael puts forwards the thesis of homogeneous compositional art for a period of tens of thousands of years and raises the question of the artistic unity of other periods (and the relationship to their economic substructures); the theme of Greek art based on Euclidian frames of reference; the art of the Renaissance derived from the human anatomical structure. All of this underlying a general thesis of the human spirit and progress that humanity has made in understanding itself. The art forms, particularly the later expressions of Christianity, centred on the human or the god-like figure whereas these paintings clearly centre on animals, animals as humans, as clans, opponents, allies; and animals who override contradictions as magic: “ (This) enables us to show why a definite world of forms must necessarily correspond to definite material and religious bases. Thus the history of art can leave the Linnaean stage of cataloguing unessential characteristics and become a serious science”. I haven’t done a detailed study of them, such a study would be interesting, but even a superficial look at the many cave paintings and engravings discovered since his book show the strength of Raphael’s hypotheses with a remarkable validation. It’s a validation of the marxist method.
Rhinoceros in an agitated state at Chauvet, They appear to be chased by a group of horses and other animals that are out of picture appearing on the right. Watching this from a rock opposite is what appears to be a contemplating baboon – the only primate shown in any cave art of this period. Unfortunately, while it looks definite, it is an optical illusion and the animal is in fact another rhinoceros. The whole episode is another “stormy drama”.
There’s one question where we would take issue with Raphael’s analysis and that is where, at the end of his book, he suggests, quite against his overall arguments, that this society was a class society based on oppression: “On the other hand Palaeolithic art is close enough to us to make us feel the unity of mankind and reduce the seeming differences between history and prehistory. The difference is justified by the fact that so-called prehistory has no written tradition, no historical documents we are able to read. Then, as today, man was oppressed by man; then, as today, art represented the wishes and interests of the ruling classes which possessed the spiritual and material tools and weapons.”
Where would exploitation come from in this society, where is its economic base and who is the ruling class? There is no class society and no basis for exploitation but Raphael points to the control of tools and weapons. Archaeological evidence, plenty of it, shows us that throughout the whole lithic period – over two million years – there was an abundance and development of tools, i.e., the means of production. From the early time of the Acheulean “axe”, vast deposits of these tools have been found, often unused. The Acheulean axe itself became one of the first works of art and symbolism. In the Upper Palaeolithic, again there’s evidence of an abundance of tools and their refinement shown in whole tool “industries” where, incidentally, Sapiens and Neanderthal worked side by side for a while. There is no economic basis for exploitation and whatever form of alienation these peoples felt – and this is another question we can’t answer here – it wasn’t from the means of production.
And who is the ruling class? Among the Australian aborigines thousands of years ago, different ‘classes’ were set up in order to avoid inter-marriage. But this is no different from the later gentes (or the earlier clans – if they existed) where inter-marriage became taboo and descent firmly fixed in the female line. If there was oppression of “man by man” where could it have come from? It can only be from the shaman/sorcerers, the warriors or the Chiefs/Judges. The paintings show clear distinctions and differentiations in this society but no expression of exploitation or oppression – on the contrary Raphael constantly emphasises the unity of these works above all other. And most of them were probably painted by the shaman/sorcerers. In fact when we move from the Upper Palaeolithic into the Neolithic farming/metal-working barbarian society prior to civilisation (and class society), which also brought the art of its ancestors into its own, we find shaman/sorcerers, warriors, chiefs/judges but still no class society – no exploitation, no ruling class, no state. In fact what we do find are clear expressions of communistic practices: everyone has a voice, the balanced role of the sexes, no private property, etc. Class society developed along with civilisation, the state and private property and then art came to be completely at the service of the ruling class. The communistic tendencies of barbarian society were crushed but not extinguished by class society and, just like the Upper Palaeolithic, this society had its “chains”, its limits and had to fall. The abiding feature of these societies compared with the proletariat today is the sense of struggle, of a “history-making” people, but no class society nor exploitation.
We must leave on a positive note for Raphael’s work on this amazing art: the dynamic of struggle; differentiation within a unity; the dialectical asymmetrical nature of this art in expressing myth, magic and symbolism. Marx posed an apparent conundrum in ascribing an eternal charm to the art of a long dead society. I think that in his analyses of prehistoric art Raphael has gone some way towards bridging the question. Today, despite its distance, we feel a unity with this art, a unity which in its timeless quality to some extent breaks down the difference between prehistory and history This earlier period was no idyll but one with the “comfortable chains” of primitive communism (Marx) and a period of struggle for survival shown by the written records of these paintings. And we should remember that in the main this society succeeded because it lasted for some twenty-five thousand years: “The study of Palaeolithic art should serve as a reminder to us that it is high time to put an end to the prehistory of mankind and to begin a new era in which the human race will consciously make its history. ‘What’s past is prologue’”[xxi]
Boxer. 11.3.16
[i] Prehistoric Art in Europe, Professor N. K. Sandars. Yale University Press, 1985.
[ii] Prehistoric Cave Paintings, Max Raphael, Pantheon Books, 1945. The “golden section” referred to here is a post-Euclidian geometric relationship that appears in many forms of art and mathematics. There is some discussion about this.
[iii] This kind of linear, mechanical view implied in the idea of a crude primitivism moving towards a refined, superior product is a view that can be used to support the idea of the supremacy of bourgeois society. Primitive here is used as a term of denigration and abuse which it doesn’t have to be.
[iv] Michel Lorblanchet, Finger markings in Peche-Merle and their place in prehistoric art. 1992.
[v] Prehistoric Cave Paintings. Pantheon Books, 1945.
[vi]One of the greatest proponents of sarcasm and abuse has been the British archaeologist Paul Bahn, described on his Wikipedia page as an “active consultant expert” for the BBC. See Membrane and Numb Brain. A Close Look at a Recent Claim for Shamanism in Palaeolithic Art” P. G. Bahn, 1997 and the response to his reactionary views: Les chamanes de la prehistoire. Text integral, polemique et reponses, Jean Clottes et David Lewis-Williams, 1998.
[vii]Raphael makes the central role of woman clear in all the activities around spiritual production. Subsequent archaeological finds have pointed to the likely role of women as shamans, sorcerers and magicians in prehistoric society.
[viii] The Demands of Art, Max Raphael. Princeton University Press, 1968.
[ix] Prehistoric Cave Paintings
[xi] Prehistoric Cave Paintings.
[xii] Idem.
[xiii] Raphael is not entirely clear about the “clan” but I think that we can surmise a relationship between the Palaeolithic clan, if it existed, and its relations of parts to the whole, to the development of the barbarian gentes as outlined by Lewis-Henry Morgan in Ancient Society... and Engels in Origin of the Family.
[xiv] I think that David Lewis-Williams (see below) was correct in defining Raphael as a “structuralist”, in part anyway. Structuralism began and is epitomised in the works of Giambattista Vico. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Vico [1419].
[xv] The Golden Bough, a study in magic and religion, 1890, James George Frazer, which, among other things, documents the similarities in magic and belief systems from ethnological evidence around the world.
[xvi] Prehistoric Cave Paintings
[xvii] Idem.
[xviii]Idem.
[xix] We know that this particular expression of art lasted for twenty-five thousand years and continued in content some millennia after. It must be very likely that these expressions were in line with earlier developments in Africa. The developing form and its content were one and the same for a long period.
[xx] Prehistoric Cave Paintings. All quotes now from this work.
[xxi] Idem.
It is 40 years since the events that took place in the city of Vitoria, where, in 1976, in the context of falling wages due to the economic crisis there were important workers’ movements throughout the country, and in Vitoria there were increasingly massive General Assemblies which elected a committee of revocable delegates. It was when a General Assembly was taking place in the Church of San Francisco that police unleashed repression against the workers gathered there. The then government minister, Señor Fraga Iribarne, founder and president of the Partido Popular (the People’s Party) until his death, and honoured ‘democrat’, ordered the police to fire upon the workers, causing five deaths with many injured.
There was an overwhelming response by workers to these events, throughout the country there were solidarity demonstrations and massive assemblies. In Pamplona this ranged across the entire city. This expressed a mass struggle, united in demands and refusing to return to work until all their demands were met. The state had to partially concede.
In his first parliamentary speech on the occasion of the proposal of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, Señor Iglesias (leader of Podemos) used this anniversary to endorse proposals for a “democratic renewal” and “social justice”. However, in 1976, workers were confronted by a post Franco government that was carrying out the democratic transition which was organised with the international help of the old democracies of the then US bloc (Germany and France), in order to contain the enormous discontent and struggles. A year later the Moncloa Pact showed the unity of the whole bourgeoisie in its attack upon the proletariat under the ideological cover of democratic reform.
If there is a relationship between Vitoria in 1976 and the massive assemblies of 15M in Spain in 2011, with the dynamic of mass struggle[1] (despite those of 2011 not having a clearly proletarian identity); there is none between these events and Iglesias’s party[2].
Before you read the article we would like to make some critical remarks about it. It was written when the ICC section in Spain had not yet been formed[3]. Inexperience and difficulties in assimilating our positions influence the article. Today, 40 years later, we think the following points are completely correct:
That said, the article has passages that reveal an overestimation of the immediate possibilities of the proletariat.
Thus, for example, it says “and, next time, the police stations, barracks, post offices and telephone exchanges”. This overestimation of the possibilities of the situation suggests an almost pre-revolutionary moment. The international situation of the proletariat did not justify such propositions since the struggle had strongly declined following the explosive events in France 1968, Italy 1969 and Poland 1970, something that is ignored when it says, on the contrary, that “Today, in all parts of the world the workers are striking against the conditions which the crisis is imposing on them and those strikes, even when suppressed, resurge with greater fighting spirit every time.” This sees things in a very formal way, the proletariat was very far from the levels of consciousness and the politicisation of its struggles necessary for the posing of such aims.
Furthermore it affirms that there was “the means to develop our unity, consciousness, and organisation through the experience of this period of struggle”. If it is true that there was an impressive unity and proliferation of assemblies, there was nevertheless much less of a clear conscious understanding of the necessity for the world proletarian revolution and the means for making this happen. But this same unity of the working class was not the same everywhere; there was a significant and powerful weight of sectoral, regional and other divisions. The assemblies had not taken on all the consequences and implications of their function in the class, and the committees of delegates were occupied and manipulated by the unions and forces of the extreme left of the bourgeoisie.
The inexperience and difficulties of the assimilation of class positions to which the young sections of the ICC clearly adhered, is seen in the article’s understanding of the October 1934 workers’ insurrection in Asturias as a “revolution”. Despite the enormous combativity displayed by the Asturian miners, the movement remained strictly within regional limits and was more the fruit of a provocation that forced the miners to insurrection than a conscious action they decided upon. At the same time, the world situation was an accumulation of physical and ideological defeats of the class, the triumphant counter-revolution, the preparation of the second imperialist slaughter which impeded the struggles taking up a revolutionary perspective. In reality, the Asturias insurrection has to be seen in the same light as the Austrian Social Democrats’ provocation of workers in that country in February 1934 which lead to a terrible defeat. Their Spanish colleagues, lead by Largo Caballero who had the nerve to present himself as the “Lenin of Spain” (when in the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he was a state councillor to the dictator), leading the workers into a trap and leaving them there by sabotaging all attempts at solidarity in Madrid and other places[4].
Rosa Luxemburg said that “self-criticism, cruel and relentless criticism that goes to the root of evil is life and breath for the proletariat”. The honest highlighting of these errors gives us clarity and conviction in the struggle.
The bourgeoisie has not concealed its anxiety about the strength displayed by the working class during the first three months of this year. The language used by the press and the statements made by public personalities give us an idea of the extent of that anxiety. For the Primate Cardinal “. . . days of uncertainty for Spain are drawing near”; for Ricardo de la Cierva (a bourgeois commentator) “. . . the horizon is so black that I can’t see any more.” Informaciones (a Spanish periodical), faced with the avalanche of strikes, asks itself: “Are we facing an attempt that is basically revolutionary?”
Our strikes have shaken the country: all its regions and all its branches of production. The cities of Salamanca and Zamora, where ‘nothing ever happens’, have witnessed strikes in the construction and metal industries; even the blind went on strike and demonstrated in the streets.
Not even before the war has there been such a general movement. In January alone there have been more strikes than in all of 1975. Such a gigantic generalisation must serve to make us aware of the strength which we have, make us see that in this strength lies the road leading to the end of capitalist exploitation, which every day grows more unbearable.
That is the first lesson to draw, a lesson that has been present, more or less clearly, in the recent struggles. The building workers and others in Pamplona, Vitoria, Elda, Vigo, and Barcelona organised the strikes through assemblies, which were unified through a committee of delegates together with a general city assembly; they looked for the solidarity of all workers on the streets and backed by that accumulated strength and their autonomous organisation, they occupied the city, closing bars, offices, banks, and public departments.
To speak of communism, to speak of working class emancipation, is no longer considered utopian. We know that the day of revolution is still far off, but we know that on our way there, we have something very solid on which to lean: the experience of our brothers in Vitoria, Pamplona, Vigo, and other cities. That experience contains the means to unite us, the means to confront bourgeois power, to destroy it and to liberate ourselves. This experience forms part of the real resurgence of the proletariat throughout the entire world and takes up the revolutionary torch which set fire to Europe through the years 1917-21, and whose zenith saw the creation of the soviets in 1917 in Russia and the workers’ councils in Germany in 1918.
It’s essential to deepen these experiences, to generalise them to all places, and to ensure that such experiences should have a conscious organisation forged by the workers themselves. Clearly, the means are:
The road is long and difficult, but we are not starting from scratch; we have the experience of two centuries of workers’ struggle behind us. Today, in all parts of the world the workers are striking against the conditions which the crisis is imposing on them and those strikes, even when suppressed, resurge with greater fighting spirit every time.
If we have the means to develop our unity, consciousness, and organisation through the experience of this period of struggle, it is also true that the bourgeoisie is powerful and has many ways of defeating us, dividing us, and stopping our advance forward.
We have to have a very clear consciousness of the methods the bourgeoisie is going to use to defeat our struggle. We can sum them up under two headings: repression and democracy. In less than two weeks, the pre-democratic government of Fraga assassinated more workers than the fascist government of Carrero Blanco did in two years!
Faced with the uncontrollable strength of the workers’ struggles in Vitoria, Elda, Vigo, Pamplona, etc., there was no other response open to the capitalists than to resort to the most savage repression - and a fascist government would have done the same as a democratic one, or a ‘workers’ or ‘revolutionary’ one. Capitalism - under all its state forms - always speaks the same language. History provides us with too many examples: in 1918 the Social Democrat, Ebert, bloodily defeated the workers of Berlin, assassinating Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; in 1921 the Bolshevik government used aerial bombardment to end the Kronstadt workers’ insurrection[5]; in 1931 the Swedish Conservative government killed nine workers in Adalen; in 1933 under the Spanish Republic, the progressive Azaña waded in blood at Casas Viejas while the fascist (today a democrat) Gil Robles drowned the workers’ revolution of the Asturias under the barbarity of the Spanish Foreign Legion. After the massacre of the Second World War, the killings continued: Italy in 1947 under the Christian Democrats; Berlin in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 under ‘Communist’ governments; Poland in 1970; twelve miners killed during a miners’ strike in South Africa in 1972; Argentina under the military regime, workers killed in Córdoba and Tucumán …
The crimes committed in Vitoria, Elda, etc are not the work of an ‘ultra’ faction of the bourgeoisie as OICE[6] says in Revolución number 7, but the conscious and necessary response that capitalism, under whatever form of government, makes and will go on making to the proletarian menace. Carillo would have done the same as Fraga!
But repression is not enough if the working class continues to advance through every struggle and learns from each defeat. The reform of the institutions of the bourgeois state is essential in order to contain the workers’ struggle, to divide it, and to imprison it within objectives which, far from destroying the system, consolidate and conserve it.
The events in Vitoria have not made the Government abandon its policy of reform.
They have not brought a crisis to the dreadful ‘bunker’[7]. The Council of Ministers made the following declaration:
“In consequence, the government (after the events in Vitoria) is disposed to act not only with the object of firmly maintaining public order, but also to create the objective conditions which permit a real social peace . . . particularly distressing are events such as those in Vitoria which are clearly intended to delay the programme of reforms which the Spanish people want and which the government is not prepared to renounce.”
It is no contradiction to combine democracy with murder. Bloodbaths are not a monopoly of the fascists. All factions of capital use the same weapons against workers’ rebellions.
But although it is a necessity for the Spanish bourgeoisie to defeat in blood and fire all independent workers’ struggles, it must at the same time create the democratic political institutions it needs (like unions, parties, universal suffrage and other ‘liberties’) to avoid frontal confrontations like those at Vitoria by forcing the workers’ struggles against exploitation into meaningless channels.
The vote, the unions, and the parties have a function: to contain the class, to erode its initiative, to confine it within the factory and the nation, diverting the horizon of its struggle towards ‘socio-political’ reforms such as the self-determination of the people, self-management, and anti-fascism. These are all weapons which the politicians of capital use to prevent us from becoming conscious that the only solution possible for our problems is to finish with exploitation once and for all.
Faced with a government incapable of controlling the situation, and whose only real language is crime, detention and provocation, the Democratic Opposition of the Right (liberals, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) got together with the Left and extreme Left in the same endeavour - to channel the strike movement towards democratic reforms.
In an article appearing in Mundo Diario (a Stalinist-backed paper) entitled ‘The Urgent Need for a Political Pact’, Solé Tura, mouthpiece of the Catalonian Communist Party, drew the following conclusions from the struggles in Vitoria, Pamplona, and Sabadell: “You have to be blind not to see that we are on the point of losing the big opportunity for establishing and stabilising a democracy in our country.” He ended with the following proposal for immediate action: “Either we quickly reach an accord which encompasses the opposition and the consistent reformists to bring into being a democratic alternative, or we will very quickly reach a limit, and beyond that limit things are going to turn out very difficult for all, that is to say for the country.”
What could be clearer? A party which pretends to be ‘proletarian’ and ‘communist’ measures struggles in terms of the interests of the ‘Nation’, which can only mean the owners of the ‘fatherland’: the capitalists.
The small groups to the left of the CP are more cautious, since they speak in the name of the ‘working class and the people’; but their intervention is still more criminal because they present the same reforms which the CP and the bourgeoisie defend, as ‘great victories for the working people’; at least the CP has the nerve to speak openly in the name of the bourgeoisie and the nation:
ORT, MCE and PTE[8] in a joint declaration, after much snivelling about the assassinated workers and shouting about how evil and fascist Juan Carlos is, conclude the necessity for: “. . . a real unity of the democratic forces to fight in a consistent way for democracy against fascism, against the disunity and bourgeois vacillations of the Junta and the Plataforma.”
Liga Communista[9] in their paper Combate number 40, criticise Ruiz Giménez and Tierno Galván (bourgeois radical democrats) for not going to the pro-amnesty demonstration in Madrid on January 20th, adding: “. . . the thousands of demonstrators didn’t need their presence to defend the amnesty, and other democratic aspirations of the masses which they (Giménez and Galván) don’t know how to defend consistently.”
Since the bourgeoisie don’t know how to fight for the democracy which they need, LC will attend to the matter by telling workers that they should help the bourgeoisie out.
For the ‘ultra-leftist’ OICE, the balance sheet of Vitoria reads as follows: they attribute the criminal acts to a phantasmal ‘ultra’ faction of the bourgeoisie, and end up considering the workers’ self-defence of their demonstrations and assemblies as provocations and adventurism; they consider the class as ‘immature’ for the ‘democratic rupture’ as for the ‘socialist rupture’; finally they seize the chance to advertise themselves as a ‘beacon’ for the workers, attributing to themselves the ‘honour’ of having directed the struggle.
This ‘anti-capitalist’ and ‘left communist’ organisation doesn’t say a word about the importance that this fight has for the advance of the workers’ movement; nor does it draw the lessons by pointing out successes and errors so that the class can prepare itself for future struggles; nor does it see the fight within the world situation and the general struggle of the class. Not one word of all this; its total obsession is to show that the OICE is ‘responsible’, and that it didn’t fall for any ‘provocations’.
If we have reviewed the reactions of the groups of the Right, Left and extreme Left to the events in Vitoria, this has not been to expose then, and once having done so offer our merchandise as the best.
All comrades who want to engage in a permanent collective and organised struggle against capital must regroup themselves into a political organisation where we will forge a clear communist programme and a coherent intervention in the class struggle.
The problem we have to consider is whether those organisations of the Left and extreme Left who put themselves forward as the ‘vanguard’ of the proletariat really are useful instruments in the fight for communism.
For us the answer is no. For neither in the programme, nor in the organisation, nor in the consciousness of these groups can we find anything of use to that fight. Their programmes are never about communism and the practical means for achieving the consciousness and organisation necessary to create it. On the contrary, they call for ‘liberties’ (some call them democratic, others political), for a ‘workers’ trade union, for self-management, for workers’ control . . . in other words a minimal programme for the reform of capitalism, when we know from historical experience and from the experience of the democratic countries that this programme is not a ‘step forward’ but a dead-end which weakens us, divides us, and leads us to defeat.
Their organisations are models of bureaucracy and hierarchy, where all political discussion by militants is curtailed with a thousand excuses: the need for ‘unity’, the danger of falling into ‘ultra-leftism’, ‘dogmatism’ or ‘purism’ … But their main danger lies in the recipes they serve up about how the workers should struggle. These recipes are always based on a division between economic struggle and political struggle. In effect, the Left in general and the extreme Left in even more confusing jargon have insisted that the recent struggles are economic (in January Camacho[10] never stopped repeating this everywhere). The funny thing is that they utilise the same logic as the Right, which says “. . . economic strikes, yes; political strikes, no” (because they are managed by Moscow . . . or by the French CGT). The Left rejects the ‘accusation of politicisation’ by separating, in the face of all reality, the economic from the political with the exactitude of a medieval scholastic. The Left does this because, according to them, the only politics the workers can have are the politics of the bourgeois opposition . . . and that’s the end of the discussion!
Who can believe, they ask themselves, that the class can struggle politically in an autonomous way? And the extreme Left too dusts down the poorest texts of Lenin in order to justify the same old counterrevolutionary idea that in the end the workers can only arrive through their struggles with a ‘trade union’ consciousness.
Nobody denies that consciousness has to make its own way, and that in the majority of cases strikes begin for economic reasons. What we absolutely insist is counterrevolutionary is the haughty denial that consciousness is enriched by action; the posing of unbridgeable barriers between economic and political consciousness when all evidence shows that these moments constitute a permanent and continuous progression.
“. . . when they try to take exact account of the strikes, of the co-ordination, and other forms by which proletarians make into reality before our eyes their organisation as a class, some are invaded by a real terror, others show a lofty scorn.”
“Do not say that the social movement excludes the political movement. There has never been a political movement which was not at the same time social.” (Both quotes from Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy)
It has been said that the dead of Vitoria have to be blamed on the role of the ‘bunker’ which led the workers to slaughter by continually provoking them. The workers only wanted the re-instatement of the twenty two sacked men of Forjas; the challenging attitude of the police and their exacerbation of violence provoked the tragedy; it was all a shady manoeuvre by the bunker to block democratisation. In fact the Government followed the events step by step and the order to fire came from the Civil Governor of Alava, who previously consulted with the Government. In Zamaraga, where the tragedy happened, a conversation by radio transmitter was intercepted between the Chief of Police and the Governor in which the latter specifically said that the former need not have any fear of shooting.
The Governor of Alava doesn’t have any fame as an ultra-rightist; he is a man who has the complete confidence of Fraga and was appointed by him. Neither did the Civil Guard - the refuge of the ultras - poke their noses into the conflict at all.
Another cause which has been pointed out has been the intransigence of the Alava business men and their obstinacy in not negotiating with the workers. Forjas Alaves as and other isolated companies came to an agreement to concede a very substantial part of the demands, with the clear aim of dividing the workers and negotiating company by company. But the workers didn’t allow this manoeuvre to succeed. They demanded that they should be given an overall settlement without dismissals or detentions. This was a political decision in which they put the unity of the class before negotiation and rewards (which they could see as pretty insecure). In the assemblies there were some very heated discussions about this and in the end the position of ‘all or none’ triumphed. In Forjas Alavesas, the board conceded everything: the factory assembly decided to go back to work but the joint assembly asked them to reconsider their decision and to continue to strike. The workers of Forjas accepted this.
This is very important. It means putting class unity before negotiation, before possible economic gains within a factory; it means understanding the political nature of the struggle for our demands (direct confrontation against capital and its state); it means recognising the power of the joint assembly of factories in struggle, the expression of the general movement of the class.
When people talk about the ‘bunker’ or of the irresponsibility of the Alava businessmen, they are inventing scapegoats. They see the savagery of the fascist wing of capital, but they draw a veil over the savagery of its democratic wing. Finally, they are hiding the fact that our class interests clash directly with the whole of capitalist order and that faced with our struggles, any bourgeois regime will employ the same criminal methods.
Vitoria is an example of a conscious and organised struggle by the proletariat against bourgeois power. It shows that in Vitoria workers grasped that our demands couldn’t be satisfied within capitalist institutions (agreements, negotiations, unions …), so it is necessary to prepare ourselves to face the inevitable confrontation with capital and its state.
The creation of scapegoats has a purpose: to make us believe that a trade unionist, economist struggle is viable and disrupted only by a reactionary and bunkerite element against whom we have to direct all our forces. At the same time those who put forward this line try to hide the revolutionary content of the struggle in Vitoria and try to prevent us from facing reality. And this reality is that if we generalise our struggle and unify it autonomously in genuine class organs, the whole of the repression will fall upon us. It is therefore imperative to pose the issue of the organised and conscious defence of our assemblies and demonstrations.
Solidarity with Vitoria cannot be reduced to protest against the government’s crimes; we have to understand how we can become united with the struggle of the Vitoria workers in support of their conscious and autonomous confrontation with bourgeois power.
In some places like in Navarre and Tarragona, there was a class response, while in others - Euzkadi, Catalonia - the dead were made use of by the Left to defend their democratic-nationalist alternative, confining the struggle to whimpering about the crimes.
It can be said that Madrid was a case apart. The exhaustion of the recent general strike weighed heavily on the workers there. There were places where symbolic stoppages of five minutes were made, while in other concerns (Torrejón, Intelsa and Kelvinator in Getafe …) workers struck and went out onto the streets in an attempt to extend the fight, but without success.
In Navarre, the atmosphere was already combative when news arrived from Vitoria. That same Wednesday, May the 3rd, the textile industry was paralysed and 300 factories were on strike for the Collective Agreements of Navarre, a measure intended to favour workers in smaller enterprises. In this action the ‘Council of Workers’[11] (controlled by representatives of the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO)) found itself overtaken by the workers who had elected an assembly of factory delegates. That very Wednesday afternoon, after news from Vitoria had arrived, 160 factory delegates had been meeting, and they decided to propose a general strike to their assemblies. On Thursday morning, they began to close factories, particularly in the area of the Landaben Polygon industrial estate. The main decision, which was taken in almost all the assemblies, was to go out into the streets, to extend the strike, to paralyse the city.
Pickets and demonstrations, called particularly by the workers of the following factories: Superser, Torfinosa, Perfil en Frio, Immanesa, were bringing other factories out into the street and closing shops and bars. As in the general strike of 1973, they again sang:
“Through the streets goes a song
Worker raise your fist,
Leave the machines, come out of the factory,
Go to the streets with a single cry: Revolution! Revolution!”
After building huge barricades and engaging in hard clashes with the cops, the workers reached the centre, where the commercial and banking employees joined them unanimously. The most repeated cries were “We are workers; join us!” “Solidarity with Vitoria!” “Brothers of Vitoria, we shall not forget you!” The workers’ districts were mobilised with everybody coming out into the streets. This happened especially in Rochapea, San Juan and Chantrea. The other Navarran towns were also united; Lesaca, where the workers of Laminaciónes, having paralysed the town, set off on the road to Irún (the border town with France), although the Civil Guard dispersed them with shots. In Estella, Tafalla and Tudela there were total strikes. The movement lasted until the end of the week. To curtail it, the management put forward new economic offers to be considered at the Collective Agreements. On the other hand, the ‘Council of Workers’ put forward their demand for the re-instatement of those sacked in the Potasas conflict of 1975, which the management - cornered by the situation - agreed to negotiate on.
These concessions shortened the struggle, in the same way as the mopping-up work of the Workers Commissions (controlled not by the CP, but by the ORT and the MCE) which stressed the need for, ‘conserving strength’ for the single day of struggle called for all Euzkadi (the Basque Country) to celebrate the 8th of March. That day there were hardly any strikes in Navarre.
In Tarragona: in the refinery plant employing 3,000 workers, workers put forward a class response. On Thursday, the atmosphere was effervescent, but nothing concrete came of it. However, on Friday, some workplaces started to come out, and drew people to them, everybody joining in less than an hour into an assembly where workers proposed making a march into the centre (around six miles away) to try to bring out all the factories in the industrial zone. There were opinions against this, but in the end two-thirds of the meeting decided to go forward. The attempt failed and very few factories joined them. There were groups of workers who asked the demonstrators to hold a meeting in the Ramblas which they could go to after coming out of work. Also many people from the Buenavista neighbourhood joined them. In the Ramblas there were intermittent clashes the whole evening and a Morrocan worker was killed by the police who used the maximum savagery possible.
The Tarragonan experience shows that things may not turn out well at the beginning, but that the only way to go forward is to begin to move. The factory with the highest level of consciousness must not concentrate its strength on struggle in that particular factory; its higher consciousness must lead it to take up the task of generalising and extending working class action. In almost all the zones there were examples of factories that were the motive force for the movement: Kelvinator in Getafe, Superser in Pamplona, Standard in Madrid, Duro-Felguera in Gijón, Caf in Beasíń.
In Euzkadi, all the unions and political organisations joined in a call for a day of struggle for March 8th. It was followed by some 500,000 people. A success in numbers, but a failure from the point of view of the conscious struggle of the working class. How is it to be explained, for example, that a worker from Basauri was killed on Monday and nobody lifted a finger on the following day to protest against the crime?
One-day struggles mean a whole series of things for the workers’ movement which it is necessary to criticise and demystify.
1. In the first place, to stop for 24 hours and on the following day to return to work as if nothing had happened, serves to accustom the workers to the idea that their weapons of struggle (the strike, the demonstration) are means for pressuring the bourgeois state, not means for liberation which go on reinforcing our unity and weakening our enemy, until there is a violent confrontation.
2. In the second place, one-day struggles are demonstrations of force on the part of the parties of the Left against the state and other traditional factions of the bourgeoisie; they have the object of convincing the ruling factions that they should take note of the Left’s capacity for mobilisation and recognise that there is a role for the Left in the political game of the bourgeoisie. Although using methods different from parliamentary politics, they have the same end: to use the workers’ struggle in conflicts between one faction of capital and another.
The meaning of the one-day struggles held in the whole of Euzkadi was the same, with a propaganda which placed the emphasis on the fact that the dead were Basques, assassinated by Spanish centralism.
The Left of the whole country has made use of the dead to attempt to convince the population about the need for democracy. Thus, there were numerous funeral processions, protesting against the ‘violence of a government’, and demanding the coming of another - a ‘democratic’ one - which would ‘end all types of violence!’
March 1976
[1]. See our international leaflet ‘From Indignation to hope’ in WR 353 and at https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4766/statement-social-m... [412]
[2]. See the article in this issue of WR and an earlier in Acción Proletaria (our territorial publication in Spain) on the Podemos hoax https://es.internationalism.org/ccionline/201406/4033/podemos-un-poder-d... [1420].
[3]. There was a nucleus formed by elements that came together in 1973 and who participated in a process of discussion that lead to the formation of the ICC in 1975. This nucleus separated itself from this process in 1974 due to activist and workerist differences. A new group of militants made contact with the ICC in 1975 and, after a series of discussions, was definitively integrated in September 1976.
[4]. See our book (in Spanish) 1936: Franco and the Republic massacre the proletariat. An online version can be found at https://es.internationalism.org/booktree/539 [1421]
[5]. The crushing of the Kronstadt workers’ was indeed a decisive step in the transformation of the soviet state into an instrument of capitalism, but we don’t think this was the culminating point of the counter-revolutionary process that would make the Russian state fit without qualification into a list of capitalist states. See for example https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200001/9646/1921-pro... [1422]
[6]. Organización de la Izquierda Comunista de Espańa, Revolución was its publication, was an organisation of the so-called extreme left, which, in reality, is the left of capital, and, while adopting some of the positions of the Communist Left, in reality, perverted them and used them in its role of containing the autonomous movements of the proletariat and leading it into a dead end. Proof of this was their position according to which there are other fractions of the democratic bourgeoisie under which capitalist exploitation would be tolerable.
[7]. With this expression the article refers to those years in which a part of the state tried to stay anchored in Francoism.
[8]. ORT, Organización Revolucionaria de Trabajadores; MCE Movimiento Comunista de Espańa; PTE, Partido de los Trabajadores de Espańa, were three leftist organisations.
[9]. A Spanish Mandelite Trotskyist group
[10]. Camacho (1918-2010) was the organiser of the diversion onto the union terrain with the initiative for Workers Commissions created in the struggles with the capitalist approach of a permanent organisation during the times of Franco. From here was born the CCOO union of which he was general secretary for many years.
[11]. An organ of the Francoist vertical union that was still active at that time
The arguments by both sides in the UK’s Referendum on membership of the European Unions are limited. They make outlandish claims on the benefits of Leaving or Remaining while warning of the dangers of their opponent’s policy in a perpetual pantomime of “Oh no it isn’t! Oh, yes it is!”
Yet it’s clear from the start that there can only be one winner, and that’s the British ruling capitalist class. We have been asked to examine every issue with one thought uppermost in our minds: “What is best for Britain?” To look at the effect on jobs, prices, benefits, pensions, family income, the prospects for businesses big and small, security, immigration, sovereignty, terrorism, anything you can think of is supposed to be looked at in terms of the UK’s membership of the EU. And ‘what is best for British capitalism’, as soon as it is considered in an international context, means ‘what is best for British imperialism’.
The fact that workers are exploited by the capitalist class means that their interests are not the same. Many groups and parties pretending to speak on behalf of the working class have recommendations on how to vote. The Labour Party says that Remaining provides jobs, investment and ‘social protection’. Many leftists are campaigning against EU membership on the grounds that the ‘bosses’ EU’ is against nationalisation, demands austerity, and attacks workers’ rights. In reality one of the main attacks on the working class in Britain today lies in the propaganda around the referendum and all the illusions in the democratic process and the EU that all the lying campaigners of the bourgeoisie are trying to foment.
So, what is agreed by the Leave and Remain campaigns – what will benefit British business, what is good for the British capitalist state – is the shared basis of an ideological campaign which could have a disorienting effect on a working class that is already confused about where its interests lie and what capacity it has to change society. However, the differences between the In and Out campaigns are not all just theatre (although there is a lot of that) as there are, and have been for decades, real divergences in the ruling class on membership of the EU.
The dominant faction of the British bourgeoisie sees the benefits of the UK’s membership of the European Union at the economic, imperialist and social level. Big businesses from the FTSE 100, the vast majority of manufacturing industry, big banks and other financial institutions, multinational corporations, much of local government, organisations representing lawyers and scientists, all recognise the importance of access to an EU market of 500 million people, the deals that the EU is capable of doing, the fact EU trade with the rest of the world is about 20% of global exports and imports, the investment that EU countries attract, and the necessity for the UK to be part of the EU as part of its imperialist strategy. Outside of Britain the main factions of a number of major capitalist countries also see the importance of the UK’s continuing EU membership. In Europe itself, leading figures in Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, and Sweden have expressed themselves in favour of Britain remaining.
Outside Europe it is significant that US President Obama is among those who support the UK continuing in Europe. The question of Britain’s relationship with the US is not simple. During the period of the two big imperialist blocs led by the US and the USSR Britain was an integral member of the western bloc, a loyal ally to the US. It was during this period that the EU’s predecessors, the European Coal and Steel Community, and its successor, the European Economic Community were founded, also, effectively, part of the US-led imperialist bloc. But, with the collapse of the eastern bloc, and the corresponding breakdown of the western bloc, British capitalism’s imperialist and economic interests implied different emphases in policy. At the imperialist level Britain has tried to pursue an independent orientation, while, at the same time, sustaining alliances with other powers when the situation has demanded it. At the economic level almost half of British trade is with the EU, while 20% of UK exports go to the US. In an article we published in WR 353 in 2012 (“Why British capitalism needs the EU”) we said that “examination of Britain’s international trade shows that its economic interests have their main focal points in Europe and US. This helps to explain the actions of the British ruling class in recent years […] While it would be an error to see a mechanical relationship between Britain’s economic and imperialist interests it would also be a mistake to deny any such link. Analysis of the economic dimension reveals some of the foundations of Britain’s strategy of maintaining a position between Europe and the US.” For the US, the UK is still a Trojan horse in the EU, a potential means to undermine the possibility of Germany strengthening itself as a rival to the US. For the UK, Germany is part of an important trading partnership, but also a potential imperialist antagonist.
But what about those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU? Who are they? What do they represent? Economically we have heard the managers of hedge funds favouring Brexit, along with, typically, smaller businesses and individual entrepreneurs. If there were nothing else to consider then this would be easy to explain. The law as it stands benefits hedge funds, but they are understandably inclined to rail against any form of regulation that might obstruct their pursuit of profit. With smaller businesses, their size might just be the result of a lack of competivity, but that doesn’t stop them blaming the EU, or the UK government, or the local council, or the practices of bigger businesses. Anything could be the target of their frustration, when quite possibly what they suffer mostly from are plain ‘market forces’.
However, politically, the factions of the bourgeoisie that support Brexit are notable by their variety, and are not obviously tied to any particular social group or strata. There are the extreme right parties from UKIP to the BNP, the eurosceptics of the Conservative Party, and, from the left, an array of Stalinists and Trotskyists. Here are a strange set of bedfellows with a wide range of rhetoric and hypocrisy. That the likes of Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith, who’ve been at the heart of government since 2010, part of a party that’s been in power for more than 60 of the last 100 years, can stand behind banners saying “Let’s Take Back Control” is a fine example of Doublespeak from these longstanding functionaries of a long-established part of capitalism’s political apparatus. However, there is something else that the Leave factions have in common, and that is their attachment to the rhetoric of populism, the pose of standing against the ‘establishment’, a hankering after a mythical past, and battlers against an exterior threat . In a period of growing social decomposition, populism is an increasing phenomenon. In the US there is the Tea Party and Donald Trump, in Germany there is AfD and Pegida, in France there is the Front National, and, from the left, there is Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. Closer to home, in the 2015 UK General Election, the Scottish National Party’s populist campaign was at the root of the removal of nearly all Labour’s Scottish MPs.
The classic example of the marriage of two career populists was at an Anti-EU meeting where Nigel Farage of UKIP introduced a speech from George Galloway from the Respect party (“one of the greatest orators in the country” and “a towering figure on the left of British politics”). Galloway explained that “We are not pals. We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin…” The comparison was telling. Galloway sees the link up of left and right as being like an imperialist alliance in a war involving death and destruction on a massive scale. He is not wrong. Farage and Galloway do represent forces for imperialist war and destruction, but then so do all other factions of the ruling class. The more immediate problem posed by the rise of populism is this: while it is evidently a phenomenon that can be used by the bourgeoisie, there is the danger that it can escape the control of the main political parties and cause problems for the usual political manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie.
We don’t intend to speculate on the result of the coming Referendum. It is hard to see which factions of the bourgeoisie would benefit from a Leave victory which would seem to pose difficulties for British capitalism. But the British bourgeoisie is the most experienced in the world and would seem likely to be able to ensure a Remain victory, or at least be able adapt to any other result.
What’s important for the working class is to see that the campaign around the EU Referendum is completely on the terrain of the ruling class. There is nothing to choose from the alternatives on offer as they both start and finish with the continuation of British capitalism and the demands of its imperialist drive.
For the working class the possibilities for social change do not lie in capitalism’s democratic process. For the struggle of the working class to be effective it needs to be conscious. At this stage, when workers have little sense of class identity, they need to be able to withstand the propaganda campaigns of all the different factions of the bourgeoisie. Forty years ago, in 1975, there was an earlier referendum on EU membership. Like today there was agreement between the main factions of the main parties, but also, in the No camp you could see the shared approach of right-winger Enoch Powell and left-winger Tony Benn. At that time the campaign was one aspect of the work of the Labour Party in power, trying to convince workers that they should abandon their struggles and put their faith in a party of the left. Today the working class is not struggling at all on the same scale as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, but, with a perspective for a world based on relations of solidarity rather than exploitation, it still has the potential to transform society.
Car 9/4/16
(Second letter from the ICC to Tampa Communist League)
We welcome the publication of DP’s response to our letter to the Tampa Communist League1 and hope that this debate can continue in a fruitful (and fraternal) way. We will keep this reply fairly succinct but hope by doing so to concentrate on the main issues raised in this debate. We are responding more or less in the order the topics were covered in your letter, but for us the last two questions – the relationship between activity and period, and the principal lessons of the Russian revolution regarding party and power – are probably the most important ones for further debate.
The letter is a response from an individual comrade and we don’t know the content of the discussions about the question of the party within the group – it would be very positive if at some point an account of these discussions could also be published. But DP says that the group as such has added a new “unity point” on this question, i.e. “In order to triumph in the class struggle the proletariat must organise into a world-wide political party around a programme that expresses its exclusive class interest”.
There is certainly much in this condensed formulation we can agree to: that the working class cannot triumph without a political party; that this party has to defend a distinct programme; that it must be international. But we still take issue with the formulation “the proletariat must organise into a political party”. When this formulation appeared in the 19th century workers’ movement under the impulsion of the marxist current, it was a definite expression of the necessity for the working class to engage in political struggles up to and including the seizure of power. It was thus to become a point of demarcation from those, like the anarchists, who rejected both the immediate political combat and the goal of political power. But the formulation “constitution of the proletariat into a class, and thus into a political party” (Communist Manifesto) also expressed certain ambiguities of the period, not least the fact that there was not yet a clear distinction between the unitary organisations of the class, open to all workers, irrespective of their beliefs or opinions, and the political organisation organised around a clear programme (made up of members who join because they agree to the political principles of the organisation) . The First International, for example, combined both these aspects. But as the class struggle matured this distinction became much sharper: in the Second International, between the socialist parties and the trade unions, in the Third, between the communist parties and the soviets. For us, this was one of the signs that the organisation question is posed differently to the working class in different epochs, in particular, when it enters what the Third International referred to as the “epoch of proletarian revolution”. It is in this epoch, when there is no longer any possible cohabitation between reformists and revolutionaries in the same organisation, that it becomes evident that the party is the organisation of the communist minority within the class.
Nevertheless, the theoretical bases for what became clarified in “revolutionary practice” can already be found in the Communist Manifesto, which affirms that communists are not saviours from on high, not a self-appointed elite, but merely the most determined and theoretically advanced minority of the class, an expression of its historical struggle which is also an active factor in its development. This vision is one of a class in movement, one in which consciousness necessarily develops in an uneven way, given the enormous weight of the dominant ideology. The communist minority is indeed in the “avant-garde” when it comes to political clarity, but its aim is always to generalise this clarity as widely as possible. By the same token, the communist programme is not developed by the politicised minority in isolation from the class struggle: the latter learns from the struggle and seeks to draw out its most significant lessons and in doing so to clarify the perspectives for the future.
We don’t think there is anything elitist in this view. Nor do we think that there is any contradiction between aiming at the highest level of political clarity and the culture of debate, the confrontation of ideas, the testing of hypotheses in relation to practical experience. On the contrary: class consciousness, theoretical clarity, can only develop in this way. The search for truth for a clear perspective, is not something that is “imported” from outside or imposed onto the class from above, it is the result of a process of collective and individual reflection which can only move forward through debate and the exchange of ideas., But debates in a movement that aims to apply the scientific method are not a simple exchange of opinion – they seek to achieve a higher synthesis and this includes the intransigent critique of false conceptions2.
DP’s reply refers to “modern Leninist groups” without specifying which organisations or political tendencies are meant. It looks to us, however, as if it is talking about the organisations of the left of capital, such as the Trotskyists, whose ideas about organisation are bound to be hierarchical and monolithic, simply because these are natural to all bourgeois organisations. Although in the CLT’s points of unity you talk about the left of capital, it is not very specific and we are not sure whether you would include “modern Leninist groups” in this category.
The fact that bourgeois organisations function like bourgeois organisations is evident enough, but this does not mean that authentically proletarian organisations cannot be affected by manifestations of bourgeois ideology such as elitism and monolithism. Some indeed – such as the Bordigists – positively theorise such conceptions, while others are affected in a more subtle and perhaps more insidious way. But all of us - not just the revolutionary minority but the entire working class - are bound to be affected in one way or another because in a class society “the dominant ideas are the ideas of the dominant class”; and this means a permanent struggle against the infiltration of such ideas and practices. And this too is part of the theoretical combat, the fight for a higher level of clarity, specifically on the questions of organisation and of morality (we note that both DP’s reply and the points of unity both refer to the question of ethics and we welcome this – it’s a discussion we could take up at a later date).
On the question of the minimum and maximum programmes, we don’t agree that the 1880 programme of the Parti Ouvrier can be a model for us, however interesting it is as a historical document. It’s true that Marx wrote it along with Guesde, but if we are not mistaken, it was Guesde’s interpretation of the demands it contained, especially the economic ones, which led to disagreements between the two of them later and to Marx exclaiming that “moi, je ne suis pas marxiste”. For Marx, the economic demands were based on real possibilities and could be won under capitalism though the immediate struggle, whereas “discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.” The bourgeoisie’s inevitable rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, “free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.”3. This bears a strong resemblance to the manipulative methodology behind Trotsky’s “transitional demands” and Marx was right to reject it.
The political part of the text, on the other hand, while containing some very concise formulations about the goals of the revolution, is less than clear about the political means to achieve them: on the one hand, even though this was nearly 10 years after the Commune, the programme still holds out the hope that the working class can gain power through parliament. And at the same time it uses terms like “Commune” and “the general arming of the people” which imply that this whole programme is to be implemented once the class itself has already taken power.
Not then an example of clarity which we can import wholesale, but one to be seen in its historical context. This again raises the question of periodisation – for us the transition from the ascendant to the decadent period – which has a considerable bearing on whether the demands put forward in a political programme correspond to the possibilities of the period. For us, the measures which should be contained in the programme of a communist party in a genuinely revolutionary situation must be based on a clear understanding that the bourgeoisie is no longer fit to rule and that all its political institutions, including its most democratic, are thoroughly rotten, and need to be destroyed from top to bottom; and by the same token that capitalist social relations have reached a total impasse and are a blockage on the development of man’s productive powers. This is why there is no alternative to replacing them with communist social relations. Even if this entire social-economic transformation cannot be implemented the moment the working class takes power, the measures it takes must tend in this direction. On both counts (political and social-economic) we think we are talking about implementing the maximum programme: the communist revolution.
In our previous letter we referred to the question of the communist fraction, which was not taken up in DP’s reply. But we think that it is an indispensable element in understanding the role of communists in periods when the formation of the party is not yet on the immediate agenda. Historical experience indicates that parties are born when the class struggle is in the ascendant, and that they are not the product of the incremental growth of this or that group. They tend to appear as the coming together of different groups and tendencies, but the more advanced fractions play the most decisive role in his process, and are the best means to ensure that the party will be formed around a clear programme. This is why, for us, the development of a coherent theoretical outlook - a specific task of a communist fraction or fraction-like organisation - is indeed crucial. And we do think that centralisation, as opposed to federalism or localism, is the means that proletarian organisations use to develop their theoretical unity. For us this does not mean an unthinking conformity imposed by a minority from above. Rather it implies the commitment of the whole organisation to achieving a coherent outlook on world events and the perspectives for the future. From our point of view, centralisation is a principle in the workers’ movement, since it implies the precedence of the whole over its parts, and theoretical rigour is our main weapon against the fog of bourgeois ideology. We also think that there can be no separation between this search for theoretical unity and the defence of principles, since the latter are precisely the conclusions forged by marxist theory on the basis of the historic experience of the class. It follows that principles can only be defended consistently if they are built on very firm theoretical foundations – they are not just a collection of points but are linked to each other, intertwined, bedded into a framework. But rather than continue with this train of thought now, perhaps we can refer comrades to the article based on one of the reports to the 21st ICC congress, “The role of the ICC as a ‘fraction’”, which provides a short history of the fractions in the workers’ movement4. As always, we would welcome your comments.
Finally, with regard to the question of the party taking power, there is obviously a connection here to the question of whether the party is a minority or not. If you consider that the party, however “massive” its influence, will only regroup a minority of the class, then it is all the more logical to oppose such a minority taking or holding power. But even if the party organised a majority in the class or could obtain a majority in the soviets, we would still be opposed to the notion of the party taking power, whether or not shared with other parties or with the soviets themselves. First, because it undermines the historical advance made by the workers’ movement, referred to above, which made it possible to see that the unitary organisations and the political organisations have distinct though complementary tasks. A confusion about these tasks weakens both types of organisation - this is surely a key lesson from the Russian revolution And second, because the idea of the party forming a government or taking power reveals a vestige of parliamentary conceptions which go against the principle of instant revocability of delegates. Bourgeois parties form a government when they have a majority in parliament and can carry on governing for the next four or five years, until the next election. But when delegates to the ‘higher’ councils are subject to constant recall by base assemblies, today’s majority is tomorrow’s minority, and there is no basis for declaring that this or that group is “in power”. In fact, this is precisely the strength of the principle of revocability, that it allows the organisations of the class to express the real evolution of its consciousness.
As we approach the centenary of the October revolution (which will no doubt be accompanied by a flood of propaganda from right and left, aimed at distorting its real significance), we think that a discussion about the lessons of this gigantic experience of our class is as important as ever. We have tried here to outline some of the lessons we draw regarding the relationship between party and soviets; and vital though this is, it does not exhaust the question. In particular, there is a whole wealth of debate and contributions on the question of the transitional state, particularly in the work of Bilan and the Gauche Communiste de France, much of which we have published in our series on communism. However, for the moment, we want to suggest that a fruitful way of continuing this discussion would be for you to send your comments and criticism of two texts in particular: ‘On the party and its relations with the class [1424]’ and ‘Party, councils and substitutionism [1367]’
Obviously, in sending your comments of our own efforts, we would be greatly interested in hearing from you about what you consider to be the principal lessons of the Russian revolution regarding the relationship between party and class.
We look forward to further debate
Very fraternally, the ICC
1 communistleaguetampa.org.
2 See our text on this question: The culture of debate: A weapon of the class struggle [1379]
3 From Bernard H. Moss, The Origins of the French Labour Movement, 1830-1914, 1976, p.107, cited in the introduction to the programme on the Marxist internet Archive [1425].
If we are to believe the media bombardment that has been assaulting us in recent months, we are on the eve of an earthquake that will shake to the core the traditional scenario of the last thirty years, in which the People’s Party of the right (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) have succeeded each other alternately in power without anyone finding anything to complain about. This political chessboard is disturbed today by the eruption of ‘emergent forces’, and in particular by the most recent: Podemos. But Podemos represents nothing new.
Its political programme and its ideology are the classics of Stalinist regimes[1] defended by the so-called Communist parties (in reality virulently anti-communist) and their leftist acolytes of all stripes (Trotskyists, base unionists, anti-globalisation movements)[2], who are the main supporters of this pantomime of ‘new politics’. The specificity of Podemos which justifies the stunt it has pulled for Spanish capitalism is that the troops of Iglesias (its leader) fulfil a special mission, very important for both the Spanish and the world bourgeoisie, which is to erase the footprints of the movement of May 15 that shook the streets four and a half years ago.
Four years ago, huge crowds took to the streets and squares not only in Spain but also in Greece, the USA, Israel, etc. “This movement of indignation has spread internationally: to Spain, where the then Socialist government imposed one of the first and most draconian austerity plans; to Greece, the symbol of the crisis of sovereign debt; to the United States, the temple of world capitalism; to Egypt and Israel, focus of one of the worst and most entrenched imperialist conflicts, the Middle East.” There were attempts, still timid and embryonic, at international solidarity: “In Spain solidarity with the workers of Greece was expressed by slogans such as ‘Athens resists, Madrid rises up’. The Oakland strikers (USA, November, 2011) said ‘Solidarity with the occupation movement world wide’ In Egypt it was agreed in the Cairo Declaration to support the movement in the United States. In Israel they shouted ‘Netanyahu, Mubarak, El Assad are the same’ and contacts were made with Palestinian workers.[3]
This internationalism, expressed spontaneously even in an embryonic way in the strongest moments of the Indignados movement, is something very dangerous for the bourgeoisie which justifies its domination of the proletariat by the existence of a supposed community of interest between exploiters and the exploited of each country.
From its origins, Podemos has been characterised by what they call a “transversal” discourse, that is to say, addressing both the ‘disadvantaged’ and business leaders to whom the they have not ceased to send reassuring messages. But this supposed ‘transversal’ community is also the one invoked by the fraternal party of Podemos, the Greek Syriza party, to justify its compliance with the requirements of the European Union, which underpins an intensification of the attacks against the living and working conditions of the Greek workers. Instead of solidarity towards the victims, Iglesias, Errejon and the others solidarised with their executioner, Tsipras.
In this patriotic assault, the ‘podemists’ have distanced themselves from proposals to send soldiers into the areas occupied by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq on the grounds that “they might be killed”. We have seen that, in contrast to their initial call to send troops into the areas occupied by the Islamic State (in Syria and Iraq), they then claimed that “Spanish soldiers could be killed.” The ‘argument’ of the man with the ponytail[4] is a very effective weapon to inject the poison of nationalism, and attempts to trap workers in the small and narrow world of the ‘Spanish nation’.
No matter that the Syrian or Iraqi workers and peasants will be massacred? No matter that the population of Raqqa, the ‘capital’ proclaimed as the bastion of the Islamic State, is subject to the threefold terror of its ‘Islamist rulers’, the bombing of Russia, US and France and also of the Assad militias? No matter that these territories will be transformed into a black hole where it becomes simply impossible to live? None of this we should worry about, according to the ‘national philosophy’ and jingoism of Mr. Iglesias! The only thing that matters is that no ‘compatriot’, no Spanish national can go to die there!
It is for this reason that the ‘podemists’ have joined as ‘observers’ the anti-jihadist pact signed by both the parties taking part in the invasion of Iraq (the Popular Party), the invasion of Afghanistan (PSOE) and by the candidates for the invasion of any country that would be made under the banner of the Spanish flag. It is for this reason that Podemos has promised Rajoy[5] all the necessary support to deal with terrorist attacks, as it has already done for the victims of the recent attack in central Kabul[6].
One of the most repeated slogans of the movement of May 15 was “our dreams do not fit in your ballot box!” Indeed, the Indignados movement arose with a strong tendency to reject bourgeois politics, elections,[7] etc etc. In the movements of 2011, there began to be emphasised, with still many weaknesses and hesitations, a fact that, today, that is to say four years later, seems strange: “These people, the workers, the exploited who have been presented as failures, idlers, incapable of taking the initiative or doing anything in common, have been able to unite, to share initiatives and to break out of the crippling passivity to which the daily normality of this system condemns them (...) It was the first step towards a real politics of the majority, far from the world of intrigues, of the world, lies and dodgy manoeuvres that is characteristic of the dominant politics. A politics that addresses all the issues that affect us, not just the economy or politics, but also the environment, ethics, culture, education or health.”[8]
By contrast bourgeois politics advocates the isolation of each one of us; it argues that we must each consider ourselves as our own master faced with problems which have a social character and must search for their solution through the individual act of voting in favour of professional politicians – a procedure which, over time, only results in greater atomisation and greater resignation.
The evolution of the trajectory of Podemos is very significant. In its early years, to strengthen the illusion of continuity with the movement of May 15, they reproduced and plagiarised the appearance of the assemblies and public debates to understand the causes of our sufferings, possible alternatives to offer, etc. But today, the so-called ‘assemblies’ of Podemos have become an undisguised knife fight between the different competing tendencies on the electoral lists.
Furthermore, the debates are today reduced to an approval of the list of recipes defended as a simple electoral programme of variable geometry, depending on the electoral needs of Iglesias and those of his gang.[9]
The organisation of Podemos’ ‘internal’ functioning is not in contradiction with its role, as the representatives of the wing most critical of this group would have us believe. It is in reality fully in line with the mission assigned to this party by the entire bourgeoisie: to convince the workers that any protest movement, any questioning of the control by the networks established by the democratic state to channel indignation about the future capitalism has in store for us, is inevitably doomed to die and finish up in their nets. Its ultimate aim is to convince us that it is useless to think we can fight against the system, because in the end the capitalist system will always recuperate this fight and entangle it in the institutions of the bourgeois state.
The movement of the Indignados in Spain, like those which arose in the following months in the United States or in Israel, or other expressions of weariness towards this capitalist system that turns human beings into vulgar commodities, failed to overcome the trap set by the bourgeois state, and particularly by those factions most able to sabotage any movement that puts capitalism into question. This does not mean that the possibility of a reflection, of a searching to learn the lessons of the causes of the weakening of these movements, does not exist - even in a latent form - in the dynamics of the current situation. The stimulants for this reflection are not missing. Capitalism is sinking every day into an abyss of growing misery for huge masses of the population, into multiplying outbreaks of war and terror, into a spreading scenario of ecological disaster. The exploiting class will always need, and will always be willing to pay handsomely, someone who proclaims at every street corner that the emperor is not naked, he only needs new clothes, like the ones Podemos, Syriza, Bernie Sanders in the USA or the ‘Corbynistas’ in Britain are willing to cut and tailor for him.
Paolo, 13 December 2015 (Acción Proletaria, organ of the ICC in Spain)
[1]. As we have already criticised in the previous issue of Acción Proletaria. See our article in Spanish: http: //es.internationalism.org/accionline/201406/4033/podemos-un-poder-del-estado-capitalista
[2]. In fact, a large part of the workforce of the ‘podemist’ grouping is made up of militants from the ‘anti-capitalist left’ formed from the remnants of leftist organisations in the 1980s and from the umpteenth ‘left’ split from the Spanish ‘Communist’ party.
[3]. Extract from our leaflet distributed internationally on the balance sheet of the 2011 movements: “2011. From indignation to hope,” published on our website March 30, 2012 https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4766/statement-social-m... [412]
[4]. A reference to Iglesias.
[5]. Spanish prime minister and leader of the People’s Party.
[6]. Perpetrated by the Taliban in the diplomatic quarter and which killed four Afghan policemen and two Spaniards, after which the Spanish government declared it was “an attack against Spain.”
[7]. It is not for nothing that the assemblies in the squares defiantly refused to follow the call for their dissolution during the “day of reflection” on 21 May.
[8]. Extract from the ICC international leaflet cited (the last passage is not included in the English version).
[9]. Of some 380,000 supporters that Podemos claims, only 15% took part in the primaries and only 4% mobilised for the adoption of its platform.
It may be that the recent terrorist attacks in France and Belgium are an expression of the difficulties facing “Islamic State” in the ground war in Iraq and Syria, but sudden murderous attacks on the population of the central countries of capitalism are fast becoming a fact of life, just as they have been for many years in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and numerous other countries caught up in today’s expanding war zone. In sum, the terrorists have “brought the war back home”, and even if Daesh is being militarily weakened in the area of its “Caliphate”, there are plenty of signs that the influence of this or similar groups is spreading to Africa and elsewhere. This is because the conditions which give rise to modern terrorism continue to ripen. Just as al-Qaida was pushed into the background as Enemy Number One by the rise of IS, so new gangs can emerge, and not necessarily Islamist: it looks as if the two most recent atrocities in Turkey were carried out by a wing or offshoot of the “Kurdish Workers’ Party”.
We live in a civilisation, the capitalist mode of production, which has long ceased to be a factor of progress for humanity, its most exalted ideals exposed as utterly degenerate and corrupt. As early as 1871, in the wake of the Paris Commune, Marx noted the cooperation of the great national rivals France and Prussia in crushing the uprising of the exploited, and predicted that in the future the call to “national war” would become no more than a hypocritical excuse for aggression and robbery, in the advanced capitalist zones at any rate. In 1915, in her Junius Pamphlet, Rosa Luxemburg insisted that from now on, in a planet dominated by huge imperialist powers, national war was everywhere a mere cover for imperialist appetites. The world wars and super-power conflicts that dominated the 20th century proved her absolutely correct.
And since the collapse of the great power blocs at the end of the 80s, war, the most overt expression of capitalist competition and crisis, has become ever-more irrational and chaotic, a situation highlighted by the carnage in Syria, which is being reduced to rubble by a host of armies and militias which are both at war with each other and which vie for the support of the many imperialist vultures flying over the region – the US, Russia, France, Britain, Iran, Saudi Arabia…
The irrational ideology of Islamic State is a clear product of this broader insanity. In the period of the blocs, opposition to the dominant imperialist powers tended to take on more classical forms of nationalism – the ideology of “national liberation” in which the aim was to develop new “independent” nation states, often with a sprinkling of “socialist” verbiage linked to the support of Russian or Chinese imperialism. In a period when not only blocs but national entities themselves are fragmenting, Islamic State’s pseudo-universalism has a wider appeal; but above all, in a period of history which constantly bears the threat of an end of history, of a collapse into barbarism under the weight of war and economic and ecological crisis, an ideology of the apocalypse, of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, becomes a real lure for the most marginalised and brutalised elements of bourgeois society. It is no accident that most of the personnel recruited for the attacks in France and Belgium come from the ranks of petty criminals who have taken the path of suicide and mass slaughter.
Terrorism and imperialist war
Terrorism has always been a weapon of despair, characteristically of layers in society who suffer the oppression of capitalist society but who have no future within it, of the “small bourgeois” ruined by the triumph of big capital. But 19th century terrorism was usually aimed at symbols of the old regime, at monarchs and other heads of state, and rarely targeted gatherings of ordinary citizens. Today’s terrorists seem to try to outdo each other in their cruelty. The Taliban faction which carried out the Easter attack on a park in Lahore claimed that it was “targeting Christians”. In reality it was targeting a children’s playground. Not just Christians but Christian children. And no matter to these gallant apostles that the majority of those killed were Muslims anyway. In Paris, people who like to listen to rock music, dance and have a drink were considered worthy of death in the IS communiqué lionising the attacks. But even these putrid “religious” justifications don’t stretch very far. Hitting a metro or an airport is aimed first and foremost in killing as many people as possible. This is because terrorism today is, overwhelmingly, no longer the expression of an oppressed, if non-revolutionary, class in its resistance against capitalism. It is an instrument of imperialist war, of a fight to the death between capitalist regimes.
It is sometimes claimed, in justification of suicide attacks by Palestinians in Israel for example, that the suicide belt is the poor man’s drone or dive bomber. This is true - or at least morally true - only if you recognise that the “poor man” recruited for the cause of Daesh or Hamas is not fighting for the poor but for a rival set of exploiters, whether a local proto-state or the bigger imperialist powers that arm them and cover them diplomatically or ideologically. And whether carried out by semi-independent groups like Daesh, or directly by the secret services of countries like Syria and Iran (as in the case of a number of attacks on European targets in the 1980s), terrorism has become a useful adjunct of foreign policy to any state or would-be state trying to carve out a niche on the world arena.
This doesn’t mean that acts of terrorism aren’t also used by the more respectable states: the secret services of democratic countries like the USA and Britain, not leaving out Israel of course, have a long tradition of targeted assassinations and even false flag operations in the guise of overtly terrorist factions. But returning to the comparison between the suicide belt and the sophisticated fighter-bomber, it’s true that the model for the terrorists is less the clever liquidation of this or that troublesome individual by the CIA or Mossad, and more the awesome destructive power of the cannons and aircraft of established armies, of weapons that can pulverise entire cities in a matter of days. The logic of imperialist war is the systematic massacre of entire populations – and this is something which has accelerated visibly over the last hundred years, with its progress from World War One, fought primarily between armies in the field, to the vast numbers of civilians carpet bombed or exterminated in death camps during World War Two, and on to the potential World War Three with its threat of the annihilation of the whole human race (a threat which has not at all disappeared in the new phase of chaotic militarism).
“Your armies kill our children with your planes, so we give you a taste of your own medicine, we kill your children with our suicide bombs”. This is the oft-heard justification of the terrorists on their pre- or post-atrocity videos. And again this shows how faithfully they follow the ideology of imperialism. Far from addressing their anger at the real perpetrators of war and barbarism, the small class of exploiters and their state systems, their hatred is directed at entire populations of entire regions of the world, all of whom become legitimate targets, and they thus play their part in reinforcing the false unity between exploiter and exploited which keeps the whole rotten system creaking on. And this attitude of demonising entire swathes of humanity is fully consistent with the dehumanising of particular groups who can then be subject to pogroms and terrorist bombings in the areas where you operate most commonly: Shia heretics, Christians, Yezidis, Jews, Kurds, Turks….
This ideology of revenge and hatred is echoed most clearly in the discourse of the right wing in Europe and America, who (while keeping their options open about blaming the Jews for the world’s ills) tend today to see all Muslims or Islam itself as the real threat to peace and security, and who brand every refugee from the war-torn zones as a potential terrorist mole, thus justifying the most ruthless measures of expulsion and repression against them. This kind of scapegoating is another means of papering over the real class antagonisms in this society: capitalism is in a deep, irresolvable economic crisis, but don’t investigate how capitalism functions to the benefit of the few and the misery of the many, blame it all on a part of the many, thus preventing the many from ever uniting against the few. It’s a very old trick, but the rise of populism in Europe and America reminds us never to underestimate it.
The democratic state is not our friend
But the spread of terrorism, of radical Islamism and its Islamophobic and populist mirror images should not blind us to another very important truth: in the countries of the capitalist centre, the main force safeguarding the system is the democratic state. And just as the democratic state is not averse to using terrorist methods, directly or indirectly, in its foreign policy, so it will use every terrorist attack to strengthen all its powers of social control and political repression. In Belgium, in the days after the Brussels attacks, the police powers of the state were dramatically reinforced: a new law was set in motion, increasing the possibility of raids and telephone-tapping, and introducing a closer following of “dubious” financial funding. As always, there was a very obvious presence of the police and army on the streets. Lessons were learned from the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, which initially gave rise to spontaneous gatherings expressing anger and indignation, requiring a major effort of media and politicians to make sure all this was contained in the framework of national unity. This time there were clear calls by the police for people to stay at home. In sum, trust the democratic state, the only force that can protect us from this horrible menace. The media, meanwhile, urged the population to get used to the new daily ambiance of fear. Of course there was much debate about the apparent incompetence of the Belgian security services which ignored a number of clues prior to the attacks. But the net result of the investigations into such failings will be to find ways of improving surveillance and supervision of the whole population.
Increasing the powers of the police state may help this or that ruling class in the incessant war between bourgeois factions and nations, but it will also be used against the population and the working class in particular in any future social explosions provoked by the crisis of the system, just as laws against terrorist groups who “hold democracy in contempt” can be used against authentically revolutionary political groups who put in question the whole capitalist system, including its democratic fireguards. But above all, just as the Islamist or nationalist ideology of the terrorists serves to bury the real class conflicts in every country, so the call for national unity behind the democratic state serves to prevent the exploited and the oppressed in any country from recognising that their only future lies in solidarity with their class brothers and sisters across the planet, and in the common struggle against a putrifying capitalist order.
Amos
On hearing of a strike by nurses demanding better staffing levels at Europe’s largest hospital, Charité, in Berlin last July a junior doctor in London said “They should do that here”. Now the junior doctors are striking here in England in a dispute over a contract that involves both a pay cut and problems of staffing levels. The government claim that they have offered a pay rise, but it’s one which will leave doctors thousands of pounds worse off due to a cut in out of hours pay. The claim that this is about 7 day working is equally outrageous, when the junior doctors have always covered nights and weekends, and rightly fear that increasing the weekend workload without increasing the number of staff would put patients at risk. In February secretary of state for Health, Jeremy Hunt, announced that the new contract would be imposed from August as negotiations had broken down.
The question facing junior doctors now, as with any sector of workers, is how to struggle. The BMA has escalated strike action from one day to two days in March and again on 6-8 April, and on 26-28 April will call an 18 hour strike without emergency cover – emergencies will be seen by other doctors. It is also launching a judicial review of the government decision on the contract – junior doctors have raised tens of thousands of pounds for this.
The problem here is that judicial review is clearly not an action that workers take collectively, but an appeal by citizens to the state and in the case of ongoing strike action nothing but a sideshow, a distraction to make it appear the BMA is doing something for junior doctors. Strike action, on the other hand, is the classical weapon of working class struggle and the plan to withdraw emergency cover sounds really militant – although other BMA members will be covering. Nevertheless, the strikes are protest strikes in support of union negotiation, with the BMA website at pains to explain who may and may not join the strike, insisting that participation in the strike is an individual decision, and laying out how to picket legally (a maximum of 6) with a view to public support. And the rules on who can strike are indeed byzantine. If teachers have faced a situation where those in one union are told to cross a picket line of those in another, there are some doctors in the position of being told they can strike on Wednesday 6th, when they are formally employed by the NHS, but not on Thurs 7th when part of the same job is formally for Public Health England, for instance. Here we can see the BMA is doing its best to rob the strike action of all collective solidarity and turn it into another protest by citizens.
Is this because junior doctors, however highly educated, are very inexperienced in class struggle? Last time they struck in 1975 the overwhelming majority were destined for a petty bourgeois position either as GPs running a small business or consultants with a private practice. After 40 years of pressure on NHS costs that is no longer the case, and while some will find more scope for business as NHS providers, or in the NHS bureaucracy, or both, others will be salaried workers. In this situation their union, the BMA, prides itself on representing all doctors whether employees or employers. Whatever is unusual about the BMA, it is containing this struggle just like any other union.
Calling workers out on strike for one or 2 days now and then as a demonstration to support or demand negotiation has been typical of struggles in the recent past, such as the electricians in 2011-12 or the teachers’ strike over pensions on 28 March 2012; and before that the CWU used exactly the same tactic with postal workers. It is a tactic that gives the unions great control, even at the expense of anger by the workers and in spite of the efforts they make to break out of this control. For instance when electricians and students held separate demonstrations on the same day a large group of electricians tried to get through to link up with the students instead of marching tamely off to Parliament. They were kettled and blocked. Similarly, while most unions would not emphasise that striking is an individual decision they achieve the same thing by emphasising the need to obey the law on picketing. So to struggle as part of the working class, rather than just being a bit of walk-on street theatre, means to come up against the unions. And as the electricians’ demonstration showed, if the unions cannot maintain control and keep them isolated, the police will be there to do it for them.
The electricians who tried to get through to link up with a student demonstration showed another aspect of what it means to struggle as part of the working class – solidarity with other sectors, linking up with them, because their struggle is our struggle. When workers are isolated, as electricians, as postal workers, as junior doctors, they are very weak – even the massive and very militant miners’ strike in 1984-5 was fatally weakened by being isolated in one sector. Strikes that spread across many sectors – France in 1968, Poland in 1980 – were much more powerful. The question of extending a struggle to link up with other workers is not just a useful tactic; it goes to the heart of what the working class is as the class that collectively produces in capitalism. And it is illegal. So a good citizen may withdraw his or her labour from a particular boss with whom there is a contract of employment, but may not legally try to extend that struggle to others who are equally affected by the dispute. Workers in Port Talbot are not the only ones who are affected by the decisions of Tata Steel: a much greater number of workers in the supply chain also find their jobs at risk because they are all associated in various aspects of the production of goods that goes far wider than even a huge multinational. This is the basis for the working class, when it sees itself as a class, to develop the power of solidarity, and also to develop a perspective for society as a whole which is in total contradiction with capitalism’s war of each against all.
Going back to the example of the junior doctors, their dispute has an impact on all those who rely on the health service, which is recognised but distorted in the totally false ideology of defending the NHS. So we have seen pickets with posters “hoot if you heart the NHS”, as we have in many struggles in the health service, just as the miners called for support to British coal. It is a trap that keeps workers tied to their employer, their sector, their isolation from other workers. And it is clearly not true. Striking health service workers do not love the NHS, they are on strike against it because they are being exploited by it. What they ‘love’ is not the real NHS with all the cuts and cost savings, but the idea of a health service that gives them adequate resources to look after patients well and do a job they love. There is no perspective for such a health service in capitalism.
The issue of what it means to struggle as a part of the working class is not just a question for junior doctors, but for all of us. And it does not stop at being able to recognise the traps and obstacles put in place by unions, government, media or police, it also carries the perspective of a new society: “Class identity is not … a kind of merely instinctive or semi-conscious feeling held by the workers … It is itself an integral aspect of class consciousness, part of the process whereby the proletariat recognises itself as a distinct class with a unique role and potential in capitalist society. Furthermore, it is not limited to the purely economic domain but from the beginning had a powerfully cultural and moral element: as Rosa Luxemburg put it, the workers’ movement is not limited to “bread and butter issues” but is a “great cultural movement”…”[1] Alex, 7.4.16
The co-chairman of the Oxford University Labour club resigns after claiming “a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews."; two Labour councillors suspended for antisemitic posts on social media: one of them, Salim Mulla, the mayor of Blackburn, tweeted that Israel was behind recent Islamic State atrocities in Europe; further up in the party hierarchy, Labour MP Naz Shah has to apologise in the House of Commons for suggesting on Facebook that the solution to the Israel-Palestine problem is to transport the entire population of Israel to the USA; and to top it all, Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, denies that Naz Shah has said anything antisemitic and refuses to apologise for claiming that “Hitler supported Zionism in 1932 before going mad and killing six million Jews”. Under pressure from the press and parts of his own party, Jeremy Corbyn announces the formation of a commission of inquiry into antisemitism in the party, headed by civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabarti.
So, do Labour and the left have a “Jewish problem”?
Leaving aside the way Labour’s scandals have been used to the hilt by the Tories, the right wing press, and parts of the Labour party itself, to discredit the Corbyn leadership; leaving aside the habitual refrain of the right wing Zionists that any criticism of the Israeli state is by definition antisemitic – the answer is still yes.
Antisemitism is deeply embedded in capitalism, even if its historic roots go much further back. And Labour and the left are part of capitalism. Like capitalism’s right wing, its left wing also sees social reality not from the standpoint of the exploited class, but from the standpoint of the dominant world system.
Neither right or left are able to understand capital for what it is: a social relation between classes. For them capital must be personified to make it more understandable; but in doing so, they obscure its essentially impersonal nature. As Marx once put it: individual capitalists are increasingly becoming mere functionaries of capital.
The classic embodiment of antisemitism is the form developed by the right wing, by fascism and its various antecedents and offspring. Their anti-Jewish propaganda had a powerful impact in the wake of the First World War and above all in the great capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Millions were thrown into poverty and unemployment by the decline of the capitalist system, but this is a mode of production which appears to operate in a mysterious way, through the working out of economic “laws” which present themselves almost as laws of nature. And yet these are laws that are set in motion by the activity of human beings. A contradiction which is certainly difficult to grasp! Far easier to understand the calamities brought about by the laws of commodity exchange as the malign product of identifiable human groups.
The “anti-capitalism” of the Nazis was thus able to point the finger of blame at the hooked-nosed, money-lending profiteers from “debt-slavery”, at “unpatriotic” Jewish financiers and at the equally unpatriotic “Judaeo-Bolsheviks” who had stabbed Germany in the back and caused it to lose the war in 1918. The “stab in the back” was, in reality, the proletarian revolution in Germany which had compelled the ruling class to halt the war, but which had been defeated through the combined efforts of the left of capital – the “social traitors” of the German Labour party – and the rightist precursors of the Nazi party. The purveyors of the myth of a Jewish conspiracy against the Fatherland were, in these conditions, largely successful in diverting the defeated and disoriented masses from going any further towards understanding the real origins of their impoverishment.
But the personalisation of capital is not limited to the right. The left also has its sinister caricatures: the top-hatted Fat Cat, the poshos of the Tory party, the bonus-guzzling bankers. In the discourse which dominated much of the Occupy movement in 2011, the bankers in particular were singled out as the very people who had caused the financial crash through their insatiable greed. And this anger at the bankers could easily slide into whispers about the power of the Rothschilds and the “Zionist lobby” in the US, or into the full-blown mythology of the Illuminati, which in turn reiterates the old theme of a world Jewish cabal.
This left-wing personalisation is also at the basis of the essential programme of the left: not the abolition of the capitalist social relation, which means the revolutionary suppression of wage labour and commodity production, but the statifying of that very same social relation – another motif they share with the fascists. In this world-view, if capital is taken over by the state, it ceases to benefit the private few and can be made to work for the many.
This traditional state capitalist programme of the left is, significantly, defined by them as a programme of “nationalisations”, with or without the sweetener of “workers’ control”. This is another indicator of the capitalist nature of the left, whether Labourite, Stalinist or Trotskyist. Nationalisation means “national” ownership – the attempt to unify the national capital. The starting point of the left is thus the starting point of all factions of capital – the interests of the nation, that fabulous community which transcends all class divisions.
In the days of Marx and Engels, the workers’ movement supported certain national movements because it saw them as progressive in relation to the still-surviving forms of feudal domination. They understood that they were capitalist and insisted that if workers took part in them they must at all times guard their organisational and political independence.
Those days are long gone. Capitalism everywhere is a reactionary system whose very survival threatens humanity with ruin. The nation state is a crying anachronism in an age where only a world without frontiers, a global human community, can overcome the crises confronting the entire species. Over the last hundred years or so, nationalist ideology has morphed into the most hideous forms, utterly devoid of any progressive content. Again, fascism is the most obvious sign of this, but the nationalism promoted by the Stalinist regimes has been hardly less rabid (and has certainly been made ample use of antisemitism where this proved expedient for the regime, as with the so-called “Doctors’ Plot” in Russia in 1952-53[1] and the employment of dark references to Zionists and “rootless cosmopolitans” in state propaganda).
Modern political Zionism was born at the end of the 19th century as yet another form of nationalism. It arose as a reaction against the rise of antisemitism in Europe. Despairing of any possibility of radical social change as a cure for the scapegoating of the Jews, its mainstream version elaborated by Theodor Herzl and others came up with the solution of a Jewish state in Palestine, where Jews would not only be free from persecution but would create a kind of ideal society, flowering in the allegedly uninhabited deserts of the Holy Land.
Like all forms of nationalism, Zionism starts off by obscuring the real class differences within the “Jewish community” and claims that all Jews have the same fundamental interests, from the worker in a small clothing factory to the Baron de Rochschild himself. For that reason alone, it is an antidote to the real danger that threatens capitalism: that the workers of the world will unite, recognising that their true interests have nothing to do with nationality or religion, but spring from a shared struggle against a shared exploitation.
But more than this: like any other “national liberation movement” in the epoch of imperialism, Zionism could only survive by attaching itself to the great powers that dominated the globe. First Britain, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, then, with the fight against the British Mandate in Palestine in the 40s, the USA. And, having established itself as a nation state, Israel provided us with further confirmation of Rosa Luxemburg’s observation that we are living in an epoch where every state, from the most powerful to the most petty, has its own imperialist appetites. The drive to conquer surrounding territories and to expel or subjugate their populations has been reflected at the ideological level by the ascendance, within Zionism, of the most reactionary notions justifying the imperialist expansion of the Israeli state – Netanyahu’s thuggish nationalism, various brands of religious fundamentalism, and even a kind of Jewish fascism, where the slogan of “kill the Arabs” raised by the admirers of “Rabbi” Meir Kahane bears a sinister resemblance to the “Judenraus” of the Nazis.
The left has no difficulty in chronicling this story of the transformation of Zionism from Herzl’s utopia of a safe haven for Jews into an increasingly militarised outpost surrounded by an ‘Anti-terrorist” wall. But their critique of Zionism is an essentially nationalist one, since they choose to oppose it by supporting another form of nationalism, supposedly a “nationalism of the oppressed”, an “anti-imperialist” struggle for national liberation. For them, Zionism is a “nationalism of the oppressor”, similar to British jingoism or German fascism, because it allied itself with imperialism and established a new colonial system in Palestine. In reality, the Jews who were drawn towards Zionist ideology in the 1930s after the failure of the proletarian revolution and with the rise of fascist persecution were also oppressed, and it was their tragedy that the escape to Palestine brought them into conflict with the oppressed Palestinian Arabs who were already living there. But whether the followers of a nationalist ideology are oppressed or not, the actual nationalist movements they espouse are unfailingly compelled to seek imperialist backers: early Palestinian nationalism first tried it with the British (who were utterly two faced in their policy towards Jews and Arabs in Palestine), then it sought help from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; during the Cold War it turned to Russian imperialism; when Palestinian nationalism morphed into the Islamism of Hizbollah and Hamas, they became more reliant on regional powers like Iran or Saudi Arabia. But underneath all these shifts, the reality of a dependence on imperialism remains. Palestinian nationalism is not anti-imperialist, but part of the world imperialist system.
It is well known that Corbyn has developed links with Hamas and Hizbollah, and his allies in the Trotskyist movement, after years of supporting Arafat or other factions of the PLO, have raised slogans like “we are all Hizbollah” at demonstrations against Israeli incursions into Lebanon. It is here that anti-Zionism indeed becomes indistinguishable from antisemitism. It is an irony of history that the classic motifs of European Jew-hatred - from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Blood Libel[2] - are now openly peddled in the Arab and Muslim world, which once had a rather different relationship with its Jewish minorities. Hamas has referred to the Protocols in its programme to prove that there is a world Zionist conspiracy. Hezbollah’s leaders have talked of “throwing the Jews into the sea”. Corbyn and the Trotskyists may disapprove of these excesses, but the essence of national liberation ideology is that you make a common front with the enemies of your enemy. In this way, the left becomes a vehicle not only of a more shamefaced antisemitism, but of its most open manifestations.
To return to the scandal caused by Livingstone’s claim about Hitler supporting Zionism. Clearly “Red Ken” doesn’t have much grasp of the materialist conception of history if he thinks the Holocaust is down to Hitler all of a sudden going mad. But the core of his claim – collaboration between the Nazi regime and the Zionist organisations – is not quite so outrageous, even if this is a subject that is mired in controversy and historical sources on the subject must be treated with caution. Given that there was a convergence of interests between the Nazis, who wanted Jews out of Germany, and Zionists who also wanted them to leave, provided that they went to Palestine, it is hardly surprising to find evidence that this convergence led to actual cooperation - as in the case of the Havaara, or Transfer, agreement which Livingstone refers to, allowing German Jews to take themselves and a good part of their wealth to Palestine, or the toleration of Zionist organisations in Germany by the Nazi regime.
The story is highly complicated: the Nazis, no less than the British, were quite capable of playing a double game in Palestine, giving support both to the Zionists in so far as they came into conflict with the British, and also to the Mufti of Jerusalem who led an often violent opposition to Jewish immigration into Palestine. And there were certainly factions of Zionism who saw an ideological connection between their version of Jewish nationalism and the Nazi racial doctrines – most notably in the case of the Lehi group, better known as the Stern Gang, which preached a kind of Hebrew racial identity and which proposed a military alliance with the Nazis against the British, seen by Lehi as enemy number one.
We don’t propose to go further into this particular question here. But there is a great deal left unsaid in all the bluster about Livingstone’s remarks, both by the right and the left. Because collaboration with the Nazis before and during the war itself was not limited to the relatively small Zionist organisations of the day. Indeed, there was considerable support for fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s by the ruling classes of the main capitalist powers, still haunted by the spectre of “Bolshevism” which they continued to identify with the Stalinist regime in the USSR. They saw in fascism a rather brutal but perhaps necessary counter-weight to the threat of proletarian revolution. The Daily Mail, today among a procession of newspapers manufacturing offense about claims of cooperation between Zionism and Nazism, were themselves collaborators with fascism in the 1930s, with their infamous “hurrah for the Blackshirts”[3] headline in January 1934 and other articles expressing admiration for the Hitler regime. That great antifascist and critic of the policy of appeasement towards the Nazis, Winston Churchill, had himself, speaking in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praised Mussolini’s fascist regime: he considered that it had rendered a service to the whole world with its “triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’[4]. Up to the very eve of war, the rulers of Britain and France were not yet decided whether they should oppose Hitler or ally with him against the USSR.
Even when Churchill (supported by the Labour party and the left) had recognised that German imperialism was the greater threat to the interests of the British Empire and taken command of the British war effort, hatred of the working class and its struggle could still lead to de facto collaboration with the Nazis – most cynically after the Italian workers’ revolt of 1943 which led to the downfall of Mussolini. It was here that Churchill came up with the policy of “letting the Italians stew in their own juice”, which meant halting the allied advanced through the south of Italy in order to give the German army time to subdue the workers of the northern cities.
The truth is that there is nothing unnatural about one part of the ruling class cooperating with another against a common enemy – whether an imperialist rival or the exploited class, although it is only the threat from the latter which will lead all the different bourgeois gangs to bury the hatchet and concentrate on crushing the revolution, as they did in 1918, when revolution in Germany convinced both camps that it was time to end the war. This is why there was also nothing unnatural in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 which enabled the two “totalitarian” regimes to carve up Poland and was the signal for launching the Second World War. By that time, there was nothing Soviet or socialist about the USSR, which had become a capitalist state like all the others.
Fascism and anti-fascism, Zionism and anti-Zionism: these are all varieties of bourgeois ideology which can oppose each other violently but can also make shady deals among themselves. But the most dangerous thing about them is that they aim to convince the working class to forget about its own interests and collaborate with its class enemy.
Amos 6/5/2016
[1] This totally fraudulent campaign was based on allegations that a group of mainly Jewish doctors were plotting to kill Soviet leaders
[2] The Protocols were a forgery by the Czarist secret police purporting to prove the existence of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. The Blood Libel was the charge, often used as a pretext for pogroms in the Middle Ages, that the Jews murdered Christian children and drained their blood as an ingredient for the Passover matzah (unleavened bread).
[3] The British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosley
[4] See our article ‘Churchill: the counter-revolutionary intelligence of the British bourgeoisie’ https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200504/1204/churchill-co... [1432]
Gatherings every evening of several thousand people, especially at the Place de la République in Paris: the Nuit Debout movement has been in the headlines since 31 March. These are meetings of people from different horizons – high school pupils and university students, workers and the precariously employed, unemployed and pensioners, all sharing a desire to get together, to discuss, to close ranks against the adversities of this system. The sincerity of many of the participants is undeniable; they are indignant about all kinds of injustice and at root they aspire to a different world, a more human world founded on solidarity. However, Nuit Debout is not developing their fight or their consciousness. On the contrary, this movement is leading them into a dead end and strengthening the most conformist outlooks. Worse than that, Nuit Debout is a vehicle for the most nauseating ideas, like the personalisation of the evils of society, blaming them on a few representatives like bankers and oligarchs. In this way Nuit Debout is not only misleading all those who are taking part for honest reasons, but is already a blow by the bourgeoisie against the consciousness of the whole working class.
The new Labour law (known as the “El Khomri” law after the current Minister of Labour, Myriam el Khomri) in itself symbolises the bourgeois and anti-working class nature of the Socialist Party. This “reform” will further degrade living standards and increase divisions among the wage earners, putting them in competition with each other. This whole project is an attempt to generalise the idea of separate negotiations over working hours, wage levels, lay-offs…
To facilitate the acceptance of this new law, the unions have played their usual role: they have cried scandal, demanded the modification or withdrawal of certain parts of the initial draft and have pretended to “put pressure” on the Socialist government by organising numerous days of action and demonstrations. These union parades, which consist of people tramping the streets and being bombarded with slogans like “The workers are in the street, El Khomri you are screwed”, or “Strike, strike, general strike!”, without being able to discuss or build anything together , serve only to demoralise people and spread feelings of powerlessness.
In 2010 and 2011, in response to the pensions reform, these same union days of action followed each other for months, sometimes mobilising several million people, but in the end allowing the attack to go through and, worse still, creating a kind of moral exhaustion which still weighs heavily on the whole working class. There is however a notable difference with regard to the movements of 2010 and 2011: the Nuit Debout phenomenon has benefited from a media and political coverage which is much wider, and presented much more sympathetically, than is usual for something which claims to be a social movement contesting the present state of affairs.
“Nuit Debout, the camp of the possible”[1], or “Nuit Debout, bringing the imaginary citizen back to life” as the journal Libération put it. It also wrote that “It’s of little importance how it turns out politically…what counts is that on the public squares and elsewhere, we are groping towards a more dignified daily politics”[2]. This support can also be seen at the international level. Numerous branches of the media around the world have given publicity to the general assemblies of Nuit Debout which, according to them, is reinventing politics and the world. Certain political figures on the left and far left, many of whom have gone along to the assemblies, have also waxed lyrical. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the co-founder of the Parti de Gauche, rejoiced over this gathering, as has the national secretary of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent. For Julien Bayou (EELV – the French green party), Nuit Debout “is an exercise of radical democracy in real time”. Even Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the primaries candidate of the right, says she heard “interesting” slogans on the square, such as “we are not just electors, we are also citizens”. The president of the Republic himself, François Hollande, also gave his little salute: “I find it legitimate that the youth wants to have its say about the world as it is today, even about politics as it is today…I am not going to complain that part of the youth wants to invent the world of tomorrow”. The same ring tone at the international level: for Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, “these movements are magnificent sparks in the midst of a dark sky”.
What is the significance of these eulogies by major international media and politicians? The answer is in the two founding documents of the movement. The leaflet distributed by the Convergence des Luttes collective on 31 March in Paris, and which launched the first gathering at the Place de la République[3] puts it like this: “Our governments are trapped in the obsession of perpetuating a system at the end of its tether at the price of ‘reforms’ which are more and more retrograde and conform to the logic of neo-liberalism which has been at work for 30 years: all power to the stockholders and the bosses, to the privileged few who appropriate the collective wealth. This system has been imposed on us by government after government, at the cost of numerous ways of denying democracy”. The manifesto has the same tone: “humanity must be at the heart of the concerns of our leaders”[4].
The orientation is very clear: it’s a matter of organising a movement to “put pressure” on the “leaders” and the state institutions in order to promote a more democratic and humane capitalism. This is the kind of politics that has marked the whole life of Nuit Debout. It’s enough to look at the actions coming out of the assemblies and commissions: “an aperitif with Valls” (a few hundred demonstrators went to have an aperitif at the home of the prime minister on 9 April); demonstrations at the Élysée on 14 April, following a TV programme in which François Hollande took part; occupation of the banking agency BNP Paribas in Toulouse; picnic at a hypermarket in Grenoble; disturbance of the regional council meeting in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and the municipal councils of Clermont-Ferrand and Poitiers; establishment of a ZAD (Zone to be Defended)at Montpelier; occupation of a MacDonald’s in Toulouse; tags on the windows of banks; depositing rubbish in front the doors of certain Parisian town halls, etc.
The most popular proposals at the Paris general assemblies are also revealing about this political orientation of looking for a few superficial or falsely radical alterations to the capitalist system: demonstrations for an “ecological democracy”, for a life-long wage, a minimum wage, cutting high incomes, full employment, organic agriculture, better treatment of minorities, democracy through drawing lots, more commitment by the state to education, especially in the deprived suburbs, transatlantic partnership in trade and investment etc.
Regarding the trade unions, Marx wrote in 1865: “Instead of the conservative motto: ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolition of the wages system!’ (Value, price and profit). It’s precisely this revolutionary logic that those who pull the strings behind Nuit Debout are deliberately rejecting, leading the young generations who are posing questions about this society onto a rotten terrain: reformism and the election box.
The most emblematic demand is without doubt the call for a new constitution establishing a “social republic”. Thus according to the economist Frédéric Lordon, one of the initiators of Nuit Debout: “the first act of re-appropriation is the re-writing of a constitution…what is the social republic? It’s taking seriously the democratic idea posed in 1789”[5]
It’s all there in a nutshell. The central aim of those who launched Nuit Debout is to realise a “true democracy” promised by the French revolution of 1789. But what was revolutionary two and half centuries ago, i.e. installing the political power of the bourgeoisie in France, overcoming feudalism by the development of capitalism, building a nation…all this today has become irredeemably reactionary. This system of exploitation is decadent. It’s not a question of making it better, because that has become impossible, but of going beyond it, of overthrowing it through an international proletarian revolution. But here the illusion is being sewn that the state is a neutral agent on which we have to put pressure, or even protect from the shareholders, the corrupt politicians, the greedy bankers, the oligarchs…when in reality, the state is the highest representative of the ruling class and the worst enemy of the exploited.
Above all, we should not underestimate the danger of fixating on the bankers, the shareholders, the corrupt politicians. This method of accusing this or that action or person instead of the system of exploitation as a whole has no other meaning than the preservation of capitalist social relations. It replaces the class struggle, the struggle against capitalism and for another world, by hatred directed against individuals who only have to be removed from power for all the evils of society to disappear as if by magic[6].
Nuit Debout claims to be taking up the torch of the movements of 2006 and 2011. But in reality, it is making a travesty of their memory by completely deforming what was the strength of the movement against the CPE and the Indignados, framing all discussion in the optic of citizenship and republican values, and diverting reflection to the problem of making capitalism more human and democratic.
In 2006 in France, the students debated in real sovereign general assemblies which liberated speech. They also had the concern to widen the movement to the employed, to the retired[7], to the unemployed, in the first place by opening their general assemblies to them, by putting forward demands which went beyond the simple framework of the CPE[8], leaving to one side all specifically student demands. Five years later, in 2011, we saw with the Indignados movement in Spain and Occupy in the US and Israel expressions of the same vital need to get together and discuss the evils of this capitalist system founded on exploitation, exclusion and suffering. This time, the assemblies didn’t take place in lecture halls and theatres but in the streets and squares[9].
In the Indignados movement, although the context was different, we saw the same strings being pulled as in the Nuit Debout movement. The ‘alternative worldists’ of DRY (Real Democracy Now) hid behind the mask of ‘apoliticism’ in order to sabotage any real discussion. Then too they tried to channel energies into the ‘life of the commissions’ to the detriment of the debates in the general assemblies and into making the ‘right choice’ in elections (Podemos was the culmination of this approach). But at that time the social movement was rather more profound. Participants often had the strength to take the struggle into their own hands, and real general assemblies, animated by serious debate and reflection about society, were held in parallel with those of DRY, although this was totally blacked out by the media. This is what we wrote at the time:
“On Sunday 22nd, election day, instead of another attempt to end the assemblies, DRY proclaimed that “we’ve achieved our goals” and that the movement must be ended. The response was unanimous: “We are not here for the elections”. On Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th, both in the number of participants and in the richness of the debates, the assemblies reached their peak. Interventions, slogans, placards proliferated demonstrating a deep reflection: “Where is the Left? It’s behind the Right”, “The polls cannot hold back our dreams”, “600 euros per month, that’s some violence”, “If you don’t let us dream, we will prevent you from sleeping!, “No work, no home, no fear”, “They deceived our grandparents, they deceived our children, they will not deceive our grandchildren”. They also show an awareness of the perspectives: “We are the future, capitalism is the past”, “All power to the assemblies”, “There is no evolution without revolution”, “The future starts now”, “Do you still believe this is a utopia?”…. However, it was the demonstration in Madrid in particular that provided a new focus coming from June 19th on perspectives for the future. It was convened by an organisation coming from the working class and its most active minorities. The theme of this gathering was “March and unite against the crisis and against capital.” It declared: “No to wage cuts and pension cuts; against unemployment: workers' struggles; no to price rises, increase our wages, increase the taxes on those who earn the most, protect our public services, no to privatisation of health and education ... Long live working class unity.”[10]
We didn’t share all the demands raised by the Indignados. Weaknesses, illusions in bourgeois democracy were also very present. But the movement was animated by a proletarian dynamic and included a deep criticism of the system, of the state, of elections. It began a fight against the organisations of the left and extreme left who were deploying all their political forces to limit reflection and drag it back into the limits of what is acceptable for capitalism.
The present weakness of our class has meant that it has not been possible for this kind of proletarian critique to emerge out of Nuit Debout or for the desire to come together and discuss, which certainly does animate a section of those taking part, to bear fruit. The bourgeoisie has drawn lessons from the previous movements, It has prepared the ground very well and is manoeuvring intelligently, taking advantage of the present weaknesses of the proletariat. Today, it’s Attac, the New Anti-Capitalist Party, the Left Front and all the adepts of reformism and of a so-called “real democracy now” who remain in control of Nuit Debout and who are taking advantage of the proletariat’s disarray, its lack of perspective, its difficulty in recognising itself as a class. These groups are occupying the social terrain and in doing so are acting as the most effective support for capitalism.
We have to be clear: there was nothing spontaneous about Nuit Debout. It’s something which has been prepared and organised over a long period by the radical defenders of capitalism. Behind this “spontaneous” and “apolitical” movement lurk the professionals, the groups of the left and extreme left who use “apoliticism” as a means of control. The appeal of 31 March already had this professional dimension:
“In the programme: animations, relaxation, concerts, information sharing, a Permanent Citizens’ Assembly and all kinds of surprises”. Nuit Debout had its origins in a public meeting organised at the Paris Bourse du Travail on 23 February 2016. This meeting, baptised “make them afraid” was motivated by the enthusiastic reactions to the film by François Ruffin, Merci Patron!. The decision was taken to occupy the Place de la République at the end of the demonstration of 31 March.
“The ‘pilot’ collective of 15 people met: Johanna Silva from the journal Fakir, Loic Canitrot , from the company Joilie Mome, Leila Chaibi from the Black Thursday Collective and a member of the Left Party, a trade unionist from Air France also a member of the Left Party, a member of the Les Engraineurs association and a student from Sciences Po, the economist Thomas Couttrot and Nicolas Galepides of Sud-PTT….The association Droit au Logement offered legal and practical aid, the ‘alternative worldist’ Attac and the Solidaires union federation also joined the collective. It was the economist Frédéric Lordon who was approached by the initiative collective to open this first Paris night on 31 March. His idea: “for the social republic” would be echoed in the workshops formed to write a new Constitution in Paris and Lyon…”. These few lines from Wikipedia show how far the official political forces, trade unions, left associations etc contributed to setting up and taking charge of the Nuit Debout movement.
In particular, who is François Ruffin? Editor in chief of the leftist paper Fakir, he is close to the Left Front and the CGT. His aim is to “put pressure on the state and its representatives”, or, to use his own words, “make them afraid”. For a movement to succeed, according to him, you have to ensure that the “combat on the streets and the expression through the ballot box come together”, like in 1936 and “even in 1981”. This is an attempt to make us forget that 1936 prepared the mobilisation of the working class for the Second World War; as for 1981, this so-called “social movement” enabled the Socialist Party to come to power and carry out some of the most effectively anti-working class policies of the last few decades!. This is the real agenda of Nuit Debout: an enterprise aimed at getting those participating in good faith and full of hope that the real aim of a radical struggle is to head back to the ballot box, to instil the illusion that capitalist society can be made more human if you vote for the right parties, i.e. the Socialist party or the extreme left[11].
This initiative by the left of the SP and the extreme left has arrived at a highly opportune moment for the bourgeoisie: in a year of presidential elections, when the SP is very widely discredited. This is what is at stake in the short and medium term – the capacity of the bourgeoisie to create a new left that has some credibility for the working class, a “radical, alternative, democratic” left. We are seeing the same dynamic in a number of other countries, with Podemos in Spain and Sanders in the USA.
It’s not at all certain that this part of the manoeuvre, its electoral dimension, will be a success for the bourgeoisie, i.e. that it will lead to a mobilisation for the elections, because the working class is very deeply disgusted by all the political parties. At the same time, the attempts of François Ruffin to pull the participants of Nuit Debout towards the trade unions[12], in particular the CGT, has up till now been a failure, On the other hand, the ideology transmitted by this movement, the idea of citizenship, which serves to further dilute the proletariat’s class identity, and the tendency towards personalisation instead of the combat against the capitalist system, is a particularly dangerous and effective poison for the future.
Nuit Debout, even more than being the product of a new manoeuvre by the left and extreme left, is the symbol of the real difficulties of the workers to recognise themselves as a class, as a social force which bears the future for humanity as a whole. And these difficulties are not just temporary: they are part of a deep historical process going on in society. The seeds planted by movements like the struggle against the CPE or the Indignados, which were expressions of the real need of the proletariat to develop its struggle, are today dormant in a frozen soil. As for older movements, like the ones which led to the Paris Commune in 1871 or the October revolution in 1917, they are being buried and forgotten under heaps of lies.
But when the social atmosphere heats up, under the blows of the crisis and the inevitable aggravation of attacks against our living conditions, then some flowers can begin to bloom. This confidence in the future is based on an awareness that the proletariat is a historic class which carries within itself another world, free from relations of exploitation, which is necessary and possible for humanity.
Germain, 15.5.16
[6] This denunciation of the oligarchy is also very close to the fixation on the Establishment by Donald Trump in the USA. While the appearances are different, the same ideological basis is there, that of personalisation.
[7] One of the most successful banners read “View croûtons, jeunes lardons, la meme salade”, which we could translate (with a slight change of recipe) to “old cucumbers, young tomatoes, it’s the same salad”
[8] On the CPE: see ‘Theses on the spring 2006 students’ movement in France’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students [1439]
[10]From our article ‘Protests in Spain, a movement that heralds the future’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/146/editorial-protests-in-spain [1074]
[11] For a better understanding of the thinking of Ruffin and the origins of Nuit Debout, see our article on the French site on the film Merci Patron! https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201605/9374/merci-patron-denaturation-ce-qu-lutte-classe [1440]. See also: www.liberation.fr/france/2016/02/24/qui-est-francois-ruffin-le-realisate... [1441]
[12] “I hope that we can have a very big 1st of May, that the demonstration ends at the République and that we hold a mass rally with the unions who oppose the Labour law”
The following article was written by our section in France as a response to cases of cruelty against animals exposed in French slaughter-houses. But the same horrors have also come to light in British abattoirs, for example in 2015 following the secret filming of what goes on behind closed doors at a slaughter-house in Butterton, Staffs[1]. As the article explains, cruelty to animals is inseparable from cruelty to human beings, and both are inseparable from the capitalist mode of production, where everything is subordinated to the drive for profit.
“Poor dogs, they want to treat you like human beings” - Marx on the proposed tax on dogs in France, in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Just over a month ago some videos were put onto social media showing great cruelty going on within some French abattoirs. The association L214, Ethiques & Animaux distributed a video filmed on a hidden camera showing how animals in an abattoir close to Pau were being treated. This video was taken up on social media from March 29. The treatment inflicted on the animals, the atrocities and cruelties, committed sometimes directly by the employees, are indefensible. The employees butcher still-living animals, felling them sometimes with blows from a hook. Others push the animals by blows on the head from an electric prodder and you can even see a separated living lamb transfixed on two hooks in the absence of an operator. These are similar images to those which led to the closure of the abattoir of Ales in October 2015 and, following that, one at Vigan in February 2016.
Such a banalisation of barbaric practices doesn’t mean that they are a simple consequence of sadism or a lack of scruples among the staff. Submitting to infernal, mechanised time-keeping, pushed by profitability in a context of intense competition and staff reductions, these acts are driven by the need for speed, provoking unimaginable suffering in the animals, but also, in some ways, in the men who must kill them. The situation in fact demands the personnel to develop a very thick skin, a forced desensitisation. The bestiality of the staff is first and foremost that of the capitalist system, of its totalitarian power. The savage acts, the jokes and the laughter of the employees which sometimes accompany them, are as much defence mechanisms faced with daily tasks institutionalised and imposed by the bloody logic of capital.
Beyond the current practices of cruelty, we should understand that the trade-mark of this capitalist society is standardisation and the violent transformation of quality into quantity. What’s the aim of this? Profitability, the sacrifice of nature and man himself to this sole end. Everything which resists this quantification is eliminated, meticulously disqualified and excluded.
Competition gives rise to battery farming: removed from the outside world, animals are fattened and bloated by antibiotics[2]. The animals are systematically transformed in the meat factories into real monsters. The cattle in feed-lots (fattening areas) are not only pressed together in much reduced spaces but physically deformed to the point of showing muscular hypotrophy. Milk cows have a very reduced life-span because of their intensive treatment, even though overproduction pushes angry farmers to pour their unsold milk over the fields! The pollution from this intensive and massive form of farming is a major bane, the animals wallowing in their own waste, with all the risk of spreading diseases.
The same farming methods are used in the selection of ducks and geese for the production of foie gras. Terrible and often useless suffering is inflicted on these animals. First of all the males are selected because of their larger livers and the staff are required to throw the females into the crusher, with some dying slowly in agony. The forced-feeding itself “gives rise to lesions, inflammations (the gut, enteritus), infections (forms of thrush, bacterial infection)[3]. One could continue with similar scandalous cruelties, towards pigs for example or domestic animals. But it’s clear that the reality of this violence is in no way limited to acts upon animals. It is really the result of a totalitarian industrial uniformity through which the animals are reduced to commodities just like the producers, those who sell their labour-power.
The association mentioned above calls above all for action via the application of article L 214 of the Rural Code which recognises animals as “sensate” beings[4] .
Even if we can understand it, the combat of this association is destined to fail or at least only obtain very ephemeral changes since it simply asks for “the application of the law”. Laws in reality are only fig leaves which aim to make us think that the indignant reactions of politicians and their media supporters could in any way modify such practices, which are fundamentally linked to the very real logic of capitalism and profit. That’s why the L 214 association, which justly denounces numerous barbaric practices involving the killing of animals, participates in the mystification of bourgeois legality when it calls for “the elected of the nation” to “make the law apply”. It even invites “citizens” to put pressure on “political personalities”: “Politique-animaux.fr wants to be at the service of the citizens. Resources given to them could help them question their elected politicians and candidates, as well as orient their vote during the electoral process”.
When we see the way that capitalism treats human beings, workers in “production units” or migrants fleeing from the atrocities of war or the horrors of hunger, it’s hard to see why the question of animal farming should be any different. The deceitful reality of “public liberties”, of “equality between men” drawn up in the “Rights of Man” 200 years ago shows that “animal rights” can only turn out to be an empty shell.
The light thrown on these practices linked to the inhumanity of the production of commodities, the exposure of cruelty to the point of sadism in the killing of animals, while it arouses indignation, has no other end than to mystify the “citizen”, to restrict thought to the terrain of a capitalist order that is the very basis of these horrors. The system has established its hypocritical rules (the laws) which are adapted to the economic logic of productivity and the generalised commercial war. In several sites of the production of animal meat where barbaric acts have been committed on the animals, the meat produced has been given labels denoting quality (Red Label and IGP) and, in several cases, been declared clean and healthy. Which should mean, in principle, that a maximum amount of care and respect has been given. The director of an abbatoir gave a very limpid explanation for these cruelties when he described the working deadlines: “We had to kill 15,000 lambs in a fortnight for Easter. If we worked slower they wouldn’t commit these types of acts”[5]
In fact the more that barbarism develops within this society, the more any argument will be used or rules applied in order to mask the causes of it and continue the selling of products for the most profit. For that the market has come up with new “labels” which aim to get the consumer to buy a product with a “mark” which claims a so-called “ethical” or “superior quality”. But these labels don’t give any protection from the advancing decadence of the capitalist system. As an expert consultant on food security said, we have in front of us images “revealing the standard functioning of abbatoirs in France (in which) negligence and ill-treatment occur daily.”[6]
In fact they take no more care in slaughtering animals than they do in cutting down wood or picking out the best stones. And it’s the same thing for human beings robotised by the social relations and who are only labour power to be exploited, “things”, more exactly commodities, that one buys and one sells on the labour market.
Capital doesn’t care at all about human beings or animals. Its implacable organisation does not include the satisfaction of human needs. It responds only to the law of profit and the market. It is claimed that the mad destructiveness of capitalist growth is a price worth paying for feeding humanity. That’s false. The reality is that industry produces in a blind manner with an almost unique objective: to sell at any price. Nourishment is just a simple consequence which the system doesn’t care about. As it happens it can be more pertinent to talk about food production as a form of poisoning (see our article on junk food on https://fr.internationalism.org [1443]). This also explains why this totalitarian logic can also allow for the fact “every five seconds a child under ten dies of hunger. On a planet full of riches... In its present state, in fact, world agriculture could feed 12 billion human beings with no problem – twice the present population. There’s no fatality in this respect. A child that dies of hunger is a child that has been murdered.”[7]
Look at how the governments of the European countries have just been haggling with the government of Turkey over the acceptance or rejection of new migrants who are treated as cattle, herded and corralled without any thought or respect for their dignity. The capitalist state treats human beings as it treats animals and vice-versa.
Of course the bourgeoisie doesn’t directly carry out the horrible practices that it wants implemented and quite often it takes care to keep its distance. For the most part it doesn’t get its own hands dirty! It leaves that for the mass of the exploited. Little consequence is given to the humans or animals, these “sensate beings” that capital despises and grinds down. All this Rosa Luxemburg recognised and denounced a hundred years ago, affirming at the same time her great moral sense as witnessed by one of her letters from prison. She felt herself close to a suffering animal who was being violently beaten by a soldier because it couldn’t move its load. And she was able to connect this ferocity to the barbaric acts committed between human beings in times of war: “I had a vision of all the splendour of war...”[8]
Paco, 22 April, 2016
[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/harrowing-undercover-footage-butchers-abattoir-5124981 [1444]. See also https://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/slaughter/ALL/// [1445]
[2] This also favours the growth of resistant bacteria and equally reduces the effectiveness of medicines for humans.
[3] “Ducklings ground and mutilated in order to produce foie gras” (Le Monde, December 21, 2015).
[4] “All animals being sensate beings must be kept by their owner in conditions compatible with the biological imperatives of the species”. (Article L 214-1 of the Rural Code).
[5] “An abattoir in the Basque country closed after the discovery of acts of cruelty” (Le Monde, March 29, 2016)
[6] “Acts of cruelty in an abattoir in Gard certified as organic” (Le Monde, February 23, 2016).
[7] Massive destruction – The geopolitics of hunger, 2011, Jean Ziegler (Special Reporter to the UN for the entitlement to food between 2000 and 2008).
[8] Letters from Prison, p 56-58, cited in Peter Nettle, Rosa Luxemburg,OUP 1969, p 412
The whole range of imperialist war and conflict in the Middle East, despite various truces, talks and cease-fires, continues to deepen and spread: Syria’s Assad, backed by Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, is continuing the regime’s butchery; around a hundred “rebel” groups, fighting each other as well as the Assad regime, are backed by the USA, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey; the Saudis, with US and British backing as part of a more or less willing “Coalition”, launched “Operation Decisive Storm” a year ago in Yemen, which has turned into an all-round disaster; the “Caliphate” of Isis is still a strong force in fragmented Iraq and Syria with its affiliates strengthening their positions in Libya, other parts of north Africa, the Sinai Peninsula and Yemen, while al-Qaida also strengthens in Syria and Yemen – where it effectively has a mini-state – and both are making inroads into Afghanistan; Turkish actions in its manoeuvres against Russia have reignited the smouldering conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, potentially spreading the conflict to the fragile Caucasus; Turkey’s war on the Kurds has intensified while it has been giving succour to Isis and moving its Turkmen forces into Syria; different Kurdish factions have fought for the Syrian regime, the Americans, the Russians and the British, while tensions increase between the Syrian Kurds and Iraqi Kurds. Both Lebanon and Israel are increasingly in danger of being drawn into this maelstrom.
Within this general centrifugal tendency, of each against all, a myriad of national, religious, ethnic, alliances are being formed between global and regional powers, and this includes obscure alliances between various rebel groups and jihadists. The “Scorched Earth” policy practised by all the forces involved has further increased the killings, the destruction, the misery of the civilian populations, further multiplying the numbers of displaced people and refugees.
In these circumstances it is useful to look into the root of these developments within the framework of the decadence of capitalism – the context of imperialist domination and its connection to the formation the nation state in the area of the Middle East; in particular, we want to concentrate on the “Islamic Republic” of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose rivalries are becoming increasingly significant within the overall pattern of conflicts. These two countries, now arch-enemies, bear the inevitable curse on all the nation states born in capitalism’s decadent period – i.e. from around the beginning of the First World War. These two religious regimes – the first preaching a Shia version of Islam, the second the Wahabi interpretation of the Sunni Muslim tradition - co-exist perfectly well with the modern developments of internal repression and within the ever-expanding spiral of militarism. They have grown in the hundred years since they formed but, as expressions of decadent capitalism, they have grown deformed, stunted by a development that has been chained by the self-destructive nature of capitalism in decline, and are thus straightaway forced to sacrifice vast portions of their national capital to the demands of militarism and war.
The establishment of Iran as a nation took place in the early conditions of decadent capitalism. It was born of war and imperialism and involved one the least-known and worst atrocities of the 20th century. An estimated 8 to 11 million Persians, roughly half the population, were killed in a famine engineered by the British – see the book by the Princeton University-based author Mohammed Gholi Madj The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-19. The British, taking increasing control of the country, which had just lost vast parts of the Caucasus to the Russians, diverted the material resources of the country to its military effort elsewhere. Britain confiscated food, local transport, goods, oil etc., which it refused to pay for, and sent these away from the country in order to assist its war. Not a “genocide” in the strict legal framework of the bourgeoisie, which requires direct slaughter of populations, but just as deadly. Moreover, with malice aforethought, the British banned any import of food into the country, including from the local areas around Mesopotamia (Iraq) that had a surplus which it controlled. The approximate figures for the engineered famine above are based, in part, on contemporary information kept by the American Legation in the country, the US State Department, British and local sources and a later census. The British had already used starvation as a weapon against the Irish in the mid-1800’s, causing a million deaths, and Churchill was to use the weapon of famine again in his “Denial Policy” which caused the deaths of over 3 million in India in 1943.
Britain had a dominant role in the Middle East from the early 1900’s, pushing out the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, Germany and eventually Russia from the region. In 1907, the British and Russians divided up the region between themselves in the “Great Game” as part of the carve-up of the Middle and Near East. In 1919, Britain established the “Anglo-Persian Protectorate” with a strong occupation of the country as the forces of Russian imperialism were withdrawn in 1917, a result of the proletarian revolution (which the British also attacked from its positions in Persia). The “Anglo-Persian Agreement” was forced on the Iranian government by Britain in 1919 as it tightened its military control on the state. In the conditions of capitalist decline, the disintegration and collapse of the Ottoman Empire could not give birth to new coherent industrial nations with a dynamic bourgeoisie, but only to fragmentation and states that were abortions; and then as now these states were not at all independent expressions but were prey to global imperialism and its machinations. Historically, capitalism needed large integral and united territories with a strong intellectual base, leading to the development of new forces of the working class, which is why Marx and Engels supported certain movements for national independence during capitalism’s rise. But there was no chance of any of this developing in the Middle East at the onset of capitalist decay, when the priority of the “old” nations was to carve up the world at the expense of their rivals and fight over what was left.
Certainly Britain was now the main power in the region but the Communist International at its 2nd Congress, at Baku in 1920, was wrong to pose national solutions and “national revolutions” against British domination, which it saw as a “greater evil”. The Comintern was already degenerating on the question of imperialism and national liberation and would soon fall into the trap of the “United Front” with the ruling class mobilising the working class for national “solutions”. In Persia any attempts at a more independent policy by local elements were swiftly and ruthlessly dealt with by the British, beginning with the latter fomenting a coup against undesirable Iranian elements in 1921. The British installed the Pahlavi clan as its chosen pawns and this clique, despite a pro-Nazi move in 1941 that was defeated by the British, remained in power from the mid-20’s to the late 1970’s. The Imperial State of Persia was established by the British and the Pahlavis in 1925, to be transformed into the Imperial State of Iran ten years later.
In the Second World War many factions of Arab nationalism flirted with the Nazis, as did certain elements of Zionism, and as did Britain’s pawn in Iran, Reza Shah of the Pahlavi clan who had crowned himself King and declared his “Divine Command”. He further declared Iran “neutral” but was getting too close to the Nazis, threatening Britain’s oil and strategic interests. Britain and a now fully-imperialist USSR invaded Iran in 1941 and replaced Reza with his son who ruled until his overthrow in 1979. A further attempt to make some sort of independent move, which could have only taken place within the confines and conditions of imperialism, was made by the Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, when he attempted to reduce Britain’s influence and tried to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by Britain and helped by the CIA in “Operation Boot”, which used all sorts of thugs and criminals as well as religious fundamentalists, the latter being around since the 1920’s, in order to save the Pahlavi regime. This period also marked the strengthening of the USA as the major world power, more and more supplanting Britain economically and militarily, particularly following the Second World War – a trend that had continued from World War One. Well before labelling it the “Great Satan”, the Iranian clergy kept a low profile, working primarily as forces of social control within the Iranian state that was becoming a lynchpin of US imperialist strategy in the region, above all as an outpost of the western bloc against Russian imperialism at its southern flank. But the 1963 “White Revolution” of the Shah, bringing in land and various other “reforms” including votes for women, was opposed by the Shia clergy and its particular figurehead Ruhollah Khomeini. The reforms were a sham, the proposed “trickle-down” wealth effect went the same way as all such attempts – upwards; and more and more resources went to the military and militarism with 50% of the Iranian population living below the poverty line by the early 1970s. With the traditional power of the clergy reduced by repression, backed by the USA’s strengthened position which included diplomatic immunity for all US forces in the country, the Shah declared war on the clerical opposition, resulting in some 15,000 Muslims killed and Khomeini’s exile to Iraq, Turkey and then Paris, which took in him and his clique for its own longer-term imperialist interests. Khomeini continued to call for “Islam to stand united against western and arrogant powers” and for an “Islamic revolution”.
Hobbled from the outset, the Iranian economy, based on a war economy and its plentiful oil reserves, never really developed, thrusting most of its population into poverty, while corruption and high-living among its rulers were rife. The overthrow of the Shah in 1979 was not a bourgeois revolution – such times were well past; nor was it a proletarian revolution – the working class was certainly involved and combative through months of struggle but it wasn’t strong enough to become an autonomous and leading force. The army and security forces remained intact, merely adapting to the new situation. When the now Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from Paris he established the Islamic Republic of Iran, ruled by a Supreme Leader. This was a theocratic state that relied not only on the clerics but on the army, the secret police and the feared Revolutionary Guards. Iran was now out of US control but, unusually, did not turn towards Russia. This was a foretaste of what was to become a feature of the new phase of capitalist decomposition where, in contrast to the certainties of the Cold War, irrationality, centrifugal forces and unpredictability would become the norm (as we saw later with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tendencies of every man for himself in the western bloc). Today Iran has the highest per-capita execution rate in the world, and strikes and labour unrest are ruthlessly put down by the Revolutionary Guard.
The importance of Iran as a country can be seen in its geo-strategic position: located between the Caucasus and the Indian Ocean, the country has offered its services as an alternative route for the gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian Basin without crossing Russia, with whom it has fallen out on many occasions over oil and gas issues. The country itself has claimed to have 12% of the world’s proven petroleum reserves and also has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas. China alone currently depends on Iran for 15% of its industrial oil and gas needs and most of Europe and Japan relies on oil that goes through the Straits of Hormuz, which are overlooked by Iran. The country has worked itself into its position of relative strength thanks to the undermining of the position of the US, not as an economic powerhouse, even with its vast natural resources, but as a militaristic regime. These resources have not been used for the modernisation of existing industries nor the setting-up of technically advanced ones, and while sanctions economic haven’t helped it, the only effective industries are those directly related to the military with the others being derelict, backward and non-competitive. Being an underdog, the country can threaten, challenge and destabilise but its formidable resources are squandered for military purposes. The clergy in particular has resorted to whipping up religious divisions and nationalism, while intensifying the dictatorship and its ruthless suppression of political dissent and social protest, such as the demonstrations of 2009.
Iran’s reliance on religious ideology is a characteristic expression of a social order which has no future, of the growth of irrationalism throughout the capitalist system But the Iranian ruling class also makes very calculated use of the Shia card in cementing imperialist alliances, for example with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in Iraq where entire parts of the country and its capital Baghdad have been purged of Sunni influences and taken over by Shia cliques. At the same time it doesn’t want to be seen as an exclusively Shia country, preferring rather to present itself as an anti-imperialist umbrella to all, a counter-weight to the USA and Israel and to the corrupt Arab regimes. In short, the export of the Islamic Revolution was nothing other than Iranian imperialism in a new situation. The regime rejected Russia while at the same time constantly challenging the US in the region, building up alliances and backing terrorist networks that were making its rivals – and the greater powers – extremely nervous. Iran made a long-standing alliance with Syria which only briefly faltered over the question of Palestine. Iran was behind the assassination of President Gemayal of Lebanon in September 82 and two months later an Israeli military HQ in Tyre was bombed. The first modern suicide bombers hit the US embassy in Beirut in 83, followed by similar attacks against US, French and Israeli forces, forcing a withdrawal by both the US and Israeli militaries. But drained by the Iran/Iraq War and screwed down by very tight US sanctions, Iran was obliged to jettison the overtly aggressive stance typified by President Ahmadinejad with his threat to wipe Israel off the map. The regime now appears to be coming in from the cold under the “moderate” and more intelligent regime of President Rouhani. The recent nuclear deal, essentially with the US, brings Iran back as a more or less approved player in the region. Even before this deal was signed, Iran and the US were working very closely at the highest military levels in Iraq, and continue to do so, particularly given their mutual interest in opposing the advance of Isis. Allowing Iran to take a greater role may well benefit the US and may partially make up for its weaknesses in the region, but it is already causing major ripples among its local rivals, not least Saudi Arabia. This disquiet has both military and economic aspects: Iran is certainly feared as a regional military power, but the lifting of sanctions could also give Iran an edge over other regional oil-producers in the sharpening competition for a dwindling world oil market.
Like Iran the origins of this Kingdom lie in imperialist rivalries and war, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the various manoeuvres around it. In 1912 the religious Ikhwan (Brotherhood) based on Wahhabism gave its support to the al-Saud family exiled in Kuwait by the Turks. The Saud-backed forces took control of Riyadh and by 1924, the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, consolidating their power in the region then known as Hijaz. The Ikhwan turned against their rulers because of their plans for modernisation, but were defeated, resulting in the 1932 establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia led by Abd-al-Aziz, aka, Ibn Saud. Britain’s India Office had already secretly agreed to support Ibn Saud and his tribal forces while betraying other anti-Turkish forces and the idea of a unified Arabia being promoted by Lawrence of Arabia. In 1914, the Earl of Crewe, Britain’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, summed up the approach of British imperialism: ”What we want is not a unified Arabia but a disunited Arabia split into principalities under our suzerainty”. In the following year Britain, along with France, achieved this aim by, as elsewhere, partitioning this country along meaningless boundaries and carving up territories in a classic divide and rule strategy, forming the Kingdom as an absolute monarchy under Islamic law.
The regime was a gerontocracy replete with anachronisms, and the ruling sheiks have never been part of a class of industrially-minded capitalists, but are a highly privileged clique, enriching themselves at the expense of the population as a whole, a trend which increased even more spectacularly with the discovery of oil in the 1930s. Britain had been the initial protector of the Saud regime and the US wasn’t much interested until the oil started flowing; by the early 30s the US established bilateral relations and shortly after full diplomatic relations. In common with the global squeezing out of the interests of British imperialism, the US Quincy Agreement of 1945 guaranteed Saudi security on condition that the latter provided the US with most of its oil. The Saudi regime, apart from some secondary spats over Israel during the 1970s, continued to be a stable and faithful ally of the US until relatively recently. The situation began to change with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, when amidst the acceleration of decomposition in international relations, Saudi Arabia began to defend its own imperialist interests much more independently and voraciously.
On the basis of its gigantic oil revenues, Saudi Arabia has become ”the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the world’s second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves... (it) has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world and in 2010-14 was the world’s second largest arms importer” (Wikipedia). Its command economy is petroleum-based: “roughly 75% of budget revenues and 90% of export earnings come from the oil industry” (Ibid). The ruling class has been unable to develop any substantial industrial base and has failed to integrate the greater part of its 28.7 million people into any meaningful productive process. There is virtually no production of commodities or heavy goods for the internal or export market. The population is fed and looked after by a work-force of 8 million relatively cheap migrant workers who are mainly employed in oil-related industry along with foreign experts and contractors. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented foreign workers, Yemenis, Ethiopians and Somalis, have been detained, deported and expelled. Thousands of highly-trained Saudi youth, often expensively tutored abroad, are mostly unemployable because their wages would be far higher than foreign workers. The Saudi ruling clique invests much of its considerable wealth in speculative foreign dealings and, of course, the arms sector. Because of a lack of broader industrial development – closely tied to the general conditions of decadence – there has been no development of a classical bourgeois sector able to act as a political or social buffer, and brutal repression with its religious police and ubiquitous secret services are the order of the day: the horrible practice of beheading, so decried in the west when carried out by Isis, is a routine means of instilling terror in Saudi, as is the amputation of hands for those accused of theft. The appalling oppression of Saudi women has been fairly well documented. A system of clans run the country and it has been able to buy social peace at the cost of massive state subsidies. In 2011, King Abdullah announced “a series of benefits for citizens amounting to $36 billion” and a few months later “a package of $93 billion which included 500,000 new homes.... in addition to 60,000 security jobs” (Ibid). Whatever its specificities, Saudi Arabia shows the same development of militarism and repression, the same state capitalist tendencies inherent in all nation states in decadence. But the problems with the economy that appeared a couple of years ago have developed dramatically since. For the second consecutive year the country faces a deficit and cuts in state expenditure and increases in taxes are being implemented for the first time. For the country to avoid a budget deficit the price of oil would have to be $106 a barrel. At the moment it’s just about making $40.
While much of Saudi youth, who have the money to do so, study abroad in relatively liberal circumstances, at home the contrary tendency is for the increasing domination of religious indoctrination. “As of 2004 approximately half of the broadcast air-time of Saudi state television was devoted to religious issues. 90% of the books published in the Kingdom were on religious subjects and most of the doctorates awarded by its universities were in Islamic studies. In the state school system about half of the material taught is religious... assigned reading over 12 years of primary and secondary schooling devoted to covering the history, literature and culture of the non-Muslim world comes to a total of about 40 pages” (Ibid). Saudi Wahabism, which does everything it can to maintain the Sunni/Shia divide, is hostile to any reverence given to historical or religious places of significance for fear of idolatry (“shirk”) and the most significant Muslim sites in the world, Mecca and Medina, are located in the western Saudi region. While the west, which has caused the most global devastation to historical and cultural monuments, hypocritically criticises Isis for its cultural destruction, it is estimated that the Saudi regime has destroyed 95% of Mecca’s historic buildings, most of them over a thousand years old. Fewer than 20 out of 300 sites linked to Mohammed and his family survive after being demolished by the regime in the name of religious purity. The dazzling skyscrapers and shopping malls that have become a feature of economic “growth” not only in Saudi Arabia but in the other oil-rich sheikhdoms in the region are a better indication of the true religion of these “puritans”: the worship of money and worldly wealth. On the imperialist level Saudi Arabia has exported its Wahhabi ideology throughout the world, not least through the development of well-funded terrorist factions. Though overshadowed by the Sunni/Shia split, the conflict between the Saudis and Iran is one between two imperialist sharks. During the 2011/12 protests in Bahrain the Saudi government sent shock troops in British-supplied Armoured Personnel Carriers not only to quell the social unrest but also to send a bloody warning to Iran in case the latter used the protests to rally Shia resistance to the Saudi regime. The Saudis’ execution of the dissident Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr at the beginning of 2016 was an even more explicit message aimed at Iran, which responded by staging massive demonstrations calling for the Sheikh to be avenged.
The oil-reliant economies of both Iran and Saudi are ill-suited to compete on a world market saturated with over-production. Iran may have had a certain respite with the ending of sanctions and the new deals and openings that this may bring, but its economic base remains fundamentally weak. Even more precarious is the economic reality of Saudi Arabia whose trillion-dollar attempt to move away from oil dependency, the “National Transformation Programme”, proposed by the Crown Prince Mohammed, has been called “manic optimism” by the Economist. Moreover this doomed strategy has already upset the clergy who, like Iran, still hold great power within the state. These types of tensions, in the land that gave us al-Qaida and thus Isis, can only get worse where an estimated 3 million Saudis themselves live in poverty. State subsidies will end or be severely cut back and direct taxes have been imposed for the first time. One of Saudi’s largest companies outside of the oil industry, the construction giant the Saudi Bin Laden Group, was recently unable to pay its workers, summarily sacking 77,000 of them. In short, the economic situation will impact on the social situation and imperialist rivalries.
Ever since the fall of the Shah, the Saudis have been supporting any enemy of Iran, firstly spending $25 billion in supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran/Iraq War of the 1980s. In March 2015 “Saudi spearheaded a coalition of Sunni Muslim states, starting a military intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houtis and forces loyal to the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who was deposed in the 2011 social uprising”(Ibid). It has stationed over 150,000 forces on the heavily fortified Saudi/Yemeni border and launched devastating air-strikes on the poverty-stricken inhabitants of this country while taking severe losses itself. At the same time, “together with Qatar and Turkey, Saudi Arabia is openly supporting the Army of Conquest, an umbrella group of anti-government forces fighting in the Syrian Civil War that reportedly includes the al-Qaida linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar ash-Sham ...” (Ibid). We should also mention the close relationship that Saudi has with Pakistan with much speculation that the Kingdom has bankrolled Pakistan’s nuclear programme and is looking to purchase atomic weapons from it in the near future.
The recent nuclear deal between the US and Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), as well as the spectacle of these two old foes fighting alongside each other against Isis in Iraq, has dealt quite a blow to the Saudis and added a dangerous twist to imperialist developments in the region. The Saudis are very worried about losing their standing with the US and the weakening of the US overall has allowed the Iranians to make significant gains in Syria. The Saudis have been forced to look for new alliances: Turkey, Egypt and even the arch-enemy, Israel, have been courted. The economic plight of the country will hamper its imperialist reach somewhat but this doesn’t make the situation any less dangerous – on the contrary. In April the Saudis did a deal with Egypt, who it’s been subsidising to the tune of billions a year, offering it two Red Sea islands, Sanafir and Tiran, as a sweetener. The deal had to be agreed by the Israeli government, which it did. In fact Saudi support for the new Egyptian butcher el-Sisi in overthrowing Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, which went against the wishes of the USA, was a further indication of the weakening of the latter and the strengthening of every man for himself.
The tendencies to war in the region are speeding up and spreading: in early spring the Turkish Prime Minister explicitly warned the Russians that it would make trouble for them and their Armenian clients in the enclave of the High Karabakh in Turkish-backed Azerbaijan, spreading potential war and uncertainty to the South Caucasus. Should the war currently going on at a low level between Saudi Arabia and Iran intensify – and we cannot rule out open military clashes – then this would be an important qualitative step in the further decomposition of the region, destabilising the whole of trade and traffic around the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, including oil supplies, which in turn would have an enormous impact on the world economy.
If we have gone into detail about the historical development of Iran and Saudi, it is because they are almost a showcase of the totally decadent character of the world capitalist system. Instead of being able to draw on the natural riches of the region, the ruling classes, caught in a spiral of war and imperialist rivalries, has been forced to feed large parts of their profits into the military machine. And if the two biggest regional rivals are now clawing at each others’ throats, it is because imperialism in its advancing decay has turned the Middle East into a true nest of vipers.
Boxer. 8.6.16 (This article was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC)
In the first article in this series [1405], we gave a brief overview of the origins and function of migration in the capitalist system and how this has changed as that same system began its remorseless historical decline in the early 20th century. In part two [1355], we examined the culmination of those trends in the horror of the Holocaust. But the defeat of the Nazi terror did not mean an end to the suffering and trauma of displaced people around the globe. As Nazi terror was replaced by the terror unleashed by the Stalinist and democratic powers, millions of displaced Jews, fresh from the horror of the concentration camps, became pawns in the imperialist struggle in the Middle East around the formation of the Israeli state. As the Cold War confrontation widened, millions more around the globe fled wars and massacres, victims of murderous rivalry between the global super-powers and their equally murderous local client states.
At the end of the Second World War, the disastrous destruction caused by imperialist confrontations created a world of ruin and desolation. In May 1945, 40 million people were displaced or refugees in Europe. To this must be added the 11.3 million workers who had been conscripted by Germany during the war. In other major regions of the world, the weakening of colonial powers caused instability and conflicts, particularly in Asia and Africa, leading over time to millions of migrants. All these population movements provoked terrible suffering and many deaths.
On the still smoking ruins of the world conflict following the conferences at Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945), the "Iron Curtain" that fell between the former allies (the Western powers behind the United States on one side and the USSR on the other) drove millions of people to flee from hatred and vengeance. With the division of the world into spheres of influence dominated by the victors and their allies, the new line of inter-imperialist confrontations was drawn. Hardly had the war ended than the confrontation between the Western and Eastern blocs began. The months that followed the end of the war were marked by the expulsion of 13 million Germans from the Eastern countries and the exile of more than a million Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Poles and Balts, all fleeing the Stalinist regimes. Ultimately, “Between 9 and 13 million people perished as a result of the policy of Allied imperialism between 1945-50. There were three main foci of this monstrous genocide:
- Firstly amongst a total of 13.3 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern parts of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary etc., as allowed by the Potsdam agreement. This ethnic cleansing was so inhumane that only 7.3 million arrived at their destination within the post-war borders of Germany; the rest 'disappeared' in the most gruesome circumstances.
- Secondly amongst the German prisoners of war who died as a result of the starvation and diseased conditions of the allied camps - between 1.5 and 2 million.
- Finally amongst the population in general who were put on rations of around 1000 calories per day, guaranteeing slow starvation and sickness - 5.7 million died as a result.”[1]
A great number of Jewish survivors did not know where to go because of the resurgence of anti-Semitism, particularly in Poland (where new pogroms broke out such as at Kielce in 1946) and Central Europe. The frontiers of the Western democratic countries had been closed. Jews were often housed in camps. In 1947 some sought to reach Palestine to escape hostility in the East and rejection in the West. They did so illegally at the time and were stopped by the British to be immediately interned in Cyprus. The aim was to deter and control all these populations to maintain capitalist order. In the same period the number of prisoners in the camps of the Gulag in the USSR exploded. Between 1946 and 1950, the population doubled to more than two million prisoners. A large number of refugees and migrants, or "displaced" persons, ended up in the camps to die. This new world of the Cold War shaped by the "victors of freedom" had created new fractures, brutal divisions tragically cutting populations off from each other, causing their forced exile.
Germany was divided up by the imperialist victors. And to prevent migration and the flow of its population to the West, in 1961 the GDR had to build the "wall of shame". Other states such as Korea and Vietnam were also cut in two by the "Iron Curtain". The Korean War, between 1950 and 1953, divided a population imprisoned by the two new enemy camps. This war led to the disappearance of nearly 2 million civilians and caused a migration of 5 million refugees. Throughout this period until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many populations were forced to flee from the incessant local conflicts of the Cold War. Within each bloc, numerous displacements often directly resulted from the political games played by the American and Russian great powers. Thus, propaganda concerning the 200,000 refugees who fled to Austria and Germany after the suppression of the uprisings in East Berlin in 1953 and Budapest in 1956 by the Red Army fed the ideological discourse of the two rival camps. All the wars fuelled by these two great East-West military blocs continued to create large numbers of victims who were the systematically exploited by the propaganda of each opposing camp.
The brutal divisions of the Cold War continued in the 1950s with decolonisation movements that fuelled migration and further divided the proletariat. Since the beginning of the period of decolonisation, and especially in the 1980s when Cold War conflicts intensified and worsened, so-called "national liberation struggles" (in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East) were particularly murderous. Pushed to the geographical periphery of the major capitalist powers, these conflicts gave the illusion of an "era of peace" in Europe while the lasting wounds and forced displacement of large numbers of migrants appeared as so many "distant" tragedies (except of course for the old settlers coming from these regions and the nations directly affected). In Africa, since the end of the colonial era, there were many wars, some of them among the most murderous in the world. Throughout these conflicts, major powers like Great Britain or France (then acting as the Western bloc’s "gendarme of Africa" against the USSR) were widely involved militarily on the ground where the logic of the East/West blocs prevailed. For example, hardly had the Sudan gained its independence in 1956 than a terrible civil war would involve the colonial powers and thus be exploited by the blocs, leaving at least 2 million dead and more than 500,000 refugees,forced to seek asylum in neighbouring countries. Instability and war became a permanent feature. The terrible war in Biafra caused famines and epidemics, leaving at least 2 million dead and as many refugees. Between 1960 and 1965, the civil war in the former Belgian Congo and the presence of mercenaries led to many victims and many displaced. One could add to these examples, like that of Angola which had been ravaged by war since the first uprisings of its population in Luanda in 1961. After its independence in 1975, many years of wars followed between the forces of the ruling MPLA (Movement of Liberation of Angola, supported by Moscow) and the rebels of UNITA (supported by South Africa and the United States): not less than one million died and 4 million were displaced, including half a million refugees who ended up in camps. The many conflicts on this continent permanently destabilised entire regions such as West Africa or the strategic Great Lakes region. One could equally find examples in Central America, or in Asia, which saw many bloody guerrilla conflicts. The Russian intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 marked an acceleration of this infernal spiral, leading to the exodus of 6 million people, the largest refugee population in the world.
The new states or nations that emerged following large displacements were the direct product of imperialist divisions and poverty. They were the fruit of nationalism, expulsions and exclusion: in short, a pure product of the climate of war and permanent crisis generated by decadent capitalism. The formation of these new states was a dead end that could only fuel destructive tensions. Thus the partition of India in 1947, then the creation of Bangladesh, forced more than 15 million people to be displaced on the Indian subcontinent. The founding of the state of Israel in 1948, a real besieged fortress, was also a significant example. This new state, growing from 750,000 to 1.9 million inhabitants in 1960, was from its birth the focus of an infernal spiral of wars that caused the growth of Palestinian refugee camps everywhere. In 1948, 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced and the Gaza strip gradually became a vast open-air camp. Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Damascus, Amman, were transformed gradually into suburbs of the capitals.
Similar problems of refugees and migrants were widely created across the planet. In China, millions of people were displaced, themselves victims of the ferocious Japanese oppression during the war. After the victory of the Maoist troops in 1949, some 2.2 million Chinese fled to Taiwan and 1 million to Hong Kong. China then isolated itself in relative autarky to try to make up for its economic backwardness. In the early 1960s, it then undertook a forced industrialisation and launched the policy of the "Great Leap Forward", imprisoning its population in kind of national labour camp, preventing any attempt at migration. This brutal policy of uprooting and repression practiced since the Mao era led to the growth of the concentration camps (laogai). Famine and repression caused not less than 30 million deaths in all. More recently, in the 1990s, the massive urbanisation of this country tore from the land not less than 90 million peasants. Other crises struck Asia, such as the civil war in Pakistan and the flight of Bengalis in 1971. Similarly, the taking of Saigon in 1975 (by a Stalinist-type regime) provoked the exodus of millions of refugees, the "boat people". More than 200,000 of them died.[2] There followed the terrible genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia causing 2 million deaths: refugees were the rare survivors.
Refugees have always been the exchange currency for the worst political blackmail, the justification for military interventions by intervening powers, sometimes for use as "human shields". It is difficult to calculate the number of victims who paid the price for the confrontations of the Cold War and give a precise figure, but "At a World Bank conference in 1991, Robert McNamara, former Secretary of State for Defence under Kennedy and Johnson, gave a table of losses in each theatre of operations whose total exceeds forty million.”[3] The new post-war period had therefore only opened up a new period of barbarism, increasing further the divisions among populations and the working class and sowing death and desolation. By further militarising borders, states exerted a globally greater and more violent control over the populations bled dry by the Second World War.
In the early days of the Cold War, not all migrations were caused by military conflicts or political factors. The countries of Europe that had been largely devastated by the war needed to be rapidly reconstructed. But this reconstruction had to overcome a decline in population growth (10 to 30% of men had been killed or wounded during the war). Economic and demographic factors therefore played an important role in the phenomenon of migration. Everywhere, there was an available workforce, at low cost.
This is why East Germany was forced to build a wall to stop the leakage of its population (3.8 million had already crossed the border to the West). The former colonial powers favoured immigration, primarily from the countries of southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece ...). Initially, many of these migrants arrived legally, but also illegally with the help of organised smugglers. The need for labour meant the authorities at the time closed their eyes to these irregular migrations. In this way, between 1945 and 1974, many Portuguese and Spanish workers fled the regimes of Franco and Salazar. Until the early 1960s, Italians were recruited in France, first from northern Italy and then the south as far as Sicily. Then a little later it was the turn of the former colonies in Asia and Africa to provide their quotas for a docile and cheap workforce. In France, for example, between 1950 and 1960, the number of North African migrants rose from 50,000 to 500,000. The state then built hostels for migrant workers to keep them away from the population; this foreign labour was in effect deemed a "risk", justifying its marginalisation. But this did not stop it from hiring cheap labour for the heaviest work, knowing that it could get rid of them overnight. The high turnover of these newly arrived workers allowed a frenzied and unscrupulous exploitation, particularly in the chemical and metallurgical industries. Between 1950 and 1973, nearly 10 million people migrated to Western Europe to meet its industrial needs.[4]
This situation was inevitably exploited by the bourgeoisie to divide the workers and turn them against each other, to generate competition and distrust on both sides. With the recovery of workers' struggles in 1968 and the waves of struggles that followed, these factors would feed the many divisive manoeuvres by the unions and the ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie. On the one side, racial and xenophobic prejudices were encouraged; on the other, the class struggle was diverted by anti-racism, often used as a distraction to workers' demands. In this way, poison was spread and foreigners became "undesirable", or were portrayed as profiteers" or "privileged". All this would favor the growth of populist ideologies, facilitating the expulsions which have increased wholesale since the 1980s.
WH (April 2016)
In the next and final article [1448] in this series we will cover the issue of migrants from the 1980s to the current period which is marked the final stage of decomposition of the capitalist system.
[1] See ‘Berlin 1948: The Berlin Airlift hides the crimes of allied imperialism’, https://en.internationalism.org/node/3865 [1449]
[2] Source: UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees).
[3] According to André Fontaine, The Red Spot. The Romance of the Cold War, Editions La Martinière, 2004.
Over the last few years in Britain, and especially recently, there’s been a number of ‘independent’ inquiries, parliamentary investigations (often televised live), police, parliamentary and ‘independent’ reports into all sorts of scandals and injustices, some of which go back decades. With several major inquiries in progress or just starting up, those that have been pronounced upon or, like the report on the 2003 Iraq War just out, it appears that the state is ‘cleaning up its act’ and, at last, holding those responsible for unacceptable, immoral or criminal behaviour to account. Senior politicians and top police officers are bought to book and the media, from its right to left wing, as in the Hillsborough case for example, celebrate the ‘justice for victims’. But under capitalism there can be no justice for victims and the primary aim of all these inquiries, reports and investigations is to strengthen the ideology of democracy and its ‘rule of law’ behind which lies the strengthening of the totalitarian state. The bourgeoisie may make scapegoats out of one, two or even more individuals from within its ranks but this itself only serves to reinforce its overall democratic campaign against a presently disorientated and weakened working class. It is only at such times that the ruling class is able to unleash such campaigns because if the working class was struggling in any significant way even the bourgeoisie’s ‘rule of law’ would be lifted and, as with the miners’ strike of 84, the state would be confronting it with all the forces and methods available to it however heinous and brutal.
Let’s look at some examples of the inquiries and investigations going on within this democratic campaign.
The Chilcot Inquiry into Britain’s role in the 2003 war in Iraq. After 7 years and ten million quid, the 2.6 million word Chilcot Report has been released. There’s nothing surprising about its conclusions. Tony Blair didn’t lie it says but that’s not even the point; the whole war was based on a mendacity that’s stock-in-trade for the whole ruling class. The intelligence on the threat posed by Saddam was ‘flawed’ apparently but reading it one can see that it clearly warned that the war would increase the jihadist threat and increase regional instability in the Middle East. In this sense the family of one soldier killed in the war was going in the right direction in labelling Blair (and his clique) as “the world’s worst terrorist”.
Despite not being accused of lying, Blair does come in for particular criticism in the report, and was the only individual mentioned in the initial oral presentation of it. Everyone denounces Blair but it was the whole of the British bourgeoisie that was overwhelmingly behind supporting the war of the US NeoCons: the cabinet, the civil service, the military, the secret services, politicians of all parties, all faithfully supported by the media as it obediently danced to their lying tunes. The intelligence that was acted upon was what was required and made up by the British ruling class in order to fulfil its imperialist interests[1] covered by its democratic facade. It’s not a question of individuals but of the state apparatus. All the individuals involved in fomenting this war, from the civil service, the military, intelligence, the cabinet office, the media, have all been promoted or are doing very well in high-paid positions – including Tony Blair the “Peace Envoy” to the Middle East!
The lawyers arguing about ‘who lied’ deliberately avoid the point. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, an admirer of the BBC, hits it on the head: “The essential English leadership secret does not depend on a particular intelligence.... The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous”. “Never again”, “lessons will be learnt” are just continuations of the democratic lie. After around half-a-million Iraqis had been killed, the country fractured and the rise of an ISIS closely linked to the Iraq War and the role of US and British intelligence, British imperialism then unleashed the 2011 Libyan war with similar lies, similar ruthlessness and similar results.
Chilcot can’t teach us anything because the imperialist policies of Blair government are still the policies of the British state as expressed by the current political set-up. Most recently in the British bombing of Syria, the Cameron government had the full support of a significant number of the Labour Party and the majority of the media in the US-led ‘War on Terror’ (which parts of the Labour Party equated to the ‘war against fascism’). And these fantasy politics of British imperialism continue with forces on the ground in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in order to defend its own ‘national’ interests, i.e., contribute to the war of each against all in the Middle East
One of the aspects of the inquiry and the general discussion, particularly in relation to the families of British servicemen and women, has been the need to beef up British militarism and its equipment so that its imperialist interests can be better managed. In this sense it’s similar to the ‘Walter Reed scandal’ in the US which exposed the atrocious living and medical conditions of Iraqi war veterans which was then linked to a campaign for a better organised military[2].
Finally, Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the Labour Party, the same Corbyn that saluted the killers of Hamas and Hezbollah from the same ‘Stop the War Coalition’ that supported Islamic fundamentalism against US and British interests.
The Hillsborough inquiry, a response to the entirely justified anger and indignation of many to this slaughter (96 crushed to death at a football match in 1989) and its cover-up, has found many elements of the state culpable, including some named individuals. Some of these might, probably will not, go to jail but the state becomes stronger with this result that suggest that ‘victims matter’. Police forces are polished up and the constant refrain of ‘lessons will be learnt’ means absolutely nothing because the police remain a repressive arm of the capitalist state, and the football authorities and the media, who hounded the fans and their families even in death, can now present clean hands.
The result of the Hillsborough inquiry gave rise to demands from the left for an inquiry into South Yorkshire police and its role in the attack on miners at the Orgreave coking plant in 1984. But everyone knows what happened: the police attacked the miners and the BBC and the rest of the media consciously inverted the story to make it look the other way around. There’s already been an inquiry into this and the BBC, in order to maintain any credibility, had to admit what it had done and apologise – presumably ‘learning lessons’. But this hasn’t stopped some, on the left in this case, for calling for more investigations and inquiries, a sort of enquiryitis going around in circles while everything stays the same or rather gets worse.
There have also been various parliamentary select committee inquiries, some televised live, to examine contentious issues and individuals; Philip Green and the now bankrupt BHS, Mike Ashley and Sports Direct (scandal of low wages and aggressive management) for example. These nauseating individuals and their ‘interrogators’ are all part of the game which, like ‘banker-bashing’ is going nowhere while the workers of both companies are either losing their jobs or continue to suffer the same conditions. And the daily grind of exploitation continues to deepen for the working class.
There are inquiries into the role of British intelligence in the killing of civilians during the ‘troubles’ in Ireland, investigations into the role of MI6 in the abuse of young boys at the Kincora home in the North and the role of these agencies in 50 killings related to the British army’s IRA agent ‘Stakeknife’. Another circular waste of time for the victims aimed at not uncovering the past but covering up the present and the future activities of these self-same agencies with the same aim of presenting a ‘clean’ democratic state.
There are various investigations into sexual abuse such as the 2014 Goddard inquiry which will also look at the question of the 150,000 children in Britain that were taken from their families by groups including the Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Church of England, Salvation Army and Barnado’s and sent abroad from the 1920s to the 70s, with many suffering sexual and physical abuse. Along with the state, to which they belong, these organisations were running a massive children’s ring of sex slaves and cheap labour. The result of the Jimmy Savile inquiry, where those that supported him have been promoted by the BBC while those that flagged up his ‘institutionalised ‘ abuse have been forced out, shows how meaningless are words like ‘Sorry’ and ‘lessons will be learnt’ and that will certainly apply in the Goddard attempt at ‘closure’, i.e., the whitewashing of the state. And apart from anything else these inquiries are a goldmine for the lawyers and other parasitic layers. But the real underlying motive is the strengthening of the state by presenting it as ultimately clean, moral and democratic.
While making a show, in one circus after the other, of its ‘clean hands’, the British ruling class continues its war against the working class and the war against its rivals, backing torturers and butchers while manipulating various elements of terrorism to its own ends. When they are not facilitating the expression of terrorism they are using it. In this sense the British bourgeoisie are no different from their counterparts everywhere, who also have their own ‘clean hands’ campaigns.
The bourgeoisie’s ideas about ending corruption and the recent London summit to this effect, involving all sorts of professional gangsters and their cliques, was beyond any parody. And London steeped in money from all sorts of ‘enterprises’, and with its offshore networks, stands as probably the most ‘corrupt’ of all national capitals.
None of these expressions of capitalism: corruption, ‘mistakes’, ‘bad policing’, cover-ups, greed, unemployment and fear at work, increased exploitation, sexual slavery and abuse, none of these are exceptions to capitalism which can be overturned or even altered by any number of inquiries. These are integral expressions of the whole system along with the tendency to increased militarism and war. There can be no fair capitalism just as there can be no ‘fair day’s pay’. The essence of this system is profit, exploitation and militarism and no inquiry can even begin to attenuate that. Nor can the bourgeoisie, who are increasingly gripped by the irrationality of their system, do anything but follow its devastating course and try to manage its rhythm. For this they have to continually swamp the working class ideologically with all their various campaigns and ‘investigations’. For its part, and as weak as it is at the moment, the working class is the only force that is capable of posing a new society but for this it has to fight for its own interests and if it begins to do that we won’t be seeing the bourgeoisie setting up inquiries into the excesses of the capitalist state.
Boxer, 7/7/16
[1] For a deeper look at this question see: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201601/13764/british-bombs-wil... [1409].
[2] The US itself is no stranger to ‘scandals’ and ‘inquiries’ and uses them, like Britain, to strengthen the democratic state and settle internal squabbles. ‘Watergate’ was a famous one and the Iraqi Abu Ghraib scandal and others were used to ease the US Neo-Cons out of office.
Last August 2015, in our article ‘Boycott the election: the marxist standpoint in the era of decadent capitalism’[1] we wrote:
“The failure of the Aquino Regime is not just because of BS Aquino and the Liberal Party. Long before the current ruling faction, the capitalist system in the Philippines was already a failure .
Together with the rottenness of the present administration, the opposition led by its strongest contender for the Presidency, Vice-President Jojimar Binay, stinks with corruption and self-enrichment. Proof that both the administration and opposition are rotten and corrupt.
Each of them exposes the scandals of their political rivals. In decadent capitalism there is no need for the radicals and progressives inside parliament to expose the decay of capitalism.
One negative effect of decadent capitalism in its decomposing stage is the rise of desperation and hopelessness among the poverty-stricken masses. One indication is the lumpenisation of parts of the toiling masses, increasing number of suicides, rotten culture among the young and gangsterism. All of these are manifestations of the increasing discontentment of the masses in the current system but they don’t know what to do and what to replace it with. In other words, increasing discontent but no perspective for the future. That’s why the mentality of ’everyone for himself’ and ’each against all’ strongly influences a significant portion of the working class.
But the worst effect of having no perspective due to demoralisation is hoping that one person can save the majority from poverty; hoping for a strongman and a “benevolent” dictator. This is no different from hoping for a all-powerful god to descend to earth to save those who have faith in him and punish those who do not. The class which mainly generates this mentality is the petty-bourgeoisie.”
Generally we were not mistaken of our analysis.
Different bourgeois ‘political analysts’ admitted that the votes for Rodrigo Duterte are votes against the failures of the BS Aquino administration. What they did not say and don’t want to say is that the hatred and discontent of the people is against the whole system of bourgeois democracy that they believed replaced the dictatorship of Marcos Sr. in 1986. For the past 30 years the failures and corruption of the democratic institutions has been exposed, and seen as no different from the Marcos Sr. dictatorship. They feel that the current situation is worse than during the time of the Marcos Sr. dictatorship.
Duterte declared that he is a “socialist” and a “leftist”. He boasted that he will be the first leftist Philippine President. Almost all the left factions in the Philippines agree with Duterte and offer their support for his regime. And the front runner in this support is the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines and its legal organisations.[2]
Whatever the “socialism” of Duterte, it is certainly not scientific socialism or marxism. For sure it is another brand of bourgeois “socialism” to deceive the masses and revive the lies of the bourgeoisie against socialism/communism. The “socialism” of Duterte is state capitalism.[3]
Based on Duterte’s statements before and during campaign, it is clear that the essence of his platform of government is for the interests of the capitalist class not of the working masses. In relation to this, he has threatened militant workers not to launch strikes under his term or else he will kill them.
Worse, Duterte uses language (as well as the deeds) of a street gangster and a bully This is an expression of the fact that he sees the government as a big mafia where he is the ‘Godfather’. His vague policy of “federalism”, which seems to be based on the boast that the income of the local governments is bigger than that of the national government, is in reality closer to the concept of the autonomy of local mafias in their own territories.
For the communist organisation and revolutionary workers, the Duterte regime is a rabid defender of national capitalism[4] but is still totally dependent on foreign capital.
The “bold” promise of Duterte to stop corruption, criminality and drugs within the first 3-6 months of his presidency has a very strong appeal to the voters. This has a stronger appeal among the capitalists and the ‘middle class’ who are the constant targets of crime. Capitalists want a peaceful and smooth-sailing business in order to accumulate more profits. That’s why, for the capitalists, workers’ strikes are just as much expressions of ‘chaos’ as the plague of crime.
The new government cannot solve the problems of massive unemployment, low wages and widespread casualisation. In the midst of a worsening crisis of over-production, the main problem for the capitalists is to have a competitive edge against their rivals in a saturated world market. Reducing the cost of labour power through lay-offs and precarious contracts is the only way to make their products cheaper than their rivals.[5]
Essentially the solution of the regime is to strengthen state control over the life of society and to oblige the population to strictly follow the laws and policies of the state through propaganda and repression.
Under the new regime factional struggles within the ruling class will intensify as the crisis of the system worsens. On the surface, most of the elected politicians from the other parties, especially from the ruling Liberal Party of Duterte’s predecessor, the Aquino regime, are now declaring their allegiance to the new government. But in reality every faction has its own agenda which they want to assert under the new administration. Furthermore, within the Duterte camp there are several factions competing for favour and positions: the pro-Duterte Maoist faction, anti-CPP/NPA faction, warlords from Mindanao/Visayas, warlords from Luzon particularly the group around Cayetano, the Vice-Presidential candidate of Duterte.
We also wrote in our article ‘Boycott the election….’
“If Duterte runs for president in 2016 and the ruling class in the Philippines decides that the country needs a dictator like in the era of Marcos to try to save dying capitalism in the Philippines and drown the poverty-stricken mass in fear and submission to the government, surely he will win. Ultimately, the capitalist class (local and foreign) is not concerned with what kind of management of the state the Philippines has. What is more important for them is to accumulate profit.”
There are certainly indications that Duterte is a psychologically disturbed individual who hankers after being a dictator. But whether he rules as a dictator or as a bourgeois liberal depends on the general decision of the ruling class (both local and international) and the solid support from the AFP/PNP and even from the Maoist faction that supported him.
For us, what is important is to analyse and understand as communists why significant numbers of the population are ready to accept Duterte as dictator and ‘Godfather’. Analysis is crucial because in other countries, especially in Europe and the USA, ultra-rightist personalities who engage in tough-talking and bullying (the likes of Donald Trump ) are gaining popularity. Significant numbers among the youth are also attracted to the violence and fanaticism of ISIS.
In analysing the phenomenal popularity of Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the late dictator, it is necessary to have a world-wide view
Globally, for more than 30 years capitalist decomposition has been infecting the consciousness of the population. The infection encompasses many areas: economy, politics, and culture/ideology. The popularity of Duterte and Marcos Jr. is an indication of helplessness, hopelessness and a loss of perspective; of a loss of confidence in class unity and the struggles of the toiling masses. Hence, the current seeking for a “saviour” instead of for class identity. The background to this is the unsolvable crisis of capitalism, expressing itself in worsening poverty, growing chaos, spreading wars, devastation of the environment, scandals and corruption in governments.
But a major contributing factor is also the near absence of a strong working class movement for more than 20 years in the Philippines. The militant struggles at the time of the Marcos Sr. dictatorship were diverted and sabotaged by leftism towards guerrillaism and electoralism. Because of the strong influence of nationalism the Philippine workers’ movement is isolated from the international struggles of the working class.
For almost 50 years the Filipino toiling masses witnessed the bankruptcy of both the guerrilla war of the Maoists and the promises of reforms from every faction of the ruling class sitting in Malacañang Palace. In addition, the militarisation in the countryside of both the armed rebels and the state resulted in massive dislocation that creates a widening and increasing population of poor and unemployed people living in saturated slum areas in the cities. This situation is exploited by the crime syndicates. Hence, criminality from drugs, robbery and kidnapping and car-napping increases year by year. Gang killings and gang riots, rape and other forms of violence are daily events in the cities. And increasingly, both the perpetrators and the victims are the young, even children.
Since a number of police and military officials are protectors of these syndicates, the state itself has become totally unable to control crimes and violence.
Although the first to be affected by the rise of criminality, particularly robbery and kidnapping, are the rich, the poor people also carry the burden of these crimes since most of the “soldiers” or the cannon-fodder of these syndicates come from the hungry and unemployed population.
There is a widespread feeling of helplessness among the population. Being atomised and isolated, they’re asking who can protect them. Behind this thinking is their expectation that the state must protect them. But the state is abandoning them. Helplessness and atomisation breed a longing for a saviour, a person or group of persons that can save them from their misery, that is stronger than the sum of the atomised population. And this saviour must control the government since only the government can protect them.
This helplessness is a fertile ground for scapegoating and personalisation. Blaming somebody for their misery: the corrupt government officials and criminals. The loss of perspectives and growing feelings of helplessness catapult the popularity of Duterte and Marcos Jr. The popularity of these figures is an effect of the rotting system, not of the rising political awareness of the masses. This rottenness was also the reason for the popularity of Hitler and Mussolini before World War II.
As this tendency towards scapegoating and personalisation grows, the number of people who support physical elimination, by whatever means, of corrupt officials and criminals is increasing. They clap their hands whenever they hear Duterte declaring “kill them all!”
It is more difficult for us to combat the effects of a decomposing society in the current political situation. Nevertheless, we are not fighting alone or in isolation. We are part of the international proletarian resistance that exploded since 1968. The international working class, despite its difficulties to find its own class identity and solidarity as an independent class, is still fighting against the attacks of decadent capitalism.
We can only see a bright future by rejecting all forms of nationalism. We cannot see the proletarian class struggle if we just look at the ‘national situation’. We should not forget that since 2006 our class brothers in Europe, some parts of the Middle East and USA have been fighting against decomposition through movements of solidarity (anti-CPE movement in France, Indignados in Spain, class struggle in Greece, Occupy movement in the USA). We should also remember that hundreds of thousands of our class brothers in China have launched widespread strikes.
We must persevere with theoretical clarification, organisational strengthening and militant interventions to prepare for the future struggles at the international level. We are not nationalists as the different leftist factions are. We are proletarian internationalists.
Let us be reminded by the last paragraph of the Communist Manifesto: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
Internasyonalismo (ICC section in the Philippines) June 2016
[2]. Despite the initial “protest” of the Maoists against the neo-liberal 8-point Economic Programme of the regime, they’re all united in support of the ‘butcher’ Duterte. Proof of this is they have Maoist representatives inside the Duterte cabinet.
[3]. Regimes like the ones in China, Vietnam, Cuba, which claim to be “socialist” countries, are also a version of state capitalism. Even the barbaric capitalist regimes of Hitler (Nazism), Saddam Hussein and Assad shamelessly declared that their governments were “socialist”. Even now a majority of the population in the Philippines still believe that the “Communist” Party of the Philippines is a communist organisation.
[4]. Not essentially different from the programme of the Maoist CPP-NPA.
[5]. In the 8-point economic agenda of the Duterte regime it is clear that its objective is to strengthen national capitalism through increasing direct foreign investment. And this means more attacks on the living conditions of the toiling masses. Basically its economic programme is neoliberalism. (www.rappler.com/nation/elections/132850-duterte-8-point-economic-agenda [1453])
“The communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got” (Communist Manifesto, 1848)
Capitalism, the system of exploitation which rules the planet, cannot maintain itself by force and violence alone. It cannot do without the power of ideology – the endless production of ideas which turn reality on its head and persuade the exploited that their best interests lie in lining up behind their own exploiters. Exactly a hundred years ago, hundreds of thousands of workers from Britain, France, Germany and other countries, at the Battle of the Somme, paid the ultimate price for believing the basic lie of the ruling class – that the workers should ‘fight for their country’, which could only mean fighting and dying for the interests of the ruling class. The horrible massacres of World War One proved once and for all that nationalism is the deadliest ideological enemy of the working class.
Today, after decades of attacks on living standards, of the break-up of industries and communities, of financial shocks and austerity packages, and of a whole series of defeated struggles, the working class is being subjected to a new tidal wave of nationalist poison in the form of the populist campaigns of Trump in the USA, Le Pen in France, the Brexiters in Britain and many other central capitalist countries. These campaigns are openly basing themselves on the real disorientation and anger within the working class, on growing frustration about the lack of jobs, housing, healthcare, on widespread feelings of powerlessness in the face of impersonal, global forces. But the very last thing these campaigns want workers to do is to think critically about the real causes of all these misfortunes. On the contrary, the function of populism is to divert any attempt to understand the complex and apparently mysterious social system that governs our lives and to come up with a far simpler solution: look for someone to blame.
Blame the elites, they scream: the greedy bankers, the corrupt politicians, the shadowy bureaucrats who run the EU and tie us all up in red tape and regulations. And all these figures are indeed part of the ruling class and play their part in ramping up exploitation and destroying jobs and futures. But “blaming the elites” is a distortion of class consciousness, not the real thing, and the trick can be exposed by asking the question: who is peddling this new anti-elitism? And you only have to look at Donald Trump or the leaders of the Brexit campaign, or the mass media who support them, to see that this kind of anti-elitism is being sold by another part of the elite. In the 1930s, the Nazis used the same trick, scapegoating a sinister international elite of Jewish financiers for the devastating effects of the world economic crisis, and pulling workers behind a fraction of the ruling class which claimed to defend the true interests of the national economy. The Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels once said that the bigger the lie, the better the chance of its success, and the claim to stand for the little guy against the elite, mouthed by politicians like the billionaire Trump, is a lie worthy of Goebbels himself.
But above all, the target of the new nationalism is not a section of the rich but the most oppressed layers of the working class itself, the most direct victims of capitalism’s economic crisis, its savage imperialist wars, its devastation of the environment – the mass of economic migrants and war refugees driven towards the central capitalist countries in search of a respite from poverty and mass murder. Another “simple” solution offered by the populists: if we could stop them coming in, if we could kick them out, there would obviously be more to go around, a better chance for the “native” workers to find jobs and housing. But this apparent common sense obscures the fact that unemployment and homelessness are products of the workings of the world capitalist system, of “market forces” that cannot be blocked by walls or border guards, and that the migrants and refugees are being pushed by the same capitalist drive for profit which closes down factories in the old industrial regions and displaces whole sectors of production to the other side of the world where labour is cheaper.
Faced with a system of exploitation that is by nature planetary in its reach, the exploited can only defend themselves by uniting across all national divisions, by forming themselves into an international power against the international power of capital. And in direct opposition to this need is the tactic of divide and rule, which is used by all capitalist parties and factions, but which has been pushed to an extreme by the populists. When one group of workers sees the cause of their problems in other workers, when they see their interests being upheld by parties which call for tough measures against immigration, they give up the possibility of defending themselves, and they weaken the prospect of resistance by the working class as a whole.
Behind the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the populists lies the very real threat of violence, of the pogrom. In countries like Greece and Hungary, the toxic hatred of ‘foreigners’, the rise of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have engendered out and out fascist groupings that are willing to terrorise and murder migrants and refugees – the Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the list could easily be extended. In Britain after the Brexit victory, there has been a real upsurge in racist attacks, threats and insults against Poles and other EU immigrants as well as against black and Asian people, as the most overtly racist currents in society feel that the time has come to emerge from their sewers.
But the example of Britain also shows that there is a false alternative to populism which ‘remains’ on the side of the capitalist system. The chaotic political situation created by the Brexit vote (which we analyse in another article in this paper), the growing threat to immigrant workers, has led many well-meaning people to vote for the Remain camp, and in the wake of the referendum, to organise large demonstrations in favour of the EU. We have even seen anarchists, in a panic about the increasingly overt expressions of racism stirred up by the campaign, forgetting their opposition to capitalist elections and voting Remain.
To vote for or demonstrate in favour of the EU is another way of falling into the hands of the ruling class. The EU is not a benevolent institution, but a capitalist alliance which imposes the most ruthless austerity on the working class, as we can see most clearly from what the EU demanded of the Greek workers in return for receiving EU funds for Greece’s bankrupt economy. And the EU is certainly not a kindly protector of migrants and refugees. In favour of the ‘free movement’ of labour power when it suits the profit motive, it is no less capable of building walls and razor wire fences when it sees migrants and refugees as surplus to requirements, and of coming to sordid deals to send refugees whose labour power it can’t use back to the camps that they are trying to escape from – as it has done in a recent agreement with Turkey.
The division between pro- and anti-EU cuts across the traditional left-right divide in bourgeois politics. Both camps have their right and left supporters. The Remain campaign in Britain was led by a faction of the Tory party but was officially supported by the majority of Labour, and by the SNP in Scotland. The left itself was split between Remain and Leave. Corbyn was nominally for Remain but he comes from the Old Labour idea of a “socialist Britain”, in other words an island of autarkic state capitalism, and it was obvious that his heart wasn’t in the Remain campaign. Corbyn’s supporters in the Socialist Workers’ Party and similar groups were for Left Exit, an absurd mirror image of the Brexit camp. This Tower of Babel of nationalisms, whether pro- or anti-EU, is itself another factor in the prevailing ideological fog, posing everything in terms of ‘in’ or ‘out’, of the interests of Britain, of the existing system.
And all these capitalist groups and parties were further thickening the fog by spreading the fraud of “democracy”, the idea that capitalist elections or referendums really can express the “will of the people”. A key element of the Leave campaign was the idea of “taking our country back” from the foreign bureaucrats – a country which the vast majority never had in the first place because it is owned and controlled by a small minority, which manipulates the institutions of democracy to ensure that, whoever wins the majority of votes, the working class as a class remains excluded from power. The democratic polling booth – which in some countries is rightly called an “isolator” – is not, as the capitalist left will often argue, a means for the working class to express its class consciousness, at least in a defensive manner. It is a means for atomising the working class, for dividing it up into a mass of powerless citizens. And referendums in particular have been a time honoured means of mobilising the most reactionary forces in society – something that was already apparent under the dictatorial regime of Louis Bonaparte in 19th century France. For all these reasons, despite the political convulsions the Brexit vote has produced, the EU referendum was a “success” for bourgeois democracy, presenting it as the only possible framework for the conduct of political debate.
Faced with a world system which seems intent on turning each country into a bunker where only you and yours deserve to survive, some groups have raised the slogan “No Borders”. This is a praiseworthy aim, but to get rid of borders you have to get rid of nation states, and to get rid of the state you need to get rid of the social relations of exploitation which it protects. And all that requires a world-wide revolution of the exploited, establishing a new form of political power which dismantles the bourgeois state and begins to replace capitalist production for profit with communist production for universal need.
This goal seems immeasurably distant today, and the advancing decomposition of capitalist society – above all, its tendency to drag the working class into its own material and moral downfall – contains the danger that this perspective will be definitively lost. And yet it remains the only hope for a human future. And it is not a question of passively waiting for it to happen, like the Day of Judgement. The seeds of revolution lie in the revival of the class struggle, in returning to the path of resistance against attacks from right and left, in social movements against austerity, repression, and war; in the fight for solidarity with all the exploited and the excluded, in the defence of ‘foreign’ workers against gang masters and pogroms. This is the only struggle that can revive the perspective of a world community.
And what about the communists, that minority of the class which is still convinced by the perspective of a world human community? We have to recognise soberly that in the present situation we are swimming against the stream. And like previous revolutionary fractions which withstood the challenge of a tide of reaction or counter-revolution, we need to reject any compromising of principles learned from decades of class experience. We need to insist that there can be no support for any capitalist state or alliance of states, no concessions to nationalist ideology, no illusions that capitalist democracy provides a means of defending ourselves against capitalism. We refuse to participate in capitalist campaigns on one side or the other, precisely because we do aim to participate in the class struggle, and because the class struggle needs to become independent from all the forces of capitalism which seek to divert it or corral it. And faced with the enormous confusion and disarray which is currently reigning in our class, we need to engage in a serious theoretical effort to understand a world that is becoming increasingly complicated and unpredictable. Theoretical work is not an abstention from the class struggle, but helps prepare the time when theory, in Marx’s words, becomes a material force by gripping the masses.
Amos 9.7.16
Populism is not another player in the games between the parties of left and right; it exists because of widespread discontent that can find no means of expressing itself. It’s entirely on the political terrain of the bourgeoisie, but is based on opposition to elites and ‘the Establishment’, on antagonism towards immigration, distrust of left-wing promises and right-wing austerity, all expressing a loss of confidence in the institutions of capitalist society but not for a moment recognising the revolutionary alternative of the working class.
In the ICC’s “Theses on Decomposition [410]”, published in 1990, we wrote about “the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation” and “the ruling class’ loss of control over its own political strategy”. Although the use of democracy has proven a very effective tool and ideology for the capitalist class, something in which their control of the political situation has been sustained, the latent tendency for difficulties to emerge for the ruling class has come more and more to the surface with the growth of populism.
The rise of populism, at a certain level, strengthens democracy with the discontented rallying to the populist parties, with others rallying to any force that will confront populism. However, the UK vote to Leave the EU is a reminder of the difficulties that populism can cause for the bourgeoisie’s political control. The ruling class uses democracy to try and give its rule some legitimacy, but populism undermines its attempts at validation. Populism poses dangers for the bourgeoisie because, as it develops, it brings unpredictable upsets in the democratic process
We have often had good reason to emphasise that the British ruling class is the most experienced bourgeoisie in the world, able to manoeuvre at the diplomatic, political and electoral level in a manner that is the envy of capitalist states across the globe. However, in this case, the Brexit vote shows the limits of the abilities of the British bourgeoisie.
Although the UK has a long history of capitalism’s use of elections, it has had little use for referenda. After the EU referendum of 1975, apart from local referenda in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there was only the 2011 referendum on a new voting system before this year’s vote on Leave/Remain. This has been a wise policy for the bourgeoisie because there is always the danger that a referendum can be used as a focus for protest on any issue, regardless of the actual subject of the vote. In practice David Cameron’s calling of a referendum was a massive miscalculation about the growth of populism. Far from being limited to a battle with UKIP and Eurosceptic Tories, there were many from all and no political backgrounds drawn into the fray. This also accounted for the weakness of the Remain campaign. While it presented facts, common sense and rational considerations (from a capitalist point of view), the Leave campaign appealed, with greater success, to irrational emotions.
The Brexiters personalised the argument by focussing on the rich Cameron and Osborne who couldn’t understand the concerns of ordinary people; they said that people were fed up with experts and should trust their gut feelings; they portrayed immigration as a problem and one worsened by EU membership; and they promised £350m per week would be available to spend on the NHS (later saying this was a ‘mistake’). Against this the Remain campaign sustained its arguments on the need to continue the benefits of EU membership, displayed the analysis of armies of economists, and quoted the testimonies of businesses that recognised the importance of the EU. When Remain did approach questions like immigration they agreed with the Leavers that it was a problem, but insisted that the EU framework was the best way of further clamping down on the movement of people looking for employment or safety.
After the EU referendum there will be no return to political ‘business as usual”. Neither side had a plan for what to do in the event of a Leave victory. Whatever happens those who will suffer most will be those who were suffering already. While Osborne was quick to announce a cut in Corporation Tax to attract business to Britain, it is clear that it will be the working class that will have to make the economic sacrifices, and that workers would bear the brunt of attacks whether Remain or Leave had won.
At the economic level there has been much speculation as to what could happen, how British capitalism can best defend its interests, how the countries of the EU can defend themselves against any collateral damage in the aftermath of the referendum. The implications are international. There will be attempts to limit the impact on the EU. The dangers of a Brexit contagion spreading to other countries are very real. There are forces in many countries that resent the dominance of France and Germany in the EU. A British exit could further deepen these centrifugal forces.
One other prospect opens up with the growth of separatist tendencies. With the Scottish vote in the referendum strongly in favour of remaining in the EU, and with the 2015 General Election leaving only a handful of Scottish MPs not in the Scottish National Party, the possibility of a further loss of control and the undermining of the Union has been the subject of much speculation. It’s a different situation in Northern Ireland, but a majority there also wanted to remain, which could also cause further difficulties for the United Kingdom.
On the political level there will be realignments, but there’s no guarantee that there’ll be a return to the unambiguous certainties of Left/Right politics. Parliament has 40 years of EU legislation to examine in a short period. After its internal battles the Conservative Party is not going to settle down easily. There was a big split in the Tory Cabinet during the campaign, and, after the referendum, the battle between Gove and Johnson showed a further division in the Brexit camp. Of the two women who are candidates for the Conservative leadership, May was for the Remain side but now says that “Brexit means Brexit”, while Leadsom, in 2013, said leaving the EU “would be a disaster for our economy”, but campaigned to Leave in 2016. The 150,000 members of the Conservative Party who will decide on the next Prime Minister might not be a predictable electorate, any more than the Labour Party was when it voted for Corbyn. (Editor's note: Since this article was written, the political situation has evolved yet again, with Theresa May now installed as Prime Minister, following Leadsom's withdrawal.)
The situation in the Labour Party is a microcosm of the overall political difficulties faced by the bourgeoisie. Labour is not being called on to fulfil any important government function at present, but it does have an important oppositional role and needs to be ready for the future whenever the working class begins to stir. There is a gap between the MPs who don’t support Corbyn as leader and the membership who do. The unions are not united, but they too will contribute to the situation, not necessarily to provide stability.
The UK’s EU referendum is a disquieting example to the bourgeoisie elsewhere. If the British bourgeoisie, across the spectrum, has difficulties in coping with the growth of populism then the same will apply to every other state. While democracy is one of the main means for containing and diverting the impulses of the working class and other social strata, the force of populism shows that the democratic process has its limitations and doesn’t always follow the will of the dominant factions of the bourgeoisie.
One of the reasons for the growth of populism is the weakness of the working class, at the level of its struggles, its consciousness and its sense of its own identity. If the working class was widely seen to present an alternative to capitalism then it would be an inspirational factor in the perspective of a human community. But this is currently not the case.
Not only that, many workers have fallen in with populism, taken in by the idea of the ‘people’ against the elites. It is significant that in those areas of old industrial Britain that have been most run down and neglected there was a greater working class tendency to vote Leave. The Labour Party has taken support in these areas for granted, and although a majority of Labour voters voted to Remain, the minority that didn’t was significant. These are the sections of the working class who have suffered most from the ‘neo-liberal’ policies which have displaced whole industries from the old capitalist heartlands, have turned the housing market into an arena for unrestricted speculation, and which subsequently offered austerity as the medicine needed to avert the disintegration of the international financial system.
Faced with this onslaught, often presented in the guise of a kind of capitalist ‘internationalism’, it is not surprising that whole sectors of the working class feel a very real anger against the establishment, but this does not in itself lead to the development of class consciousness. The appeal of populist demagogues, with their easy targets to blame, the EU, a metropolitan elite, immigration, foreigners, is quite concrete. Where capitalism is an abstraction, the populists can change their focus from EU regulations to Islamist terrorism to globalisation, even to the parasitic rich, without pausing for breath. Populism represents a considerable danger to the working class, because it does not have to be in any way coherent to be effective. It is a big challenge for revolutionaries to analyse the significance this whole phenomenon, and we are only just beginning this work.
The UK referendum, both campaign and result, is just one demonstration of a situation that is changing because of the growth of populism. It is a problem that can only get worse until the proletariat begins to appreciate its historic role, understands that it is not just an exploited class but that it has the capacity to overthrow capitalism and establish an international human community.
Car 9/7/16
The state has prepared the terrain for repression very well. As we said in our articles on the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015, the incredible reinforcement of police control and the state of emergency put in place created a situation, on the material as well as ideological levels, in which repression and police provocation can be used more easily, especially in exploiting the phenomenon of ‘casseurs’ (rioters/wreckers) as an important alibi for the police action.
The state and its repressive forces are the product of irreconcilable class contradictions and are the instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed, exclusively at the service of the bourgeoisie. How is ‘order’ maintained? “... in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power seemingly standing above society became necessary for the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” But “This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed people but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds... A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power.”[1] So, the reality of police violence is neither new, nor an accident of history, nor the product of an imperfect realisation of democracy; it is a clear expression of the profoundly oppressive nature of the state. The ruling class has thus always been extraordinarily brutal faced with any expression that puts its social order in question. The bourgeoisie has attempted to bury each challenge from the proletariat under a deluge of iron and fire. So today the police cosh the working class youth on the same pavements where in 1871 the armies of Versailles drowned the Paris Commune in blood.
From the start of the workers’ movement revolutionary organisations have been confronted not only with state violence but also with the question of the recourse to violence in the ranks of the proletariat. Violent actions in themselves have never been seen as an expression of the political strength of the movement, but have to be seen in a more general context. Even when directed against the forces of order, violent actions can often be no more than individual responses which contain the danger of undermining the unity of the class. This doesn’t mean that the workers’ movement is “pacifist”. It inevitably uses a certain form of violence: the violence of the class struggle against the bourgeois state. But here it is a question of a different, liberating, nature, which is accompanied by a conscious step which has nothing to do with the violence and brutality of ruling classes whose power is maintained by terror and oppression. So, the experience of a proletariat which little by little constituted itself as a distinct organised and conscious class, allowed it to gradually struggle against the immediate temptation of blind violence which was one of the characteristics of the first workers’ riots. For example in the 18th century numerous workers, nearly everywhere in Europe, rose up very violently against the introduction of weaving machines by destroying them. These violent actions, exclusively against the machines, were the product of the lack of experience and organisation in the infancy of the workers’ movement. As Marx emphasised: “It took both time and experience before the workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of production to the form of society which utilises those instruments.”[2]
On the other hand, there were a number of political expressions which emerged during the 20th century and which have given in to blind violence in various forms. This was particularly the case after 1968, for example those in Italy inspired by ‘operaist’ ideologies[3], or in West Germany among the many ‘autonomist’ tendencies. These currents expressed a lack of reflection and orientation about the means needed for a political confrontation with capitalism. In Berlin, for example, since the 1980s, the 1st May has become a time of ritual confrontations between police and all sorts of ‘rioters’ who above all seek confrontation with the police, destroying shops and cars, mistakenly identifying this with the idea of ‘making the revolution’.
Today these ‘autonomist’ forces, which are more and more identified with ‘terrorism’ by the state, express the impotence and the political void left at present by the great weakness of a working class which, if it has been able to emerge from decades of traumatic Stalinist counter-revolution, has not yet succeeded in recognising itself as a social class, in affirming its authentic means of struggle, and thus its communist perspective. Disorientated, totally lacking in confidence in its own strength, the proletariat has not succeeded in recognising its own identity and still less its historic power. So it leaves the field free for all the impatience of an exasperated youth, deprived of political experience, and momentarily lacking any perspective for the future.
This largely explains the relative attraction among some of the young for the methods of the ‘autonomists’ and ‘insurrectionists’, or the success of hazy theories like those of the pamphlet The Coming Insurrection[4] by a certain ‘Invisible Committee’. In it we can read “The offensive aiming to liberate territory from police occupation is already committed, and can count on inexhaustible reserves of resentment that these forces have united against themselves. The ‘social movements’ themselves are little by little won over by the riot”. This kind of discourse, more or less shared by a good number of autonomists regrouped under various changeable banners (black blocs, defenders of ‘autonomous zones’, some antifascists) has pushed them more and more to the front of the social scene. For some years more and more of the young, suffering the social violence of capitalism, of precarity and unemployment, express their anger and exasperation in revolt, sometimes violently. Fed up, subject to police provocations, they are easily led to confront the forces of order during demonstrations. Some of the young are thus exposed to the influences and actions of ‘casseurs’ or of ‘autonomist’ groups who distinguish themselves through sterile actions such as trashing property, breaking shop windows, etc, which can unfortunately fascinate the desperate.
There is no question of drawing a parallel between the violence of the state, through the good offices of the over-equipped police, and that of some demonstrators armed with a few feeble projectiles, as if the first were the ‘legitimate’ consequence of the second. The bourgeois press do this shamelessly. But the problem of this sterile violence, of these brawls with the police, is that the state can used them totally to its advantage. So, the government has wilfully pushed all these ‘casseurs’ and ‘autonomists’ into a trap seeking to ‘demonstrate the facts’ to proletarians as a whole that violence and revolt inevitably lead to chaos. The damage to the Necker Hospital in Paris is a perfect illustration. On 14 June the police charged with unusual violence a demonstration passing by a children’s hospital. Groups of rioters, probably incited by agents provocateurs[5], ended by breaking some hospital windows, under the impassive gaze of several companies of CRS riot police. That evening, the bourgeois press obviously had a field day, and we were treated to the scandalised declarations of the government which didn’t fail to use the occasion to pit the ‘radicals’ against the sick children. This is how the bourgeoisie polarises attention on the most violent elements on the margins of a whole damaged youth, victims of the bourgeois order, to justify the brutality of police repression. To better present the state and its institutions as the ultimate rampart against those who threaten ‘public order’ and democracy, the media highlight the symbolic destruction carried out by the ‘rioters’. This also has the effect of dividing the demonstrators, of generating distrust within the working class and above all of smothering the least idea of solidarity and of the revolutionary perspective. So, far from shaking the system, these phenomena allow the bourgeoisie to exploit their actions in order to discredit all forms of struggle against the state, but above all to better deform the revolutionary perspective. The manifestations of violence at present are both the reflection of a weakness of the class struggle and the product of social decomposition, of a general atmosphere which gives free rein to behaviour typical of social layers who have no future, who are incapable of opposing the barbarity of capitalism with another perspective, apart from blind and nihilistic rage. Other actions by rebellious minorities (such as the Molotov cocktail attack, on 18 May, against two police officers in their car, on the margins of a rally), which are clearly products of a spirit of revenge, are also exploited to the hilt by the state and its press in order to denounce ‘anti-police hatred’.
Throughout the existence of the workers’ movement it has been shown that the construction of a real balance of forces with its class enemy takes a completely different road and uses radically different methods. To take only a few examples: during the summer of 1980 in Poland, faced with the threat of repression, the workers immediately mobilised massively across sectors in the towns of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot, making the government pull back. When the state threatened to intervene militarily to suppress them, the workers of Lubin, in solidarity, threatened in their turn to paralyse transport, the railways which connected the Russian barracks in the GDR to the Soviet Union. The Polish state ended by retreating. Faced with the past repression in 1970 and 1976, the workers’ response was not based on revenge, but on memory and solidarity.[6] More recently in France, in a different context, at the time of the struggle against the CPE in 2006, the proletarianised youth of the universities took control of their struggles by organising general assemblies open to all to extend their movement. The Villepin government, fearing the extension, had to retreat. In 2011, at the time of the Indignados movement in Spain, the people were regrouped in assemblies in the street to discuss, to exchange experience and so to forge a common will to struggle. The Spanish bourgeoisie attempted to break this dynamic by provoking confrontations with the police and by unleashing media campaigns on the ‘rioters’. But the strength and confidence accumulated in the open assemblies allowed the proletariat to respond with massive demonstrations, particularly in Barcelona where thousands of people were able to resist police attacks courageously, several times.
So, it is not violence in itself, the spirit of revenge, isolated and minority action, which creates the power of a movement faced with the capitalist state, but on the contrary a dynamic of conscious action with the perspective of overturning and destroying it.
The strength of our class resides precisely in its capacity to oppose police provocation massively and consciously.
The rotting of capitalism on its feet generates a tendency to the fragmentation of the social tissue and devalues all effort at coherent thought and reflection, pushing towards ‘action for its own sake’ and to simple and immediate solutions,[7] fed by an accumulation of dissatisfaction and resentment, a spirit of revenge, encouraging the upsurge of tiny groups which are the prey of choice for police provocation and manipulation. The most violent elements often come from decomposing petty bourgeois layers or from a declassed intelligentsia in revolt against the barbarity of the capitalist system. Their actions, marked by individualism, blinded by hate and impatience, are the expressions of immediate impulses, often without any real aim. So we find the same nihilist roots which push other young people to set out on jihad.
The bourgeoisie also uses the violence and destruction that accompany many demonstrations to push workers back towards the unions which, despite the distrust towards them, appear as the only force able to ‘organise and lead the struggle’. Such a situation can only further weaken consciousness by rebranding the main saboteurs of the struggle.
An authentic working class movement has nothing to do with the false alternative between containment by the official unions and ‘riotous’ actions which can only lead those who truly want to struggle, especially the youth in the demonstrations, towards the political void and repression. By contrast, what characterises a real workers’ struggle is solidarity, the search for unity in struggle, the will to fight against capitalist exploitation as massively as possible. The essence of this combat is the unification of struggles, uniting all, unemployed, employed, young, old, retired, etc. And when the working class is able to mobilise on such a scale, it is capable of rallying all the other strata of this society that are victims of the suffering caused by this system. It is this mobilisation in large numbers, really taken control of by the workers themselves, which alone has the capacity to push back the state and the bourgeoisie. This is why the working class does not seek the badge of violence to create a balance of force against the ruling class, but bases itself first of all on its numbers and its unity. The proletarian struggle has nothing to do with the skirmishes filmed by journalists. Far from the instrumentalisation of violence that we see today, the historic and international combat of the working class rests on conscious and massive action. It consists of a vast project whose cultural and moral dimension contains in embryo the emancipation of humanity as a whole. As an exploited class the proletariat has no privileges to defend and only its chains to lose. For this reason the programme of the Spartacist League, written by Rosa Luxemburg, says in point 3 that: “the proletarian revolution requires no terror for its aims; it hates and despises killing. It does not need these weapons because it does not combat individuals but institutions...”[8] The workers’ struggle, with its spirit of association and solidarity, anticipates the real human community of the future. Its way of organising is not that of a general staff which directs from the summit to the base but takes the form of a conscious, collective resistance that gives birth to innumerable creative initiatives: “The mass strike … flows now like a broad billow over the whole kingdom, and now divides into a gigantic network of narrow streams; now it bubbles forth from under the ground like a fresh spring and now is completely lost under the earth. Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting – all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another – it is a ceaselessly moving changing sea of phenomena.”[9] This living, liberating momentum is expressed in the mass strike, then in the formation of the workers’ councils before leading to the insurrection and the world-wide taking of power by the proletariat. For the moment this perspective is not within reach for the proletariat which is much too weak. Although it is not defeated, it does not have sufficient strength to affirm itself and first of all needs to become conscious of itself, to reconnect with its own experience and history. The revolution is not immediate and inevitable. A long and difficult road, littered with pitfalls, still remains to be travelled. A veritable and profound upheaval of thought has to happen before it is possible to imagine the affirmation of a revolutionary perspective. EG/WH, 26/6/16
[1]. Lenin, State and Revolution, including quotation from Engels Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Foreign Languages Press, Peking
[2]. Marx, Capital vol.1, chapter 15, part 5, Pelican Marx Library. Our emphasis.
[3]. Operaism is a ‘workerist’ current which appeared in 1961 around the magazine Quaderni Rossi, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri being its principle theoreticians. In 1969 the operaist current divided into two rival organisations: Potere Operaio and Lotta Continua. After 1972 the operaists have been involved in the autonomous movement extolling riots and violent, so-called ‘exemplary’, actions.
[4]. This pamphlet has sold more than 40,000 copies in French.
[5]. For example, this was the case for police unmasked in Spain by demonstrators themselves during the Indignados movement in 2011. In France, the infiltration of demonstrations by the police of the BAC (Anti-Criminal Brigades), who have the job of inciting the crowds, is well known.
[6]. Among the workers’ demands was a monument to commemorate their dead, the victims of the bloody repression of the earlier movements in 1970-71 and in 1976.
[7]. Like the slogans and chants “we hate the police” or “all coppers are bastards”.
[8]. Rosa Luxemburg, Selected political writings, Monthly Review Press.
[9]. Rosa Luxemburg, The mass strike, the political party and the trade unions, chapter 4, Merlin Press. Our emphasis.
“A trial of strength”! A “War of attrition”! “Rising tensions”!
These are the kind of terms the media has been using in the last few weeks to describe the apparent confrontation between the governments and the unions over the “El Khomri” labour law. The conflict has been presented in a spectacular way by the media. It even reached the point where, for a few hours, the government banned a union demo prior to allowing it after all – something that hasn’t been seen for 50 years.
There has been real discontent against this attack on the working conditions of the entire working class. It has given rise to a relatively significant level of mobilisation and militancy during certain days of action. However, contrary to what the media would have us believe, this militancy has not drawn in the majority of wage earners. Despite the images of blockades, of tyres burning on the roads, the strikes have very often been restricted to a minority and there has been little in the way of a growth of confidence, unity and consciousness in the ranks of the working class. On the contrary: “these union parades, which consist of people tramping the streets and being bombarded with slogans like ‘The workers are in the street, El Khomri you are screwed’, or ‘Strike, strike, general strike!’,without being able to discuss or build anything together , serve only to demoralise people and spread feelings of powerlessness”[1].
Many wage earners, high school and university students, and precarious or unemployed workers have asked questions about this, feeling that the omnipresence of the unions and their sterile days of action are not leading anywhere. But they have not been able to break out of the union manacles or develop an open, collective critique of union methods. And the Nuit Debout movement, which claims to offer a “space” for deeper reflection, “is leading them into a dead end and strengthening the most conformist outlooks. Worse than that, Nuit Debout is a vehicle for the most nauseating ideas, like the personalisation of the evils of society, blaming them on a few representatives like bankers and oligarchs”. [2]
Among the youngest participants, there is the illusion that all this is an expression of the class war and that we are heading towards a new May 68, a mobilisation of the proletariat on a scale we haven’t seen for many years. But the government has shown no signs of retreating in the face of pressure from the streets, as it did in 2006 at the time of the fight against the CPE. Even if the Socialist government has not been a picture of unity and coherence, the government and the unions, led by the CGT, have managed to work together to set up this confrontation, with the aim of manipulating the working class and reinforcing its disorientation.
The focus of this strategy has been the growing “radicalisation” of the CGT[3]. Over several months the social movement has not disappeared, and in response the two main actors, government and unions, have fuelled the appearance of a major confrontation. The CGT through the blockading of oil refineries and motorways, through rolling strikes in public transport and the energy sector. The government, especially Manuel Valls, has come out with more and more provocative declarations, culminating in this momentary, but still gob-smacking decision to ban a union demonstration. All this on the basis of the heavy media publicity given to the violence of the rioting “casseurs”. If we were to believe the bourgeoisie and its press, you’d think the country was on a war footing, with everything being dramatised to an almost surreal level, until you stop watching the TV or the computer screen and go and out and look at what’s really been happening.
The conflict, we are told, reached a culminating point with the operations aimed at “blockading the economy”, in particular the ports and oil refineries. Blocking the oil refineries, as in 2010 with the struggle against the pension reforms, is presented as the ultimate weapon against the bourgeoisie, a way of hitting it where it really hurts. But not only was the real level of paralysis on the oil sector even more pathetic than in 2010, it has functioned as a powerful factor of division within the working class.
On the one hand you have some of the most militant workers trapped behind makeshift barricades, cut off from the rest of their class and at the mercy of police repression; on the other hand, you have many workers who are feeling discontented but are waiting to see what will happen, hardly involved in the social movement and sometimes exasperated by the endless transport strikes and the petrol shortages.
The CGT and all the “combative” unions have not suddenly become “revolutionary” any more than they are fighting for the basic interests of the workers. With the decadence of the capitalist system, the trade unions, whose original reason for existence (the reduction of capitalist exploitation) was already quite conservative, have become an essential cog of the state apparatus, with the task of imprisoning the working class in the logic of negotiations, of sabotaging workers’ struggles and smothering the growth of a revolutionary consciousness. Their role is to divide the workers and undermine any mass movement which could lead to questioning the capitalist order. The current radicalism of the unions is aimed at making us forget their direct complicity in the attacks that have been carried out by successive governments, and their involvement in the day-to-day management of exploitation in the factories and offices.
The essential complicity of the unions and the government doesn’t mean that there are no struggles for influence between various cliques. The government’s efforts to restore credibility to the union apparatus have involved downgrading the hegemonic status of the CGT and giving a more central role to more “tolerant” and “cooperative” unions like the CFDT. Article 2 of the new labour law aims to give accords reached at enterprise level priority over those worked out at branch level, which would mean undermining the financial organisational and strength of the CGT in favour of the more “reformist” unions, especially at the level of the small and medium enterprises which are in the majority in France. This is what to a large extent lies behind the radicalism of the CGT: keeping its place at the table of the state, maintaining its position in the apparatus of exploitation.
From the point of the view of the interests of the working class, the CGT is anything but radical. While the working class draws its strength from its capacity to unite, to extend its struggles beyond sectional and national frontiers, the CGT demands that everyone must march in their particular work clothes behind “their own” union banner, raising demands specific to each sector. If they do raise the slogan “everyone together”, this is still within the limits of each union boutique. It has nothing to do with the search for the extension of the struggle, with raising proposals that will draw all sectors into a common fight regardless of union membership, as was the case for several weeks during the struggle in 2006.
Similarly, the general assemblies, which should be the lungs of the movement, have been replaced by simulated assemblies which only bring together a minority of wage earners and where the unions decide on practically everything in advance. This has nothing to with assemblies that are open to all, young and old, without consideration to profession, union or political membership; assemblies which elect and can recall strike committees, and where you can openly discuss the conduct of the struggle, how to spread it and establish a balance of forces in the face of the state. The anti-CPE struggle of 2006, whose lessons the state and its unions want us to forget, was exemplary at this level and resulted in a real loss of credibility by the unions.
This division of labour on the part of the different wings of the state, government and unions, is exploiting to the maximum the current weakness of the working class, with the object of manipulating it, dividing it, demoralising it and pushing through the attacks, all the while giving the impression that only militant unions like the CGT and FO are capable of standing up to an arrogant Socialist government that is even worse than the right.
The working class needs to make the deepest and most lucid analysis possible of the present social movement, in order to identify its enemies and prepare the real struggles of the future.
Stopio, 24.6.16
[2]. ibid
[3]. The CGT is the union linked to the Stalinist French Communist Party; the CFDT is closer to the Socialist Party while FO has come under a strong Trotksyist influence.
In July 2016, the ICC held an open discussion day on the topic of immigration, refugees and populism. We are publishing the following account, written by one of our close sympathisers who attended the meeting.
Held in London, July 2016, against the backdrop of the largest global ‘production’ of refugees since the end of WW2 and the accompanying rise of xenophobic political ‘populism’, the meeting attempted to understand these phenomena in both their historic dimension and in their present-day implications for the struggle of the working class. It was called by the International Communist Current which made two presentations and provided the input of comrades from three European countries. In addition the meeting was animated by representatives of the Communist Workers Organisation/International Communist Tendency; the Socialist Party of Great Britain; The Midlands Discussion Forum; an author and lecturer sympathetic to communist politics; an internationalist anarchist, former member of the Anarchist Federation; an individual concerned with the plight of refugees and several sympathisers of the ICC, some of them former members.
The atmosphere was fraternal, the discussion serious, with little evidence of sectarianism or ‘scoring points’ but saw a real attempt to clarify reality and understand different proletarian interpretations of it in order to effect change. It was a moment of face-to-face debate – real militant interaction - in an evolving discussion, producing some basic if essential affirmations but raising issues for further elaboration, some of which appear in the necessarily truncated account below.
The first (morning) presentation dealt in great length and depth with the historic aspects of economic migration and refugees from war, from the origins of humanity as an eminently migratory species (‘out of Africa’) to the evolving and dynamic specificities of the capitalist mode of production in both its formative and declining epochs:
In the ascendant epoch: above all, with and through violence - by forcing peasants off the land (enclosures, etc) and robbing them of a means of subsistence; through the kidnap and enforced migration of millions of black slaves - capitalism created the modern proletariat, a class without countries, a class with nothing but its labour power to sell: doomed to wander in search of employment, a migratory class par excellence. Emigration (eg to the ‘Americas’ or the British ‘colonies’) was encouraged by the state, an expression of capitalism’s continuing expansion.
In its epoch of decline: With quasi-permanent economic crisis and world-wide warfare, the rise of militarised borders, the restriction and even mass extermination of large parts of the labour force amid hysterical state-sponsored nationalism and pogroms and the creation of vast refugee populations fleeing increasing conflict or seeking decreasing opportunities to work. Capitalism is less able and has less need to integrate such masses into highly-automated production and emigration is largely subject to increasing restrictions and obstacles.
Some quotes from the presentation to give a flavour:
“Marx described primitive accumulation as the process of ‘divorcing the producer from the means of production. … great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and ‘unattached’ proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process’ (Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter 26: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation). This separation of the peasant from the soil, from their means of production, meant uprooting millions of people. Because capitalism needs “the abolition of all laws preventing labourers from transferring from one sphere of production another to and from one local production centre to another” (Marx, Capital Volume 3, Chapter 10.) ....
“... we need to distinguish economic migration from wars: every refugee is a migrant, but not every migrant is a refugee. A migrant is someone who leaves his residence in search of a place where he can sell his labour power. A refugee is someone whose life is at stake in an immediate way and moves elsewhere to find a safe place.” ....
“...Today, we can see that migration from Africa and the Middle East falls entirely as a consequence of the murderous wars which have raged for over 40 years. There is no attempt to truly integrate these desperate people only to see them die, be used as pawns, in a cynical political game or at the best used as the very cheapest of cheap labour.”
The morning discussion emphasised that this global and historical approach was the only method capable of fully arming and inoculating the proletariat against the prevailing pogromist, nationalist, anti-immigrant hysteria and the leftist-liberal counterpart, a vision of capitalism without such excrescences - a contradiction in terms and in reality.
On the level of humanity as a species, the migration of hunter gatherers colonised the world; an entirely natural process accompanied by and the result of a development of profound social bonds and instincts - one for all and all for one: a necessity made more or less conscious. Humanity is a species of immigrants! As for the proletariat, it is the essence of a migratory class having been formed by an enforced rupture with the land and the products of its labour, obliging it to cross counties, countries and continents in a bid to sell its labour power. These are the realities behind today’s false claims that the working class is by nature racist and to blame for the rise of right-wing ‘populism’.
The CWO comrade, who agreed with and welcomed the presentation, pointed out that despite the historic tightening of borders, limited immigration was a ‘necessary evil’ for the bourgeoisie (pace Marx, quoted above) and that it wanted, needed, to a certain extent, ‘porous borders’. The dynamic of bourgeois attitudes depended on the state of the economy (ie the slave trade in ascendancy; the ‘import’ of labour from the ‘British colonies’ during the labour shortage after WW2). An ICC sympathiser said that ‘people smuggling’ was in itself a ‘growing business’, while an ICC member pointed out that, by its very nature as a class representing the continued revolutionising of the means of production within social relations restricted to the nation state framework, the bourgeoisie inevitably faced an ‘overproduction’ of labour power in certain sectors (in particular manual labour), while projecting chronic shortages in others: a real anarchy of production characteristic of capitalism and one only mitigated, not resolved, by the on-going development of state capitalism.
However the over-arching dynamic of capitalism remained clear: the system in its decadence and decomposition doesn’t stop creating vast waves of human misery – economic migrants and those fleeing wars - on the contrary. But its ability to integrate these masses has been more and more restricted over the past 100 years, despite periods of reconstruction such as that post WW2. Ethnic cleansing; mass exterminations and the creation of rigid borders were the hallmark of the 20th century and this dynamic only accelerates in the 21st, a process unfolding before our eyes and the root cause of today’s social and political upheavals. The economic and social crisis that the bourgeoisie of the major metropoles has for decades attempted to push to what it considers ‘the peripheral parts of the planet’ returns to the centre in the form of financial dislocations, viruses and diseases long thought banished and terror on the streets of Istanbul, Brussels, Paris, Nice and elsewhere.
At the dawn of capitalism, the dispossessed peasantry flooded into the towns which became ‘human drains’, over-crowded cities riven with squalor and disease, before a growing industrialisation – which required this ‘surplus population’ for the reproduction of capital – and the consequent geographic extension of capitalist social relations, together with the epic migration this implied, tended to ‘mop up’ this mass of humanity. This whole process took 200-300 years or so.
But in the space of the past 100 years – particularly since the end of WW1 - while wars and crises created ever-more tides of migration and refugees, increasing barriers have been raised on cross-border movements, with militarised zones, the building of walls, etc. These developments were designed to control the movement of labour (in the former Eastern bloc, to prevent its mass migration to the West) and to a certain extent, to police the population internally. At the same time, masses expelled from the unprofitable agriculture of the land tended less and less to be integrated into capitalist production with the consequent the swelling of the world’s cities, turning large parts of many of them into burgeoning slums.
Whereas in the late 19th century the bourgeoisie was taking strides to ‘clean up’ its environmental act in major European metropoles (eg the sewer systems of Victorian London), today, millions of dispossessed Chinese peasants whose labour power is surplus to the world market’s relatively saturated requirements are stranded in misery while many newly-built cities remain empty ‘ghost towns’. The hideous degradation of the environment implied in the transfer of production to areas of ‘low-cost labour’ – the ‘race to the bottom’ – is a notable reversal of tendencies in the late 19th century and makes a mockery of lying lip service about ‘mitigating climate change’.
In the lifetime of most comrades at the London meeting, the reality of a society closing in on itself was evident. In the 60s, treks to Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush and elsewhere, were possible. Though travel to and within the former Eastern imperialist bloc was difficult, the collapse of this bloc in 1989 promised a golden epoch of ‘open borders’. Today, despite the EU, whole areas are rendered impassable by war (the Balkans, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Mid-East, increasing swathes of Africa, etc) while ‘fortress Europe’ constructs vast camps – the ‘safety nets’ - where tens of thousands of human beings are caught (i.e. between Greece and Turkey; and on the borders of Europe with Africa). 4000 migrant souls drowned in the Mediterranean in the first 6 months of 2016 alone! All this and the land-mine militarization of walls and borders across the Mid-East:... “this is living barbarism.” The deteriorating situation in Turkey – “a worrisome, country running the risk of sinking into civil and external war” ... such a situation is “a nightmare for humanity.”
Finally, on the morning session, an essential notion for the working class: migrants are not merely ‘victims’ but ‘have agency’ and are able to defend themselves and, through their struggle, a struggle of the proletariat, are able at certain moments to contribute to an alternative, politicised, internationalist perspective for humanity. There are many examples of this - from the immediate defence of immigrant communities from racist attacks in this or that country to the struggles of the Amsterdam workers in Holland during WW2 to prevent the deportation of Jews to extermination. But... in today’s situation, such limited initiatives are no longer enough. If the basic resistance to racism and anti-immigration – like the essential defence of immediate proletarian demands – is one element, the development of communist consciousness is even more important. Today, given the gravity of the historical situation, only large-scale movements in the direction of the mass strike and the proletarian revolution offer any real alternative perspective to capitalist barbarism.
The second half of the day’s meeting, concerning the current situation and the rise of ‘populism’, began with a presentation from an ICC comrade:
“The [UK] Brexit option was not an isolated incident but another example of the growing international problem of populism. You can see it in the support for Donald Trump in the battle for the US Presidency; in Germany with the appearance of political forces to the right of the Christian Democrats (Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland); in the recent presidential elections in Austria where the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats were eclipsed, and the contest was between the Greens and the populist right; in France there is the continuing rise of the Front National; in Italy there is the Five Star movement; and there’s also the governments of Poland and Hungary.
“Populism is not another player in the games between the parties of left and right; it exists because of widespread discontent that can find no means of expressing itself. It’s entirely on the political terrain of the bourgeoisie, but is based on opposition to elites and ‘the Establishment’, on antagonism towards immigration, distrust of left-wing promises and right-wing austerity, all expressing a loss of confidence in the institutions of capitalist society but not for a moment recognising the revolutionary alternative of the working class.” (Growing Difficulties for the bourgeoisie and for the working class [1458]).
Populism is therefore not merely a weapon of the ruling class but a product of a social impasse – neither the bourgeoisie nor the working class can offer a way forward to society which meanwhile experiences growing poverty, war and social dislocation. This populist trend is an expression of demoralisation, despair, of anger; in its demonization of bankers, of elites, as well as of its scapegoats, ‘the refugees’ the migrants, the Muslims, the ‘others’. It offers a personalisation of a system that is apparently incomprehensible.
For the ruling class, this situation marks a retreat from its claim to uphold traditional, ‘liberal’, ‘enlightened’ values. It’s a reinforcement of borders, not a ‘global community of ‘free capitalism’.
The ruling class in Great Britain made a mess vis-a-vis the recent referendum on EU membership because they thought that expressions like UKIP only represented a small minority alongside the ‘Eurosceptics’ in the Conservative Party. Former Prime Minister David Cameron and his clique underestimated completely the scope of this phenomenon in this period. One result: both main UK parties suffered. Labour Party still undergoing severe convulsions; leadership challenges; legal actions, a split between Parliamentary Party and grass roots activists, etc. The Tories were thrown into disarray, with back-stabbing, but showed a capacity to make a coherent response, to find a way of creating the facade of healing the wounds with the resignation of Cameron, a new cabinet and new PM Teresa May’s policy of addressing the ‘healing of divisions’ between right and left, rich and poor, black and white.
However the point is that they have been obliged to act out something the more intelligent factions of the bourgeoisie did not want: an exit from the European Union. In the immediate aftermath, the UK economy has suffered with fluctuations in the value of sterling, a new round of ‘quantitative easing’ (ie the electronic printing of money) and this, coupled with the slowdown of the Chinese economy, and threats to the Italian banking system, etc, has further imperilled the world economy.
Also on the international level: the UK EU referendum result has given a boost to other populist demagogues: Trump in the US, Le Pen in France. The ruling class, in order to deal with the crisis over the past 30 years, has evolved organisations to control the movement of labour and capital, and the populist move tends to wreck these and reinforces national isolationism. On the imperialist level, being outside the EU makes it harder for the United Kingdom to present itself as a dominant power, makes it more difficult to influence events in Europe as it and the US wanted it to do.
For the working class, this does not create a situation beneficial to the development of consciousness. On the contrary, it’s poisoned the atmosphere, fostered racist divisions; divisions over whether to leave or to stay in Europe; anti-populism, which is strong (eg the London ‘March for Europe’) which presents the idea that the way to oppose this racist poison is to stand up for state capitalist Europe. Also: the emphasis on the generations (with many of the older generation voting to leave), between London and the regions. It got people involved in the bourgeois democratic process – it even affected parts of the anarchist milieu and this represents a capitulation to bourgeois democracy. So this poisoned, nationalist atmosphere has strengthened the difficulties already faced by the proletariat.
Is the ICC saying the working class is defeated? “We certainly think since 1989 it has suffered a series of blows, of impacts on its consciousness. Having thrown off the counter-revolution in the ‘60s, since 89, it has faced campaigns about the ‘death of communism’; globalisation; has seen the decimation of whole sectors of industry that were foci of militancy – cars, mines, shipbuilding, etc.” These were global phenomena and Britain exemplified the ruling class’s response: the ‘Thatcher solution.’
There have been important movements of the working class this century– in France, Spain and elsewhere - but in the last five or so years there has been a regression in combats and above all in consciousness. One of the consequences of capital’s decomposition is the refugee crisis, posing immediate problems for the proletariat, raising concretely the question of internationalism to a class that’s under the cosh and doesn’t have an immediate answer. Fundamentalism, terrorism, all pose problems, allow channels through which the prevailing trends of bourgeois barbarism seep into the working class, threatening definitively to derail its alternative project for humanity. Still, the organisation has stated that they don’t think the working class has yet reached this point, despite all the difficulties.
Revolutionaries are against the stream: only a tiny political minority held on to principles to oppose the either/or of the UK referendum. Faced with a situation that’s confusing, perplexing, revolutionaries need to develop analysis, coherence. And if that means criticising ourselves, our past positions, so be it. Defence of internationalism is key. In the face of the referendum, as in the war in Syria, we’ve seen sizeable chunks of the Anarchist milieu call for support for one side or the other (eg supporting the ‘revolution in Rojava’). The need for the defence of those who are facing repression, for the unity of the working class, is paramount. If the political minorities of the working class can’t say this, there’s no one else. Revolutionaries must talk about revolution, must insist that the problems can’t be resolved inside this system, these social relations. Well-meaning concepts and phrases like ‘No Borders’ won’t cut it.
One fundamental strand of the discussion concerned the class and social origins of today’s populist movement. Various views were forwarded about the origins, from the ‘populist peasant revolts of the Middle-Ages’ to anti-elite populism in early 20th century America. Perhaps most succinctly, a comrade (S from The Midlands Discussion Forum) argued that contrary to the ICC’s presentation, populism did not arise from civil society but “comes from and serves the bourgeoisie.”
He dated the beginning of populism as a programme of national renewal to, perhaps, Mussolini in the 1920s and Peron in the 40s and 50s, both of whom used populist ideology and promoted or represented the corporatist state. These were the ideological forbearers of today’s populism which then as now, expresses divisions inside the ruling class, used against the working class.
This was clearly seen during the UK referendum in which both sides argued for bourgeois solutions. Rather than arguing that the Remain camp represented the most intelligent, far-sighted factions of the ruling class, implying that the Brexit camp was most reactionary, S believed they represented the big and petty bourgeoisie respectively. The big bourgeoisie is connected to countries that trade internationally, common standards, currencies, whereas the petty bourgeoisie is by definition local; the ‘rules’ are just an encumbrance. So these divisions reflect how the different factions of the ruling class deal with the world. 73 % of the population rallied to this Referendum. They have been enrolled into bourgeois politics, the defence of the nation state, and this is evidently of use to the ruling class. Seen in this light, Populism in its more extreme sense (Farage) could be seen as a deliberate political orientation of the bourgeoisie in order to get people involved in the myth of the nation. Populism has to provide an explanation for things that are happening to a working class angry due to the fall of living standards. Populism is a deliberately distorted explanation: a deliberate policy of the ruling class.
There was significant disagreement with central elements of this view from various sources. For many ICC comrades, populism was not just another ideology dreamed up and used by the bourgeoisie: the situation was more serious than that, presaging a prolonged agony of unfolding violence within society, one which the ruling class is unable to adequately control. It’s not just the working class that can’t see a way forward. If today’s populism was merely a tool of the ruling class, how was it that all the major sections of it in the West opposed the Brexit campaign, for example, or the rise of Trump in the US, whilst being apparently unable to prevent either? Something more profound is at work here and it’s this underlying dynamic we need to uncover.
It was necessary not to blur the period of Mussolini and Peron – products of a defeated working class – with the specificity of modern populism which has developed in the past two decades in the context of the stalemate between the classes and the collapse of the imperialist blocs.
In 1989 our rulers promised prosperity and peace. But the result has been major wars, a terrifying financial crisis, the influx in Europe of cheap labour driving up competition for jobs and the price of housing, accompanied by a sense of fear for the future and the reality of violence on the streets in the immediate. There has evolved within populations a profound distrust of and disgust with existing institutions and parties – a helplessness and hopelessness, expressions of rage, fear and anger against ‘the elite’ - not just within the proletariat but also vast swathes of the middle class. Can we reduce this reaction to a mere ploy by the ruling class?
The populists say in answer to this generalised anger and fear “the boat is full, we are going to throw refugees out.” In Germany, Pegida, they say they want to shoot refugees. In France, the party of Le Pen advances. In Poland, rising nationalism and the formation of a part-time guard is directed as much against an imagined invasion of refugees as against resurgent Russia on its borders. Trump’s attitude to Mexicans and Muslims offers the same perspective. The specificities are different in each country, but populism announces a new chain of violence: pogromism, against refugees, and within society in general.
Higher echelons of the ruling class don’t want to concede the monopoly of violence yet. It’s a cancer developing within society, not imposed from above. Hence the concerted campaign against Brexit, against Trump, by the US security forces and even from within his own party.
Revolutionaries are used to showing how state capitalism invades every aspect of life – sometimes this leads to the assumption that any social manifestation is the result of the state’s will and role. But the state also responds to what is going on in society. The unease within the heart of the bourgeoisie at the rise of Populism, the concerted if failed attempts to block Brexit and Trump, are expressions of the fact that the ruling class is losing control over its own political apparatus.
For revolutionaries, today’s situation points towards a polarisation: for the politicisation and the development of consciousness of the working class, for understanding, for analysing, for pointing towards solidarity – or towards populism, scape-goating, every man for himself, violence. The ruling class has hitherto used democracy, elections, to channel discontent but the wearing out of existing strategies implies this may not be enough to confront the populist tide. In all events, there will be no quick outcome, and an increasing social agony in the interim.
Regarding the 30s, fascism and the mobilisation of the petty-bourgeoisie, certain analogies could perhaps be drawn, but only if the specificities of today’s period are firmly acknowledged. In the 30s the working class was physically decimated and its revolutionary consciousness crushed. The petty-bourgeoisie’s anger and rage could be harnessed by the bourgeoisie for its war aims. Today, though cowed by unemployment and in part infected with the poisonous dominant ideology, the working class is not yet defeated; the bourgeoisie is not organised for a global war and large portions of the petty bourgeoisie are as disenchanted with the elite as are the working class. It’s too simple to equate Trump, the millionaire, with Hitler, the “Bohemian corporal”, as Hindenberg contemptuously called him. The petty bourgeoisie may be crushed between the two major classes but its ideology of revolt without perspective both infects the working class and is not at all helpful in the present situation to the mainstream of the bourgeoisie which can’t easily control its expressions, of which widespread support for incoherent populism is one.
A sympathiser drew attention to the break-up of the imperialist blocs - the ‘Soviet Empire’ under Russia and the ‘Western Bloc’ under US hegemony - since 1989 and the repercussions today. The erosion of organisations like the EU and NATO should be linked to a decline of US power, an expression of decomposition, with countries tending to break free of organisations that previously held the western bloc together. This centrifugal tendency encouraged certain countries – ie India, China and Turkey – to ‘go their own way’ though vis-a-vis Turkey, the results are proving disastrous. This situation is also encouraging a more bellicose response from Russia, all this giving rise to fierce clashes (ie Balkans, Syria, Crimea, Ukraine); with more refugees, fuelling the Populist pyre.
There was, indeed, an important secondary discussion about the future fate of the nation state: for the CWO, in the recent past, capitalism had outgrown this framework and organisation like the EU represented the tendency for a reformation of the imperialist blocs which transcended nations. The Brexit result, apparently in contradiction to this, would have to be further discussed, the comrade said. For the ICC, the EU was never an imperialist bloc – e.g. the imperialist interests of Germany and Poland were widely divergent – but a trading organisation precisely to enable nation states to survive increasing global turmoil. Historically, the nation state – the basic unit of capitalist organisation - has indeed outgrown its usefulness but remains intact, whatever temporary alliances and federations it enters into. No bourgeoisie willingly gives up its sovereignty, its imperialist appetites. No nation state has in reality voluntarily dissolved itself.
**************
For this public meeting, there were many issues that could not be immediately explored – including how best and on what level to promote a working class defence against racist propaganda and attacks: the concretisation of ‘solidarity’ - or only superficially touched upon. However the main questions raised around the origins of this present, gigantic wave of refugees from war and economic migration must be pursued, for they largely determine the immediate and medium term evolution of the world situation. Within the ICC, the discussion regarding Populism is only at the beginning. A text will appear in a forthcoming edition of the International Review. Other discussions provoked by the above-mentioned article in World Revolution appear in the Discussion Forum of this website.
KT
June and July 2016 will be remembered as bloody months which struck fear into whole populations living in the West. On 12 June, 49 people were gunned down in a gay club in Orlando, Florida. The next day, the 13th, a police officer and his partner were murdered near Paris by a man who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State (Daesh). On 14 July, a man drove a truck through crowds in Nice, killing 84 people, a number of them children, and leaving over 330 wounded. The attack was claimed by IS. On 18 July, in Germany, a young man aged 17 wounded five people, two seriously, in a regional train, attacking them with an axe and a knife. IS claimed the attack. On 22 July, shooting in a shopping centre in Munich. 10 killed. Again the gunman was very young -18. On 24 July, a new attack with a machete in Germany. A 21 year old man killed a woman in a restaurant in Reutlingen and fled, wounding others as he went. On 24 July, a Syrian refugee aged 27 blew himself up in the centre of Ansbach, near an open air music festival. On 26 July, near Rouen, a priest had his throat cut after hostages were taken in a church. Again Daesh claimed responsibility.
At the very heart of the great capitalist nations, barbarism is reaching unbearable levels. In a world in chaos, where more and more parts of the globe have been plunged into terrorism and war[1], Europe has been presented as a haven of peace since 1945. So now the fortress has to be protected by walls and barbed wire from this ‘alien’ barbarism – in reality, the effects of the murderous confrontations in which the weapons and bombs of the great democratic powers have played a particularly active role. But now, like a boomerang, the horror is returning to the historical centre of capitalism. Not only are the world conflicts penetrating the walls of Schengen, but the violence that has been accumulating and internalised in a whole part of the ‘local’ population has exploded to the surface. During this summer period, the atmosphere, especially in Germany, that symbol of stability and prosperity, has become stifling. The description by the German political writer Joachim Krause[2] is rather lucid about this:
“On Friday (during the killing in Munich) we could see how widely an ambiance of fear was prevailing. When the population learned that there had been an atrocity in a shopping centre in the north-west of Munich, scenes of panic were produced in the city centre, several kilometres from the crime. In Karlsplatz, people fled en masse in fear of a shooting that never happened. In the big Hofbrauhaus beer hall, people were jumping out of windows because there was a rumour going round that an Islamic terrorist was inside”.
This climate of panic is obviously the fruit of a deliberate policy of the Daesh leadership, with its thirst for revenge[3]. IS wants to destabilise its imperialist rivals by terrorising the population, But the list of violent actions in June and July reveals a wider and deeper problem. None of these killings were carried out by a well-trained Daesh soldier, far from it. They were the work of young men hardly out of childhood and feeling excluded from society. A violent father of a family coping very badly with his divorce. A refugee whom the state had refused to regularise. Their histories and origins are diverse: some were born in Europe, others in the Middle East. Nearly all of them were recently ‘radicalised’ and without any real direct links with IS, apart from a few videos on the internet. Some of the crimes had nothing at all to do with Jihadism: the Munich shooting was the work of a sympathiser of the extreme right, fascinated by Hitler; the machete attack in the Reutlingen restaurant was in the end described as a crime of passion. So the hateful propaganda of the Jihadists doesn’t explain everything; on the contrary, the success of their influence is itself the product of a much graver and more historic situation. What destructive, murderous force is pushing these individuals, with apparently such diverse motivations, to go into action? And why now? What does this barbarism tell us about the evolution of the whole of world society?
These young murderers are not monsters. They are human beings committing monstrous acts. They have been produced by a world society that is sick, dying. Their hatred and their murderous intoxication have first and foremost been fermented by the permanent terror of capitalist social relations, then liberated by the pressure of this same system, exploding into a series of shameful deeds.
Capitalism is a society intrinsically based on terror. Exploitation is inconceivable without violence. The two are organically inseparable. Even if violence can exist outside of relations of exploitation, the latter can only be realised through coercive violence. But for over a century capitalism has been a system in decadence. No longer able to offer a real future for humanity, it maintains its existence through an increasingly systematic recourse to violence, on the ideological and psychological level as well as the physical. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 gives us a striking image of this. Violence, combined with exploitation, takes on a new and particular quality. It’s no longer a secondary element, but becomes a constant at all levels of social life:
“It’s no longer an accidental or secondary fact: its presence has become a constant at every level of social life. It impregnates all relationships, penetrates the pores of the social organism, both on the general level and the so-called personal level. Beginning from exploitation and the need to dominate the producer class, violence imposes itself on all the relationships between different classes and strata in society: between the industrialized countries; between the different factions of the ruling class; between men and women; between parents and children; between teachers and pupils; between individuals; between the governors and the governed. It becomes specialized, structured, organized, concentrated in a distinct body: the state, with its permanent armies, its police, its laws, its functionaries and torturers; and this body tends to elevate itself above society and to dominate it.
In order to ensure the exploitation of man by man, violence becomes the most important activity of society, which devotes a bigger and bigger portion of its economic and cultural resources to it. Violence is elevated to the status of a cult, an art, a science. A science applied not only to military art, to the technique of armaments, but to every domain and on all levels, to the organization of concentration camps and the installation of gas chambers, to the art of rapid and massive extermination of entire populations, to the creation of veritable universities of psychological and scientific torture, where a plethora of qualified torturers can win diplomas and practice their skills. This is a society which not only “sweats mud and blood from every pore”, as Marx said, but can neither live nor breathe outside of an atmosphere poisoned with cadavers, death, destruction, massacres, suffering and torture. In such a society, violence has reached its apogee and changed in quality - it has become terror”.[4]
In other words, capitalism contains terror like the cloud contains the storm[5].
All these barbaric acts carried out in recent weeks are the very negation of life – the life of others, the life of those who do the killing. But the ideology of Daesh in whose name so many of these attacks are committed, like that of the extreme right, are just a brutal caricature of the lack of value given to life by capitalism as a whole.
The wars waged by all the big states are the most flagrant proof of this. Like the contrast between the opulent wealth accumulated in a few hands and the poverty which leads to starvation and death for millions. Like the medicines which draw together the highest levels of human knowledge but which can’t be distributed because it’s not profitable. Like the expensive commodities which are displayed in glitzy stores when millions live in a state of total deprivation. In the film Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin, there is a classic scene in which Charlie is manhandled by a crazed robot programmed to wash him, dress him and feed him to get him ready as efficiently and rapidly as possible so he can go and work in the factory. This is a humorous but ferocious critique of capitalism as whole, not only in the factory; because man is treated like an object in every aspect of his life, and on a daily basis. We no longer live according to our bodily, mental and social needs. Everything is conceived and organised according to the needs of capital and dominated by its rhythms. Capitalist exploitation more and more requires humanity to negate itself in order to incorporate itself into the machine.
This robotisation of man leads to the exclusion of those who can’t adapt to the numbing rhythms of capital. The result is marginalisation, humiliation, a feeling of inferiority among those who are stigmatised as inadequate by the state, and through the repressive actions of its police forces or so-called ‘social welfare’ organs. There is no doubt that this is one of the deeper roots of the spirit of hatred and revenge.
Terror and the negation of the value of life: this is the soil which gives rise to individuals who become terrorists.
Sometimes materially crushed, with no hope in front of them, living in a totally restricted present tense, a daily mediocrity, these despairing individuals are easy prey to the bloodiest mystifications (Daesh, Ku-Klux- Klan, fascist gangs, gangsters and mercenaries of all kinds etc). In this violence, they find “the compensation of an illusory dignity. It is the heroism of the coward, the courage of the clown, the glory of sordid mediocrity. After reducing them to a most miserable condition, capitalism finds in these strata an inexhaustible source of recruitment for the heroes of its terror”.[6]
The Nice outrage on 14 July reveals clearly what lies behind all the others: hatred and the thirst to kill by pulverised individuals. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the man who used a truck to kill dozens of people in Nice, was described by those who knew him as ultra-violent, going through ‘crises’ in which he would smash everything around him. His ex-wife left him because of his extremely aggressive character. But to go further and to coldly run down men, women and children something else was needed: a real psychological disintegration. In such actions, all the fundamental taboos of human society crumble into dust. This man had internalised all the violence of capitalism, then externalised it in an explosion of destruction. Such mass murders have been around for several decades in the USA, where mass killings in schools and universities have frequently hit the headlines. Each time the killers are young people who feel themselves excluded and marginalised by the educational system, stigmatised by colleagues and teachers. The ideology of Daesh is thus by no means the primary cause of these barbaric actions. It’s because the system has first produced these broken individuals who are desperate for revenge that they become fascinated by the hateful and irrational discourse of IS and become obsessed with weapons. And it is at this stage that IS plays a considerable role: they enable these individuals to legitimise their barbarity. They make them believe that they can get revenge for their wasted life and win something through death. They release the most murderous impulses generated by this society.
This succession of barbaric acts is all the more traumatic because some of the perpetrators are themselves victims of war, refugees or former combatants (official soldiers of the democratic armies, private mercenaries, young people who have gone off to fight for Daesh, al Qaida etc), people who are marked by deep psychic scars, haunted by all kinds of nightmares. Here the spiral is an infernal one: victims can be carried away by fear and hatred, by the most irrational kind of behaviour, and thus in turn give rise to further suffering, further traumas.
The multiplication of these kinds of attacks, the fact that a country like Germany is now being hit, that the terrorists often come from Europe itself – all this says a lot about the considerable worsening of the international social situation. There are many reasons for this:
This convergence of factors, to which we could ad others, explains the worsening of the social situation, Fear, hatred and violence are spreading like a gangrene. And each new explosion, each new terrorist outrage, adds to this suicidal dynamic. The spirit of revenge is everywhere. Racism and the scapegoating of Muslims is part of this vicious circle. This is in any case the strategy of Daesh: if the Muslim population is persecuted, the more recruits there will be for Jihad.
The danger of this putrefaction should not be underestimated: if it is allowed to follow its logic to the end, it will push the whole of humanity towards destruction.
Fundamentally, the bourgeoisie has no real solution for this dramatic historic situation. It’s true that its most intelligent factions make speeches about tolerance and the culture of welcome in order to limit the spread of hatred and prevent the situation from spiralling out of control. This is the case with the factions of the bourgeoisie led by Merkel in Germany. But the ones who are ready to manipulate fear and hatred are becoming increasingly numerous, playing the role of the sorcerer’s apprentices.
Concretely, the most widespread response is to wage a more ferocious war in the Middle East, to build higher and thicker walls around Europe and North America in order to police (sorry, ‘securitise’) the whole of society, to put the whole population under permanent surveillance and to arm the police to the teeth. In other words, more terror, more hatred, everywhere, all the time.
But even more fundamentally, the bourgeoisie has no real solution to offer because its aim is to preserve its system, capitalism, when it is this system which is totally obsolete and is at the root of the problem. Its world is divided into competing nations, into exploited and exploiting classes; human activity is determined by the interests of the profit economy and not by human need. All these obstacles are behind the accelerating decay of society. And no government in the world, democratic or dictatorial, can do anything about this. All of them defend a dying system which is dragging humanity through the most horrible suffering.
The only counter-weight to this drift towards barbarism is the massive and conscious development of proletarian struggles. This alone can offer pulverised individuals a real identity, a class identity, a real community – that of the exploited and not the ‘believers’, a real solidarity, the solidarity that grows in the struggle of all workers, of the unemployed of all races, nationalities and religions, against their common enemy, not against the Jew or the Catholic priest or the Muslim or the gypsy or the unemployed or the refugees, not even the banker, but the capitalist system itself. It’s the class struggle alone that can give rise to the one perspective that can save humanity from barbarism: the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society.
Camille 3.8.16
[1] Just two examples: on 28 June, 47 people killed in a triple suicide bombing at the Attaturk International Airport in Istanbul. On 23 July, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a suicide bombing left 80 dead and 231 injured
[2] Professor of international politics at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel and director of the Political Institute of Security
[3] A large part of the leadership is made up of former generals from the Saddam Hussein regime sacked by the US army in 2003. Read our article on the terrorist attacks of November 2015, ‘Paris: Down with terrorism, down with war, down with capitalism!’: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201511/13672/paris-down-terror... [1461]
[4] ‘from the ICC article ‘Terror, terrorism and class violence’: https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html [1462]
[5] Following Jaures writing on the eve of the First world war: “capitalism carries war within itself, like the cloud carries the storm”
[6] ibid
[7] “By waging all these wars, by sowing death and desolation, by imposing terror with their bombing raids and stirring up hatred in the name of 'self-defence”, by supporting this or that killer regime, by offering no other solution than more and more confrontations, and all this to defend their sordid imperialist interests, the great powers have the greatest responsibility for the accentuation of global barbarism, including the barbarism of Daesh. This so-called Islamic state, with its holy trinity of rape, robbery and repression, which destroys all culture (the same hatred of culture as the Nazi regime), which sells women and children, sometimes for their organs – this is no more than a particularly blatant and 'honest' expression of the capitalist barbarity which all states, all nations, are capable of committing”. ‘Down with terrorism, down with war, down with capitalism’
[8] “Islamic State is made up of the most 'radical' Sunni factions and their main enemy is thus the great country of Shia Islam: Iran. This is why all the enemies of Iran (Saudi Arabia, the USA11 [1463], Israel, Qatar, Kuwait...) have at some point all supported Daesh financially and sometimes militarily. Turkey has also supported Islamic State with the idea of using it against the Kurds. This circumstantial and heterogeneous alliance shows that religious differences are not the real ferment behind this conflict: it is indeed imperialist interests, national capitalist interests which above all determine the lines of scission and transform the wounds of the past into today's hatreds”. ibid
At a time when the French government has just extended the state of emergency to 2017, when an atmosphere of suspicion and fear is pressing hard on a population still feeling the shock of a series of terrorist attacks, a new and highly demagogic ‘debate’ is reinforcing the current anti-Islam campaign. It’s been in the national headlines and has had considerable international coverage. We’re referring to the ‘burkini ban’ on a number of beaches. This retrograde controversy has engaged the whole political class, from local mayors in coastal towns to the highest state authorities, all of them, right and left, plunging their hands into the whole ideological mess.
At the beginning of August, ‘L’Association Islamiste des Soeurs Marseillaises, Initiatrices de Loisirs et d’Entreaide’ (a whole programme!) “privately hired a swimming centre for Muslim women to come to on 10 September. The advertising called for burkinis to be worn”[1]. It was all the extreme right needed to display its customary paranoia and to denounce the “Muslim invasion of our country”. Following pressure from local councillors, who didn’t want to appear ‘lax’ in a region where populism and xenophobia are deeply implanted, the “Burkini Day” was quickly cancelled.
But on 12 August, the mayor of Cannes again blew on the embers by forbidding the wearing of the burkini on beaches, in the name of ensuring public order. Several mayors from the region, from Corsica and from Pas-de-Calais in the north, many of them products of the most right wing and demagogic of the right wing Republican party, also imposed the ban. By instrumentalising the wearing of the burkini, the French bourgeoisie is continuing its recurrent campaign on Islam[2], aimed at poisoning consciousness, dividing the population and accentuating nationalist propaganda.
In a context where there is a growing dislocation of the social body, and in which the working class is presently not able to defend a revolutionary perspective, all sorts of irrational and sectarian tendencies are being reinforced. This dynamic is feeding fear, misunderstanding, xenophobic and racist prejudices, blind and obsessive hatred, on the part of ‘natives’ towards ‘foreigners’, and vice versa.
It was in this context that a scuffle broke out on 14 August in an inlet in Sisco, Corsica, between three families of Muslims, who according to the authorities wanted to “privatise” the beach, and part of the local population. This altercation, whose details remain rather vague, resulted the next day in an excitable demonstration of 500 people shouting slogans like “this is our home!” This kind of event is unfortunately not new in Corsica : in 2015, in Ajaccio, there were several days of demonstrations which were openly xenophobic, with the public burning of books including the Koran, pillaging of Arab shops and other provocations.
This illustrates the danger of a pogrom mentality becoming commonplace at the very heart of capitalism. The present difficulties of the working class - even if it hasn’t entirely lost its capacity to resist, its capacity to revive its own revolutionary alternative - tend to undermine hope for a better world in the minds of many proletarians. In the absence of an understanding of the real nature of capitalist social relations and their inextricable contradictions, in the absence of any real perspective, the danger is that people look for scapegoats to blame for the miseries of this world. This reactionary approach, based on the chimerical quest to go back to the good old days when society was more harmonious, sees immigrants and those hardest hit by the crisis as troublemakers, as responsible for destroying the way things used to be.
Xenophobia is not something new in history, far from it. But what we are seeing in capitalism today is a tendency for the basest instincts to be unleashed, in words and actions. There is a real threat that looking for scapegoats can lead to the physical and mental destruction of sacrificial victims.
For the bourgeoisie, the rise of populism has shaken its electoral games and can go against its real political orientations (as with the rejection of the European Union and the single currency). At the same time it is seeking to manipulate the most disgusting retrograde ideologies in order to reaffirm its domination. This is the case with the polemic over the burkini. The state has not hesitated to fuel a false debate and stir up divisions through a hysterical media campaign. For or against the burkini ban, defenders of ‘women’s rights’ versus advocates of ‘Republican virtue’, arguments between the right and left of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie – all this serves only to reinforce confusion in the minds of the workers. The dangerous strategy of those politicians and state agencies who seek to ride the tiger of populism can only strengthen it in the long term. But while fanning the flames of hatred, the state can at the same time present itself as the guarantor of democracy and national unity (as with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the burkini ban was illegal). The working class has nothing to gain by getting drawn onto this swampy ground, which is a nationalist trap on all sides.
The appearance of the burkini on the beaches is a very limited phenomenon[3], but it is also a tangible sign, like the spectacular rise of halal products and the wearing of the veil over the last few years, of the growing strength of religious obscurantism, which, far from giving meaning to life, is “at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”[4].
These garments are indeed straitjackets for women, who are often consenting victims to the bonds of dress but above all of ideology. But consenting to domination is by no means restricted to veiled women; it is a direct expression of the generalised, totalitarian alienation that pervades capitalist society and humanity as a whole. It is one form of the internalisation of the ruling social relations. At a time when science and technology have developed to unprecedented levels, the social relations of production incarcerate humanity in savagery and alienation. Both the burkini and the public humiliation, at the hands of armed police, of the women wearing it, who are treated like criminals violating the laws of democracy, provide us with a caricature of the sexual discrimination which the current ‘civilisation’ is incapable of abolishing. We can also see how the so-called ‘liberation’ of women from the 60s onwards has ended up insidiously reinforcing macho domination on a daily level. Wage labour transforms human beings into commodities, into sexual objects, into images for adverts, into anorexic manikins for luxury fashions – and all this is no less scandalous than the burkini. Obtaining rights and freedoms in capitalist society is a total illusion. The real principles of this society are terror, exploitation, and barbarism.
WH-EG, 30.8.16
[1] La Voix du Nord, 5.8.16
[2] When not talking about the burkini, the media are in a perpetual froth about the niqab, the burka, halal products and the building of mosques.
[3] At the time of writing, only about 30 women had actually worn the burkini on the beaches, most of them in response to the hyper-mediatisation of the ‘phenomenon’
[4] Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
The internal response to the July 15/16 attempted coup was, according to Turkish President Erdogan, a “Gift from God”. He insisted that the “cleansing” would continue and the “virus would be eradicated” along with terrorists wherever they were. Sure enough, a Stalinist-like purge, with lists of names already drawn-up, was implemented with force and the war against the Kurds in south-east Turkey immediately stepped up.
Without any speculation as to the possible role or knowledge of outside agencies, it looks clear that the coup involved some of the senior levels of the Turkish military, called by the BBC as the coup unfolded, “the guarantors of Turkish secularism”.
This putsch to overthrow Erdogan and his AKP was in all probability wider and deeper than a “Gulenist” movement[1], although the alliances and links between the various shadowy factions and tendencies within the Turkish state are often truly Byzantine in their complexity. For example, the Gulenists have long been accused of being involved in the “deep state” conspiracy Ergenekon, which was supposedly set up around the 1990s as a guarantor of Turkey’s secular traditions, and traditionally, the main opponents of Erdogan’s “moderate” Islamist party, AKP are not the Gulenists but the Kemalist[2] factions within the military and society at large. But this was not just a new confrontation between the Islamist AKP and the secular Kemalists – indeed, in the wake of the coup the main Kemalist party, the CHP, rallied to the government in a grand display of national solidarity. And there are also complex religious rivalries involved: between Sunni and the heterodox Alevis, and between Erdogan’s version of Sunni Islam and the one promulgated by the Gulenists. But for now Erdogan and the AKP have now tightened their totalitarian grip on the Turkish state, with a three-month State of Emergency enabling them to rule by decree in an atmosphere of fear and heightened state surveillance.
To date (CNN, 9.8.16) 22,000 people have been detained and a further 16,000 arrested on specific charges, including thousands of military personnel, involving about a third of Turkey’s General and Admiral ranks. Hundreds of journalists have been arrested, detained, investigated or sacked along with many thousands of civil servants, and foreign travel has been stopped for many. Altogether 68,000 have been fired or suspended with 2000 institutions shut down. The State of Emergency has led to torture, beatings, and starvation of those detained
Some involved in Erdogan’s inner circle have been arrested and the Presidential Guard has been disbanded. Around 250 soldiers and civilians were killed in the coup on the government side as well as an unknown number of those, wittingly or unwittingly, on the side of the putsch. Dozens of fighter-bombers, dozens of helicopters, thousands of armoured vehicles and 3 ships were used in the coup attempt. From some reports Erdogan narrowly escaped with his life after warnings from Russian interceptions.
For some years Turkey has been held up as a stable, economically thriving island, and an example of moderate, democratic Islam, amid a sea of troubles in the Middle East. And indeed, as a state, Turkey does have a more solid historical implantation than many of its war-torn neighbours like Syria and Iraq. But it remains the case that Turkey has a lot in common with Syria and Iraq in terms of ethnic and sectarian divisions.
The strength of Erdogan’s AKP has been in its delivery on the economic level where the standard of living has risen for most of the countryside and the urban poor. Jobs have been created by borrowing huge sums for state investments and state projects. At the same time Erdogan has profited from the rise of Islam and has pursued a moderate form of fundamentalism in order to enhance the image of a “New Turkey”, demonstrating its power as a potential leader of the Sunni world. Behind the conflict between the Islamist AKP and the secular Kemalists of the army and wider layers of society, i.e. a confrontation between Islamism and secularist nationalism, lies a further religious element. The previous secular Kemalist system was seen as indirectly favouring the Shiite Aleviminority at the expense of the Sunni majority, since the Alevi form of Islam is seen as more adaptable to the modern world. At this level there is a certain resemblance between the previous Kemalist system in Turkey and the Assad regime, which rules over a Sunni majority while being largely composed of another Shiite sect, the Alawites[3]. The present war in Syria between Alawite and Sunni can only affect and accentuate the religious and cultural rivalries between comparable elements in Turkey. In the wake of the coup, for example, there were reports of pogromist attacks on Alevi homes and shops.
The Turkey of today is not the same country it was at the time of the previous military putsch in 1980, whose justification was the growing disorder sown by conflicts between right and left political factions, or even ten years ago when the AKP came to power. As a result of the economic boom, which now seems to be ending, both a modern proletariat and a new elite of specialists and intellectuals has emerged in the big cities. A large part of these elements are not at all comfortable with “Islamicisation”. A dangerous situation has thus emerged where the putsch of the old elite (to the extent that they took part in it) has provoked the hatred and thirst for revenge of the AKP supporters. On the other hand, Erdogan has to take seriously the warning that this attempted coup represents. If he goes too far in his “counter-coup” he can, at worst, provoke civil war or a running conflict in the form of armed revolts or new forms of terrorism – even if the resistance of these forces has been subdued for the moment.
At a time when the country has gone from “economic miracle” to one of Morgan Stanley’s “Fragile Five” most at risk, when its productivity and growth is low, while labour costs, inflation and borrowing are rising, the results of further economic instability could be dramatic – collapse of tourism, emigration of new generation of skilled workers, etc.
Additionally, the Turkish bourgeoisie has a long tradition of “exclusion” on which the foundations of modern Turkey were born: the genocide of the Armenians, the massacres of the Greeks and long-standing opposition to any possibility of a Kurdish state. The AKP’s view that all opponents are enemies who need to be repressed has a long history in Turkey.
Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, Turkey has been affected strongly by the centrifugal tendencies unleashed. The weakening of US imperialism and that of Russia has allowed Turkey to develop its own ambitions, posing as a regional leader of the Sunni regimes. The Erdogan regime has fallen out with Israel, strengthened ties with Hamas and called the al-Sisi government in Egypt which overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood “illegitimate”. Its relationship with Russia, which after the coup and Erdogan’s August 9 meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg appears to be warming, has been complicated and fluctuating. In its present situation Turkey can blackmail the west with its links to Russia, China (and Iran), and can play its own cards in the Middle East.
The biggest nightmare for the Turkish bourgeoisie would be the establishment of a Kurdish state. The west has a dilemma here: in their war against Isis they rely on the Kurds for cannon-fodder, providing them with arms, air-cover and “advisors”. Such developments can only strengthen Kurdish nationalism and its ambitions for an “independent” state, even if the Kurdish nationalists are themselves split up into a number of different factions. The clash of interests over the Kurds, with the US, Germany and Britain on one side and Turkey on the other, is stark. Erdogan was close to the Assad regime before the war and during it both have used Isis forces for their own perceived advantages. Assad has also used the Kurdish PKK for the same reasons. But after a five-year war and Russian (and other) intervention on behalf of Assad, there are signs that Ankara may consider leaving Assad in power while doing some sort of deal with him. Neither Assad nor Turkey has any interest in a Kurdish state or any type of Kurdish autonomous region along the border. Talks have been ongoing for about a year between Assad’s Alawite representatives in Damascus and representatives of Turkey’s Homeland Party[4] along with elements of Turkey’s military intelligence, with a view, amongst others, of stopping Turkish military support to Assad’s enemies. These Turkish “interlocutors” appear untouched in the post-coup atmosphere, suggesting that these talks will continue. If this is the case it will be at the expense of the west and their Kurdish “allies”[5].
We also need to consider the significance of the fact that Erdogan, the leader of a NATO country, has accused the governments of other NATO countries – in particular the USA- of having supported the putsch, while at the same time praising Russia for having warned it of the plans for a coupThere is also a question mark over the availability of the Incirlik military base for: up till now it has been considered a NATO base, but Erdogan has said that he would not oppose the Russians using it for operations against Isis. These developments, this game of bargaining and blackmail, are a further sign of the growing fragility of imperialist alliances in the region.
Sir Richard Dearlove, ex-boss of MI6, likened the EU deal with Turkey over refugees as similar “to storing gasoline next to the fire” (Belfast Telegraph, 15.5.16). Turkey will use these millions of “assets” as a further element of blackmail against the EU (which Erdogan has called “a Christian club”). He has already threatened to cancel the deal and the Europeans have been forced to try to placate him. The present purge and the hunt for opponents means that in addition to over 2 million Syrian and other refugees there may be more Turks themselves fleeing the country and adding to the general refugee crisis.
As a system in accelerating decay, the tendency towards instability and chaos must be the dominant one on a historical scale. But this does mean that the ruling class is helpless in the face of it and that there are no counter-tendencies. We have seen this, for example, in the UK following the disastrous result of the EU referendum: the ruling class has reacted very quickly to the danger of serious fractures in its own ranks, reorganising its governmental cards in a rather adroit manner in order to present a unified response to the Brexit crisis. And we can discern similar tendencies in Turkey. Although the Kemalists and Gulenists collaborated in the coup, the fact that the Gulenists were singled out is significant. In the wake of the coup, Erdogan has more and more been stressing the heritage of Ataturk and playing the card of Turkish nationalism rather than Islamism. This could signify a serious attempt to win over the Kemalists, as well as the Alevisand other bourgeois factions, behind the option of an autocratic leader pressing the claims of the Turkish nation (somewhat on the model of Putin in Russia).
The current adulation of Erdogan in the widely publicised street demonstrations could be part of this strategy to build a new unity within the Turkish ruling class. On the other hand, the official pictures showing massive support for Erdogan and the AKP are not to be taken at face value. He’s the winner for the moment having beaten off rival cliques but there are limits to Erdogan’s authoritarian project.. One strength of Erdogan and his party has been a strong economy but as we have said this phase of growth is coming to an end He has never been as popular as the propaganda suggests; anti-government demonstrations in important areas in 2013, sparked off by the protests at Taksim Gezi Park[6], showed the existence of a widespread rejection of his policies among urban, educated youth in particular. And there remains deep resentment in the military directed against Erdogan and his party. Just a year ago AKP ministers faced public abuse and ridicule from senior military figures at funerals for soldiers killed in operations against the Kurdish PKK. The Erdogan government responded to this public humiliation – at what should be show-case events of state propaganda – by requesting the media stopped its coverage of the funerals (Times, 31.8.15). The military publicly objected to the slain soldiers being called “martyrs” and expressed the view that the military surge against the PKK was part of the strengthening of the AKP’s electoral position against the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
At the moment the Erdogan clique has strengthened its position as it has grabbed control back from the putschists but its social control remains uncertain with consequences both inside and outside Turkey.
Boxer, 15.8.16 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1] Fethullah Gulen, an ex-ally of Erdogan, now in exile in the US, runs something of an empire there with control over many institutions and assets reportedly worth some $50 billion. The Gulenist/Hizmet movement has 80 million followers world-wide and has openly supported the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Its Islamism appears to be more fundamentalist than the AKP’s. The anti-Kemalist Gulenists were able to penetrate elements of the Turkish state because of their alliance with Erdogan and the AKP from 2002 to 2011. However, their sect-like structure was increasingly seen by Erdogan as a threat to his rule.
[2] Kemalists – secular nationalists who claim to be in the tradition of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state in the 1920s.
[3] The Alevis and Alawites are not the same sect, although both their names signify their reverence for Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed and a key figure in the Shiite branch of Islam. There are also ethnic differences in the majority of their adherents.
[4] Homeland Party (YP), a small right-wing conservative party founded in 2002.
[5] On 29 August, the USA strongly condemned renewed fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. As in the past, Turkey has used an offensive against Isis (which dislodged Isis from the town of Jarablus) as a means of escalating its war against the Kurds, and this conflict has now openly spilled over into the Syrian theatre of operations.
[6] On these protests see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8371/turkey-cure-state-... [1466]
In 1915, the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, defying the wave of nationalism that had swept Germany at the outbreak of the war, recognised that this European-wide conflict had opened up a new epoch in the history of capitalism, an epoch when the ruthless competition built into the system was now posing humanity with the choice between socialism and barbarism. This war, she wrote, with its massacre of human beings on an industrial scale, was a precise definition of what barbarism means.
But World War One was only the beginning and the barbarity of capitalism soon reached new levels. The war was ended by the resistance of the working class in Russia, Germany and elsewhere, through the mutinies, strikes, and insurrections that, for a brief moment, threatened the very existence of the world capitalist order. But these movements were isolated and crushed; and with the defeat of the working class, which is the only real obstacle to capitalism’s drive to war, the horror of imperialist conflict took on a new quality.
The first imperialist war was still, like the wars of the 19th century, fought mainly on the battlefields. The scale of the killing, proportionate to the dizzying development of technology in the decades leading up to the war, was a shock even to the politicians and military chiefs who had gambled on a short, sharp conflict, “over by Christmas”. But in the wars that succeeded it, the principal victims of warfare would no longer be soldiers in uniform, but the civilian population. The bombing, by German and Italian aircraft, of Guernica in Spain, an event immortalised by Picasso’s tortured figures of women and children, set the tone. At first, the deliberate targeting of civilians from the air was a new shock, something unprecedented, and surely only something the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini could contemplate. But the war in Spain was a rehearsal for a second world war which trebled the death toll of the first and in which the vast majority of its victims would be civilians. Both sides used the tactic of ‘carpet’ bombing to flatten cities, destroy infrastructure, demoralise the population, and – because the bourgeoisie still feared the possibility of a working class uprising against the war – smash the proletarian danger. Increasingly, such tactics were no longer denounced as crimes but defended as the best means to end the conflict and prevent further slaughter – above all by the ‘democratic’ camp. The incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the newly-invented atomic bomb was justified in exactly these terms.
Today, when the leaders of the ‘democratic’ world condemn the Assad regime in Syria and its Russian backers for their relentless, systematic massacre of the civilian population of Aleppo and other cities, we should not forget that they are carrying on what is now an established tradition of capitalist warfare. The deliberate destruction of hospitals and other key infrastructure such as the water supply, the blocking and even bombing of aid convoys: this is modern siege warfare, military tactics learned not only from previous generations of ‘dictators’, but from also from democratic militarists like ‘Bomber’ Harris and Winston Churchill.
That is not to say there is nothing exceptional in what is happening in Aleppo. The ‘civil war’ in Syria began as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 – with a revolt by a population exasperated by the brutality of the Assad regime. But Assad had learned from the fall of his fellow dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, and responded to the demonstrations with murderous firepower. The determination of the regime to survive and perpetuate its privileges has proved to be unbounded. Assad is prepared to lay waste to entire cities, murder or expel millions of his own citizens, to remain in power. There is here an element of the tyrant’s revenge against those who dare to reject his rule, a plunge into a spiral of destruction which will leave the rulers with little or nothing to rule over. In this sense, the coldly rational calculation behind the terror bombing of Syria’s ‘rebel’ cities has become a new symbol of the growing irrationality of capitalist war.
But the insanity of this war is not limited to Syria. Following the mass shootings of unarmed demonstrators, splits in the Syrian army gave rise to an armed bourgeois opposition, and this rapidly transformed the initial revolt into a military conflict between capitalist camps; this in turn provided the opportunity for a whole number of local and global imperialist powers to intervene for their own squalid reasons. The ethnic and religious divisions that aggravated the conflict inside Syria were exploited by regional powers with their own agendas. Iran, which claims to be the leader of the world’s Shiite Muslims, supports Assad’s ‘Alawite’ regime and backs the direct intervention of the Hezbollah militias from Lebanon. Sunni Muslim states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have armed the numerous Islamist gangs which aimed to supplant the ‘moderate’ rebels, including Islamic State itself. Turkey, often on the pretext of striking back against IS, has used the war to step up its onslaught on the Kurdish forces who have made considerable gains in northern Syria.
But in this three, four, even five sided conflict, the world’s major powers have also been playing their role. The US and Britain have called for Assad to step down and have indirectly supported the armed opposition, both the ‘moderates’ and, via Saudi and Qatar, the Islamists. When IS began, like al Qaida in the previous decade, to bite the hand that feeds it and set itself up as a new and uncontrolled power in Syria and Iraq, a number of western politicians have reconsidered their position, arguing that Assad is actually a ‘lesser evil’ compared to IS. Earlier in the conflict, Obama threatened the Assad regime with military intervention, declaring that the use of chemical weapons against civilians was a line that could not be crossed. But this threat proved empty, and subsequently, the debates in Washington and Westminster have been how to intervene against IS, thus indirectly boosting Assad.
The indecisive US response to the situation in Syria is the product of a long process of decline in its world hegemony, summarised above all by its disastrous interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The ‘War on Terror’ unleashed by the Bush administration has only served to foment chaos in the Middle East and has made Islamist terrorism an even greater force than it was before the Twin Towers fell. The war in Iraq proved particularly unpopular in the US and even the gun-toting Trump now proclaims it to have been a disaster. The USA is thus extremely reluctant to get drawn into a new quagmire in the Middle East.
Imperialism abhors a vacuum, and the hesitations of the US provided a resurgent Russia with the chance to reassert itself in a region from which it had been largely expelled by the end of the Cold War. Syria is the last place in the Middle East where Russia hung on to its military bases, and its support for the Assad regime has been constant. But after embarking on a policy – via the wars in Georgia and the Ukraine – of regaining its lost empire in the region of the former USSR, Putin’s Russia is now gambling on increasing its status as a world power by directly intervening in the Syrian conflict. The initial pretext was the need to hit back at IS which was gaining ground in Iraq and Syria, even threatening Russia’s only remaining outlet to the Mediterranean, the naval base at Tartus. To the extent that it was posed as a response to IS, Russian intervention was quietly supported by the US. Following IS atrocities in Paris, France even carried out some joint operations with Russian forces in Syria. But Russian imperialism has shown little interest in attacking IS bases and every interest in propping up an Assad regime that was showing serious signs of collapse. By the simple trick of branding the entire opposition to Assad as terrorists, it has become a major force in Assad’s assault on rebel strongholds, effectively turning the tide of war in favour of Assad. Russian imperialism’s answer to the conflict in Syria is a simple one, entirely in accord with Assad’s methods, and already applied without mercy in Grozny in 1990-2000 in response to the Chechen nationalist movement: reduce the city to rubble and the problem of rebellion is solved.
Russian imperialism makes no secret of its ambitions in the Middle East. “Over the weekend, marking the first anniversary of Russia’s intervention in Syria, state media was full of bold statements such as ‘Russia proved that it’s nonetheless a superpower’ and ‘Russia has become the main player in this region … The United States, on the other hand, lost its status as first fiddle’.”[1]
The assault on Aleppo, which was raised to new levels following the rapid collapse of the latest cease-fire brokered by the US, has visibly sharpened tensions between Russia and the USA. Reacting to the charge that it is carrying out war crimes in Syria – which is undoubtedly true – Russia has pulled out of peace negotiations over Syria and also from a process aimed at reducing US and Russian stockpiles of plutonium, with Putin placing the most far-reaching conditions on a resumption of talks, including the dropping of sanctions against Russia and substantial reduction of NATO troop concentrations in eastern Europe.
Faced with the increasingly brutal policies of the Putin regime at home and abroad, with its retrograde nationalist ideology and crudely lying propaganda, the ‘democratic’ powers in the west do not find it difficult to take the moral high ground. But we have already seen that Russia’s use of terror bombing in Syria has a long pedigree in the west. And the hypocrisy of the democratic states applies equally to their recent and current behaviour. America’s condemnation of Russia for destroying Aleppo and other cities cannot efface the memory of the bombardment of Baghdad in 2003 or the siege of Fallujah in 2004, which also led to thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, even if US bombs and missiles are supposedly ‘smarter’ than their Russian equivalents and thus more focused on purely military targets. Neither should it obscure what Britain has been doing on the quiet in Yemen – supplying the Saudis with weapons in its intervention in a bloody ‘civil war’. A recent report in The Guardian showed that over a million children in Yemen face starvation as a direct result of Saudi blockades and bombing of areas held by Houthi rebels[2].
But western hypocrisy reaches its highest pitch when it comes to the millions of Syrians who have been forced to flee for their lives, and who now suffer from severe malnutrition in ill-equipped refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon; or, if they try to reach the ‘haven’ of western Europe, they fall into the hands of ruthless human traffickers who push them into perilous crossings of the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats. The European Union has shown itself incapable of dealing with what Cameron once referred to as the “swarm” of refugees from Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. While some governments, like the German, brandish their ‘welcoming’ policy to those whose labour power they need to exploit, the walls and barbed wire fences have gone up all over Europe. More and more European governments and parties are adapting to or openly espousing the politics of exclusion and scapegoating promulgated by the populist currents. We are witnessing sinister echoes of the massacre of the Jews in the 1930s and 40s, when the democracies wrung their hands over the Nazi persecutions and murders, but did everything they could to close their borders to the victims, taking in no more than a symbolic number of Jewish refugees[3].
Double-talk and hypocrisy over Syria is not limited to the governing parties. The majority of parties of the ‘left’ have a long history of supporting Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Baathist regime in Syria, alleging that these are, for all their faults, ‘fighting imperialism’, by which they mean the imperialism of the US, Israel or other western states. The ‘Stop the War’ coalition in the UK, for example (in which Jeremy Corbyn has played a leading role for many years) will organise massive demonstrations against Israel’s military incursions into Lebanon and Gaza, under slogans such as ‘We are all Hezbollah’. You will never see them organising an equivalent demonstration against the actions of Assad and the Russians in Syria, which are not only a mirror image of Israeli militarism, but have far surpassed it in levels of death and destruction.
Other activist organisations opt for supporting military action by the USA and the west. The Avaaz group, which specialises in massive online campaigns and petitions, and which opposed the US invasion of Iraq, now argues that the only way to protect the children of Aleppo is to call on Obama, Erdogan, Hollande and May to enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Syria[4].
Either way, we are asked to support one side or the other in what has become a global imperialist conflict.
For revolutionaries, it is essential to defend the principle of internationalism against every case of imperialist butchery. That means maintaining political independence from all states and proto-state militias, and supporting the struggle of the exploited in all countries against their own bourgeoisies. This principle is not dependent on whether or not the exploited are engaged in open struggle. It is a signpost for the future which must never be lost. In 1914, the internationalists who opposed the war were a very small minority, but stubbornly holding onto class positions, while so many former comrades were rallying to the war effort of their own bourgeoisies, was absolutely essential to the emergence of a massive proletarian struggle against the war two or three years later.
In Syria, there is no doubt that the proletariat is absent from the scene. This is a reflection of the political and numerical weakness of the Syrian working class, which has been unable to stand up against the Assad regime and its various bourgeois opponents. But we can say that the fate of Syria and of the ‘Arab spring’ as a whole sums up the historic situation facing the world working class. Capitalism is in an advanced state of decay and has no future to offer humanity other than repression and war. This has been the response of the ruling class to the various revolts that swept through North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. But this has only been possible because the working class was unable to take the lead in these revolts, unable to propose a different aim and perspective than the democratic illusions which dominated the social movements. And this was a failure not merely of the working class of North Africa and the Middle East, but of the working class in the central countries of capitalism, which has more deeply implanted revolutionary traditions and a long experience in confronting the obstacle of bourgeois democracy.
It is these battalions of the class who are best placed to revive the perspective of proletarian revolution, which remains the only hope for a human future. This is not just wishing for the best. The Arab spring also served as an inspiration to struggles in the central countries, most notably the Indignados revolt in Spain, which went furthest of all the movements of 2011 in posing serious questions about the future of world capitalism and in developing the means of struggle against it. But this was just a glimpse of the possible, a small indication that, despite the steady advance of capitalist barbarism, the proletarian alternative is still alive.
Amos, 8.9.16
[3]. This is not to denigrate the sincere efforts of many thousands of volunteers in Europe who have tried to offer aid to the refugees, or indeed the truly heroic work of doctors, nurses and rescue workers struggling to save lives in the most appalling conditions in Aleppo and other besieged cities. Very often these efforts begin as spontaneous initiatives which governments and other official forces then try to take under their own control.
Politicians of left and right have condemned the increased xenophobic abuse and physical attacks on immigrants since the referendum, and indeed do not want the tensions in society to explode in ways that disrupt the exploitation of the working class. They may also recognise the role of referendum propaganda in encouraging the increase in these attacks. But they will never acknowledge the extent to which their capitalist system and their state are responsible for the very attitudes which feed xenophobic and racist populism. It is the nation state that defines who is a citizen, or subject, and who is an outsider, an illegal, or to be accepted on sufferance provided their work is needed and sent away afterwards, which encourages immigration when labour is scare, and turns away refugees when it is not wanted.
Home secretary Amber “don’t call me a racist” Rudd’s announcements at the Tory Party conference are an illustration: on the one hand a work permit scheme for EU citizens who get jobs here, so that capital can bring in the workers it needs, including seasonal fruit pickers; but on the other hand definitely no out of work benefits or social housing, and businesses to be ‘named and shamed’ if they do not make efforts to recruit and train British workers. This is, of course, in continuity with Cameron’s promise to limit net migration, with restrictions on student visas – which upset the universities - and with Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” policy. However it goes further in making concessions to populism in attacking business for employing immigrants when there is unemployment at home, taking up its anti-elitist rhetoric. If holding the referendum was already a sop to populist sentiment, the May government is taking this further by hinting at a hard Brexit and Article 50 by the end of March, even if no details have been given yet. It seems to have rattled some in UKIP with Steven Woolfe, one of its leadership candidates, getting into an altercation with a fellow member after it emerged that he had held talks with the Tory Party.
Even more dangerous for would-be refugees and migrants are the agreements made by the EU to send refugees who arrive in Greece illegally by boat back to Turkey; and in 2014 there was the EU-Horn of Africa Migration Rout Initiative (or the Khartoum process). The latter provides brutally repressive regimes such as Sudan with equipment to police its borders – in the name of humanitarian concern for the victims of people traffickers the desperate are prevented from attempting to flee to safety.
At the end of July, Byron Burgers set up a fake training session (some employees were told it was on health and safety, other that it was on a new burger recipe) to assist immigration authorities in arresting 35 suspected illegal immigrants, and deporting at least 25 including separating some from the families they have in this country. The employer’s excuse for this deception was the 2016 Immigration Act which makes parts of civil society (in this case, employers and landlords) responsible for checking the immigration status of employees and tenants, and so policing immigration controls. This sort of blatant, and mandatory, snitching is currently of limited extent and this piece of legislation only specifies the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, not the working class (although individual workers must undoubtedly be required to carry out some of the tasks involved, whether aware of the motivation behind them or not). It seems likely that the highly publicised application of this Act at Byron Burgers a month after the referendum was an attempt to use the populist mood to get us used to this sort of behaviour, or at least test its acceptability. The state will no doubt have watched carefully not just those expressing indignation about the action of Byron Burgers (there were a number of small demonstrations outside their restaurants), but also those who took the contrary, conformist view that all means are appropriate in arresting illegal immigrants.
Since the vote in favour of Brexit there has been an increase in reports of “hate crimes” – 57% in the 4 days following the vote and 42% in the last 2 weeks of June, with incidents continuing at over 3,300 in the last 2 weeks of July, which is a 40% increase on the previous year. While most have involved verbal abuse or racist graffiti, in Harlow a 40 year old worker from Poland was killed, in Milton Keynes a pregnant Muslim woman was kicked in the stomach, losing her baby, and in Plymouth a Polish family whose shed was set on fire found a note threatening it would be the family next. This should be no surprise given the nature of the campaign around the referendum which lent heavily on the question of immigration, including UKIP’s infamous poster showing hundreds of refugees in Southern Europe. Nigel Farage’s “I want my country back” slogan was very useful in using, and encouraging, a mood of discontent and xenophobia. It is as though some people think they had just won a referendum to rid the country of all ‘immigrants’, no matter whether they came from the EU and no matter how many years - or generations - they had been here.
These attacks show the dark and dangerous nature of the populist upsurge that contributed to Cameron feeling the need to promise a referendum on Brexit, and to the result going against the wishes of all the central factions of the ruling class in the UK, Europe and the USA. It is not hard to understand the reasons for the discontent that feeds populism. The financial crisis of 2007/8 hit people’s savings. Decades of economic crisis and decline have left old industrial areas completely run down with no prospects. This has all been presided over by alternating Tory and Labour governments since Heath and Wilson in the 60s and 70s, all of which have imposed versions of austerity, and thus eroding confidence, and participation, in elections as a way of ameliorating the situation. ‘Elites’ and ‘experts’ are rejected. Meanwhile the perspective of the working class seems absent. Not only are strikes at a historic low, there is even a feeling that the working class no longer exists, particularly when it is seen not as the class of wage or salaried workers, but only as those who do blue collar, manual jobs and live on a council estate. Migrants are not seen for what they are, fellow victims of the same capitalist system, forced to flee war or move to seek work, but as dangerous competitors for dwindling resources. As put forward in the contribution ‘On the question of populism’ “... when an alternative – which can only be that of the proletariat – is missing, parts of the population start to protest and even revolt against their ruling elite, not with the goal of challenging their rule, but in order to oblige them to protect their own ‘law-abiding’ citizens against ‘outsiders’. These layers of society experience the crisis of capitalism as a conflict between its two underlying principles: between the market and violence. Populism is the option for violence to solve the problems the market cannot solve, and even to solve the problems of the market itself. For instance, if the world labour market threatens to flood the labour market of the old capitalist countries with a wave of have-nots, the solution is to put up fences and police at the frontier and shoot whoever tries to cross it without permission.”[1] However, while these xenophobic attacks show us the reality that lies behind populism, it is important to understand that they are the actions of a tiny minority, even of those seduced by the illusion of getting their country back, or by the idea that cutting immigration will solve any of the problems of housing, education or health services. There have been many expressions of indignation and solidarity with those attacked, even if these have also been drawn into demonstrations in favour of the democratic state. The fact is that even though the working class alternative appears absent, the class has not been defeated, and overt racists do not have a free hand to run amok and physically attack those they scapegoat for the problems in society.
With the Tories as well as UKIP making xenophobic speeches about limiting immigration, blaming migrants for all sorts of problems, and the increased verbal and physical attacks on them, how do we answer all this xenophobia and racism, how do we show solidarity? The Greens and the Corbyn faction of the Labour Party appear to be standing against the xenophobic mood, or at least refusing to join in. Corbyn was notably criticised for not taking up immigration in his conference speech and instead proposing financial aid to areas with high levels of immigration. Can we, in other words, oppose the populism of the Brexiters and xenophobes with a sort of left alternative, such as the huge influx of new members of the Labour Party supporting Corbyn, or his supporters in Momentum? Or internationally with the likes of Podemos, Syriza or Bernie Sanders? While it is beyond the scope of this article to analyse these forces (see article on the Labour Party in this issue) there are a few things we can say.
These political forces take the view that they should not try to make concessions to populism, not even at the level of propaganda, but oppose it. But they do this on a totally bourgeois basis. Their programmes are all fundamentally based on fighting elections and seeking government office; and where they have a large extra-parliamentary activity this is also based on pressurising or influencing some part of government policy. In other words they base their politics on the nation state and the national interest which they share with all bourgeois forces, however much they disagree on how to defend that national interest. No wonder such parties can completely change policy when they get into office. For instance, the Labour Party has often had a leftwing leader, often considered unelectable, in opposition, but in power it carries on the same old policies. When it comes to demonising migrants we only have to look back to the Blair government and its talk of “bogus asylum seekers” and even “bogus” gypsies[2]. Similarly, in Greece, Syriza in government found itself carrying out the very austerity it had denounced in opposition; and its positive promises to improve things for immigrants didn’t stop it aligning with the right wing, anti-immigrant ANEL (Independent Greeks).
The only way we can oppose the populist idea that keeping immigrants out will protect the citizens at home from the chaos of the world today is to understand that we are all victims of the same capitalist system. It is the same capitalist crisis that has caused unemployment in old industrial areas in the advanced countries, that lies behind imperialist wars in the Middle East sending thousands of refugees fleeing for their lives, and that causes the unemployment and poverty leading to economic migration. That means to see things internationally which is the viewpoint of the working class, which is concretised in the practical unity between immigrant and ‘native’ workers that develops in their struggles, as in the strike at Deliveroo recently. It is the apparent absence of this working class perspective that has allowed populism to develop as a product of capitalism’s decay. But it is only the working class that can provide a perspective to resist capital’s attacks, unmask its rotten ideology, and offer humanity the prospect of a world without states and borders.
Alex, 7.10.16
[2]. In fact the Corbyn led Labour Party has had its own problems with anti-semitism, particularly among his followers, see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13931/labour-left-and-j... [1472]
In response to the austerity demanded by the capitalist crisis, the proliferation of imperialist wars, terrorism on the streets, and the dismal prospects offered by the continuation of capitalism, there is much dissatisfaction. This discontent can be expressed in many ways, not embracing any solutions but expressing unhappiness with a reality that’s not understood.
In the UK Referendum on membership of the European Union millions voted to leave without any clear idea of what the consequences might be. Some were concerned about immigration, some were worried about a distant EU bureaucracy having control over their lives, some believed the propaganda about the economic prospects for the UK, and some were just expressing a negativity about the existing state of things. Elsewhere people have been attracted by other expressions of populism, like Trump in the US, Le Pen in France or the ‘Alternative for Germany’.
But it’s not just right-wing populism that people have turned to. Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, Bernie Sanders in the US have all offered a ‘new radicalism’ on the Left. It’s in this context that we can begin to appreciate the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
For the Left Corbyn is a hero. For the SWP (Socialist Worker 27/9/16) “His success is a clear sign of the feeling against austerity, racism and war. His victory can be a launchpad for increased resistance in the workplaces and on the streets.
We look forward to continuing to work with Corbyn and his supporters against the disastrous Tory policies that threaten to destroy key public services, deepen poverty, whip up racism and plunge British armed forces into more imperialist wars.”
And yet in the same salute they show how Syriza also “sent hope across the world” before “implementing a worse round of austerity than those imposed by its … predecessors.” They present Corbyn as something positive, but when you read the small print the SWP says (International Socialism 152) “the detail of his economic programme is standard post-crash social democratic fare—a £500 billion programme of infrastructure investment, an industrial strategy overseen by a new National Investment Bank, support for cooperatives, a National Education Service…” And when you see the policies of deficit reduction and borrowing for investment in infrastructure McDonnell lines up with his Labour predecessors with much talk of “fiscal credibility” and “discipline”.
For the Right Corbyn is an ‘extremist’ who, with allies such as McDonnell and Abbott, will raise taxation, increase debt, reinforce state intervention in the economy, be soft on terrorists, undermine defence by not renewing Trident and stifle the ‘initiative’ of private enterprise.
For a typical right-wing take on Corbyn try the Daily Mail’s (29/9/16) report of his speech to the Labour. “Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to spend more than £100billion a year creating a socialist state was condemned yesterday as a blueprint to bankrupt the nation.” He apparently plans to “spend more on everything from education to housing.” There would be investment to increase employment, build homes, keep down rents, ban zero hours contracts, ease the pressure through immigration on public services, provide free education, move to a low carbon economy, renationalise railways, and increase taxes. There would be a “new National Investment Bank to spend cash on better broadband, railways and energy infrastructure.”
The Express (26/9/16) was a bit less hysterical. Mr McDonnell was reported as promising to work with the “wealth creators in the private sector”…He said: “We think we can get the economy growing very quickly and it will then pay for itself.” As the SWP would say, this is ‘standard social democratic fare’ – promises to increase the role of the state when the tendency towards growing state capitalism is one of the dominant trends of the last hundred years, an expression of capitalism’s economic crisis, not a solution to it.
So, while the Corbyn/Sanders/Syriza left –wing version of capitalism has no capacity to improve the quality of people’s lives, any more than the right-wing plans of Trump or UKIP, it has a big appeal to some workers.
In the history of the workers’ movement there have always been currents that emphasise that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself, that the self-organisation of the working class is not only a strength of the struggle, but the basis of a future society based on relations of solidarity, a society where the state has become an anachronism. However, in the period leading up to the First World War the idea grew in social democracy that the capitalist state could provide social order, could eliminate the excesses of capitalist competition, and could guarantee social welfare. In fact this had as much to do with socialism as Louis XIV’s centralised state or Bismarck’s ‘state socialism’.
Today, despite the experience of a century of state capitalism in all its political forms – social democratic, Stalinist or fascist - the idea that the state can somehow be neutral still has enormous appeal. The ‘enemies’ of ‘ordinary people’ are typically deemed to be bankers, hedge fund managers, tax avoiders, multinational corporations, ruthless companies, exploitative bosses, and all the rest. Against this, the state is portrayed as being a force above classes that can curtail malevolent greedy individuals who are trying to rip off the rest of us. This personalisation, which in the past would dwell on a bloated capitalist in a bowler hat, now focuses on those who, behind closed doors, make decisions that affect the jobs, lives and living conditions of millions.
So, the Labour Party in the UK, while doing badly in opinion polls, is still putting forward the sort of ideas that others have to imitate. When Theresa May became Prime Minister she indicated her intentions: “The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by you. We won’t entrench advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything to help you go as far as your talents can take you. We must fight the burning injustices. We must make Britain a country that works for everyone” (Daily Telegraph, 13.7.16).
The parties are united in their opposition to privilege and injustice, but, in practice, the Labour Party is seen as being more authentic. In research published in August 2016 by the House of Commons Library, figures were given for membership of political parties. It suggested that the Labour Party’s 515,000 members were more than all other political parties in the UK put together. And Labour members are far more likely to be committed activists than the members of other parties. They think they have identified what is wrong with the world and what needs to be done. A conservative, by definition, wants to preserve those things which they think have proved their value over time. But for the Labour activists, whatever their initial motivations, the solution to society’s problems lies in the explicit intervention of the state.
The role of Corbyn’s Labour Party is to present an alternative plan for the management of capitalism. At present there is no particular call for Labour to be introduced into government; the Conservatives will do their best to try to navigate Britain out of the EU with as little damage to the national capital as possible. The differences in the Labour Party, in particular between Corbynists and the heirs of Blair and Brown, are genuine and we can envisage continued and deepening conflict in its ranks. This in itself will make demands on the energies of activists as different factions try to ‘save the Labour Party’. The bottom line for workers to remember is that Corbyn’s programme, far from being a fresh innovation, is a programme for the running of capitalism, not its destruction.
Car, 8.10.16
One of the fears about workers in very precarious casual jobs, with a large proportion of immigrants among them, is that they will not be able to struggle, and so will be nothing but a competitive pressure to lower wages. Firms such as Uber and Deliveroo like to claim their workers are self-employed (so not getting minimum wage, holiday or sick leave). The recent strike at Deliveroo, which spread to UberEats drivers, has answered both questions. They are most definitely part of the working class, and most definitely able to struggle to defend themselves.
Threatened with a new contract that would change from hourly pay plus a bonus for each delivery (£7 and £1) with pay only for each delivery, despite their apparent isolation from each other and their precarious circumstances, Deliveroo delivery workers organised meetings to run their struggle, a protest moped and cycle ride through the streets in London, and a 6 day strike. They insisted on collective negotiation against the managing director’s ‘offer’ to speak to them individually[1]. In the end the threat that they would lose their jobs if they did not sign up to the new contract was withdrawn, but it is being trialled by those who opt in. A partial victory.
Some UberEats delivery workers came to Deliveroo meetings. They face similar conditions, being falsely given self-employed status; pay has fallen so they barely make the minimum wage, with no guaranteed pay, only getting £3.30 per delivery. After a wildcat strike one worker was sacked (or “deactivated” since he is not protected by employment law), underlining the courage needed by workers who struggle in such precarious industries.
These small strikes by workers in such difficult circumstances demonstrate that they are fully part of the working class and its struggle.
Alex 8.10.16
[1]. See the video of this event at https://libcom.org/article/deliveroo-drivers-wildcat-strike [1474]
This critique was one of two originally posted on our online forum by comrade Link. Because of the importance of the issues raised, both the for the ICC and the wider communist movement, we decided to reply on a more formal basis.
The original forum posts can be found here [1475]and here [1476].
First of all I must say that I am very surprised that the very important text in IR 156 from January 2016 still has not prompted responses from comrades. These documents are significant signposts for the future of the ICC yet have neither been applauded nor criticised - just ignored.
I would like to applaud the approach of self-criticism in preparing the balance sheets contained in the latest IR. In particular, the identification of an underestimation the capacity of capitalism to maintain itself, globalisation and the restructuring of the working class, some limited recognition of the weakness of Luxemburg markets theory and responses to elongated period of decline in working class struggles since wave of period 60s to 80s.
I would criticise the text in IR however as a balance sheet that lacks incisiveness and is too keen to self congratulate itself. In saying that I do recognise the major contributions that the ICC has made on issues such as decadence, the historic course, the working class movement and more generally on the body of work and the range of issues raised for discussion in the workers movement. There has been a growing tendency nevertheless to prepare overlong texts on organisational and behavioural issues, and self-analysis that just tend to disguise weaknesses, obscure issues and self justify. Frankly I’m left with the impression that the concern demonstrated is for ICC militants not today’s working class movement as a whole.
I would like to put forward some obvious questions that the texts avoid:
1 Why the ICC has all these periodic internal confrontations?
2 Why no critical analysis if the ICCs approach to internal discussion? Yes I’m happy to reject the extreme criticisms of Stalinism but it is still the case that internal discussion has been criticised from many quarters. Has the ICCs approach, this determination to reach a conclusion and the determination to make swingeing criticisms of others contributed to these breakups?
3 Has orientation of international organisation in distinction to federal approach been successful? The approach was identified uncritically in the texts but given that the oranisation has given up on being a pole of international regroupment and appears to be withdrawing from intervention in favour of a fraction’s role of analysing past events. Why shouldn’t this approach be questioned through a serious discussion? If the new period changes the focus of militant activity should it not also change the organisational structure?
4 Why have obvious points of political disagreements over the past 40 years not been addressed in the balance sheets? i.e. left as natural party of opposition, 80s as years of truth, parasitism, Decomposition and the idea that we are in the final phase of caitalism, an increasingly problematic understanding of the historic course, economic analysis and problems with Luxemburg’s analysis of role of extra- capitalist markets.
5 Why is there such an inability to provide clarity in the explanations of certain issues? The ICC does not appear to be able to produce definitive statements on what it thinks on proletarian morality, proletarian culture and centrism and the new role as a fraction appears now to join that list (it’s certainly not clear to me from the text).
6 Why has there not been a real attempt to draw a balance sheet of the period of the past 8 years of crisis in the ICC? This has been the explanation for withdrawing from public interventions and reducing publications so, was it crisis and has it been resolved or was it actually just the start of this new practice? Is it continuing or is it over.
7 How have these issues/weaknesses affected ICC political analysis in the recent period? I am particularly interested to hear how early, major criticisms of CWO and IFICC relating to their alleged adoption of academicism and rejection of intervention and lack of understanding of historic course, can be squared with the ICC’s new approach. The ICC has adopted what it was criticising these organisations for yet has not either revised criticisms nor apologised.
Link (14/7/2016)
WR Reply
Thank you very much for your comments and questions posted on the ICC online forum about the critical balance sheet of 40 years of the ICC from International Review (IR) 156[1]. As we indicated to you then we needed more time and reflection to give your questions the answers they deserve. In order to do so in a little depth we won’t take up all the questions in one go - there are a lot - but in installments, with this first reply answering mainly the first two questions of your first post above, leaving the other questions on the fraction from the first and second post to a later date. We hope that the answers we give to your questions will not be seen as our last word on the subject but as only the beginning of a discussion with you.
In recognising the importance and seriousness of this self-critique by the ICC you firstly express your surprise that there has been no public response to it from comrades. By this we assume you refer to the wider milieu of groups and individuals sharing the general internationalist communist left tradition with the ICC. In answer to this point it was said on the ICC forum in reply that there had been an initial reaction to the critical balance sheet from one of our contacts on the ICC forum. We have also had responses from other contacts verbally or by email. But as far as the proletarian milieu as a whole is concerned we have hardly seen any public reaction. Your surprise is understandable, since the fate of the ICC, a significant organisation of the communist left for the past 40 years, is surely of concern for those who espouse the politics of the communist left, even if they disagree with many of our political positions and analyses. More: one would think surely that many of those who disagree with the ICC on whatever question would want to express themselves publicly on the subject as you have done.
While from this political point of view the silence about our self-critique is surprising and regrettable, from the vantage point of the past four decades, such indifference has not been that unusual. Ever since the re-emergence of the left communist milieu internationally since the end of the sixties, it has lacked a significant sense of common purpose which, if it had been pursued, despite the disagreements within it, would have strengthened this whole milieu and accelerated its internationalist impact on the working class much more than it actually has. In hindsight the three Conferences of Groups of the Communist Left in the late seventies which had the goal of confronting these often profound disagreements at the necessary theoretical and political level, and making common public statements on vital current questions facing the working class, were a high water mark. The collapse of these Conferences at the end of the decade has led to a long period of dispersal of the left communist milieu – even if polemics and other limited instances of mutual collaboration have sometimes occurred. The emergence of the phenomenon of political parasitism in 1981 has tended to further exacerbate the atomisation of the left communist milieu and reduce the solidarity between its individuals and groups . The low morale of the left communist milieu in general may help to explain the background to the dearth of response to the 40 year self-critique of the ICC.
In respect of this lack of an effective forum of debate for the whole of the internationalist milieu over the past 40 years, some of your questions seem however to imply that in-depth critiques of our politics and analyses have already been developed within this milieu. But for us it is precisely such profound critiques that are mostly lacking and which still need to be elaborated and deepened. We will point to these below in answer to your questions.
While applauding the self-critique in general you feel that it doesn’t go far enough and that it avoids key questions which need answers.
“I would like to put forward some obvious questions that the texts avoid:
1 Why the ICC has all these periodic internal confrontations?
2 Why no critical analysis if the ICC’s approach to internal discussion? Yes I’m happy to reject the extreme criticisms of Stalinism but it is still the case that internal discussion has been criticised from many quarters. Has the ICC’s approach, this determination to reach a conclusion and the determination to make swingeing criticisms of others contributed to these breakups?”
As you note the 40 year balance sheet is not complete but rather at the beginning and doesn’t provide a detailed history of our method of debate nor of the different splits in the ICC over this period and whether they could have been avoided by a better method. We haven’t avoided the question though, but so far only concentrated on some key questions like that of the fraction, because the latter is closely related to the fundamental issue of whether we have carried out our initial conception of our own role, and the question of the accuracy of our analyses of the world situation and our consequent intervention.
At the moment we are not yet in a position to present a detailed history of our mistakes made in our internal debates nor the extent to which these errors may have contributed unnecessarily to the break ups. And your questions on this matter of internal discussion aren’t very specific. So we can only here try to put this question of marxist debate in the ICC, which of course is not Stalinist, in a wider context.
You commend us for the major contributions of the ICC.
“….I do recognise the major contributions that the ICC has made on issues such as decadence, the historic course, the working class movement and more generally on the body of work and the range of issues raised for discussion in the workers movement.”
The politics of the ICC, its class principles or lines of demarcation of the working class from the bourgeoisie, its analysis of the trajectory of the capitalist mode of production, its marxist method and its organisational principles, are all the product of a tradition of stormy debates in the revolutionary movement that stretches back over a century and a half.
The general conceptions of marxism for example would not exist without the blistering polemics of Marx and Engels against the Left Hegelians in their books the Holy Family and the German Ideology, or the scathing critiques directed against Proudhon’s anarchism and Dühring’s positivism.
The specific tradition of the Communist Left would not be conceivable without the fierce and repeated polemics of Lenin and Luxemburg against the renegade Kautsky concerning the opportunism and betrayal of internationalism by the German Social Democracy, nor a few years later on without the unrelenting criticism of the likes of Herman Gorter and Amadeo Bordiga against the growing opportunism of the Third International.
“At the time that it was founded the Italian Communist Party, animated by the leadership of the Left and of Bordiga, was always an ‘enfant terrible’ in the Communist International. Refusing to submit a priori to the absolute authority of leaders — even those it held in the greatest regard - the Italian CP insisted on freely discussing and, if necessary, fighting against any political position it didn’t agree with. As soon as the CI was formed, Bordiga’s fraction was in opposition on many points and openly expressed its disagreements with Lenin and other leaders of the Bolshevik party, the Russian revolution, and the CI. The debates between Lenin and Bordiga at the Second Congress are well known. At this time nobody thought about questioning this right to free discussion; no one saw it as an insult to the authority of the ‘leaders’. Perhaps men as feeble and servile as Cachin believed in their heart of hearts that this was scandalous, but they wouldn’t have dared to admit it. Moreover, discussion wasn’t seen simply as a right but as a duty; the confrontation and study of ideas were the only way of elaborating the programmatic and political positions required for revolutionary action”. IR 33 ‘Against the concept of the “brilliant leader”’[2].
The ICC in particular would not exist without the confrontation of ideas with both councilism and Bordigism by the Gauche Communiste de France in the 40s and 50s.
Of course all these polemics were accompanied by very profound study and reflection. Painstaking marxist research has usually been stimulated by the intensive confrontation of ideas in the revolutionary movement.
In the history of the ICC itself the principles and analyses that it has developed from the heritage of the past have required the debating of differences. Most of which have not led to splits. The debates on the state in the period of transition, which were not merely internal but also conducted with other groups, or the debates on the reasons for the decadence of capitalism, were both confrontations of important differences that didn’t lead to a separation and in fact are still ongoing. Likewise the development of positions on the proletarian political milieu, on terror, terrorism and class violence, on the critique of the theory of the weak link, on centrism towards councilism, on the theses on parasitism and on the period of the social decomposition of capitalism were all elaborated in our press after extensive debate. In the last decade the International Review has seen the publication of orientation texts on Confidence and Solidarity, Marxism and Ethics and on the Culture of Debate, which were also the object of intense argument within the organisation. While these latter texts, due to the nature of their subject matter, are not final statements they nevertheless constitute in the organisation’s view a valid framework for our approach on these questions and entirely consistent with our marxist method and organisational principles.
All these debates in the history of the ICC which involved, as you might say, ‘swingeing’ criticism, and the desire to reach a conclusion – to see the discussion through to the end – didn’t of themselves lead to organisational break ups.
The decisive reasons that explain the various splits in the organisation, rather than being a result of the debates on general political questions that we mention above, were more to do with political and theoretical questions of organisational principle, in particular that of the primacy of the unity and solidarity of the organisation as a whole against the attempt to assert (often in grotesque ways) the sovereignty of the separate interests of individuals or groups within it. The difficulty for the new generations of revolutionaries since 1968 to understand or accept this principle and its implications, which is at the heart of the question of proletarian morality among revolutionaries, has been a common feature of the splits in the ICC. Yet without the acquisition, defence and explanation of this principle there would be no tradition of organised marxist debate within the revolutionary movement. If for example there had been no defence of organisational principles by the ICC in 1981 against the thefts of the Chenier Tendency or the gangsterism and informing of the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ twenty years later, then there would be no organisational basis for the subsequent theoretical contributions that you recognise. The need to remain united in spite of differences and disagreements is obviously an existential question.
We can also suggest that the same principle of ‘freedom of discussion, unity in action’ remains a difficult one for the internationalist milieu as a whole to understand and not just the ICC.
We won’t speculate here to what extent the mistakes the ICC made in dealing with this question contributed to the schisms. The important thing to recognise here is that matters of organisational life or death were involved.
It should also be noted that after these break-ups, the ICC was not satisfied with the fact that the dissenters had left – far from it – but attempted to draw out the details and lessons of the splits, their origins and their connection to more general weaknesses in the organisation. And it made these findings public.
After the Chenier crisis for example there were significant elaborations in the International Review of our conception of the functioning and function of revolutionary organisation which had been forgotten or not fully understood in the ICC in the lead up to this crisis.
After the crisis of 1995 a series of six articles were published in the International Review (82-88) on the contemporary significance and relevance of the Hague Conference of the Ist International involving the split between the marxists and Bakuninists.
In light of the theoretical dispersal or indifference of the internationalist milieu that we noted earlier in relation to the ICC’s 40 year self-critique, it is nevertheless remarkable that all these crises in the ICC and the extensive publication of the details and general theoretical lessons from them have not led to a serious and intensive theoretical and political debate within this milieu about them.
To tentatively conclude this reply to your first two questions: in explaining the splits in the ICC and the dispersion of the Communist Left milieu it is necessary to take into account the profound difficulty today’s revolutionaries find in pursuing the confrontation of differences within a unitary framework.
Some short answers to some of your other points:
“I would criticise the text in IR however as a balance sheet that lacks incisiveness and is too keen to self congratulate itself….
There has been a growing tendency nevertheless to prepare overlong texts on organisational and behavioural issues, and self- analysis that just tend to disguise weaknesses, obscure issues and self justify. Frankly I’m left with the impression that the concern demonstrated is for ICC militants not today’s working class movement as a whole”
While recognising this is your opinion we do not share it and would like to hear more of your argumentation and evidence for these views in order to answer them usefully.
“3 Has orientation of international organisation in distinction to federal approach been successful? The approach was identified uncritically in the texts but given that the org has given up on being a pole of international regroupment and appears to be withdrawing from intervention in favour of a fraction’s role of analysing past events. Why shouldn’t this approach be questioned through a serious discussion? If the new period changes the focus of militant activity should it not also change the organisational structure?”
In a second article, we shall take up this question in relation to that of the fraction. For the moment: we haven’t given up on being a pole of international regroupment or on carrying out a communist intervention.
“4 Why have obvious points of political disagreements over the past 40 years not been addressed in the balance sheets? i.e., left as natural party of opposition, 80s as years of truth, parasitism, Decomposition and the idea that we are in the final phase of capitalism, an increasingly problematic understanding of the historic course, economic analysis and problems with Luxemburg’s analysis of role of extra- capitalist markets.”
Please point more specifically to where the political/theoretical disagreements with all these analyses, that you think we should address, have been made. Or elaborate your own position on them a bit more.
“5 Why is there such an inability to provide clarity in the explanations of certain issues? The ICC does not appear to be able to produce definitive statements on what it thinks on proletarian morality, proletarian culture and centrism and the new role as a fraction appears now to join that list (it’s certainly not clear to me from the text).”
See IR 127 and 128 on Marxism and Ethics. IR 111 and 112 on Confidence and Solidarity, IR131 on the Culture of Debate. And IR 43 on centrism. In order to answer your question we need a bit more explanation of why you think these statements are unclear.
“6 Why has there not been a real attempt to draw a balance sheet of the period of the past 8 years of crisis in the ICC? This has been the explanation for withdrawing from public interventions and reducing publications so, was it crisis and has it been resolved or was it actually just the start of this new practice? Is it continuing or is it over.”
IR’s 154 and 156 already give some serious answers to the explanation of the most recent crisis in the ICC. The 40 year balance sheet is part of this explanation which is ongoing. On intervention and the press, we will take that up more in our reply on the fraction.
“7 How have these issues/weaknesses affected ICC political analysis in the recent period? I am particularly interested to hear how early, major criticisms of CWO and IFICC relating to their alleged adoption of academicism and rejection of intervention and lack of understanding of historic course, can be squared with the ICC’s new approach. The ICC has adopted what it was criticising these organisations for yet has not either revised criticisms nor apologized”.
You will have to explain more why you think the ICC has ‘adopted’ academicism and rejected intervention, and where you think we made those criticisms of the CWO, so we can answer more precisely. We don’t consider the IFICC as part of the revolutionary milieu.
Looking forward to your reply to all or part of the above while we work on an answer to your questions about the fraction, in the belief that such a discussion between us is a contribution to fulfilling the tasks of revolutionaries in the working class.
WR, 8.10.16
We are publishing here a critique of the article ‘Towards a communist electoral strategy’ which recently appeared on the website of the Communist League of Tampa (in Florida, USA). We have already published previous correspondence between ourselves and the CLT, in which we welcomed their recognition of the necessity for a world communist party, while also highlighting some of the key differences between our Current and the CLT regarding the conception of the ‘mass party’, the question of whether the communist party takes power, and the relevance of the old social democratic programmes to the communist project today[1]. With the publication of the article ‘Towards a communist electoral strategy’ by Donald Parkinson[2], these differences seem to have widened, or at least become clearer. A comparable process seems to be underway in the relationship between the Tampa group and its Miami affiliate, which has now changed its name to the Workers’ Offensive Group and has adopted a statement of positions which are much more in line with those of the communist left. At the same time, the Miami group has declared that it wants to maintain the discussion with the group in Tampa[3]. We support this decision and want the discussion between ourselves and Tampa to continue as well: hence the present contribution, which we hope will stimulate a response from the Tampa group and others.
We think that this debate on elections is particularly important, not least because in the present political climate in the USA, there is a tremendous pressure on all those who see themselves as being opposed to the capitalist system to set their principles to one side and use their vote to keep Donald Trump from getting his hands on the presidency. In this article, we explain why participation in bourgeois elections in general no longer serves the interests of the class struggle, but directly opposes it.
The text by DP begins by asserting that “participation in electoral politics, and therefore an electoral strategy, are essential if communists are going to gain public legitimacy as a serious political force”. The text recognises that electoral cycles are “endlessly nauseating, particularly this year’s in the USA with the obnoxious Trump vs the neo-liberal imperialist Clinton”. But it refers to passages written by Marx and Engels to support the view that, nevertheless, communists should put up their own candidates, as Marx put it in his 1850 address to the Communist League, “in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint”. DP is aware of the existence of communists like Pannekoek and Bordiga who, in the new conditions created by war and revolution after 1914, rejected all parliamentary activity, but his main concern here is to deplore the fact that their views have had an inordinate influence on a contemporary ‘left’ which is to a large degree “purely based on direct action”. He admits that the appeal of such a approach is understandable, given that “the bourgeois state presents itself as a Leviathan of sorts”, but we should not conclude that “anything that touches it is therefore doomed”. The text then outlines the main elements in the revived communist electoral strategy:
“Yet the question of whether we must smash the state and whether we participate in elections are two different questions. The bourgeois state can be smashed, yet we can still participate within its institutions with the purpose of propagandizing and politically training the working class. Election campaigns, even when lost, serve the purpose of forcing Communists to engage the public at large and argue their positions. However what if Communists actually win elections? Would we not just be managing the bourgeois state?
The first clarification to make is that we would not come to power unless we had the mandate to operate our full minimum program and essentially smash the bourgeois state and create the dictatorship of the proletariat. The party would be a party in opposition and would not form coalition governments with bourgeois parties. Unlike other organizations like Syriza, who act as if they cannot accomplish anything until they are in power, a properly Marxist party would remain in opposition and not form a government until conditions for revolution are ripe.
Another clarification is that we are not going to aim for executive powers we can’t realistically win. The extent to which communists are responsible for managing the state is the extent to which they will be forced to make compromises with bourgeois legality. Rather than running for offices like governor or president, we should aim for offices in the legislative branch such as the federal House Representatives, but also state Houses and Assemblies. In these positions we can vote for and against legislation (as well as abstain) and establish our party as a “tribune of the people” that uses its seat of power to propagandize against the bourgeois state and capitalism. By voting against reactionary laws, even if we are outnumbered by the Democrats and Republicans, we can demonstrate that our party stands firmly against the interests of the bourgeois state and develop mass legitimacy for radical positions”.
What is immediately striking about this passage is that it appears to exist outside of history. There is a complete absence of any idea of the profound changes that have taken place in the life of capitalism and the working class since the days of the Second International when such dilemmas about how workers’ representatives should conduct themselves in parliamentary bodies had a real significance. But with DP’s text, we are taken to a universe where there has been no tendency for the mass parties and unions of the working class to be absorbed into the capitalist state; no qualitative growth of the totalitarian state Leviathan in response to the new epoch of wars and revolutions; no traumatic decades of Stalinist, fascist and democratic counter-revolution which corrupted or exterminated a whole generation of revolutionaries, leaving only a few small internationalist groups fighting against the tide; no tendency, in the generations that emerged after the receding of this counter-revolution, towards a deep suspicion of politics and political organisation of any kind. The result of this real historical process has been palpable: the communists, who by definition must always remain a minority in the confines of capitalist society, have become a miniscule force, even if you are fairly wide-ranging in your definition of what constitutes the political forces of the working class today. In this actual universe, there is no party of the working class, let alone a mass one.
The CLT don’t, of course claim to be a party and don’t think the communist party is close to being formed; neither do they envisage “running any candidates anytime soon, as we are a small sect with little support and limited resources”. But the divorce from reality we saw in relation to the past also applies to a possible electoral strategy in the future, because there is no attempt whatever to consider what changes would have to take place that would make it possible for today’s “small sects with little support and limited resources” to form themselves into a formidable communist party capable of winning a respectable number of seats in Congress or similar parliaments, and even, possibly “winning a mandate to smash the bourgeois state and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat”[4]. Such a transformation could only be the result of a massive upsurge in the class struggle on a world-wide scale, of a movement that would give rise not only a whole new generation of revolutionaries and a serious strengthening of the communist minority, but also engender new forms of mass organisation based on the principles of general assemblies and workers’ councils. This perspective has been validated not only by the soviets of the first international revolutionary wave, but in more recent mass movements – for example the inter-factory strike committees that emerged in Poland in 1980, or the general assemblies that were the focus of discussion and decision-making in the struggle against the CPE in France in 2006 or the Indignados movement in Spain 2011.
It is already significant that the text says nothing at all about the question of the councils, and even appears to hold out the prospect of the communist party coming to power via bourgeois elections. But what is even more significant is that the text doesn’t examine the role of parliament and elections in cases where workers’ councils were being formed and the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat was being directly posed, such as in Germany in 1918, where democratic elections were used as a weapon against the councils, a means of trapping workers in the idea that parliamentary democracy and workers’ councils could in some way co-exist (providing the latter were reduced to tame trade unionist type bodies limited to the individual workplace…). In sum: communists will only be able to act as a party, an organisation which has a real impact on the development of the class struggle, in a pre-revolutionary upsurge, and then it will be more evident than ever that their energies should be directed towards the strengthening of the councils or council-type organisations against the deadly mystifications of bourgeois democracy.
And we should be aware of just how deeply these mystifications have implanted themselves in the minds of the working class, including its revolutionary minorities. The idea that the triumph of democracy and the political victory of the working class amount to the same thing is already present in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. The experience of the Commune enabled Marx and Engels to understand that the working class could not use the existing parliamentary bodies to come to power…and yet how fragile this understanding was, when shortly after writing The Civil War in France, which drew out the lessons of the Commune with magnificent clarity, Marx could still envisage the working class coming to power ‘peacefully’ in certain democratic bourgeois countries like Britain or Holland. And when, in the phase of social democracy which made it seem that the working class could step by step build up its parties and its unions inside the framework of bourgeois society, theoreticians like Kautsky could see no other ‘road to power’ except the parliamentary road[5]. Those within the marxist movement who began to challenge the Kautskyite orthodoxy had a hard battle trying to develop the implications of the new forms of struggle appearing as capitalism’s ascendant epoch drew to a close: the mass strikes in Russia, the appearance of the soviets, the development of wildcat strikes in western Europe. It was through examining these new forms and methods of struggle that Pannekoek, Bukharin and eventually Lenin were able to break through the social democratic consensus and base their programme on the most lucid insights of Marx and Engels – on the recognition that the bourgeois state had to be dismantled, and not by parliamentary decree, but by the new organs of proletarian political power created by the revolution itself. These theoretical developments took place alongside, and in the case of Pannekoek were deeply influenced by, Rosa Luxemburg’s analysis of the mass strike, which put into question the old social democratic (and, by extension, anarcho-syndicalist) practice of step by step forming the mass organisations that will eventually take over the running of society; in the new conception of Luxemburg and Pannekoek, the revolutionary mass organisation of the working class is a product of the mass movement, and cannot be fabricated by the communist minority in the absence of such a movement.
DP wants us to drop the idea of “anti-electoralism as an eternal principle”. But none of the militants of the social democratic, and then the communist, left fractions considered anti-electoralism as an eternal principle. They were marxists, not anarchists, and they recognised that, in a previous epoch, the period that included the Communist League and the first two Internationals, the strategy of standing workers’ candidates in bourgeois elections could indeed serve what is an “eternal principle” for revolutionaries: the necessity to develop the autonomy of the working class from all other classes. Thus in the mid to late 19th century, marxists advocated participation in bourgeois elections and parliaments because they considered that parliament could still be a field of battle between parties which were tied to an outmoded feudal order, and those which expressed the forward movement of capital, and could thus be critically supported by the workers’ organisations. In this period, it was possible to consider that such alliances could be in the interests of the working class and even a moment in the development of its political class independence. As capitalism reached its limits as a factor of progress, the distinction between progressive and reactionary bourgeois parties became increasingly meaningless, so that the role of revolutionaries in bourgeois parliaments had to be focused more and more on opposing all the different bourgeois factions – on playing the ‘tribune’ role as a lone voice in a purely bourgeois arena. But it was precisely during this phase, the phase of mature social democracy, that the leading currents within many of the workers’ parties were drawn into all kinds of compromises with the capitalist class, even up to the point of accepting posts in government cabinets.
For the left communists, the advent of a period of open revolutionary struggle, and the concomitant triumph of opportunism within the parties of the old International – definitely completed by their role in the war of 1914 and the ensuing revolutionary wave – meant that all the old tactics, even the limited use of elections and parliament as a tribune, had to be thoroughly reassessed. Pannekoek, writing in 1920 when he was still firmly convinced of the necessity for a communist party, accepted that participation in parliament and elections had been a valid strategy in the previous era, but pointed to its pernicious effects in the new conditions:
“Matters change when the struggle of the proletariat enters a revolutionary phase. We are not here concerned with the question of why the parliamentary system is inadequate as a system of government for the masses and why it must give way to the soviet system, but with the utilisation of parliament as a means of struggle by the proletariat. As such, parliamentary activity is the paradigm of struggles in which only the leaders are actively involved and in which the masses themselves play a subordinate role. It consists in individual deputies carrying on the main battle; this is bound to arouse the illusion among the masses that others can do their fighting for them. People used to believe that leaders could obtain important reforms for the workers in parliament; and the illusion even arose that parliamentarians could carry out the transformation to socialism by acts of parliament. Now that parliamentarianism has grown more modest in its claims, one hears the argument that deputies in parliament could make an important contribution to communist propaganda. But this always means that the main emphasis falls on the leaders, and it is taken for granted that specialists will determine policy – even if this is done under the democratic veil of debates and resolutions by congresses; the history of social democracy is a series of unsuccessful attempts to induce the members themselves to determine policy. This is all inevitable while the proletariat is carrying on a parliamentary struggle, while the masses have yet to create organs of self-action, while the revolution has still to be made, that is; and as soon as the masses start to intervene, act and take decisions on their own behalf, the disadvantages of parliamentary struggle become overwhelming.
As we argued above, the tactical problem is how we are to eradicate the traditional bourgeois mentality which paralyses the strength of the proletarian masses; everything which lends new power to the received conceptions is harmful. The most tenacious and intractable element in this mentality is dependence upon leaders, whom the masses leave to determine general questions and to manage their class affairs. Parliamentarianism inevitably tends to inhibit the autonomous activity by the masses that is necessary for revolution. Fine speeches may be made in parliament exhorting the proletariat to revolutionary action; it is not in such words that the latter has its origins, however, but in the hard necessity of there being no other alternative.
Revolution also demands something more than the massive assault that topples a government and which, as we know, cannot be summoned up by leaders, but can only spring from the profound impulse of the masses. Revolution requires social reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions made, the whole proletariat involved in creative action – and this is only possible if first the vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves, know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect, assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and laborious; thus, so long as the working class thinks it sees an easier way out through others acting on its behalf leading agitation from a high platform, taking decisions, giving signals for action, making laws – the old habits of thought and the old weaknesses will make it hesitate and remain passive”[6].
Here Pannekoek gets to the root of why the fight for the councils is diametrically opposed to parliamentary activity in all its forms. To make a revolution, the proletariat has to make a fundamental break with old habits of thinking and acting, with the very idea of alienating its own forces through the election of representatives in bourgeois parliaments. For him, the tactic of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’ adopted by the parties of the Communist International (which is very similar to the electoral strategy advocated by DP) could only serve to reinforce the prevailing and paralysing illusions in bourgeois democracy. And we can add that, even though the statutes of the Communist Parties contained a number of precautions against corruption by parliamentary politics, these rules did not prevent the official parties from transforming themselves rather rapidly into vote-chasing machines.
For Pannekoek and other left communists, the same problematic applied to the trade union form, which, while originally emerging as a form of working class self-organisation, had become hopelessly enmeshed in the bourgeois state and its bureaucracy. The counter-revolutionary role played by the old parties and unions in the imperialist war and the proletarian revolution that followed made it clear that the new forms of organisation would develop not inside the shell of the old society, but through an eruption that would shatter the shell itself. In a sense, this was a return to Marx’s observation that the working class is a class of civil society that is not a class of civil society, an outlaw class that by definition can never gain “public legitimacy” in the normal operations of capitalist society. The idea of seeking public legitimacy, of looking for ‘popularity’ and the biggest possible share of the vote, is a gross deformation of the role of communists, whose task is always to defend the future goals in the movement of the present, to speak the truth however unpalatable it may sound, even when this means going against the stream, as revolutionaries like Lenin and Luxemburg did in the face of the wave of nationalist hysteria which temporarily swept over the working class in 1914. Bordiga, who in the debates in the Third International actually considered the question of abstentionism to be a tactic, nevertheless further illuminates the reasons why the ‘electoral’ mentality ties us to bourgeois society. In The Democratic Principle[7], for example, he shows that the principle of bourgeois democracy, the principle of one citizen one vote, is rooted in the very operation of commodity relations, of a society founded on equivalent exchange. A movement for communism is by definition a movement that overcomes the notion of the atomised citizen exercising his rights through the polling booth, as part of a wider struggle against the reified social relationships imposed by the commodity form.
We think that the comrades of the CLT should go back to these theoretical contributions and engage much more deeply with the reasons why these militants rejected all forms of electoral participation. It’s true that DP’s text accepts that there is a danger, confirmed by the German SPD’s vote for war credits in 1914, that party representatives will develop interests independent from the working class. But his answer is that this problem “can be addressed without having to abstain from electoral activities. For example, electoral reps can be required to donate a certain percentage of their salary to the party and be subject to recall by popular vote”. Leaving aside the speculative, even fantastic nature of this whole scenario, this remains a purely formal response which does not get to the heart of the criticisms raised by the likes of Pannekoek and Bordiga.
As we have noted, the CLT is not in any immediate danger of plunging into electoral practices. But its reluctance to consider the real historical conditions facing the communist minority today seems to be pushing it towards a kind of syndicalist activism on the one hand (having said they won’t be running any candidates as yet they say that “our energy right now is being put into making ourselves a more effective organisation and helping get a General membership branch of the IWW started”[8]). More dangerously, its ambiguities about the nature of the ‘left’, which can be seen in the early part of the text, seems to be opening doors to alliances with openly left-capitalist organisations like the Red Party, which looks like an American equivalent of the Communist Party of Great Britain/Weekly Worker in the UK[9], an organisation which has never put into question its historic origins as a faction within Stalinism. Perhaps the CLT sees such alliances as a means of breaking out of its situation as a “small sect without support”, but it is more likely to drown the group in a sea of leftism.
DP’s article, as we have seen, deplores the fact that “large sections of the left” favour direct actionism to the exclusion of a viable electoral strategy. In reality, in a period of considerable difficulty for the working class, where strikes and ‘the movement in the street’ have gone into retreat, many newly politicised elements are being mobilised in support of a ‘new Look’ left in the shape of Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US. These currents all represent a clear attempt to pull militant energies into the dead end of elections and the ‘long march through the institutions’. Communists can only stand against the false hopes they offer by offering a clear critique of bourgeois democracy and its insidious influence within the revolutionary class.
Amos, October 2016
[1]. https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13503/communist-league-... [1479] https://communistleaguetampa.org/2016/01/11/debate-on-the-world-party-a-... [1480] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201604/13893/once-again-party-... [1481]
[2]. https://communistleaguetampa.org/?s=communist+electoral+strategy&submit=... [1482] We understand that this is a signed article and may not represent the views of all members of the CLT, but posts by CLT member Pennoid on a thread on libcom, broadly agreeing with the article’s approach, and the absence of any counter arguments by CLT members on their website, seems to indicate that DP’s article has wider support within the group. See https://libcom.org/forums/organise/communist-electoral-strategy-22082016 [1483]
[3]. https://workersoffensivegroup.wordpress.com/points-of-unity/; [1484] https://workersoffensivegroup.wordpress.com/category/official-statements/ [1485]. On elections, the Workers’ Offensive Group says in its points of unity: “All elections are a sham. Political power is fundamentally a question of violence, not votes. The ritual of mass self-delusion that forms part of electoral politics acts as a safe outlet into which the grievances of the exploited class can be harmlessly redirected. Participation in elections helps maintain capitalists’ mental dominion over the working class by reviving the great lie that workers have any voice within this system. Begging pathetically at the feet of the exploiters and entrusting a tiny minority to fight all its battles does not produce independence and assertiveness in the working class, only weakness and submission”.
[4]. The air of unreality also hovers over DP’s view of how the mass party will engage in the field of direct action: “A mass party will have to engage large amounts of workers through “extra-parliamentary” means before it will even stand a chance winning in an electoral campaign. Building class unions, solidarity networks, unemployed councils, mutual aid societies, gun clubs, sports teams, etc. is not to be rejected in favor of electoral action”. This looks very much like more nostalgia for the good old days of social democracy when the working class could maintain its own economic, political and cultural organisms for a lengthy period without them falling into the hands of the bourgeois state.
[5]. See our article on the parliamentarist errors of Engels and Kautsky: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/199701/1619/revoluti... [1486]
[6]. ‘World revolution and communist tactics’, https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/tactics/index.htm [1487]
[8]. Again, the Points of Unity published by the Workers’ Offensive Group take a clear position on the union question: “Labor unions, regardless of their internal structure, are not workers’ organizations but organs of the capitalist state that smother and contain the resistance of the working class against the exploitative system through the negotiation and enforcement of contracts with capital. In the heat of the class struggle, the workers must destroy the unions and form their own mass and unitary organizations to direct and carry out their struggle against capitalism”.
[9]. https://red-party.com/ [1489]
The discussions around the proposed law on “marriage for all” (same-sex marriage) in France, 2013, aroused much emotion, posturing, grandiloquence and stupidities, and more still when “gender studies” were bandied around as decisive arguments by one camp or another. Then, change of subject, the passionate controversies took a dramatic turn when thousands of refugees, forced from their homes by misery and war, knocked on the door of the developed countries, or when we had the sound of the Kalashnikov aimed at annihilating young people in Paris for their way of life, or the young of Orlando for their sexual orientation. The left, the right, the extreme-right, the extreme-left, all the elements of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie expressed their gut feelings on the media theatre – some among them proclaiming “je suis Charlie” or again “je ne suis pas Charlie”, redoubling the demagogy so as not be outdone by the competition.
Let’s leave the theatre of official politics and return to the basic question posed by racism, xenophobia, sexism and homophobia, by all these social behaviours which reveal human alienation and which can go as far as murder. How does one explain such an unleashing of social violence, how do you understand these prejudices which seem to come from a bygone age of superstition? How, faced with these types of problems, do you guard against the ideological thinking that the bourgeois system abundantly spreads around in order to mask reality and accentuate the divisions which weaken its historic enemy, the class of proletarians?
Of course, one can sense the profound causes of these phenomena in a society divided into antagonistic classes, based on exploitation of man by man, where the commodity imposes its tyranny on all levels of existence, including the most intimate. In a society where a monstrous cold state dominates and watches each individual, it’s not surprising that social violence is extremely high. In this type of society, the Other, the individual in front of us, is straightaway felt as suspect, as a potential danger, at best as a competitor, at worst as an enemy. He is stigmatized for a thousand reasons, because there’s not the same skin colour, the same sex, the same culture, the same religion, the same nationality, the same sexual orientation. Thus the multiple facets of competition that are found at the base of capitalist society regularly give rise to pauperisation, war, and genocides but also at another level, stress, aggression, harassment and psychological suffering, the pogrom mentality, superstition, nihilism and the dissolution of the most elementary social links[i].
But this explanation remains general and is insufficient; it is still necessary to identify the dynamic which generates these prejudices and the acts that they are supposed to justify, or to explain their survival and both their immediate and more deeply-rooted causes. It is a most vital question for the working class. First of all, because in its struggles, it is ceaselessly confronted with the necessity for its forces to come together, to fight for its unity. The struggle to reject or neutralise prejudices which divide its forces, such as racism, sexism or chauvinism for example, is indispensable and it is not won in advance. Secondly, because the revolutionary perspective carried by the working class has the aim of a society without classes, without national frontiers, that’s to say the creation of a human community finally unified at a global level. This means that the proletarian revolution intends to conclude a whole period of human history from the groupings, mixtures and alliances within primitive society up to the struggles of the XIXth century for national unity, a process based on the development of the productivity of labour leading to revolutions in the relations of production and an enlargement of the scale of society.
It’s true that the working class, as a historic class that carries within itself the communist project, as the highest representative of the active principle of solidarity, is already pushed in practice to overcome these divisions. But racism, sexism and xenophobia remain a real problem, since they touch on the subjective factor of the revolution. Objective conditions are not sufficient for the revolution to succeed and it is still necessary for the class to be subjectively capable of undertaking its historic task to the end; for it to acquire, in the course of its struggles, the capacity to unify and organise itself; to develop a depth of intellectual and moral understanding. As for the communist minority, it has to be able to give clear and convincing political orientations, and to constitute a world party when the conditions of the class struggle allow it.
The little book by Patrick Tort, Sexe, race et culture, can help us to better understand these questions and constitutes a real stimulus for the most conscious workers. We already know about the scientific rigour of the works of this author[ii] which are not always easy to read, but the will to make all types of problematic accessible is clearly present here. Conceived under the form of an interview, the book is composed of two parts: the first confronts the question of racism and takes a position on the decision recently made in France by several state and scientific institutions to abandon the use of the word “race”; the second confronts the question of sexism and tries to define the relations between sex and “gender”. All these questions are to be found at the crossroads of biology and the social sciences and cannot begin to be clarified without a critique of the dominant conceptions of “human nature”; in other words, without a critique of the old, congealed opposition between “nature” and “culture”.
Here the contribution of Darwin is considerable. In his own field, the science of life, Darwin puts forward a whole series of theoretical tools and a scientific approach which allow the construction of a materialist vision of the passage of nature to culture, from the reign of the animal kingdom to the social world of man. At the international level Patrick Tort is one of the best authorities on Darwin, and he has now published the complete works in French in the Slatkine (Geneva) and Champion (Paris) editions. The publication of the monumental Dictionnaire du Darwinisme et de l’ évolution, drawn up by him, has put an inestimable tool at our disposal. Notably through the idea of the reverse effect of evolution, he has greatly contributed to making intelligible elements in the anthropological work of Darwin which have been obscured because of their subversive content[iii]. This combat remains very much active today because we still find resistance to the fundamental advances made by Darwin. There are those, trying to avoid the fundamental questions, who feign surprise “What do you see in Darwin? Is this a new cult of a now fashionable scientist?”[iv] There are those that Patrick Tort calls “the premature gravediggers” who, forgetting that Darwin wasn’t a socialist, that he was a man of his time and thus shared some of its prejudices, use carefully isolated quotes as trophies that are supposed to disqualify the whole logic of his work[v].
Of course, we are not necessarily in agreement with all the political positions coming from the text of Patrick Tort. The essential here is to base ourselves on the contributions of different scientific disciplines in order to give more flesh, more clarity to the ideas that, for the most part, marxism has long integrated into its theoretical heritage. The great quality of this author, alongside a rigorous materialist method, is the capacity to bring together different disciplines, his critique of accepted ideas and of good old common sense, products, of both what he calls the “liberal right” and “the dominant progressivist ideology ”. It is this critical approach which enables him to keep his distance from the lumber room of the media, that “great machine of influence”.
The fundamental contribution of the anthropology of Darwin consists of a coherent and materialist description of the emergence of the human species through the mechanism of natural selection, which allows individuals with an advantageous variation to give rise to better adapted and more numerous descendents. Basically the process is the same for all species. In the struggle for existence the least apt are eliminated, which ends up, when certain conditions are met, in the transformation of a species by prolonged selection of advantageous variations, and the appearance of new species. What is transmitted to the descendents, in the case of the higher animals [vi], are not only advantageous biological variations but also the social instincts, the sentiments of sympathy and altruism, which themselves serve to amplify the developments of rational capacities and moral feelings. What happens with man is precisely that the development of sympathy and altruism comes up against the elimination of the weakest and opposes it. The protection of the weak, assistance for outcasts, sympathy towards the stranger who appears similar despite differences in culture and external appearance, as well as all the social institutions responsible for encouraging these reactions, Darwin calls this civilisation. Tort briefly recalls the content:
“Through social instincts (and their consequences on the development of rational and moral capacities) natural selection selects civilisation, which is opposed to natural selection. This is the simplified and current formula of what I have called the reverse effect” (p. 21). It’s a perfectly materialist and dialectical conception. An overturning comes into operation with the appearance of man, who more and more adapts his surroundings to his needs rather than adapting to them, and thus frees himself from the eliminatory grip of natural selection. At the beginning of the process it’s the elimination of the weakest which predominates; then, through a progressive inversion, it’s the protection of the weak that finally imposes itself, an eminent mark of the solidarity of the group. The original error of socio-biology consists of seeing human society as a collection of organisms in struggle; it thus postulates a simple continuity between the biological (reduced to a hypothetical competition of genes) and the social. This is not the case with Darwin. According to him there is a continuity, but it’s a reversive continuity. In effect, the overturning that we have just described produces not a break between biological and social but a new synthesis. According to Tort this notion allows us to understand the theoretical autonomy of the science of man and society, while maintaining the material continuity between nature and culture. It’s a rejection of any dualism, of all rigid opposition between the inner and the acquired, between nature and culture.
The discoveries of Darwin, to which we can add the reverse effect as an indispensible key to understanding his work, represented a real overthrow of our scientific conceptions of the appearance of human society. By calling into question the old certainties (fixism) and the apparent stability of the living world, and by adopting the perspective of its real genealogy, Darwin opened up new horizons. It’s the same type of overturning that was provoked by Anaximander in Greek antiquity when he called into question the dominant view that our planet necessarily had to rest on something. In reality, he affirmed that the Earth floated in space and in this sense there was no up and down. By simply changing how we look at sensual reality, Anaximander opened the door to the discovery of the Earth as a sphere – where people who lived in the antipodes didn’t walk upside-down – and all the scientific advances that flowed from it[vii].
The consequences of Darwin’s discoveries are recalled by Patrick Tort:
At this stage of evolution, natural selection is no longer the main force which governs the future of human beings:
“In other words, if evolution preceded history, history today governs evolution” (p. 1).
“Biology is necessary for the social, but on one hand the social can’t be reduced to the biological, and, on the other hand it is the social which from the point of view of man, actor and judge of his evolution, produces the truth of biology in the capacities that through him biology shows itself apt to reveal” (p. 1).
As there exists a (reversive) continuity between nature and culture, and as “Historic man hasn’t for all that ceased to be an organism, evolution englobes or includes history” (p. 1).
We are not going to reproduce in full the famous quote in chapter IV of The Descent of Man, but only two phrases which are fundamental for understanding the importance of Darwin’s conclusions about man reaching the present stage of “civilisation”: “Once this point is reached, there’s no longer an artificial barrier to prevent sympathies spreading to men of all nations and races. It’s true that if these humans are separated from each other by great differences of exterior appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shows us how it is a long time before we regard them as similar” (Quoted by Tort, p. 23).
By reading The Autobiography[viii] that Darwin reserved solely for his close friends, we can note that he was perfectly conscious of the revolutionary nature of his discoveries, notably of the fact that he called into question belief in God: he himself became an atheist. But he showed an extreme prudence in avoiding, in puritan and religious Victorian England, his book being indexed. We find in this passage the same profound and revolutionary vision of human becoming: national frontiers are artificial barriers that civilisation will have to breach and abolish. Without being communist, without even explicitly envisaging the destruction of national frontiers, Darwin in fact included in his hypothesis a disappearance of the national framework. In this spirit civilisation is not a state of fact, it is a constant and painful movement (“it’s a long time before...”), a continual process of overcoming which, by achieving the unification of humanity, must continue beyond the human species towards sympathy for all sentient beings. Bringing together the perspective forged by Darwin and the one forged by Marx, we consider that on the shoulders of the proletariat and its reconstituted solidarity rests the heavy task of overthrowing bourgeois civilisation in order to allow the free development of human civilisation.
One other important consequence is the way in which we conceive the famous “human nature”. We know the error of the Utopian socialists. Despite all their merits, due to their time they were incapable of defining the premises which, within bourgeois society, favoured the overthrow of existing social relations and the construction of a communist society. It was therefore necessary to invent a whole ideal society which conformed to a human nature as an absolute criterion. By doing this the Utopian socialists took up the dominant vision of their time, an idealist vision still largely extant today, according to which human nature is immutable and eternal. The problem, responded Marx, is that human nature is constantly modified during the course of history. At the same time as man transforms external nature, he transforms his own nature.
The conception defended by Darwin on the relations between nature and culture allows us to go much further than a simple abstract vision of a human nature that’s ephemeral and fluid. A continuity exists between the biological and the cultural, which implies the existence of a constant kernel in human nature, a product of the whole of evolution. Marx shared this vision. It’s what stands out in this passage of Capital where he responds to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham: “To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch”[ix].
Even if the profound roots of human nature have been recognised, the error of interpretation made by the Utopian socialists still remains dominant today. Patrick Tort shows its nature well: “The error is not to affirm the existence of a ‘nature’ in the human being, but to still think of it as an all-powerful heritage which governs it following the intangible law of a sustained and one-sided determinism” (p. 83). This sustained and one-sided dterminism belongs to mechanical materialism. Whereas modern materialism adds an active determination, as Epicurus well understood with his theory of clinamen (the unpredictability or ‘swerve’ of atoms). In his doctorate thesis, The Difference Between the Democritian and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature[x], Marx recognised the considerable contribution of Epicurus which went beyond the reductionist atomism of Lucretius and Democritus and which introduced freedom into matter. This freedom signified that in nature nothing was predestined as absolute determinism claimed, and that there was space for the spontaneity of agents. It meant that for organisms which have acquired a certain autonomy, “at any moment, I can decide on an act, a contrary act or a non-act without the need to be ‘programmed’” (p. 83).
This active materialism – not passive and submissive – defended by Patrick Tort leads to a definition which should be etched in all memories: “’human nature’ is the incalculable sum of all the possibilities of humanity. Or again, on a deliberately existential mode: ‘human nature’ is what is in our own hands” (p. 86).
We have seen above that the persistence of racism, sexism and homophobia are products of a society divided into classes. It’s important to keep this in mind because it is then possible to understand why the struggle of the proletariat, because it’s the only class that can lead to the abolition of classes, includes the struggle against these different phenomena. Whereas the inverse is not true. As soon as anti-racism or feminism claim to wage an autonomous struggle they rapidly become a weapon against the working class and take their place within the dominant ideology. It’s the same with pacifism which, when it’s not explicitly linked to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against capitalism as a social system, is transformed into a dangerous mystification.
But these are still real problems for the proletariat and we must, with Tort, refine the analysis. Xenophobia is not simply a rejection of the Other because of the perception of totally different characteristics. This element is flagrant in the case of racism, but that can and must be explained in a deeper way: “Racism is the rejection of what one exteriorises, of what one hates most in oneself” (p. 22). Fundamentally, what is rejected in the Other is not the difference, it’s what one wants to banish from oneself. “In the most extreme versions, racism must then define itself less as the simple ‘rejection of the Other’ than as the negation of similarity in similarity through the fabrication of the “Other” as vile and threatening” (p. 23).
The person or population aimed at doesn’t represent an unknown menace; it is considered a threat because it is precisely part of ourselves, the part that we consider contemptible. As Patrick Tort says, German Jews and Christians lived together for more than sixteen centuries. It is the one who is most similar that becomes the victim that it’s necessary to kill. In the Old Testament, “the ritual of the ‘scapegoat’ is a ritual of atonement, which exteriorises the guilty part of oneself and dedicates it to the demon and symbolic death in the desert” (p. 28). We know that bourgeois society has very often been the theatre of pogroms or genocides and that the dominant class bears the entire responsibility for them. But it’s necessary to widen our understanding of these phenomena and not stop at their most spectacular manifestations. We should examine to what point the search for a scapegoat and the pogromist mentality, with the extreme violence that they contain, are rooted in the soil of capitalist society, where they always find the nourishment they need.
If you re-read the passage from The Descent of Man quoted above, you can understand better what Darwin wanted to underline with these words: “It’s a long time before we regard them as similar”. The very principle of civilisation is the process of the development of sympathy, that’s to say the recognition of similarity in the other. As this civilisation is the product of natural selection before being overthrown, the process of the elimination of the elimination (the reverse effect according to Tort) is still ongoing and a backward turn is always periodically possible. But from what we’ve said above it means we can’t talk about a still primitive “human nature”. “Anthropology influenced by Darwin has never ceased to metaphorically use a biological concept in order to interpret, within civilisation, the reappearance of ancestral behaviours that return the human to his animal origins: this is the concept of the atavistic return, unfortunately inflated and besmirched in the French hereditary psychiatry of the nineteenth century and in the Italian criminal anthropology which inspired it, but which is nevertheless useful for thinking about what remains, and what can potentially re-emerge, of a persistent ancestral heritage” (p. 27).
The argument most used to fight racism consists of explaining that what appears as great differences in exterior appearances of human beings is objectively negligible when put on the genetic or molecular level. We know very little about “race”, the argument goes on, because in fact it’s the name used for a pseudo-reality and what we do know about it seems enough to conclude that it is non-existent. It is thus ridiculous to be racist. This argument is totally unworkable says Patrick Tort. If tomorrow, scientific research affirmed, thanks to new discoveries, that “races” existed biologically, would that then justify racism? The weakness of this argument comes from the fact that racism addresses itself to phenotypes[xi](biological and cultural) and not to genotypes[xii], to whole individuals with their observable characteristics and not to their molecules. It is thus easy for identity-based conservatism (Alain de Benoist, Zemmour, Le Pen) and for all the racists to appeal to common sense: the races are an evidence that all the world can see, it’s enough to compare a Scandinavian and an Indian.
It’s certain that the non-scientific use which is made of the word “race” totally disqualifies its use and obliges us to at least put it in inverted commas. But in reality “races” do exist and as such correspond to “varieties” which distinguish the identifiable subdivisions within a species. Certainly it’s a very difficult notion to demarcate, it is not homogenous, it remains even more in flux than the notion of species, because the living ceaselessly evolve under the effect of incessant variations and the modification of their milieu. Thus species are not perennial entities but groups that classification ranges under categories. They exist nevertheless. Darwin showed that species are in permanent transformation, but that at the same time it is possible to distinguish them because they correspond to a stabilisation – certainly relative or temporary if they are placed on a geological time-scale – imposed by the presence of other species in competition with them in the struggle for existence, and even by the need for classification. There is, under the regularity of specific forms, an effective combination in relation to a given milieu and an ecological niche which explains why individuals of the same species look alike. “Even if it’s understood that in the history of the science of organisms, classificatory divisions have only a temporary and technical value, there is still a naturalist sense to say that there is a single human species, and that this species, as roughly all biological species, comprises of varieties. In the naturalist tradition ‘race’ is synonymous with ‘variety’” (p. 33).
Racism is a social phenomenon and it is at this level that it’s necessary to respond to it. From this point of view the colonial past continues to have harmful consequences and the proletariat will have to firmly combat “an ideology which turns human characteristics into signs of native and permanent inferiority, as well as a threat to other human beings” (p. 41).
The problematic is globally the same for the question of sexism. Sex is a biological reality, but “gender” is really a constructed cultural reality and thus a becoming, a possibility which remains open. The radical attitude of some feminists or of certain “gender studies” which want to “denaturalise” sex is as stupid as that which denies the reality of visible inter-racial differences. The fight for the social equality of men and women, which will never happen under capitalism, the fight for sympathy towards others, that’s to say for the recognition of the Other as similar despite all the cultural differences – all these combats are at the heart of Darwin’s anthropology. Proletarian ethics continue this heritage. That’s why the struggle for communism is not the work of robotised and undifferentiated individuals, and has nothing to do with a negation of cultural differences. It defines itself as unification in diversity, inclusion of the Other within one association, the creation of a community which has need of the richness of all cultures[xiii].
The critique of dualism and the demand for a reversive continuity between nature and culture, between biology and society, leads us to a rigorous definition of human nature and takes up the Darwinian idea of civilisation as a still unachieved process. What are the consequences for the revolutionary struggle? Within capitalism this struggle is before everything a struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, even if it bears within it the emancipation of all of humanity. The proletariat must prepare itself for a particularly difficult civil war faced with a bourgeoisie which will never accept giving up power. However it’s not mainly by force of arms that the proletariat will carry the decision. The essence of its strength comes from its capacity for organisation, from its class consciousness and in its natural tendency, on the one hand to achieve unity and on the other hand to draw behind it all the non-exploited layers, or, at least, to neutralise them in periods of indecision about the outcome of the combat. Does this process of unification and integration operate automatically under the pretext that man is a social being and that human nature contains the evolutionary advantage supplied by the generalisation of the sentiment of sympathy? Of course not. But the results of the scientific approach exposed in the book by Patrick Tort, confirm the marxist vision of the importance of the subjective factor for the proletariat, in particular of consciousness, and more globally of culture. They confirm the validity of the Communist Left against the fatalism of degenerating social democracy which defended the opportunist position of a gradual, automatic and peaceful passage of capitalism to socialism. They confirm that the future of humanity is in the hands of the proletariat.
Avrom Elberg
[i] On the nature of violence within bourgeois society, see our article: “Terrror, terrorism and class violence”:https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html [1462]. International Review, no. 14, 1978 on our site.
[ii] Tort demonstrates this all through the 1000 pages of Qu’est que le materialisme? , Paris, Berlin, 2006. We recommend this book of Patrick Tort in order to deepen the questions treated here.
[iii] We have presented the work of this author and the idea of the reverse effect of evolution in the article The Darwin Effect, A materialist conception of the origins of morality and civilisation on our site https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/2842 [1491]
[iv] On France Culture, Jean Gayon, a philosopher specialising in the history of sciences and epistemology, doesn’t fear resorting to banality when he declares of Darwin that “he’s neither Jesus nor Marx” (La Marche des Sciences, broadcast February 4, 2016, called “Darwin under fire from today’s reality”).
[v] The International Communist Party which publishes Le Proletaire in France undoubtedly belong to the “premature gravediggers”. You can verify this by reading its magazine, Programme Communiste no. 102, February 2014. In a polemic aimed at the ICC, this group, blinded by the Malthusian legend of Darwin, undertake a real tour de force by confusing not only the Darwin and the social Darwinism of Spencer, but in the same outburst, Darwin with sociobiology.
[vi] By “higher animals” traditionally in natural history we mean the warm-blooded vertebrates - the birds and mammals.
[vii] See our article on the ICC English website https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4739/reading-notes-science-and-marxism [1380].
[ix] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm#S5 [1493]
Karl Marx, Capital, chapter XXIV, Section V, “The so-called labour funds”.
[xi] Phenotypes: in genetics, all of the observable characteristics of an individual.
[xii] Genotype: all of an individual’s genes.
[xiii] The proletarian vision of the richness of culture, considered as a positive factor in the fight for unity in struggle – in total opposition to multiculturalism and bourgeois communalism which reproduce the ideology of identity politics– is developed, with numerous historical examples, in our article “Immigration and the workers’ movement” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/immigration [1495] on our website.
This article, written by a close contact of the ICC in the USA, looks at the current difficulties of the American bourgeoisie as revealed in the Trump candidacy and the rise of populism. Although written before the most recent scandal about Trump’s abusive attitude to women, this episode confirms a central point of the analysis in the article – the existence of a concerted attempt by the more serious factions of the ruling class, across the party divide, to keep Trump out of the White house.
A second part of the article, looking more closely at the situation of the working class in the US, and particularly the deep divisions within its ranks, will be published in the wake of the election.
As the 2016 US Presidential campaign approaches its crescendo, the media promises us this election might be the most important in US History. The bombastic billionaire Donald J. Trump, representing the Republican Party, and the much berated former First Lady and Democratic Senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton face one another in a dramatic showdown amid a media spectacle designed to convince the populace of the absolute importance of participating in the electoral process even when neither candidate is a source of great inspiration.
For the vast majority of the pundits, commentators and analysts arrayed on cable television each evening, and whose articles litter Facebook feeds, it is absolutely imperative for the American public to defeat the racist, xenophobic and even ‘fascist’ menace of Trump, even if it means voting for a less than stellar candidate in Clinton. Meanwhile, the minority of talking heads aligned with Trump implore the American voter to reject the politics of the status quo, take a chance on a true outsider and defeat the criminal Clinton, who they say belongs in prison anyway. This amped up rhetoric makes it all look like high stakes for the country and indeed the entire world. The main theme the media pushes day in and day out is that a veritable existential crisis of global civilization might befall us all should Trump somehow win the White House.
From our perspective, we have to once again categorically state the well-tested position of the communist left that the working class has nothing to gain by participating in this electoral swamp. Whether it is voting for Clinton to stop the country from falling into the hands of a dangerous tyrant, pulling the lever for Trump to reject the status quo and “make America great again” or supporting a minor party candidate to display one’s utter disgust with the other options, voting only serves to draw the working class onto the political terrain of the bourgeoisie and derail it from an autonomous fight to defend its living and working conditions.
At the end of the day, whoever wins the election and becomes the next President of the United States, the fundamental underlying conditions of capitalist decomposition that drive the deepening problems of bourgeois political life will remain. Electing Clinton might stop Trump, but it won’t stop the economic, social and cultural dislocations that drive Trumpism (and the populist upsurge more broadly). Electing Trump might stop the shady, corrupt, neo-liberal Clinton from assuming office, but wouldn’t the former reality TV star and neophyte politician really just turn policy over to the same old clique of “experts” as before? And voting for a minor party candidate like Jill Stein (Green Party) or Gary Johnson (Libertarian) might make one feel good about oneself for a few moments as a protest against the two main choices, but then the sad realization that either Clinton or Trump will be President will assuredly quickly set in. What is to be gained then from voting?
No, the only genuine route to struggle against all this for the working class is to resume the defense of its living and working conditions outside this sick electoral circus and beyond the control of all the bourgeois parties – right, left or center. While we recognize that present conditions may certainly hamper this process and that as a result many sections of the working class will be drawn into this electoral fray on one side or the other, we see no reason why this should alter our defense of the principle of abstaining from bourgeois elections that has been a fundamental position of the communist left for the last century
We also must say that on an objective level, the evolution of the US political scene over the last several years has been a stark confirmation of the analysis we have been developing since at least the botched Presidential Election of 2000 that led to George W. Bush becoming President over Al Gore – against the wishes of the main factions of the US bourgeoisie. According to this analysis, the conditions of capitalist social decomposition are exerting a reciprocal effect on the life of the ruling class itself, making it more and more difficult for the US bourgeoisie to control the outcome of its electoral apparatus to produce the results it desires. The botched election of 2000 led to the eight-year Bush Presidency that largely squandered the inter-imperialist advantage the 9/11 attacks gave the US state by invading Iraq in a unilateral and careless way, leading to a precipitous decline in the prestige of the United States on the international level and the increasing frustration of its imperialist goals.
While the US bourgeoisie was able to temporarily right the ship with the election of the first African-American President Barack Obama in 2008 – reinvigorating the image of the US state internationally, reviving the electoral illusion for millions, especially among the younger generations, and providing a measured response to the outbreak of the Great Recession in 2008 – these gains proved frustratingly fleeting. Obama’s Presidency served to ignite a fierce right-wing resistance in the form of the Tea Party, which over the course of his term in office saw the Republican Party increasingly fall under the influence of an erratic and ideologically driven faction of right-wing diehards who could not be trusted to take the reigns of national government.1
Although early in his administration Obama was able to ram through a health care reform plan that has so far survived court challenges from the right, as his Presidency has unfolded, it has become increasingly clear to large swathes of the American public who voted for him that he would simply not be the transformative figure of his campaign rhetoric: he has continued Bush’s mass surveillance programs, aggressively stepped up America’s droning operations abroad, done little to counter income inequality, increased deportations of immigrants and surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders from the start.
Moreover, although Obama has so far avoided entangling the US state in new Bush style Cowboy adventures abroad, his stated international policy of “leading from behind” has not endeared him to the war hawks in either party, as he has come in for increasingly harsh criticism for not standing up to Putin, allowing Syria’s Assad to cross the red line of chemical weapons use without consequences, watching Libya slip into chaos and not sufficiently bombing the Islamic State. On the domestic front, the unabated march of income inequality, the continued hollowing out of the “middle class,” and a failure to bring the contentious political rancor about immigration to a close have fueled a furious “populist” rejection of Obama’s Presidency by many in the so-called “white working class.” 2
This populist upsurge, coupled with the increasing descent of the Republican Party into ideologically driven positions, has created a dangerous situation for the US bourgeoisie at the close of the Obama Presidency. No longer able to trust the Republican Party with national office, the main factions of the US bourgeoisie have been forced to rely almost solely on the Democratic Party as the party of national governance. The increasing difficulty to manipulate election results and the now centuries old institutions of the US state have meant that Obama has had to deal with a Republican Congress for most of his Presidency. This has only increased the pressure on the Democratic Party to transform itself from the ostensible “party of the working class” to a neo-liberal party of technocratic governance and to increasingly show this face to the American public.
As a result, over the course of the Obama Presidency, the Democratic Party itself has become increasingly unmasked as a ‘neo-liberal’ party beholden to the same capitalist interests as the Republicans – discrediting it in the eyes of millions, especially among white workers and self-employed people who have become enamored by Trump’s populism, but also the younger generations, many of whom who were attracted to the insurgent candidacy of the “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign.
These are the main fault lines that have defined the 2016 Presidential campaign for the US bourgeoisie. On the one hand stands a dangerous figure the main factions of the bourgeoisie simply cannot risk assuming the ship of state; on the other a largely discredited representative of the old political guard, who is despised by large sections of the population both right and left – if for different reasons. How can the bourgeoisie manage such a perilous situation? We will explore that question in some analytical detail below.
One thing in this election campaign is certain: the main factions of the US bourgeoisie do not want Trump to win the Presidency. This is true regardless of political party. The Republican Party establishment is as much afraid of a Trump Presidency as the Democratic Party. Major figures in the Republican Party such as the Bush family have signaled they will not vote for Trump. Staples of the “movement conservative” press like the National Review actively oppose him and Republican candidates for Congress and the Senate have had to keep their distance lest they alienate the all important swing voter. While Trump may have the stated support of some Republican figures concerned about their own political future, who do not want to run afoul of the populist upsurge, it’s clear that Trump is regarded as an interloper in the Republican Party.3 Once a Democrat who supported abortion rights and socialized medicine, and who has even sung the praises of the Clintons in the past, Trump’s credentials as a social conservative are in serious doubt. Moreover, his willingness to trash the Iraq War, run down the Bushes and praise Russian President Putin are not in keeping with the Republican Party’s neo-conservative doctrines on foreign policy. So how in the heck did Trump win the Republican Party nomination for President?
The answer to this lies as much in the trajectory of the GOP itself, as in the figure of Trump. As the Obama Presidency unfolded, the Republican Party – already reeling from the disastrous second Bush Presidency – adopted an increasingly hostile and oppositional stance to the President. In the 2010 mid-term elections a new crop of hardcore ideologues associated with the Tea Party movement were elected to Congress, forcing the Republican Party establishment to accommodate an increasingly boisterous right-wing allergic to compromise and even to governance itself.
From violently opposing Obama’ healthcare reform efforts to government shutdowns and even threatening to default on the US national debt, the Tea Party insurgency gave the Republican Party new electoral life in the wake of Obama’s rousing victory, while at the same time threatening the stability of GOP institutions. From 2009, the Republican Party played a dangerous game with the Tea Party, whereby it reaped its insurgent energy for electoral success, while risking a hostile takeover by a virtual mob-like hydra of hardcore right-wingers within its ranks. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner was forced to play a careful cat and mouse game with these insurgents, balancing electoral and political success with the need for actual state governance, which always requires compromises with the other side of the aisle. Eventually however, dealing with the Tea Party insurgents proved too much for Boehner and he resigned from the Speakership in 2014, at which point it was only reluctantly assumed by Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.
As the Obama Presidency unfolded, it became increasingly clear to the main factions of the US bourgeoisie that the Republican Party could not be trusted to contain its radicals and therefore it was not a viable option to put a Republican in charge of the White House. With a choice between functional gridlock and uncertainty of what an empowered Tea Party movement would bring forth in the Republican Party, the main factions of the US bourgeoisie opted for the former. It was in this context that the US bourgeoisie began preparations for Hillary Clinton, then serving as Obama’s Secretary of State, to succeed Obama as President.
However, just because the main factions of the bourgeoisie have decided to back one candidate in the election doesn’t mean they cancel the campaign. The state still must field candidates from each of the main parties in order to preserve its democratic façade. And although historically the US state has had remarkable success in manipulating the electoral process to produce the desired outcome – particularly through manipulation of the media narrative – the process is not guaranteed to always work as planned, as the election of 2000 showed. In politics, as in life, accidents happen. With each election there is the risk the wrong candidate will win and the US bourgeoisie will be stuck with a less than optimum choice in the executive mansion. While in times past this has not posed a dramatic problem as generally each candidate could be steered by the institutions of the state (the permanent bureaucracy) towards policies enjoying a general consensus among the main factions of the ruling class, the present day descent of the Republican Party has complicated the matter, making it that much more essential that the Democrat prevail in the end.
Historically, the long drawn out primary process has been the main tool through which the US bourgeoisie ensured that the best possible candidate, from its point of view, would become the nominee of each major party. The primary process is consciously designed to weed out mavericks and insurgents as it favors establishment candidates with the political and financial backing of the party hierarchy. However, much like in 2012, the 2016 Republican Party primary opened with a carnival-like atmosphere. With 17 candidates representing various factions of the party, including maverick billionaire Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party primary was generally billed as the contest to see who would lose to Hillary Clinton in the General Election.
Nevertheless, even if the main factions of the bourgeoisie were generally lined up behind Clinton, it was still desirable for them to push forward a Republican who could be a credible governing alternative if an accident happened or Clinton’s own legal troubles proved too much to overcome. Set up for this task were figures like former Florida Governor (and brother and son to former Presidents) Jeb Bush, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (an Hispanic who once favored immigration reform) and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (a darling of the Tea Party who nevertheless appeared to govern effectively, having faced down mass protests over his right-to-work law in 2011 and an attempt to recall him from office). Each of these candidates had their own political baggage, but they had nevertheless shown themselves to be malleable to the political consensus of the main factions of the bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, the 2016 Republican primary would not turn out like it did in 2012 when establishment candidate Mitt Romney (considered a safe alternative to Barack Obama) fended off a series of insurgent challengers to secure the nomination. The 2016 contest would see Trump systematically take down each of his rivals with a hurl of personal insults and embarrassing call-outs of their political failures. Bush and Rubio were denounced as soft on immigration, while Scott Walker was dispatched for turning his state into a fiscal disaster.4 None of these establishment candidates ever appeared to pose a serious challenge to Trump, flooring the political pundits and seemingly putting fear into the hearts of bourgeois institutions. In fact, Trump’s only serious challenger, the Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz, was himself a radical outsider despised by a political establishment that only belatedly coalesced around him to try to stop an even greater evil in Trump.
When Trump accepted the Republican Party nomination for President at the party convention in July, it was the culmination of some of the deepest fears of the main factions of the US bourgeoisie (outside of proletarian revolution): an unpredictable, erratic and dangerous figure, considered something like a Messiah to his followers, had usurped the mantle of one of its two main political parties. Certainly, from the point of view of the main factions of the bourgeois, the two party system was now in jeopardy, if not the democratic ideological apparatus itself. There was nothing left to do, but to furiously oppose Trump in the general election – something which, as we will see, the main factions of the bourgeoisie had already concluded required Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination.
But how did Trump do it? How did he succeed where so many insurgent campaigns had faltered before? This is a question that will likely puzzle academic political scientists and sociologists for some time to come, but what seems clear is that Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party is a result of the intersection of his embrace of an international wave of populist politics and his unique personality and personal wealth. Not being beholden to political donors and party institutional structures, Trump was free to conduct a true maverick campaign that took up the main themes of political populism emerging across the old industrial world today: a critique of neo-liberal policies, a promise to defend domestic industries and jobs from outsourcing and international trade deals, a pledge to beef up the safety net for displaced workers and a fierce opposition to immigration – seen by many ‘lower class’ whites as the source of lower wages, declining living standards and community disintegration.5
Substantively, these policies have an appeal to many,, even if only in the sense that they appear the opposite of the bourgeois policy consensus from both major parties over the last several decades.. Copying part of the stylistic playbook of Italian fascism, Trump has built a virtual cult of personality around himself (something that goes back to his days as a pop culture icon in reality TV) that has captured the attention of millions of Americans who are so disgusted with the politics of the neo-liberal capitalist consensus they are willing to take a chance on a man every “responsible” media outlet and pundit tells them is a disaster in the making. However, from the point of view of Trump’s base, the disaster has already happened, only continues to deepen and none of the “responsible” candidates appear to want to do anything about it. Trump’s candidacy is in large part an insurgency fueled by the desperation of millions of working class people whose once relatively stable jobs and expectation of social improvement appear to have been frustrated precisely by the kind of policies liberal elite consensus tells them are in their best interests (Globalization, outsourcing, free trade, etc.).
Still, even if Trump’s stated policy preferences are not in line with the wishes of the main factions of the ruling class today, we must be clear that they nevertheless do not escape the realm of bourgeois policy itself. In fact, it is probably the case that the main factions of the bourgeoisie are right that his stated policies are simply incompatible with the objective political-economic condition of the capitalist world today. Should he by some chance upset expectations and win the Presidency, the working class should be clear that this would not result in the restoration of some Halcyon way of life from the good old days of the post-World War II economic expansion. Rather, he will likely either fail miserably in implementing his policies due to resistance from other bourgeois factions or we will find out that his Presidential aims were in fact a giant hoax all along, as he hands real executive power off to the professional politicians and policy wonks of the very same factions of the ruling class he claims to hate.6 And of course, if he ever did implement his stated policies, that would certainly make things even worse for the majority of the working class - as British workers have already found to their cost, with a collapse in the pound sterling and corresponding abrupt increase in inflation. Trumpian style populism is no answer for what ails the working class.
As we have seen, the Republican Party has rendered itself too volatile for the main factions of the bourgeoisie to trust in the executive mansion at this juncture in time. However, the very descent of the Republican Party has had a reciprocal effect on the Democratic Party, whereby it is increasingly called upon to shed its veneer as the “party of the working class,” and reveal itself as the neo-liberal capitalist institution it is. This process has accelerated over the course of the 2016 campaign and was particularly manifested in the contentious primary showdown between the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and insurgent upstart Bernie Sanders – the “democratic socialist” Senator from Vermont.
As the 2016 primary season began, the main factions of the bourgeoisie had already long ago settled on Hillary Clinton as their preferred candidate to succeed Obama in the White House. Whatever their fierce rivalry in the 2008 Democratic primary, which saw Obama apply a momentary brake to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions, the main factions of the bourgeoisie believed that a Clinton Presidency would be the best chance for a stable transition to a new administration and could keep the democratic electoral illusion going. Having voted in Obama as the first African-American President in 2008, the American public would now have the chance in 2016 to vote in the first female President. Having supposedly defeated racism in the 2008 election, the American voter was now ostensibly given the chance to deliver a giant victory for the feminist cause. As such, this time the Democratic primary was supposed to be a virtual coronation of Queen Hillary, as she was expected to face no serious challengers. In fact, many pundits worried that the lack of a serious primary challenger might put her off the game when the general election campaign started in the summer against a battle-tested Republican nominee.
Alas, the coronation proved to be long in coming. The Clinton campaign would face a protracted and surprisingly strong primary challenge from the left in the form of Vermont’s “democratic socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders’ insurgent campaign was likely not anticipated by the main factions of the bourgeoisie, who probably believed he would amount to little more than a protest candidate earning a paltry single digit vote share. However, as Sanders managed a virtual tie with Hillary in the pivotal Iowa caucus and then surged to clobber her in the New Hampshire primary, the main factions of the bourgeoisie – through the institutions of the Democratic Party and the liberal media – were thrown into a panic.
Buoyed by overwhelming support from the so-called “millennial” generation of younger voters who regard Clinton as part of a discredited old guard of neo-liberal politicians out of touch with the emerging “progressive” consensus, Sanders threatened to make a real game of it. Even if he wouldn’t actually win the primary, his protracted presence – running a genuine campaign in which he correctly and effectively painted Clinton as a neo-liberal friend of Wall Street – threatened to weaken the candidate preferred by the main factions of the bourgeoisie in the general election. Already facing possible indictment over her email scandals and already detested by many voters after years of right-wing attacks, Clinton could not afford to lose the millennial generation (so critical in Obama’s electoral victories) to third party candidates or protest abstentionism.
What followed can be described as nothing less than a political nightmare for the Democratic Party, and its allies in the media, as seemingly no plausible attack was left unused in the quest to make sure Clinton prevailed. Sanders was roundly attacked in the media for being a utopian dreamer out of touch with objective reality, and his supporters were painted as mostly white privileged brats who just wanted everything for free. The Clinton campaign actually employed a small army of paid operatives to patrol social media to “correct” anti-Hillary posts and degrade Sanders. The Vermont Senator’s male supporters were labeled misogynist “Bernie Bros,” while Sanders himself was said to be myopically concerned with class and economic inequality to the detriment of the Democratic Party’s tried and true identity politics around race, gender and sexual orientation. This was of course a way of slandering Sanders and his supporters as out-of-touch white guys, blinded by their “white privilege.” The Clinton campaign actually trotted out African-American surrogates, like former Civil Rights activist turned Congressman John Lewis, to delegitimize Sanders’ own background as a civil rights campaigner in the 1960s while a student at the University of Chicago.
In a bizarre turn of events, before the primary was over, the Clinton campaign, her surrogates, the Democratic Party itself and the liberal media were all basically running a campaign against Roosevelt’s New Deal itself, suggesting that it was based on “white privilege” and that many of its structures were simply incompatible with social reality today.7 Clinton ran against socialized medicine, juxtaposing it to the great “achievement” of the Obama administration – Obamacare, which still leaves millions of Americans without health insurance – and argued Sanders’ goal of free tuition at state universities was simply practically impossible. Rather than run a “Hope and Change” and “Yes, We Can!” campaign as Obama had in 2008, winning over millienials in the process, Hillary was forced to run on an “Accept and be Satisfied” and “No, We Can’t” message. Far from being a candidate of transformative progressive change, Clinton and the Democratic Party itself were revealed as part and parcel of the capitalist political infrastructure, just more useless politicians like all the other useless politicians for tens of thousands of younger voters who had become enamored of Sanders’ message of an expanded Social Democracy and political mobilization in the context of the emergence of something resembling a movement culture.
As the primary progressed and voting irregularity after voting irregularity emerged, many Sanders supporters became increasingly convinced that the Democratic Party was in fact stealing the election from their candidate and handing it over to Clinton in something of a corporate coup d’etat. These suspicions were confirmed in the summer when WikiLeaks released a series of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) showing that the party structures did in fact conspire to defeat Sanders and ensure Clinton was their party’s nominee. However, whatever the veracity of the various “vote rigging” allegations made against the Democratic Party by Sanders supporters, the fact that so many believe them is itself an ominous sign. The Democratic Party and its nominee not only appear as corporate shills to many in the younger generations, they also seem to operate on the level of a third world tyranny. The democratic electoral apparatus itself is now called into question as a result of the Democratic Party’s rather desperate and clumsy conduct in the primary campaign to ensure Clinton would fend off the challenge from Sanders.
Of course, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party wouldn’t have engaged in such tactics if they didn’t think it was to their electoral advantage and indeed this all proved too much for Bernie Sanders to overcome. For whatever his strengths among disillusioned younger voters and those liberals and progressives disappointed with the Obama legacy, Sanders simply could not make major headway with older minority voters, older women and the various levels of the “professional class” that have become the Democratic Party’s electoral base. The Clinton campaign played its advantage with minorities to the hilt, often engaging in blatant pandering to these groups in something of an absurd complement to Trump’s racial demagoguery. In one debate, Clinton promised not to deport non-criminal illegal immigrants – a promise few serious observers can believe she has any intention of keeping if elected.8 Clinton’s new found progressive discourse on race stood in stark contrast to her conduct as First Lady when she demonized black youth as “Super Predators” or in the 2008 Democratic Primary, when her campaign used racial dog whistle politics to attack Obama for attending the church of the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.9
Clinton’s blatant flip-flopping on racial politics stood for many as another example of the Clintons’ willingness to “triangulate,” which means being willing to say whatever is politically convenient for them at the moment for a particular audience. Far from constituting the optimistic candidate of a better tomorrow, Clinton has come to be despised by many would-be Democratic Party voters as a slick but substanceless political operative who will say whatever it takes in her quest for political power. Many appear to hate her even more than they hate Trump, even if it’s only because they assume Trump is honest about his bigotry, while Clinton hides her regressive policies behind nice-sounding, but utterly dishonest rhetoric.
In the end, all of Clinton’s advantages proved too much for the upstart Sanders campaign to overcome and Clinton was eventually able to secure the Democratic nomination in advance of the party’s convention in Philadelphia in July. Still, having won 45% of the vote in the primary, Senator Sanders had built up considerable political capital within the Democratic Party. While the main factions of the bourgeoisie may hate him, they also know they need him to play along if their goal of assuring Clinton ascends to the White House over Trump will be achieved. What would Sanders do? Would he go rogue and run as a third party candidate splintering the Democratic Party vote and handing the Presidency to Trump? Would he endorse the Green Party candidate Jill Stein with the same result or would he accept his defeat “graciously,” endorse Clinton and turn his attention to defeating the greater evil of Donald J. Trump?
Anyone who has followed Sanders’ career over the years already knew the answer. Although nominally a political independent, Sanders has always caucused with the Democrats in Congress. He campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1996 and has publicly criticized third party candidates in the past. However distasteful it was to him after his stinging political defeat in a contest that was almost certainly not fair even by bourgeois standards, Sanders nevertheless endorsed Clinton and promised to do whatever he could to keep Trump from becoming President. He gave a rousing speech at the Democratic convention actually claiming – after months of saying the opposite – that Clinton would make a “great President.” From a dangerous insurgent threatening to derail the main factions of the bourgeoisie’s plans, Sanders now became their “useful idiot,” nevertheless becoming among the most important figures in the general election, tasked with delivering his millennial followers for Clinton.
The problem for the main factions of the bourgeoisie was that, to many of Sanders’ erstwhile supporters, this sudden about-face did not seem at all credible. How could the beloved and incorruptible Bernie go from a harsh critic of this war-mongering corporate stooge to calling her a great candidate for President virtually overnight? Many refused to believe it or concluded that some coercion had been worked to make Sanders change course. What did they threaten him with? A harsh lesson in the realities of bourgeois electoral politics was being taught. Still others simply gave up on the Bernie bandwagon and concluded he was a sell-out politician himself who took millions of dollars in small donations, promising a new kind of politics only to turn it all over to the same corporatists he claimed to despise. Many of these voters have since moved on to Greener pastures (no pun intended), such as Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Others, impressed with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson’s stance on legalizing marijuana, now carry his banner.
In any case, Clinton’s continuing difficulties with millennial voters is now a major problem for the main factions of the bourgeoisie. Younger voters’ fascination with Barack Obama was the main catalyst for his two electoral victories. Now eight years after Obama’s historic election, many millennials have given up on the Democratic Party altogether – seeing it as the corrupt neo-liberal capitalist institution it is. In their immediate quest to get Clinton elected over Trump, the main factions of the bourgeoisie have unleashed a massive propaganda campaign designed to make these millennials vote for Hillary anyway. This has taken the form of a typical anti-fascist campaign, attempting to convince them that whatever their distaste for Clinton, Trump will inevitably be worse. The fascist must be stopped even if it means voting for the contemptible corporatist.
But the propaganda campaign hasn’t stopped there. A viciousshame campaign has been unleashed in the media and on social networks, shaming anyone who says they will vote third party or stay at home in November. Denouncing such voters as “spoiled,” “privileged” or simply race baiting them as out-of-touch white men, the ideological mouthpieces of the ruling class are engaged in an intense campaign to discipline the younger generation and instruct them in the proper rules of American two-party democracy In the United States’ first-past-the-post system, Duverger’s Law10 is operative – you only get two choices. Voting for a minor party candidate or staying at home will only help the insurgent neo-fascist populism that is on the rise today. If Trump wins it will be the millennial generation’s fault, or Sanders fault or the fault of those political “purists” too good to cast a vote for a flawed candidate. According to this ideological campaign, it will be anyone but the Democratic Party and Clinton’s fault if the nation and the world are forced to endure Trump.
While it is reasonable to expect that the anti-fascist shame campaign will largely succeed and most erstwhile Sanders supporters will cast ballots for Clinton in November, it is also clear that many will do so only grudgingly. For many of these unenthusiastic Clinton voters, the Democratic Party has been revealed as a contemptible institution unworthy of long term electoral loyalty in the absence of a fascist menace like Trump. If it were any other Republican running against Hillary this time, she may very well lose.11 For the main factions of the bourgeoisie, this situation is indeed fraught with peril. As the Republican Party descends further into ideology, incoherence and erratic behavior, the Democratic Party must be called upon as the party of rational and responsible bourgeois governance. However, the more and more it fulfills the role, without another credible party to balance it out, its ideological veneer as the party of the working class and the oppressed is further revealed to be an illusion. Bourgeois electoral ideology finds itself sinking ever deeper into a crisis.
Henk, 10.10.16
1 See Our “The Tea Party”: Capitalist Ideology in Decomposition [1498]"
2 We won’t pretend that there isn’t a good chunk of old fashioned racism in the anger towards Obama from among white members of the working class, but it is also clear that part of the rancor comes from white workers who voted for him amidst the unfolding economic crisis of 2008, but who were quickly disappointed by his failures to enact any kind of substantive improvement in their standard of living, other than a half- baked health care reform plan that did little to stem the rising cost of health care in the only major country without a national health program.
3 It is true that while many establishment Republicans have openly rejected Trump, the leaders of the party infrastructure – such as Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus – have had to reluctantly come over to his side. The risk that the Republican Party would openly split apart was a constant fear of the bourgeoisie during the primary campaign. It was necessary for the sake of the stability of the two party system that once Trump won the nomination in the primary contests the party could not be seen to actively oppose him. Of course, the risk of a splintering of the Republican Party is still present, even if it has been momentarily suppressed.
4 Poor Rand Paul (a darling of libertarians, but never a serious candidate for the Presidency) was taken out when Trump simply implied he was ugly.
5 Of course Trump, running as a Republican, has also had to accommodate numerous standard Republican ideas and has given some lip service to social conservative positions on abortion. The extent to which he actually believes any of that is anyone’s guess, but he has actively courted the LGBTQ2 vote in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting, which he blamed on Islamic homophobia – hardly a typical right-wing tactic in American politics, but typical of various populist parties in Europe.
6 This appeared to be exactly what Trump was planning when reports emerged that he was courting former rival John Kasich to run with him as the Vice Presidential candidate. According to these reports, Trump promised to let Kasich run both foreign and domestic policy, with Trump assuming a figurehead-like role of “making American great again.” While it was more or less an open secret during the early period of the G.W. Bush administration that VP Cheney was running things, it is pretty clear that given Trump’s personality and temperament, such an arrangement this time would have been nothing short of a disaster for the US state.
7 See the Left Business Observer’s Doug Henwood’s [1499] comments on this.
8 To be fair, Sanders made the same promise – the difference being he probably sincerely meant it.
9 It has been suggested by many on the right that it was actually the 2008 Clinton campaign that was responsible for the emergence of the racist “birther conspiracy” regarding Obama’s qualifications for the Presidency. While the campaign itself never used this particular attack, evidence has emerged that it was indeed suggested by one campaign strategist as a potential avenue to delegitimize Obama.
10 A concept in academic political science, Duverger’s Law states that the nature of a country’s voting system will determine the number of viable national parties. A first-past-the-post system generally ensures that only two parties will ever compete for national office. In this conception, voting for a third party in such a situation is irrational, because it only increases the chances the party one is least aligned with will win.
11 A fact that has stoked conspiracy theories that Trump’s candidacy is actually a hoax based on a compact with the Clintons to blow-up the Republican Party and ensure Hillary wins in November – meanwhile Trump gets massive free media exposure to feed his narcissistic ego and keep his family’s brand in the spotlight. While there is no credible evidence this is true, the extremely bizarre way that Trump has run his campaign since securing the Republican nomination certainly raises questions about his seriousness. In fact, it is not only wild conspiracy nutters who have proposed this. It has been suggested, if jokingly, by none other than one of Trump’s vanquished Republican foes Jeb Bush [1500].
In 2014 we published an article on the fast food workers’ struggles in the USA, ‘Capitalist astro-turfing finds its way to the trade unions [1504]’, () by a comrade in the USA who appeared to share our view of the trade unions as organs of capitalist control. Subsequently the comrade has revised his view of the trade union question and has asked us to debate this with him. The following response, written by a close sympathiser, is an initial contribution to a discussion which we think is a central one for revolutionaries.
"The catastrophe of the imperialist war has completely swept away all the conquests of trade union and parliamentary struggles. For this war itself was just as much a product of the internal tendencies of capitalism as were those economic agreements and parliamentary compromises which the war buried in blood and muck.” (Manifesto of the Communist International, 1919)
The following is intended as an initial response to comrade mhou’s text Class, Bureaucracy and the Union-Form (CBUF)[1], with the aim of developing the discussion he has invited on the ICC’s forum.
The comrade directs his text “against the core left communist theories of the class struggle and by extension the trade union question”, and specifically against the position defended by the ICC, among others, that in the current historic period – the period of capitalism’s decadence – the trade unions have become integrated into the capitalist state.[2] Rather than setting out his specific criticisms of these “core left communist theories”, or showing why he thinks they are wrong, instead the comrade offers us his own alternative theory, summarised in a set of theses and illustrated by episodes from the history of the American unions from their origins up to the present day
So what, in essence, is the comrade’s argument?
But in many ways it is what the comrade does not say in this text that is more revealing. In fact the list of key issues that we might expect to be addressed in a Marxist theory on the trade union question is a long one, including:
The real ‘elephant in the room’ here of course is the concept of capitalist decadence. Against the persistent tendency in the revolutionary milieu today to question or openly reject capitalist decadence, the ICC has many times shown that this concept is simply the concretisation of historical materialism in the analysis of capitalism as a historically transitory mode of production.[3] It’s therefore indispensable for understanding the historical period we are living in, and how to act as revolutionaries.
When prompted, the comrade has confirmed that his text is “primarily against the political positions derived from the conception of decadence.” While he agrees that the “material basis for socialism and the placement of proletarian revolution on the agenda were signaled by events in the class struggle (exemplified by the Paris Commune and October Revolution…)”, he does not agree with the political positions derived from this by the “contemporary or historic communist left”.[4]
So communism has been on the agenda since at least the October Revolution but the comrade sees no political implications for the class struggle or the trade unions in this momentous change of conditions for the two historic classes; or at least none important enough to mention in his theory.
The basic Marxist position on decadence is quite clear: at a certain stage of their development the productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing relations of production; from being forms of development, these relations turn into fetters on the forces of production. Then a period of social revolution is opened up, leading either to the transformation of society or to the mutual ruin of the contending classes.
For the “material basis for socialism” to exist, therefore, capitalist relations must have become a definitive fetter on the further development of human productive forces. Since at the same time capitalism is a dynamic system that must continue to extract profit in order to survive, it is forced to reproduce itself through the increasing destruction of the productive forces; either directly through wars, or indirectly through growing waste, debt, attempts to cheat the law of value, etc, and by adopting a series of increasingly drastic palliatives to prolong its life and ensure growing accumulation - palliatives that can only worsen its historic crisis in the longer term.
But capital is above all a social relationship, in which the bourgeoisie is forced to take into account the struggle of the proletariat in everything it does. With the “material basis for socialism” already negating its historically progressive character, and faced with the conscious revolutionary attempts of its gravedigger, above all in the October Revolution, capital must ensure its reproduction through the permanent and conscious suppression of the proletarian threat. We can see this most clearly in the way it was forced to unite across the battlefields of WW1 to crush the revolutionary wave, especially in Russia and Germany, but the lessons it learned from this experience were not lost; they were embedded in the development of state capitalism in the 20th century and especially in those organs charged with dealing with the proletarian threat; the left parties and the trade unions.
So either the comrade believes that the material basis for socialism exists without capitalist relations having become a definitive fetter - in which case he needs to explain how and why this can be the case from a Marxist perspective - or he accepts that they have become a fetter, in which case he needs to explain the political implications of such a fundamental change for his theory of trade unionism.
Not only does the comrade avoid any mention of decadence in his text, he also avoids any analysis of the underlying tendency towards state capitalism which underpins the betrayal of the trade unions and their integration into the capitalist state apparatus. Instead, he argues that tendencies for the trade unions to become bureaucratised or to defend reactionary policies are inherent in the class struggle in capitalism from its origins. In fact he goes further, arguing that “From the twilight of primitive communism and the bourgeoning stratification of humanity, bureaucracy emerges as the administration of social relationships in societies divided into classes.”
Of course, there is some truth in this at a general level; after all, for Marxists the state itself is a product of the division of society in to classes. But this is next to useless for a historical analysis of changes in the trade unions over the last two centuries of capitalism.
In the 19th century it was absolutely necessary for the working class to fight for reforms like the shorter working day and the right to organise. This inevitably demanded an ever-increasing level of co-ordination in order to combat the organisation of employers and concentration of capital, but it was the very nature of the trade unions as permanent mass organisations within bourgeois society that created bureaucratic tendencies right from the beginning. This went hand in hand with a tendency for union leaderships to become wedded to peaceful, reformist methods of struggle; a tendency the bourgeoisie of course actively encouraged in order to prevent more dangerous class struggles.
The deepening nature of the capitalist crisis and the intensification of imperialist rivalries demanded ever greater sacrifices from the working class, but the Paris Commune clearly showed that it represented a growing revolutionary threat. Increasing state control was necessary not only to organise the national economy to compete in an increasingly saturated world market, but also to more effectively control the working class by incorporating its own organisations into the state apparatus. In return, the working class would receive minimal welfare benefits which would serve to tie it more effectively to national capitalist interests.
The trade unions themselves - including those set up to defend unskilled workers - were strong supporters of state intervention on the basis that a healthy economy was the precondition for negotiating higher wages. In an epoch of intensifying imperialist rivalries the logic of this position increasingly led the trade union bureaucracy to become the best defender of the national interest - and an implacable enemy of ‘disruptive’ workers’ struggles.
Even before the first world war, revolutionaries themselves were able to identify this tendency towards the incorporation of the trade unions into the capitalist state and denounced the growth of oppressive state control disguised as social welfare measures. The outbreak of inter-imperialist warfare in 1914 and the massive increase in state control of society that ensued only confirmed this tendency. In Britain, for example, in 1917 one socialist workers’ leader concluded that: "the trade union movement is tending to create a sort of organ of oppression within the masters' organ of oppression - the state - and an army of despotic union chiefs who are interested in reconciling, as far as possible, the interests of masters and men".[5]
Today, over 100 years after the first world war spectacularly confirmed the entry of capitalism into what the new Communist International announced in its Platform as “The epoch of the dissolution of capitalism, of its inner disintegration. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat", we need to recognise that the nature of ‘bureaucratisation’ in the trade unions is qualitatively different, as described in the ICC pamphlet Trade Unions Against the Working Class [1505]:
“What characterises bureaucracy is the fact that the life of the organisation is no longer rooted in the activity of its members but is artificially and formalistically carried on in its ‘bureaux’, in its central organs, and nowhere else. If such a phenomenon is common to all unions under decadent capitalism it is not because of the ‘malevolence’ of the union leaders; nor is bureaucratisation an inexplicable mystery. If bureaucracy has taken hold of the unions it is because the workers no longer support with any life or passion organisations which simply do not belong to them. The indifference the workers show towards trade union life is not, as the leftists think, a proof of the workers’ lack of consciousness. On the contrary it expresses a resigned consciousness within the working class of the unions’ inability to defend its class interests and even a consciousness that the unions belong to the class enemy.” (original emphasis)
The roots of the tendency towards state capitalism lie in the attempts of the system to avert its historic crisis of accumulation, ie. decadence – which may be why the comrade avoids any treatment of it in his text. The above is simply an attempt to briefly sketch out some of the connections between state capitalism, the emergence of a trade union bureaucracy and the nature of the trade unions as permanent mass organisations within bourgeois society; a sketch which hopefully shows up the inadequacies of the comrade’s arguments about ‘bureaucracy’ and the need to develop the discussion in this area.
The stated aim of the comrade in writing this text is to identify “a legitimate socialist practice”. The exact nature of this practice is not spelled out in the text but the comrade’s main argument is that despite the anti-working class policies of the union leaderships the trade unions remain working class organisations (or, at least, he argues that they still have ‘legitimacy’ in the class, in other words, workers still believe them to be their own organisations). It is therefore necessary to wage “a political struggle in the trade unions”.
But a political struggle for what? To win over the union leaderships and turn the unions back into real workers’ organisations? Or to warn the working class against the dangerous role of the trade unions and support all moves towards the generalisation and self-organisation of the workers’ struggles?
Let’s take a concrete example: the mass strikes in Poland in 1980-81, when the workers were organising themselves, extending their struggles, holding assemblies, electing delegates and creating inter-factory committees to co-ordinate and make their actions more effective. One of the first blows against this real class movement was the transformation of the inter-factory committees into a new union, which became Solidarnosc. This is how the ICC drew the lessons at the time:
“The actions of Solidarnosc in 1980 and 1981 demonstrated that, even when formally separated from the capitalist state, new unions, started from scratch, with millions of determined members and enjoying the confidence of the working class, act the same as official, bureaucratic state unions. As with unions everywhere else in the world, Solidarnosc (and the demands for ‘free trade unions’ that preceded its foundation) acted to sabotage struggles, demobilise and discourage workers and divert their discontent into the dead-ends of ‘self-management’, defence of the national economy and defence of the unions rather than workers’ interests.” (‘Poland 1980: Lessons still valid for the struggles of the world proletariat’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_poland80.htm [110])
What lessons would the comrade draw from this experience for the intervention of revolutionaries in the workers’ struggles? This may seem an abstract question today in the absence of mass strikes and when the working class is still finding great difficulties in responding to the global attacks of capital, but in future waves of struggle it will be vital to warn workers against the sabotage of the trade unions. When asked whether he believes that there will be any need for the working class to break – politically and organisationally - with the existing trade unions at some point in its struggle against capitalism, the comrade responded:
“No; but not as a political choice (…) the class struggle exists regardless of the activity or inactivity of the socialist movement, and we can’t alter the fundamental processes of labor’s class struggles under the capitalist social relation but can only understand and then use them to abolish capitalism … ‘We’ can influence labor’s class struggles through to the abolition of the class struggle, but can’t alter the basic content of the class struggle.”
On the contrary, not only is it necessary for revolutionaries today to warn the working class that the trade unions are enemies of their struggles, but, if workers are to take these struggles forward across all boundaries of trade, sector, race, gender and above all nationality, it will be necessary to break from the straightjacket of union control and take the struggle into their own hands.
It’s not accidental that the comrade appears to be drawing on Bordigist ideas for his theory. We can see this, for example, in his unqualified quote from the Bordigist PCI (Partito) on its attempts to ‘re-conquer’ the unions. The confusions of Bordigism have been criticised many times by the ICC and others. Very briefly, when the Internationalist Communist Party was formed in Italy in 1943-45 the tendency around Bordiga rejected the position developed by the fraction of the Italian Left in exile that the trade unions had become incorporated into the capitalist state. In effect, the Bordigist current rejected the conclusion that capitalism had entered into its epoch of imperialist decay and that this had major implications for the trade union question, regressing on the union question to the positions of Lenin and the Second Congress of the Third International and continuing to argue that, despite being under reactionary leaders, the unions were still class organisations.
On the trade union question as with others (for example national liberation), Bordigism therefore defends what we can characterise as opportunist and centrist positions and it would be helpful for the discussion if the comrade could clarify the extent to which he is explicitly defending a Bordigist political orientation.
Finally, let’s look at the comrade’s vision of revolution, which is based on the idea that ultimately the working class organised in trade unions seizes state power, after which it will exercise its dictatorship through trade unions. As he puts it: “This bureaucracy of the workers state differs in no way from that of the trade unions, in composition, character or function …Proletarian dictatorship is in perfect continuity with classical trade unionism…”
There are many issues with this vision – not least whether the working class can identify itself with the state that exists after it has seized power – but is it based on the historical experience of the working class?
If we take the example of the October Revolution - which after all is the only experience of the proletariat seizing political power on a national scale - through a few highly selective quotes the comrade gives the impression that it was the trade unions that made the revolution and formed the dictatorship of the proletariat.
So why in 1917 did Lenin and the Bosheviks take up the slogan “All power to the soviets!” – a slogan that was already being adopted by the most class conscious Russian workers - and not “All power to the trade unions”? And why did the Third International in 1920 affirm that “The authentic soviets of the masses are the historically-elaborated forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat”?[6]
The comrade’s ‘core theory’ is that “trade unionism appears as the content of labor’s class struggles under the capitalist social relation.” His text hardly mentions soviets or workers’ councils and where it does he gives the impression that they are simply a form of trade unionism in a period of revolutionary struggles. But if we examine even briefly the experience of the working class we can see this isn’t true.
The first appearance of soviets - unprepared and unpredicted by revolutionaries at the time – was a practical demonstration that the period of capitalism's ascendency, in which the proletariat had been able to constitute permanent mass organisations (particularly trade unions), to fight for reforms of the system, was nearing its end. The working class itself found the weapons it needed to struggle against capital in the new conditions created by the system’s decline; a struggle not just for immediate demands but ultimately for the destruction of the bourgeois state. These weapons were the mass strike and the formation of soviets or workers’ councils. Unlike the trade unions, soviets regrouped the majority of the workers in struggle, assemblies of delegates mandated by general assemblies of workers; but above all, they were political organs, forged in the heat of generalised mass struggles, whose fundamental objective was to prepare for the seizure of power.
The problem for the comrade’s theory is that any attempt to seriously address the role of the soviets in history would not only highlight these differences but also the change in the historic conditions for the class struggle at the start of the 20th century which gave rise to these political organs in the first place.
Having set out to provide an alternative Marxist theory of the nature of trade unionism directed “against the core left communist theories of the class struggle”, and specifically against the position that the trade unions have become integrated into the capitalist state, the comrade has come up with a theoretical approach that studiously avoids addressing the most significant changes in the conditions for the proletariat’s struggle over the last hundred years.
His attempt to clarify his political differences by developing such an alternative theory is a real sign of seriousness. But at the same time it may have served to exaggerate these differences and highlight the flaws in his basic approach. The political movement we know as ‘left communism’ is after all only the struggle the left of the communist movement – historically always the most intransigent and clear-sighted fraction of the workers’ movement – to defend the revolutionary content of Marxism in the new epoch of capitalist decadence, and in particular to draw out the most important political implications for the workers’ struggles. This struggle was in direct continuity with that of the left in the Second International against opportunism and centrism and in defence of internationalism, and of the Marxist tendency in the First International: the struggle to defend the historical materialist understanding of capitalism as an historically transitory society; the struggle against the rise of reformism in the workers’ movement; the implications of the rise of imperialism and the appearance of the mass strike…
Any attempt to devise ‘new’ theories without clear reference to all these links in the chain risks throwing throwing the baby out with the bath water and we can see signs of this in the comrade’s text: on reformism, decadence, the mass strike, soviets…
To take this discussion forward, it may be better instead to focus on the comrade’s specific criticisms of the positions of the ICC and their implications for the role and intervention of revolutionaries. After all, the fact that the ICC defends the position that the trade unions have been integrated into the capitalist state does not in any way mean that revolutionaries ignore workers’ struggles that take place under union control, or that our only intervention is to stand up and denounce the unions as bourgeois. The ICC pamphlet on the trade unions includes a whole section on the intervention of revolutionaries that could act as the starting point for a perhaps more fruitful discussion.
MH (this response was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC)
[1] octoberinappalachia.com.
[2] The position of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, for example, is that the trade unions “threw in their lot with the capitalist state” at the start of the 20th century and are now openly “a tool to control the class struggle” but stops short of referring to their integration into the capitalist state (https://www.leftcom.org/en/about-us [1506]). But the PCInt (Battaglia Comunista), its main constituent group, apparently defends the more explicit position that “In the present period of decadence of capitalist society, the union is called upon to be an essential tool in the politics of conserving capitalism, and therefore to assume the precise functions of a State organ” (this is a quote from a 1947 conference of the PCInt, re-adopted at its 6th Congress in 1997, see Internationalist Communist no. 16, https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/1997-06-01/communist-work-and-the-trades-unions-today [1507])
[3] See, most recently for example, ‘Once more on decadence: some questions for the ‘deniers’ ‘https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13467/once-more-decaden... [1508]
[4] See the thread on the trade union question started by the comrade on the ICC forum (https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/mhou/14054/trade-union-question [1509])
[5] George Harvey, Industrial unionism and the mining industry, 1917, p.3, cited in Raymond Challinor, The Origins of British Bolshevism, 1977, p.73. Harvey was 'an outstanding worker-intellectual' (Challinor); a Durham miner's leader and editor of The Socialist, paper of the British Socialist Labour Party.
[6] “Theses on the Conditions under which Workers' Soviets may be Formed”, Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International,1920 ( https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/doc02.htm [1510]).
In the twilight of ancient Rome, the madness of emperors was more the rule than the exception. Few historians doubt that this was a sign of Rome’s decrepitude. Today a scary clown is made king in the world’ s most powerful nation state, and yet this is not generally understood as a sign that capitalist civilisation has itself reached an advanced stage in its own decadence. The surge of populism in the epicentres of the system, which has brought in quick succession Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump, expresses the fact that the ruling class is losing its grip over the political machinery that, for many decade now, has been used to hold back capitalism’s innate tendency towards collapse. We are witnessing an enormous political crisis brought about by the accelerating decomposition of the social order, by the complete inability of the ruling class to offer humanity a perspective for the future. But populism is also a product of the inability of the exploited class, the proletariat, to put forward a revolutionary alternative, with the result that it is grave danger of being dragged into a reaction based on impotent rage, on fear, on the scapegoating of minorities and a delusional quest for a past that never really existed. This analysis of the roots of populism as a global phenomenon is developed in more depth in the contribution ‘On the question of populism [1471]’ and we encourage our readers to examine the general framework it offers, along with our initial more specific response to the Brexit result and the rise of Trump’s candidacy, ‘Brexit, Trump: setbacks for the ruling class, nothing good for the proletariat [1513]’. Both texts are published in n°157 of our International Review.
We have also published an article by our sympathiser in the US, Henk: ‘Trump v. Clinton: nothing but bad choices for the bourgeoisie and the proletariat [1514]’. This article, written in early October, looked at the almost frantic efforts of the more ‘responsible’ factions of the US bourgeoisie, both Democrat and Republican, to stop Trump from getting to the White House1. These efforts evidently failed, and one of the more immediate factors which brought about this failure was the incredible intervention by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, at the very point where Clinton seemed to be surging ahead in the polls. The FBI, the very heart of the US security apparatus, severely damaged Clinton’s chances by announcing that she may well have a criminal case to answer after it had further investigated her use of private email servers, which goes against the basic rules of state security. A week or so later, Comey tried to backtrack by announcing that, in fact, there was nothing untoward in all the material the Bureau had examined. But the damage had been done and the FBI had made a major contribution to the Trump campaign, whose rallies have endlessly chanted the slogan ‘Lock Her Up’. The FBI’s intervention was yet another expression of a growing loss of political control at the centre of the state apparatus.
The article ‘Trump v. Clinton’ begins by clearly re-stating the communist position on bourgeois democracy and elections in this epoch of history: that they are a gigantic fraud which offers no choice for the working class. This lack of choice was perhaps more pronounced than ever in this election, fought between the arrogant showman Trump, with his overtly racist and misogynist agenda, and Clinton, who embodies the ‘neo-liberal’ order that has been the dominant form of state capitalism for the last three decades. Faced with a choice between two evils, a substantial part of the electorate, as is always the case in US elections, did not vote at all - an initial estimate gives the turn out as just under 57%, lower than in 2012 [1515] despite all the pressures to go out and vote. At the same time, many who were critical of both camps, but of Trump in particular, decided to vote for Hillary as the lesser of the two evils. For our part, we know that abstaining from bourgeois elections out of disillusionment with what’s on offer is at best only the beginning of wisdom: it is essential, though extremely difficult when the working class is not acting as a class, to show that there is another way of organising society which will pass through the dismantling of the capitalist state. And in the post-election period, this rejection of the existing political and social order, this insistence on the necessity for the working class to fight for its own interests outside and against the prison of the bourgeois state, will be no less relevant, because many will be drawn towards a simple anti-Trumpism, a kind of revamped anti-fascism2 which will again align itself with more ‘democratic’ factions of the bourgeoisie – most probably with those which talk the language of the working class and of socialism, as Bernie Sanders did during the Democratic primaries3
This is not the place to analyse in detail the motives and social composition of those who voted for Trump. There is no doubt that the misogyny, the anti-woman rhetoric so central to the Trump campaign, played its part and it needs to be studied in itself, especially as it is part of a much more global ‘male backlash’ against the social and ideological changes in gender relations during the last few decades. In the same way, there has been a sinister growth of racism and xenophobia in all the central capitalist countries, and this played a key role in Trump’s campaign. There are also particular elements to racism in America which need to be understood: in the short term, reaction to the Obama presidency and to the American version of the ‘migrant crisis’, in the longer term, the whole heritage of slavery and segregation. From the early figures, the long history of the racial divide in America can be discerned in the fact that the pro-Trump vote was overwhelmingly white (although it did mobilise a rather significant number of ‘Hispanics’) while around 88% of black voters chose the Clinton camp. We will return to these questions in future articles.
But as we argue in the contribution on populism, we think that perhaps the most important element in the Trump victory was rage against the neo-liberal ‘elite’ which has identified itself with the globalisation and financialisation of the economy – macro-economic processes which have enriched a small minority at the expense of the majority, and above all at the expense of the working class in the old manufacturing and extractive industries. ‘Globalisation’ has meant the wholesale dismantling of manufacturing industries and their transfer to countries like China where labour power is far cheaper and profits are thus much higher. It has also meant the ‘free movement of labour’, which for capitalism is another means to cheapen labour power through migration from ‘poorer’ to ‘richer’ countries. Financialisation has meant, for the majority, the domination of economic life by the increasingly mysterious laws of the market. More concretely it meant the 2008 crash which ruined so many small investors and aspiring house-owners.
Again, more detailed statistical studies are needed, but it does appear that a core strength of the Trump campaign was the support it won from non-college educated whites, and especially from workers in the ‘Rust Belt’, the new industrial deserts who voted for Trump as a protest against the established political order, personified in the so-called ‘metropolitan liberal elite’. Many of these same workers or regions had voted for Obama in the previous elections, and some supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. Their vote was above all a vote against – against the growing inequality of wealth, against a system which they felt has deprived them and their children of any future. But this opposition was framed in the complete absence of a real working class movement, and has thus fed the populist world-view which blames the elite for selling out the country to foreign investors, to giving special privileges to migrants, refugees and ethnic minorities at the expense of the ‘native’ working class – and to women workers at the expense of male workers. The racist and misogynist elements of Trumpism thus go hand in hand with the rhetorical attacks on the ‘elite’.
We won’t speculate about what Trump’s presidency will be like or what policies he will try to implement. What characterises Trump above all is his unpredictability, so it will not be easy to foresee the consequences of his reign. There is also the fact that while Trump can say a dozen contradictory things before breakfast, and that this didn’t seem to affect his support in the election campaign, what worked in the campaign may not work so well in office. So for example, Trump presents himself as the archetypal self-made entrepreneur and talks about liberating the American businessman from bureaucracy, but he also talks about a massive programme of restoring the infrastructure in the inner cities, of building roads, schools and hospitals and revitalising the fossil fuels industry by abolishing environmental protection limits, all of which implies a heavy state capitalist intervention in the economy. He is pledged to expel millions of illegal immigrants, and yet much of the US economy depends on their cheap labour. On foreign policy, he combines the language of isolationism and withdrawal (as in his threat to scale down US involvement in NATO) with the language of interventionism, as with his bluster about ‘bombing the hell out of IS’, while promising to increase the military budget.
What seems certain is that Trump’s presidency will be marked by conflict, both within the ruling class and between the state and society. It’s true that Trump’s victory speech was a model of reconciliation – he will be a ‘president for all Americans’. And Obama, before receiving Trump at the White House, said that he wanted to ensure as smooth a transition as possible. In addition, the fact that there is now a large Republican majority in Senate and Congress could mean- if the Republican establishment overcomes its antipathy for Trump – that he will be able to get their backing for a number of his policies, even if the more demagogic ones may be put in the pending tray. But the signs of future tensions and clashes are not hard to see. Parts of the military hierarchy, for example, are likely to be very hostile to some of his foreign policy options, if he persists in his scepticism about NATO, or translates his admiration for Putin as a strong leader into undermining US attempts to counter the dangerous resurgence of Russian imperialism in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Opposition to some of his domestic policies could also arise from within the security apparatus, the federal bureaucracy and big business interests, who might see it as their role to ensure that Trump is not allowed to run amok. Meanwhile, the political demise of the ‘Clinton dynasty’ may also give rise to new oppositions and perhaps even splits within the Democratic Party, with the likely rise of a left wing around the likes of Bernie Sanders, hoping to capitalise on the mood of hostility to economic and political establishments.
At the social level, if post-Brexit Britain is anything to go by, we are likely to see a sinister flowering of ‘popular’ xenophobia as overtly racist groups feel that they are now empowered to realise their fantasies of violence and domination; at the same time police repression against ethnic minorities may reach new heights. And if Trump seriously begins his programme of detaining and expelling the ‘illegals’, all these developments could provoke resistance in the streets, in continuity with some of the movements we have been seeing in the last few years following police murders of black people. Indeed, from the very day the election result was announced, there has been a series of very angry demonstrations in cities across America, generally involving young people who feel disgusted at the prospect of a Trump-led government.
At the international level, Trump’s victory is set to be, as he himself put it, ‘Brexit plus plus plus’. It has already given a powerful boost to right wing populist parties in western Europe, not least the Front National in France where the presidential election is due in 2017. These are parties who want to withdraw from multi-national trade organisations and favour economic protectionism. With Trump’s most aggressive statements being directed against Chinese economic competition, this could mean that we are heading towards a trade war which, as in the 1930s, will further constrict an already clogged-up world market. The neo-liberal model has served world capitalism well over the last two decades, but it is now approaching its limits, and what lies ahead bears the danger of transferring the ‘every man for himself’ tendency we have seen at the imperialist level to the economic sphere, where it has so far been held more or less in check. Trump has also declared that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese to support their export drive, and says he will pull out of all the existing international agreements on climate change. We know how limited these agreements are already, but scrapping them is likely to plunge us even more deeply into the mounting world ecological disaster.
We repeat: Trump symbolises a bourgeoisie which has truly lost any perspective for running society. For all his vanity and narcissism, he is not mad himself, but he embodies the madness of a system which is running out of options, even that of world war. Despite its decadence, the ruling class has, for over a century, been able to use its own political and military apparatus – in other words, its conscious intervention as a class – to prevent a complete loss of control, a final working out of capitalism’s innate drive towards chaos. We are now beginning to see the limits of this control, even if we shouldn’t underestimate our enemy’s capacity to come up with new temporary fixes. The problem for our class is that the evident bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie at all levels – economic, political, moral – is not, with the exception of a very small minority, generating a revolutionary critique of the system but rather misdirected rage and poisonous divisions in our own ranks. This poses a serious threat to the future possibility of replacing capitalism with a human society.
And yet one of the reasons why world war is not on the agenda today, despite the severity of capitalism’s crisis, is that the working class has not been defeated in open combat and still contains untapped capacities for resistance, as we have seen in various massive movements during the last decade, such as the French students’ struggle in 2006 or the ‘Indignados’ revolt in Spain in 2011 and the Occupy movement in the US in the same year. In America, these heralds of resistance can be discerned in the protests against police murders and the post-election demonstrations against Trump, although these movements have not taken on a clear working class character and are vulnerable to recuperation by the professional politicians of the left, by different varieties of nationalist or democratic ideology. For the working class to overcome both the populist menace and the false alternatives sold by the left wing of capital, something much deeper is required, a movement for proletarian independence which is able to understand itself politically and re-connect with the communist traditions of our class. This is not for the immediate, but revolutionaries have a role today in preparing such a development, above all by fighting for the political and theoretical clarity that can light a way through the prevailing smog of capitalist ideology, in all its guises.
Amos 13.11.16
1 A sign of how widespread is Republican opposition to Trump: former president George W Bush himself, hardly part of the left wing of the party, announced that he would submit a blank paper rather than vote for Trump.
2 Our rejection of the policy of ‘anti-fascist’ alliances with one sector of the ruling class against another is inherited above all from the Italian communist left, who correctly saw anti-fascism as a means to mobilise the working class for war. See ‘Anti-fascism: a formula for confusion’, a text from Bilan republished in International Review 101 [1516].
3 For more on Sanders, see the article ‘Trump v Clinton’.
If you were to ask a high school student about the Russian revolution of 1917, most likely she would reply that it was a Bolshevik coup which, despite the good intentions of its protagonists, ended up in a nightmare: the Soviet dictatorship, the Gulag, etc.
And if you to ask her what happened on 15 May 2011, it’s possible that the response would be that it was a movement for ‘real democracy’ and that it was very closely linked to the Podemos political party[1].
Anyone who is looking for the truth will not be satisfied with such simplistic answers, which have nothing to do with what really happened, stuffed as they are with the ‘common sense’ views promoted by the deformed education we are subjected to and the brow beating of the ‘means of communication’. In short, by the dominant ideology of this society.
It’s true that the proletariat is today in a situation of profound weakness. But the history of society is the history of the class struggle, and the capitalist state knows very well that the proletariat could one day return to the struggle. This is why it attacks it at its most vulnerable points, and one of these is its historical memory. The bourgeoisie has a great interest in destroying this memory by re-writing the past experience of our class. It’s as if it was trying to format the hard disc and reinstall a very different programme.
The most intelligent form of rewriting is to take advantage of the real weaknesses and mistakes of proletarian movements. These always carry with them a whole burden of errors which posterity can then rewrite in ways diametrically opposed to what they originally stood for.
Marx, commenting on the difference between the struggle of the bourgeoisie and the struggle of the proletariat, argued that
“Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success... On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals.”[2]
This is why, for the proletariat
“its thorny way to self-emancipation is paved not only with immeasurable suffering but also with countless errors. The aim of its journey – its emancipation depends on this – is whether the proletariat can learn from its own errors. Self-criticism, remorseless, cruel, and going to the core of things is the life’s breath and light of the proletarian movement.” [3]
The aim of this article is not to make a critical analysis of the 1917 revolution. We only want to go back over the movement of the Indignados in 2011, the ‘15 May’ movement[4] and the way it has been ‘rewritten’ by the ideology of the ruling class.
After the long night of the counter-revolution which crushed the revolution of 1917, the proletariat revived its struggles in 1968. But this revival was not able to politicise itself in a revolutionary direction. In 1989, the fall of the so-called ‘Communist’ regimes resulted in an important retreat in consciousness and combativity whose effects can still be felt today[5].
From 2003, there was a new upsurge of struggles, but they mainly involved the new generations of the working class (students, unemployed, precarious workers), while the workers of the big industrial centres remained passive, only engaging in sporadic struggles (the fear of unemployment was a major inhibition). There was no unified and massive mobilisation of the working class, but only of a part of it, the youngest part. The revolt of young people in Greece (2008), the movements in Tunisia and Egypt (2011) were in this sense the expression of a wave whose highest points were the fight against the CPE in France (2006) and the 15 May movement.[6]
Despite their positive and promising aspects (we will come back to this later), these movements took place in a context in which the working class was losing its sense of identity and confidence in its own strength. This loss of identity meant that the great majority of those who took part in the struggles didn’t see themselves as being part of the working class, but rather as citizens, Even when they talked about being ‘at the bottom of the pile’ and about being treated as ‘second class’, they didn’t break the umbilical cord with the ‘community’ of the nation.
As we wrote in 2011: “Although the slogan of ‘we are the 99% against the 1%’, which was so popular in the occupation movement in the United States, reveals the beginnings of an understanding of the bloody class divisions that affect us, the majority of participants in these protests saw themselves as ‘active citizens’ who want to be recognized within a society of ‘free and equal citizens’”. This prevented the participants from seeing that “society is divided into classes: a capitalist class that has everything and produces nothing, and an exploited class -the proletariat- that produces everything but has less and less. The driving force of social evolution is not the democratic game of the “decision of a majority of citizens” (this game is nothing more than a masquerade which covers up and legitimises the dictatorship of the ruling class) but the class struggle”[7].
There were thus two fundamental weaknesses within the 15 May movement, which mutually reinforced each other and which made their current falsification possible: most of their protagonists saw themselves as citizens and were aspiring to a renewal of the democratic game.
Because of this, the movement, despite its promising beginnings, was not articulated around “the struggle of the principle exploited class -the proletariat- who collectively produce the main riches and ensure the functioning of social life: factories, hospitals, schools, universities, offices, ports, construction, post offices.”[8], but ended up being diluted in a powerless protest of ‘indignant’ citizens. Despite some tentative efforts to extend the movement to the workplaces, this was a failure, and the movement was increasingly restricted to the city squares. Despite the sympathy that it inspired, it more and more lost its strength until it was reduced to a minority that succumbed to a desperate kind of activism.
Furthermore, the difficulty of recognising itself as a class movement was reinforced by the lack of confidence in its own strengths. This gave a disproportionate weight to the elements of the radicalised petty bourgeoisie which joined the movement, thus boosting confusion, inter-classism, and belief in the worst formulas of bourgeois politics, such as ‘no more two party system’, ‘fight against corruption’ etc.
These social strata contaminated the movement with an ideology which reduced capitalism to “a handful of ‘bad guys’ (unscrupulous financiers, ruthless dictators) when it is really a complex network of social relations that have to be attacked in their totality and not dissipated into a preoccupation with its many surface expressions (finance, speculation, the corruption of political -economic powers”[9]
Despite some attempts at solidarity based on mass action against police violence, it was the idea of struggle as a form of peaceful pressure by citizens on the institutions of capitalism that very easily led the movement into a dead end.
As our section in France has pointed out, “there was nothing spontaneous about Nuit Debout. It’s something which has been prepared and organised over a long period by the radical defenders of capitalism. Behind this “spontaneous” and “apolitical” movement lurk the professionals, the groups of the left and extreme left who use “apoliticism” as a means of control.” [10]
The aim of this set-up was to imprison social discontent and all discussion “in the optic of citizenship and republican values, and diverting reflection to the problem of making capitalism more human and democratic”[11]. As a leaflet by the collective which animated the movement, ‘Convergence des Luttes’ put it, “humanity must be at the heart of the concerns of our leaders”.
This pious wish simply reiterates the reactionary utopia where governments are really concerned with human beings. But this only serves to hide their real concern, which are the problems and necessities of capital. Asking the state to defend the interests of the exploited is like asking a burglar to look after your house.
The demands put forward by Nuit Debout all go towards sowing the illusion that a capitalist system which is fleecing us more and more can still offer something. A ‘universal basic income’ is called for, healthier food, more money for education and other ‘reforms’ which are always part of electoral promises and which are never kept.
The most ‘ambitious’ demand put forward by the promoters of Nuit Debout is the call for a ‘social republic’, which is seen as going back to the ‘revolutionary ideas of 1789’, when the bourgeoisie demolished the feudal power to cries of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. This is the reactionary utopia of the “’true democracy’ promised by the French revolution of 1789. But what was revolutionary two and half centuries ago, i.e. installing the political power of the bourgeoisie in France, overcoming feudalism by the development of capitalism, building a nation…all this today has become irredeemably reactionary. This system of exploitation is decadent. It’s not a question of making it better, because that has become impossible, but of going beyond it, of overthrowing it through an international proletarian revolution. But here the illusion is being sewn that the state is a neutral agent on which we have to put pressure, or even protect from the shareholders, the corrupt politicians, the greedy bankers, the oligarchs…”[12]
The real antagonism, the one between capital and the proletariat, is replaced by an imaginary antagonism between, on the one hand, a corrupt minority of financiers and venal politicians, and, on the other side of the barricade, an immense majority which can include the good politicians, the honest capitalists, the soldiers, the people, the citizens. In this scenario the proletariat abandons its class ground and submerges itself in a conflict between all good citizens and a handful of bad guys.
What’s more, just as the populism of Trump or the Front National blames everything on certain people and not on the social relations of production, the ‘radicals’ of Nuit Debout also put forward a project based on personalisation. The right puts the blame on migrants; the left on a few bankers or politicians. But it’s the same reactionary logic. The problems of the world can be resolved by getting rid of a few people who are seen as the root of all evil.
The promoters of Nuit Debout have wiped out the hard disc of the 15 May movement and written over it. But what really remains of this movement? What can we hold onto for future struggles?
The assemblies
We reproduce here what we wrote in our international leaflet drawing the lessons of the Indignados, Occupy and other movements:
“The mass assembles have concretised the slogan of the First International (1864) ‘The emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves or it is nothing’. This is the continuation of the tradition of the workers' movement stretching back to the Paris Commune, and to Russia in 1905 and 1917, where it took an ever higher form, continued in Germany 1918, Hungary 1919 and 1956, Poland 1980.” [13]
The assemblies of the future will have to strengthen themselves by drawing a critical balance sheet of the weaknesses in the assemblies of 2011:
Solidarity
Through all its pores, capitalist society secretes “marginalisation, the atomisation of the individual, the destruction of family relationships, the exclusion of old people from social life, the annihilation of love and affection and its replacement by pornography,”. In sum, “the destruction of the very principle of collective life in a society devoid of the slightest project or perspective.”[15]
A barbaric expression of this social decomposition is the hatred towards immigrants encouraged by populism, which won a spectacular victory with ‘Brexit’ in the United Kingdom and Trump’s election in the USA.
Against all of that, the 15 May movement and Occupy sowed the first seeds of something different
“The demonstrations in Madrid called for the freeing of those who have been arrested or have stopped the police detaining immigrants; there have been massive actions against evictions in Spain, Greece and the United States; in Oakland ‘The strike Assembly has agreed to send pickets or to occupy any company or school that punishes employees or students in anyway for taking part in the General Strike of the 2nd November’. Vivid but still episodic moments have happened, when everyone can feel protected and defended by those around them. All of which starkly contrasted with what is ‘normal’ in this society with its anguished sense of hopelessness and vulnerability”[16].
However, this very important experience could be overwhelmed and buried by the present populist wave (which is supported by politicians who present themselves as ‘antagonists’ to the ‘elite’). Proletarian solidarity still has to put down firmer roots[17]
The culture of debate
This society condemns us to inertia in work and consumption, endlessly reproducing alienated models of success and failure, manufacturing stereotypes which reinforce the dominant ideology. In the face of this, all sorts of false responses serve to further deepen social and moral putrefaction:
“ - the profusion of sects, the renewal of the religious spirit including in the advanced countries, the rejection of rational, coherent thought even amongst certain “scientists”; a phenomenon which dominates the media with their idiotic shows and mind-numbing advertising;
[18].
Against these two poles of capitalist alienation, movements like the 15 May or Occupy “thousands of people began to look for an authentic popular culture, making it for themselves, trying to animate their own critical and independent criteria. The crisis and its causes, the role of the banks etc, have been exhaustively discussed. There has been discussion of revolution, although with much confusion; there has been talk of democracy and dictatorship, synthesised in these two complementary slogans ‘they call it democracy and it is no’” and ‘it is a dictatorship but unseen’”. These were the first steps towards a real politics of the majority, far away from the world of intrigues, lies and shady manoeuvres which characterise the politics of the ruling class. A politics which raises all the questions that affect us, not just economics and politics but also the environment, ethics, culture, education and health”[19]
The importance of this effort, however tentative, however weakened by democratist and petty bourgeois illusions, is obvious. Every revolutionary movement of the proletariat can only be based on mass discussion, on a cultural movement founded on free and independent debate.
The vertebral column of the Russian revolution of 1917 was this culture of massive debate
“The thirst for education, so long held back, was concerted by the revolution into a true delirium. During the first six months, tons of literature, whether onhandcarts or wagons, poured forth from the Smolny Institute each day, Russia insatiably absorbed it, like hot sand absorbs water. This was not pulp novels, falsified history, diluted religion or cheap fiction that corrupts, but economic and social theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky”[20]
Concern for an international struggle
The proletariat is an international class with the same interests in all countries. The workers have no country, and nationalism, in all its varieties, is the graveyard of any possible perspective for the liberation of humanity.
Capitalism today is assailed by a contradiction: on the one hand, the economy is more and more global, production is more and more inter-dependent. But on the other hand, all states are imperialist and wars are increasingly destructive; the environment is deteriorating as competition between national states, especially the most powerful ones like the USA and China, gets sharper and sharper. As economic life becomes more and more international, there is a blind, irrational retreat into all kinds of false communities, whether national, racial or religious…
These contradictions can only be overcome through the historic struggle of the proletariat. The proletariat is the class of worldwide association. It produces across frontiers. It is a class of migrants, a melting pot of races, religions, cultures. No product, from a building to a threshing machine, can be made by an isolated community of workers stuck in a national or local framework. Production needs raw material, transport, machines, all of which circulate on a world scale. It can only be realised by workers trained in a universal culture, through incessant exchanges on an international level. The internet is not only a cultural instrument, but above all a means without which capitalist production would be impossible.
In 2011, expressing these realities and what they mean for the proletarian struggle, even if in a still vague manner, “this movement of indignation has spread internationally: to Spain, where the then Socialist government imposed one of the first and most draconian austerity plans; to Greece, the symbol of the crisis of sovereign debt; to the United States, the temple of world capitalism; to Egypt and Israel, focus of one of the worst and most entrenched imperialist conflicts, the Middle East.
The awareness that this is an international movement began to develop despite the destructive weight of nationalism, as seen in the presence of national flags in the demonstrations in Greece, Egypt or the USA. In Spain solidarity with the workers of Greece was expressed by slogans such as ‘Athens resists, Madrid rises up’. The Oakland strikers (USA, November,2011) said ‘Solidarity with the occupation movement world wide’. In Egypt it was agreed in the Cairo Declaration to support the movement in the United States. In Israel they shouted ‘Netanyahu, Mubarak, El Assad are the same’ and contacts were made with Palestinian workers”[21].
Today, five years on, these gains seem to have been buried deep underground. This is the expression of an inevitable feature of proletarian struggles which Marx referred to in the quote we put at the beginning of this article - that “they seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever”
But there is a vital task which the advanced minorities of the proletariat have to carry out: draw the lessons, place then in an evolving Marxist theoretical framework. This is the task we call on all committed comrades to address, to “start the most widespread possible discussion, without any restriction or discouragement, in order to consciously prepare new movements which could make it clear that capitalism can indeed be replaced by another society”[22].
Accion Proletaria ICC section in Spain, 6.7.16
[1]When in reality the role of Podemos was to neutralise and derail everything that was authentically revolutionary in the Indignados movement, as we showed in our article ‘Podemos, new clothes at the service of the capitalist emperor’ https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201604/13907/podemos-new-cloth... [1518]
[2] The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
[3] Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius pamphlet
[4]We’ve written a lot about this experience in which our militants actively participated, not only from the section in Spain but from other sections as well. Two documents which summarise our analysis are:
‘Indignados in Spain, Greece and Israel: from indignation to the preparation of class struggle’, IR 147
https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201111/4593/indigna... [343]
And our international statement, ‘2011: from indignation to hope’: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4766/statement-social-m... [412]
[5] See IR 60, ‘Collapse of Stalinism: new difficulties for the proletariat’ https://en.internationalism.org/ir/60/difficulties_for_the_proletariat [1519]
[6]There were weaker echoes of these movements in Canada in 2012, Brazil and Turkey 2013, 2014 in Burgos, and 2015 in Peru.
[7] ‘From indignation to hope’
[8] ‘From indignation to hope’
[9] ibid
[10] ‘What is the real nature of the ‘Nuit Debout’ movement?’ https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13953/what-real-nature-... [1457]
[11] ibid
[12] ibid
[13] ‘From indignation to hope’
[14] See our article ‘Real Democracy Now: a dictatorship against the mass assemblies’ https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2011/special-report-15M-spain/... [1520]
[15] See ‘Theses on decomposition’ https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]. This text develops our analysis of the present historical period, a period characterised by the continuation of a decadent, obsolete society which the proletariat has not managed to eradicate from the planet.
[16] ‘From indignation to hope’
[17] See our orientation text on confidence and solidarity https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200301/1893/orientat... [1521]
[18] ‘Theses on decomposition’
[19] ‘From indignation to hope’
[20] John Reed, 10 Days That Shook the World
[21] ‘From indignation to hope’
[22] ibid
In the first article in this series [1405], we gave a brief overview of the origins and function of migration in the capitalist system and how this has changed as that same system began its remorseless historical decline in the early 20th century. In part two [1355], we examined the culmination of those trends in the horror of the Holocaust. Part three [1406] discussed the plight of migrants during the terror of the Cold War.
Towards the end of the 80s, the world entered a new period: one of generalised, social decomposition [410]. This phenomenon was the result of the failure of the working class to politicise and push forward the struggles it had begun in the 70s. But although the ruling class was able to beat back the proletariat's resurgence it was unable to inflict a decisive defeat, one that would have enabled it to impose an outright march towards war.
The result was a descent into a protracted struggle of attrition which, while inflicting grevious wounds on the proletariat, also began to destabilise the bourgeoisie's economic and political apparatus. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc heralded a new stage in this process, a "New World Disorder" with weaker states disintegrating entirely. As soon as one devastated region seemed to recover, another began to fall apart. Faced with what seemed like a new wave of post-Apocalyptic nightmares, with entire societies seemingly dissolving into anarchy, more people than ever before began the desperate search for safety in a collapsing world.
It is this period we will now examine.
With the return of the economic crisis in the middle of the 1970's, the policy of immigration was greatly reduced. Migratory policies became much more restrictive concerning entry over borders. Capital did continue to hire cheap immigrant workers despite the massive increase in unemployment, but it could no longer absorb a whole mass of foreigners heading for the major industrial centres.
From the end of the 80's and beginning of the 90's packed charter flights took immigrants back to their countries of origin. And this happened despite the context of the exacerbation of conflicts and the deepening of the economic crisis which multiplied the number of potential candidates for migration. A new phenomenon thus came to the fore throughout the world: that of the "illegals". With the closure of frontiers, an illegal immigration which was already difficult to quantify, exploded in a spectacular fashion. A real mafia economy, made up of transnational networks, could then be deployed with impunity, made up of unscrupulous crooks and all forms of modern slavery like prostitution, but also feeding the labour black market of low pay, particularly in building and agriculture. The United States itself profited from this situation in order to super-exploit the sweat of illegal immigrants coming mainly from Latin America. So, for example "the number of Mexicans registered outside of Latin America (the majority in the United States) tripled between 1970 and 1980, reaching more than two million. If one took into account the enormous number of clandestine immigrants, the exact figure must be very much higher: between 1965-1975, the number of illegals fluctuated around 400,000 a year reaching between 1975 and 1990 about 900,000 migrants"[i].
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the quasi-autarkic Stalinist regimes, accelerated this process and opened up a new spiral of war, chaos and unprecedented disorder. While after 1945 displacements were essentially those of victims of war, mainly of expelled Germans, followed by those fleeing the German Democratic Republic before the construction of the wall in 1961, migrations after 1989 were rather the product of a new international wave. Up to 1989, migrants from Eastern Europe were blocked by the Iron Curtain. Migratory waves thus went from the South towards the North, notably from northern Africa and the countries of the Mediterranean towards the large urban centres of the European countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the integration of the countries of central Europe into the European Union (EU), a worker from the East could again move to the countries of the West. At the same time, the massive and rapid growth of China led to the beginning of a vast internal migration, stirring hundreds of millions to leave the countryside for the towns. Because of the growth of the Chinese economy these masses could be absorbed. A contrario , with the advance of the crisis in Europe and the United States, the flow coming from other countries was restricted by the numbers already there.
The dynamic of militarism and of the world chaos which followed the dislocation of the Eastern Bloc and the disintegration of the alliances around the United State aggravated the tendency of "each for themselves" and the tensions between different nations, pushing populations to flee the fighting and/or growing misery. The real barrier which separated East from West, whose objective was not only the demarcation of borders on the imperialist level but also the prevention of emigration, disappeared, provoking an anguished response from the governments of Western Europe faced with the presumed threat of a "massive immigration" from the countries of the East. After 1989, a wave of migrants did come towards the West, notably from Romania, Poland and central Europe, looking for work, even if badly paid. Despite the tragic episode of the Balkans War between 1990 and 1993 and the recent conflict in Ukraine, the migratory flow within Europe was relatively "under control". And this while at the same time the pressure from migration at its periphery became stronger and stronger on the EU[ii].
At the beginning of the 1990s, new wars were sowing chaos in the Middle-East, the Balkans, in the Caucuses and Africa, provoking ethnic cleansing and all sorts of pogroms (Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Thailand, etc.). Millions were looking for refuge but the majority of refugees still remained in their regions. Only a limited number of them turned towards Western Europe. During the first Gulf War (1991) the US-led "coalition" used the local Kurd and Shi'ite populations for its intervention, which resulted in at least 500,000 deaths and a new wave of refugees[iii]. The "humanitarian" and "peace-making" alibis of the West allowed the covering-up of the worst imperialist exactions in the name of the "protection of refugees" and populations, in particular the Kurdish minorities. The bourgeoisie then promised us an era of "peace" and "prosperity" along with the triumph of democracy. In reality, as we can see today, the major powers and all the states involved were to be dragged along by the logic of militarism into a downward spiral that becomes ever more murderous and destructive. Moreover, war rapidly returned to Europe, in ex-Yugoslavia, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths. In 1990, 35,000 Albanians from Kosovo began to flee towards Western Europe. A year later, following Croatia's declaration of independence, 200,000 people fled the horror of the conflict and 350,000 others were displaced within the old, now carved-up territory. In 1995, the war spread to Bosnia and 700,000 supplementary people were driven out, notably following the daily bombardments on Sarajevo[iv]. A year earlier, the genocide in Rwanda, equally with the complicity of the French and, to a lesser extent, the British and USA, saw close to a million victims (mainly from the Tutsi population, but also some Hutus) provoked the massive and tragic stampede of Rwandan refugees escaping towards the province of Kivu in the Congo (1.2 million displaced and thousands more deaths due to cholera, revenge attacks, etc.). Every time the refugees become the hostages and victims of the worst atrocities. At best they were considered "collateral damage" or as a simple nuisance from the point of view of military logistics.
There were many who were ready to think that the spectre of war was a distant prospect but in the reality and logic of capitalism, the war-like spiral can only continue. Entire zones of the planet found themselves polluted by warlords and the appetites of the major powers, hunting down and terrorising the populations, obliging still more to flee the barbarity of the combat zones. Millions fled the atrocities of gangs and mafias, as in Latin America with the narco-wars, or those left adrift by states collapsing in tatters, such as Iraq, where we saw the rise of the obscurantism of al-Qaida and then "Islamic State”. The same thing was happening in Africa where inter-ethnic tensions and armed bands of murderous terrorists multiplied their attacks.. The interventions of the main powers, notably the United States in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, awakened the ambitions of the regional powers, further destabilising these extremely fragile countries, devastating wider zones and delivering them up to war. All this aggravated the problems of refugees, multiplying the camps and the tragedies. The refugees were prey to the mafias, submitting to brutality, theft, violations, with women often enrolled or kidnapped by prostitution networks[v].
Throughout the globe these same phenomena are coming together, fed by the hot-points of war as in the Middle-East, condemning hundreds of thousands of families to wander in exile or stagnate in the camps.
Up to this time the majority of the refugee victims of war around Europe, remained in their regions. But, for some years now, faced with ever-wider spreading war-zones, notably the Middle-East and Africa, a much higher number of refugees head for Western Europe and that at the same time as more "economic" migrants from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Mediterranean or others hit by the economic crisis.
The same thing goes for the U.S. continent: more emigrating from Mexico, a growing number of refugees fleeing the violence of Central America, trying to escape towards Mexico in order to get to the United States.
Obama’s Wall
“President Barack Obama has already earned the damning nickname “Deporter in Chief” for kicking out of the country more than 2.5 million undocumented people during his two terms in office. Fear of deportation has sharply escalated since Trump’s election”.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/multimedia/The-Global-Rise-of-Xenophob... [1522]
Over the past five years and more, Iraq, Libya and Syria have fallen prey to an uncontrollable chaos which is pushing still more of the population to flee in large numbers. At the same time thousands of people are taken hostage by the rival imperialisms involved, as in Aleppo for example, where they are condemned to die under massive bombardments and bullets as well as dying of hunger and thirst. About 15 million people are displaced today from the Middle-East alone. In 2015, more than a million people were sent into exile, counting only the flow towards Germany. For the first time since 1945, waves of refugees, victims of wars and bombardments, are heading towards a Europe perceived as an "Eldorado", but are brutally pushed back or languish in camps. In Ukraine the war has flared up again and thousands of Ukrainians have fled the fighting, asking for asylum in neighbouring countries, notably in Poland which is growing more and more hostile to refugees.
Between 2000 and 2014, 22,400 people were drowned or disappeared in the Mediterranean trying to reach this idealised European Union, despite police numbers making access to the borders difficult. This exodus has provided a major opportunity to unscrupulous “people smugglers” whose organisations have prospered on what's become an industrial scale. As a result the richest states have become real bunkers multiplying their walls, barbed wire, patrols and police numbers. It's an irony of sorts that the champions of "democratic freedom", the United States, which didn’t have enough harsh words to stigmatise the Berlin "wall of shame" have already constructed a giant wall along its southern border in order to keep out the "Chicanos"[vi].
In many countries refugees have not only become undesirable but are also presented as criminals or potential terrorists, justifying a paranoia which deliberately aims to divide and control populations and prepare the repression of future social struggles. And to the police repression, can be added, outside of hunger and cold, deliberate administrative and bureaucratic harassment. The major powers have thus deployed a whole juridical arsenal whose job is to filter out the "good migrants" (those who can be useful for the valorisation of capital) notably the best educated, the products of the "Brain Drain". "Asylum-seekers" and the "bad migrants", the hungry majority without qualifications, must... go home, or go somewhere else. According to demographic and economic needs, different states and national capitals thus "regulate" the number of refugees available to be integrated into the labour market.
A good number are brutally sent back. Men, women and children, notably in camps in Turkey, are victims of the police who, if tasers, baton blows, etc., are not enough, don't hesitate to shoot them in cold blood. The EU is perfectly aware of these terrifying practices and the bodies which continue to wash up on Mediterranean beaches. Not only does this carnage leave them cold, but they are busy but organising a whole military and man-hunting apparatus to push back the refugees.
With this very general tableau of the history of refugees and the migratory flux, we've tried to show that capitalism has always used force and violence, either directly or indirectly, initially with the aim of forcing peasants to abandon their land and sell their labour power wherever they can. We have seen that these migrations, their numbers, their status (clandestine or legal), their direction, depend on the fluctuations of the world market and change according to the economic situation. War, which became more intense, more frequent and more widespread during the 20th century, means that the number of refugees and victims of war has constantly increased. With recent conflicts this flow has made its way to Europe and the other major industrial centres. Added to this is the fact that for some time now more and more movements of refugees are linked to the destruction of the environment. Today, climatic ecological changes and disasters can be added to all the other ills. By 2013, there were already 22 million climatic refugees. According to some sources there will be three times as many refugees from climate change than those fleeing war. For 2050, the UNO forecasts the number of 250,000 climatic refugees, a greatly underestimated figure when we are already seeing the air in some zones and cities becoming unbreathable (e.g. Beijing and New Delhi). The convergence of all these factors combines to increase the scale of the tragedy. There is now a growing number of refugees that capital, as a result of its historic crisis, can no longer integrate into production.
Thus the tragic fate of the refugees poses a real moral problem for the working class. The capitalist system is carrying out the hunt for illegals, repression, deportation, imprisonment in camps, while multiplying xenophobic campaigns which end up feeding the preparation for all sorts of violence against migrants. Further, in trying to distinguish "real asylum-seekers" from the rapidly-growing numbers of undesirable "economic refugees", the bourgeoisie accentuates these divisions. Faced with the reality of the economic crisis throughout Europe, and by exploiting the fear of terrorism, the bourgeoisie is stoking up xenophobia while at the same time presenting the state as the sole guarantor of stability. The propaganda of the ruling class cranks up concerns about competition for work, for housing and health benefits, favouring a reactionary, pogromist mentality. All this constitutes fertile soil for the spread of populism[vii].
This is confirmed by the growth of anti-immigrant and ultra-conservative parties in Europe and the United States, parties which have gained an influence in the more marginalised parts of the proletariat in the old industrial regions. The result of the referendum in Great Britain, like the election of Trump in America, is the most evident expression of this.
Faced with the thorny question of migration and refugees, the working class will have to take on a growing moral responsibility. It will be necessary to banish both the expressions of open hatred, such as "Throw out the immigrants", and the more “democratic” version which says "we can't take on the entire world's misery". It has to avoid the traps of official propaganda which are an obstacle to a basic necessity of the class struggle: solidarity, which will have to be affirmed in an increasingly conscious manner. The bourgeoisie, which does fear for a future loss of control faced with a more and more chaotic situation, willingly fosters a climate of terror, pushing isolated individuals to put themselves under the “protection” of the state. Faced with the anxiety-ridden official speeches and the security measures of the state apparatus, proletarians must act in an absolutely conscious manner and reject the reflexes of fear conditioned by the media, recognising that before everything refugees are the victims of capitalism and the barbaric policies of these same states. This is what we have tried to show in this series of articles. In time, the working class will have to be able to see that behind the question of migrants and refugees is the question of the international unity of the working class and its revolutionary fight against the capitalist system.
"If our class aims to recover its class identity, solidarity can be an important means of unification in its struggle. If, on the contrary, it only sees in the refugees competition and a threat, if it doesn’t form an alternative to capitalist misery, to a system which forces millions to flee under the threat of war or of hunger, then we will be under threat of a massive extension of the pogromist mentality and the proletariat at the heart of it will not be spared."[viii]
WH, November 2016
[i] Veronique Petit, International migrations, published in La population des pays en developpement (Populations of the developing countries).
[ii] For this reason, the EU created a unique space (the Schengen space) allowing for drastic control and a tighter policing (while allowing the "free movement" of labour inside this space).
[iii] See the ICC's Gulf War 1991: the terror of the new world order. https://en.internationalism.org/wr/307/iraq-1991 [1523]
[iv] At the time of the Serbian offensive in the enclave of Srebrenica, the French and British military of FORPRONU, under the orders of their high commands, kept their "neutrality" allowing the massacre of more than 8000 Bosnians.
[v] The phenomenon of prostitution, straightaway threatening minors, is in full expansion throughout the world. There are about 40 million prostitutes around the entire world with many taken by force.
[vi] See our article: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201509/13390/migrants-and-refu... [1524]
[vii] See our article in International Review no. 157 on populism: https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14086/questi... [1471]
The ruling class in Britain was not prepared for the Brexit result. That there was no plan in place has become evident in the subsequent months. The Cameron government had no measures prepared. Those who campaigned to Leave the EU have gone back on slogans such as ‘£350 million a week to be spent on the NHS’ but not suggested anything in their place. The British bourgeoisie had partly lost control of its political apparatus and was looking for strategies to limit the damage to the economy, to stabilise a situation in which, especially after the advent of President Trump in the USA, instability and uncertainty are rapidly spreading.
The government’s February 2017 White Paper spends nearly 25,000 words trying to resolve a raft of contradictions. In a speech in January Theresa May said that the “British people … voted to shape a brighter future”. The White Paper aims at paving the way for a “smooth, mutually beneficial exit” and wants to “avoid a disruptive cliff-edge.” Whether this future will be ‘brighter’ remains to be seen.
You can read that “We will not be seeking membership of the Single Market, but will pursue instead a new strategic partnership with the EU, including an ambitious and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and a new customs agreement.” So, the UK is going to leave the Single Market and then come to some arrangement with the 27 remaining countries. To leave the EU there need only be the agreement of 20 of the remaining countries, whereas a trade deal may need the backing of all the remaining 27 EU states. With trade, the government thinks that “An international rules based system is crucial for underpinning free trade and to ward off protectionism.” At a time when the US under President Trump seems to be going in a protectionist direction, putting America First, and renegotiating trade deals, this is not a welcome prospect for British capitalism as the US is the UK’s single biggest export market on a country-by-country basis. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested that, while the UK’s contributions to the EU budget will cease, the loss of trade will have a much bigger impact on the British economy.
May proposes an alternative to the Single Market “If we were excluded from accessing the single market – we would be free to change the basis of Britain’s economic model.” Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, speaking to Welt am Sonntag (15/1/17) said “If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, if Britain were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, then we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term. In this case, we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness. And you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do.” The proposal to do “something different” has been greeted with much speculation. Will the UK become a tax haven? Will it get stuck into a trade and tariff war? There are only so many options, one of which is certainly not Britain undergoing a revival of manufacture on any significant scale, despite vague promises in this direction.
One reason that British access to the single market seems impossible to many commentators is that it would involve a commitment to freedom of movement for EU citizens. May has said “We want to guarantee the rights of EU citizens who are already living in Britain”, but at the same time her government is prepared to use these nearly 3 million people as bargaining chips. Liam Fox was reported as describing EU nationals in the UK as one of the “main cards” in Brexit negotiations. A leaked document from the European parliament’s legal affairs committee said there could be an EU backlash against this.
The contradictions in the British government’s position reflect the position that British capitalism is stuck in. “We will take back control of our laws”, says May, but, at the same time, “as we translate the body of European law into our domestic regulations, we will ensure that workers’ rights are fully protected”. The goal is to have everything ‘beneficial’ about the EU, plus every advantage of ‘independence’. The British bourgeoisie will employ any and every manoeuvre it can. It will blame the EU for every difficulty. But it’s not starting from a position of strength.
The British bourgeoisie has historically been noted for the ability of its political apparatus to act in defence of the interests of the national capital. The result of the referendum showed a growing loss of cohesion within the ruling class, but it also showed the capacity of the British ruling class to adapt to its difficulties. This was demonstrated after the referendum when May was quite evidently ‘selected’ as Tory leader to resolve a temporary government crisis. Similarly, subsequent legal and parliamentary battles, and the role of the media, have to be seen in this context. The case brought against the government, to stop it acting on its own and insisting on a role for parliament, produced a wave of populist media rage against the judges of the Court of Appeal: the Daily Mail branding them as “Enemies of the People”, while the liberal media defended the ‘independence of the judiciary’.
But what was being touted as a ‘constitutional crisis’ soon subsided. When the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court was also dismissed there was far less hysteria. The House of Commons performed its duty and rubber stamped the proposals of the executive, despite the majority of MPs having been in favour of remaining in the EU. The Labour Party was particularly helpful. Jeremy Corbyn imposed a three-line whip on MPs to ensure they supported the latter stages of Brexit legislation. Corbyn was loyally supported by the Trotskyists of Socialist Worker (9/2/17) “He had rightly insisted that Labour MPs vote for a bill that would begin the process of leaving the European Union”. For all Corbyn’s attempts to pose as a ‘radical’ he remains a very conventional participant in the battles over Brexit, as he said in a speech on 10 January 2017. “Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle”. Labour principles start from the defence of British capital and the manoeuvres of bourgeois democracy.
Elsewhere in parliament, a government source said “If the Lords don’t want to face an overwhelming public call to be abolished they must get on and protect democracy and pass this bill”. Brexit Secretary David Davis called on peers to “do their patriotic duty”. Threats to the House of Lords from the Conservative party are intriguing evidence of the divisions within the bourgeoisie, even though at a deeper level they are united as parts of one state capitalist class
Despite all the declarations of ‘freedom for the UK’, in January 2017 the reality of British imperialism’s position was seen in May’s visit to the US and Turkey. With Trump, she held hands, and clearly grasped at any straws available. The so-called ‘special relationship’ has always been one-sidedly weighted to the US’s benefit and there seems little prospect that the imbalance will be modified in the foreseeable future. In Turkey May “issued a stern warning to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoðan about respecting human rights yesterday as she prepared to sign a £100m fighter jet deal that Downing Street hopes will lead to Britain becoming Turkey’s main defence partner” (Guardian 28/1/17).
This is the current international face of the British bourgeoisie. Unsure of prospects outside the EU, desperate for any crumbs from American imperialism, uncertain about the prospects for its financial sector, but at least able to rely on arms sales to a country in conflict. A leaked government document showed the industries that are set to be prioritised by the government during Brexit talks. High priorities included aerospace, air transport, gas markets, financial services, land transport (excluding rail), insurance, and banking and market infrastructure. Low priorities included steel construction, oil and gas, telecoms, post, environmental services, water, medical, and education. Behind the scenes decisions are being made as to which sectors might survive, or can be sacrificed, and which need more serious backing.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (Telegraph 11/2/17) doesn’t underestimate the abilities of the British bourgeoisie to intrigue and conspire, “the Brits will manage without big effort to divide the remaining 27 member states”. And the British government does have a fall-back position as, in May’s words “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain”. That is the ‘hard Brexit’ position that the British bourgeoisie appears to be rallying round. The ruthlessness of the British bourgeoisie hasn’t vanished, but its ability to function cohesively in a period of growing decomposition has declined.
The problems faced by the working class in Britain echo those faced internationally. In 1989 the momentous transitions in the regimes of eastern Europe were accomplished with the working class just a spectator, not playing any independent role. In the last couple of years, we have seen the spread of terrorism to the streets of western Europe, the EU Referendum, the election of Trump, and the resurgence of Marine Le Pen’s Front National. Again, for all the talk about the tremendous changes that are taking place, and the discontent of the people up against the elites, the working class has not been an active factor in the situation. The bourgeoisie will try and use the decomposition of its system against the working class, whether promoting the populist option or ‘anti-populist’ battles and campaigns. But whereas the bourgeoisie is defending a society in decline, the working class has the capacity to create new social relations based on solidarity rather than exploitation and nihilism.
Car 15/2/17
The bourgeoisie has made no mistake in spending decades concocting the shabbiest lies about the revolution in Russia in 1917. 100 years after the soviets took power in Russia, the propagandists of the ruling class continue to sing the same hymn to the virtues of bourgeois parliamentary ‘democracy’ and spew out the worst falsifications about the reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia. In fact, despite a whole number of quibbles, these historians of the bourgeois order have unceasingly presented the February 1917 revolution as a movement for ‘democracy’, hijacked by the Bolshevik ‘coup d’etat’. February 1917 was an authentic ‘democratic festival’, October 1917 a vulgar ‘coup d’etat’, a Bolshevik manipulation of the backward masses of Tsarist Russia. This shameless brainwashing is the product of the fear and rage felt by the world bourgeoisie faced by the collective work and solidarity, the conscious action of the exploited class, daring to raise its head and put in question the existing order. The shock waves from this proletarian earthquake still haunt the memory of the bourgeoisie, which has done everything possible, then as now, to separate the working class from its historic experience. Today, falsifying the nature of the Russian revolution and degrading the essence of the workers’ councils is part of capitalism’s odious campaign on the ‘death of communism’, identifying the proletarian revolution with its executioner, Stalinism. This is the misleading idea that revolution can only lead to the Gulag. Faced with this torrent of calumnies and mystifying propaganda, the defence of the Russian revolution is a duty for revolutionaries in order to help the working class rid itself of all the ideological muck spilled by the bourgeoisie, and re-appropriate the whole richness of this vital experience.
The workers’ rising in St Petersburg (Petrograd) in Russia did not come like a bolt from the blue. It was in continuity with the economic strikes launched by the Russian workers since 1915 in reaction against the savagery of the world butchery, against hunger, misery, excessive exploitation and the permanent terror of war. These strikes and revolts were in no way a specificity of the Russian proletariat, but an integral part of the struggles and demonstrations of the international proletariat. A similar wave of workers’ agitation developed in Germany, Austria and Britain. At the front, especially in the Russian and German armies, there were mutinies, mass desertions, fraternisation between soldiers on the two sides. In fact, after allowing themselves to be carried away by the government’s patriotic venom and ‘democratic’ illusions, after being led astray by the treason of the majority of the social democratic parties and unions, the international proletariat raised its head and started to come out of the fog of chauvinist intoxication. The internationalists were at the head of the movement - the Bolsheviks, the Spartacists, all the lefts of the 2nd International who had intransigently denounced the war since its outbreak in August 1914 as an imperialist pillage, as a manifestation of the collapse of world capitalism, and as a signal for the proletariat to complete its historic mission: the international socialist revolution. This historic challenge would be raised internationally by the working class from 1917 to 1923. The vanguard of this vast proletarian movement, which stopped the war and opened the possibility of the world revolution, was the Russian proletariat in February 1917. The outbreak of the Russian revolution was not, then, a national affair or an isolated phenomenon - that is to say, a late bourgeois revolution, limited to the overthrow of feudal absolutism. It was the highest moment of the world proletarian response to the war, and more profoundly to the entry of the capitalist system into its decadence.
From 22nd to 27th February, the workers of St Petersburg launched an insurrection in response to the historic problem represented by the world war. Started by the textile workers - overcoming the hesitations of revolutionary organisations - the strike involved almost all the factories in the capital in 3 days. On the 25th there were 240,000 workers who had stopped work and, far from remaining passive on their shop floors, meetings and street demonstrations proliferated, where their slogans, in the first hours, demanded “bread”, soon reinforced by the calls “down with the war”, “down with autocracy”.
On the evening of the 27th February, the insurrection, lead by the armed proletariat, reigned supreme in the capital, while strikes and workers’ demonstrations were starting in Moscow, spreading in the following days to other towns in the province, Samara, Saratov, Kharkov... Isolated, incapable of using the army, profoundly undermined by the war, the Tsarist regime was forced to abdicate.
Once having broken the first chains, the workers did not want to retreat and, in order not to advance blindly, they revived the experience of 1905 by creating soviets which had appeared spontaneously during this first great mass strike. These workers’ councils were the direct emanation of thousands of workers’ assemblies, who centralised their action through elected and instantly revocable delegates.
Trotsky had, after 1905, already shown what a workers’ council was: “What was the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies? The Soviet came into being as a response to an objective need - a need born of the course of events. It was an organisation which was authoritative and yet had no traditions; which could immediately involve a scattered mass of hundreds of thousands of people ... which was capable of initiative and spontaneous self-control.” (Trotsky, 1905). This “finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat”, as Lenin said, rendered the permanent organisation in unions null and void. In the period in which the revolution is on the historical agenda, struggles explode spontaneously and tend to generalise to all sectors of production. So the spontaneous way the workers’ councils arise results directly from the explosive, rather than planned or programmed, character of the revolutionary struggle.
The workers’ councils in the Russian revolution were not the simple passive product of exceptional objective conditions, but also the product of a collective coming to consciousness. The movement of the councils itself carried the means for the self-education of the masses. The workers’ councils mingled the economic and political aspects of the struggle against the established order. As Trotsky wrote: “in that lies its strength. Every week brings something new to the masses. Every two months creates an epoch. At the end of February, the insurrection. At the end of April, a demonstration of the armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd. At the beginning of July, a new assault, far broader in scope and under more resolute slogans. At the end of August, Kornilov’s attempt at an overthrow beaten off by the masses. At the end of October, conquest of power by the Bolsheviks. Under these events, so striking in their rhythm, molecular processes were taking place, welding the heterogeneous elements of the working class into one political whole.” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, ‘Shifts in the Masses’) “Meetings were held in the trenches, on village squares, in the factories. For months, in Petrograd and in the whole of Russia, every street corner became a public tribune.” (ibid).
Although the Russian proletariat gave itself the means for its combat by forming the workers’ councils, as early as February it encountered an extremely dangerous situation. The forces of the international bourgeoisie immediately attempted to turn the situation to its advantage. Unable to crush the movement in blood, they tried to orient it towards bourgeois ‘democratic’ objectives. On the one hand they formed an official Provisional Government with the aim of continuing the war. On the other hand, the soviets were invaded by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries straight away.
These latter, of whom the majority had passed into the bourgeois camp during the war, enjoyed an enormous confidence among the workers at the start of the February revolution. They were naturally put on the Executive of the Soviet. From this strategic position they used all means to try and sabotage and destroy the soviets.
From a situation of “dual power” in February, a situation of “dual powerlessness” had emerged in May and June 1917, with the Executive of the Soviets serving as a mask for the bourgeoisie to realise its objectives: the re-establishment of order at home and at the front in order to continue the imperialist butchery. Menshevik and Social Revolutionary demagogues made ever more promises of peace, “the solution to the agrarian problem”, the 8 hour day etc., without ever putting them into practice.
Even if the workers, at least those in Petrograd, were convinced that only the power of the soviets would be able to respond to their aspirations, and although they saw that their demands were not being taken into consideration, elsewhere and, among the soldiers, there was still a strong belief in the “conciliators”, in the partisans of a so-called bourgeois revolution.
It fell to Lenin in his April Theses, two months after the opening of the movement, to unveil an audacious platform to rearm the Bolshevik Party, which had also drifted towards conciliation with the Provisional Government. His theses clearly explained where the proletariat was going, and formulated the perspectives of the party:
“In our attitude towards the war, ...not the slightest concession to ‘revolutionary defencism’ is permissible...
“No support for the Provisional Government: the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding ‘demand’ that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government...
“Not a parliamentary republic - to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step - but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country from top to bottom.”
Armed with this solid compass, the Bolshevik Party was able to make proposals for action corresponding to the needs and possibilities at each moment of the revolutionary process, keeping in mind the perspective of taking power, and to do this by the work of “persistent and patient explanation” (Lenin, op cit). And through this struggle for the masses to take control of their organisations against bourgeois sabotage, after several political crises in April, June and especially in July, it became possible to renew the Soviets, within which the Bolsheviks became the majority.
The decisive activity of the Bolsheviks had the central axis of developing consciousness in the class, based on confidence in the masses’ capacity for criticism and analysis, confidence in their capacity for unity and self-organisation. The Bolsheviks never pretended to make the masses submit to a preconceived ‘plan of action’, raising the masses as one raises an army. “The chief strength of Lenin lay in his understanding the inner logic of the movement, and guiding his policy by it. He did not impose his plan on the masses; he helped the masses to recognise and realise their own plan.” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, “Rearming the Party”).
From September the Bolsheviks clearly posed the question of the insurrection in the assemblies of the workers and soldiers. “The insurrection was decided, so to speak, for a fixed date, the 25th of October. It was not fixed by a secret meeting, but openly and publicly, and the triumphant revolution took place precisely on the 25th of October” (ibid). It raised an unequalled enthusiasm among the workers of the entire world, becoming the “beacon” which lit the future for all the exploited.
Today, the destruction of the political and economic power of the ruling class is still an imperious necessity. The dictatorship of the proletariat, organised in sovereign councils, remains the only way to open the way to a communist society. This is what proletarians need to re-appropriate in the light of the experience of 1917.
SB (Originally published in WR203, March 1997, and published again in WR 301, February 2007)
Ken Loach’s latest film, I, Daniel Blake, has already generated a lot of ink. First because it is the work of a very expressive film-maker who is well-versed in criticising the capitalist world. Second, because the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, to widespread surprise. Since then there have been numerous articles in the press, praising or attacking the film, seeing it either as a real social thermometer or as an alarmist tear-jerker.
We don’t intend to portray Ken Loach as a new Eisenstein[1], or his film as a new equivalent to the Communist Manifesto, or to see it as a sentimentalist apology for the British Labour Party, as one or two reviewers have claimed. Even though Loach denounces the “conscious cruelty” of David Cameron and has all kinds of illusions in the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, none of this really effects the quality of the film: it sometimes happens that a work of art escapes its author and takes on a life of its own.
In this film, Loach inveighs against the destruction of whole sectors of the economy and sides with the unemployed who are told to go out looking for non-existent jobs. This reality of de-industrialisation and this approach by the state are certainly realities. Ken Loach has the merit of showing this while going beyond observing how miserable everything is, pushing his audience towards a real indignation against the current state of affairs. He has the rather rare quality of providing a lucid and dynamic image of the consequences of the capitalist crisis in Britain – consequences which can easily be transposed elsewhere – and of exposing the totalitarian face of the state through its practice of social exclusion, repression, and dehumanisation.
All the passages in the film showing the “treatment”, via the telephone, of the unemployed by “healthcare professionals” who are made to function as the guard-dogs of the system, would be laughable if they were not so realistic. This facet of the democratic state – in fact its dictatorship – is no fiction: the capitalist system, its democratic institutions, including those which are supposed to support or protect vulnerable, elderly, sick or unemployed people, function like a juggernaut and like tools of exclusion. Trying to get the minimum needed to live on becomes a real battle where you pay heavily for the least slip in writing, the slightest sign of the “wrong” attitude, and often end up starving. Daniel’s partner Katie is more or less cornered when she falls hungrily on a tin of beans after going with him to a food bank.
But what’s really at stake in this “social” movie, as with all the others, is whether it can envisage a perspective of resistance, of struggle against the crisis and the capitalist Moloch. Is such a struggle possible? Who could lead it? It’s on this level that you have to judge the real qualities of this kind of film and few are up to it. Most remain at the stage of merely recognising powerlessness or retreating into ethereal ideals.
On the first question, Ken Loach’s film expresses all the difficulties of the working class to fight back and confront the state. Today, most attempts to resist, to keep your head above water, are limited to the level of the individual or to narrow networks of mutual aid. The title of the film, I, Daniel Blake, is a clue in itself: individual self-assertion as the only possibility.
Here we are very far indeed from a collective, offensive class solidarity, which is a real weapon in the struggle and in developing a long-term perspective of going beyond capitalist society. This is not in the frame of the film and none of its characters gives any sign of raising it. The only situation where we catch a glimpse of something more collective is when Daniel reacts by daubing graffiti on the walls of the job centre. Enthusiastic reactions and applause from passers-by: they understand his action and perhaps live in the same situation, but at no point do they express solidarity by coming to talk to him or opposing the cops who come to arrest him. They are no more than impotent spectators. Only one individual reacts more openly: a homeless person, who you imagine to be marginalised, probably alcoholic – a whole symbol of powerlessness.
But the film does have some small, limited moments, where we see human reactions, people listening to each other, helping each other, taking pleasure in sharing. Between Daniel and Katie, her children, with a former work-mate, a neighbour, an employee at the job centre who really wants to help but whose initiatives come to nothing – all this is a source of humanity, even if none of them can see how to go any further.
Clearly, behind the immediate incapacity to change anything, we feel that there are sparks of life, possibilities that contain the basis of really human social relations. This is not at all like the film by Stéphane Brizé, La loi du marché, where behind the same observation of social problems and the reality of unemployment the most awful nihilism is advertised, without a trace of hope, without any perspective, a totally static vision of society, which can give rise to nothing but “no future”, to death[2].
Another aspect emerges very strongly from this film: the dignity of the characters, their sense of self-worth. This is definitely one of the qualities of the film. The key to any proletarian’s self-worth is to hold on to moral values, to defend their dignity whatever the circumstances. The defence of this proletarian morality is what reveals the possibility of a future in which humanity can go beyond barbarism, beyond each-against-all. Daniel Blake expresses this when he discovers that Katie has had to resort to prostitution to avoid dying of hunger. This devastates him more than anything, even more than his own drama. Dignity again when Daniel insists that “When you lose your self-respect you're done for”.
But this proletarian dignity is also contradicted by the words attributed to him and read out at his funeral:
“My name is Daniel Blake, I am a man, not a dog…I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen, nothing more, nothing less”. Daniel sees himself as a citizen rather than a proletarian. But to be a citizen means belonging to a nation, not a social class. The difference is fundamental, above all for the proletarians. It’s always in the name of citizenship or the defence of democracy, or the Republic, that the ruling ideology tries to mobilise us for the interests of our exploiters. This can only be the logic of the bourgeoisie. The defence of citizenship is not the logic of the proletariat. It leads to competition and division and the perpetuation of the capitalist world.
As Daniel Blake expresses it, his situation is shared by millions of exploited proletarians, thrown into precariousness, excluded by the capitalist system. Whether it’s in Britain, France, China or anywhere else, the same capitalist laws of wage labour exert their violence on us. Even when it wears a democratic mask, capital divides us, grinds us down, kills us.
Real class solidarity, which is a necessity for the future of humanity, must above all be expressed by struggle: a conscious, collective struggle which goes beyond national frontiers. The phrase from the Communist Manifesto, “the workers have no country” is no dream. It’s the key to transforming the world.
Stopio, 15.12.16
[1] Eisenstein was a Russian film-maker of the early 20th century, who has had a major influence in the history of cinema. His work was able to give form to the tide of revolution after 1917, although his compromises with Stalinism later made him a pioneer of cinema as propaganda.
[2] See our article (in French) ‘’A propos du film La loi du marché: une dénonciation sans réelle alternative” https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/201506/9226/a-propos-du-film-l... [1529]
Today everyone wants to talk about the working class. At the last UK general election Cameron claimed to speak in the name of “hard working people” and Theresa May has gone one better in wanting to represent the working class, while UKIP claims to be able to speak for – and take the votes of – the workers who have become disillusioned with the Labour Party which imposed austerity on them for the 13 years of the Blair and Brown governments.
But when workers struggle for their own interests it is a different story: Mrs May’s spokesperson condemned the strikes called in December as “completely unacceptable” and showing a “shared contempt” for ordinary people.
Although strike days are at a historic low at present, the disputes going on this winter involve many of the concerns all workers face, especially when they are an average of £20 a week worse off than before the financial crash. To take some examples: BA cabin crew taken on since 2010, in the “mixed fleet branch” with worse pay and conditions, have rejected a derisory 2% pay offer and are concerned about cuts in training courses; workers at Crown post offices are concerned about job security, due to closure of offices, as well as pension changes; tube workers also concerned about jobs with closure of ticket offices, as well as bullying management; rail workers are concerned about safety on trains, as well as jobs for guards. These disputes illustrate the fact that what members of the working class sell to the capitalist, their labour power, is not simply a commodity like any other sold at around the minimum cost of production. If supply outstrips demand it results in the suffering of unemployment. And the cost of labour power, the wage or salary, has a cultural and moral component according to what is considered an acceptable standard of living, and according to what the workers can win by struggling. While there is a working class there will be class struggle.
Does this mean that the trade unions, which after all are negotiating these disputes, speak for the working class? Not at all. If we take the example of the strikes on Southern Rail over driver operated trains, an issue of safety that affects drivers, guards and passengers, we can see that the unions are not working according to the principles of solidarity that underpin all workers’ struggles. Not only have ASLEF and the RMT kept the drivers and guards separate, when they both face the same issue, but ASLEF, the TUC and Southern Rail cooked up a deal for drivers that would isolate and undermine the guards’ struggle, and actively oppose any tendencies for solidarity. They are acting according to the principles of insurance – pay your dues to ASLEF and we will provide certain benefits – in opposition to the working class principle of solidarity. The vote to reject the deal shows that this principle remains alive in the working class.
At this time it is certainly very difficult to grasp the nature of the working class and its struggle, and the revolutionary potential it carries within it. Not only are the unions able to reduce almost every struggle to a question of their negotiation, over the heads of the workers; not only is almost every politician claiming to defend capitalism and nationalism in the name of the working class; but this comes more than a quarter of a century after 1989 when the fall of the Soviet Union was used for a barrage of propaganda purporting to show that there is no possibility of any better society than capitalism, as the Stalinist counter-revolution performed one last service for capital through its collapse. Nevertheless proletarian struggle still contains the revolutionary perspective it showed 100 years ago in the Russian revolution. The solidarity necessary for any struggle is a small indication of this, contradicting the capitalist principle of “every man for himself”.
Alex 17.2.17
The first part of our reply to Link’s ICC forum posts was on the ICC’s 40 year balance sheet of its existence[1]. This second part concentrates on the problem of the Fraction and the article in the International Review ‘The ICC as a Fraction’[2]. This is what Comrade Link wanted to ask in his second post:
“This is an important text giving an orientation for future activities of the ICC. It appears as an organisation statement that significant changes to intervention even from resolutions of recent congresses. It changes the way the organisation is to behave in the coming period. Yet it has been ignored by sympathisers and has not been elaborated by the organisation (as far as I am aware) and the promised second part of this document has not appeared.
I must say I am confused by this document as it focuses on long historical justifications without explaining and justifying the change clearly in terms of the period or of a change in the ICCs approach to intervention from relatively recently. The ICC appears to be now adopting a role as a Fraction but I am struggling to understand the reasons and the possible consequences. What does this role mean and what is the political justification for this change ie what is the analysis of current situation leading to this outcome.
I have previously made the statement on this forum that the ICC has given up on its role as ‘pole of regroupment’ and drew no criticism or rebuttal. The ICC has simply avoided explaining or clarifying its direction. It would appear however to tie in with this new role of the Fraction. I’m afraid I do need this explaining further but it appears to be a role of analysing previous events to determine lessons for the future. OK not a problem, that is always a role for militants but it is presented as a primary role in the context of a downturn of struggle and the inability of a revolutionary organisation to have an impact on the class.
So, is it being said that the class has been defeated in the past couple of decades or is this change just a response to a downturn in struggle and if so why has it taken so long to realise this? I’m afraid it remains very unclear what analysis is being made of the current period and how that justifies this course of action. Is this going to be an extended period of balance of the working class and the bourgeoisie where neither can impose its will? Is the class a defeated class and is the Bourgeoisie able to move towards war? Is the perspective of the historic course altered in some way or even rejected.
One contradiction I see is that this period of decomposition is still being called the final crisis of capitalism in the texts. However if we now enter a new period where this new role for the organisation is based on recognition of a defeat of the class, then surely for this to be the final phase, the ICC is really denying that neither a period of world war nor a period of revolution can follow. Can this current period of downturn of struggle not be followed by a revolutionary period and what’s more cannot that be following either by a period of working class power or a period of restoration of capitalism (or barbarism)?
There clearly are changes in the world that need analysing but I’m afraid that the ideas presented in these texts do not clarify them for me. No one in the 1970s was expected such an elongated period of low class struggle, so does this result void the theory of the historic course to war or revolution or is it just a new wrinkle to analyse.
There is clearly a downturn in class struggle that, with hindsight, negates the idea of the 80s as ‘Years of Truth’. I personally would stress the current low level of struggle is a product of enormous impact of nationalist ideologies. The referendum, the hullabaloo around it and the responses to current migration levels demonstrate clearly how the Bourgeoisie has taken the initiative today and sets the agenda for events. In this content there is clearly an impact on the abilities of militants to intervene in class struggle but the text leaves me with the uncertain impression that the the ICC is saying the working class has now been defeated?”
As in the first of Link’s posts about the balance sheet of the ICC’s 21st Congress[3] the comrade is surprised by the dearth of responses from sympathisers or anyone else in the revolutionary milieu to this significant article about the ICC and the fraction. Our response to this important observation is the same as we made to a similar remark by Link about the lack of reaction by the milieu in his first post:
“Your surprise is understandable, since the fate of the ICC, a significant organisation of the communist left for the past 40 years, is surely of concern for those who espouse the politics of the communist left, even if they disagree with many of our political positions and analyses. More: one would think surely that many of those who disagree with the ICC on whatever question would want to express themselves publicly on the subject as you have done.
While from this political point of view the silence about our self-critique is surprising and regrettable, from the vantage point of the past four decades, such indifference has not been that unusual. Ever since the re-emergence of the left communist milieu internationally since the end of the sixties, it has lacked a significant sense of common purpose which, if it had been pursued, despite the disagreements within it, would have strengthened this whole milieu and accelerated its internationalist impact on the working class much more than it actually has. In hindsight the three Conferences of Groups of the Communist Left in the late seventies which had the goal of confronting these often profound disagreements at the necessary theoretical and political level, and making common public statements on vital current questions facing the working class, were a high water mark. The collapse of these Conferences at the end of the decade has led to a long period of dispersal of the left communist milieu – even if polemics and other limited instances of mutual collaboration have sometimes occurred. The emergence of the phenomenon of political parasitism in 1981 has tended to further exacerbate the atomisation of the left communist milieu and reduce the solidarity between its individuals and groups. The low morale of the left communist milieu in general may help to explain the background to the dearth of response to the 40 year self-critique of the ICC.”
The reasons for this indifference are also related to the recognition of the responsibilities of the fraction.
It’s safe to say that the article ‘ICC as a fraction’ has left Link confused. He asks whether it means that the ICC is completely changing course. If so what will be its new tasks? Will it mean an end to intervention and regroupment? Does it mean that the working class is now defeated as far as the ICC are concerned? Has the historic course therefore changed fundamentally?
Let’s try and clarify some of these questions.
The article ‘Report on the role of the ICC as a fraction’[4] was part of the 40 year review set in motion by the last international congress of the ICC, re-examining our vision of the function of revolutionary organisation in a necessarily historical way. It wasn’t to proclaim a complete change of course: ‘we are now a fraction’, but to set out the historical parameters - and precedents - of the role of revolutionaries today, not with the aim of reversing our original conception of the role of the ICC, but of restating it from a particular vantage point so that we can better measure our self-critique of the past 4 decades.
In the wake of each of the crises the ICC has overcome in its history, there has been an attempt by the organisation to return to fundamental principles by which to judge the reasons for the crisis. In 1982 for example, after the famous Chenier crisis of 80-81, a text on the function of revolutionary organisation was published which went back to fundamentals[5], further elaborating the original vision of the ICC in order to respond to the new problems that had arisen. Is this not an essential historical part of the Marxist method: to judge new situations according to fundamental principles, measuring the new circumstances with the main lessons of the past and thus developing those principles?
This is why the article recapitulates the historical justifications for the existence of the ICC. And the question ‘fraction or party’ is an important part of this recapitulation. It would seem perhaps that Link is not that interested in ‘long historical justifications’ and would prefer to remain in the present. But from the point of view of the Marxist method the establishment of historical reference points are necessary, short or long, in order to understand the present and future.
The way we treat the question of the fraction in this article does not represent a departure from our previous conceptions. One of the defining principles of the ICC is its explicit dependence on the work of Bilan from 1928–38 and of the Gauche Communiste de France from 1945-52, both in terms of the political programme developed from the lessons of the defeat of the October Revolution and the fraction conception of function in the counter revolutionary period as opposed to that of a party function. Bilan’s vision was opposed to that of Trotsky when he formed the 4th International in 1938 on the eve of the 2nd World War. The GCF strongly criticised the foundation of the Internationalist Communist Party in 1943.
Closely linked to this distinction between the role of fraction and party that the ICC reprised from Bilan and the GCF is the insistence of the ICC at the time of its formation in 1975 that it wasn’t, and couldn’t be, a party in the prevailing conditions, but was a current which had to help prepare the future party, and therefore its tasks were in a sense ‘fraction like’:
“The end of the period of counter-revolution has modified the conditions of existence of revolutionary groups. A new period has opened up, favourable to the development of the regroupment of revolutionaries. However, this new period is still an in-between period where the necessary conditions for the emergence of the party have not been transformed - through a real qualitative leap - into sufficient conditions”[6].
The text ‘ICC as a fraction’ is in continuity with previous ICC texts on the subject. Here are some of them: ‘The Italian Left 1922-37’, International Review 59; ‘The Italian Left 1937-52’ IR 61; ‘The Fraction-Party Marx to Lenin 1848-1917’ IR 64; ‘The Bolsheviks and the fraction’ IR 65; ‘Fraction or new party?’ IR 85; ‘The Italian Fraction and the French Communist Left’ IR 90[7].
The first four articles in this (non-exhaustive) list are in the form of a polemic with the International Communist Tendency (formerly known as the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party) whose main components are the PCInt - Internationalist Communist Party in Italy (Battaglia Comunista) - and the Communist Workers Organisation of Britain. The Italian wing of this trend (The CWO joined it in 1984) parted ways with the Bordigist wing of the party in 1952, with both claiming to be the continuators of 1943.
This series of polemics in the International Review brings out - for the ICC at least - the importance of the role of the fractions of the past for the consistent and coherent formation of the revolutionary programme today, and the necessary function and the type of functioning that the revolutionary organisation must adopt in the present historical epoch, the ‘in-between’ period before a party is possible.
We haven’t room to elaborate here on all the political consequences of this distinction between fraction and party. We will only briefly mention two by way of illustrating that the historical justifications of the role of the revolutionary organisation are fundamental. To try and create and fulfil the role of a party in a period of counter-revolution, that is to try and be the recognised vanguard of a defeated working class, is fraught with the danger of opportunism. The Italian party softened its opposition to anti-fascism when it allowed Vercesi, and the minority of Bilan, which had gone off to fight in the anti-fascist militias in Spain, into its ranks and adopted an ambiguous position toward the anti-fascist partisans in occupied Italy during the Second World War[8].
Secondly in May 1980 at the Third Conference of groups of the Communist Left, the PCInt and the CWO announced that their further participation in the Conferences was dependent on the closing of the debate on the revolutionary party. The ICC could not accept this new criterion for participation. It was as though for the PCInt the differences between the surviving and dispersed strands of the Communist Left could be decided in advance – the Party after all was already supposedly in existence since 1943 - and there was no longer any need for a forum of debate with other communist left trends, (nor, by the way, was there supposedly any need for a common statement proposed by the ICC on an internationalist denunciation of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that began at the end of the previous year). For the ICC however the failure of the conferences was a major setback on the road to the formation of the future party which will depend in large part on the greater clarification of outstanding differences through debate and polemic between the disparate elements of the communist left.[9]
Link doesn’t express himself on these questions that have a direct bearing on the article ICC as a fraction; yet, as we have tried to show, they are extremely relevant for the role of revolutionaries today. It would be interesting to know his opinion.
Link seems to think that talk about the fraction necessarily implies that the working class is now defeated. It’s true that Bilan emerged from the degeneration of the Communist International and the failure of the revolutionary wave that began in 1917. Bilan intended to draw the lessons of this defeat and the resulting counter-revolution, and to develop a new ‘system of principles’ for the party of the future. It had a direct and organic link with the left within the Italian Communist Party from which it was excluded.
The reemergence of revolutionary organisations after 1968 did so however in very different conditions. The immense wave of international class struggle that began with the May-June 1968 general strike in France marked a decisive break with the counter revolution; emerging revolutionary groups had no organic link with the parties of the past; and the work of the formation of new class principles was in large part completed.
However there were circumstances of the post-68 era that gave ‘fraction-like’ tasks to the revolutionary organisation despite the undefeated nature of the proletariat. The upsurge in class struggle came from the re-emergence of the world economic crisis which would be necessarily long and drawn out. The working class struggles were mainly of an economic, defensive kind – the proletarian revolution was still a distant perspective. The revolutionary political milieu was minuscule and immature, and unrecognised by the working class, despite the continuing claims of the Bordigist currents to already be the Party. In other words the conditions for both the possibility and necessity for the formation of the party had not yet revealed themselves. The revolutionary organisations no longer had an organic link with the parties of the past as Bilan did. However they still had to provide a bridge to the future party. And in that sense their work had to be fraction–like, a work of preparation for the future party and not the party itself.
The conditions since 1989, a period of the decomposition of world capitalism, has created still more difficulties for the advance of the class struggle beyond a defensive posture, indeed the last few decades have witnessed a decline in the extent of its combativity and consciousness, reversing an upward trend that reached its limits in the 1980s (the Polish mass strike, the British miners’ strike, etc). The ascendancy of right wing populism in the major capitalist countries at the present conjuncture will probably reinforce this decline. However these circumstances do not allow us to conclude that the working class is defeated in the way it was in the 1930s, when its revolutionary attempts in Russia, Germany and elsewhere had been crushed physically and when the bourgeoisie had its hands free to terrorise the entire population and mobilise it for world war.
The onset of the period of decomposition in the late 80s, in our view, was the product, on the one hand, of the changed historic course after 1968, in which the bourgeoisie was unable to mobilise the main battalions of the working class for war; at the same time the working class, despite intense struggles in the period 68-89, had been unable to offer a revolutionary alternative to the crisis of the system. Social decomposition is the result of this impasse in society. In time, it could lead to the overwhelming of the working class and an irreversible slide into barbarism, but we do not think we have reached this point of no return. In that sense, the potential for major class confrontations we announced in the 1970s still remains, despite all the difficulties facing the proletariat; by the same token, the task of preparing the ground for the future party has not been abandoned.
It is not entirely clear what Link’s view of the historic course is, whether he agrees or not with the concept itself or with the ICC’s assessment of it at the present time. It’s worth noting that for the ICC the analysis of the balance of class forces on a historical scale is indispensable to be able to judge from a materialist rather than a voluntarist standpoint whether the formation of the party is possible or not.
The more difficult context of today compared with the 70s and 80s particularly obliges us to recall the long term, historical vision of the role of revolutionaries, and to fight the tendency to see the latter only in the short or immediate term, and neglect important aspects of its ‘fraction-like’ role. Indeed the article on the balance sheet of the ICC’s 21st Congress underlines the danger of immediatism as a major risk factor in the forgetting of principles (opportunism) which the revolutionary organisation must preserve and transmit to the future party.
Examining the role of the fraction in assessing the role of revolutionaries does not mean, as Link fears, abandoning the tasks of intervention - the press, public meetings, leaflets, manifestos etc - nor the regroupment of revolutionaries and the strengthening of organisation, nor turning theoretical research into an academic, contemplative pursuit. The fractions of the past were by no means shy and retiring but intervened to the limit of their capacities even in the darkest days of the counter-revolution, i.e., in periods of dangerous illegality.
Marxism is in essence a militant theory devoted to changing the world and not merely interpreting it as the philosophers have done - but without the activist, immediatist and anti-theoretical spin that is often given to this famous slogan from the Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.
Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary organisation.
Revolutionary intervention thus has a historical framework, each element of revolutionary activity measured within a long term time frame.
The ICC has certainly, like other revolutionary groups, had to reduce the regularity of its printed press and other forms of intervention as a result of a number of factors – the reduction in number of outlets for selling the printed press, the escalating cost of printing and postage, dwindling resources, etc. At the same time we have recognised the growing importance of the internet and of our website as our principal, and most widely read publication. So all this is part of a necessary realism, related to current conditions, and doesn’t amount to abandoning the task of intervention. And despite the general unpopularity of marxism today, there remain individuals who want to join the revolutionary organisation: the regroupment and formation of such militants remains an axis of ‘fraction-like’ activity as does the greater discussion and confrontation of differences within the revolutionary milieu.
We look forward to hearing Link’s response both to this reply and the previous one.
WR 16.2.17
[1]. https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14137/questions-comrade-link-and-some-replies#_ftn1 [1530]
[2]. https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13786/report-role-icc-fraction [1426]
[3]. https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13785/40-years-after-foundation-icc [1531]
[4]. https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13786/report-role-icc-fraction [1426]
[6]. IR 29, ‘Report on the function of the revolutionary organisation [1532]’
[7]. All these texts can be found online by clicking on ‘ICC press’ at the top of our webpages and then scrolling down to ‘International Review’, which is divided into decades.
In the face of the decline of the US, and also of growing class, racial, religious and ethnic divisions, Trump wants to unite the capitalist nation behind its ruling class in the name of a new Americanism. The United States, according to Trump, has become the main victim of the rest of the world. He claims that, while the US has been exhausting itself and its resources maintaining world order, all the rest have been profiting from this order at the expense of “God’s own country”. The Trumpistas are thinking here not only of the Europeans or the East Asians who have been flooding the American market with their products. One of the main “exploiters” of the United States, according to Trump, is Mexico, which he accuses of exporting its surplus population into the American social welfare system, while at the same time developing its own industry to such an extent that its automobile production is overtaking that of its northern neighbour.
This amounts to a new and virulent form of nationalism, reminiscent of “underdog” German nationalism after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. The orientation of this form of nationalism is no longer to justify the imposing of a world order by America. Its orientation is to itself put in question the existing world order ...
Date: Saturday 15 April 2017, 2pm-6pm
Place: Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Rd, Kings Cross, London WC1X 8QY
The ICC will begin the meeting with a presentation based on two recent articles:
After that – plenty of time to discuss. All welcome!
After the push from the extreme right in Austria and Holland, the Brexit vote in the Uk and the victory of Donald Trump in the USA, France could be the next big power to see a populist movement at the gates of power, or at least to seriously shake up the electoral machine. While the more lucid factions of the bourgeoisie, both right and left, are not at all just folding their arms faced with this objective threat to the state and the ruling class, the scenario of a victory by marine Le pen at the next presidential election is taken sufficiently seriously to mobilise the European governments and send shivers through the financial markets. Such an event, at the heart of the European motor, would pose a major danger to the EU, much greater than Brexit. It would be a disaster for Germany and all the pro-European governments, potentially menacing the imperialist balance of power at the historic centre of capitalism.
As we have previously underlined in previous articles, the roots of populism in Europe and the USA are in the first instance a result of the historical weakening of the traditional government parties, which have been discredited by decades of attacks against living and working conditions, by unbearable levels of chronic mass unemployment, by the cynicism, hypocrisy and corruption of numerous political and economic spheres, and by their incapacity to offer the masses the illusion of a better future. Faced with a working class which for the moment is unable to put forward a revolutionary perspective and pose a tangible threat to capitalist society, we are seeing a mounting tide of indiscipline, of every man for himself, both at the international level and in the relations between the different bourgeois cliques. The examples of this latter phenomenon in France are legion, such as the battle between Villepin and Sarkozy, who, in 2004 around the “Clearstream” affair , threatened to hang his opponent on a butcher’s hook, or, in 2012, the merciless rivalry between Copé and Fillon to get to the top of the party of the right, are good illustrations of the dangers such a process poses to the political life of the ruling class.
The other essential factor for understanding the surge of populism is the current political weaknesses of the working class, in particular its huge difficulty in identifying itself as the only social class capable of overturning the capitalist order. Faced with the incessant attacks of the bourgeoisie, there are real feelings of revolt within the proletariat and strata of the petty bourgeoisie. But given the lack of a real proletarian political perspective, this discontent can’t express itself on the terrain of the class struggle. For those who are deeply fed up with what’s going on, the only apparent answer is either to withdraw from any political involvement, or to support parties which are fraudulently presented as being against the “system”, who are marginalised and attacked by the mainstream media, and who are prepared to purge society of “elites” and “foreigners”. In sum, a whole mish-mash of demagogy based on social frustration, despair, and the hunt for scapegoats.
All these elements lie behind the growing difficulty of the state apparatus to put forward strategies based on parties best suited to the needs of capital. This is how a person as irresponsible and incompetent as Donald Trump has been able to get into the White House against the will of virtually the whole American political establishment, the more rational parts of the media and show business.
Not one populist force really stands against the system, every one of them are ready, in their own way, to defend the interests of capital. But the upsurge of these movements still represents a serious problem for the bourgeoisie. The defence of the national capital in the period of decadence opened up in 1914 has up till now demanded a strict subservience of the various political factions around the state power, around common capitalist interests which overrule the particular interests of this or that clique or party. Since 1945, the artifice of democratic pluralism has been assured by the alternating game of the more responsible parties of left and right. But the current populist movements have a totally irrational and obscurantist approach. Lacking a clear vision of the objective interests of their class, bereft of any real competence, they threaten at any moment to create havoc at the summit of the state and to block its proper management, as every day in the catastrophic presidency of Trump seems to demonstrate.
In France, the Front National (FN) is for many the embodiment of those who have been “left behind” by the most recent phase in the globalisation of capitalism. Its incoherent programme is not even taken that seriously by many of its own electors. But it is presented as a kind of final resort for “getting things moving”. This image is greatly helped by the fact that it has never been associated with managing the state. Since the 1980s, when President Mitterand was able to present a rather insignificant assemblage if ancient Petainists, Poujadist shopkeepers , old partisans of colonial Algeria and desperate young skinheads as a major fascist danger, the FN has made considerable progress on the electoral level. The tactic of inflating the FN as a bug-bear escaped the control of the tacticians, so much so that, although it’s still pointed to as a basis for anti-fascist campaigns aimed at reviving the image of the bourgeois republic and its democratic values, the rest of the bourgeoisie is now much more interested in actively weakening the FN.
Part of the French right, headed by Nicolas Sarkozy, has thus taken up the language and themes of the extreme right. In 2007 it managed in 2007 to reduce the electoral base of Jean-Marie Le Pen to a more respectable proportion (10.44% of votes at the first round of the presidential election). But the rapid wearing out of the ‘rational’ right after its spell in power, and above all with the deepening decomposition of the social and political tissue (particularly the rallying of many who had previously voted for the Stalinist party, having being seduced by the rabid patriotism of the FN) allowed Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the old leader, to obtain a historic score at the following presidential lection (17.90%).
But it was the regional elections of 2015 which really made the French bourgeoisie aware of the scale of the danger represented by the FN, which had become the “first party of France”, with more than 27% of the vote. It has again responded, albeit with much greater difficulties than before, in reviving the tactic of the “Republican front”: the Socialist party withdrew its candidates in favour of the right in two important regions in danger of falling into the hands of the FN. But the victry of the “Republican front” was just a hasty parade faced with the inexorable growth of populism. Despite all the legal and media weapons being used against it by the established factions of the bourgeoisie, Marine Le Pen knows that there is a real possibility of her party entering the Élysée.
The danger represented by the FN to the objective needs of the ruling class is increasing the difficulties of a bourgeoisie which already has a lot on its plate with the economic crisis. The militancy of the working class up to the mid 80s, the archaic nature of the Gaullist right and the role played by Stalinism in the state apparatus still weigh on the French bourgeoisie, which has inherited an enoros bureaucracy and and has always had a hard time modernising its economic structures, in carrying out the reforms needed for the national capital, unlike its immediate competitors, germany and Britain.
The accession of François Hoolande in 2012 clearly corresponded to this necessity of French capital: as in many other countries, the Socialist party represents the most intelligent faction of the bourgeoisie and thus the best placed to carry out the required attacks both at the economic and ideological level. But the beacon measure of Hollande’s presidency, the reform of the Labour Code with the adoption of the “El Khomri” law ended up weakening it and increasing the resistance of certain sectors of the bourgeoisie who are very attached to state intervention and Keynesianism. Although the SP, especially its social democratic wing, has long been in the forefront of the combat against the extreme right, the impossibility of keeping Hollande in power and the weakening of prime minister Valls have made its strategies obsolete.
The right wing has tended to base itself on relatively consensual personalities who have a statesman-like air. But Juppé’s candidature failed at the primaries and against all expectations, Fillon, the incarnation of the more stupid conservative right, came through on the basis of another kind of ‘electoral revolt’ while also playing the card of someone who is badly thought of by the mainstream media. But right from the start the new candidate handled his victory very badly, getting rid of the Sarkozyites from the top of the party, making no compromise on the virulence of his programme (for example, promising to get rid of hundreds of thousands of state employees…) which his own camp described as “radical”, and showing a worrying sympathy for Putin, in flagrant contradiction with the imperialist orientations of the French state. There was a big risk that Marine Le Pen could get the better of him in the second round of the presidential election. But the sabotaging of his candidature, thanks to the revelations about “Penelopegate” (the fake jobs given to his wife and family members) seems to have allowed the bourgeoisie to block his path to the Élysée.
The difficulties on the established right, Hollande’s withdrawal of his candidature and the victory of the ‘radical left wing candidate’ Benoit Hamon in the SP primary, have opened the door to the ‘independent’ candidate, Emmanuel Macron, who is presented as a new face, not mixed up with politicians’ intrigues. Having left the Socialist government in 2016, Macron can put himself forward as a credible alternative for the most lucid elements of the bourgeoisie, as a barrier against populism. What’s looking more and more like a coalition between left, centre and right, a bit like in Germany in 2013 with the third Merkel cabinet, the Hollande clan, a significant sector of the centre right and even of the right, like the MEDEF, and a number of personalities from economic and intellectual milieus like Martin Bouygues, Alain Minc and Jacques Attali seem to be counting on this former banker to block the route of the FN. And this despite the fact that a win for a man without any real anchoring in the state apparatus, and dependent on political spheres with very differing outlooks, could pose real problems for the management of state affairs and end up further accelerating the dynamic towards every man for himself.
Without predicting the result of the next election, especially since the situation is so unstable, it seems that the bourgeoisie is fully aware that the old electoral circus, arranged around the alternation between the traditional parties, is worn out and being rejected. So it is trying to come up with new faces, with people who claim to be doing things ‘differently’ and to be uninvolved in the old wheeling and dealing. But this approach, even if it works for a while, is also likely to be used up and thus to give ground to the most irrational tendencies in society.
EG, 28.2.17
This article, written by a close contact of the ICC in the US, is a contribution to our effort to follow the evolution of the situation in the US following the election of Trump. Events are moving very fast – since this article was written we have had the official announcement by the FBI that it will investigate links between Trump and the Russian state in the election campaign, and the highly significant defeat of Trump’s healthcare proposals in Congress. We will certainly continue to write about such events, but our aim is not “reporting” on a day-by-day basis but rather to develop a Marxist analysis of the underlying meaning of these developments.
As this article is written, the Donald J. Trump Presidency is barely a month old, but it is already engrossed in massive controversy as its very legitimacy hangs in the balance. So far, Trump’s advisors have struck a chilling tone, threatening the media and using Orwellian language about “alternative facts.” Trump himself has not shifted from his confrontational campaign persona, continuing his disconcerting and apparently compulsive habit of Tweeting out random thoughts and taunts of his critics at any hour of the night. He has even picked a fight with the venerable National Park Service over photographs of his inauguration depicting a crowd size much smaller than the throngs that appeared for Obama’s historic moment in 2008. With the democratic legitimacy of his Presidency in question from the start—having won the Presidency through the Electoral College, while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton (the second time in the past decade and a half that a Republican has won the Presidency, while losing the popular vote)—Trump continues to push the factless claim that millions of illegal immigrants voted for Clinton, costing him the popular vote—a claim that will almost certainly be used by Republican operatives to step up their campaign to purge the voter rolls of certain demographics.
At the end of his first week in office, Trump signed an Executive Order, apparently in an effort to keep one of his most controversial campaign promises to ban Muslims from entering the United States, that restricts entry of nationals of seven Muslim majority countries—including Iraq and Syria. The resulting chaos at US airports, which saw even legal Permanent Residents from these countries prohibited from returning to their homes, has led to the first major confrontation between the Trump administration and the judiciary as several federal judges issued orders temporarily blocking some of the more egregious elements of the executive’s unilateral action—apparently taken without any consultation with the customs and immigration agencies who would have to implement it.[1]
After a month, one could be forgiven for concluding that the United State’s federal government has been hijacked by a right-wing conspiracy website, because this may be in part exactly what has happened. Trump has elevated the shadowy figure of Steven Bannon, previously editor of the right-wing “Bretibart News” website, to a prominent advisory role in the White House—including a seat on the National Security Council. Bannon—an important figure of the so-called “alt-right,” who has a reputation as a “white nationalist” and anti-Semite—has become the Rasputin figure of the new administration, a mysterious, behind the scenes operative, who many suspect is now the real locus of power in the Trump White House. Couple this suspicion with the media firestorm—pushed hard by the defeated Democratic Party—that Trump was helped to power by the intervention of the Putin regime in the election and the widespread sense that the United States is now under some kind of strange occupation by hostile forces becomes understandable.
Clearly, the condition of the American state has fallen quite some distance from the heights of triumphant optimism that accompanied the election of the first African-American President in 2008. Today, a dark sense of foreboding disaster grips society and even important factions of the American state appear to have succumbed to confusion and despair. Quite frankly, very few analysts know what to expect in the period ahead. As Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren remarked during an appearance at one of the many semi-spontaneous protests that developed at airports across the country in the wake of Trump’s immigration orders, “I expected Trump to be bad, but not this bad and not this quick.”
While many elements in society appear prepared to fight back against the Trump administration—a fact that has already manifested itself in massive protests on his first weekend in office (the so-called “Women’s March”), it is also clear that the Trump administration—to the extent that is has a guiding philosophy—wants to govern through something resembling the “Shock Doctrine”: massive assaults on existing societal norms and institutions in an effort to provoke confusion, fear, anxiety and a constant sense of not knowing what is coming next. If one of the side effects of such a policy is to make the administration look somewhat incompetent, that appears to be of a secondary concern in the implementation of Bannon’s long-term policy to wreck the establishment institutions. In such conditions, it is no wonder that many good intentioned people have raised the question of “fascism” and openly wonder if the basic liberal freedoms that we have taken for granted are in real danger under the current administration.
Obviously, there is much material here to keep the analysts busy trying to make sense of what is happening to the American state in the age of Trump. This is no less true for revolutionaries, who themselves need to make a concerted effort to understand these developments and the challenges they pose for the workers’ movement. While we cannot pretend to give an exhaustive analysis of all of the myriad issues Trump’s election poses, we will attempt to commence this process here by examining several important concerns that have emerged in the wake of the election that relate to the workers’ movement. First, we will examine the issue of responsibility for Trump’s election victory—which many have attempted to blame on the “working class.” Second, we will address the question of how to fight back against the acceleration of chaos and attacks that Trump’s victory represents in the context of the already emerging protest movements opposing him.
The first thing to say about Trump’s victory in the November election is that it was never supposed to happen. The main factions of the US bourgeoisie in both the Democratic and Republican parties were against him becoming President from the start. He wasn’t even supposed to win the Republican Party nomination.[2] From the perspective of the main factions of the US bourgeoisie, Donald Trump is a radical outsider—a rogue real estate mogul who in the past has demonstrated no firm commitment to any particular policy orientation or political trajectory. He has been both a Democrat and a Republican in the past and has stated his support for both social democratic and extreme right wing positions at various times. More recently however, Trump emerged as a proponent of a kind of right-wing populist politics. Vociferously anti-immigrant and an anti-Obama birther conspiracist, he nevertheless talked a “pro-worker” economic populism, slamming neo-liberal trade policies and vowing to protect social security and Medicare from the budget hawks in both parties itching to cut them. On foreign policy, Trump has criticized the Iraq War and attacked the George W. Bush administration’s policies, while at the same time threatening to bomb ISIS into oblivion and permit Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to obtain nuclear weapons; he has even put NATO into question. Most curiously however, he has pushed a reconciliationist approach to Putin’s Russia, raising concerns among sectors of the bourgeoisie and the population at large that Trump may be modeling his Presidency in the image of his idol’s “authoritarianism,” or worse— that he is actually taking orders from Moscow.
While there are elements in Trump’s policy hodge-podge for members of various factions of the bourgeoisie to get behind (some Republicans might support his immigration stance for example, while the Democrats could get behind his infrastructure proposals), the overall package represents a grave threat for the main factions of the bourgeoisie, whose commitment to a neo-liberal policy core has been central across the partisan divide for several decades. However, the threat represented by Trump is not limited to the policy arena alone—his erratic personality, child-like temper and narcissistic drive have led many to question the President’s sanity itself. A core theme of the campaign against Trump during both the Republican primary and the general election was that you just can’t trust such a dangerous person with the nukes.
Nevertheless, despite the almost universal revulsion to Trump among the main factions of the US bourgeoisie, they were in the end unable to keep him out of office. Over the course of the 2016 campaign, nearly every institution of the American state tasked with getting the main factions of the bourgeoisie’s preferred candidate (Clinton) through the machinery of the electoral process failed. Firstly, a great deal of the blame for the Trump Presidency can be laid at the feet of the media. While most of the mainstream media were against Trump, they nevertheless—in the pursuit of their own profit-making sectoral interests—gave him massive coverage. Time and time again, while the hired professional pundits and talking head analysts ran him into the ground, the corporate bosses at CNN and even Democrat-leaning MSNBC covered his rallies, giving him massive free media exposure.
Even at the height of the Sanders insurgency in the Democratic primary, the media seemed focused on Trump and the salaciousness of his campaign, as they sought out viewers and Internet clicks. A major contradiction emerged during the campaign between the political preferences of the members of the mainstream media, and the interests of their corporate bosses to remain competitive in a highly fractured media environment driven by the Internet and social media, in which extreme partisanship, conspiracy theory and even “fake news” are growing in importance at the expense of professional journalism that seeks to build a common “news narrative.” With so many voters secluded in their respective partisan media bubbles, the mainstream media is severely handicapped in its function of building the kind of political narrative that assists the main factions of the bourgeoisie’s preferred candidate win office. The news media are themselves driven more and more towards becoming a form of entertainment—a situation Trump as a media-constructed entertainer himself was able to exploit.
The next institution that can be blamed for Trump’s victory is the Republican Party. While Trump was clearly not the choice of the Republican Party establishment, his candidacy and eventual victory were nevertheless built upon years of the GOP pandering to the kind of anti-immigrant, racist, misogynist and populist politics that Trump used to dramatic effect to take over the party. In a sense, Trump’s victory in the Republican primary was just the hoisting of that party on its own petard. For the eight years of the Obama Presidency, the Republicans exploited the Tea Party insurgency within its ranks to obstruct Obama’s agenda, win off-year elections and gerrymander voting districts in their favor. Over the course of the Obama Presidency, the rhetoric emanating from the Republican Party grew more and more radical, confrontational and delegitimizing of the Obama Presidency and even the institutions of the American state itself. From flirting with the birther conspiracists to effectively denying the President the right to appoint a Supreme Court justice, the Republican Party has tended towards an ideological degradation that pits short term partisan interests over the longer term interests of the national capital and the state itself. This has increasingly rendered it incapable of serving as the party of national governance, in the viewpoint of the main factions of the bourgeoisie.
Even if the central figures of the Republican Party were just pandering to the populist sentiments emerging from the back-benchers within its ranks for immediate political and electoral gain and did not subscribe to these ideas themselves, they nevertheless enabled them and allowed them to fester within their ranks. It should not come as a great surprise then that the populist virus at work within the Republican Party for the last eight years has now risen to consume the party establishment itself. Nevertheless, it is also clear that even if the Republican establishment opposed Trump from the beginning, now that he has won they will attempt to exploit his Presidency for their own policy purposes and impose their extreme austerity and repression agenda on the country. The post-election euphoria within the Republican leadership about a united Republican government —an idea that before Election Day seemed like an impossibility in the expectation of what most believed would be Trump’s imminent overwhelming defeat—should serve to illustrate the extreme opportunism and utter hypocrisy of a party that opposed Trump when it thought it was not in its political interests, but that welcomes him into its ranks when it sees the opportunity to exploit him for their partisan goals. Of course, President Trump—who so far appears to be willing to go along with the Republican Party’s agenda (at least domestically) as evidenced by his hard right cabinet picks—may yet have different ideas, a situation that should it emerge will add another round of uncertainty and chaos at the heart of the American state. [3]
However, even if the Republican Party was the political soup in which a President Trump evolved, this in no way absolves the Democratic Party from its own responsibility in his victory. This is true on several levels. First, the Democratic Party—like establishment governing parties in many other advanced countries—completely misread the political dynamic of the rise of populism, nominating perhaps the worst possible candidate to defeat a right-wing populist demagogue. Although Clinton was the clear choice of the main factions of the bourgeoisie, having proved herself a loyal servant of the neoliberal policy consensus —in essence a continuation of the Obama administration[4]—she was nevertheless nothing short of a political disaster in the making.
Faced with the Sanders insurgency, the Clinton campaign ran to the right denouncing core Democratic Party commitments to the New Deal. This alienated the left and millenials in the Party, some percentage of whom simply refused to vote for her in the general election. Faced with Trumpian economic populism, she denounced Trump’s blue-collar supporters as a “Basket of Deplorables,” severely harming her electoral prospects in critical Rust Belt states she would need to win to become President. But beyond these glaring political mistakes, Clinton was marred by deep ethical and legal problems—including having made numerous paid speeches to Wall Street banks and facing an active FBI investigation over her private email server while she was Secretary of State. These fed suspicions that she was an ethically compromised individual, who simply could not be trusted to keep her campaign promises—such as her newfound commitment to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact.
Clinton’s legal problem’s exploded just a week an a half before Election Day, when FBI Director James Comey—having initially cleared her of criminal wrongdoing in her email scandal—announced that he was reopening the investigation after another cache of emails were found on her trusted aide Huma Abedin’s computer. This was confirmation of the sheer arrogance and hubris of the Democratic Party establishment that had assured everyone, including itself, that Clinton’s email problems were not a real issue. The mentality in the Democratic Party establishment appeared to be that it was Hillary’s turn to be President and any challengers—even one who consistently polled better against Republicans than she did, like Sanders—would be stopped, even if it meant using the institutional power of the Democratic Party itself to ensure her victory in the primary.
Even with all the uncertainty surrounding her legal and ethical problems, the Democratic Party stubbornly refused to consider nominating another candidate. Even if they didn’t want Sanders in power—there appears to have been no serious effort made to recruit someone like Vice President Joe Biden to enter the race[5]. In a sense, what the Democratic Party did was at a level of debasement even lower than the Republicans. While the Republicans have put short-term partisan gain in front of the interests of the national capital as a whole, in 2016 the Democrats put the ambitions of the Clinton dynasty itself front and center, even with President Donald Trump the penalty for making a bad bet that she couldn’t lose. In doing so, the Democrats paved the way for Trump, discredited their own party and have put the very ideological division of labor in the American two party system into serious jeopardy.
While it is clear that had Clinton won the election she would have mostly continued the policy preferences of the main factions of the bourgeoisie and for this reason she was their preferred candidate, it is also now clear that her candidacy came with very clear political risks that the main factions of the bourgeoisie either failed to see or willfully ignored. Sometimes in the political life of the bourgeoisie, it is necessary for it to fall behind candidates that, while they may be on the fringes of the policy mainstream, nevertheless give the system as a whole a level of political cover that allows it to continue. The fact that the US bourgeoisie, through the institutions of the Democratic Party, failed to recognize the political necessities of the moment marks a major milestone in the worsening effects of decomposition on the political apparatus of the bourgeois state.[6]
The fact that the Democratic Party’s delusions about the political moment were only ratified by its extensive (and expensive) “scientific” polling, consulting and voter micro- targeting apparatus only highlights the extent to which, like the Republican Party before it, it has succumbed to a kind of degeneration. For the Democrats, this took the form of a self-congratulatory group-think narrative about its own invincibility, based on favorable demographic trends within the electorate, that led it to convince itself there was no way Hillary could ever lose to Trump. With this fact seemingly assured, the Democrats thought they could take Sanders voters for granted, ignore the Rust Belt, busy themselves with courting moderate Republicans and ensure the donors were happy. This, of course, was all a dangerous illusion that exploded in dramatic fashion on Election Day when Hillary lost, putting Trump in power and leaving an increasingly ideologically driven Republican Party on the cusp of controlling nearly the entire federal government apparatus.
When the election results began to role in on the night of November 8th, the reality slowly set in as it became clear that Hillary was losing just about every swing state in the election: Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and even Pennsylvania. These were all states that went for Obama at least once, but now each one went into Trump’s Electoral College column. Needing a clean sweep of all these swing states to win the Presidency, Trump got it. Needing to win just one or two—Hillary was completely shut out. By the end of the night, the media was in complete shock about what had just occurred. By the next morning, the shock had spread to the pundits, columnists, editorialists and politicians of all stripes, as well as to the population itself.
A man who had run a campaign based on promising to deport millions of immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country, and send troops into the nation’s cities—a man who was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women—would now be President? In the days that followed, shock and confusion turned into fear and anxiety. What would American society look like in the age of President Trump? Would there be gangs of empowered white supremacists roaming the streets looking to assault minorities? Would millions of families soon be torn apart by deportation? Many white liberals took to wearing safety pins on their clothes as a symbol to minorities that they were “safe whites” who wouldn’t assault them or denounce them to the immigration authorities. While much of this wellspring of solidarity was animated by a genuine concern for the safety of one’s neighbors, others wondered where such sentiment was under Obama when he set a record for deportations?
In any event, once the shock began to alleviate, the media and the pundits turned their attention to the very question we have been examining here: who was to blame for the electoral catastrophe? The Democratic Party, and their allies in the mainstream media, found many villains to blame: chief among them FBI Director Comey and Russian President Putin—who supposedly “intervened” in the election by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s email servers and turning the damning contents revealing the DNC actively conspiring to defeat Sanders over to Wikileaks who released them to the public. While it is indeed possible that this “intervention” cost Hillary electoral votes by alienating Sanders voters who might have otherwise voted for her against Trump, it’s not clear how this “offends democratic values” or undermines the US’s “democratic system” in that all it did was reveal to the public the rampant corruption within the Democratic Party that many already suspected was there.
Nevertheless, whatever effect the interventions of Comey and Putin may have had on the outcome of the election, neither of these figures put a gun to the head of voters and made them pull the lever for Trump. Therefore, the defeated Democrats—who represent the viewpoint of the main factions of the bourgeoisie as a whole—need another villain in their narrative of explaining how Hillary lost this election to the supposedly hapless Trump. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they have decided that it is mostly the “working class” that is that villain.
First, it should be understood that in American bourgeois political discourse, the concept of the “working class” generally refers to only one particular cultural/sociological component of the proletariat: white blue collar workers without a college degree. Rarely do bourgeois commentators include minority workers in this concept (who are thought to have no other identity than their race or ethnicity), nor do they generally include more educated workers, who are generally considered to be part of a different “professional managerial class” (even if their incomes are lower than some of the members of the “working class”). Moreover, to the extent to which the concept of “working class” is increasingly defined in bourgeois discourse as a cultural identity rather than an economic relationship to the production process, even many white small business owners (petty bourgeoisie) are lumped in with actual blue-collar proletarians in the media construction of the “working class.” It would therefore be a grave mistake to conclude that the majority of Trump’s voters were proletarians or that most of the working class supported Trump. This is simply not empirically accurate.
However, it may indeed be true that among white blue-collar workers (otherwise known in bourgeois political discourse as “downscale whites”) there was a certain level of enthusiasm for Trump’s candidacy to the extent to which he promised to reverse trade deals that many in this demographic blame for declining wages, attacks on their living and working conditions and community disintegration. He framed this promise by calling for certain economic protectionist policies that sound as if they might help the national economy and improve the conditions of the working class. If many in the so-called “white working-class” believed these campaign promises, they have been misled, but it is not entirely surprising that they would be open to them after nearly three decades of a neo-liberal political consensus, which told the working class they had no other place to go outside the establishment parties.
Still, since the election many figures in the defeated Democratic Party have been loudly shouting their belief that the “working class” did not support Trump so-much for his economic policies but out of their racist and xenophobic sentiments, which Trump did so much to pander to during the campaign. For the Democrats, Trump won over members of this demographic not because of his opposition to trade deals or his promises to punish corporations who ship jobs overseas (Sanders made all of those promises too), but because of his desire to deport millions of immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the United States. For the Democratic Party—the party that since FDR has supposed to have been the party of “working America”—the working class has become something akin to an inherently racist mob, whose deep-seated hatred threatens the United States’ very democratic institutions in that it is so easily manipulated by a dangerous demagogue like Trump. The irony in this reversal of ideological roles between the Democrats and Republicans is remarkable in highlighting the severe crisis of political legitimacy that the US two-party system now finds itself in, but to what extend are these accusations of the Democrats actually true?
First, it is necessary to point out that in the November election, there were many counties in the so-called Rust Belt states that went for Obama in either 2008 or 2012 (or both), but that voted for Trump in 2016. It simply would not be possible for this to occur without some percentage of white blue-collar workers who previously voted for an African-American for President at least once, changing their votes to Trump this time. It is thus rather difficult to write such a switch off to pure racism and xenophobia.[7] A better explanation for this phenomenon is that among this demographic there has been a growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party after eight years of neo-liberal governance and policy under Obama—dressed up in the flowery campaign language of “Hope and Change.” With nowhere else to go, with no real alternative offered by the Democratic Party after Sanders was dispatched in the primary, it is not surprising that many white workers were willing to take a chance on the radical outsider Trump, who at least—many must have reasoned—would “shake things up.”[8]
Nevertheless, on the issue of immigration today, it is necessary for us to acknowledge that there is a divide within the working class in its reaction to the phenomenon. For some drawn in by Trump’s rhetoric, immigration is seen as a major factor in the decline of their living standards, while many of those who supported Sanders in the Democratic primary, in particular the younger generations of educated workers, do not go in for such conclusions and support openness to others—even as they look in disgust at the “white working class” as racists and xenophobes. It is clear that this divide in the working class is a major problem at this historical juncture, limiting the proletariat’s ability to deepen its own struggles as a unified class against the decline in its living and working conditions outside of the bourgeois electoral arena.
We will not pretend that we have easy answers for how this problem can be overcome in the immediate period ahead. It is likely these differences are the reflection of profound sociological realties resulting from the breakdown of the old Fordist order that dominated the post-World War Two era and the emergence of new social formations within the working class as a result of the new neo-liberal modes of managing the capitalist crisis. Nevertheless, this does not change the underlying fact that neither of these groups have any long term interest in the continuation of capitalism. If the working class is to fulfill its role as the revolutionary gravedigger of the capitalist system these division will have to be overcome in a common struggle against the universal effects of the crisis, regardless of their particular manifestations for different sociological cohorts within the proletariat.
In this regard, the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton proved themselves to be just as apt in the politics of racial, ethnic and linguistic division as Trump and the Republicans. Clinton’s description of Trump’s followers as a “basket of deplorables,” while perhaps not as openly racist as many of Trump’s statements, is nevertheless racialized code designed to marginalize and disparage the white working class—in particular by continuing to sow distrust between it and the millennial generation of educated workers. While we recognize the cultural differences between these two groups may be profound, there is nevertheless a community of interest between the two in figuring out how to effectively respond to capital’s attacks against their standard of living. Whether it is the collapse of the old Fordist certainties (for older white workers) or the sense of no real future of stable employment (for educated millenials), these problems cannot be overcome by succumbing to the politics of fear, suspicion and division. It is precisely these obstacles to consciousness that that political campaigns of both political parties seek to sow.
At the end of the day, whatever the problems affecting proletarian class-consciousness at this juncture of history, we think it is simply wrong headed to lay the blame for Trump at the feet of the working class of whatever racial identity. On the contrary, as we have endeavored to show above, the blame for Trump lies squarely on the institutions of the American state itself—institutions that it is not even controversial anymore to say have undergone a major degradation. We think this degradation is a result of the reciprocal effects of capitalist decomposition on the state itself. At the end of the day, the rot within the US state, which has now produced President Donald J. Trump, is an effect of the now decades long crisis of capitalist accumulation, a crisis that the ruling class has no solution for.
Understandably, Trump’s Presidency has provoked a major backlash from civil society. After all, most of the electorate did not vote for him; he won the Presidency solely on the strength of the Electoral College, meaning his legitimacy has been suspect from the start. In the days after the election, there were massive and regular protests in many American cities, particularly in New York City where tens of thousands surrounded Trump Tower in Manhattan night after night to express their utter disgust with the election results. On Inauguration Day, there were sometimes violent protests in the nation’s capital, followed the next day by the massive Women’s March, which saw millions of people flow into the streets of cities across the country large and small. When Trump announced his Executive Order banning citizens of seven Muslim majority countries from entering the US, a series of spontaneous protests broke out at the nation’s airports—seemingly forcing the administration to back down on some of the more extreme aspects of the order, such as banning US Permanent Residents from returning from abroad. More protests are planned, including an Immigrants’ March and a Scientists’ March. There has even been talk of a General Strike and a Women’s Strike.
From our perspective, the outpouring of solidarity that has often accompanied these protests is a very positive reaction to the deepening crisis of capitalist society that Trump’s election represents. We will not attempt to pour cold water over these actions, which at some level represent a healthy response from society to the cancer of capitalist decomposition eating it from the inside. However, we also need to be frank that such actions in and of themselves are unlikely to constitute an effective resistance to the root causes of the continuing social rot, which is what in the end is responsible for giving us a President Trump. In our view, President Trump—as horrible and grating as those two words still sound to the ear—is more an effect than a cause itself, even if it’s clear that his administration will certainly accelerate the very historical tendencies that have produced his Presidency in the first place.
We will not rehash a list of all the ways that Trump’s policies are really just a continuation of Obama’s (although many of them are); we won’t try to tell you that Hillary Clinton would be as much of a disaster as Trump is shaping up to be (although it is clear that had she won she would have continued to be haunted by major controversies surrounding her legal problems and ties to Wall Street while President). However, it is nevertheless true that Obama, Hillary and Trump all grow out of the same slop of capitalist decomposition and the neo-liberal policies that the bourgeoisie has adopted across the advanced capitalist world in order to manage the economic crisis over the last three decades. It may be true that Trump is uniquely garish, erratic and personally revolting; but it is also true that the kind of politics he espouses is not a sui generis phenomenon in the capitalist world system today: Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Kevin O’Leary, Kellie Leitch, etc. are all faces of what must be described as a global phenomenon across the old industrial core countries today: right-wing populism.
This populism is not a uniquely American problem driven by a particularly racist working class, nor is it merely a function of Trump’s warped personality (even if one does not need to be a practicing psychiatrist to strongly suspect the many personality disorders he suffers from). On the contrary, it is a result of a global capitalist system that has no solution for its underlying economic crisis and the social decomposition that results from it. Still, Trump’s victory is nevertheless a very important moment in the evolution of this crisis in that up until November, the bourgeois state had been more or less successful in keeping any populist politicians from actually seizing the reigns of the state.[9] The fact that today one governs the most powerful bourgeois state—still the world’s last super power—is only a dramatic illustration of the threat the continued existence of global capitalism poses to humanity itself.
Under the conditions marked by social decomposition today, it is increasingly difficult for much of the population to believe the lies and false promises the neoliberal politicians spew. While some within the American population turned to Sanders in the Democratic primary, with his promise of a revitalized social democracy, to vent their anger and disgust, others turned to Trump and his ideology of “nation-state populism.” In any event, both phenomena were made possible by the same underlying force: the increasing discredit of both establishment political parties and the development of a real crisis of political legitimacy.
Nevertheless, whatever their discredit today, it is almost inevitable that the neo-liberal politicians will try to take full advantage of Trump’s Presidency to revitalize their image in the eyes of the population. The Democrats will organize and lead protests[10]; they will attempt to appear to obstruct and delegitimize Trump at every turn. The main factions of the bourgeoisie will exploit their electoral screw-up to try to enact a “left in opposition” policy to build up the Democratic Party as the vehicle for the population’s revulsion at Trump and his polices. This is why it is of utmost importance that whatever resistance movement develops in the period ahead avoids becoming subsumed under the auspices of the newly combative Democrats—the same Democrats whose elected officials will almost certainly “make deals” with Trump when they think the national capital’s interests are at stake.[11]
Of course, given their own political failings it is possible that the Democrats will botch this attempt to become a party of “left opposition.” Already, there are signs that the Democratic establishment might just try to wait for Trump to self-implode and not make too many concessions to the Sanders faction before they return to power. In such a case, it is likely that Sanders—or whoever claims the mantle as the social democratic insurgent—will be there to attempt to capture the population’s anger. If this happens, it will be even more important that those genuinely interested in fighting the systemic roots of the current mess maintain their independence from all the political parties and formations.
Moreover, it is of utmost importance that the emerging social movements do not succumb to the rabid Russophobia that has currently overtaken the Democratic Party. The attempts to brand Trump as a “traitor” on the pay roll of Putin sound odd coming from the Democrats, but this is nevertheless powerful evidence that when it thinks it is in its political interests, the Democrats will adopt the same language of McCarthyite innuendo and suspicion as the Republicans have in the past.[12] Disappointingly, it has not been uncommon to see this Russophobia on display at the many protests against Trump, with many signs telling the President to move to Moscow, labeling his daughter Ivanka a “Tsarina,” or even implying that there is a sultry homosexual relationship between Trump and Putin. The irony of such homophobic denigration emanating from Democrats is rich, but is also an illustration of how quickly the ideological shoe can move to the other foot in bourgeois politics.
However, this campaign of Russophobic McCarthyism (itself a form of the xenophobia the Democrats denounce in the “white working class”) is doubly dangerous in that it has already been turned from a way to delegitimize Trump to a weapon to wield against “the left.” Anyone who questions the narrative about Russian interference in the election or who rejects the McCarythite tactics being deployed against Trump can themselves be the object of McCarthyism through the tried and true tactic of “guilt by association.” Some commentators are already talking about a “red-brown” convergence going in the world, wherein certain “left-wing” forces are seen to be giving succor to the rising scourge of global fascism represented by Trump, Putin and company.[13] While for the moment this is directed mostly against factions of the bourgeois left (like the Green Party), it is highly likely it would also be used against real revolutionary forces should they become seen as a genuine threat to the system. The combination of an ominous McCarthyism with rampant allegations of treason being leveled at the President and his inner circle creates an extremely dangerous environment that, even if it is not primarily directed at us today, would not be difficult to turn into a campaign against genuine revolutionary forces in the future.
Nevertheless, it is also true that while those who seek to genuinely oppose Trump should avoid the kind of McCarthyite hysteria gripping the Democratic Party, it is also important that they have no illusions in the Putin regime being some kind of benevolent anti-imperialist force in the world, because it opposes US imperialism or because it gives voice to certain oppositional forces inside Western democracies through its propaganda media channel Russia Today (RT).[14] Quite on the contrary, the Putin regime is in fact a brutal capitalist state with its own imperialist ambitions in the world. The fact that the Russian state may judge that it is in its interests to promote forces (on both the left and the right) within Western “democratic” states that put the established political order in these countries into question should blind no one to the Kremlin’s ruthless imperialist nature.
In order to effectively resist President Trump, it is necessary to understand the deep historical forces that have given birth to him. While it is true that in some ways, Trump’s Presidency is an “accident” (in the sense that the bourgeoisie bungled the election and he is only in office on the strength of the antiquated Electoral College machinery), we should have no illusion that the bourgeoisie is in control of the situation or that Trump is some kind of aberration that will give way to a restoration of a healthy democratic politics. No, on the contrary Trump is a symptom of a wider disease, the historic crisis of capitalism that has brought on a generalized social rot, which now infects the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie itself. Even if Hillary would have won the election as she was supposed to, this would have not squelched the social forces of anger and disgust with the establishment status quo bubbling to the surface in capitalist society that are empowering populist politicians around the world.
We do not know what will happen in the immediate future with American politics. The rest of the bourgeoisie may resist Trump so fervently that he is either impeached over his real or imagined ties to Russia or some other legal breech he is bound to commit, or his Presidency may fizzle out in defeat in four years time. Certainly, the controversy over his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian Ambassador and the near constant harangue coming from Democrats over his supposed ties to Putin and the Russian state do not bode well for the future of his Presidency. [15]
It is also possible that Trump will be able to coerce a few corporations to delay or cancel various outsourcing plans long enough and he will deport just enough migrants to please his base, establishing something approaching a stable “populist” locus of legitimacy within the bosom of the American state. We can’t say exactly how it will all play out. However, what its clear is that Trump’s Presidency represents a qualitative step into the abyss for humanity, driven by a capitalist system that can no longer offer any real perspective for our species. In order to resist this drive it is necessary to rediscover the path of struggle outside the political apparatus of the bourgeois state—whatever its particular partisan form. While the shear odiousness of Trump gives rise to an understandable desire to whatever is possible to just make this vulgar man go away, we need to comprehend that while the Democrats may sound more competent and professional (although their current descent into Russophobic nationalism, puts that contention into serious question), while they may offer up a more welcoming and progressive surrounding rhetoric than Trump and the Republicans, as a vital part of the state apparatus, they are fully complicit in the systemic decline of capitalist society that has made President Trump a reality. The only road forward for humanity is the path of the independent struggle of the proletariat to defend its living and working conditions against the effects of the ongoing capitalist crisis outside the control of all bourgeois political formations, left or right.
Henk
2/16/2017
[1] Some have postulated the chaos surrounding the executive order was in fact intentional as a way of shocking the immigration bureaucracy in order to determine who could be counted on to implement controversial orders and who would put up resistance. See for example: https://medium.com/@jakefuentes/the-immigration-ban-is-a-headfake-and-we... [1538]
[2] See our Trump vs. Clinton: Nothing But Bad Choice for Both the Bourgeoisie and for the Proletariat for more details on the primary campaign: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14149/trump-v-clinton-n... [1514]
[3] It is quite possible that in attempting to implement Bannon’s “nation-state populism” the Trump Administration will push certain policies too far or fail to pursue the Republican Party’s austerity agenda with sufficient fervor, bringing him back into conflict with his own party. Already, Trump has followed through on his campaign promise to scuttle the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—aggravating many Republicans and Democrats alike. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham have loudly contested Trump’s openness to Moscow. Of course, any Republican who wants to oppose Trump faces the reality of the President’s fervent supporters. Where Obama’s support within the Democratic base was broad, but not very deep, Trump’s supporters appear to be the kind to show up and vote in primaries against establishment Republicans who oppose their President too openly.
[4] During the Obama Presidency, despite their firm grip on the Presidency, the Democrats’ position at the state and local level actually declined and the party lost both houses of Congress. Clearly, whatever the charismatic power of the first African American President for the majority of the electorate that voted for him, it did not carry over into off-year elections and down-ticket races. Obama’s popularity was based mostly on a personalized celebrity charisma and not on some kind of deep loyalty to the Democratic Party or the institutions of American “democracy”. In a way, then, the form of legitimacy that undergird the Obama Presidency paved the way for the “anti-Obama” in Trump (in the same way Obama was the “anti-Bush”), who was busy developing his own charismatic base of support in the population through his reality TV show and his escalating forays into sensationalist right-wing politics. In any event, this sequence only highlights the increasing difficulties of the US bourgeoisie in legitimating its two-party “democratic” apparatus. More and more, political life is devolving into a contest of personalities and their negations, where one figure obliterates the image and legacy of his/her predecessor (even if many substantive policy continuities remain). The resemblance of all of this to a reality TV show is not coincidental. It was to the Democratic Party’s dismay that it could only build a very limited base of personalized legitimacy for Clinton, mostly with older professional women and minorities. She was never going to play well with blue-collar whites in the Rust Belt or with increasingly politicized and left-leaning millenials, who saw her for the corporate neo-liberal she was. In some ways, the Sanders campaign marked an attempt to construct a different form of legitimation, in that it sought to build a “social movement culture,” but there was nevertheless something like a “cult of personality” that developed around Sanders as a sort of “incorruptible” and almost awkwardly sincere social justice crusader. Of course, some of this lustre evaporated when he predictably endorsed Hillary in the general election.
[5] Biden appears to have considered entering the race in the early going, but declined under the personal stress of his son’s death and the seemingly inevitable Clinton coronation. Nevertheless, with Hillary facing growing difficulties in the summer, the Democrats seemingly refused to make a genuine effort to get him to reconsider.
[6] Focused as we have been on the ideological decay of the Republican Party, we have perhaps tended to underestimate in past articles the extent to which the Democratic Party has experienced its own form of degradation over the course of the neo-liberal period. This process, while less ideological than what the Republican party has experienced, has nevertheless led to the point where the Democrats’ arrogance—buoyed by Obama’s victories--as “the party of demographic change” and the party of the “techno-utopian future” enabled a kind of cronyism resulting in a complete misreading of the political exigencies of the current populist climate. Of course, in this the Democrats are not alone, as center-left parties across the old industrial core countries—including many ostensibley “Socialist” parties--have tended to reveal themselves as “technocratic” managers of neo- liberal policies that champion an ethic of “meritocratic progressivism” rather than parties of social democratic security—thus opening up the political space for populism.
[7] It is of course possible that some white workers voted for Obama in spite of their racism, but this would suggest that they do not make political decisions solely on that basis—their political subjectivity remains open.
[8] Some have suggested that even if the white working class didn’t vote for Trump because they are racist, they were nevertheless willing to overlook Trump’s racism and the very real threat it poses to the lives of minorities, in order to express their “economic anxiety.” This seems a fair point and only highlights the threats to social solidarity in the era of capitalist decomposition; but it is also true that in the media construction of Trump which many of these voters were consuming, he was not portrayed as the virulent racist of Democratic campaign ads. On the contrary, Trump’s closing campaign ads in the Rust Belt focused on economic grievances and a promised national renewal. They were not the dark images of doom and destruction of his Republican Convention address, nor were they focused on racial dog whistling. In the words of one analyst, “In these ads, Trump sounded like Bernie Sanders.”
[9] The Brexit vote in the UK is of course a noteworthy precursor of Trump’s election, but even as the British bourgeoisie struggles with the outcome of the referendum that didn’t go the way it planned, the establishment politicians have been able to retain control of the state apparatus.
[10] Of course, they will only be seen to sanction the right kind of “responsible” protests. They will completely abandon those who act out in fits of property destruction as “criminals,” “professional anarchists” or “agent provocateurs” in their quest to demonstrate their professionalism and responsibility to Middle America. Such was clear in the aftermath of the recent UC Berkeley protests against the appearance of the alt-right figure Milos Yiannapoulous at an on campus speaking engagement. The young protestors who engaged in property destruction, which effectively shut the event down, were denounced by most Democrats in such terms, including former Sanders supporter and Bill Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who appearing on CNN suggested they were really fascists disguised as protestors. The message is clear: those who attempt to protest outside the established channels will be abandoned to their fate at the hands of the state’s repressive apparatus.
[11] In this, the Democrats will likely reveal a key difference from the Republicans. As the party of technocratic management, it is unlikely the Democrats will pass up a chance to “compromise” with Trump in the rare instances when there is good policy (from their neo-liberal perspective) on offer. Where the Republicans have excelled at the politics of obstruction, the Democrats seem, so far at least, to be rather out of their element in attempting to delegitimize Trump, as their McCarthyite diatribes come off as rather pathetic. It remains unclear if the Democrats will have the fortitude and political vision to effectively refashion themselves as a party of the left in opposition—much of that hangs on the outcome of the current race for DNC chair, which pits an Obama/Clinton functionary (Tom Perez) against a Berniecrat (Keith Ellison).
[12]At this point there is no way we can know the truth behind the details of Russian intervention in the US election. However, the “evidence” produced for these links has been rather weak. This hasn’t stopped the Democrats from resorting to the most aggressive and inflammatory accusations against Trump, with talk of “’treason” liberally spewed on CNN and MSNBC. The irony of such a campaign of delegitimation should not be understated coming from a party whose President suffered from the effects of the “birther conspiracy” for his entire tenure. Of course, the allegations of collusion with Moscow against Trump are such that there isn’t much he can do to disprove them—its not like he can whip out some kind of document that would definitively refute them. Absent starting a war with Russia, Trump will likely suffer from allegations of being a “Manchurian President” on the pay roll of Moscow for his entire Presidency (however long it lasts)—something which in and of itself tells you all you need to know about the “health” of the US political system.
[13] See for example: https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-f... [1539]
[14] RT America’s current line-up features “news” and talk programming centered around “left-wing” figures like Thom Hartman and Ed Schultz (who has become rather open to President Trump lately), as well as the comedian Lee Camp, who was a vocal Sanders supporter who pushed the idea that Democratic primary was rigged by actual vote fraud, but also includes more populist conspiracists like former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura (and his son). Some commentators have suggested that the Russian state's goal here is to promote suspicion and contempt for the institutions of liberal democracy, rather than favor a particular political line. This may be true, but it is also true that it is possible to obtain information and perspective from such programming that is simply verboten in the mainstream media. Of course, one must be on constant guard to filter out the pro-Russian, pro-Putin propaganda of the news programming, some of which is rather subtle.
[15] The intervention of the intelligence apparatus to bring down Flynn by leaking wiretap intercepts of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, in which he supposedly discussed the sanctions Obama had placed on Moscow over interference in the election while Obama was still in office, is a very ominous sign. The fact that the Democrats have been cheering on such interventions by the “Deep State,” is both ironic (given their fury at the FBI for supposedly bringing Clinton down) and revealing of the party’s true nature.
On Wednesday March 22, a 52-year old man born in Kent, Khalid Masood, launched an attack on Westminster Bridge using a rented SUV and a kitchen knife. As a result 6 people died including a police officer and the assailant himself; dozens more were injured. The propaganda machine of the bourgeoisie went into overdrive, powered by the incessant and breathless news reporting of its media. With the attack's proximity to the British parliament and the details of the assailant, this propaganda drive has not been anti-Muslim as such but has rather taken the "Jo Cox"[i] line which is that of the "unity of all" behind the interests of British imperialism.
The phrases are predictable and could be written by almost anyone: the attack was "evil" and "evil will not win"; "British values will be maintained" as will "British resolve" which means that "Britain will not be beaten" ("broken" or any one of a dozen such descriptions). You would think that Britain had been attacked by a fleet of war-planes and that this wasn't a murderous assault by a lone individual who shouted before the attack that "This is for Syria".
There's been plenty of "why did this happen" throughout the media with a multiplicity of motives put forward for what lies behind such an attack. There have been various analyses of backgrounds and the like to this and very similar cases that are too complicated to go into here - let alone the interpretation of religious fundamentalism adhered to by groups or individuals and its relationship to violent jihad. The attacker had spent some time in Saudi Arabia and on his return to this country came to Luton where there was a known fundamentalist milieu. Despite the real shock of relatives and friends of attackers in these cases it is rarely a case of a "lone wolf"[ii] attack - somebody usually knows something about its direction even if only through the internet. But the words of the attacker are no mystery: "This is for Syria". First and formost it's an example of the decomposition of capitalism and the asymmetric warfare of the "War on Terror" led and fed by the major powers. It's testimony to the growing weakness of Isis, particularly its international reach, that increasingly it has to rely on individual criminal or unstable types armed with vehicles and kitchen accessories; and despite the best attempts of the British bourgeoisie to uncover a complex international plot or conspiracy around the killer, nothing has been found so far. Indeed, as is increasingly usual in these cases, all of those arrested in police "swoops" have now been released, including those which the police called "significant arrests".
Though the phenomenon is by no means finished, the populists haven't had a look-in here: the racist Nigel Farage (another 52-year-old from Kent) and his mates were spreading their anti-migrant poison on Fox for a few dollars more and were roundly mocked here for their "analysis" of the situation. Ex-leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, who was in the vicinity at the time of the attack and tried to get a public meeting together, was ridiculed and ignored by all (and had to be collected by his Mum when his car broke down). The "inclusive", multi-cultural classical bourgeoisie swung into action here talking about how "we won't be divided" and Muslim victims of the killer were pushed forward while the "multi-faith" druids performed their religious rituals for strengthening the national interest. This whole campaign has the right and left wings of the state on one side and working class unity and solidarity on the other. While in the Daily Mail Katie Hopkins shat out her anti-migrant opinion to some derision, its editorial was talking about "shared values" and the defence of "liberty", as did most of the right wing press.
The whole spectrum of capitalist interests is engaged in this campaign for democracy, including "British fighters for the YPG"[iii], ardent supporters of Kurdish nationalism and British imperialism. Through this process, no less racist than the populists but more insidious, Muslims in Britain have to demonstrate their "Britishness" and show themselves worthy to be represented by the "Mother of Parliaments"- a tumbledown building full of self-seekers, crooks, windbags and individuals with much more blood of innocents on their hands than anyone else.
In the face of this "pure evil", British imperialism won't be deterred from defending its imperialist interests. In fact it is perfectly willing to use it as a mask for the continuation of these murderous interests. Over a few days around the same week as the London attack, hundreds of civilians in Mosul, Iraq, were killed and many more injured in US coalition air-strikes that have included British Tornado jets with British military personnel on the ground, and with any building with a roof on it a legitimate target for an air strike. It's a similar situation for Raqqa in Syria. In Yemen the slaughter and starvation of civilians continues with defenceless refugees shot to death while fleeing war on the seas. British interests, weaponry and military personnel are involved here also, mainly through the medium of “our ally”, the fundamentalist regime of Saudi. The hypocrisy and phoney "outrage" over this event can also be measured against the historical and current role of British imperialism in the endless war and its consequences around South Sudan.
The whole narrative around this attack in London is that the working class doesn't exist and as individuals we have to rally behind the defence of the state and its forces of repression, which is also strengthened in this process, a state that is one of the leading lights in devastating wars across the Middle East and Africa. Isis and its adherents are just a bunch of amateurs compared to these killers. The bourgeoisie's response in this case was able to take advantage of the fact that the more rabid forms of populist ideology are not very strong in London. It cynically used genuine expressions of solidarity and sympathy towards the innocent, random victims, and hijacked them in defence of the sanctity of Parliament and democracy. And for them, that's where the reflection over this event should begin and end.
Baboon, 9.4.17 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[i] Jo Cox was a Labour Party MP who was killed in a right-wing terrorist attack in June 2016. The murder of this unfortunate woman unleashed a similar flood of democratic "multiculturalism" across all the major parties. Her killing was indeed brutal and disgusting, but that doesn’t mean we should forget that Jo Cox and the general interests of the ruling class that she represented were exponents of this "multiculturalism". She was also in favour of extending the bombing raids of the RAF further into Syria.
The bombing of an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena with a device packed with nuts and bolts was bound to kill or injure many young people. A statement by “Islamic state” said that “one of the soldiers of the caliphate was able to place an explosive device within a gathering of the crusaders”, as they claimed responsibility for the “endeavour to terrorise” infidels at a “shameless concert arena” as a response “to their transgressions against the lands of the Muslims”. These ‘crusaders’ were typically, teenagers of 14 or 16. One of the victims was a girl of 8. So far, the death toll is 22 (including ten under 20), with 116 injured.
Like the November 2015 mass shooting in Paris at the Bataclan theatre (where 89 were killed) it was deliberately aimed at young people, except even younger in Manchester. Today, it is increasingly clear that it is not just adults but also children who are caught up in the imperialist conflicts, not just in Syria, Libya, and Yemen but also in Manchester, Paris and Nice. Revolutionaries condemn unequivocally all acts of terror, whether by the biggest military forces in the world, or by a lone truck driver or suicide bomber.
Moreover, we can expect even more expressions of terrorism in Europe as military forces (such as ISIS), facing substantial military setbacks in Syria, unleash further attacks. This is part of the logic of imperialism today, as terror and terrorism are integral parts of all imperialisms’ weaponry.
While the Security Service of MI5 say they will examine their processes because the Manchester bomber had been ‘on their radar’, it was an opportunity for the state to up the security status and put armed troops on the streets alongside increased policing. Politicians, who had been in the middle of a general election campaign, united to declare their intentions to ‘protect’ the British people, to defend ‘democratic values’, and assert that they would never give in to terrorism. Tories have tried to make out that Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, was suspect on the questions of security and terrorism. Corbyn retaliated by blaming the Tories for cuts of 37,000 personnel in the police and security services. He said he would spend millions of pounds expanding the security services and hiring more police and border guards, thereby showing himself in continuity with Labour leaders over more than a hundred years of militarism and state repression.
Across the world figures from Trump to Putin to the Pope have added their voice to the anti-terrorist avalanche. All have condemned the killing of children as an expression of barbarism. The hypocrisy of these imperialist gangsters knows no limits. How many children were killed in the invasion of Iraq in 2003? A campaign based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force killed an unknown number of people since the US and Britain had no interest in counting them. There the US and its Allies could terror bomb with devices much more sophisticated and deadly than that of a solitary suicide bomber.
Today, vast areas have been laid waste by imperialist warfare in places such as Syria where the protégées of imperialist powers, including the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia among others, show no evidence of shame in the killing and maiming of thousands, either in support of Assad’s Syria or the multiplicity of militia in the many oppositions.
We should not forget the hypocrisy of the British state here, after its military intervention in Libya, alongside France, leaving the country in a state of civil war and chaos – this is the very country the family of the Manchester suicide bomber came from. It appears his father worked in Gaddafi's security apparatus, and later in an al Qaeda affiliate – the latter both used and abused by British intelligence.
To give one further example of our rulers’ hypocrisy, we need only look at the recent US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, ($110 billions worth immediately, $350 billion over 10 years). This was signed off by Trump as the Saudi bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen continued and where it is particularly targeting hospitals, and using cluster bombs against civilians.
As elsewhere in the face of attacks or disasters, the humanity of Manchester residents shone through. Hotels opened up their premises for victims, taxi drivers gave free lifts, hospitals pulled out all the stops, people opened opening their homes, cups of tea and coffee, people off the street just came to see what they could do. However, in conversations, in TV interviews, many people were completely confused as to where society is going. Is this going to last forever? Can some sort of solution be found? Saying ‘Manchester will not be defeated’ or ‘we’ll never be divided by terrorism’ are not answers to such questions.
We can see war and terrorism across the face of the globe. But the role of the big capitalist nations in this barbarism is often well hidden. The ‘peace’ after the Second World War was in reality a time of local and proxy wars as the Western and Russian imperialist blocs vied for position. Yet the rule of these blocs in the Cold War, with its doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, created a sort of, relative, stability in international relations. After the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 the world was turned upside down. The relative stability which was held in place by the two-bloc system disintegrated and we began to see crises and war multiply and become more chaotic. This period is the period of decomposition of the capitalist system.
The present day ‘war on terror’ and the proliferation of terrorist groups have their roots in the very bloody conflict between US and Russian imperialism that took place in Afghanistan. After the Russian invasion of December 1979 the USA and its allies supplied and supported the Mujahideen as their proxy fighters. The Taliban and al Qaeda developed out of this. So present day terrorist groups are not some bizarre anachronism from the past, even if they do claim to represent religious fundamentalism, but an intrinsic part of present day capitalism and its chaotic imperialist conflicts.
There was a new step in these imperialist conflicts after 11 September 2001 with the invasion of first Afghanistan and then Iraq destabilised whole areas of the globe in particular in the Middle East and giving rise to forces like the self styled Islamic State. Terrorist groups have proliferated, born out of war and kept going by the sordid alliances, and manipulation of the big powers.
All these wars have set in motion waves of refugees who risk their lives fleeing to the relative safety of Europe, the USA and other richer countries. Their numbers have been added to by those fleeing repression following the failure of the ‘Arab Spring’ and particularly the war in Syria, and also by economic necessity. These people, victims of capitalism, are used by politicians as scapegoats for terrorist outrages, as well as for falls in living standards over the last 10 years. The latter is due to the world economic crisis of 2007/8 which saw the enormous instability of the world economy with stock exchange crashes and bank failures. It ruined millions of savers and shattered confidence in money (which under capitalism holds the social links of society together). This created a huge fear and mistrust between people as well as uncertainty in the future.
“Facing this barbarism in a whole swathe of countries, from Mali to Afghanistan, passing through Somalia and up to the southern tip of Turkey, millions of human beings, month after month, have been forced to flee just to keep alive. They have become ‘refugees’ who are either stuck in camps or turned away at borders. They arrive at the same time as the economic crisis worsens and as terrorism is on the rise, all of which has greatly exacerbated xenophobia;
And above all, as capitalism advances into its decomposition and social ties disintegrate, the working class for the moment is unable to offer humanity another perspective. Incapable of developing its consciousness and its fighting spirit, its sense of international solidarity and fraternity, it is absent as a class from the world situation.” (‘Terrorist attacks in France, Germany, America: Capitalism carries terror within itself, like the cloud carries the storm’, ICC online, 15 August 2016[1])
The danger of this putrefaction should not be underestimated: if it is allowed to follow its logic to the end, it will push the whole of humanity towards destruction. The only answer is the development of the struggles of the working class, and with it the solidarity that is an important part of those struggles. This starts with the questioning of society as it now exists as well as struggling to defend ourselves against capitalism, and its state, and not calling on the state to defend us against the worst products of its decaying system.
MX, 29 May 2017
We’re publishing here the presentation and some of the issues and contributions at the meeting which was called by the ICC and attended by some of its members and sympathisers (one of whom has produced this report), two members of the Communist Workers Organisation (ICT)[1]; a former member of the group Kronstadt Kids[2]; and several other individuals who evidently considered discussing proletarian politics a worthwhile Easter project. There were also written and Skype contributions by ICC comrades from the US and France[3].
Presentation:
1. The world order is crumbling. Disorder is increasing: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, North Korea…
After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Eastern Bloc in 1989, when the ruling class announced the end of history and a ‘new world order’, the ICC insisted that disorder, chaos and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’ by the major imperialisms would be the real result, with the Western bloc unravelling as well as the Russian empire. The US acted to stop its own bloc falling apart by obliging members to back it in the first Gulf War of 1991. But soon after came events in Yugoslavia, with Germany and Britain already acting against the US. 2001 saw 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq... But the intervention of the US superpower only further fanned chaos...
The rise of China, the revival of Russia, regional powers like Turkey and Iran vying for influence... US ‘full spectrum dominance’ lies in disarray. Obama’s ‘foreign’ policies represented a US retreat on the world stage. Trump wants to make the US ‘great again’ – merely underlining the fact it’s in decline! However Trump embodies the weakening of any strategy, even in the short term. In the face of internal pressure from other factions of his class, he’s had to engage, contrary to election pledges, in volte face manoeuvres in domestic policy and to involve his administration abroad in “other people’s wars”; to prove “I’m not Putin’s puppet” (attack on Syria), “I’m tougher than Obama” (confront North Korea) … Such rapid switches in policy hardly testify to increasing stability or coherence.
2. Imperialist chaos and the populist politics of Trump have common root: a lack of perspective for capitalism. The economic crisis is unresolved, deepening, despite apparent ‘growth’ which brings with it a vast destruction of nature and the dislocation of millions of people. Lacking the mobilisation of the masses, world war is not at present possible and not in any case a ‘solution’ for capital. At same time the working class, despite emerging from defeat in the (1917-1928) revolutionary wave in late ‘60s - with world-wide strikes, struggles and protests against war - was not thereafter able to politicise sufficiently and offer an alternative vision of life for the future. Capitalism rots on its feet and its continuation is a threat to humanity, a threat to the material and subjective basis of a communist alternative.
3. Populism expresses this impasse. Brexit, Trump, both show the established parties can’t convince that they can improve things except for a tiny, privileged minority, especially after 2008. Neo-liberalism - the most recent stage in the evolution of state capitalism – reveals its limits. There’s a loss of political control by the ruling class: witness the Brexit fiasco and the election of Trump as president despite opposition from his own party, and from key parts of state apparatus like elements in the secret services.
4. Populist parties are bourgeois but they don’t correspond to most ‘rational’ needs of the bourgeoisie, they threaten further disorder in the management of bourgeois society, cf Brexit and Trump’s unpredictability. This is not a total loss of control: traditional parties ‘co-opt’ populist policies in order to maintain their continuity: the Tories in GB[4] (5) and, strikingly, Trump in the White House who, faced with the needs of the state, have already modified policies (Obama care, immigrants, and vis-a-vis Russia). However the origins of populism in the depths of a disintegrating society means that it’s not something that can easily be controlled or manipulated by the ruling class.
5. Part of the working class, especially that most affected by globalisation, ‘revolt’ but without perspective and not on their own class terrain. Some vote for populists as a possible ‘alternative’. Without an understanding of the root causes and evolution of the economic and social crisis – reinforced after 2008 because it affected people more as individual savers or householders (or evicted home-owners) at the mercy of the mysteries of finance – there tends to develop a search for scapegoats: the ‘urban elite’, ‘the bankers’, and above all the migrants and refugees. Here the imperialist situation aggravates populism: waves of refugees – including a veritable EU refugee crisis - as well as terrorist attacks in Europe, express the ‘blow-back of war’ and stimulate populist upsurge. This manifests itself in, amongst other aspects, a ‘bunker mentality’: the thirst for revenge and the violence of those who feel powerless and robbed; the shadow of the pogrom... In economic terms, grab what you can and to hell with solidarity.
6. Populism doesn’t at all infest the whole working class. ‘Urban’, technological, more diverse sectors, often misrepresented as part of the elite, but really proletarian, may be repelled by populism. But they are vulnerable to democratic ‘resistance’ which is also on a nationalist terrain: ‘we are the real America’ as marchers of 1 million and more chanted in Washington after Trump’s victory. Populists also refer to the democratic will, so this central plank of bourgeois ideology is reinforced on all sides. Certain comparisons with the 1930s are valid – key themes of fascism do reappear. But even if ‘building walls’ and vainly attempting to isolate this or that country from global events is on the agenda, the out-and-out concentration camp state is not at present. And this is because the proletariat may be weakened but it is not en masse dragooned behind capitalist policies.
7. Our perspective: the potential for communism remains even if the decomposition of capitalist social and material relations threaten to undermine it. The continued expansion of capitalism is also the growth of contradictions: use value/exchange value, capitalism and nature, world-wide association and private appropriation; the centralisation of capital and centrifugal tendencies within and between the world’s ruling cliques and countries.... etc
8. On the subjective level: in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ICC predicted a profound retreat in class consciousness within the proletariat. (6) Anti-communist campaigns and the effects of decomposition, coupled with the effects of ‘globalisation’ have ensured that class identity has weakened, along with a loss of confidence in itself and its project of constructing a new society.
And yet still important movements, especially among younger generation have emerged: in 2006 (the anti-CPE protests in France) and 2011. Also ‘classic’ economic movements, Spain, Egypt, China, UK…The problem is that economic struggles don’t automatically raise political issues and more ‘political’ ones like Indignados movement in Spain show how a loss of class identity makes workers’ movements vulnerable to ‘citizen’ ideology (Podemos, Syriza, Corbyn, Sanders etc). Both parts of the jig-saw need to be put together.
9. Revolutionaries, weakened by difficulties within the class, are today very isolated. But it’s more necessary than ever:
Discussion:
To a certain extent it was a debate between the ICC and the CWO, but as these are rare enough, this was positive in itself. The main points of contention were a) the underlying nature of populism, b) the constitution (class composition) of the working class and its present perspectives for struggle and c) the role of revolutionary minorities.
Why the rise of populism and what are its origins?
The CWO comrade had a slightly different emphasis: what lies behind these phenomena are the effects of the crisis of 2007/8 which the bourgeoisie has been unable to solve. There is certainly a loss of confidence in the ruling class about its ability to control the situation. Trump talked of ‘unfair trade’, of debt and these grievances, also felt by the populace, are diverted by the bourgeoisie into populism. For the CWO comrade, populism doesn’t have a future. It has no solutions. It’s a short-term phenomenon. It proposes trade barriers, and nationalism, against all the developments of the last 30 years. It represents the view of the petty bourgeoisie, and as such it’s not correct to look to or compare the situation with the 1930s because the strength of petty bourgeois groups in society is no longer the same. This section of the populace has been decimated.
Various ICC comrades and sympathisers responded to this analysis, expanding on the idea made in the presentation that populism was not something manufactured or even particularly desired by the bourgeoisie: the main factions of the ruling class wanted neither Brexit nor Trump but got both! And as the CWO comrade himself said, it represents an attempt on the political and juridical levels to reverse recent capital developments such as trade blocs, globalisation – expressing something equally real in today’s situation - a disruptive, centrifugal, each for himself tendency: the growing fetter of social relations on the tendency of capital to globalise. No: populism arises out of the depths of a degrading society which offers no perspective for the populace in general and the working class in particular. A close ICC sympathiser in the US put it thus:
“One of the primary --perhaps the overriding feature--of the current epoch is uncertainty. This, of course, reflects one of the main features of decomposition--it is very hard to say what exactly will happen in the future these days even on the scale of weeks. Already with Trump's Presidency, we have seen a series of shifts and back slides that make one wonder about the nature of his campaign and Presidency...
“...But this raises more questions about the nature of populism. Populism is not new. There were features of populism in the right-wing fascist movements of the 1930s, but also in Roosevelt's New Deal, but what we seem to be saying now is that populism is emerging is a defining feature of the current period--we are in a sense entering an epoch of populism, perhaps as something of a sub period of decomposition.”
“..beyond all this I think what we are seeing today is not just declining faith in the bourgeoisie to manage society, but a collapse of legitimacy in institutions of all kinds: political parties are chief among these, but it seems to go even deeper--there seems to be even an increasing rejection of or questioning of politics itself--which seems another manifestation of decomposition.”
Other comrades addressed comparisons with the 1930s; these existed and should be further explored, particularly the loss of confidence of whole populations in their rulers to govern; the hunt for scapegoats, the persecution of minorities, and also the solidarity expressed by some workers towards immigrants and other hounded, herded sectors. However, unlike the 30s, the aim isn’t to mobilise an ideologically and physically crushed class for immediate war; and populism today hasn’t invaded the entirety of the state apparatus as in Nazi Germany, Italy, or even Roosevelt’s US ‘New Deal’.
The example of The New Deal dovetailed with further elements to the discussion around populism which remain to be addressed. For example, is it correct to see populism as only a ‘right-wing’ phenomenon? Is there a ‘left-wing’ populism? The original ICC discussion document on populism[5] suggests there is not. Other comrades have questions: The US comrade again:
“I’m concerned we continue to use "populism" only to refer to the right-wing variant, when it seems like that is only part of the story of this period. But what all of these variants have in common is that they attempt to portray themselves as somehow outside the system, anti-establishment, different, etc. The problem with this is that if they win they have to govern and it isn't long before they are part of the establishment themselves, which furthers the political crisis. In another sense then, the populism can be seen as something that flows from society itself, as much as it is a political phenomenon of the bourgeoisie. Trump wouldn't be President and Brexit wouldn't have passed unless millions of workers voted for them (millions also voted for Sanders--he received more votes in the Dem primary than Eugene Debs ever got) against the overwhelming consensus of the media/ideological establishment. In a sense there is a kind of "distorted" class rebellion here--even if it is expressed in very dangerous and counterproductive way.”
One comrade said this: “Right and left populists portray themselves as against mainstream. We need to understand what is similar in them and what is different....Scape-goating is a developing phenomenon. Obama deported millions but this was ‘hidden’ rather than the openly declared programme of Trump’s populism. Right-populism rejects the bourgeois ideology of universalism. It had no realistic policy to forward in US election but was pressurised once in office to act in the national interests. On the left (eg Syriza – Greece, or Sanders, US) had a more realistic policy for national capital. Similarities between different populisms but also distinctions at time of great weakening of working class support for traditional parties as in France.”
However an ICC sympathiser questioned the notion that the left wing of capital had a more coherent economic/social programme than the right. “Trump put himself forward as an outsider – it is part of his image. This leads us to a general view of where the bourgeoisie is at – and it is true they do not have a perspective for society. But the bourgeoisie does think about the future. Trump represents where the world is going – there are going to be unprecedented numbers of immigrants attempting to enter the main centres of capital, for instance. The US bourgeoisie is getting ready to deal with this. Populism is seeing things from the point of view of the ‘citizen’ in society – both right and left populism. The idea that (in the US) Sanders had a more realistic program than Trump – I am not sure of that. The left live in denial of reality – their dreams of massive state spending on social welfare, equality, support for local industry, are simply that: dreams and propaganda. Trump’s wall is more realistic and redolent of the future.”
Concluding this section of the debate, ICC comrades insisted that populism is not a temporary phenomenon but expresses something profound. The bourgeoisie is unable to fully impose order in its own house. There’s a certain loss of political control - not complete - but a crisis in confidence in itself and a loss of confidence by the population in general in their ability to go on as before. However, on issues like refugees, immigration … as long as there is no explicit working class alternative, populism appears as ‘common sense’. The ICC Theses on Decomposition[6] refers to the effect on the petty bourgeoisie of the impasse in society. We’re today seeing a disintegration of bourgeois ideology. But this process also weighs heavily on the proletariat’s consciousness. One way of looking at world embodied in populism – conspiracy theory – has a deep hold on the younger generation; populism nurtures itself on this. Populism may morph into new forms but the dangerous tendencies in it will not disappear until there is an overt proletarian movement to confront it.
Are we turning our backs on the class struggle?
Immediately after the main presentation, a comrade, formerly a member of the proletarian group Kronstat Kids, said the ‘downbeat’ assessment on the difficult state of the class struggle made it “sound as if the proletarian milieu is turning its back on the working class.”
This intervention to a certain extent coloured the rest of the discussion not directly concerned with populism (though, of course, populism is intimately entwined with the historic balance of class forces, as far as the ICC is concerned).
Be that as it may, this gave rise to different strands regarding the class struggle: a) the objective existence of class antagonism and current manifestations of working class struggle; b) the difficulties of combativity and coming to consciousness plus the changing composition of the working class and the importance of Europe and the US; finally, c) the past and present role of revolutionary minorities.
The basics
First and foremost: no-one had turned their backs on the working class. In the present historical situation, in the relative absence of class identity and the perspective of a struggle for a classless society, revolutionary potential lies, for the moment, in the objective conditions: the persistence of the class antagonisms; the irreconcilable nature of class interests; the world wide-collaboration of the proletarians in the production and reproduction of social life. Only the proletariat has an objective interest in and capacity to resolve the contradiction between world-wide production and private and nation-state appropriation of wealth. On this objective basis, the subjective conditions for revolution can still recover, in particular through the return of the economic struggle of the proletariat on an important scale, and through the development of a new generation of revolutionary political minorities. The presentation had highlighted important moments of struggle over the past 10 years and these continued today: uncountable movements in China where, according to the CWO comrade, the past 25 years has seen the creation of some 70 million new proletarians; massive struggles at present in South Africa; a recent anti-union (though also ‘anti-political’) strike of bus crews in Poland, etc etc.
However revolutionaries had a duty to make a sober assessment not only of immediate events but their historical evolution. Historical materialism recognises no automatic road to revolution: the struggle between classes can result in a ‘higher’, more compatible method of social reproduction (in our epoch, that would be communism) or it can lead to the “mutual ruin of the contending classes.” It wasn’t the ICT or ICC which invented the mutually exclusive alternatives of “socialism or barbarism.” The struggles of the recent period largely failed to have a major impact on the world situation: none (with few exceptions) had acted as focal points for the world proletariat, nor manifested a palpable level of proletarian class consciousness or, crucially, enriched the ranks of revolutionaries. Some of the most major events of the past period – like the collapse of the Eastern bloc – had, seemingly, taken place without the active intervention of the working class, reinforcing its non-active role in forging future social life as well as giving rise to all the damaging campaigns about the death of communism and the victory of democracy.
Comrades of the ICC who had been involved through their organisational commitment in the class struggle for over 40 years recalled the ‘bombshell’ that was May ‘68, the re-entry on the world scene of the proletariat after years of counter-revolution, accompanied and followed by at least a decade’s-worth of world-wide and massive strike movements, culminating in the mass strike in Poland in 1980 and a corresponding rediscovery of proletarian traditions, texts and the reconstitution of new organisations such as the ICC. There were reasons to be cheerful... But “It’s taken us long time to recognise it’s not as optimistic as we thought. When we started out, many of us felt the revolution was quite close. Yes, because we were young, but also because there were struggles breaking out everywhere.” Despite the insistence that history was the struggle between two major classes, that the ruling class consciously acted in its own interests and against those of the proletariat, and that the proletariat’s struggle followed a jagged course, “We assumed a steady development of struggles and a continued evolution of political currents towards the formation of the Party. However, we had overlooked the difficulties and deficiencies in the development of class consciousness: economic crisis and combativity did not automatically give rise to deeper and more widespread clarity within the class as a whole. So the most important judgement we can make is that there is problem...”
One of these problems is that the ruling class is able to use the reality of different living standards around the world and the chaos of wars outside the proletarian heartlands to create divisions within the working class. There has been a loss of class identity and even revolutionaries felt the weight of of Stalinist and unionist ideology in ‘60s in their conception of who and what the working class actually is - a tendency to fixate only on blue-collar industries (which were in many cases prone to corporatist mentalities). The working class has not disappeared in the West – though it may be doing different work under changed conditions – but there are real obstacles to its seeing itself as the producer, revolutionary class at present.
The weekend of the meeting coincided with the arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station 100 years before. Neither he nor the Bolsheviks had anticipated the proletarian nature of the subsequent revolution in Russia which ‘seemed’ to come out of nowhere but which had in fact been brewing in the bowels of society. Today, it’s not possible to predict with any certainty, nor should we try, when the current regression in class consciousness and in combativity might end. The class often surprises its revolutionary minorities. But any concrete manifestation of a ‘subterranean maturation’ or a ‘qualitative leap’ in the level of struggles will not spring out of thin air: it will have been prepared by a whole series of movements, strikes and protests – including those against war, the degradation of living standards and of the environment on which humanity depends and which the ruling class is destroying. It’s hard to clearly see in today’s movements such developments. It also depends on the presence of revolutionary minorities – like the Bolsheviks – formed by the class itself, and today we can say the number of these remaining from the events before and after May 68 is absolutely tiny in relation to the tasks involved.
The Importance of Europe and the US
Within this process of coming to consciousness, not all parts of the proletariat are equal, even if they form an international whole. The CWO comrade felt that the focus of the class struggle had shifted from Europe and the US (which had witnessed record year-on-year reductions in strikes and struggles) to Africa, Asia and in particular China. This is not the first time that this organisation has placed emphasis on the “struggle in the peripheries” and the ICC disagreed then as now[7].
Reality is that In many parts of the world – in the Middle East, in large swathes of Africa – the proletariat and the dispossessed, landless population is being decimated by war and famine: Syria, Libya (which has witnessed the return of slave markets!), Somalia and Sudan were examples So essentially we’re talking here of countries like China which have seen a real industrial development.
The creation of new battalions of the class in China should, of course be welcomed – it will make any future generalisation of struggles throughout the world easier. But the new Chinese proletariat – and many millions of them are ejected back to the ruined ‘natural economy’ of the countryside once projects like the Beijing Olympic builds are completed or others collapse due to falling world demand and rising labour costs – is politically inexperienced and unexposed to traps long endured by workers in the West: trade unions; multi-party democracies, etc, institutions that the rest of the world bourgeoisie has (so far) unsuccessfully tried to foist on the rigid Chinese bureaucracy in order to preserve social control and supply chains. The Chinese proletariat’s struggles require the politicization already achieved in the past in the West and which will again have to be manifested and surpassed there in future.
It’s no accident that despite the growth of the Chinese proletariat over the past quarter of a century - a growth in significant part corresponding to a loss of jobs and the creation of ‘rust belts’ in the West - no politicised minorities have emerged to our knowledge. If the workers’ history of the past 40 years – if the histories of organisations like the ICT and ICC – is examined, the difficulty in coming to consciousness within the proletariat and the secretion of revolutionary minorities is notable for its feebleness.
The massive and varied struggles of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ – including workers’ strikes in Egypt, Bangladesh, the US as well as the formation of street assemblies and manifestations like Tahir Square and the Occupy movements – has given rise to very little ‘political decantation’. The most politically advanced movement appeared in the Europe, in Spain, in the Indignados movement. And while this has seen some small residue in the form of newly politicised comrades, it’s a pitifully small and painfully slow process.
The CWO comrade acknowledged the “huge difficulties” of struggles today in South Africa: despite large-scale mobilisations and the exposure of the ANC as a capitalist prop, the class hadn’t drawn the lessons and was to some extent repeating the same experiences as in Europe - the formation of new, often ‘base’, unions which were diverting struggles into a dead end. Revolutionary intervention was necessary, a sharing of experiences with struggles in Europe, but how was this to be achieved? In all events, at least there is an open combat as opposed to the low-levels of strikes in Europe.
The role of revolutionaries
The final strand of the discussion concerned the familiar theme of the role of revolutionaries and how to make contact with the working class and its struggles. Again, there’s a whole history of debate between the CWO/ICT and the ICC, particularly on the former’s conception of ‘Factory Groups’ as transmission belts between party, or revolutionary organisation and the class as a whole. For the ICC, the argument has never been whether intervention is necessary or not: communists are ‘leaders on the spot’ taking an active role wherever and whenever possible in strikes, assemblies, discussions, etc. The ICC devoted many resources to intervening, for example, in the Indignados movement, speaking in assemblies, etc. However, for the ICC, there are no ‘organisational panaceas’, no recipes to create the conditions either for struggle, or the favourable reception in that struggle of revolutionary ideas. When workers move, when minorities of them begin to coalesce, to discuss, then revolutionary intervention is vital, not to freeze this process but to help accelerate and politicise it. The dominant illusion in today’s proletarian milieu is they can create an immediate and lasting link between themselves and the class but this whole approach has been an activist failure. The reality is that nearly 50 years on from the end of the counter-revolution, organised revolutionaries are a tiny minority without influence in the class struggle and while they will in no way operate in some academic vacuum, the task of today, under the pressure of the dominant ideology, given the weakness of the working class, is ‘not to betray’ the principles and class lessons of the workers’ movement and to prepare for the transmission of these understandings for the revolutionary generation of tomorrow.
KT 21.04.2017
[1] ICT: https://www.leftcom.org/en [1543]
[2] A group formed in the late 70s with anarchist/councilist poliics, but definitely on a proletarian terrain.
[3] See the written contribution of comrades Baboon and jk1921 at /forum/14270/icc-public-forum-london-15-april-trump-election-and-crumbling-capitalist-world-order [1544]
[4] In GB, PM Teresa May’s early election call is another attempt by the ‘traditional’ parties to regain a modicum of political control over the vagaries of populism – as is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to present himself as the ‘outsider’, ‘anti-establishment’ candidate
[6] Theses on Decompostion: https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
[7] See for example Polemic with the IBRP: Task of revolutionaries in the peripheral countries: https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/3160 [1545] and in addition, the ‘Critique of the Theory of the Weakest Link’ https://en.internationalism.org/ir/1982/31/critique-of-the-weak-link-theory [1546]
In the week just after mid-May, there were three particular events in the Middle East: the first was an incident involving an attack by US fighter jets on an Iranian-backed militia in south-eastern Syria fighting for Assad; a general election in Iran; and President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia. The context for these events, which mean a deepening of tensions and greater military dangers for the world, is the tendency for centrifugal forces to increasingly dominate over relatively stable blocs and alliances, and how this takes place in a world where American power is increasingly resented and weakening. A couple of weeks after Trump’s visit, this dangerous dynamic was emphasised and reinforced by the sudden and coordinated isolation of Qatar by land, sea and air, led by Saudi Arabia, with apparent US backing. This amounts to a call for Qatari regime change and is virtually a declaration of war. There is no doubt that the Saudi action, in line with its increasingly reckless behaviour, marks a rise in tensions and a more and more aggressive approach towards Iran. At a wider level, and again in line with already developing tendencies, clear differences are shown within Nato between the US and Germany. On June 7, the German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, responding to the Qatar crisis, stated that the "Trumpification of relations (within the Middle East) is particularly dangerous". There is more on this development below.
The historical weakening of the US as a superpower has been a developing expression since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. It's not weakening militarily, on the contrary, and it is still a very powerful economy; but at the level of its global domination, both militarily and political, its influence has eroded. This weakening gives further strength to the innate capitalist tendency of "dog eat dog", each for themselves, which in turn, further acts on US weakening and creates the downward spiral that is typical of this phase of capitalism’s decline which we refer to as the phase of decomposition. After the collapse of Russia, instead of enjoying a great "victory", the US found its hold on its allies beginning to unravel. The first (1990/91) Gulf War was an attempt by the US to pull its allies back into line but it only briefly succeeded, with centrifugal tendencies dominating more than ever once it was over, most obviously in the war in ex-Yugoslavia which saw Germany, France and even Britain backing their own pawns against those of the US. The second Gulf War against Saddam saw a greater distancing by Germany in particular. The re-emergence of Russia onto the imperialist scene has caused the US problems that it's found difficult to deal with, and US and European relations are at very low ebb, as shown by the recent G7 meeting. And even some of its oldest "friends", Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel (who all have tensions with each other) are trying to take advantage of the weaknesses of the US. Along with Turkey and Bahrain they are rather unstable allies.
The US hasn't won a war since it invaded Granada in 1983, a country with no standing army. There have been ongoing military debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya which have been costly in terms of lives and material, laying the ground for more problems in relation to those areas along with those posed by China and North Korea. "Make America Great Again" is a re-launch of the 1990's NeoCon thinking which admits the basic premise of a weakened US and, like the present situation, wants to strike out. Though a token effort militarily, the bombing of the Syrian Shayrat air-base by Tomahawk missiles in early April and dropping the US's biggest non-nuclear bomb, the "Massive Ordnance Air Blast" (MOAB) on the Nangerhar region of Afghanistan a week later, was supposed to send out a powerful message that the US was back and fighting. But, along with the increasing numbers of civilians killed by US and Coalition air-strikes in Syria and Iraq and by drone strikes in Pakistan, these sorts of actions simply make more enemies for the US and the west. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, initiated under Obama, is now being put into question; on the other hand, the "Pivot" to Asia, with the principal aim of containing Chinese expansion, was already being set up under Obama and is likely to be intensified under Trump, who has already engaged in some verbal sabre-rattling by claiming that he was dispatching an “armada” towards North Korea in response to the regime’s nuclear posturing (in fact this turned out to be something of a bluff by Trump[1]). In Africa the US is also reinforcing its presence and any ideas about the US under Trump "withdrawing" from the world stage have been flatly contradicted.
In a sudden turn of events that took the Qatari regime, and many others, by surprise, Saudi Arabia, its proxies in Bahrain and the UAE, along with the support of Egypt and some smaller states, completely cut off this small country from the rest of the world. It was an act of war. The reason for the move according to the Saudi's, was that Qatar was "Supporting terrorism" and "supplying Iranian-backed terrorist groups" which includes its support for Hamas in Gaza[2]. The Saudi move was endorsed by Trump who said that his visit was "paying off" and, in an open disagreement with Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said that the move was "necessary"[3]. The Saudi move would have been quietly egged-on by Israel. That Qatar, like Saudi and the rest of imperialism, supports factions of terrorism is beyond dispute; the Qatari jihadists fighting in the 2011 war in Libya, who were backed by the British and French, were particularly indiscriminate and horrific in their slaughter. Qatar, like Saudi, has backed the al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front in Syria. The Qatari regime has also backed the Muslim Brotherhood, including its rise to government in Egypt during 2011/12, which explains Saudi’s enthusiasm for the "secular" Egyptian despot, El Sissi, who overturned Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government.
The original excuse for the Saudi move was an insipid statement on Qatari state TV that Iran should not be isolated. That was the pretext for the already planned move to be put into effect. Its aim is to distance Doha from Tehran and make it more compliant to the Saudis. There have been tensions within the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council for decades now but this is of a different order of magnitude in a situation of deepening instability and recklessness which brings further dangers to the Middle East. Kuwait, Oman and Pakistan have refused to join in while the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have all increased internal repression against any dissent.
Qatar holds the largest US base in the Middle East, housing its Central Command which directs its regional wars. Rex Tillerson, again contradicting his president, said that the capacities of the base had been "hindered" by the move. Turkey has a small, token military presence in the country but has recently signed an agreement to send in more troops. Qatar has cooperated with Iran over exploiting the largest gas reserves in the world that lie in their off-shore waters, but this move by Saudi is not dominated by any sort of immediate economic motives but by increases in imperialist rivalries against Iran pushed by the Trump administration.
On May 17 US fighter jets destroyed an Iranian-backed convoy of around a couple of dozen militia and their equipment as it headed towards the Jordanian border, killing six of them. Some 25km away on the border is a camp set up by the CIA and manned by British and French intelligence agents and special forces, with Saudi and Bahraini assistance. Its job is to train an anti-Assad, anti-Iranian army which includes some fundamentalist Islamists of the so-called "New Syrian Army". The placing of the camp is important because it is close to the Baghdad-Damascus highway and is part of an important Iranian supply-line which meanders from Tehran all the way to Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast. In the near future the camp could be an element in the partition of Syria and represents an increase in western involvement in the war, but in the meantime it is certainly a threat to Iranian-backed elements. Three days prior to the attack there were media reports of very direct Russian warnings to the Assad regime to reign in its Iranian units and stop their advance to the Jordanian border. They were ignored by the regime but they indicate a number of possible developments: high-level Russian-US communications; the fact that the US doesn't want to confront Russia in Syria; possible Russian ambiguities towards Iran; and the fact that Iran is very much in US sights – Trump’s bombastic words about Iran were, in this case, translated into action. The incident also points to latent tensions between Russia and the Assad clique. But more than this, this attack sends a clear message of US intentions towards Iran. It's one of the contradictions of this war-torn region that in Iraq US and Coalition air power are protecting Iranian-backed Shia units on the ground, but the Tanf incident points to the possibilities of a serious Coalition and Iranian confrontation further down the road[4].
In the same week as Trump's visit there was a general election in Iran in which the re-elected "moderate", Hassan Rouhani, won overwhelmingly. In bourgeois terms this is probably one of the "cleanest" elections in the whole region (no such elections for Saudi) and it has been virtually ignored by the US, the proponent of democracy everywhere. The administration was less welcoming to Rouhani's election than it was to the earlier election of the hard-line Ahmadinejad. Rouhani delivered the 2015 nuclear deal with Europe, Russia and the US, a deal which Trump called "The worse deal ever negotiated". The "pivot" to Saudi Arabia by the US under Trump is a clear move away from the Obama administration's attempt to use Iran as a counter to the growing uncertainties of Saudi Arabian influence in the region[5].
There are still US sanctions on Iran and the next few weeks will see if they are lifted in line with the nuclear agreement or intensified. The development of the economy is crucial for the survival of the Iranian "moderates" as youth unemployment, for example, officially stands at 26%; and while there has been some German and French (and Chinese) investment in Iran[6], putting these countries at odds with the US, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) hardliners have their own business empire to protect. It is extremely unlikely that there will be any US investment, or US "encouragement" to invest in Iran, under the present US regime. This puts the latter at odds with Europe, Germany particularly, over the economy and the nuclear deal. The Iranian hardliners under Ebrahim Raisa, who could well be endorsed by the "Supreme Leader", Al Khamanei, got a significant vote and these deeply irrational forces can only be strengthened by present and developing US policy.
It's hard to not to point out the sickening hypocrisy of "anti-terrorist" Trump going to the snake pit of fundamentalist jihadism which the Saudi state, through its state-run Muslim World League, has exported near and wide. But the "dealmaker" has got a great deal here: $350 billion worth of sales including $110 billion worth of assorted weaponry. This aspect has ruffled some Israeli feathers but it has the advantage for the US of upping the ante on future arms sales to Israel. At any rate the new weapons are unlikely to do the Saudi regime much good when the previous batch (around $40 billion) has not been that effective for Saudi intervention in Syria. For all its military fire power, Saudi Arabia has been unable to subdue Houti regulars in Yemen. Trump met with the de facto Saudi ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the German intelligence report eighteen months ago (see end note), described as a dangerous sectarian interventionist and naive political gambler. Who does that remind you of? Bin Salman has pursued the devastating war in Yemen (along with its "allies", including Britain) and has backed the jihadist "Army of Conquest", al-Qaida, the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham as well as promising to "take the war to Iran".
The anti-Iranian message was crystal clear in Trump's first foreign outing: he spoke to the assembled leaders in Riyadh in NeoCon terms of "Good versus Evil" and evoked "God" in one speech nine times in Israel. Here the aim to isolate and confront Iran was further emphasised when Trump said that "There is a growing recognition among your Arab neighbours that they have common cause with you in the threat posed by Iran"[8]. The US turn to a Sunni Saudi, UAE and the other Gulf states along with Israel and Egypt against Iran has one notable absentee: President Erdogan's Turkey. There are no doubt remaining tensions between Turkey and the US over the former's 2016 "coup" but there are other, deeper divisions emerging between the countries. The main one being the support from the US to the Kurdish YPG units which are a really useful force for US imperialism in the region against Isis. These forces have come into close proximity to Erdogan's Turkish proxies (and the Turkish army) but in general the latter dare not attack the Kurdish units who fly the Stars and Stripes. This army, and the potential for a Kurdish buffer zone, is a major source of Turkish/US tension. On the anarchist forum libcom, the Kurdish "supporters of Rojava" have expressed their unease about the YPG/US relationship[9] but these anarcho-nationalists can only imply that things might have been better with Russia as their main backer. It doesn't look as if the US is going to abandon the YPG any time soon and is in fact building up its presence around Kobane in northern Syria, including an airport designed to take the massive C-17 transporters. But the Kurdish nationalists are right to be worried because, historically, the Kurds are at their most vulnerable when they are up there playing with the big boys.
The anti-Iran turn is by no means restricted to Trump and his immediate clique; there were many in the US military that were dubious about or hostile to the nuclear or any agreement at all with Iran. Trump's move here represents an imperative for US imperialism to impose itself more fully on the world stage. This new "strategy" of the US, from a position of weakness, thus increases the temptation to use its military superiority. A number of generals that are very influential in the Trump administration were in Iraq and, because of US setbacks and casualties caused by the Shia militias and Iranian dominance in the country, have an abiding enmity towards Iran[10] . For them, Isis is not the main issue and the memory of Iranian-backed devastating attacks on US forces in Lebanon in the 1980's is still raw. At the same time, judging from the Jordanian border build-up and their support for a Kurdish army, they seem to be reconciled to a future carve-up of Syria.
The US turn is in line with other developments in the Trump regime and its foreign policy. Trump recently rubber-stamped the new Pentagon strategy to "annihilate Isis", which gives the military carte-blanche. Rules of engagement have been relaxed, more decisions "diluted" and delegated to the Pentagon with Trump's Defence Secretary, General James Mattis saying that the President had delegated "the ability to authorise military operations to him"[11] . These events tend to show the Pentagon more in control of Trump, whatever his eventual fate, than the other way round.
It may seem tenuous to link Trump's Middle East warmongering with the Manchester bombing and the most recent London attacks but the connection is already well established. By stirring up war, militarism and ethnic hatreds, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and their dubious allies, have used and fuelled terrorism for a quarter of a century now. In that process many, many thousands in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and central Africa have been slaughtered, getting scant attention from the British media unless there's a particular campaign furthering their war efforts. Trump's visit and policies are the latest contributions to ensuring more Middle East instability and more terrorist atrocities in Europe for many years to come.
Boxer, 10.6.17. (This article was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC)
[2] The regime-funded news organisation al-Jazeera, launched in 1996, has also been a constant thorn in the side of the Saudi's, often exposing the hypocrisy of the latter. Another recent factor that annoyed the Saudis was the payment of $500 million to Iranian authorities that were responsible for the release of a hunting party comprising Qatari royals who were captured in Iraq.
[3] This disagreement, like the many other conflicts that have already appeared within the Trump administration, highlights the unpredictability of the new regime which makes it extremely difficult for it to put forward any long-term, coherent strategies.
[4] There have been two subsequent attacks in this US and British declared "deconfliction zone" in south-east Syria against Assad's forces. It further raises the possibility of wider collisions between British, American and Syrian, Iranian and Russian forces.
[5] In December 2015, German intelligence's BND issued a stark and surprisingly public warning about the destabilising effect of Saudi Arabia in the Arab world (and Europe, as later reports suggest): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/120295... [1549]
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201606/13973/iran-and-saudi-ar... [1550] gives a wider view of the dynamics of Iran and Saudi and the wider region.
[7] Editorial in the Financial Times, 22.5.17: "Trump of Arabia takes side in sectarian conflict".
[8] WSWS, 23.5.17
[10] The British too, who had to sign a virtual surrender document to the Iranian-backed militia in order to get out of Basra in one piece in 2007. Just like Helmand, Afghanistan in 2014, another ignominious defeat for the British army presented as a victory.
[11] WSWS, 20.5.17
According to a substantial number of politicians and media outlets, one of the most positive outcomes of the recent British election was the fact that Labour’s surprising revival was largely based on a kind of upsurge of young people, breaking with habits of apathy or cynicism towards “politics” and seeing the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn as offering a real alternative, hope for a more equal and fairer society.
As revolutionaries, we beg to differ. The engagement of discontented youth with bourgeois electoral politics is founded on the recuperation of real discontent, on diverting it towards false solutions that lie inside the horizon of capitalist society. The discontent is the positive element, its diversion is the negative. We have seen a similar process in Spain and Greece, where massive movements of a new generation of proletarians, organised in street assemblies, were deflected onto the electoral terrain by new left-wing parties like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, who promise to combine the social struggle on the street with the struggle for power in parliament, when the two paths head in different and opposed directions. Neither is this a new trick played by the left wing of capital. In the German revolution of 1918 the workers and soldiers organised in councils were cajoled by the Social Democratic Party into subordinating the councils to the new “democratic” parliamentary regime – a profound error which could only mean the death of the councils.
The left and the extreme left are differentiated from the right and the extreme right particularly by their language, which seems to be much more humane. Solidarity, welcoming and sharing are among the values that are attributed to them. This image is all the more tenacious since it is anchored in the memories of the glorious past of these parties. In France, for example, the figure of Jean Jaures, murdered for his opposition to the 1914-18 war, still draws a great deal of sympathy today. So, despite the experience of the left in power which everywhere has been responsible for imposing austerity and reduction in workers’ living standards, workers in their millions (in work, unemployed, pensioners, students and precarious workers) regularly go to vote, without much enthusiasm, without believing their programmes, simply to prevent something worse, the arrogant, and often sexist and racist, right, and hateful extreme right. This is what lies behind the idea of tactical voting to “keep the Tories out”. It also lies behind the way austerity measures by the Blair government were consistently described as “Tory policies” when they were patently the policies and actions of the Labour Party in office. Similarly, in France the wish for “anyone but Sarkozy” gave socialist Francois Hollande his victory in 2007, just as many former supporters of the left voted for Macron to keep out Le Pen . However, this illusion of preventing something worse cannot stand up to historical facts. To take a few examples: not only did the Labour home secretary in the Blair government, Jack Straw, play the immigration card, talking of “bogus” asylum seekers among other insults, but the supposedly dangerous radical Jeremy Corbyn said he wants immigration “... based on the needs of our society”[1], meaning based on the needs of British national capital. Obama may not have campaigned on deporting illegal immigrants the way Trump did, but he still became known as “deporter-in-chief” because of the millions expelled under his presidency. Although portrayed as a lesser evil, Obama has never claimed to be a socialist. Bernie Sanders has, and he voted against the immigration reform bill in 2007, supporting the AFL-CIO unions in claiming this was to prevent American workers having their wages undercut. Not a million miles from Trump’s reasoning. The French politician who stated “I think there are too many arrivals, immigration that should not be there... We teach them to speak French and then another group arrives and we have to start over again. This never stops... So, there comes a time when it has to stop” was not Le Pen but Hollande![2] And always actions follow the words: deportations, frontiers reinforced (Corbyn wants 500 more immigration officers), no matter how tragic it is for the refugees, including unaccompanied children as in the Jungle at Calais. All these parties and politicians have supported the very imperialist policies that cause the wars and instability – in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – that only increase the number of refugees risking their lives to reach relative safety.[3]
From the extreme right to the extreme left, for a century, different governments all over the world have many times demonstrated the inhumanity of their policies. Yet there is still an idea fixed in the body and mind of each ‘citizen’ that to vote is to defend democracy and keep it alive. Your vote is your voice. If you don’t vote, what right do you have to complain about what the government does? This message is omnipresent. But what is the reality of the power of this little bit of ballot paper?
Democracy is a mystification for it presupposes humanity is unified, something which has never been the case, whether in the last 5,000 years of class society or before that when humanity was divided into tribes and clans. Throughout the history of class society social cohesion has been maintained by the power of the ruling class and its state machine, to the detriment of the powerless mass of the exploited and oppressed. In one of its first expressions, state power took the sophisticated form of democracy, as in ancient Greece, where the word originated. The Athenian city state was able to adopt this form of government thanks to the growth in wealth brought by a flow of slaves, linked to the pillage of its neighbours. The demos, that is to say the people, of Greek democracy was not the whole population, but only the citizens in the polis. The mass of slaves, the majority of society, as well as women and foreigners, had no rights of citizenship. Democracy in ancient Greece was an arm of the state for the benefit of the slave owners.
Bourgeois democracy is, in essence, no different. The bourgeois parliamentary regimes of the 19th Century openly excluded the working class from the right to vote through the rules of eligibility (it was necessary to own property to be able to vote). And when universal suffrage was granted to society as a whole, the bourgeoisie still had many means to exclude the working class from its political affairs: the many links which united the political parties to the bourgeoisie and to the state; the system of direct suffrage which atomises the classes into isolated and supposedly equal individuals; the control of the media, and so the electoral campaigns, through the state, etc. This is why no election organised by a democratic state has ever given a majority to parties of the exploited class. Quite the contrary! During the Paris Commune, for example, the National Assembly elected in 1871 was nicknamed “la Chambre introuvable” (the unobtainable Chamber), in reference to the Royalist Chamber of 1815, so the bourgeoisie couldn’t dream of a better result for its interests, even when Paris and part of France was caught up in a revolutionary tidal wave.
Democracy, in whichever historic period it has arisen, has always been a method of government ensuring the violent rule of the minority over the majority, and not the reverse as we are led to believe. It has never been, and never could be, a means of self-regulation and control by society as a whole. Democracy is the most sophisticated system of political organisation allowing one class to rule society:
It is no accident that the great democracies are the oldest capitalist countries, where both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have a long experience of struggles. The stronger the working class, the more its consciousness and its organisation have developed, the more the bourgeoisie needs its most effective political weapon. Hitler was able to come to power democratically and supported by all the large German industrialists, in the elections of 1933, precisely because the working class had already been crushed physically and ideologically by German Social Democracy during the revolutionary wave of 1918-1919. It was not the abandonment of the ballot boxes by the ‘citizens’ which led Nazism to power, but the bloody defeat of the working class, militarily and politically vanquished by the very democratic Social Democracy!
The bourgeoisie makes believe that the most important battle has always been “democracy against dictatorship”. So, the main justification for Allied imperialism during the Second World War against fascism was the struggle for democracy against dictatorship. Millions of human beings were massacred in the name of democracy. After 1945, democracy was the main theme mobilising for the Cold War against the Stalinist imperialist bloc by the bloc led by the United States. Whole countries have been ravaged in the name of the struggle against totalitarianism. After1989, the collapse of the USSR bloc marked the start of a whole series of colossal military adventures by the United States to maintain its world hegemony, under the banner of democracy and human rights, against the mad dictators (Gulf war, intervention in Yugoslavia) or against evil terrorists (war in Afghanistan). So, during the imperialist conflicts which have ravaged the planet for more than a century, the strength of the “liberal democracies” has always been to persuade the proletarians used as cannon fodder that they were fighting for democracy, and not defending the interests of a capitalist faction. And these same democracies have shamelessly, cynically used or even put in place this or that dictator when it corresponded to their strategic interests. There is no lack of examples: the USA in Latin America, France in the majority of its African ex-colonies, the UK in ex-colonies when needed. This eternal battle of democracy against dictatorship is an ideological myth. Capitalism as a whole, whatever its mask and political organisation, is a dictatorship, a system of a privileged exploiting minority crushing the majority of humanity.
There could be one remaining reason, despite everything, to go and vote: universal suffrage was won with great and often bloody struggles of the working class in the 19th Century: with the Chartist movement in Britain, in Germany between 1848-49, in Belgium with the immense strikes of 1893, 1902 and 1913... In France, it was only after the Paris Commune was drowned in blood that workers definitively obtained universal suffrage. This demand is even found in the Communist Manifesto written in 1848 by Marx and Engels. But this poses a question: why does this same bourgeoisie which, in the previous century violently repressed workers who demanded universal suffrage, make such efforts today for the maximum number of them to vote? Why the publicity paid for by the state hammering out the message: “Vote, vote, vote!” on all the TV channels, in the press and in schoolbooks? Why in all these media are the “abstentionists” condemned as irresponsible citizens putting our democracy in danger? Why this flagrant difference between the 19th Century and the 20th and 21st Centuries?
To answer this question it is necessary to distinguish two epochs of capitalism: ascendance and decadence. In the 19th Century capitalism was at its height. Capitalist production developed by giant steps. In this period of prosperity the bourgeoisie achieved it political domination and eliminated the power of the old ruling class: the nobility. Universal suffrage and parliament were one of the most important means in the struggle of the radical fraction of the bourgeoisie against the nobility and against its own retrograde fractions. As such the democratic bourgeoisie and its liberal ideology represented a prodigious advance historically in relation to the religious obscurantism of feudal society. The struggle of the proletariat in this period was directly conditioned by this situation of capitalism. In the absence of capitalism’s historic crisis, the socialist revolution was not yet on the agenda. For the proletariat it was a question of strengthening its unity and its consciousness in fighting for lasting reforms, to try to permanently ameliorate its living conditions. The unions and the parliamentary parties allowed it to regroup independently of the bourgeois and democratic parties and to put pressure on the existing order, and even when needed to make tactical alliances with the radical fractions of the bourgeoisie; these were the means it gave itself to obtain reforms. Parliament was the place where the different fractions of the bourgeoisie united or confronted each other to govern society. The proletariat had to participate in this arena, to try to obtain laws and decisions that corresponded to the defence of its interests.
With the 20th Century capitalism entered a new phase, that of its historic decline. The division of the world between the great powers was completed. Each one of them could only appropriate new markets to the detriment of the others. As the Communist International said, the agony of capitalism opened “the epoch of wars and revolutions”. On the one hand the First World War broke out. On the other, in Russia (1905 and 1917), in Germany (1918-23), in Hungary (1919) and in Italy (1920), the proletariat shook the old world with an international revolutionary wave. To face up to these growing difficulties capital was constrained to constantly reinforce the power of its state. More and more the state tended to take control of the whole of social life, in the first place in the economic domain. This evolution in the role of the state was accompanied by a weakening in the role of the legislature in favour of the executive. More concretely, as the second congress of the Communist International said: “The focal point of political life has shifted fully and finally beyond the boundaries of parliament”. Today, in Britain as elsewhere, parliament has become more of a rubber stamp for legislation, almost all of which is proposed by the government. In France it is evident that the National Assembly no longer has any power: 80% of the laws it votes are presented by the government; once voted this law must be put into effect by the President of the Republic and, to take effect, must wait for the signing of the presidential decree. Besides, the President can bypass parliament to legislate by recourse to edict or even, in France, with the aid of Article 16 of the constitution which gives him full powers. In Britain the prime minister has taken on the powers of ‘Royal Prerogative’ in matters such as foreign affairs, defence and security. This insignificant role for parliament is expressed in a ridiculous participation by MPs in its sessions: most of the time there are very few who follow the debates, when in the 19th Century, it was the place for fierce and impassioned debates and sometimes brilliant discourse, like those of Jean Jaures in France or Karl Liebknecht in Germany.
At the same time as parliament’s effective political function diminished, it mystificatory function grew and the bourgeoisie was not mistaken when, in 1917 in Russia and in 1919 in Germany, it brandished the constituent assembly against the proletarian revolution and its workers’ councils. From then on, parliamentary democracy would be the best means to tame the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie does not exercise power as a whole but by delegating it to a minority fraction of itself, regrouped in political parties. This is equally true in democracies (competition between several parties) as in totalitarian fascist or Stalinist (one party) states. This power held by a minority of political specialists does not only reflect the minority position of the bourgeoisie within society; it is also necessary to preserve the general interests of the national capital faced with the divergent and competing interests of the different fractions of this bourgeoisie. This mode of power by delegation is thus inherent in bourgeois society; it is reflected in each of its institutions and above all in universal suffrage. The latter is even the privileged means by which ‘the population’, in fact the bourgeoisie, ‘entrusts’ power to one or several political parties. For the revolutionary action of the proletariat it is the whole of the class that acts to take power, and not the delegation of a minority. This is the condition for the success of all proletarian movements. So universal suffrage cannot, in any shape or form, provide the framework for the revolutionary mobilisation of the proletariat against the existing order.
Far from encouraging the initiative and self-organisation of the masses, it tends on the contrary to maintain their illusions and their passivity. May 1968, the largest strike since the Second World War, was followed a month later by the greatest ever electoral victory for the right in France. The reason for this discrepancy resides in the fact that the election of a deputy exists in a totally different sphere from that of the class struggle. The latter is a collective action of solidarity, where the worker is alongside other workers, where the hesitations of one are swept up by the resolution of the others, where the interests in question are not particular, but those of a class. In contrast, the vote calls on a totally abstract notion, quite outside of the reality of a permanent relation of force between two social classes with diametrically opposed interests: the notion of the “citizen”, who finds himself alone in the voting booth faced with a choice for something outside his daily life. It is the ideal terrain for the bourgeoisie, where the worker’s militancy has no possibility to really show itself. It is no accident that the bourgeoisie makes such efforts to get us to vote. The electoral results are precisely the terrain where the combativity of the mass of workers cannot be expressed at all. On the contrary, in Britain the question of Brexit, or in France the proposition by certain candidates of a VI Republic and a new Constitution, encourage the individual-citizen to limit their reasoning to the narrow framework of national frontiers and the mortifying social relations of capitalist competition and exploitation.
The response to the contradictions of this system and to the growing suffering that it engenders can only come through the international dimension of the proletarian struggle and its global solidarity. In order to liberate society form the destructive consequences of capitalist production, communism must abolish classes and private property, which means the withering away of the state and of democracy: “... it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.
At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even begin to fear that we are expecting the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed – for democracy means the recognition of just this principle.
No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognises the subordination of the minority to the majority, ie, an organisation for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another.
We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, ie, all organised and systematic violence, all use of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But in striving for socialism we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, hence, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.” (Lenin, State and Revolution). Democracy will no longer have any meaning in a communist society which will replace the government of men and capitalist management with “the administration of things”, in a world which, contrary to capitalism, draws its strength from the diversity of needs and the real capacities of the associated individuals.
Sandrine
Adapted from an article on our French web page, https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201703/9528/el... [1552]
[2] Said to journalists Davet and Lhomme, 23 July 2014
[3] See https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14333/hard-times-bring-increased-illusions-labour-party [1554] for examples of how the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership is no exception to this.
The survivors of the Grenfell fire, those who live in its shadow, those who live in similar towers elsewhere, those who came to manifest their solidarity, whose anger drove them to occupy Kensington town hall and march to Downing Street, were perfectly clear that this horror was no abstract “tragedy”, still less an Act of God, but as one makeshift banner put it, “a crime on the poor”, an issue of class made even more obvious by the fact that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea typifies the obscene contrasts in wealth that mark this social order, summarising them in the very visible and tangible form of the “housing question”.
Long before the outbreak of the fire, a residents’ action group had warned of the dangerous state of the Grenfell building, but these warnings were repeatedly ignored by the local council and its agent, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. There is also a strong suspicion that the cladding which is being pinpointed as the main cause of the rapid spread of the fire was installed not for the residents of the tower but to improve the look of the building for the richer residents of the borough. Again, it is well known that this borough is infested by that new breed of absentee landlord who, encouraged by the British bourgeoisie’s mania to encourage foreign investment, buys up extremely expensive housing stock and in many cases doesn’t even bother to rent it out, but leaves it empty purely for the purposes of speculation. And indeed speculation in housing – fully supported by the state - was a central element in the crash of 2008, an economic disaster whose net effect has been to further widen the huge gulf between those with wealth and those without it. And yet keeping house prices high, especially in London, remains a central plank of today’s debt-driven casino economy.
The depth and extent of the indignation provoked by such policies was such that the media owned and controlled by those at the higher rungs of the wealth ladder had little choice but to go along with the tide of rage. Some of the pro-Brexit tabloids started off by trying to blame the fire on EU regulations[1], but had to backtrack quickly in the face of the popular mood (but also when it was made apparent that the type of cladding used to “regenerate” Grenfell is banned in a country like Germany). A paper not famed for its radicalism, the London Metro, carried the headline “Arrest the Killers”, presented not as a quote but more like a demand, even if based on the rhetoric of Tottenham MP David Lammy who was one of the first to describe the fire as “corporate manslaughter”. And all but a minority of racist internet trolls avoided any disparaging words about the fact that the majority of the victims are not only poor but come from a migrant and even refugee background. The many expressions of solidarity we saw in the wake of the fire – the donation of food, clothes, blankets, offers of accommodation and labour in the emergency centres – came from local people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, who didn’t ask about the personal history of the victims as a precondition for giving their aid and support.
The demonstrators are right to demand answers about the cause of this fire, to pressure the state into providing emergency assistance and into re-housing them in the same area – some of them have referred to the dismal experience of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which was seized upon to carry out a kind of class and ethnic cleansing of “desirable” areas of New Orleans. Those who live in other tower blocks quite understandably want safety checks and improvements to be implemented as soon as possible. But it is also necessary to examine the deeper causes behind this catastrophe, to understand that the inequality which has been so widely cited as a key element is rooted in the very structure of present day society. This is particularly important because so much of the current anger is directed against particular individuals or institutions - Theresa May for shying away from direct contact with Grenfell residents, the local council or the KCTMO – rather than against a mode of production which engenders such disasters from its very entrails. Unless this point is grasped, the door remains open to illusions in alternative capitalist solutions, particularly those proposed by the left wing of capital. We have already seen Corbyn again racing ahead of May in the popularity stakes because of his more “down to earth” and sensitive response to the Grenfell residents, and his advocacy of apparently radical solutions such as the “requisitioning” of empty housing stock to provide homes to those who have been displaced[2].
This is how Marx defined the problem, focusing specifically on the ruthless hunt for profit in the production process:
“Since the labourer passes the greater portion of his life in the process of production, the conditions of the production process are largely the conditions of his active living process, or his living conditions, and economy in these living conditions is a method of raising the rate of profit; just as we saw earlier that overwork, the transformation of the labourer into a work horse, is a means of increasing capital, or speeding up the production of surplus-value. Such economy extends to overcrowding close and unsanitary premises with labourers, or, as capitalists put it, to space saving; to crowding dangerous machinery into close quarters without using safety devices; to neglecting safety rules in production processes pernicious to health, or, as in mining, bound up with danger, etc. Not to mention the absence of all provisions to render the production process human, agreeable, or at least bearable. From the capitalist point of view this would be quite a useless and senseless waste” (Capital, vol III, chapter 5).
But this drive to save space, to neglect safety rules and cut production costs in order to raise the rate of profit applies no less to the provision of housing to the exploited class. Engels, in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) described in great detail the overcrowding, dirt, pollution, and dilapidation of the housing and streets hastily erected to accommodate the factory workers of Manchester and other cities; in The Housing Question (1872) he emphasised that these conditions inevitably gave rise to epidemic diseases:
“Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, smallpox and other ravaging diseases spread their germs in the pestilential air and poisoned water of these working class districts”. But he also went on to say that “In these districts, the germs hardly ever die out completely, and as soon as circumstances permit it they develop into epidemics and then spread beyond their breeding places also into the more airy and healthy parts of the town inhabited by the capitalists. Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pressure of generating epidemic diseases with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in the ranks of the capitalists as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers”.
It is well known that the construction of the London sewer system in the 19th century, a titanic work of engineering which greatly reduced the impact of cholera, and which still functions today, was given a significant boost after the “Great Stink” of 1858 coming from the polluted Thames assailed the nostrils of the politicians in Westminster. Workers’ struggles and demands for better housing were also of course a factor in the bourgeoisie’s decisions to demolish slum areas and provide safer and more salubrious accommodation to the wage slaves. To protect themselves from disease, and to avoid the decimation of the work force, capital was obliged to introduce these improvements – besides, substantial profits could be made from investing in construction and property. But as Engels also noted, even in those days of substantial reforms, made possible by an ascendant mode of production, capitalism’s tendency was simply to shift the slums from one area to another. In The Housing Question he shows how this took place inside the boundaries of Manchester. In the present epoch, marked by the spiralling decay of the capitalist system on a world scale, the shift has most obviously taken place from the more “advanced” capitalist countries to the immense slums that surround so many of the cities of what used to be called the “Third World”[3].
This was why, rejecting Proudhon’s utopia (subsequently revived in the Thatcherite project of buying your own council house, which has considerably intensified the housing problem) where every worker owns their own little house, Engels insisted that “As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labour by the working class itself” (The Housing Question).
The proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917 gave us a glimpse of what, in its initial stages, this “appropriation” might mean: the palaces and mansions of the rich were expropriated in order to house the poorest families. In today’s London, alongside actual mansions and palaces, the dizzying increase in speculative building over the past few decades has left us with a huge stock of prestige towers, some parts of which are inhabited by a few wealthy residents, some parts of which are used for all kinds of parasitic commercial activities, and many parts of which remain unsold and unused. But they certainly have better fire safety systems than Grenfell. These types of buildings are a primary argument for expropriation as an immediate solution to the scandal of sub-standard housing and homelessness.
But Engels, like Marx, stood for a much more radical programme than simply taking over existing buildings. Again, rejecting the Proudhonist fantasy of a return to cottage industry, Engels stressed the progressive role played by the big cities in bringing together a mass of proletarians capable of acting together and thus challenging the capitalist order. And yet he also insisted that the communist future would have gone beyond the brutal separation of town and country and that this involved the dismantling of the great cities - a project even more grandiose in today’s epoch of swollen megacities which make the great cities of Engels’ day look like minor market towns.
“On its own admission, therefore, the bourgeois solution of the housing question has come to grief-it has come to grief owing to the antithesis of town and country. And with this we have arrived at the kernel of the problem. The housing question can only be solved when society has been sufficiently transformed for a start to be made towards abolishing the antithesis between town and country, which has been brought to an extreme point by present-day capitalist society. Far from being able to abolish this antithesis, capitalist society on the contrary is compelled to intensify it day by day. On the other hand the first modern utopian socialists, Owen and Fourier, already correctly recognized this. In their model plans the antithesis between town and country no longer exists. Consequently there takes place exactly the contrary of that which Herr Sax contends; it is not the solution of the housing question which simultaneously solves the social question, but only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible. To want to solve the housing question while at the same time desiring to maintain the modern big cities is an absurdity. The modern big cities, however, will be abolished only by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, and when this is once on the way then there will be quite other thing to do than supplying each worker with a little house for his own possession” (The Housing Question).
Continuing this radical tradition, the Italian left communist Amadeo Bordiga wrote a text in response to the post-second world war fashion for tower blocks and skyscrapers, a fashion which has returned in force in recent years despite a series of disasters and despite all the evidence that living in tower blocks intensifies the atomisation of urban living and generates all kinds of social and psychological difficulties. For Bordiga, the tower block was a potent symbol of capitalism’s tendency to cram as many human beings as possible into as limited a space as possible, and he had harsh words for the “brutalist” architects who sang its praises. “Verticalism, that is the name for this misshapen doctrine; capitalism is verticalist.”[4]
Communism, by contrast would be “horizontalist”. Later in the same article, he explains what is meant by this:
“When, after the forcible crushing of this ever-more obscene dictatorship, it will be possible to subordinate every solution and every plan to the amelioration of the conditions of living labour , to fashion with this aim everything that has come from dead labour, from constant capital, from the infrastructure that the human species has built up over the centuries and continues to build up on the earth’s crust, then the brutal verticalism of the cement monsters will be made ridiculous and will be suppressed, and in the immense expanses of horizontal space, once the giant cities have been deflated, the strength and intelligence of the human animal will progressively tend to render uniform the density of life and labour over the habitable parts of the earth; and these forces will henceforth be in harmony, and no longer ferocious enemies as they are in the deformed civilisation of today, where they are only brought together by the spectre of servitude and hunger”.
Amos, 18/6/17
[2]. From Corbyn’s state capitalist perspective, the requisitioning of buildings would not be the result of self-organised initiatives by the working class, but of legal measures taken by the state, similar to the requisitioning of buildings in war time.
[4]. ‘Space against cement’ in The Human Species and the Earth’s Crust (Espèce Humaine et Croûte Terrestre, Petite Bibilotheque Payot, p168). Our translation. See https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201609/14092/1950s-... [1558]
The 9.6% improvement in the Labour vote between the general elections of 2015 and 2017 was the biggest increase for the party since the Labour landslide of 1945. The Socialist Workers Party said that millions had voted for “real change” and it was “a great boost” to “all who campaigned against austerity and racism”. A young apprentice put it simply to the Guardian “I want a country that’s fair to everyone, where everyone’s happy, with poverty eradicated. Something similar to what Corbyn wants. Corbyn’s on our side, not like May.” Other young people were reported as seeing Corbyn as “compassionate” and representing a “new type of politics”.
There are many reasons for people to be discontented in Britain, mostly rooted in the state of the economy. Talk of the value of the pound being at its lowest level for 30 years, or GDP growth being sluggish can seem very abstract, but low wages, precarious employment, cuts in services, difficulties in finding decent affordable accommodation, they are all tangible manifestations of the impact of the economic crisis on people’s lives. But it’s not just these ‘bread and butter’ questions: people are also concerned with the global state of the environment, with the proliferation of military conflicts, with the possibility of terrorist attacks.
This is the context of the increased vote for Labour. The Conservative manifesto claimed “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.” They offered increased state intervention in certain areas of the economy. They wanted to improve “workers’ rights” and be the party of “ordinary working people”. After the last 7 years of Conservative government it was clear that some workers might be inclined to look elsewhere.
Labour offered more money for the NHS, the abolition of university fees, an increased minimum wage, increased taxes for high earners, as well as the renationalisation of the railways, post office, electricity and water companies. Although they were criticised for encouraging belief in a Magic Money Tree, many Tory promises were also uncosted.
It was not as though Labour didn’t take the financial situation seriously. They intended to eliminate the deficit within five years and balance spending with the amount raised in taxes. Without resorting to debt this would definitely mean cuts as a Labour government tried to live within its means. They couldn’t promise not to freeze benefits because, as Emily Thornberry put it “We shouldn’t be promising things we can’t afford.”
Some areas would not be subject to cuts. They promised to maintain defence spending at 2% of GDP, including the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, and increase the resources available to the police and security services. The approach to war is one of opposition to “unilateral aggressive wars of intervention”, which means they will support any wars that are supported by NATO or the United Nations. Use of nuclear weapons is not ruled out, although Labour do say they will be “extremely cautious” in their use. As for immigration Labour say that “freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union” and therefore proposed a new system of immigration controls which would involve “employer sponsorship, work permits, visa regulations or a tailored mix of all these.”
People don’t generally read manifestos, they’re like the small print in contracts. But if you look at the programme of the Labour Party it’s in continuity with the rest of modern social democracy. Corbyn used the Blair slogan from 1997 when he said Labour would “rule for the many, not the few”. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true twenty years later. The Labour programme is for state capitalism, which has been the dominant trend over capitalism’s last century internationally. Labour’s call for an increased role for the state means an increased role for a capitalist state, a state that can only act on behalf of the capitalist ruling class. In the present system of production founded on wage labour, workers exchange their labour power for wages, and any surplus value created goes to the capitalist class whether in the shape of individual entrepreneurs, big corporations, or state bureaucracies.
The Labour Party does not propose disturbing this central relationship in capitalist society. The exploitation of the working class will continue. In opposition, they will criticise government policy, but once they take their turn in government they will ensure the management of the economy, the defence of British capitalism and the advancement of British imperialism. In government or opposition, they have consistently upheld the needs of capitalist exploitation. This is true not only for the past hundred years of the Labour party in Britain - it’s no less the case for the last century of social democracy internationally. All these parties have shown that they support imperialist wars, carry out repression against workers’ struggles, and spin a web of lies about offering an alternative to capitalism.
Overall, we are in a period where the bourgeoisie, particularly in Britain, is having great difficulties in the deployment of its political apparatus. One element that has experienced a recent revival is the Labour Party. It offers illusions of social change through parliament and democracy, where the reality is the continuation of capitalist rule. Social change for the working class doesn’t come from trooping through polling stations to vote for left wing capitalist parties. Workers, from small struggles and an initial questioning of capitalism to the point where they can establish themselves as a conscious independent force against capitalism and its state, need to lose all illusions in state capitalism and its proponents. Labour is just another face of the bourgeoisie, but, where the parties of the right are readily rejected by thoughtful workers, illusions in the left are widespread and insidious.
Car 11/6/17
In a previous article about a discussion on libcom[1] we commented on the fact that some comrades appear to reject the concept of decadence even though they agree that capitalism is a historically transitory system. An example of this line of argument is a 1993 text by the UK-based journal Aufheben which claims that: “The theory of the decline of capitalism is an interpretation of the meaning of Marx's insight that capitalism is a transitory system, an interpretation that turns the notion of a particular dynamic of development into a mechanistic and determinist theory of inevitable collapse”.[2]
For us, this seems contradictory to say the least. Surely the decadence of capitalism flows logically and inevitably from the materialist conception that all class societies are transitory, each going through an ascendant and decadent stage? Rejecting decadence implies that capitalism, unlike all previous class societies, is somehow able to avoid the consequences of its fatal contradictions and if that is the case, in what way is it a transitory system?
This article explores in more depth where exactly the concept of capitalism as a historically transitory system comes from and how it relates to the Marxist theory of decadence, with particular reference to the writings of Marx and Engels on this subject, drawing out some of the political implications of denying the intimate connection between these key concepts of historical materialism and showing that they have nothing to do with “mechanistic and determinist theories of inevitable collapse”; on the contrary, the active revolutionary role of human beings lies at their heart.
“The highest maturity or stage which any Something can reach is that in which it begins to perish.” (Hegel)[3]
Marxism is sometimes criticised for taking the whole idea of a succession of modes of production going through ascendant and decadent stages from bourgeois political economy. This rather misses the point; from the beginning, scientific socialism, as the highest theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, consciously based itself on the discoveries and best insights of the bourgeoisie’s historians and philosophers. These included the existence of a series of historical epochs marking the economic development of society.
In the early stage of its ideological struggle against feudalism the revolutionary bourgeoisie’s main focus was on the need to empirically grasp the natural world in order to develop the forces of production. Its most important expression was a form of materialism influenced by discoveries especially in physics, which represented a huge advance for humanity over the theological and metaphysical thought of the Middle Ages.
Bourgeois materialism essentially conceived the entire universe as a machine in motion according to fixed natural laws; human beings were simply more complex and delicate machines whose thoughts and actions were the product of the motion of atoms. If the bourgeoisie could ignore the active role of human beings in history it is because its economic system appeared to operate according to laws as impersonal as those of astronomy in the general interest of human progress. But to consolidate its victory it needed to develop a scientific understanding of the workings of history in order justify its system as the final, perfect form of society.
The first open class struggles of the proletariat sounded the death knell of this attempt by the bourgeoisie to become critically self-conscious of the world and from now on its most important theoretical developments – in particular the development of political economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo and idealist philosophy from Kant to Hegel – could not help but reveal the contradictions of its position as the new ruling class. Above all the bourgeoisie was unable to recognise in the proletariat’s growing struggles the historically transitory nature of its own system.
The science of political economy begins as part of the bourgeoisie’s effort to comprehend empirically the new society it is attempting to establish. But with the first appearance of economic crises and workers’ struggles it retreats to become a justification for bourgeois class rule; a scientific investigation of the basic premises of capitalism can only be undertaken in the form of a critique of its workings from the standpoint of the new revolutionary class.
The development of idealist philosophy by Hegel is the last great attempt by the revolutionary bourgeoisie to grasp the entire movement of history. Hegel’s contribution to human knowledge is immense, fully acknowledged later by the founders of scientific socialism: “not only a creative genius but also a man of encyclopaedic erudition, he played an epoch-making role in every sphere” (Engels).[4] Hegel’s philosophical idealism is an advance over bourgeois materialism because it begins from the recognition of human society, including ideas, thoughts and beliefs, as a subject for scientific, empirical research equal to the natural world; it partially recognises the active role of human beings in history, and, drawing on the findings of political economy, it affirms the crucial role of human labour in the development of society. Above all, it systematically develops a dialectical method with which to comprehend the evolution of human history.
Dialectics, with its long history in the civilisations of Asia and the Middle East as well as Ancient Greece, is intrinsically a critical, revolutionary method because it affirms the transient nature of the existing state of things; everything in the world is in a state of motion, constantly coming into being, changing and passing away. The source of this motion is the struggle between the contradictory tendencies inherent in all phenomena and processes: “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, and it is only insofar as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity” (Hegel).[5] Only by analysing things in the context of this motion rooted in contradictions can we begin to understand the whole picture of the world, including its reflection in the minds of human beings.
Hegel’s lasting achievement is to use this dialectical method to represent the entire sweep of human history as a process of change, transformation and development, and to attempt to identify the laws that underlie this process. He was unable to do this, however, due not only to the limits of his own knowledge and of bourgeois society at the time but also to the flaws and contradictions in his method: having shown that all historical forms were transitory, for political reasons he tried to limit the concept of dialectical change to previous societies, and having proposed an empirical approach to analysing human thoughts, ideas and beliefs as abstract pictures of real things and real historical processes, he fell back into an idealist view that these were the products of an “Absolute Idea” that existed somewhere outside of history and the world; in other words he turned the relationship between ideas and reality completely upside down.
Significantly, after Hegel bourgeois philosophers and historians progressively abandoned the dialectical vision of history and the search for the laws of the evolution of human society. Under the influence of the class struggle a new generation of radical thinkers was able to identify the flaws and contradictions in Hegel’s idealism and restore the dialectical vision of history but was ultimately unsuccessful in using a materialist approach to identify the laws of historical change.
It was the development of the proletarian movement itself that both demanded and made possible a clarification of the laws of historical change. Adhering to this movement, Marx and Engels were finally able to draw on the lessons of its struggles and the gains of its first theorists to identify the motor force of history as the antagonism between the classes, which are themselves the products of material conditions in a given historical period.
Turning Hegel’s method ‘back on its feet’, they were able to show that the thoughts, beliefs and ideas of human beings are determined by the material conditions of their social existence. Dialectics, rather than the workings of some “Absolute Idea” outside of the world, is a reflection in the human brain of real historical processes, and therefore the starting point for a scientific, empirical investigation of bourgeois society. For the first time it was possible to understand the historical conditions that had given rise to capitalist exploitation and therefore to discover the conditions for its ending.
Accepting the research of the bourgeoisie’s own theorists and historians as a “broad outline”, Marx and Engels identified a series of modes of production as historical epochs marking the progressive development of society, showing that, by developing the productive forces of humanity and creating the conditions for a classless society, capitalism was simply the final stage in the class struggle, its revolutionary overthrow concluding the ‘prehistory’ of human society.[6]
The historically transitory nature of capitalist society is thus the foundation stone of this new proletarian scientific method, which assimilates the most advanced methods and conclusions of the revolutionary bourgeoisie and, by extension, the accumulated wisdom not only of bourgeois but all previous societies.
At the core of this method is a dialectical vision of historical progress driven by the growing social productivity of labour; the increasing power of human beings to satisfy the social needs of their existence. These needs are first and foremost physical, because “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals” (German Ideology).[7] But the satisfaction of these immediately creates new needs – emotional, intellectual, sexual – through which human beings express their life. The way human beings define their needs is determined in the final analysis by the way in which they reproduce their social existence in a given historical period and the way they satisfy their needs is through their labour, consciously transforming nature for this purpose.
As the productivity of labour increases, human beings are able to produce an ever greater surplus over and above the needs of the individual and the community; and as the productive forces available to humanity grow, an increasingly specialised division of labour develops, which is expressed in the development of ever more complex forms of ownership of the means of production leading to the evolution of private property. The growth of the social productivity of labour is therefore also expressed in the growing separation of human beings from the products of their labour, which increasingly appear as something alien to them, and from nature, which Marx in an early text describes as “man’s inorganic body”.[8]
This process of increasing alienation reaches its extreme form in capitalism. But at the same time, by rendering the great mass of humanity ‘propertyless’ and by making possible the unlimited development of the productive forces, capitalism creates the practical conditions for its abolition. Historical progress is thus a dialectical process; a working out, through a succession of different modes of production, of the contradictions between the growth of the social productivity of labour and the social relations which increasingly separate human beings from the products of their labour. For historical materialism, ‘progress’ is the extent to which the real movement of history makes possible the liberation of humanity; not economic growth or the development of technology in itself.
Having shown that capitalist exploitation was the product of specific historical conditions, it was necessary for the proletarian movement to discover the precise mechanisms that would create the conditions for its ending.
The Communist Manifesto locates capitalism’s contradictions in its inherent tendency towards the overproduction of commodities and the periodic crises that result. The response of capital to these only creates the conditions for even greater crises and further undermines its ability to prevent them; having conjured up a gigantic growth of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie finds its own relations of production threatening to destroy it. But these same relations also create its grave-digger, the proletariat, whose organisation as a class is the inevitable product of the development of capital itself; this is the fatal contradiction that determines its historically transitory nature.
The Manifesto triumphantly proclaims the fall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat to be equally inevitable. But as we know, the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and the subsequent spectacular expansion of capitalism led Marx to develop a more sober, longer term view of the opportunities for capitalism’s overthrow – and also a more precise analysis of the mechanisms through which capitalism would eventually reveal its fatal contradictions and create the conditions for its overthrow. To do this it was necessary to expose the basic premises of capitalism hidden beneath the science of the bourgeoisie.
If Marx’s critique of political economy appears to be explaining history as an objective process, this is because bourgeois society is a particular form of the social life of human beings in which the relations between human beings in the social reproduction of their lives appear as relations between things. By generalising the production and exchange of commodities, capitalism both separates the producers from the products of their labour and tears asunder all hitherto existing social ties, leaving “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment””. Instead of exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions it substitutes “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Manifesto). But this exploitation is now hidden behind the apparently impersonal workings of ‘the market’ or ‘the necessities of production’, so that capitalism appears to be based on relations between ‘things’ that are completely outside of human control.
For Marx, these ‘things’ – like ‘money’ or ‘commodities’ or ‘wage labour’ – are summoned into existence by the objective laws of capitalism and have their own material reality: “They are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode of social production” (Capital).[9] For political economy, of course, they are ‘natural’, eternal forms. But the critique of this bourgeois science reveals its most fundamental ideas and principles to be mere fetishes, distorted visions of underlying relations between human beings within a specific historical epoch: “The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the basis of commodity production, vanishes therefore as soon as we come to other forms of production” (Capital).[10] The objective laws of capitalism themselves are historically specific forms taken by the class struggle at a certain stage in its development, which can only be destroyed in practice through the proletarian revolution.
In Capital Marx more exactly locates the tendency of capitalism towards overproduction in the specific character of capitalism as the first mode of production to have generalised commodity production, and specifically in the wage labour relation. Significantly he begins his investigation with the commodity, the basic unit of the capitalist mode of production, because it is in the commodity that we find the germ of all the contradictions contained in bourgeois society. It is these contradictions beneath the surface appearance of ‘things’ that provide its motion; the same contradiction that is experienced by the worker as “the accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation”[11] also drives capital to the point where it eventually becomes a definitive fetter on the productive forces.
Marx’s analysis of the precise mechanisms that determine capitalism’s historically transitory nature has been dealt with many times.[12] To summarise:
1. The first is in the process of producing surplus value itself. For capital only living labour can create value, but at the same time the capitalists are driven by the whip of competition to improve productivity; that is, to increase the ratio between the dead labour of machines and the living labour of human beings, thus reducing the rate of profit and increasing the mass of commodities produced. The more accumulation accelerates, the more the rate of profit falls, threatening the continuation of the production process. For Marx:
“this characteristic barrier in fact testifies to the restrictiveness and the solely historical and transitory character of the capitalist mode of production; it bears witness that this is not an absolute mode of production for the production of wealth but actually comes into conflict at a certain stage with the latter’s further development”.[13]
2. The production of surplus value is only what Marx calls the ‘first act’ of the capitalist production process. The increasing mass of commodities produced must be sold if the capitalist is to realise the surplus value extracted, but the conditions for this are again determined by the wage labour relation itself, which dictates that the workers can never consume the full value of what they produce: by definition they must always be overproducers, while at the same time capitalism is driven to produce an increasing of commodities without regard to the capacity of the working class to consume. This is why “The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses, in the face of the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute consumption capacity of society set a limit to them”.[14]
In order to try to resolve this inherent contradiction, capital must continually expand the market but this can never keep up with the expansion of production; the more productiveness develops, the more capital finds itself confronting the limits to consumption due to its own social relations.
We can see clearly here that capitalist production describes not a cycle but an ever-increasing circle or spiral and the continual attempts of capitalism to overcome its contradictions, which present themselves as imminent barriers to its own further development, can only create even more formidable barriers in its way, because:
“The true barrier to capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-valorization appear as the starting and finishing point, as the motive and purpose of production; production is production only for capital, and not the reverse. i.e. the means of production are not simply means for a steadily expanding pattern of life for the society of the producers.” [15]
For Marx, what distinguishes capitalism from previous modes of production above all is that it is driven towards the unlimited development of the productive forces but, since it is based on class antagonisms, this is in contradiction with the definite limits of its own relations of production and therefore drives it towards “dissolution” (Grundrisse)[16].
In a nutshell; capitalism is doomed because it must grow without limit – yet it is itself its own limit. This is the fundamental contradiction, the specific reason why capitalism, like all previous class societies, is transitory: it’s only purpose is the self-expansion of capital, but in pursuit of this it confronts the barrier of its own relations of production, eventually reaching the point where these relations become a definitive fetter on the further development of the productive forces, or, to put it another way, the further development of the productive forces itself becomes a fetter on capital: “When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage labour, enters into the same relation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter.”[17]
“To exploit living labour, capital must destroy dead labour which is still useful. Loving to suck warm young blood, it kills corpses.” (Bordiga)[18]
In an abstract, a-historical sense, of course, capitalist social relations are always a fetter on the productive forces of humanity because wage labour and capital place artificial restrictions on their potential growth from the very start. But the real question is whether the material conditions for a new mode of production exist, since in the materialist conception of history, “new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society” (Preface). Only when these conditions exist does capitalism’s continued survival become a definitive fetter on the development of all the productive forces available to humanity.
What are the productive forces? Far from defining these merely in terms of technological development or economic growth, for historical materialism the productive forces cannot be separated from the social relations of production in which they develop and operate, because: “a certain mode of production … is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a “productive force” (German Ideology). Both must be considered as a totality.
The productive forces of humanity in the widest sense are the means available to human beings to reproduce their material life and meet their needs in a given historical epoch. These comprise not only physical means like machines but also scientific knowledge, technical skills and, most important of all, human labour and creativity. In capitalism the most important productive force is the working class itself; not just as the class engaged in social labour, the source of value in society, but as the class that is the bearer of communism, because for Marxism, “Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself”(Poverty of Philosophy).[19]
Decadence is therefore the fettering of the growth of all the means available to human beings to reproduce their social existence compared to what would be possible without the constraint of the existing social relations. This includes not only economic growth and technological development in the broadest terms but also relations between human beings and the ability of individuals to develop their potential knowledge, skills and creativity to the maximum possible given the material conditions.
Once a mode of production has entered into its decadent stage, development does not come to a halt; the dialectical movement of society continues, driven by contradictions that are now sharpened and increasingly come to the surface, while the barriers imposed by the outmoded property relations are pushed to their furthest limits in order to prolong the mode of production’s survival, giving every appearance of growth but in fact heralding its decay.
As the first mode of production to be driven by the continual need for the expansion or accumulation of profit, capitalism’s decadence is characterised not by long-term stagnation or a collapse of production like previous class societies but “bitter contradictions, crises, spasms”, together with “the violent destruction of capital” which for Marx is “the most striking form in which advice is given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social production”.[20]
Starved of sufficient outlets for its expansion, capital must increasingly destroy the productive forces, above all through wars which no longer serve a rational purpose in consolidating national units or extending the field of accumulation but rather express the competitive struggle of the most advanced capitals for a share of the already-existing world market. The world wars of the 20th century, with their destruction of millions of proletarians, in the most developed centres of bourgeois society, along with the accumulated productive forces of humanity, are the clearest proof that the system has entered its epoch of decadence.
With the continued survival of the system, the productive forces themselves are progressively transformed into forces of destruction, in which we see a qualitative development of all the destructive tendencies that are inherent in capital’s mode of operation, including the expulsion of living labour from the production process, the severing of the connection between human beings and nature and the long term despoiling of nature itself in the drive for profit.[21]
The spiralling of this destructive dynamic ultimately poses the alternative for humanity of an advance to socialism or a descent into full-scale barbarism.
But if the entry of capitalism into its epoch of decadence is inevitable from the moment of its birth, its revolutionary overthrow is not. In the Communist Manifesto, despite describing the decline of previous class societies as resulting either in a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large”, or the “common ruin of the contending classes”, Marx and Engels consistently refer to the downfall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat as inevitable. But to be consistent with their scientific method we must indeed affirm that in the absence of the conscious overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat, the outcome of capitalism’s decline will be “the common ruin of the contending classes” – and quite possibly the destruction of human civilisation along with it.
At the heart of historical materialism is a dialectical vision of the evolution of human society unfolding through a succession of modes of production, each going through a stage of ascent and decline. There is no ‘theory of decadence’ separate from the materialist conception, based on the study of history, of historically transitory class societies.
The denial of the theory of decadence at the same time as defending the position that capitalism is a historically transitory system is at best contradictory and confused. At worst it is a deliberate piece of misdirection by those who want to pretend that ‘decadence theory’ is an invention of the ICC or of left communism.
Logically the denial of decadence must also lead to the rejection of the idea that each mode of production goes through a period of ascent in the first place. And since both ascendance and decadence describe the movement of a class society as the result of its inbuilt contradictions, this is also in effect a denial of the dialectical vision of history, or at the very least its taming and dilution.
We have shown that the decadence of capitalism is inherent in the wage labour relationship that is capital’s central contradiction. The same contradiction that is experienced by the worker as exploitation and oppression drives capitalism to the point where it becomes the biggest barrier to the further development of the social productivity of labour. This is why from the moment of its birth capitalist production describes not a cycle but an ever-increasing circle or spiral. But if this point is not reached, it implies that capitalism can somehow overcome its contradictions, or at least avoid their fatal consequences. According to this view, capitalist production thus describes not a spiral but a repetitive cycle.
Despite paying lip service to the concept of capitalism’s transitory nature, the denial of decadence, if taken to its logical conclusion, leaves us with a vision of capitalism as an enclosed, self-perpetuating system that cannot be undermined by its own internal contradictions.
As for the criticism that decadence is a mechanistic and determinist theory that ignores the subjective dimension of the class struggle, we have seen that historical materialism is founded on the recognition of the active, revolutionary role of human beings in history. By developing the productive forces and bringing into existence the proletariat, capitalism creates the material conditions for its own supersession. But human thoughts, ideas and beliefs are also a material factor, and the maturation of all the conditions for capitalism's overthrow depends on the ability of the proletariat to fully develop its class consciousness and understand its historic tasks.
This is the one point where our views appear to coincide with those of the deniers; unless capitalism is destroyed by the proletariat it will persist, albeit in a state of advanced decomposition; there is no ‘third way’. The problem with the denial of decadence is that it underestimates the implications of this for the future of humanity because, as we have seen, it is precisely the fettering of the productive forces by capitalist social relations that provokes a qualitative change in the destructive tendencies of capital, with potentially dire consequences for human civilisation and life on the planet. The alternative facing humanity today is socialism or barbarism; not socialism or simply the continuation of capitalist exploitation.
In fact, far from ignoring the subjective dimension, the ICC has written at some length about the immense difficulties the proletariat faces in taking on its historic tasks, due to both objective and subjective factors.[22] There are undoubtedly objective reasons why the proletariat has so far been unable to overthrow capitalism: for example, the slow rhythm of the development of the open economic crisis since the 1960s has allowed the bourgeoisie to spread out its attacks on the working class over a whole period and to use the apparatus of state capitalism to take measures to ‘manage’ the crisis. But even this has a subjective dimension in that it is also a result of the ruling class’ ability to learn the lessons of dealing with the proletarian threat to prevent the development of class consciousness. As a result we must recognise that, in the ICC’s phrase, the proletariat has so far missed its ‘appointments with history’, above all in the revolutionary wave that put an end to WW1.
Revolutionaries have undoubtedly underestimated the capacities of the bourgeoisie to manage its open crisis for so long. But this should not lead us to underestimate the importance of subjective factors in the survival of capitalism. The final irony of accusing the ‘theory of decadence’ of ignoring the subjective dimension is that it is largely because of this factor, in the negative sense, that we are forced to have this discussion today, a full 100 years after capitalism entered its epoch of decadence and announced its historically transitory nature.
“But the time is coming when “the conditions themselves [will] cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”.[23] If it remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie, human society will never reach the next century, other than in shreds, nothing human any longer left in it. As long as this extreme has not been reached, as long as a capitalist system survives, there will necessarily be its exploited class, the proletariat. And there will therefore remain the possibility that the proletariat, spurred on by capitalism's total economic bankruptcy, will at last overcome its hesitations and take on the enormous task that history has confided to it: the communist revolution.”[24]
MH
[1] “Once more on decadence: some questions for the ‘deniers’”, October 2013, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13467/once-more-decaden... [1508].
[2] Decadence: The Theory of Decline or the Decline of Theory?, https://libcom.org/library/decadence-aufheben-2 [1560]. Aufheben were later forced to admit the failure of their attempted critique of decadence theory (see the introduction to the above at https://libcom.org/aufheben/decadence [1561]), but their arguments are still apparently influential in some parts of the anarchist-influenced milieu. Cf https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201206/4981/decadenc... [972]
[3] Quoted in Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 1941, “Chapter V. The Science of Logic”, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/reason/ch01-5.htm [1562].
[4] Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy, 1886, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.h... [1563].
[5] Quoted in Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic - Book II (Essence), 1914, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch02.htm/ [1564]
[6] In The German Ideology Marx identifies three forms of class society: ancient, feudal and bourgeois. These are the ones described in the Communist Manifesto. As a result of further research, set out in the Grundrisse, he added the Asiatic or oriental system, which is incorporated into the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. For the evolution of Marx’ and Engels’ thinking on this whole subject see Eric Hobsbawm’s introduction to Karl Marx: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, International Publishers, 1963.
[7] Marx, The German Ideology, 1845, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.h... [1565]
[8] “Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature” (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm [1566].
[9] Capital Volume One, Penguin, 1976, p.169.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Capital Volume One, Penguin, 1976, p.799.
[12] See for example “The decadence of capitalism (v): The mortal contradictions of bourgeois society”, International Review no. 139, 2009, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/139/decadence [1567].
[13] Capital Volume Three, Penguin, 1981, p.350.
[14] Op. Cit., p.615.
[15] Op. Cit., p.358.
[16] Grundrisse, Penguin, 1973, p.540.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Murder of the Dead, 1951, https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm [1568]. Bordiga is commenting in particular on capital’s appetite for so-called natural disasters but more generally on its crisis of overproduction in the post-war period.
[19] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm [1569].
[20] Grundrisse, p.749.
[21] “Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.” (Marx, Capital Volume One, p.638.
[22] “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism, Part 2”, International Review no. 104, 2001, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/104/why-no-revolution-02 [1570]
[23] A quote from Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The phrase is a reference to Aesop’s fable about an athlete who boasts he made a stupendous leap in Rhodes; the crowd points to a rose (in Greek Rhodos can mean both ‘Rhodes’ and ‘rose’): “Here is Rhodes, leap here”.
[24] “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism, Part 2”, Loc. Cit.
The new president of the Republic has finally been elected, this “new man” who is “not part of the system”, Emmanuel Macron.
Macron is promising to “change France” and “reunite the French” in a new national, fraternal concord. He promises to re-launch the French economy and claims to be for European renewal, partisan of a more democratic and economically dynamic euro zone. These of course are all entirely bourgeois concerns. Only the bourgeois class and its representatives can win elections. Democracy is the ideology which hides the dictatorship of capitalism and the totalitarian domination of its state. For more than a century, the electoral terrain has been a trap for the working class. Bourgeois elections are one of the key moments for the ruling class to ensure it gets a government which is in line with its interests, while at the same time intensifying its democratic ideology, through which it tries to make us believe that it’s the majority of the population which governs and makes the decisions. This is the exact opposite of reality. Democracy enables the minority to rule over the majority and the proletariat in particular. It covers up class antagonisms which in reality can’t be reconciled. It turns the revolutionary working class into a sum of individuals, of isolated, atomised, powerless “citizens” and “voters”.
It’s obvious that the most responsible sectors of the bourgeoisie were very uneasy about the possibility of the Front National coming to power. This is a party which also defends the national interest but at the same time is totally irresponsible and irrational. In this these sectors of the French bourgeoisie were not alone. The German chancellor Angela Merkel and her minister of the economy, Herr Schlaube, didn’t hide their very active support for Macron. Between the two rounds of the presidential election, Merkel declared “I have no doubt that if Emmanuel Macron is elected he will be a strong president”. Not forgetting ex-president of the USA Obama and the European Commission who also made their support for Macron perfectly clear. At the beginning of the campaign, the French bourgeoisie had been counting on two candidates which it saw as being best placed to manage the national capital while keeping out the FN: messieurs Juppé and Macron. However, Juppé’s candidature had from the start been severely compromised. A former prime minister, a member of a party which has been rejected by the majority (the Républicains), a man of the apparatus, he carried a strong risk of failure. This was amply confirmed by the first round of the right wing primaries which saw the surprise victory of François Fillon. In fact, growing sectors of the bourgeoisie were already working more and more openly for the victory of the “new man”, Macron. The active support of the outgoing president, François Hollande, soon became an open secret. The same went for a certain number of key figures in the Socialist Party, which finds itself in a real mess. The same also went for the right wing parties who were equally in crisis. Supported by numerous business men, financiers and industrialists, backed up by a large part of the media, in particular the BFM news channel, the campaign was extremely effective. Macron had to be promoted at any cost!
Why such determination on the part of these sectors of the French and western bourgeoisie? Certainly not in order to defend the interests of the working class! The truth is that these sectors of the ruling class were deeply concerned about the possibility of an FN victory and at the same time they needed to give the illusion that some kind of “renewal” was taking place.
The bourgeoisie is without doubt the most intelligent ruling class in history. It can never completely lose sight of its class interests and of how to defend them. The history of capitalism shows this, whether the bourgeoisie is up against the revolutionary working class or defending its economic and imperialist interests. This is why the rise of populism in most of the western countries is so alarming for it. This anxiety became a priority concern after the victory of Brexit in the UK and Trump in the USA. These are not events which took place in minor countries. Two of the most powerful bourgeoisies in the world were incapable of preventing the electoral victory of populism. The alarm-bells are now ringing on a permanent basis, especially now that populism is threatening to tear the European Union apart. This couldn’t be allowed in France, where there is a powerful populist formation, the FN, which is sapping the bases of the ideological mystifications which the bourgeoisie uses to maintain a certain level of social cohesion (the “Rights of Man”, universal progress, etc). The irrational, backward-looking FN is incapable of providing an adequate ideological stratitjacket since it openly preaches a form of exclusion, declaring that the world is about to go under and that the only thing you can do is to save “our nation”, our “own kind” at the expense of the rest of the planet.
What most worries the more lucid factions of the bourgeoisie is the fact that the populist parties are so ill-adapted for defending the general interests of the national capital. Marine Le Pen’s call for a referendum about leaving the EU or quitting the euro is a very clear example. The populist parties are incapable of understanding what policies need to be pursued. They propose something one day and its opposite the next, and this is true both at the economic and imperialist levels. To prevent the FN coming to power in France became a priority, just as it was to show that the Brexit and Trump victories were not an irreversible phenomenon. The result of the elections in France has brought considerable relief to a large number of major governments. This is why, despite the historical fragility of the bourgeoisie, this election had been a success not only for the ruling class in France but also on the international level, above all in Europe.
The necessity to react to the rise of populism has its roots in the historic weakening of the ruling class, which includes the main western countries. Underneath this irreversible historic process is the decomposition of the capitalist system. This expresses itself in particular in a growing difficulty to develop a long-term policy, to ensure sufficient cohesion to make it possible to defend the national interest above those of cliques, coteries and personal rivalries. This dynamic has particularly affected the traditional parties which have been at the head of bourgeois states since the end of Second World War. In France, it’s the parties of the traditional right and the Socialist Party which have been most strongly affected, to the point where they have become increasingly marginalised. A large majority of the population no longer wants anything from these parties. Having been running France for decades, they have, each in their turn, done nothing but impose austerity and precarious employment without being able to offer any kind of credible perspective for the future. Gangrened by scandals, clan battles and ego-wars, they have earned disgust and rejection. They made a bed for a form of populism that is particularly strong. This weakening of the most responsible and experienced bourgeois parties is a reality facing the ruling class and it has had the most serious consequences, as we see today in the USA. At the same time there is a need to make new attacks on the working class as soon as possible. Given the urgency of this situation, the discredited traditional parties could no longer do their job. They had become an added factor in the historic weakening of the bourgeoisie. Even if there is no guarantee that the legislative elections in June will give Macron a solid majority, the immense pro-Macron campaign will certainly be continued by the main factions of the French and German bourgeoisies, whatever their genuine economic and imperialist divergences.
The bourgeoisie is getting things in place for unprecedented attacks on living and working conditions. This is what Macron has just repeated to the whole of Europe at a recent press conference in Berlin: “I am here to profoundly reform France. I will keep my campaign promises”. The working class has been warned. Macron is going to act in a full-on manner, with no going back. He is proposing to take a series of measures for which workers will pay the cost – some of them to come into effect this summer when many workers will not be at the workplace alongside their class brothers and sisters.
The key word here is generalised flexibility, with the aim of going much further than the El Khomri law. At each workplace, wage levels will be imposed, along with real working hours and conditions for hiring and firing, all in the name of being more competitive. This means a ferocious increase in exploitation. But even that will not be enough. There will also be blows against unemployment insurance. The increase in the CSG (social security contributions) and the intensified policing of the unemployed is part of the programme. As for pensioners, “the sums contributed individually will determine everyone’s pension level”. This is very clear: you will have to work longer for even more miserable pensions, with the guarantees that still remain disappearing rapidly. And Macron also plans to get rid of special regimes. This is his way of “reducing the social fracture” as he put it, paraphrasing former president Chirac. Precarious employment and impoverishment for the employed, the unemployed, for young people and the retired. The whole working class is about to be violently attacked by the French capitalist state.
It’s clear that elections can only be a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Yesterday Hollande and Sarkozy, today Macron…but for the working class, there is no other perspective but increased exploitation and the degradation of living standards. The bourgeoisie accords no dignity to the lives of the proletarians, or to human life in general. The only things that count are profit and its continued domination. In this Macron can count on other factions of the national bourgeoisie. Mélanchon and his movement have already actively participated in strengthening republican and democratic ideology. In the future they will probably have an even more important role in countering the class struggle. Mélanchon, this old hand of the bourgeois state apparatus, knows this quite well. As do the leftists and the trade unions, especially the CGT and FO, since they are already calling for a “third social round”, which means fully playing their role of boxing in struggles and sabotaging them from within.
For part of the working class, it’s a grave error to think that you can challenge the existing order and hold off the impending attacks by getting pulled into a reactionary populist revolt, which sets worker against worker. Equally dangerous is supporting the “democratic” anti-populist forces. A small number of young people in demos at the end of the first round of the election raised the slogan “Neither Marine nor Macron, neither Fatherland nor Boss”. Whatever confusions might go along with it, and whatever difficulties face the proletariat today at the level of its consciousness and its fighting spirit, this slogan carries the seeds of the class struggle and the necessity to affirm the perspective of another kind of society. The communist revolution remains the only realistic way to construct a truly human society, without classes and without exploitation. And this means consciously confronting the bourgeoisie, its democracy, and all its different factions.
Philippe, 19.5.17
In September 1867, a group of Fenians, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, blew a hole in the wall of Clerkenwell prison in London in an attempt to free another member of the organisation. The resulting explosion, while failing to free the prisoner, caused the collapse of a row of nearby working class houses, killing 12 and injuring over a hundred residents.
This was a time when Karl Marx and other revolutionaries supported the cause of Irish independence, particularly because they saw it as an essential precondition for breaking the ties between the working class in the mainland and their own ruling class, who used their domination of Ireland to create an illusion of privilege among the English workers and separate them from their Irish class brothers and sisters.
Nevertheless, Marx reacted angrily to the Fenians’ action. In a letter to Engels he wrote
“The last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing. The London masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will be made wild by it and be driven into the arms of the of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries. There is always a kind of fatality about such a secret, melodramatic sort of conspiracy” [1]
Marx’s anger was intensified by the fact that, not long before the Clerkenwell explosion, large numbers of English workers had joined demonstrations in solidarity with five Fenians executed by the British government in Ireland.
In this brief passage from Marx, there is a neat summary of two of the main reasons why communists have always rejected individual terrorism: that it replaces the massive, self-organised action of the working class with conspiracies by small elites; and that, whatever the intentions of those who carry out such acts, their net result is to drive the working class away from an independent stance and into the hands of the government and the ruling class.
A great deal has changed since Marx wrote these words. The call for national independence, which made sense in an epoch when capitalism had not yet exhausted its progressive role, became inextricably linked, from the First World War onwards, with support for one imperialist camp against another. For Marx, terrorism was an erroneous method used by a national movement that deserved support. In our epoch, the epoch in which only proletarian revolution can offer a way forward for humanity, national movements have themselves become reactionary. Bound up with the endless imperialist conflicts that plague humanity, terrorist tactics have increasingly mirrored the brutal degradation which marks warfare in this period. Where once terrorist groups mainly targeted symbols and figureheads of the ruling class (as in the case of the Russian ‘People’s Will’ group who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881), most of today’s terrorists translate the logic of the states who wage imperialist war – such as the indiscriminate aerial bombing of entire populations – into their own indiscriminate bombings and murders, aimed at a population which is blamed for the crimes of the governments which rule them.
According to today’s pseudo-revolutionaries on the left[2], behind the religious slogans of al-Qaida or Isis terrorists, we are witnessing the same old struggle against national oppression that the Fenians were engaged in, and today’s marxists should therefore offer support for such movements, even if they distance themselves from their religious ideology and from their terrorist methods. But as Lenin said in response to those social democrats who used the writings of Marx to justify participation in the first imperialist world war: “Anyone who today refers to Marx’s attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie, and forgets Marx’s statement that the ‘workingmen have no country’ – a statement that applies precisely to the period of the reactionary and outmoded bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, is shamelessly distorting Marx, and is substituting the bourgeois point of view for the socialist.” (Lenin, Socialism and War, 1915). The murderous means used by groups like Isis and their sympathisers are entirely consistent with their aims – which is not to overturn oppression but to substitute one form of oppression for another, and to ‘win’ at any cost in the gruesome battle between the one set of imperialist powers and another set (such as Saudi Arabia or Qatar, for example) which backs them up. And their ‘ultimate’ ideal – the global Caliphate – even if it is as unrealisable as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich, is no less an imperialist venture, demanding well-tried imperialist measures of slaughter and conquest.
Marx pointed out that the Fenians’ action in London would drive a wedge between the working class movement on the mainland and the struggle for Irish independence. It would create divisions between English and Irish workers which could only benefit the ruling class. Today, the Islamist terrorists make no secret of the fact that their aim is precisely to create divisions through the atrocities they carry out: most of the initial actions of Isis in Iraq targeted the Shia Muslim population, which Isis regards as heretics, with the goal of sparking a sectarian civil war. The same logic in the London or Manchester terror attacks: to sharpen the gulf between the Muslims and the non-believers, the kaffirs, and thus hasten the outbreak of full-blown ‘jihad’ in the central countries. This is further testimony that even terrorism can degenerate in a society which itself degenerating.
Apart from the openly racist right wing, who like the jihadis also long for a kind of race war in the streets, the stock response of governments and politicians to the terrorist attacks in Europe is to raise the national flag and proclaim that ‘the terrorists will not divide us ‘. They talk about solidarity and unity against hatred and division. But from a working class point of view, this is a false solidarity – the same kind of solidarity with our own exploiters which ties workers to the patriotic war efforts of the imperialist state. And indeed, such calls for national unity are often a prelude for mobilising for war, as after the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, with the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what Marx meant by workers being driven into the arms of the government party. In an atmosphere of mounting fear and insecurity, when you are faced with the prospect of random massacres in the streets, bars or concert halls, an understandable response of those threatened by such attacks is to demand the protection of the state and its police forces. Following the recent atrocities in Manchester and London, the question of ‘security ‘was a major issue in the recent UK election campaign, with the Tories denouncing Corbyn for being soft on terrorism and Corbyn denouncing May for cutting police numbers.
Faced with the terrorists on the one side and the capitalist state on the other, the proletarian position is to reject both, to fight for class interests and class demands. The working class has a deep need to organise itself independently, including the organisation of its defence against state repression and terrorist provocations. But given the weakened condition of the working class today, this need is a long way from being fulfilled. There is a tendency for many workers to see no alternative but to seek the protection of the state, while a small number of disaffected proletarians are drawn towards the putrid ideology of jihadism. And both these tendencies actively undermine the potential for the class to become self-aware and self-organised. Thus, every terrorist outrage, and every state-sponsored ‘solidarity’ campaign in response to it, must be seen as blows against class consciousness – and ultimately, as blows against the promise of a society based on real human solidarity.
Amos 12/6/17
[1] Quoted in K. Marx and F. Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow 1971), p 150
[2] See for example https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/jenkins/2006/xx/terrorism.html#n6 [1573], from the SWP’s journal International Socialism, 2: 110, spring 2006
The general election on 8 June gave the UK a hung parliament. The Conservative Party were 8 seats short of the majority Theresa May had hoped to increase. This meant the possibility of a new election before the end of Brexit negotiations and further instability. This is a failure for Mrs May, and leaves her in office as Prime Minister only on sufferance until the Tory Party grandees feel it is opportune to oust her.
More seriously, it reopens the question of what sort of exit from the EU Britain will try to negotiate, which could prove useful for the bourgeoisie. The fact that the government looks likely to be dependent on the 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs from Northern Ireland could undermine the power-sharing agreement there which relies on the government’s apparent “rigorous impartiality”. However, definitely on the plus side for the ruling class, the ‘Corbyn factor’ has really increased illusions in democracy among young people and particularly among young workers. Turnout among the 18-24 age group rose from 43% to 58% since the 2015 election, a significant leap in participation in the electoral circus.
This election cannot be understood without seeing it in the context of the 2015 general election and last year’s Brexit referendum. Like many other countries, Britain faced the growth of populism[1] in the form of the UK Independence Party which offers a simplistic answer to much of the discontent in the population, including parts of the working class, based on opposition to immigration, and the illusion the country could regain its former economic and imperialist power if only it took control back from the EU. In doing this it disparaged elites and experts – particularly economists who warned against the effect of Brexit on growth. On a totally bourgeois terrain of nationalism and xenophobia, without any pretence of humanitarian values, it appeals particularly to those with least hope for the future looking for someone to blame.
But UKIP does not offer a consistent or rational policy to run the state in the interests of the central factions of the ruling class and so is a problem for the bourgeoisie as a whole. While UKIP had been taking votes from both Tories and Labour, its anti-EU policies chimed with the Eurosceptic views that have existed in both major parties, particularly the Conservatives, for decades. In response to this pressure from both UKIP and Eurosceptics in his own party, David Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership in the election manifesto for 2015, with the aim of settling the issue for a generation. This was a huge miscalculation, a loss of control of the electoral game, which resulted in the vote for Brexit which they had not prepared for.[2]
Cameron resigned to be replaced by May, who did much to try and stabilise the situation.[3] She interpreted the referendum result as meaning that immigration had to be cut, and the country leave the European Court of Justice, hence leaving the single market and customs union, a ‘hard’ Brexit; and the government wanted to keep parliament out of any role in the negotiations. Saying that “no deal is better than a bad deal” for Britain in advance of negotiations made her look like a poker player with nothing in her hand trying to convince an opponent to fold. That was the hand she had been dealt. It was in these circumstances, with negotiations imminent and opinion polls strongly in her favour, that she called the snap election to try and strengthen her hand.
Although Brexit was the key to understanding why this election was called, it is not surprising that it hardly featured in the campaign beyond Mrs May telling us she would provide “strong and stable” leadership for the negotiation. With both main parties divided on the issue any discussion during the campaign could only risk severely weakening either or both of them.
The British ruling class has tried to deal with populism in the form of UKIP by taking on a major plank of its policies, leaving the EU, as part of the policy of the government and main opposition party. The government had gone as far as insisting that this meant leaving the single market and customs union in order to limit immigration, whereas this was weakening it on both the economic and imperialist levels. The decision caused a fall in the value of the pound, and strict immigration control would deprive many businesses of either skilled or seasonal labour power. On the imperialist level, outside the EU, Britain will have far less influence. Merkel’s recent statement that the USA and Britain are unreliable partners is a small indication of this. Relying on the ‘special relationship’ with the USA is no compensation since the relationship is more of a fiction based on a huge imbalance in power to the UK’s disadvantage.
Brexit had reopened the question of Scottish independence since Scotland had voted clearly in favour of remaining in the EU, despite a clear vote against independence in the 2014 referendum. To this has been added the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The open border, with both countries in the EU, was an important factor in the Good Friday Agreement which established power sharing between Catholic Republican and Protestant Unionist politicians. Power sharing has been called into question by Sinn Féin walking out of the government, the current sticking point appearing to be the demand for parity for the Gaelic language which has nothing to do with the pretext for the original walk out. So there is also the problem of tendencies towards the disaggregation of the UK.
The British bourgeoisie is also aware of the considerable discontent within the population, and particularly within the working class, after decades of austerity, particularly since the subprime crisis 10 years ago that have left workers worse off. In 2014 wages were almost 10 per cent lower than seven years before. In addition there are the cuts to funding in health and social services, to education, along with public sector pay restraint. Although this is not being expressed in working class struggle, and there is at present no strong feeling of being part of a working class that can struggle effectively – as there was in the period from 1968 to the late 1980s – which is the only really effective way to fight for a future society, the bourgeoisie still need to deal with this discontent. Some of this discontent was expressed in votes for Brexit, more to give the government a bloody nose than out of any conviction. However, the political apparatus has also provided another avenue for expressing discontent with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, which produced a large influx of new members into the party. Despite all the efforts to portray him as incompetent, unwilling to defend the country, going back to the 1970s, this promotion of a left-wing figure is the bourgeoisie’s tried and tested way of absorbing discontent and diverting it back into support for democracy and parliament, that is, for the very state that is imposing austerity.
There is now a new problem with the instability of a minority government, that we might be expecting a new election sooner rather than later, and that the prime minister is much weakened and unlikely to last long. Theresa May did not strengthen her mandate for a hard Brexit, so much as lost it. She told the Tory 1922 Committee of backbenchers “I’m the person who got us into this mess and I’m the one who will get us out of it”. The change in the situation has strengthened the hand of those wanting to argue for a different Brexit that retains access to the single market or at least the customs union. Former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Ken Clarke have both proposed that there is now cross party debate about Brexit. While this holds the promise of the possibility of a Brexit less damaging to the national capital, it also creates difficulties for negotiations starting only 11 days after the election! The EU negotiators are ready, Michel Barnier has a mandate from the other 27 countries, but no-one knows what Britain wants with only 21 months left on the clock. The EU is insisting on a programme of negotiation starting with the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU, which might cause great controversy, despite everyone’s benevolent stated intentions. If there are what The Economist (17/6/17) called “silver linings” Britain remains in a very weakened position.
With the Scottish National Party losing 21 seats, although retaining a majority of Scottish seats, to unionist parties, ie the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats, a new independence referendum is now off the table. But the Tory reliance on the DUP for a majority only adds to Britain’s problems there. It is not only Republicans from Northern Ireland who have warned that the government may be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement to remain “rigorously impartial” between them and the Unionists (even if this could only ever be a fiction). Former PM John Major has also warned that the “men of violence” are still there and that it would be far better to run a minority government, however difficult, than to risk the Agreement with this alliance with the DUP.
When it comes to the question of dealing with discontent, the election has clearly marked a step forward for the bourgeoisie, thanks to Corbyn. Being dismissed as weak and unelectable, and demonised as far left, soft on terrorists such as Hamas, no doubt improved his image as a radical socialist politician, although he is a long term supporter of state capitalism.[4] In much the same way as Bernie Sanders in the USA, Syriza in Greece, or Podemos in Spain, he was able to mobilise young people, particularly young workers, behind the idea that they can change things through the democratic process, encouraging them to register and turn out to vote. For those totally disgusted by the xenophobia of populism he offers the illusion of fighting against it within the democratic system, and he offers the hope of change based on ‘social justice’ – within capitalism. During the election campaign the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London gave him the opportunity to underline his support for the state as the only means to protect the population through the call for more police officers.
Before the election he was regarded as a pariah in the Parliamentary Labour Party, with many refusing to serve in his shadow cabinet after an attempt to get rid of him with a vote of no confidence among Labour MPs. This has all changed with his very successful election campaign and an increase of nearly 10% in Labour’s share of the vote to 40% and an increase of 30 seats. This result makes it appear that he has a credible alternative government, without the loss of credibility that would soon follow if he were to find himself in office and responsible for imposing austerity.
It is not surprising that moderate Labour MPs now recognise the important role Corbyn is playing in soaking up discontent and mobilising it for the election, overcoming much of the cynicism about Labour that is left over from the Blair and Brown governments. Particularly, if they consider how he is playing this role within the Labour Party, as opposed to what has happened in Spain where the growth of Podemos is largely at the expense of the Socialist Party, or in France where the opposition to the populism of Marine Le Pen through Macron’s new party has also come at the expense of the French Socialist Party.
The Trump election, coming hard on the heels of the Brexit referendum, was an important warning for the bourgeoisie of the danger of the disruptive political force of populism. We have already seen how Britain has been weakened by the referendum result, and we can see the difficulties faced by the USA in trying to cope with and control a president who is something of a loose cannon with various investigations and even talk of impeachment. There has clearly been a loss of control of the political apparatus by the most powerful bourgeoisie, in the USA, and the most experienced, in Britain, a clear indication of the difficulties faced by them in the period of the decomposition of the capitalist order.
In the UK, the mainstream bourgeois parties have really limited the UKIP influence in the latest election (the UKIP vote went from nearly 3.9million to less than 600,000) but only by taking on much of its policy and rhetoric – on leaving the EU and on the limitation of immigration.
This has reinforced the political system of two main political parties but at the cost of the self-inflicted wound in the referendum, with the Brexit negotiations still ahead. In the Netherlands, the centre right Prime Minister, Rutte, also used the tactic of undermining support for Geert Wilders by showing he could also stand up to Islamic countries, in this case by refusing to allow Turkish ministers to speak at meetings in the country ahead of their constitutional referendum, and by this means limited the populist party to 20 seats in a chamber of 150. The French bourgeoisie has been more determined in creating a new centre party, La Republique en Marche, behind the new president Macron, who plays at being an outsider.[5] Even his predecessor Hollande, has backed this new party despite the fact it comes at the expense of a huge loss of deputies for his own party.
Our rulers are having difficulties in controlling their political game and their elections to get the results they need. That this is one more piece of evidence that the capitalist system is now obsolete is of no advantage to the working class. The bourgeoisie can no longer provide any sane perspective for society, but the working class has to a large extent lost not only any sense that it can offer the perspective of a new society but even the confidence that it is a class that can struggle against the effects of capitalism and its crisis as a class.
In this situation, while the ruling class has suffered the disruption caused by populism, the working class faces the danger of being caught up in the conflict between populism and anti-populism. And the greatest danger is from the anti-populists, especially those on the left such as Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, who appear to give an answer to xenophobia and hatred, and offer hope for the future within this decaying capitalist system, rather than a perspective for its destruction.
Alex 18/6/17
[1]. See https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14086/questi... [1471] for a discussion of this phenomenon.
[2]. See https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201607/14011/growing-difficult... [1458] for analysis of the referendum vote.
In Le Proletaire number 519, the publication of the Parti Communiste Internationale (PCI), there's a critique of our article "Attacks in Paris, down with terrorism! Down with war! Down with capitalism!"[i]
The PCI considers our article "superficial" and "impressionistic" and wax ironic about the fact that "the ICC is shocked" by the attacks, which is shown in the title of their article borrowed from the novelist Amelie Nothomb, "Stupeur et tremblements" ("dazed and shaken"). In fact here Le Proletaire confuses the indignation of the proletariat faced with barbarity with what they imagine to be petty-bourgeoisie sensitivity or pacifism.
Before responding to these criticisms and independent of the disagreements that we may have with this organisation, we first of all want to support its initiative in making this polemic. Polemics within the revolutionary milieu have always been the life-blood of revolutionary combat. Too infrequent today, they are nonetheless precious, notably between organisations which defend the principles of the communist left. Such attempts are indispensable for political clarification.
Unfortunately we can't respond here to all the questions raised by this text but for us there's a priority issue, particularly because it's being debated by elements close to the PCI: the national question[ii]. In fact, reading Le Proletaire's article, it appears that within this same milieu of sympathisers who gravitate around "Bordigist" positions there exists a debate about the question of the nation and internationalism. We also understand that a participant in a PCI meeting, and other elements besides, have seriously asked whether we should refrain from condemning Daesh because we should adhere to"the principle of the anti-imperialist struggle"! This problematic is reformulated by Le Proletaire thus: "Should we conclude that IS (Islamic State) represents an anti-imperialist bourgeois force which, by attacking the status quo, unintentionally works in favour of a future proletarian revolution by accentuating chaos and the weakening of imperialism in the region? A force which, despite its brutality and its sinister reactionary tendencies, we should more or less support?" The response of Le Proletaire regarding such support (or, as it writes, "more or less support") is negative. It shows that the comrades of the PCI place themselves on the point of view of the working class. Moreover, one can observe that their approach to the national question is no longer applied in the same manner as during the 1980's, when they put forward the possibility "of a struggle for the national liberation of the Palestinian people".
But what is the argument of Le Proletaire today? Here's a first affirmation: "Because of the absence of any proletarian force, IS, as well as other 'moderate' or 'radical' armed forces, have been a counter-revolutionary bourgeois response - not 'medieval' or 'tribal' - to the unsettling of national and regional equilibriums. Isis is not fighting to spread chaos and undermine bourgeois order but to use it to its advantage (...)." Comrades of the PCI correctly talk of "the absence of any proletarian force". But in a passage of another article in the same number, responding to these same sympathisers, Le Proletaire adds that: "Daesh is an enemy of the proletariat, first of all the proletariat of Syria and Iraq, then of the proletariat of the imperialist countries. Before attacking Europe, it attacked Iraq and elsewhere. Before attacking Iraq and elsewhere, it repressed the proletarians in the regions that it controlled (for example, the case of the transport workers of Mosul who started up some protests over their working conditions and for this reason were executed by Daesh)."
In our opinion, a major problem rests in the formulation evoking the proletariat "of the imperialist countries". The comrades presuppose in fact, that certain countries today are not imperialist. We absolutely don't share this point of view. In the same extract, the PCI continues to affirm that: "The proletariat must struggle against all national oppressions, for self-determination and freedom of separation of all oppressed and colonised peoples; not because their ideal is the creation of bourgeois states, but because in order to unite the proletarians of the dominant countries with those of the dominated countries, the former must demonstrate in practice that they do not support the oppression exercised by 'their' bourgeoisie and 'their' state, but, on the contrary, they fight them not only in words but if possible in practice. This is the only way that the proposal that they make to the proletarians of the dominated countries, of uniting on an anti-bourgeois class basis, can be understood". This position of Le Proletaire, which differs from those peddled by the leftists, nevertheless remains dangerous and very ambiguous in its premises. Initially, it separates the proletariat of the "dominant" countries from those of the "dominated" and remains restricted to the problematic of "national oppression". But, they may reply, isn’t this position inherited from the workers' movement of the past?
In fact this was the case up to when the historic conditions radically changed and when the experience of new struggles called into question practices which became invalid for the class struggle. At the time of its first congress in 1919, the Communist International (CI) recognised that capitalism was in its period of decline and thus insisted on the need for an international struggle of the proletariat. The Manifesto of the International to the proletarians of the world recognised that "The national state which gave a mighty impulsion to capitalist development has become too narrow for the further development of productive forces. "[iii]. In the same logic, it emphasised that "The small peoples can be assured the opportunity of free existence only by the proletarian revolution which will free the productive forces of all countries from the tentacles of the national states,". The proletariat could thus only make this leap in the framework of a world struggle, a unitary movement, including the bastions of the great metropoles. As Lenin said, "facts are stubborn". The tactic adopted by the Bolsheviks, thinking that despite everything they could realise the extension of the world revolution by basing themselves on the old principle of national liberation, was a terrible fiasco, leading the proletariat to be overwhelmed and defeated. The examples are numerous. In Finland, the "free" bourgeoisie used the "present" of the Bolsheviks in order to wipe out the workers' insurrection of January 1918. In the Baltic states, the same year, "national liberation" allowed the British bourgeoisie to easily crush the revolution under a naval bombardment!
The most fertile criticisms of the national question were elaborated very early on and very clearly by Rosa Luxemburg: "Moreover, the Bolsheviks themselves have, to a great extent, sharpened the objective difficulties of this situation by a slogan which they placed in the foreground of their policies: the so-called right of self-determination of peoples, or – something which was really implicit in this slogan – the disintegration of Russia. While Lenin and his comrades clearly expected that, as champions of national freedom even to the extent of 'separation', they would turn Finland, the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, etc., into so many faithful allies of the Russian Revolution, we have instead witnessed the opposite spectacle. One after another, these 'nations' used the freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian Revolution as its mortal enemy, and, under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself"[iv].
Despite some elements of clarity on the subject at the time of the First Congress of the International, successive workers' defeats and the growth of opportunism were engulfing these fragile efforts and favouring theoretical regression. The lucid critique of Rosa Luxemburg was only taken up in a minority fashion by the Italian Left, notably Bilan, a position inherited by Internationalisme and defended today by the ICC. Since the revolutionary wave of the 1920's and its defeat, which led to the terrible period of the Stalinist counter-revolution, no so-called struggle for national liberation has been able to produce anything other than massacres and forced mobilisations behind national and rival imperialist powers. What was shown at the time of Lenin as a tragic error has since been strikingly confirmed through bloody crimes. Since the First World War and with the historic decline of the capitalist system, all nations - big or small - have in reality become links in an imperialist chain plunging the world into permanent war. Every time imperialist manoeuvres are at work, whatever the nations involved, the proletariat is hostage to this so-called "liberation" and pitted against its sacrificed class brothers. This was the case in Sudan for example, which after its independence in 1956, suffered a terrible civil war implemented by the imperialist blocs of East and West and resulting in at least two million dead. In Angola, after the first uprisings in Luanda in 1961 and independence in 1975, years of war saw the governing MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, supported by the USSR) fighting the rebels of UNITA (supported by South Africa and the United States). The death toll of this "struggle for liberation" was close to a million. Decolonisation and the context of the Cold War would only further illustrate, in a systematic manner, that the proletariat was being used as cannon-fodder behind the national flags.
If the PCI doesn't support Daesh, if it has evolved on the national question, it nevertheless retains certain confusions which in the past have led it to suddenly abandon a proletarian internationalist position by supporting, even if critically, the capitalist forces of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. This is shown in a passage written at the time: "Through its impact on the Arab masses, the struggle against Israel constitutes a formidable lever in social and revolutionary struggle"[v]. The framework of the struggle for national liberation, which could only lead to a political fiasco, was theorised by Le Proletaire in this way: "Intransigent marxism itself recognises, that even where the autonomous intervention of the proletariat is not yet happening and even if these revolutions have not crossed the national and democratic horizons, there is an authentic value to the upheavals as gigantic as those which have happened in the East during the last 60 years, and it would be vain to ignore them under the pretext that they haven't led to socialism"[vi]. The sudden abandonment of an internationalist class position regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict provoked a serious crisis within the PCI, leading to its fracture with the leftist elements of El Oumani (the PCI’s Algerian section). The latter put forward an openly Arab nationalist position that we rightly denounced at the time: "For El Oumani, the 'sacred Jewish union' makes class antagonisms disappear inside Israel. It is thus useless to appeal to the proletariat in Israel. That's exactly the same as 'the German people, a cursed people' of the Stalinists during the Second World War. And when, during a course of a demonstration in solidarity with the PLO, to the cries of 'Vengeance for Sabra and Shatila', El Oumani praised itself for having 'captured a Zionist who received a terrible beating', one is on the level of 'to each his boche' of the French Communist Party at the end of the Second World War. El Oumani joins the ranks of the most abject chauvinism of the bourgeoisie"[vii] .
The opportunist position of the PCI on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the 1980's was the soil which gave rise to El Oumani’s openly nationalist ideology. By critically supporting the fight of the Palestinians against Israel, by cutting them off from their class brothers in Israel under the pretext of the latter's allegiance to the Israeli bourgeoisie, Le Proletaire participated in the endorsement of division and abandoned all principle of class solidarity.
Today, Le Proletaire doesn't use the same arguments as in the past but seems to have evolved more through empiricism. If the PCI hasn't fallen into a major error by very clearly refusing all support to Daesh, it nevertheless remains prisoner to yet more dangerous conceptions and confusions for the working class, in particular in the context where nationalism takes on some nuanced shades from state propaganda and from the current powerful populist campaigns. The reasons at the root of such confusions are linked to the terrible burden of the Stalinist counter-revolution. State capitalism in the USSR thus distorted the experience of the revolutionary wave of 1920 by exploiting its worst errors in order to crush the proletariat. In the name of "the right of peoples to self-determination" and "the national liberation of oppressed peoples" the Stalinist state perverted the errors of Lenin and turned them into an eternal dogma. This has unfortunately led some revolutionaries like the PCI to draw false lessons by taking up old errors and seeing them as "revolutionary truths".
But the most recent developments since the imperialist butchery of the Cold War have only again confirmed the analyses of Rosa Luxemburg. Keeping up confusions concerning the "self-determination of peoples" is, in our opinion, largely responsible for the aberrant positions which still persist today and which pushes certain elements to pose the question of whether Daesh should be held up and supported by revolutionaries in a so-called "anti-imperialist" fight. Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, so-called national liberation struggles have only fuelled world chaos. We see it today with the birth of mini-states from the dislocation of the ex-Stalinist empire, generating abortions which do nothing other than propagate the noxious atmosphere of nationalism. We saw it with the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia and the war which followed it between the "liberated" nations, and we also saw it in Chechnya (where the town of Grozny was reduced to cinders), as well as in the conflict of the High Karabakh and Azerbaijan resulting in numerous victims and thousands of refugees at the beginning of the 1990's[viii]. Such a logic also extends to all the fractions of the bourgeoisie who do not possess any territory - the warlords and other terrorists who incarnate nationalist ideology and capitalist barbarity.
In its article, the PCI also criticises a formula used in our article, that of the idea of the "qualitative step taken with the Paris attacks". This formulation has been criticised among ourselves and can be the object of a debate. But not for the reasons that Le Proletaire gives, which raises questions of our "forgetfulness", of "the 'years of lead' in Italy in the Seventies", that of events "against the Algerian demonstrators killed by the police in 1961", "the hecatombs in the Eastern countries", etc. In fact our formulation, which is certainly open to criticism, simply wanted to point out that these attacks express an aggravation of the chaotic situation at the global level, which is very different from a "loss of memory" on our part. On the other hand, to criticise our so-called "forgetfulness" reveals that, for the comrades of Le Proletaire, these attacks are put on the same level as those perpetrated in the Seventies and the events of the Cold War. In some ways, there's nothing new under the sun. This tendency of Le Proletaire not to see the real dynamic of imperialism is linked to a fixed vision of history, continuing to deny the reality of a phase of decadence of the capitalist system and its evolution. By defending the very principle of "national liberation struggles", whereas decades of experience, and the workers' defeats that go with them, have demonstrated how dangerous the concept is, Le Proletaire persists with its error. This which makes it difficult to take account of historical reality through a living and dialectical approach. It can only interpret events according to the same immutable dogma, a clearly sclerotic conception: the fossilisation of history and the lessons to draw for the future, which means that these analyses and positions often find themselves distant from reality and even in opposition to the needs of the class struggle.
That an organisation of the communist left is even led to pose to its contacts the question of a possible support for Daesh can only leave us in fact, "dazed and shaken". Such political confusion points to a failure to see the real strength of the proletariat: its solidarity, its international unity and its class consciousness.
In their very essence, the conditions of existence and the struggle of the proletariat are antagonistic to the framework of the nation. This is also the case faced with the archaic and stupid "Grand Caliphate", a typical form of interests of a bourgeoisie without a nation which progressively tries to impose through military conquests, an authority, an administration and a national currency.
Possessing only its labour power and deprived of any form of property, the proletariat has no specific interests other than its revolutionary project, which goes beyond national frontiers. Its fundamental interest lies in its self-organisation, in the development of its consciousness, and its world-wide unity. And the proletarians of the entire world can unite thanks to a powerful cement: solidarity. This solidarity isn't some sort of utopian ideal, it is a material force thanks to which the international proletariat can defend its class interests and thus its universal revolutionary project.
March 1, 2017
[i] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201511/13672/paris-down-terror... [1579] The PCI article is titled "The ICC and the attacks: dazed and trembling".
[ii] Among other important questions (our so-called pacifism, the balance of force between the classes, etc.) that we are unable to treat in the framework of this article, we can also note the problem of the phase of decomposition, an unprecedented situation in the life of capitalism. This concept provides a framework of analysis for the historic period which is essential today for orienting the activities of revolutionaries.
[v] Le Proletaire no. 370, March-April 1983.
[vi] Le Proletaire no. 164, 7 - 27 January 1974.
[vii] International Review no. 32, "The International Communist Party (Programme Communiste) and its origins; what it claims to be and what it is". https://en.internationalism.org/node/3122 [1582]
[viii] Still running sores of imperialism today where fighting broke out recently around events in Turkey.
The events in Charlottesville Virginia in August highlighted the revival of “classical” fascism, which has developed in numerous countries as an extremist wing of populism. The white supremacist gangs which assembled in Charlottesville have flourished in the poisonous atmosphere released by the election victory of Donald Trump, whose comments after the murder of the anti-fascist protester Heather Heyer were widely condemned as a thinly-veiled apology for the far right. In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has evolved a long way beyond the small groups of plotters which have usually been associated with nostalgia for Hitlerism. In Hungary, the anti-semitic, anti-gypsy and anti-Muslim Jobbik party is very close to the populist government headed by Viktor Orban. These groups can no longer be understood as merely a kind of bugbear used by the left to bolster support for democratic values, a view which had a definite validity in previous decades. Unlike the 1930s, they are not serious candidates for direct government office in the centres of world capitalism, but their closeness to the populist parties and governments means that part of their agenda is being taken into account by a number of ruling parties. More important, they act as a factor of division, intimidation and outright pogromist attacks on the street. They may not be able, like their predecessors in the 20s and 30s, to present themselves as a force for directly attacking workers in struggle, but they play an anti-working class role nonetheless, whether by infecting certain parts of the working class with their propaganda, or carrying out brutal attacks on immigrant proletarians and political and cultural opponents.
The growth of these groups, with their deeply reactionary ideology based on racial twaddle and paranoid conspiracy theory, a pure product of capitalism in decomposition, and the more this system sinks into decay without a clear proletarian response, the more we are likely to see this fascist renaissance winning new converts and arrogantly disporting itself in the streets. In many ways they are the mirror image of the jihadi groups they often profess to hate; in both cases, an ideology rooted in violent nihilism draws in elements who are totally disaffected from this society but have no conception of a real human future.
But in the 1930s, when fascism was actually a government option for certain central capitalist countries, our political ancestors denounced anti-fascism as a “formula for confusion”, above all because it meant surrendering the independence of the working class in favour of an alliance with the left wing of the bourgeoisie. The Italian left communists, many of whom had been compelled to choose exile after the victory of fascism in Italy, maintained the position of the Communist Party of Italy in reaction to the rise of the blackshirts and their strike-breaking actions in the early 1920s: yes to working class self-defence against the fascist squads, but no to any broad anti-fascist front to defend capitalist democracy against the dictatorship of the right. In the article ‘Antifascism, formula of confusion’, an article published in Bilan no.7, May 1934, we read: “The problem is not therefore that fascism threatens, so we should set up a united anti-fascist front. On the contrary, it is necessary to determine the positions around which the proletariat will gather for its struggle against capitalism. Posing the problem this way means excluding the anti-fascist forces from the front for the struggle against capitalism. It means – paradoxical though this may seem – that if capitalism should turn definitively towards fascism, then the condition for success is the inalterability of the programme and the workers’ class demands, whereas the condition for certain defeat is the dissolution of the proletariat in the anti-fascist swamp”[1].
In 1936, around the tumultuous events in Spain, these warnings were to take on an even greater urgency. In July the initial assault of the Francoist forces was blocked by the proletariat of Barcelona especially, acting on its own class terrain and using the fundamental methods of the class struggle: general strike, fraternisation with the soldiers, arming of the workers. And yet within a matter of days and weeks this proletarian “front” had indeed been dissolved in the anti-fascist swamp as all the political forces acting within the working class, from the Socialist and Communist parties to the Trotskyists and the anarchists were, with few exceptions, unanimous in calling for the formation of an anti-fascist alliance with the priority of winning the war against fascism rather than deepening the class struggle. And in 1939-45, it was again under the banner of anti-fascism that millions of workers were dragooned into the second imperialist world war. Anti-fascism was revealed as more than a formula of confusion: it was the slogan of the counter-revolution.
By embracing this slogan, numerous currents which had belonged to the working class joined the camp of capital. This included the majority of the Trotskyists, who justified participation in the imperialist war through their policy of defending the “workers’ state” in Russia, but also through support for democracy against fascism and by calling for workers to enrol in the national resistance fronts. And the same went for a large part of the anarchist movement: if they did not have a “socialist fatherland” to defend, their engagement with the ideology of anti-fascism led them to take part in the resistance and even to form contingents within the armies of the democratic imperialisms. Thus the “liberation” parade in Paris in 1944 was spearheaded by armoured cars bearing the banner of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union, the CNT, whose militants had enlisted in a division of the French army commanded by General Leclerc.
In our view, very few anarchists, even those who can generally be found in the internationalist camp today, have ever drawn the lessons of this experience. And in the light of the events of Charlottesville, and with the rise of a new generation of fascist gangs, the response of the anarchists to those who continue to expose the falsity of the anti-fascist formula demonstrates this very clearly. The left communist position, we are told, is just a dead dogma which has no relevance to the actual needs of the working class today. An example can be seen in a recent post on the libcom internet forum by Red Marriot, often one of the more perceptive participants on the forum, and certainly one who is very clear in his opposition to those anarchists currently flocking to the banner of the Rojava 'revolution' (ie the Kurdish nationalist enclaves in Syria). He writes in response to an article written by a member of the Internationalist Communist Tendency in the US, ‘Set-up in Charlottesville’[2]. In opposition to most of the anarchist accounts which give almost uncritical support to the actions of the “antifa” in Charlottesville and elsewhere, the article was sharply critical of the ritualised character of the clash around the white supremacist march in protest against the decision of the Democratic-led local authority to remove a symbol of the Confederacy from a town park. The article characterizes the confrontations in Charlottesville as follows:
“A spectacle motivated by factions of the ruling class is played out on the streets whilst the class is mobilized into the service of factions of the bourgeoisie. The two factions can control layers and circles around them, the Democrats and the unions and leftists that follow after them, or the Republicans with their fringe of neo-fascists”.
To this Red Marriot replied:
“This seems like dogma-by-numbers - a predictable restatement of the left-comm line eternally applicable since the 30s. Avoids dealing with any concrete needs of real proletarians - ie, how to deal with potential fascist encroachment in their lives - and spouts only abstraction based on the holy canon of the ancient sacred texts set in stone. Concludes with an idealistic ahistorical call for a sudden decision to 'fight for communism' regardless of current realities with no regard of what such an historical process entails starting from where we are; the same kind of assumption of a rapture and revelation occurring that much modern communisation millenarianism is based on.
There’s a theme here common in left-comm analysis; the ruling class is always an active conspiratorial subject doing manipulative things to a largely passive proletarian object with the proletariat awaiting its acquisition of absent left-comm consciousness – everything prior to this acquisition is no more than a deception done to it. That is a simplistic narrative with a simplistic resolution – acquire the consciousness on offer from its left-comm guardians and ‘begin the fight for communism now’”.[3]
This charge that left communists are basically millenarians passively waiting for the communist rapture and have no interest in the concrete needs of the working class, in particular faced with the real threat fascism can pose to its struggles, is a real caricature.
We have already pointed out that this was never the approach of the communist left, which called for the self-organisationof the working class to defend itself from the strike-breaking actions of the fascists in Italy in the 1920s, and which supported the riposte of the Barcelona workers to the Franco coup in July 1936. We repeat: what the communist left criticises is the way anti-fascism is used time and time again as a means of dragging the working class off its class terrain and into alliances or popular fronts with the enemy. In our view, the actions and methods of today’s “antifa”, whose activists are often close to anarchism, offer us a remake of the same errors which led to the derailing of the class in the past. Instead of actually calling for the action of the workers around their “concrete” needs, for self-defence against all capitalist agencies, anti-fa advocates the action of minorities detached from the class struggle, focusing all their energies on physically confronting the fascists wherever they appear, and laying stress on the direct military confrontation with the fascist forces. This in essence is the same militarist conception which led the majority of anarchists in Spain to join the anti-fascist front and succumb to the idea that everything must be subordinated to the war against fascism. And today’s anti-fa is no less involved in the creation of a broad anti-fascist front, since it nearly always acts in concert with the “Leninists”, which is what the anarchists misleadingly call the Maoists and Trotskyists, i.e the extreme left wing of capital. In practice (and sometimes in theory) the anarchists active in anti-fa accept the need for collaboration with these “authoritarians” in the fight against fascism, even if the anarchists/anti-fa often advocate more violent methods – the “direct action” tactics practised by participants of Black Blocs on demonstrations.
Another poster in this debate, on a thread criticizing Chomsky’s recent statements about antifa[4], justified the tactic of “bashing the fash” by quoting Adolf Hitler in 1934. "Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."[5]
This implies that the one obstacle to fascism would have been a much more effective and brutal alliance of Hitler’s political adversaries, something that would have been comprehensible to him, as opposed to an idea that was certainly beyond his ken: that the only possible obstacle to fascism would have been a working class fighting for its own interests. But this possibility had already been largely undermined by the role of social democracy - and subsequently Stalinism - which had “made the bed for fascism” by sabotaging the proletariat’s revolutionary struggles in the wake of the First World War.
This problem of confusing a class movement with the action of anti-fascist minorities comes up again on libcom in the document launching the thread about Chomsky. Here, in seeking to identify the historical predecessors of today’s anti-fa, a number of other minority groups using military tactics (such as the 43 Group set up by Jewish ex-servicemen after the war with the aim of breaking up Mosley’s post-war meetings in the East End, or more recently the Anti-fascist Action group) are put in the same list as a large scale social movement which arose in response to a genuine threat to a local community - the so-called Battle of Cable Street. This took place in October 1936 when Mosley’s British Union of Fascists planned to march through the largely Jewish East End. The local population clearly perceived this as a real threat to carry out a pogrom. And the scope of the response went well beyond that of an “action” by a small military-style group: tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands came out onto the street to oppose the march and the police that were protecting it. Not only that, the Jews of the East End were joined by a large contingent of dockers, many from an Irish Catholic background, who had not forgotten the solidarity shown to them by Jewish clothing workers during the great dock strike at the end of the previous century. It was the intervention of workers coming from the docks areas that prevented the Jewish neighbourhoods being surrounded by Mosley’s forces.
And yet, precisely because this battle was fought under the flag of anti-fascism, the real class solidarity which was at its core was not strong enough to resist the subsequent drive towards world war; on the contrary, this was a temporary victory that was turned by the ruling class into a defeat, and the mythology surrounding Cable Street was added to the brew that would intoxicate the working class and lead it into the war. As Bilan put it in relation to the July days in Barcelona: the working class had armed itself materially by its own actions, and yet it was disarmed politically, unable to develop its own alternative to the democratic, anti-fascist ideology which was sold to it so assiduously by all the organisations acting in its ranks.
In another article we will examine the enormous bourgeois political consensus behind the condemnation of Trump’s apology for the “alt-right”, a front uniting parts of the Republican Right with the extreme left. The breadth of this democratic front shows how dangerous it is for the anarchists to dismiss the warnings of the left communists about the instrumentalisation of anti-fascist mobilisations. This was true in the 1930s when the working class had been through a historic defeat and it’s true today when the working class is suffering from a serious loss of class identity and is finding it very difficult to react as a class to the deepening crisis of capitalist society. Today - and perhaps especially in the USA – a whole generation has very little experience of massive workers’ struggles, which could – as in the strikes in Poland in 1980 – provide practical proof that the extension of the class struggle is the only effective response to capitalist repression. In the absence of such struggles, a growing social discontent is being channelled into a series of reactions based on “identity”, in which the working class is presented as yet another oppressed category alongside many others - racial, sexual etc - instead of as the class which concentrates in itself all the sufferings inherent in this social order and whose struggle constitutes the key to the overcoming of all oppressions and all divisions. In these conditions, it is all the more likely that social discontent which doesn’t move towards a class-based confrontation will be dispersed, repressed, and above all recuperated by those parts of the ruling class which present themselves as democratic and even socialist. We saw this with the Women’s March against Trump, we saw it with the way the official Black Lives Matter organisation took over the initial reactions against police violence against black people in Ferguson and elsewhere, and we can see the same problem with the anti-fascist mobilisations: that they are extremely vulnerable to being integrated into an overarching struggle between factions of the bourgeoisie. And the worst of it is that those who join in the anti-fascist mobilisations are often representative of the best of the present generation of proletarians, deeply opposed to racism and injustice, disgusted with the hypocrisy of the ruling class and yet unable to draw a class line between themselves and its most seductive mouthpieces. It was not for nothing that the Italian left communist Amadeo Bordiga insisted that the worst product of fascism is anti-fascism.
Let’s return to Red Marriot’s second criticism of the left communist approach: “the ruling class is always an active conspiratorial subject doing manipulative things to a largely passive proletarian object with the proletariat awaiting its acquisition of absent left-comm consciousness – everything prior to this acquisition is no more than a deception done to it”.
Another profound distortion. Throughout its existence, in innumerable reports and articles, the ICC has examined and analysed the advances and retreats in class consciousness through various phases of the class struggle since 1968. We have certainly made errors in our analysis – usually leaning towards an overestimation of the level of consciousness in the class – but we have never seen the advances merely as passively “acquiring left comm consciousness”, presumably the result of some “injection from the outside”. What we do insist on, however, along with the comrades of Bilan is that “principles are a weapon of the revolution”, and that these are weapons forged in the class struggle. This process certainly includes the reflection and intervention of communist organisations, but it's not reducible to that dimension. On the contrary, the principles we stand for today are the lessons learned through the victories and defeats of the working class as a whole, and one of these lessons is that the epoch where it was possible to form alliances with capitalist factions or parties (advocated to a limited extent in the Communist Manifesto) has been over for at least a hundred years. This remains as relevant today as it was in the 1930s, and the development of a revolutionary consciousness in wide layers of the class will have to involve the re-acquisition of lessons once learned but now largely forgotten - above all the lessons of the bloody defeats of the class in that period, from China in 1927 to Spain in 1936 and on to the Second World War.
If we insist that the working class is an active subject, we argue that this can also be applied to the ruling class, even if its consciousness can never break from the chains of ideology. It is indeed capable of understanding that it has its own class interests and privileges to defend and, at certain moments at least, it is able to recognise that the greatest threat to these privileges, to its entire civilisation, comes from the struggle of the exploited class. We have seen the bourgeoisie locked in the most savage imperialist warfare and yet capable of setting aside these conflicts to cooperate in the crushing of the working class – as when Churchill and the British military halted their advance through southern Italy to allow the Nazis to deal with the danger posed by the working class uprisings in the northern cities (the policy of “letting the Italians stew in their own juice”). We can give other examples of collaboration between the fascist and democratic factions of the bourgeoisie, but the “conspiracy” of the ruling class can also be seen in the moments when its left and democratic wing uses the ideology of anti-fascism to rally the workers to line up in its inter-factional and inter-imperialist battles. It is this side of the equation we are seeing most clearly in the USA and elsewhere today: the growth of the right, whether in its populist or openly fascist form, is also seeing the emergence of a new left (typified by Sanders in the US and Corbyn in the UK) which has the function, for capital, of channelling the discontent of a part of the proletariat into the dead-end of defending democracy.
Red Marriot’s post has a third criticism of the “left comms” which (amid some very gratuitous sideswipes at the ICC) boils down to this: we fail to understand that, “for the fascists, basically anyone who isn’t right wing is considered part of their prime target of ‘the left’ (even the rare breeds of left communism), with none of the niceties of distinction made by radicals themselves”. As a matter of fact we understand this very well and we certainly don’t reject the necessity for revolutionaries to take active measures to defend themselves against threats from capitalist thugs of one kind or another. A small example: prior to a public meeting of the ICC in Switzerland, we received threats that a local fascist group was planning to disrupt the meeting. So we called on other proletarian groups, sympathisers and so on to form a picket to defend the meeting. In the end the threat didn’t materialise, but we certainly took it seriously – as we did more recently when a libertarian bookshop/centre for discussion in France was invaded by a gang of racists[6]. But we are also aware that in some countries revolutionaries can also be threatened and attacked by leftist thugs – the examples of Mexico (where one of our comrades was kidnapped and tortured by the Maoist group he had broken from) and Maduro’s Venezuela today come to mind. And recently, we sent a letter of solidarity to two groups in Germany after a Stalinist anti-fascist group tried to prevent them selling literature which exposed the capitalist nature of both Francoism and the Popular Front in the Spanish war[7]. The defence of the revolutionary organisation is a permanent concern for us – whether that involves physical attacks from the outside or the infiltration of state agents and adventurers on the inside, a possibility that revolutionaries dismiss at their peril. But this changes nothing about the fundamental problem: defence of the organisation must remain on a class terrain and reject all forms of frontism: we don’t call on the capitalist left to defend us from fascist attacks any more than we call on the police to protect our meetings. That is the only starting point for a discussion about the concrete issues of proletarian self-defence.
Amos
[3]
https://libcom.org/blog/setup-charlottesville-30082017 [1585], 1 September.
[4]
https://libcom.org/blog/6-reasons-why-chomsky-wrong-about-antifa-18082017 [1586]. Chomsky’s central argument is that the violent methods of anti-fa play into the hands of the right. But what he doesn’t say – and neither do libcom in their reply– is that anti-fa can much more easily play into the hands of the left and the democratic forces of the ruling class.
[5]
Ibid, post on August 19 by Chilli Sauce, who is a member of Solidarity Federation and who one would normally expect to take up an internationalist position on questions like national liberation and capitalist war. But another line from this post shows how much anti-fascism can blind you to the problem of popular frontism: “Personally, I had more in mind the proud Italian anti-fascists who strung up Mussolini from a lampost. Ya know, the ones who ended fascism in Italy”. But Mussolini was strung up by the partisans, the national resistance forces who took the allied imperialist side and whose programme was to “end fascism” by replacing it with a democratic capitalist regime.
The Duterte regime has been in power for more than one year now[1]. Since Duterte’s election more than 13,000 (mostly poor people) have been being killed by the state police in his “war on drugs”.
Despite these widespread killings, there are no massive and widespread condemnation and protests among the poor people, even by the victims’ families and relatives[2]. Instead apathy and fear prevail. A significant portion of the population, even among the poor, felt “relieved” that these “outcasts”, “evils” of society have been eliminated. Even though it is accepted that there are many innocent victims, there is a significant acceptance among the population that this is “justified collateral damage” for the interest of a general cleansing. And the (admittedly manipulated) surveys by bourgeois institutions claim that Duterte enjoys “excellent trust ratings”.
In short, we are seeing a real culture of killings.
Why is this happening in the country that overthrew a dictator 31 years ago through a combination of military coup and a “people’s uprising” led by the bourgeois opposition[3]? Why the acceptance of killings and violence?
Duterte’s “war on drugs” is a war against the poor.
According to the analysis of some Filipino leftists, Duterte was catapulted to power through a “revolt” of the masses against the neo-liberal policies of the past administration. Some of them even say that the Duterte phenomenon is the “rebellion of the lumpen proletariat”.
This is clearly false. Not only does Duterte continue the neo-liberal policies of the previous administrations, he has also killed thousands of lumpenised poor people.
To understand clearly and correctly the rise of the likes of Duterte we must understand first the world system we are living in and its evolution. Not only that. To understand the evolution of world capitalism means to comprehend why we are witnessing the dominance of “every man for himself” and this culture of violence.
Despite the whipping up of hatred and the campaign to kill suspected users and pushers of illegal drugs, most of whom are those living in slums, the supply of smuggled drugs mainly from China did not stop. On the contrary. Lately, the state apprehended drugs valued at 6.4 billion Philippine pesos. The smuggled drugs smoothly passed the eyes of the Bureau of Customs whose chief commissioner is a Duterte loyalist. Implicated in this drug smuggling is the son of the president and the current vice-mayor of Davao City[4]. Furthermore, while the poor are summarily executed by the state, the suspected drug lords are giving favor by the democratic due process of the state[5].
Recently Duterte admitted that he could not control the drug problem. This is a 360 degrees turn-around of his campaign promise last election in which he boasted that he could solve the drug menace within 3-6 months[6].
This means that the aggravation of the drug problem is a result of decomposing capitalism not because of this or that policy of the capitalist state:
“At the beginning of the 90s we said: ‘Amongst the most important characteristics of the decomposition of capitalist society, it is necessary to underline the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the situation at the political level’. The reason for this lies in the difficulty that the ruling class is having in ensuring its political unity. The diverse fractions into which the bourgeoisie is divided are confronting each other, not only at the level of economic competition, but also (and fundamentally) politically. Faced with the drawn out economic crisis, there are some unifying tendencies, which are mediated by the state; but they only take place around short-term economic aims. At the level of political leadership, the worsening of competition caused by the crisis provokes the widespread dispersal of the bourgeoisie’s forces. On the international scale there is a growing tendency towards the struggle of ‘each against all’, a generalised lack of discipline at the political level, which prevents the imposition of the order that the old imperialist blocs were able to maintain during the Cold War. The atmosphere of ‘every man for himself’ which defines the international situation is repeated in the activity of the bourgeoisie in each country. It is only in this framework that we can explain the enormous growth in drug trafficking.”[7]
The massive consumption of drugs and alcohol is more than the mere consequence of addiction; it is the result of an ever increasing despair in the population. When it is no longer sufficient to look for consolation in religion, when it is no longer sufficient to emigrate and sell your labour power in other countries, and no jobs are available at home, the flight into drugs and alcohol is just one of many other consequences of a terrifying situation from which the working class and lumpen elements can see no way out. And the cancer-like growth of the drugs cartels (from producers to big and small dealers) are merely the other face of a system which can only thrive through spreading such poisons and thus push towards the demolition of human lives. The addicts, the suppliers of the drugs and those forces who propagate massive killings are all different faces of one and the same decaying system. And it is characteristic of this system that the Duterte regime, like an increasing number of regimes around the world, is a clear example of a state run like a mafia gang. Inside the Duterte government there are several factions competing against each other to amass wealth. Duterte itself is acting like the “Godfather” of these rival gangs. As the ICC text ‘Drug trafficking and the decomposition of capitalism’ stated:
“The weight of decomposition has certainly taken on growing dimensions in the least developed countries, where the bourgeoisie is less able to control its differences. Thus we see in countries such as Colombia, Russia or Mexico that the mafia has merged into the structures of government in such a way that each mafia group is associated with some sector of the bourgeoisie and defends its interests in confrontations with other fractions, using state structures as their battlegrounds. This exacerbates the whole struggle of ‘each against all’ and accelerates the rot in the social atmosphere.” (ibid)
We can thus see that the state itself is not only unable to fight those forces who benefit from the drugs trade, that it is totally unable to eradicate the problem: instead the State becomes the open promoter of barbarism, terrorism – and drug trafficking. But since we are living in a society which offers humanity no future, significant numbers of the poor and the petty bourgeoisie are infected by the culture of nihilism, despair and hatred and are prepared to support Duterte’s phony solution, based on generalising hatred and violence. Parts of the poor and the proletariat are thus mobilised against another section of the oppressed who are being used by drug and criminal syndicates, agreeing that they are “outcasts” of society that must be killed. And because of the spreading attitude of “every man for himself”, of social atomization, as long as you or your loved ones are not victims of this cycle of killings, there is no feeling of sympathy and solidarity.
At the same time, the chaos, violence and killings perpetrated by the state are also the fertile soil of the ISIS-inspired Islamist terrorism in Mindanao, where we also see the incapacity of the state’s corrupt military to quell even a small number of terrorists occupying a small city in Mindanao[8].
Filipino workers on their own cannot lead society in the Philippines out of this chaos. The problem cannot be solved within one country; Filipino workers must unite with their class brothers and sisters in other countries to destroy world capitalism.
However - and this is again an international problem - Filipino workers seem to have lost their class identity. This is aggravated by the fact that the leftist organisations and the unions are controlling their struggles – if they struggle - and as a consequence they are fighting not on their own class terrain but as atomised individuals under the banner of “citizens of the nation”. In the protests against killings of the poor, workers participated as pawns of the bourgeois liberal opposition and the left, who spew the poison of democracy and “human rights”.
In the history of the workers’ movement in the Philippines there was no period during which the workers struggled as a truly independent class. For more than 100 years of their history, workers’ struggles were generally controlled or influenced by the different bourgeois factions, using the unions and the parties of the right, but above all of the left[9]. In the Philippines, Stalinism, especially in its Maoist form, is the dominant ideology infecting the workers’ movement.
Many observers said that the Duterte regime is worse than the Marcos dictatorship. This is true. But it is also true that under Duterte, the left more openly shows its face as an instrument of the capitalist state. During the election campaign the Maoists openly campaigned for Duterte while the other factions of the left threw in their “critical support”. The Maoists were rewarded by Duterte through appointments of their cadres and close allies to his cabinet.
It is vital that workers learn from history the lessons of the left’s alliance with the state. An independent working class movement means no alliance with any factions of the ruling class. Instead all factions of the class enemy must be exposed and opposed in front of the working masses.
In addition, when different factions of the left and right are trying to mobilise the workers either to support imperialist USA or imperialist China in the contested islands in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea, any form of nationalism or defense of the country must be rejected. Instead Filipino workers must hold up the banner of proletarian internationalism: workers have no country to defend.
Internasyonalismo, ICC section in the Philippines,
August 29, 2017
[1] Duterte was elected as Philippine president in May 2016
[2] There are protests organised by the bourgeois opposition, church and leftist organisations. But there is no significant spontaneous participation among the population.
[3] The late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, who ruled the Philippines for 16 years after 1965 was overthrown on February 1986 in what was popularly known as the “People Power Revolution”.
[4] This scandal has already been picked-up by the national and international media.
[5] There were only a handful of “narco-politicians’ being killed by the state police as a “show case”.
[8] The ISIS-inspired small local terrorist Maute Group attacked and occupied Marawi City in May 2017. At the time of writing the military, despite its full mobilization, is still not able to completely “liberate” Marawi from the terrorists.
We are publishing here a statement by International Communist Perspective (South Korea) on the imperialist tensions in the Korean Peninsula.
We do have some criticisms of this statement, in particular its focus on the installation of THAAD, which could give rise to the idea that single-issue campaigns are the equivalent of the workers’ struggle to defend their interests against the demands of the war machine. It is not by campaigning against this or that weapons system that the working class can develop its consciousness. The task of revolutionaries is to expose the impasse of the whole system, while participating in struggles for class demands that can tear apart the illusions of a “national unity” and develop a real solidarity with workers in other countries.
Nonetheless, we recognise the voice of the international working class in this statement: a voice that denounces the imperialists of the entire capitalist class (including those that are supposedly "communist"). We thus unreservedly stand in solidarity with the ICP comrades and all those fighting for real internationalism in this region.
For the ICC's analysis of the situation, please see here [1593].
We criticize the Moon Jae‐In government and the United States for the deployment of THAAD.
Removal of THAAD! Struggle against the capitalist state! Struggle against capitalist governments and the threat of imperialist war!
On Sept. 7, the Moon Jae‐In government and the United States coercively deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) on Sungju-gun Sogong‐ri against most of the Korean people’s opposition including the residents. The deployment of the THAAD in South Korea does not contribute to a resolution of issues on nuclear weapon of North Korea and the peace of East Asia. It is just a hypocritical security game. It is not only a programme heightening the threat of war for the sake of US imperialist force but also a scheme to assign South Korea at the front of imperialist war.
We once again confirm that the purpose of North Korea's nuclear weapons development is a genocidal massacre against civilians, especially the working class, even though North Korea insists that the nuclear weapon is a guarantee of its regime. In addition, we never forget that the only force using the nuclear weapons which slaughtered civilians indiscriminately in the war was US imperialism. History has shown that the two systems, which are different in the Korean peninsula, are the same in terms of the exploitation of the working class and are the absolute enemy of the working class. Workers should not take either side.
The maximization of tension in East Asia shows the destructive tendencies of capitalism. However, recent conflicts have raised the risk for humanity far more than before. This time, there is a growing clash among many forces. The United States, China and Japan as well as North Korea are stepping up the arms race.
Two world wars, the Korean War and numerous wars have always brought irreplaceable pain to the working class. Today, the working class in East Asia should no longer sacrifice itself in the deadly vicious cycle of capitalism. Only the working class can save humanity from barbarism. To that end, the working class must escape from the vicious circle of nationalism and militarism. The only solution is that workers from South and North Korea including workers form China, US, and Japan struggle against their own ruling class.
The deployment of THAAD of the Moon government, which is pretending to pursue the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, would not contribute to constrain the North Korea’s nuclear weapon development but rather pour oil on the fire of military confrontation involving nuclear weapon competition. The decision to add and deploy the THAAD also shows the hypocrisy and the incompetence of the Moon government’s claim that it pursues a peace policy, a democratic process, and an independent diplomacy. It is an expression of the political and the class nature of the current government serving the interests of the imperialist and ruling classes.
Against the government of Moon Jae‐In, which committed crimes no better than that of Park Geun-hae government in less than four months after the presidential election victory,
The working class must break with the "Moon Jae‐In fantasy", which the Moon government pursues about cleaning up an accumulated evil and changing the regime.
The working class should oppose forming a united front and cooperating with the Moon government.
The working class should fight against the deployment of THAAD, as well as against the capitalist government, and the Korean War threat.
The workers have no country to defend
Workers of the world, unite!
September 7, 2017
International Communist Perspective
72 years ago, in August 1945 the first two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the wake of the massive levels of destruction already perpetrated during World War Two with all sorts of weapons, in particular incendiary bombs, the use of nuclear weapons ushered in a new stage of potential destructiveness, menacing all life on the planet.
On 9 September 2017, on the occasion of the commemoration of the establishment of the North Korean regime, the media showed us a huge state-organised party with a beaming Kim Jong-un praising the country’s hydrogen bomb as “an extraordinary accomplishment and a great occasion in the history of our people”.
North Korea had successfully carried out a nuclear explosion, the force of which by far exceeded any of its previous tests. North Korea has joined the exclusive club of the nuclear powers of the world. The news of this latest step of the descent of bourgeois society into barbarism did not arrive out of the blue. The macabre triumph of the technology of mass destruction on the part of the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang is a culmination point of months of mutual threats between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea has already carried out 17 missile tests this year – more than all the previous ones put together. With the threats to attack the US Pacific island of Guam or targets on the American continent, with missiles flying over Japan, and the threat to defend itself with nuclear weapons in case of a US attack, the showdown between North Korea and the US has reached a new stage. The US threatens to respond with their whole arsenal of military, economic and political weapons: President Trump talks about visiting North Korea with “fire and fury” if the US or any of its allies are attacked by the regime. The risk of the use of nuclear weapons puts the stakes much higher than ever before and poses a direct threat to some of the biggest metropoles of Asia – Seoul, Tokyo, etc. The recent military steps by the US and its allies South Korea and Japan (in particular the installation of the new THAAD missile systems in South Korea) have sharpened the confrontation between the US and China and pulled other countries even more into this maelstrom.
How can we explain these events in Korea and what do they mean for humanity?
For decades, during the cold war, it was mainly the big powers that were armed with nuclear bombs. But after 1989 a number of other countries have gained access or are trying to gain access to the nuclear bomb, which make the threat of mutual destruction even more unpredictable. Different factors must be taken into account in order to understand why “underdogs” such as North Korea have been developing the capacity to make nuclear threats. These developments can only be understood in a broader historical and international context.
Following the devastation of World War Two and the Korean war which followed only a few years later, both North and South had to rely for their reconstruction on their “protectors“. North Korea became dependent on China and Russia, two countries ruled by Stalinist regimes which were unable to compete on the world market, since they were lagging behind the more advanced capitalist countries. Russia had become a bloc leader following the defeat of Nazi Germany, but it had been severely depleted by the war and now had to dedicate the greater part of its resources to the new arms race of the Cold War. The civilian sector was lagging ages behind the military sector. The contrast between the blocs was summed up by the fact that an exhausted Russia had to dismantle factories in Eastern and Central Europe, while the US poured large amounts of money (the Marshal plan) specifically into German and South Korean reconstruction.
North Korean reconstruction followed the Stalinist model. Although more developed economically than the South before 1945 and better equipped with raw materials and energy resources, the North suffered from a similar backwardness – typical of regimes suffocated by militarism and run by a Stalinist clique. In the same way as the Soviet Union was unable to become economically competitive on the world market, and was heavily dependent on the use of, or threat to use, its military capacities, North Korea has been unable to compete at the economic level on the world market. Its major export products are weapons, some raw materials, and recently cheap textiles as well as parts of its labour power, which the North Korean regime sells in the form of “contract workers” to companies in other countries.[1] [1595]
At the same time the dependence on its defenders China and Russia has risen so much that 90% of North Korean trade is with China. Ruled by a party dictatorship which keeps tight control over the army, and where any rival bourgeois factions have been eliminated, the regime has the same congenital weaknesses as all regimes under Stalinist control[2] [1596], but it has survived through decades of scarcity, hunger, and repression. The military and police apparatus have been able to prevent any rising of the population, in particular of the working class. In comparison to the decade long rule of other dynasties in other backward countries, North Korea holds the record of a single dynasty terrorising the population for more than sixty years (Kim Il-sung [1597], Kim Jong-il [1598], Kim Jong-un [1599]) and forcing it to bow down to the most grotesque personality cult.[3] [1600]
Faced with the nationalist ambitions of the South, with the imperialist interests of the US, unable to count on any economic strength, the regime can only fight for its survival with ferocious repression inside and through military blackmail towards the outside. And in the age of nuclear weapons the blackmail has to be terrifying enough to deter your enemies.
Kim Jong-un sees the nuclear bomb as his life insurance. As Kim Jong-un himself has declared in public, he has drawn the lesson of what happened in Ukraine and Libya on the one hand, in Pakistan on the other. After the break-up of the USSR, the newly formed Ukrainian state was obliged – under massive pressure not only from Moscow but also Washington – to hand over the nuclear arms on its territory to the Russians. As for Libya, it agreed to abandon its attempts to acquire an atomic bomb in exchange for the ending of the international isolation of the Qadafi regime in Tripoli. A similar fate occurred to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein's regime dropped its nuclear programme following the threats above all by the US.[4] [1601] Pakistan, on the other hand, succeeded in acquiring “the bomb”. What is striking about these examples is how differently countries tend to be treated, depending on whether or not they possess a nuclear capacity. To this day, the United States has never even threatened Pakistan militarily. And this despite the fact that the regime in Lahore is still a prominent supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan, harboured Bin Laden, and has moved ever closer to China, the main rival of the USA. As opposed to this, Ukraine, stripped of its nuclear weapons, was militarily attacked by Russia, and Libya by France and Britain (with the US in the background). The lesson is clear: in the eyes of their leaders “the bomb” is perhaps the most effective means for weaker powers to avoid being pushed around too much or even being overthrown by the stronger ones. This policy is of course considered to be unacceptable by the big powers, who have been disposing of nuclear arsenals for decades and used the nuclear threat themselves for their own imperialist interests. Despite the Cold War being over all the existing nuclear powers (USA, Russia, China, France, GB) have all kept a gigantic arsenal of nuclear weapons – an estimated 22.000 nuclear bombs. And the US – as the only remaining superpower, although weakened and challenged everywhere in the world - has allowed its long-standing ally Israel or a country such as India to equip themselves with the nuclear bomb, as long as these are considered to be of some help to the US (as in the case of India, which is seen as a counter-weight to China and Pakistan). Thus the US themselves contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Amongst the existing nuclear powers, so far only Russian and Chinese missiles can reach US territory, Iranian missiles (whether equipped with nuclear warheads or not) cannot. North Korea would be the first “rogue” state to be able to do so. This is unbearable for the US.
During the time of the Cold War, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons was limited to the big powers. Since 1989 nuclear proliferation has meant that more countries have gained access to them, or could quickly produce them; and nobody can exclude the danger that these weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist groups. The threat of a “bi-polar” nuclear holocaust has been replaced by the even greater nightmare of “multi-polar” nuclear genocide.
But the new escalation cannot just be explained by the specificities of the North Korean regime and its struggle for survival. The conflict in Korea itself has another quality because of the geostrategic position of Korea and its importance for the US and China in the sharpening of their global imperialist rivalries.
Korea has always been the target of the imperialist ambitions of its neighbours. As we wrote in our special issue of the International Review devoted to the Far East, “The reasons are obvious: surrounded by Russia, China and Japan, Korea’s geographic position makes it a springboard for an expansion from one country towards another. Korea is inextricably lodged in a nutcracker between the Japanese island empire and the two land empires of Russia and China. Control over Korea allows control over three seas – the Japanese sea, the Yellow sea and East China Sea. If under the control of one country, Korea could serve as a knife in the back of other countries. Since the 1890s, Korea has been the target of the imperialist ambitions of the major sharks in the area initially only three: Russia, Japan and China - with the respective support and resistance of European and US sharks acting in the background. Even if, in particular, the northern part of Korea has some important raw materials, it is above all its strategic position which makes the country such a vital cornerstone for imperialism in the region”[5] [1602].
Especially since the carve-up of the country in the Korean war, North Korea has been serving as buffer between China and South Korea and thus, between China and the US. If the regime in the North fell, not only would South Korean troops but also US troops be stationed closer than ever before to the Chinese border – a nightmare for China. Thus China is condemned to support the regime in North Korea in order to defend its own borders above all against the US. Given the tendency for the North Korean regime to act in an unpredictable and maverick manner, China has to go along with certain sanctions against Pyongyang, but it opposes the complete strangling of the regime. For China the aggressive policy of the North Korean regime is a double-edged sword: on the one hand it provokes a stronger military response from the US, South Korea and Japan, weakening the Chinese position in its northern flank, yet possibly leaving it more room for manoeuvre in its southern flank (for example the South China Sea). But the collapse of the North Korean regime would make it much more vulnerable vis-a- vis the US and its arch enemy Japan. And the consequences of a possible collapse of the North Korean regime and the wave of refugees escaping to or via China are extremely daunting for Beijing.
Although threatened and undermined in their position, the US can – paradoxically – at the same capitalise from the North Korean threats because they are a welcome justification for strengthening its own military presence or that of its allies around China. We can assumethat if North Korea had not acted so provocatively, the US could not have installed so easily the new THAAD weapons system in South Korea. Any weapon stationed in South Korea can easily be used against China, so what is presented as a “defensive” weapon for South Korea at the same time is an “offensive” weapon against China.
The conflict between North and South Korea and the US is aggravated by the new constellation in the Far East. Almost simultaneously with its economic ascension since the 1990s, China also began to develop new imperialist ambitions. Thus we have seen the modernisation of its army, the establishment of the “String of Pearls” naval bases around its territory and in the waters of the Indian Ocean and South East Asia - a kind of military occupation of at least of parts of the South China Sea; the construction of a military base in Djibuti; increased economic weight in Africa and Latin America; combined manoeuvres with Russia in the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean and in the Far East etc. The US has declared China the number one threat to be contained. This is why the process of rearming Japan (maybe even allowing it nuclear bombs), like the increased military efforts in South Korea, are part of a global strategy both to protect South Korea and to contain China. Of course this has given an extra boost to the US armaments industry. Along with Saudi Arabia, South Korea has become one of the most important customers of the US armaments industry. Its contribution to financing the enormous military apparatus of the USA is today considerable.
At the same time, given the fact that North Korea now has the capacity for nuclear strikes, this makes it much harder for US imperialism to strike back militarily in this area and it is likely to intensify its resolve to react against China in other hotspots.
Any direct military confrontation with North Korea would trigger a chain of destruction on both sides. Half of the South Korean population lives in the Seoul area and many of the 250,000 US Americans in South Korea live in this area – all within easy reach of North Korean missiles. Trump's “fire and fury” threats would not only lead to the deaths of a very high number of Koreans, but also of many US citizens. The annihilation of the regime in the North could only be achieved at the cost of gigantic destructions in South Korea – not to mention the escalation this would meant the world-wide imperialist level.
The dominant view of these developments in the mainstream press is that they are the consequence of having a madman in power in Pyongyang, or of the matching narcissism and irrationality of both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. It’s true that both present many interesting features for a psychoanalytical study, and that their way of speaking and acting gives the escalation a spectacular and almost hysterical tone. But we have already seen that from the point of view of the defence of his national capital, Kim Jong-un’s nuclear policies make a good deal of sense. The real irrationality is located at a greater depth – in the irrationality of national competition in an era of advancing capitalist decay. The arms race in the Far East is only one expression of the spreading cancer of militarism, in turn a necessary product of a social system trapped in a historical impasse. No politician, whatever their psychological profile, can evade the deadly logic of this system. The very intelligent and articulate Barack Obama promised to scale down the Bush administration’s disastrous engagement in the Middle East, and yet if it withdrew troops from Iraq or Afghanistan it was obliged to increase its presence in the Far East. Trump criticised his predecessors for their inability to avoid involvement in “foreign wars”, especially in the Middle East, but has now had to increase the US military presence almost everywhere, including in the Middle East. In reality, both Obama and Trump have both demonstrated that the grip of militarism is stronger than the declarations or desires of individual politicians.
History has shown that China has paid a high price in the struggle over Korea. In the Korean war Mao Tse-tung's troops staged their first foreign invasion, suffering heavy losses, and ever since World War Two and even more following the Korean war the US have been able to use the Chinese threat to justify the maintenance of huge bases in the region. In addition there is China’s rivalry with Japan. In such a context, when there is no question of China employing weapons against South Korea at the moment, China has been playing the economic card. Its goal is to make South Korea as much as possible dependent on the Chinese economy. Already today, the main export market of South Korea is China (around 23%), no longer the United States (around 12%). And South Korea is the fourth biggest export market for Chinese products. The symbol of the serious setback this policy has suffered is the installation of the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea. Beijing felt obliged to immediately react with the threat of economic sanctions against Seoul. The policy of Beijing towards Pyongyang for some time now has been to try and persuade it to follow the example of China itself or of Vietnam: privatisation of state companies and the opening up to foreign investments, while maintaining the Stalinist party in power. Kim Jong-un has proven himself to be much more open to such idea than his father. Anything between 30% and 50% of the economy is said to be in private hands today – which as experience from the Eastern European countries, Russia and China has shown, means mainly in the hands of cliques belonging to the party or loyal to the party, and of the army itself.[i] Even though these privatisations are not official (they have no legal basis, so that they can be revoked at any moment), they do seem to have made certain branches of the economy more efficient. Even a mobile telephone system of its own, with one million users, has been set up (with the help of a Egyptian company). But despite all of this, relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have worsened steadily in recent years, and the degree of influence which the former has on the latter has clearly been waning. The main area of conflict is the nuclear programme. While going along with the Chinese proposals for economic development to a certain extent, Kim Jong-un has always insisted that his first priority is “the bomb”, not the economy. For him, the bomb is the guarantee of the survival of his regime. Once this has been achieved, he says, we will see about the economy. Kim's bomb is thus not only the symbol of the limits of Chinese influence; it also shows how much military interests outweigh those of the economy.
Because China is not a bloc leader and cannot impose any “discipline” on North Korea, this adds an additional element, where the tendency towards “every man for himself” makes the situation all the more unpredictable. Finally, it has to be stressed that while Kim Jong-un and his army gamble for their survival with the help of the bomb, reckoning with the desire of the US to avoid a nuclear conflict, such a calculation has never stopped capitalism’s rulers from carrying out a policy of scorched earth and risking their own annihilation in order to cling to power, or merely out of a lust for revenge. Did Hitler have any hesitations about ordering massacres and executions until his last breath; has Assad not been accepting the destruction of large areas of his own country to stay in control?
In the Far East we can thus see a sharpening of the tensions between the main rivals US and China, with Russia and Japan ganging up behind these two leading powers. But none of these leading powers have grouped a military bloc behind them. Japan and South Korea support the US to the extent the US can offer some level of protection against North Korea and China, but they are no US lackeys and they constantly look for their own room to manoeuvre. And South Korea and Japan also have territorial conflicts between themselves over certain islands. Meanwhile other countries which in the past supported the US, such as the Philippines which relies on US military support to fight against terrorists of all kinds within the country, have threatened to take sides with China in the conflict in the South China Sea; and Duterte has also been sounding of about the possibility of buying Russian and Chinese weapons instead of those delivered by western countries. And within Korea itself, even though the US remains an indispensable bodyguard, the Americans cannot count on unconditional loyalty from the ruling factions of South Korea, some of whom feel they are just one figure on the chessboard for the US.
Because they both serve as vital buffers against bigger rivals, all the imperialist sharks of the region have an interest in keeping Korea divided. The same goes for the regime in Pyongyang. However, the South Korean ruling class has always dreamt of and periodically been aiming at reunification. The so-called “Sunshine policy” of advocating growing cooperation with Pyongyang is one attempt to pave the way towards some long-term settlement with the final hope of unification.
This dream within the South Korean ruling class became stronger after the unification of Germany in 1990. This gave a boost to the aspirations of the South to put the unification of Korea back on the agenda of world politics. Following the German example, South Korean politicians began to formulate their “Sunshine” policy as a kind of Korean version of the Ostpolitik of the West German chancellor Willy Brandt in the 1970s. Its goal was to create an economic and “humanitarian” dependence of North on South Korea as a means of preparing reunification. Once the two Korean states had recognised each other diplomatically, they both became members of the United Nations in September 1991. Three months later, North and South signed an agreement on “reconciliation, non-aggression, trade and collaboration”. Although not yet a peace treaty, this agreement officially ended the state of war between the two Koreas. As the South Korean government pointed out at the time, the peace treaty it had been calling for had been prevented by the refusal of the United States to diplomatically recognise North Korea. This attitude of Washington undermined the policy of the “Sunshiners”, so that a new president, Kim Young Sam, with the support of the US president Bill Clinton, reverted to the policy of aggressive containment of the North. This latter policy takes as its model the so-called Kennan Doctrine developed by the USA against the USSR in the course of the Cold War. It consists of the military encirclement and economic strangulation of one’s enemy, in order to bring its regime to its knees. In 1994, in response to North Korean steps to develop nuclear weapons, US President Clinton considered a preventive strike against the regime’s nuclear power plants. Despite the renouncing of nuclear weapons by North Korea in the Geneva accord of autumn 1994, the US hardened their stance towards North Korea. The renewed aggravation of the inner-Korean conflict which resulted certainly contributed to the gravity of the famine which afflicted North Korea between 1995 and 1998. This catastrophe, in turn, was used by the Sunshiners to launch a new bid for power.
The founder of the giant Hyundai concern, Chung Ju Yung, is said to have put the economic strangulation policy of the Seoul government in question in 1998 by symbolically donating one thousand cows to the North. At the beginning of the year 2000 Kim Dae-jung, the most prominent advocate of the Sunshine policy, and who had won the presidential elections on this basis, met his northern counterpart Kim Jong Il (the father of Kim Jong-un). The reluctance of the North to participate in this “historic summit” had to be overcome with the help of a payment of 186 million dollars provided by the Hyundai concern – a deal made with the help of the head of the South Korean secret service . This was followed, in 2004, by an important economic venture: the establishment, in Kaesong, North Korea, of a special economic zone on the Chinese model, where South Korean companies could invest and exploit the cheap North Korean labour power. For his Sunshine policy, Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel peace prize. But it also brought him, and his successor Roh Moo-hyun, the opposition of their South Korean rivals, and of the United States.
North Korea was furious about the triumphant return of the Sunshiners in the south. To understand why, one only has to look at what happened in Germany. There, the Stalinist-ruled East Germany was swallowed lock, stock and barrel in 1990. In such a situation, the North Korean Stalinists would risk not only losing their power, as happened in East Berlin, but their lives. The more conciliatory approach from Seoul was unable to disperse the fears of the Stalinists in Pyongyang sensing this might be the beginning of the end of North Korea. The hopes of the Sunshiners that the regime in the north might support its policy of “transformation through cooperation” seemed to have been dashed. And the Sunshine policy did not receive any support from Washington.
After the intermezzo of the impeached Park Gyun-he, who stood for a more confrontational course towards the North, Moon took over in 2017[6] [1603]. Moon came to power as a staunch defender of the “Sunshine” doctrine of dialogue and cooperation rather than confrontation with the North. He was reportedly outraged about the new escalation between North Korea and the United States. He at least initially put in question the decision of Donald Trump (taken apparently without consulting the Moon government) to install the American THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea, a step which had been planned already under Park Gyun-he, the impeached president. Instead of taking the side of Donald Trump in the present conflict, the government in Seoul was initially calling for restraint from both sides. However, after the most recent nuclear tests and threats Moon suddenly called for the deployment of US atomic weapons and rammed through the installation of new missile systems such as THAAD in South Korea. In addition, the radius of South-Korean missiles (so far limited to a distance of 800 km) and their carrying capacity of 500 kg is to be increased significantly. It is too early to conclude that all this means an irreversible abandoning of his Sunshine policy, but it certainly puts it at risk.
In all these countries the ruling class tries to pull the working class onto a nationalist terrain. But the working class must refuse to be lured into the trap. True, the combativity and consciousness of the working class in North Korea are hard to assess. In the face of daily surveillance and terror, any resistance would have to be massive and would immediately confront the state and its military and police apparatus. This seems unlikely at the moment. Moreover, the effects of the UN sanctions will not strangle the North Korean regime; but they will hit the working class above all. Whenever its rulers greet successful missile tests the workers and peasants know that new sanctions are on the horizon, for which they have to pay the bill. And they know that their rulers do not care about the risk of starvation.
All the more weight therefore lies on the shoulders of the working class in South Korea and China. Although decades of “anti-communist campaigns” have distorted the view of many workers about communism, South Korean and Chinese workers have in the last few decades engaged in many militant and massive struggles, which is an indication that they will not be willing to sacrifice themselves in an imperialist war for their exploiters. And whatever the level of resistance in the working class, to confront the war drive it is essential that there is present within the class a voice defending the oldest principle and slogan of the working class - “Workers have no fatherland”. This is why we support the internationalist leaflet which the comrades of the Korean group International Communist Perspective wrote and which we publish here [1604].
We do have some criticisms of this statement, in particular its focus on the installation of THAAD, which could give rise to the idea that single-issue campaigns are the equivalent of the workers’ struggle to defend their interests against the demands of the war machine. It is not by campaigning against this or that weapons system that the working class can develop its consciousness. The task of revolutionaries is to expose the impasse of the whole system, while participating in struggles for class demands that can tear apart the illusions of a “national unity” and develop a real solidarity with workers in other countries. However, different points of view should be debated amongst internationalists and should not prevent them from combining to defending their shared principles. We can recall that Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, after the outbreak of World War One, fought together against the imperialist conflict, but debated heatedly over the national question. We thus unreservedly stand in solidarity with the ICP comrades and all those fighting for real internationalism in this region.
International Communist Current
18/9/2017
[1] [1605] The workers get between $120-150 a month, working like slaves with only one or two days off a month
[2] [1606] See “Theses on the economic and political crisis in the eastern countries”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/60/collapse_eastern_bloc [1287]
[3] [1607] The list of the titles of the leaders is endless. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kim_Jong-il%27s_titles [1608]
[4] [1609] The US Foreign Secretary Powell and British Prime Minister Blair all warned that nuclear weapons were already available to Saddam Hussein; as it turned out this was “fake news'” and a pretext for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
[5] [1610] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/2012/5305/november/i... [912]
[6] [1611] The reasons for the impeachment of Park Gyun-he were multifold: on the one hand there was the power struggle between “Sunshiners” and “confrontationists”, and we can assume that the latter pulled some of the strings in the big wave of protest against Park Gyun-he; at the same time the outrage in the population about the high level of corruption also contributed to her demise. At any rate all of this was used to ramp up the image of democracy.
[i] carnegie.ru/2016/02/03/resurgence-of-market-economy-in-north-korea-pub-62647.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html [1613]
An overview of the international situation reveals the accentuation of barbarism and global chaos. The disturbing series of terrorist attacks during the summer, striking once again at the heart of the capitalist world, alongside the missile-rattling over North Korea and the endless wars in the Middle East, illustrate this tragically.
Whichever party is in power and whatever their security measures, their promises empty when they claim to want to improve our daily lives and security. In fact, their behaviour is dictated by totally conflicting objectives: ensuring the exploitation of wage labour to the maximum in times of economic crisis and defending their imperialist interests through military and police operations which claim most of their victims among the civilian populations. It all confirms the historical impasse of a bourgeois ruling class that has run its course, but which is willing to do anything to maintain its privileges and its obsolete mode of production. Each and every day, corruption, increasing tensions between bourgeois cliques, mounting unemployment and poverty are the major elements of a chronic economic crisis, an expression of a capitalist mode of production whose prolonged agony now threatens the human species. In spite of the desperate attempts of the ruling class to create more lucid, responsible and presentable factions, as was the case in France with the successful effort to put Macron in power, the discredit suffered by the traditional parties is often leading to the formation of governments by elements least suited to defending the higher interests of capital: there is an inability to implement real global and coherent policies, to have a profound vision of the long term, beyond instant profit and return on investment.
This phenomenon is fueled by "populism", a product of capitalist decomposition which has become insidiously embedded in society. In many countries the ruling class has gradually lost control of the political machinery it has used for decades to try to curb the most harmful political effects of a bankrupt capitalism. The state and the most conscious factions of the bourgeoisie are attempting to react and with some success, as we just underlined in the case of Macron, but this can only delay or slow down the process, and cannot really stop it. On the contrary, the situation will continue to worsen. And indeed, since Brexit and the election of Trump, the total unpredictability of the situation has only given a boost to the dynamics of "every man for himself" and to the growing barbarism. Throughout the world, the politicians at the hub of major decisions tend to express the darkest aspects of human behaviour. We see the actions of a manipulative and paranoid Putin, while Erdogan pursues a personality cult in Turkey, a diehard Maduro clings to power at any cost, willing to "burn" everything in Venezuela, in the Philippines Duterte directs death squads ready to kill any opponent and openly boasts about it, and North Korea’s Kim-Jong-Un displays the traits of a real psychopath ... the list is too long to continue. The most striking thing of all is that the world's leading power, the United States, is now led by a personality like Trump, a narcissist steeped in brutality and known for his unpredictability. In Britain, too, the Brexit vote then the semi-defeat of Theresa May in the last general election makes the future of the EU very uncertain. How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of so many and sadly similar personalities, in what was previously the preserve of a few "banana republics"?
For us this is not all the fruit of mere chance, but a product of the current historical period. The phase of decomposition of the capitalist mode of production stamps its mark on the history and the personality of men. It defines their limits by almost dictating their actions, their displays of impotence, of blindness, of irresponsibility, of immorality, their thirst for repression and terror. From among the most remarkable reflections of the workers' movement on the subject, we look back to the writings of Trotsky: "Certain elements of similarity of course are accidental, and have the interest only of historic anecdotes. Infinitely more important are those traits of character which have been grafted, or more directly imposed, on a person by the mighty force of conditions, and which throw a sharp light on the interrelation of personality and the objective factors of history"[1] Using a marxist theoretical framework, subtly outlining the portraits and the crossed destinies of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and King Louis XVI of France, Trotsky perfectly depicted the imprint of historical decline on these famous figures of the aristocracy:
"Louis and Nicholas were the last-born of a dynasty that had lived tumultuously. The well-known equability of them both, their tranquillity and “gaiety” in difficult moments, were the well-bred expression of a meagreness of inner powers, a weakness of the nervous discharge, poverty of spiritual resources. Moral castrates, they were absolutely deprived of imagination and creative force. They had just enough brains to feel their own triviality, and they cherished an envious hostility toward everything gifted and significant. It fell to them both to rule a country in conditions of deep inner crisis and popular revolutionary awakening. Both of them fought off the intrusion of new ideas, and the tide of hostile forces. Indecisiveness, hypocrisy, and lying were in both cases the expression, not so much of personal weakness, as of the complete impossibility of holding fast, to their hereditary positions."[2] And he adds: " The ill-luck of Nicholas, as of Louis, had its roots not in his personal horoscope, but in the historical horoscope of the bureaucratic-caste monarchy. They were both, chiefly and above all, the last-born offspring of absolutism."[3]
With the phase of decomposition of capitalism, we are seeing a new dimension because the last two fundamental classes in history, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in their reciprocal confrontation, have not as yet succeeded in affirming a clear perspective for society, in giving a visible meaning to our future. Our epoch also finds its own "offspring" of Louis XVI and Nicholas II. It is in many ways a caricature of what went before: today’s bourgeois leaders offer us only the smell of a scorched earth. Society is blocked, humanity is enclosed in the tragic prison of the immediate, thus plunging the world into everyman for himself, theft, chaos and growing barbarism.
Since the election of Trump, the world situation has deteriorated considerably. Because of the particular historical context, this despotic and megalomaniac business leader, animated by a sort of sly, obscurantist, "anti-elite" revolt coming from within civil society, is being pushed to break with the traditions and codes of the established order.
The consequences can be sharply illustrated. We have seen Trump's foreign policy pour oil on the fire by entering into a game of military “stakes-raising” with North Korea, highlighting in the background a real and increasingly tense and dangerous stand-off with China and other Asian powers. Another significant example, among many, is Trump's conduct in the Middle East, challenging the traditional US policy through brutal diplomatic shifts, particularly against Iran, also throwing oil into this highly inflammable region. As a result, the United States, a declining power, appears even less "reliable", especially when they themselves are drawn into the dynamics of military tensions, driven to accelerate the spiral of war. This is the case in Mosul, where the war between the US-led coalition and Daesh has produced 40,000 civilian deaths, so quietly announced by the media. While the stated aim was to "fight against terrorism", the outcome was the opposite: an increased wave of attacks, such as the tragic events in Barcelona, and the resurgence of a flow of refugees trying to flee war and misery in peril of their lives. The latter are either driven back to camps or face death in the Mediterranean. This total absence of a political vision, this stalemate in a logic of war, will only generalise the violence and the mechanisms of revenge, spreading the cancer of jihadist ideology and terrorism towards new geographical zones.
These tensions and military conflicts in Asia and the Middle East are not unique. In the same vein, Trump's announcements of a possible US military intervention in Venezuela only hardened Maduro's position: instead of easing the situation, the latter using this US threat to justify his policies in the name of anti-imperialism. With regards to the domestic politics in the United States, Trump's wayward declarations and political actions have sharpened differences within the upper echelons of the state, and further discredited the government, for example, with the President's sympathy for the most extreme right-wing gangs following the recent incidents in Charlottesville, Virginia. All this weakens the image of the United States and especially of its head of state across the world.
But these worsening political and military tensions are not the only expressions of the historical impasse towards which capital and its corrupt leaders are driving us. The decisions taken also fuel the commercial war, despite alarm bells like the financial crisis of 2008. The strengthening of protectionism and "everyman-for-himself" in the economic sphere, the policy of "America First", will only plunge the world further into global crisis, mass unemployment and social deprivation. The worsening trade war also brings with it an increasingly irresponsible attitude to the protection of nature. Trump's statements, surpassing the bold claims of the oil lobby, reveal his cold casualness towards the threat of global warming. His ironic view of the Paris agreements (COP 21) shows clearly the increasing folly and vandalism of the ruling class in the face of a looming ecological catastrophe.
In short, what we can observe is that the ideological superstructures of bourgeois society, which are affected by the impasse of the capitalist mode of production, themselves act as material forces of destruction. The lack of perspective affecting society also constitutes a serious hindrance for the only class capable of posing a revolutionary alternative, the proletariat. Its loss of class identity and the propaganda seeking to distort and attack its revolutionary traditions oblige the proletarian political milieu and revolutionary organisations like the ICC to have a very great sense of responsibility. Because it bears a programme rooted in the whole historical experience of the workers' movement, the revolutionary organisation is indispensable for enabling the working class to reconnect with its past, in particular the wave of international struggles of the 1920s, and within that the combat of the Bolshevik party which resulted in the victory of Red October. With the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, it is important to reconnect with the fundamental lessons of this irreplaceable experience. By appropriating this past experience critically, in a spirit of struggle, the proletariat will be able to prepare a future worthy of the human species.
WH, 28 August 2017
[1] Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Volume 1,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch06.htm [1615]
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
After months of violence, officially there have been 1000 killed and half a million forced to flee towards neighbouring Bangladesh. These now join the 300,000 Rohingya refugees already living in miserable and unhygienic camps in Bangladesh, having fled Burma after previous waves of persecution, such as the terrible military repression of 2012. This minority now joins the long list of minorities subjected to state violence in the region. Since 1948, for example, the Tibetan-Burmese Karen minority has suffered persecution on a scale where it is not an exaggeration to talk about genocide.
Burma itself is no exception when it comes to persecution and massacre. History is full of the most horrible examples, from the colonisation of Africa and Asia by Britain and other imperialist powers, passing through the very formation of the USA through the genocide of the native Americans to the methodical extermination of Jews and gypsies during World War Two. Since its origins, the life of capitalism has been marked by the extermination of whole populations. Although the democracies loudly chorus that the Holocaust must never happen again, fill scholarly books that call on us never to forget, make themselves the champions of freedom against the persecutions of Nazi or Stalinist totalitarianism, “ethnic cleansing” has continued and has even multiplied in the last few decades: Chechnya, Darfour, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Tamils in Sri Lanka...and these are only the most emblematic examples, the ones that have witnessed the worst atrocities and the most hypocritical reactions from the democratic powers, who in some cases were directly implicated in the massacres (most notably Rwanda, with France backing the Hutu killers and the US the Tutsi rebels who came to form the present government).
The decadent, rotting state of capitalism today can only accelerate and amplify this process of persecution and destruction of peoples and ethnic groups accused of being the source of all that is wrong with society, an obstacle to the development of “civilisation”. They are the easy scapegoats that no state can do without.
For a month or more, the bourgeois press and numerous political, religious and artistic figures have been appealing to the sense of responsibility of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in power in April 2016, asking her to put a stop to the massacre. Initially there was total silence from Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1991, and known as an “intransigent” opponent of the Burmese military junta for nearly 15 years. Her imprisonment by the junta gave her a halo and when she was freed, she initiated a “democratic opening” for the country. When in mid-September she finally spoke, it was to deny the reality of the massacres and to denounce the “fake news” being put out by the western press. Presented yesterday as the Asian Nelson Mandela, a white knight for democracy, this is someone who declared that she had been born for no other reason than to “protect human rights, and I hope that I will always be seen as a champion of the Rights of Man”; someone who said that “all the repressive laws must be repealed. And laws must be introduced to protect the people’s rights”. Now she has fallen from her pedestal.
Yesterday, the whole humanitarian and diplomatic milieu, from rock stars like Bono to cineastes like Luc Besson and John Boorman, to former world leaders like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Jacques Delors, all of them saluted the determination of this “Mother Courage”. The following declaration is typical: “it’s not said often enough that the strategy of active non-violence (which is also at the roots of ecology) followed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her partisans is the real success story. Perseverance, patience, the will to understand and to reconcile, the capacity for compromise....but also firmness and inflexibility as regards the objective, all this Aung San Suu Kyi shares with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Vaclav Havel...and today the Dalai Lama...In the face of totalitarianism, peace and democracy are possible one day, especially when you know that ‘the most patient wins out in the end’. And indeed, the evolution of Burma and the freedom of expression and action of the ‘Lady of Rangoon’ are signs of hope for the whole of Asia, for all the non-violent combats on the planet. Signs of hope for freedom, for solidarity, for ecology” (June 2012 communiqué of Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV).) Are we dreaming?
Has the brave “Lady of Rangoon” betrayed, given up her principles? Is this someone who has deceived the whole world? Not at all. The reality is more down to earth. Aung San Suu Kyi is merely a representative of the capitalist world, an expression of the bourgeois class, no more, no less. This Nobel Prize winner is indeed the daughter of the general Aung San, protagonist of Burmese independence and Burmese nationalism, which from the start has always excluded the country’s ethnic minorities. Continuity, tradition....in mud and blood! She herself has declared proudly: “I have always been a political woman. I didn’t go into politics as a defender of Human Rights or as a humanitarian worker, but as the leader of a political party”. This has the merit of being clear. The icon of peace has simply taken up her role at the head of the Burmese state, cooperating without problem with the very same soldiers who put her in prison, then put her in power, mainly with the aim of giving themselves a more respectable image and currying favour with the US
Certain people, aware of her role as a “politically correct” face of the Burmese state, have waited for at least a few worlds of compassion, an “appeal to reason” faced with the killings. But no: she salutes the army for its struggle against terrorism and in defence of the general interest. But for the bourgeoisie, defending the general interest, the national interest, means defending the capitalist state and its violence, whether democratic or not. Aung San Suu Kyi has always been loyal to her cause, the cause of capitalism and her class, the bourgeoisie. At root the stunning communiquéof the EELV is right: Aung San Suu Kyi is indeed in the tradition of all the other apostles of peace: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter or Obama. A few examples:
Each time, these icons thrust forward as symbols of hope have played on the illusions of the exploited and diverted them from the collective, conscious struggle against capitalism and its barbarity.
We should also look at the religious dimension of the situation in Burma. The most violent rejection of the Muslim Rohingya has been expressed within the majority Buddhist population. Buddhist monks have themselves been stirring up this hatred and calling for pogroms. They haven’t hesitated to engage in physical aggression themselves, led by the ultra-nationalist, anti-Muslim monk Wirathu or the “Venerable W” as he is known. This person was himself imprisoned for several years by the junta for preaching hatred.
There are some who defend Aung San Suu Kyi whatever she does. According to Alter Info, September 2017, “the great lady follows a very pure Buddhist path, and she does her best despite all the insults and lies propagated by the western media...what can she do? Favour a minority which endangers the majority? Let the US destabilise the country through the Rohingya who, for many, are really Bengalis? No, she is doing what she can for the country and the majority of its inhabitants are certainly not responsible for the crimes attributed to them”.
In reality, the “purity” of Buddhism in Burma is being used in the interest of the capitalist state, a state based on religious identity and on national chauvinism. But here again, we shouldn’t be surprised. Like many of the world religions, Buddhism originated in a revolt of the oppressed against the existing order, in particular the Indian caste system. Hence, like the religion of ancient Israel, early Christianity and Islam, it was characterised by high moral values based on an emerging vision of a common humanity. But unable to offer a real solution to the sufferings of mankind, these movements were transformed into state religions which expressed the interests of the ruling class, and even their best ethical insights were turned into justifications for preserving the existing class-divided order. In decadent and decomposing capitalism, however, the religions of the world have increasingly become naked apologists for exclusion, racism and war. Buddhism, still widely reputed to be a religion of tolerance and peace, has not been able to escape this destiny.
The situation in Burma is only a further episode in the bloody agony of the capitalist system. Behind all the indignant noises coming from the bourgeois world, imperialism’s confrontations and alliances continue. Concretely, despite the denunciations, support for the Burmese state and its army will not be dropped by the western states because it can act as a barrier to the advance of Chinese imperialism - its push to gain direct access to the Gulf of Bengal and from there to the open sea, and its new “Silk Road” towards Europe.
Only the proletarian struggle, the development of international class solidarity, can put an end to the scourge of scapegoating and ethnic cleansing. The road ahead is long, very long, but there isn’t another one.
Stopio, 2.10.17
Divisions in the ranks of the capitalist class are natural for a class that competes at every level, from individual enterprises to inter-imperialist war. However, in the face of imperialist threat, economic difficulties or a resurgent class struggle, there is a tendency for the bourgeoisie to come together in the national interest. The decomposition of capitalism has pushed forward the tendency to division within the bourgeoisie, and in particular a tendency towards a loss of political control among the most experienced bourgeoisies.
The 2016 UK Referendum on membership of the EU produced a result against what the central factions of the British bourgeoisie considered as their best interests. The international populist tide was amplified with the election of President Trump. And the specific political difficulties of the British government were exacerbated by the general election of June 2017. Called to increase the Conservative government’s majority and strengthen its position in negotiations over British withdrawal from the EU, the election resulted in a loss of seats and the need to form an alliance with the DUP from Northern Ireland.
Far from improving the position of the British government and assisting in the EU negotiations, the loss of control is being shown in the plotting of various factions, divisions that go beyond those of Leave v Remain and Hard v Soft Brexit, and a general disarray within a ruling class that seems to have no coherent plans and is improvising at every turn. The British bourgeoisie faces real difficulties in the Brexit negotiations, yet appears to be unable to regain political control and at least try to get the best out of a difficult situation. The economic consequences of Brexit will be made worse by this political disarray.
The contrast between the historical strengths of the British bourgeoisie and its current situation is dramatic. The long term experience of the British bourgeoisie has meant that it has been able to unite in times of imperialist war, adapt in the face of economic crises, and adopt an appropriate strategy in the face of workers’ struggles. In 1974, in the middle of an open economic crisis and with a miners’ strike as the latest expression of a wave of workers’ militancy, an election was called which resulted in a Labour government that would be far more effective in dealing with the working class because of the extent of illusions in Labour and the unions. In the 1980s, while the Conservative government presided over attacks on the wages, jobs and conditions of the working class, Labour in opposition posed as the workers’ friend. Together with the unions, Labour presented alternative capitalist economic strategies and, in various ways, recuperated and/or diverted working class militancy.
In addition to the different ways that the British bourgeoisie have used the Labour Party against the working class, they have also handled well the differences within the ruling class. In 1990, the attitude of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher towards Europe was deemed inappropriate in a period where the blocs dominated by the US and Russia were breaking up. The ‘men in grey suits’ had the previously unassailable Thatcher removed with very little fuss.
Today there are still manoeuvres going on within the British bourgeoisie, and specifically in the Conservative Party, but, far from leading to coherent policies or at least a dominant position by one faction, the strife within the ruling class shows every sign of growing. Britain was one of the countries worst hit by the economic blows of 2008, and the political unravelling within the Tory party is contributing to a further worsening of the situation.
The weaknesses of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily opportunities for the working class. The view of many leftists is summarised by the Socialist Workers Party when they say “The Tories are down but not out - we need to start kicking to bring them down” (Socialist Worker 4/7/17). They see the problems of the Conservative Party and declare that “We need resistance on a scale that can get rid of Theresa May and the rest of the Tory rabble”. (4/10/17). This is the prelude to a Labour government, although “A Corbyn-led government would not make Britain a socialist country. But millions will have been cheered by his pledges to tax the rich, renationalise industries and put more money into services.” (3/10/17). That is to say, many have illusions in Labour, and it’s one of the functions of leftism to reinforce illusions in this cornerstone of British state capitalism. Against this the working class need to understand that it is only through its own self-activity, through a growing consciousness that capitalism has nothing to offer, and an understanding that the working class is not just an exploited class but has the capacity to transform society, that the squabbles of the right and the lies of the left can be left behind. Car 21/10/17
On the first of October the masses who had been led by the Catalan separatists to the farce of the referendum were brutally beaten by the police dispatched by the Spanish government. Both Madrid and the Catalan authorities covered themselves in the mantel of democracy in order to justify both the vote and the repression. The Catalan separatists have presented themselves as the victims of repression in order to advance their call for independence. The Rajoy government has justified its repression in the name of defending the Constitution and the democratic rights of all Spaniards. The “neutrals” (Podemos, the Party of Ada Colau[1] etc.) have declared that democracy is the means for containing Rajoy and “finding a solution” to the Catalan conflict.
We denounce this trap set by the struggles between factions of capital: on the one hand, the deception of the rigged referendum; on the other, the brutal repression of the Spanish government. The working class and the oppressed are the victims of both.
All of them present democracy as the Supreme Good. However, they want us to forget that behind the democratic mask hides the totalitarian state. Like the military regimes and one-party states, the democratic state is also a dictatorship of capital that imposes its own interests and designs in the name of the popular vote, and against the real interests of all the exploited and oppressed.
In the First World War with its 20 million dead, all the contending gangs justified their barbarism in the name of democracy. In the Second World War, whilst the defeated Nazi regime was based on openly reactionary ideologies such as the “supremacy of the Aryan race”, the victors - which included not only the democratic powers but also the tyrannical regime in the USSR- dressed themselves in democratic robes in order to justify their participation in the massacre of 60 million human beings, which included the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It was in the name of democracy that the Spanish Republic managed to enrol the workers and peasants in the terrible slaughter that was the Civil War of 1936-9; a war between factions of the bourgeoisie -Republicans and Francoists - that cost a million dead.
In the name of democracy, the modernized Francoists and the self-proclaimed democrats, through the regime set up by the 1979 Constitution, have imposed the non-stop degradation of our living and working conditions. This has led to the present situation where permanent work has been replaced by generalized job insecurity. The Catalan separatists and Spanish nationalists have collaborated in this degradation. We cannot forget that it was the government of Artur Mas which in 2011-12 pioneered the cuts in health, education, unemployment payments etc, which have been generalized throughout Spain by the Rajoy government!
The hands of both the Spanish nationalists and Catalan separatists are stained with blood from the repression of workers’ struggles. Democracy began in post-Franco Spain with the death of 5 workers in the 1976 mass strike in Victoria. During the Felipe Gonzalez government, 3 workers were killed in the struggles in Gijón, Bilboa and Reinosa, The Catalan separatist government of Artur Más unleashed a brutal repression against the assemblies of the 15 May, leaving 100 injured. Before, in 1934, the current partners of the ERC organised a militia – Los Escamots - which specialised in the torture of militant workers.
They all flout their own “democratic” rules which they claim to be their Ideal. We have seen this with the separatists who have organized the parliamentary stupidity of the “Process” towards independence, with its “pregnant” ballot boxes, filled to the brim with Yes votes.
In the name of Democracy a war to the death is being unleashed around that other pillar of capitalist domination: the Nation. The nation is not a “fraternal” amalgamation of all the inhabitants of the same land, but the private estate of all the capitalists of a country, who through the state organise the exploitation and the oppression of the great majority.
The Catalan separatists, who are aspiring for a new estate of their own, present themselves as victims of the barbarity of their rivals, claiming that “Madrid robs us”, in order to mobilize their cannon fodder in the name of “true democracy”.
This “true democracy” of the separatists is based on the exclusion of those who do not share their aims. The harassment of those who did not vote; posters and public displays aimed at shaming those who don’t agree; the moral blackmail of those who simply want to maintain a critical attitude. In all areas the “civil” associations have imposed their dictatorship, with the weapons of insults, lies, ostracism, harassment, control, trying to “homogenise” the population around “Catalonia”. This is even more marked with the Catalan separatist groups that use Nazi methods and theorise about the “purity” of the “Catalan race”.
The Spanish nationalist democrats are likewise not holding back. The stirring of hatred against Catalans; the manoeuvres to get large companies to move away from Catalonia; “spontaneous” demonstrations in favor of urging on the repressive forces with the barbaric slogan "give it to them", recalling the Basque nationalist cry of "ETA kill them"; the call to put Spanish flags in windows: all this reminds us of the way the Franco regime unleashed the nationalist beast in order to impose a reign of terror.
What both sides share is exclusion and xenophobia; they all agree on hatred of immigrants, contempt for Arab, Latin American and Asian workers, under the repugnant slogans of “they take it away from us”, “they steal our jobs”, “they increase waiting times for health care” etc, when it is the crisis of capitalism and the bankruptcy of its states, whether the Spanish or the Catalan Autonomous government, which generates attacks on everyone’s conditions and pushes thousands of young people into a wave of migration that recalls the ones in the 50s and 60s.
Meanwhile the “neutrals” of Podemos and the followers of Ada Colau try to make us believe that democracy with its “right to decide” will be the balm that allows negotiation and a “civilized solution”. From within this medley of illusions has appeared “Hablemos/Parlem” -Let us Talk-, which wants to put the Spanish and Catalan flags to one side and raise the “white flag” of dialogue and democracy.
The proletariat and with it all the exploited cannot have such illusions. The conflict that has irrupted in Catalonia is of the same ilk as the populist conflicts that led to Brexit or the enthroning of an irresponsible neurotic at the head of the world’s main power: Trump. It the expression of the degeneration and decomposition of the capitalist system which has provoked not only an economic crisis but also a political one in different capitalist states.
Capitalism at the present gives the appearance that “all is well”, that “we are getting out of the crisis”, that there is “technological progress” and dynamism on a world scale. But behind this superficially dazzling facade the violent contradictions of capitalism are growing in strength. Imperialist war, the destruction of the environment, moral barbarity, centrifugal tendencies of each for themselves are feeding the ideology and actions of xenophobia, exclusion, pogromism.
This volcano is also bursting out in the Middle East and with the danger of war between North Korea and the USA; and it is also seen in the Catalan conflict, where the apparently civilized and democratic forms, the use of “negotiations” and “truces”, are progressively disintegrating and run the risk of becoming entrenched and insoluble. If until now there have been no deaths, this is an increasingly dangerous prospect. A climate of social dislocation, violent clashes, intimidation, is taking root throughout society, not only in Catalonia, but in the whole of Spain. Growing numbers of people are finding it hard to bear a situation which is affecting friends, families, children, workmates…
We are getting a glimpse of what Rosa Luxemburg wrote about in such a penetrating and prophetic way in 1915, faced with the horrors of the First World War :“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.” (The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy).
The danger for the proletariat, and thus for the future of humanity, is that it will be trapped in the suffocating atmosphere that is being spewed forth by the Catalan swamp. The proletariat’s sentiments, aspirations and thinking, are not currently gravitating around what the future holds for humanity, how to respond to job insecurity and miserable wages, how to overcome the general worsening of living conditions. Rather they are polarizing around the choice between Spain or Catalonia, the Constitution, the right to decide, the Nation…that is, the very factors that have contributed to the present situation and threaten to take it to the level of paroxysm.
We are conscious of the situation of weakness that threatens the proletariat today. However, this cannot stop us recognizing that a solution can emerge only from its autonomous struggle as a class. To contribute to this perspective today means opposing the democratic mobilization, the choice between Spain and Catalonia, the national terrain. The struggle of the proletariat and the future of humanity can only be determined outside and against the putrid terrain of so-called Democracy and the Nation.
International Communist Current 9th October 2017.
Leaflet for our organization’s intervention – help to distribute it!
[1] Ada Colau is the left wing mayor of Barcelona and a leading spokesperson of Barcelona en com, which was neutral about the referendum.
Saturday 11 November 2017, May Day Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH, 11am to 6pm
One hundred years after the October insurrection in Russia, we will be holding a day of discussion about the relevance of the Russian revolution for the class struggle today. We will look at its historic importance as a first step towards the world revolution against capitalism, at its huge political and organizational achievements, as well as the tragic process of its degeneration and defeat.
Presentations will be given both by the ICC and the comrades of the Communist Workers Organisation [1543]. We also hope that the debate will include other groups and individuals who are trying to understand history - and what the future holds in store for us - from the standpoint of the working class.
Email: [email protected] [532]
Website: en.internationalism.org
The Labour Party, that last year was hopelessly divided and looking as if it might split, today presents itself as the new normal, a government in waiting. This is taking place in the context of Brexit on the one hand, and a situation where we see other left wing forces and personalities around the world, whether Sanders in the US Democratic Party, or Podemos in Spain and Melanchon in France, that have grown at the expense of the Socialist Parties. So what is the real state of the party led by Jeremy Corbyn? And who benefits from its actions, the working class or the capitalist state?
Promising to undo the damage done by austerity, to close the gap between rich and poor, to increase tax on the top 1% of earners and, at least until the election, to scrap and repay tuition fees, it has mobilised many young workers to register to vote, and even to join the party. Led by a man who has visited many picket lines and was welcomed as a “socialist” by the Socialist Workers’ Party when elected to the leadership, it sounds – and is – too good to be true. Corbyn’s long record as a ‘radical’, complete with previous MI5 investigation of most of his advisors, underlines and emphasises his credentials, but as Paul Mason shows, recalling his days as a full-on Trotskyist, this is false: “The idea that the left, the miners and various environmental groups wanted to ‘destroy the democratic system’ in the 80s was pure paranoia. ... what we wanted was a left Labour government.... a new kind of radical social democracy stands on the brink of government. It wants to save British capitalism from wage stagnation, grotesque inequalities of wealth and the kamikaze mission of a no-deal Brexit. .... It has boosted democratic engagement, especially among the young, by building the biggest mass political party in Europe”[1] (Our emphasis).
In other words it wants to save capitalism from those policies likely to create discontent and to provide a harmless channel for the discontent that does arise. This is why the Labour Party has played a key role for capitalism in opposition as well as in government, as we can see from its role over the last century. In fact, it can be more effective in responding to discontent within the working class when in opposition, since it does not have to impose austerity at the same time. In opposition it has tended to elect more left wing leaders, such as Corbyn today, or Michael Foot in the 1980s, as opposed to the likes of Blair or Brown in government, and to display more ‘radical’ policies. Policies such as spending more on health and education, and even the police, paid for either by taxing the rich, or as Dennis Skinner so helpfully explained, “we’re going to borrow it. ... When the private sector expands where do you think they get their money from? They borrow it.”[2] And the renationalisation of railways etc, when the contract comes up for renewal. These policies hark back to the 1945 Atlee government that is so beloved of the left because of it nationalised parts of the economy and set up the National Health Service – actions which can only be called “socialist” by forgetting that they flowed from the needs of capitalist reconstruction after the war, whatever government was elected, and the Conservative government of the 1950s had no thought of reversing them. They were policies of a capitalist state which had just waged a devastating imperialist war. Some Labour leaders in opposition, such as Foot and Corbyn, have a long record of campaigning against nuclear weapons, but this has never been more than window dressing in a party that has consistently supported all the UK’s imperialist wars since 1914, whether in or out of government, and has never put in question its nuclear arsenal when in office.
However, Corbyn is leading the Labour Party in a new situation in which there is a much greater tendency to fragmentation internationally, and in which the ruling class is finding it more difficult to control the political situation. The old USSR has broken up, as has Yugoslavia, and more recently we see calls for independence in Scotland and Catalonia. The Trump election and the Brexit referendum result also show the difficulty our ruling class has in getting the electoral results it wants.
In relation to Brexit, it is easy for Labour to point to the “chaos” in the government, to call for a Brexit for jobs, and to promise to unite the Leave and Remain voters, but it remains a difficult and divisive issue for Labour as well, so much so that the party congress vote on the issue was cancelled. It is hardly surprising to find the Labour Party divided on an issue that divides the whole of the UK bourgeoisie. Corbyn, following a tradition of Labour nationalism, was always a reluctant and half-hearted Remainer during the referendum campaign, and he is happy with Brexit to the extent that it gives more leeway for state capitalist policies - not only nationalisation but also favouring British suppliers for nationalised industries which would not be allowed in the EU. The local authority in Preston is “inspiring” in carrying out such policies by encouraging businesses to buy locally and set up co-operatives that “begin to democratise the economy”. But unfortunately the real inspiration for Preston is that “you have to be clever in austerity” when the annual spending on services has been cut by a third.[3] These are absolutely not policies that help the working class.
We will not speculate about whether there is likely to be a Labour government, or even an election, soon, but remaining vague on such a key policy issue as Brexit is the privilege of opposition.
Another aspect of the greater tendency to fragmentation and loss of control can be seen in the changes taking place in long-established political forces. One example we see of this is the way the left forces are now split in France and Spain between the traditional Socialist Party and Melanchon and Podemos respectively. This tendency underlines the seriousness of the divisions in the Labour Party at the time of the parliamentary party’s vote of no confidence in Corbyn and the subsequent leadership challenge. It is a sign of the strength of the UK bourgeoisie and its two party system in parliament that the Labour Party has held together as a ‘broad church’, in contrast to the marked decline in several Socialist Parties in Europe. Despite the fiasco of the Brexit referendum and all the pressures on the political system, we should not underestimate the ability of the UK bourgeoisie.
The other side of the new political difficulties we can see in many countries is the rise of right wing and populist forces, such as the NF in France, AfD in Germany, and Trump in the USA. Here, the rise of UKIP with its xenophobia and little Englander ideas was one of the factors, alongside a longstanding Euroscepticism particularly in the Tory party, which pushed the government into the referendum and Brexit. We can see the efforts made internationally to deal with this problem in the elections this year, most dramatically with Macron’s new party, République en Marche, in France. Despite the record of Labour governments on immigration policy, the Labour Party is perceived as being a way to fight such xenophobic populism, and this is part of its attraction to many, particularly young urban proletarians.
Another important strength of the Labour Party in dealing with discontent is its close historical link to the trade unions, particularly emphasised by the left of the party and when it is in opposition. Corbyn’s close association with Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union is a good example. This not only provides a power base for some politicians on the left of the party, but is an important resource for the bourgeoisie. The trade unions continue to be the major arm for monitoring discontent in the working class for the bourgeoisie and to containing it in limited, divided, demonstrations and strikes. Through the Unite union the Labour Party, and the bourgeoisie as a whole, have been made aware of the anger of public sector workers against the long continues 1% pay cap and the fact that continuing it would necessarily lead to disruptions. In addition, mobilisation through the “grass roots” of Momentum has a very important role in supporting Corbyn, and allows the party to respond to the discontent of an important part of the working class, particularly young workers, offering them a false perspective of change through electing a Labour government.
The Labour Party is not and never has been a revolutionary party, and since the First World War it has been an integral part of the capitalist state. It has nothing to offer the working class but the illusions that it can speak on their behalf, when in reality it is one of the strongholds of the ruling class’ political apparatus, with an important role in responding to and dissipating discontent through providing false alternatives. Alex, 21.10.17
The escalation of the push towards Catalan independence and the difficulties of the Popular Party government, and more generally the whole of the state, in dealing with this problem through a framework of agreements and negotiations, represents an important political crisis for the Spanish bourgeoisie. It has thrown the “1978 consensus”[i] up in the air (i.e. the rules of the game that the state has followed since the democratic transition in 1975). And this is a state which has already been greatly weakened by the crisis of two party rule – the tandem of the PP and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) - and the difficulty to provide an alternative through the formation of new parties (Podemos and Ciudadanos)[ii].
The immediate causes of this situation are the intensification of the struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie and the tendency towards irresponsibility which places particular interests before the global interests of the state and national capital. To these factors can be added the crisis of the principal state party since the transition: the PSOE. The underlying historic causes are the aggravation of the economic crisis and the decomposition of capitalism[iii]
In the absence, at the moment, of the proletarian alternative to the situation, the workers have nothing to gain and much to lose. The demonstrations in Catalonia, the encircling of the Conselleria de Economia and the confrontation with the Guardia Civil after the arrest of several heads of the Generalitat (the Catalan government), or the dockers’ boycott of police boats, do not express the strength of the workers. On the contrary, these actions are being pushed:
In short, the danger exists that the workers will be pulled from their own class terrain, from the confrontation with the bourgeoisie, to the rotten terrain of confrontations between factions of the bourgeoisie; that they will be shackled to the defence of the democratic state, which is the expression of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Is exploitation, moral barbarity, ecological destruction, war, going to go away because democracy dresses itself up in the Spanish flag or the Catalonian?
In order to understand the Catalan conflict it is necessary to step back and understand the international and historical situation in which it is unfolding.
We will begin with the international context. The worsening of the Catalan conflict is taking place at the same time that the Kurdish referendum is pouring oil onto the fire of the tensions in the Middle East, and that the confrontation between two nuclear armed thugs -North Korea and the United States- further demonstrates the degradation of the imperialist situation. All this, as well, at a moment when the world economy is being darkened by storm clouds.
We now pass to the historic analysis. We have already presented before in our publications the marxist analysis that in Spain there is not the problem of a “prison-house of nations”[v] but the poor cohesion of the national capital[vi]. The development of capitalism in Spain was held back by the powerful disequilibrium between those regions more open to trade and industry - those on the coast- and the rest, who were trapped in isolation and backwardness. The country entered the decadence of capitalism (1914 and the First World War) without the bourgeoisie having found any solution to this problem. Rather, faced with the blows of the crisis, there was an aggravation of tensions, particularly between sectors of the bourgeoisie in Catalonia and the Basque Country on the one hand, and the central bourgeoisie on the other.
Each time that Spanish capital has posed the necessity to restructure its economic and political organisation, the separatist fractions have asserted their aspirations by all means at their disposal, including violence (ETA, or Terra Lliure), and the attempt to use the proletariat as cannon fodder.
Thus the publication of the Italian Communist Left, Bilan, wrote in relation to Catalan separatism and the events of 36:
“The separatist movements, far from being an element of the bourgeois revolution, are expressions of the irresolvable contradictions and inheritances of the structure of Spanish capitalist society which carried out industrialization in the coastal regions whilst the central plateaus remained sunk in economic backwardness. Catalan separatism, instead of tending towards total independence, remains trapped by the structure of Spanish society. This means that the extreme forms in which it manifests itself serve to channel the proletarian movement”.[vii]
The relations between Catalan separatism and the proletariat, despite the present “left” discourse of the CUP, is not that of fellow travelers but class antagonists.
Maćia, founder of the ERC, originally came from reactionary Carlism (Spanish monarchism); but many years later, after taking up Basque nationalism, he integrated elements of Stalinist ideology into Catalan nationalism. During the 2nd Republic his party organized the Escamots, a militia that specialized in persecuting and torturing militant workers.
Cambó, leader of the Regionalist League, made a pact with the central bourgeoisie in order to confront the strikes in Spain that were part of the revolutionary wave of 1917-19, and supported the Primo de Rivera dictatorship.
Companys in 1936 made the independent Generalitat of Catalonia the bastion that saved the national state and mobilized the workers onto the front of the imperialist war against Franco, diverting them from the class front against the central state and the Generalitat[viii].
And Tarradellas, then leader of the ERC, made a pact in 1977 with the old Francoists to restore the Generalitat[ix].
The way the democratic transition faced up to the problem of separatism was through the idea of autonomous regions, which, without leading to a federal state, conferred powers in relation to collection of taxes, health, education, security, etc to the different regions and particularly to Catalonia and the Basque Country.
The pillar of this policy was the PSOE. It set up a “federal” structure which maintained the discipline of the regional organizations. To this was added the PNV( the Basque Nationalist Party) and the Catalan right-wing party, the CiU, who were conveniently bulldozered into it [x]
The PNV as much as the CiU for a long time played the role of a tampon, channeling the demands of both the most moderate and the most anachronistic nationalist sectors towards the framework of negotiations, serving as a crutch mainly to the right wing governments, but also to the PSOE when they needed to be in government[xi].
This does not mean however that the stormy sea of nationalist conflicts was calmed. Behind the facade of the PNV’s parliamentary fairplay the intransigent separatism of the HB and ETA was growing. Equally with the CiU and the ERC in Catalonia. Likewise, in the PSOE, regional barons emerged who increasingly put centralized discipline into question.
The sectors of Basque nationalism used the ETA’s outrages in their negotiations in the same way that they have been pressured by HB and ETA to put into question the framework of autonomy and to move towards independence.
Not only that: because of the configuration of the problem of separatism in Spain, there is no solution, but instead it will continue to deepen. The worsening of the crisis and decomposition has lead to “a spiral of increasingly blatant challenges, which tend to lead Spanish capital into insurmountable dead ends”, where in addition “the most radical sectors (from Basque nationalism to more reactionary forms of Spanish nationalism) instead of losing relevance, have in reality become more predominant”[xii].
In the Basque Country, the Ibarretxe[xiii] Plan, a real declaration of independence, was the confirmation of this dynamic. The central state, however, knew how to deactivate this separatist challenge. Ibrarretxe believed it could be carried out with constitutional legality but when he took it to parliament, it was treated with contempt and rejected out of hand.
In Catalonia there has been the formation of the two three-party alliances (under Maragall and Montilla[xiv]) and the wearing out of the CiU and its involvement in cases of corruption, and this has stimulated the rise of the radical separatists. Faced with its noticeable loss of electoral support and the threat of its disappearance in the medium term due to the rise of the ERC and the impact of the decline of “Pujolism”, the CiU converted itself into the PdCat in order to hide its shameless corruption, and launched a take-over bid hostile to the separatism of the ERC. However the result has been the ERC gaining electoral ground, making the PdCat its hostage and indirectly the CUP.
On the other hand, the PSOE begun the manoeuvre of the “reform of the autonomous regions” which resulted in a resounding failure and ended up weakening its own cohesion. In the resolution on the national situation which we published in Accion Proletaria 179 we took account of this fiasco: “the fact is that the famous and talented Zapatero has not managed to reduce the pro-sovereignty claims of Basque nationalism, on the contrary, because Ibarretxe has renewed his gamble in the face of Spanish nationalism. The same is true of the situation in Catalonia, where the attempt to control the most radical sectors of ERC through the tripartite government led by Maragall is leading to Maragall appearing (to what extent it is difficult to know) as a hostage to the ultra-nationalist Carod Rovira. The problems of the cohesion of Spanish capital are being aggravated, since Zapatero’s policy of 'gestures' is not satisfying the Basque and Catalan nationalists, who see his proposal of constitutional reform as a scam. Rather it is serving to encourage in other nationalisms the same feeling of "chauvinism", of "shared grievance", etc., which in turn leads to opening the Pandora’s Box of Spanish nationalism that is not limited to the PP, but has important branches within the PSOE itself”.
The two Catalan “tripartites” did not serve to calm the pro-independence movements in Catalonia, nor have they subjugated the ERC, which, on the contrary, became radicalized in its claims for "sovereignty", and ended up dislocating the Catalan branch of the PSOE that lost a large part of its pro-Catalan fraction. In fact this laid the foundations of today's enormous radicalization.
All this confirms what was said in the Theses on Decomposition “Amongst the major characteristics of capitalist society’s decomposition, we should emphasize the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation (...) …..The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilize as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’”[xv]
This has led to the present situation in which the PP government and more generally the Spanish bourgeoisie has really underestimated the 1st October Referendum.
The impression is that they thought that the failure of the Ibarretxe Plan could be repeated faced with the challenge of Catalan separatism, and that after the fiasco of the 2014 referendum, the pro-independence sectors would be pushed back. But on the contrary, not only has their determination grown, but the Spanish bourgeoisie has not taken into account the impact of decomposition upon the political apparatus of the state, particularly:
The Ibarretxe Plan was “resolved” and this appears to have re-established “tranquility”; the PNV has been turned into an “exemplary pupil” in the hands of Urkullu. This has made the central Spanish bourgeoisie believe that history will repeat itself faced with the Catalan challenge. Enter the Catalanists who have not made the same monumental error as Ibarretxe of going to the Spanish Parliament. They have followed the only possible route: a unilateral referendum which leaves the central Spanish bourgeoisie without room for manoeuvre since the constitution does not allow it “to tear up national sovereignty” in the 17 autonomous regions.
What we are living through is the crisis of the “1978 consensus”, the agreement that in 1977-8 all the political forces signed up to in order to assure a “democracy” whose axis has been until very recently, the two party system, the alternation of the PSOE and the PP, although the first of these parties has shown a much greater political capacity than the second.
All of this has been blown to pieces and the Spanish bourgeoisie is faced with the danger that the main economic region of Spain – which represents 19% of GDP- could escape its control. It has bet on a repressive response: the courts, arrests, de facto suspension of Catalan autonomy...
In other words, it is incapable of putting forward political alternatives that will allow it to control the situation. The supporters of this course (Podemos, Cola…) lack sufficient strengthen to put it into practice and are themselves divided by contradictory tendencies. The partner of Pedemos, IU[xviii], has roundly declared its rejection of the Catalan referendum and its unconditional defence of “Spanish Unity”. But on the other hand Iglesias is face by a rebellion of his Catalan constituents, who are inclined to “critically” support separatism. For its part, Colau plays the mediator and has been obliged to make an unlikely balance between one and the other, which has earned her the jocular name of the Catalan Cantinflas[xix].
The PSOE is incapable of a coherent policy. One day its supports the government, even defending article 155 of the Constitution that allows the suspension of Catalan autonomy. On another day, it proclaims that Spain is a “nation of nations”. It has proposed a “parliamentary commission in order to discuss the Catalan question” which has been rejected with disdain by its political adversaries[xx].
However, the main reason for the failure of the political system is not the clumsiness of this one or the other but the inflammation of the situation, the impossibility of finding a solution. And this can only be explained by the overall analysis that we have developed, the notion of the decomposition of capitalism.
It is now obvious that we are witnessing the general crisis of the Spanish political apparatus which, with the Catalan question, will end up being even more divided.
However it is necessary to underline another element of this very important analysis and that is equally linked to decomposition: political blockage.
Although the situation is very different, it is something that we also see in Venezuela: neither of the two teams is capable of winning the game. We can also see this at the level of imperialist conflicts, where the authority of the United States, its role as world policeman is getting weaker, a process that has accelerated with the victory of Trump. This has led to an insoluble deadlock in numerous conflicts around the world.
The separatist gang has a “ceiling”: its powerbase is in the Catalan comarcas of the interior. However it is weaker in the large cities and, especially, in Barcelona’s industrial belt. The high Catalan bourgeoisie view it with reserve because it knows that its businesses are linked to the hated Spain. The petty bourgeoisie are divided, although, of course, the comarcas of “deep Catalonia” massively support “disconnecting from Spain”. But the enormous economic concentration of Barcelona – more than 5 million inhabitants- is inclined towards indifference. This concentration has much less “Catalan purity”; it is an enormous “melting pot” made up of people from more than 60 different nations.
We must complete the analysis by showing the importance of the centrifugal tendencies, the flight towards taking endogamic, identity-based refuge in "small closed communities", tendencies endlessly fed by capitalist decomposition. Capitalism’s decadence leads fatally “to the dislocation and disintegration of its components. The tendency of decadent capitalism is discord, chaos; this expresses the essential necessity of socialism which seeks to build a world community”[xxi] The mounting disarray, exacerbated by the crisis, “generates growing tendencies to clutch onto all sorts of false communities such as the nation, which provides an illusory sense of security, of ‘collective support’”[xxii]
In the three Catalanist parties this is clear. Completely absurd propaganda that represents “free” Catalonia as an oasis of progress and economic growth because “we will have gotten rid of the weight of Madrid”; the CUP’s advocacy of the persecution of tourists because they " make life in Catalonia more expensive"; offensive allusions to immigrants and foreigners, all this shows a clearly xenophobic, identitarian tendency which is little different from the populist preaching of Trump or Alternative for Germany.
These tendencies towards exclusion have their root in society but they are blatantly and cynically used by the three parties of the JuntsXSi[xxiii], although the prize goes to the CUP.
But the Catalan separatists do not have a monopoly of this barbarity. Their Spanish rivals engage in double speak: the great leaders fill their mouths with the “constitution”, “democracy”, “solidarity between Spaniards” “co-existence” etc. At the same time they incite hatred of “the Catalans” and everything “Catalan”, propose boycotts of “Catalan” goods, call for “reinforcing the identity of the Spanish people”, while their anti-immigration politics are stock-full of racism.
In reality, the conflict between Spanish and Catalan nationalists demonstrates what Rosa Luxemburg said with great insight: “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.” (The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy, chapter 1, 1915)
This situation shows the true face of the democratic state. All the political forces defend democracy, freedom, the rights they claim are in the tradition of the state. Some in the name of the “defense of the constitution” and “national sovereignty” (PP, Ciudadanos, PSOE). Others in the name of the “democratic freedom” to organise a referendum and equally the Constitution (Podemos, Comunes, Separatists).
But behind this official democratic discourse, what is really dealt are low blows, traps, corruption scandals that they expose when it serves their interests.
Some deal in "blows" in the strictest sense of the term, sending in the civil guard and the police (even in ships painted with drawings from Warner Brothers [xxiv]); others deal in theatrical stunts. But the point is that what counts are not the ballot boxes nor the votes, but the relations of force, the blackmail, in the purest Mafioso style.
CUP’s “anti-system” stance does not fall far short of this, organizing demonstrations in front of private houses to intimidate their occupants, putting up posters denouncing the mayors who oppose the referendum.
This is the real functioning of the democratic state. It cogs are not driven by votes, rights, freedoms or other phrases, but by manoeuvres, lies, campaigns of harassment and discrediting…
The proletariat is disorientated. It has lost its sense of identity, its movement is in retreat, and it is very weak, but there have been pointers to the future, in particular the 15M[xxv], the “Indignados” movement, despite its many confusions and its difficulties in grasping its real class interests. The greatest danger is that the proletariat’s thinking remains trapped in the poisoned well that is the Catalonia-Spain conflict, forcing it to think and feel according to the dilemma “with Spain or Independence”.
These are feeling, thoughts, aspirations which are not centered around the struggle for our living conditions, the future for our children, the future of the world; thinking that expresses the proletarian terrain, even in an embryonic way. Rather this is a way of thinking polarized around ideas like “Madrid robs us” or “do we want to be part of Spain”, around the choice between the Catalan star and the red and yellow of the Spanish flag; thinking entangled in a web of bourgeois concepts: democracy, national self-determination, sovereignty, the Constitution..
The thinking of the proletariat in the main workers’ concentrations in Spain is being kidnapped by conceptual garbage that only looks to the past, to reaction, to barbarity.
In these conditions the methods of repression that the central government adopted on the 20th September creates a series of martyrs, which will generate an irrational sense of victimisation and, in this way, ratchet up an already emotional situation to a higher pitch, probably on the nationalist side.
The main danger, however, is to diverted towards the defense of democracy.
The Spanish bourgeoisie has a long experience of confronting the proletariat by diverting it towards the defense of democracy then massacring it and violently strengthening exploitation.
We should recall how the initial struggle on 18th July 1936 faced with Franco’s uprising was on the class terrain, but was then diverted towards the defense of democracy against fascism, choosing between two enemies: the Republic and Franco, the result of which was ONE MILLION DEAD.
We should also recall how in 1981, faced with the threat posed by the latest threats of Francoism, with the ‘coup’ of the 23rd February, there was a large scale democratic mobilization of the “Spanish people”. In 1997, a decisive step in the isolation of ETA was the massive mobilizations around “the defense of democracy against terrorism”.
The Catalan imbroglio is a dead-end. With or without the referendum of the 1st October it can only lead to one conclusion: the radicalization of the confrontation between the separatists and Spanish nationalists, as in Goya’s Fight with cudgels, that will go on piteously exchanging blows, will dislocate society even more, accentuating increasingly irrational divisions and confrontations. What is most dangerous is that the proletariat will become trapped on this battlefield, above all because all the contenders will ceaselessly use the weapon of democracy in order to legitimize their proposals, to ask for new elections and new “rights to decide”.
We are conscious of this situation of weakness that threatens the proletariat. However, it cannot stop us recognizing that a solution can emerge only from autonomous class struggle. The contribution to this perspective today is to oppose the democratic mobilization, the choice between Spain and Catalonia, the national terrain. The proletarian struggle and the future of humanity can only emerge from outside and against these putrid terrains.
Acción Proletaria, (section of the ICC in Spain) 27 September 2017
[i] In other words, the rules of the game established by the state after the death of Franco in 1975 and the democratic transition
[ii] On Podemos we have already written several articles, such as this one: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201604/13907/podemos-new-clothes-service-capitalist-emperor [1518]. Ciudadanos is, along with Podemos, the other of the two parties which have recently arrived in force in the Spanish parliament. It’s on the centre-right, sometimes further to the right than the PP. On the PSOE, See ¿Qué le pasa al PSOE? https://es.internationalism.org/revista-internacional/201611/4182/que-le-pasa-al-psoe [1621] [18] and the analysis developed in Referéndum catalán: la alternativa es Nación o lucha de clase del proletariado, https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/201708/4224/referendum-catalan-la-alternativa-es-nacion-o-lucha-de-clase-del-prole [1622]
[iii] See the These on the decomposition of capitalism https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
[iv] Colau’s group is En Comú Podem. It is in coalition with Podemos, which is itself a coalition. All this often leads to dislocation....
[v] This expression is used to refer to nations that, for imperialist interests, were artificially created, subsuming different nationalities: the former Yugoslavia being a main example
[vi] See Acción Proletaria 145, ‘Ni nacionalismo vasco, ni nacionalismo español; autonomía política del proletariado’ , where we cited Marx: “how are we to account for the singular phenomenon that, after almost three centuries of a Habsburg dynasty, followed by a Bourbon dynasty — either of them quite sufficient to crush a people — the municipal liberties of Spain more or less survive? That in the very country where of all the feudal states absolute monarchy first arose in its most unmitigated form, centralization has never succeeded in taking root? The answer is not difficult. It was in the sixteenth century that were formed the great monarchies which established themselves everywhere on the downfall of the conflicting feudal classes — the aristocracy and the towns. But in the other great States of Europe absolute monarchy presents itself as a civilizing center, as the initiator of social unity...In Spain, on the contrary, while the aristocracy sunk into degradation without losing their worst privilege, the towns lost their medieval power without gaining modern importance.
Since the establishment of absolute monarchy they have vegetated in a state of continuous decay. We have not here to state the circumstances, political or economical, which destroyed Spanish commerce, industry, navigation and agriculture. For the present purpose it is sufficient to simply recall the fact. As the commercial and industrial life of the towns declined, internal exchanges became rare, the mingling of the inhabitants of different provinces less frequent...And while the absolute monarchy found in Spain material in its very nature repulsive to centralization, it did all in its power to prevent the growth of common interests arising out of a national division of labor and the multiplicity of internal exchanges...Thus the absolute monarchy in Spain, bearing but a superficial resemblance to the absolute monarchies of Europe in general, is rather to be ranged in a class with Asiatic forms of government. Spain, like Turkey, remained an agglomeration of mismanaged republics with a nominal sovereign at their head. Despotism changed character in the different provinces with the arbitrary interpretation of the general laws by viceroys and governors; but despotic as was the government it did not prevent the provinces from subsisting with different laws and customs, different coins, military banners of different colours, and with their respective systems of taxation. The oriental despotism attacks municipal self-government only when opposed to its direct interests, but is very glad to allow those institutions to continue so long as they take off its shoulders the duty of doing something and spare it the trouble of regular administration” Karl Marx, Revolutionary Spain, 1854 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch0... [1623]
[vii] Bilan «La lección de los acontecimientos en España», published in our pamphlet, «Franco y la República masacran al proletariado»
[viii] See our pamphlet: Ver nuestro libro España 1936: Franco y la República masacran al proletariado. https://es.internationalism.org/cci/200602/539/espana-1936-franco-y-la-republica-masacran-al-proletariado [1624]
A historical reminder about these three Catalan forces is needed: they are more or less the direct descendants of the parties which, through the Generalitat, organised (with the support of the PSOE and the central government of the Republic in Madrid, and the « retreat » of the official CNT) the unstinting repression of the workers who in May 1937 rose up against the criminal alternative of the Republic or the Fraancoist rebellion. At the time, the Generalitat was led by Companys, from the Catalanist petty bourgeois party (a bit like the ancestor of the the PdCat) ; the Minister of the Interior, Tarradellas, a member of what is today the ERC, worked hand in glove with the Stalinist thugs of the PSUC (of which the CUP can be considered the descendant) to suppress the proletarian uprising, the last gasp of proletarian resistance against the advancing counter-revolution. See the pamphlet cited in note 8. Furthermore, both the CUP and the EDC have taken on the heritage of the leftists and even the terrorist groups (the PSAN) of the 80s and 90s. Within the CUP, there are also « anarchists », « anti-globalists » and « New Left » types similar to Podemos
[x] Between 1993 and 1996, the CIU, the part of Pujol which today is led by Puigdemont, supported the PSOE government and between 1996-2000 the PP government
[xi] It must be remembered that even if they tried to put themselves forward in a devious way or went too far in their demands for “sovereignty”, the PSOE always managed to rein them in. For example, when the separatists of Pujol threw the scandal of Banca Catalana in their face it had to act, or with the PNV it used the scandal of the game machines to force them to pledge themselves to a coalition with the PSOE
[xii] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200602/572/el-plan-ibarretxe-aviva-la-sobrepuja-entre-fracciones-del-aparato-polit [1625]
[xiii] Ibarretxe was the head of the Basque government at the beginning of the 2000s. In 2005 he presented to the Spanish parliament a project for the independence of the Basque Country, but it was rejected
[xiv] Both of them Socialist presidents of the Generalitat: Maragall (2003-2006) and Montilla (2006-2010), who ruled as part of a coalition of the left (ERC and ICV, old Stalinists, and the Greens)
[xvi] See: 1) https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/201706/4214/primarias-y-congreso-del-psoe-el-engano-democratico-de-las-bases-decid [1626] 2) https://es.internationalism.org/revista-internacional/201611/4182/que-le... [1621]
[xvii] The present bigwig of the ERC, Oriol Jonqueras, wrote “In the newspaper Avui a very serious article commenting on the differences, which he claims to know about, between the DNA of the Catalans from the forms of the helixes of deoxyribonucleic acid characteristic of the native homo sapiens from the rest of the Iberian peninsula”. This article was titled with an old xenophobic Catalan saying “bon vent i barca nova” used to invite unwanted strangers to leave. One of his inspirations is the former president of the party, Heribert Barrera, who said that “Blacks have less intellectual co-efficient than whites” (Extracts from https://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2017/09/17/59bd6033e5fdea562a8b4643.html [1627])
[xviii] Izquierda Unida (United Left) is the latest incarnation of the Spanish Communist party. It is in coalition with Podemos in “Unidos Podemos”
[xix] A comical figure of the old Mexican cinema, still very popular in Spanish-speaking countries
[xx] This article was written in the week before the referendum of 1 October and the repression that took place in Catalonia. The parliamentary group of the PSOE wanted to vote a motion of “reprobation” against the vice-president of the government after his disastrous, repressive policy was carried out. But other voices in the PSOE, in particular the “old guard” from the days of Gonzales expressed their full support for the government and their contempt for the present leadership of the PSOE. There is a real cacophony at the heart of this party.
[xxi] Internationalisme, (publication of the French Communist Left) “Report on the international situation”
[xxii] ‘The East: Nationalist Barbarism’. International Review No 62, Third Quarter 1990 https://en.internationalism.org/node/3252 [1628]
[xxiii] “Together for a Yes”, a coalition of the right (PdCat) and the left (ERC)
[xxiv] The housing of national police officers in the port of Barcelona in a boat with gigantic drawings of Cayote and Roadrunner recalls Blake Edwards’ film “Operation Pacific” where an American submarine is painted red and launches womens’ underwear through the torpedo tubes in order to confuse the Japanese battleships; this shows the level of improvisation involved in the PP response as it understood that the Catalan challenge was getting out of hand.
In a TV broadcast in 1965, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, one of the leading scientists working on the development of the US atomic bomb during World War Two, recounted his feelings when he witnessed the first atomic bomb test in the deserts of New Mexico in July 1945:
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another”[1].
Prior to capitalism, many societies had developed mythologies of the end of the world. The apocalypse anticipated by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, seen as the final destiny of this world, was understood to be the precursor of a new heaven and a new earth that would last for all eternity; whereas in the Hindu vision, new worlds and even new universes are endlessly born, dissolved and reborn in a vast cosmic cycle.
But if the idea of the apocalypse is not new, what is new in the capitalist mode of production is first, that the world inhabited by humankind for hundreds of thousands of years can be destroyed by the technologies that human beings themselves have created, rather than by supernatural beings or an inexorable fate. And second, that such a destruction would not be the prelude to a new and better world, but destruction pure and simple.
The atomic bomb tested in the desert in July 1945 would, one month later, be tested on tens of thousands of human beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world would indeed not be the same. The atomic bomb was the “scientific” proof of something that many had already begun to suspect in the wake of the First World War: in the words of Sigmund Freud in 1929, that “men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of the current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety”[2].
Psychoanalysts of the future – if mankind is able to survive capitalism – will perhaps write treatises on the enormous psychological cost of living with the threat not only of individual death, but the death of humanity and perhaps even all life on earth. It’s already possible to discern many of the outward manifestations of this mental burden: the flight into nihilism and the numerous forms of self-destruction, the vain search for hope in returning to old apocalyptic stories, central in particular to Christian and Muslim “fundamentalism”. For Freud’s rival Jung, the wave of UFO sightings in the late 40s was a modern version of old myths: faced with the unbearable reality posed by the nuclear threat, there was a marked tendency to project one’s real fears into “things seen in the skies”, often accompanied by hopes that wiser beings would come and save us from our own follies[3]. Little wonder that in 1952, during the Korean war, which many feared would explode into World War Three, the comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France were observing that “mental alienation in all its forms is to our epoch what the great epidemics were to the Middle Ages”.[4]
The democratic ruling class justified the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the story that, on balance, it saved lives, above all American lives, because it made it possible to avoid a military invasion of Japan. In reality, the bomb was a warning directed less against the collapsing Japanese military than against the USSR which had only recently declared war on Japan and was asserting its presence in the Far East. So Hiroshima was more the first act of “World War Three” than the last act of World War Two. This third world war, the global contest between the American and Russian imperialist blocs, remained a “cold” war in the sense that it never took the form of a direct conflict between the two camps. Rather it was waged via a series of proxy wars with local states and “national liberation movements” doing the actual fighting, while the two superpowers supplied arms, intelligence, strategic support and ideological justification. At certain moments, however, these conflicts threatened to escalate into all-out nuclear confrontations, in particular, during the Korean War in the early 50s and over the Cuba crisis in 1962. And all the while the spiralling “arms race” meant that the two blocs were directing vast quantities of labour and research – which in capitalist terms, means vast quantities of money – into perfecting weapons that could obliterate humanity several times over. Politicians tried to reassure the world’s population with the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD – the idea that world war was unthinkable in the nuclear age because no one could win it. Thus the best guarantee of peace was to maintain and develop this gigantic arsenal of death. Or in other words: a Sword of Damocles hangs over your head? Get used to it, because it’s the only possible way to live.
After the collapse of the Russian bloc at the end of the 80s[5], the politicians tried a new line: the end of the Cold War would mean a New World Order of peace and prosperity. A little over a quarter of a century later, the words of George Bush Senior, the president who “delivered” the US bloc’s victory in the Cold War, sound extremely hollow. Prosperity remains a chimera for millions, and this in a world system constantly menaced by huge financial storms, like the one in 2008. As for the promise of peace, the breakdown of the discipline of the old blocs has engendered a series of increasingly chaotic military conflicts, above all in the area around the Biblical Armageddon – the Middle East. This region – already the scene of the Arab-Israeli wars, the war in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war, and the battle for Afghanistan – has hardly known a day when it was not being torn apart by war, from the first major military adventure launched by the US after the collapse of the eastern bloc – the 1991 Gulf war – to the current military nightmare stalking through Syria and Iraq. This conflict, perhaps more than all the others, reveals the profound irrationality and uncontrolled nature of the wars in this present phase. Unlike the proxy wars between the two blocs which dominated the previous period, we now have a war with so many sides and so many shifting alliances that it is increasingly difficult to count them. To keep himself in power, Syria’s president Bashir Assad lays waste large swathes of his own country, while the opposition to his rule splits into “moderate” and “radical Islamic” factions constantly at each other’s throats. The American-backed coalition against “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq is rent by rivalries between Shia militias and Kurdish peshmerga, especially following the controversial referendum on Kurdish independence which threatens to disintegrate the fragile Iraqi state; regional powers like Saudi, Qatar, Iran and Turkey play their own game and swap pawns and alliances to suit their immediate interests. Meanwhile the vast majority of the population is either forced to flee towards Turkey, Jordan or Europe while those that remain try to keep sane and survive in ruined cities like Aleppo, Raqqa, Mosul... Furthermore, these conflicts are linked to a wider band of equally intractable wars, from Libya to the Horn of Africa and from Yemen to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this epidemic of warfare can no longer be isolated from the centres of western “civilisation”: the blowback of western involvement in these wars is the wave of refugees heading for the “haven” of Western Europe and the efforts of terrorist gangs like IS to take the war to the homelands of the “unbelievers”
These wars already provide us with a terrifying glimpse of what could lie ahead for the whole world if the destructive tendencies within the capitalist system are allowed to reach their full fruition. But there is another aspect to the spreading law of “every man for himself”: the reappearance of the nuclear threat in a new form. Under the reign of the blocs, the two superpowers had a real interest, and capacity, to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to themselves or to regimes that they trusted to obey their commands. The nuclear arming of China in the 1960s was a break in this chain of command because China had by then broken from the Russian bloc; but since the blocs came to an end “nuclear proliferation” has increased at some pace. India and Pakistan, two states which have already gone to war on several occasions and live in a permanent state of tension, now have nuclear weapons pointing at each other. Iran has made considerable steps towards acquiring one and numerous other regimes and even terrorist groups are no doubt quietly working to join the club.
But looming above all this today is the acquisition and piratical testing of nuclear weapons by the Stalinist regime in North Korea, while the world’s leading military power, the USA, is in the hands of an unpredictable narcissist who rode to power on the global populist wave. These two forms of “rogue regime” issue new threats of fire and fury against each other with each week that passes, and it is not possible to say that this is all bluster. There are, within both regimes, factors that constrain them from unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Trump for example does not have an entirely free hand because he is opposed at almost every turn by powerful elements in his own security and military apparatus. But these inner conflicts, like the populist wave itself, point to a loss of political control by the bourgeoisie which favour unpredictable, rash decisions. And more: behind the conflict between the US and North Korea lies a more global rivalry, between China and the USA. Meanwhile Russia remains the second most heavily armed nuclear power in the world, has recovered much of the status it lost with the collapse of the USSR, and is pursuing an ever more aggressive foreign policy, especially in the Ukraine and Syria. The danger of nuclear warfare remains as real as ever, even if the form it takes may have changed since the period 1945-89.
During the Cold War period, a considerable part of which was characterised by the economic growth that followed the Second World War, there was little awareness of what this growth might hold in store for the balance between man and the rest of nature. But the last few decades have shown how limited “mans’ control over the forces of nature” really are under the capitalist drive for profit, where looting, wastefulness and destruction have always dominated what Marx called man’s “metabolic exchange” with nature.
On October 19, The Guardian reported that “The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies [1630] were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is ‘on course for ecological Armageddon’, with profound impacts on human society”[6].
We already knew, of course, about the alarming decline of the bees. And this is only one part of a tendency towards the mass extinction of countless living species, brought about by the poisoning of the air and seas by pesticides, industrial and transport emissions, and the veritable scourge of plastic waste. And this toxic cloud is also killing human beings at an increasing rate. The day after the article about insect decline, The Guardian published a new report that estimates that nine million people die every year as a direct result of pollution[7]. Add to this the melting of the ice caps, the unleashing of superstorms, the droughts and wildfires all linked to man-made climate change, and the threatened “ecological Armageddon” more and more closely resembles the traditional stories about the world perishing in flood and fire.
Thus to the menace of destruction through imperialist war, the ecological question adds another and no less terrifying menace, but these two horsemen of the apocalypse will not ride separately. On the contrary: a capitalist world faced with dwindling vital resources, whether we are talking about energy, food or water, is far more likely to deal with the problem through exacerbated national competition, military pillage and robbery – in short, economic and imperialist war – than through the rational, planet-wide cooperation which alone could find a solution to this new challenge to human survival.
Looked at one-sidedly, this summary of humanity’s situation can only induce despair. But there is another side: if the products of man’s own hands have become capable of “exterminating one another to the last man”, realising the darkest apocalyptic nightmares, so the same powers of production could be used to realise another ancient dream: a world of plenty where there is no need for one sector of society to lord it over another, a world that has gone beyond the divisions that lie at the heart of conflict and war.
It is one of contradictions in the evolution of capitalism that precisely at the point that such a world becomes materially possible – we would say round the beginning of the 20th century – this social order plunges mankind into the most barbarous wars in history. From this point on, its very survival becomes increasingly antagonistic to the survival of humanity. This is the most striking proof that capitalism, for all its intact capacities to innovate, to develop, to find remedies for its crises, has become obsolete, a fundamental obstacle to the future advance of our species.
The recognition of this reality is a key factor in the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the exploited masses who are always the first victims of capitalism’s crises and wars. The understanding that capitalism, as a world civilisation, had entered its epoch of decay, was a crucial factor in the monumental events set in motion by the revolution in Russia in 1917 – in the international revolutionary wave which forced the bourgeoisie to call a halt to the slaughter of the First World War and which, for an all-too-brief period, brought the promise of the overthrow of capitalism and the advent of a world communist society.
Today, such revolutionary hopes might appear to belong entirely to the past. But contrary to the ideology and active propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the class struggle has not disappeared from history and indeed, even before it takes on a generalised and conscious revolutionary character, still has an enormous weight in the world situation. During the Cold War, as we have seen, the ruling class tried to convince us that its MAD doctrine was preserving the planet from a third world war. What they would never tell us is that there was a more powerful “deterrent” to world war after capitalism entered its present phase of economic crisis at the end of the 60s. This was a factor that had been missing in the 1930s, when the economic depression did lead rapidly to war: an undefeated working class more prepared to fight for its own interests than to rally to the war plans of the bourgeoisie.
Today, the break-up of the blocs and the accelerating imperialist free-for all is another factor that makes a classic third world war a less likely scenario. This is not a factor that favours the proletariat however, because the threat of world war has been by-passed by a more insidious slide into barbarism in which, as we have argued here, the danger of nuclear warfare has by no means diminished. But the class struggle – and its escalation towards revolution – remains the sole barrier to the deepening of barbarism, the sole hope that humanity will not only avert the apocalypse of capital but realise all its untapped potential.
Amos, 21.10.17
[1]. J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Trinity test (1965). Atomic Archive. Retrieved May 23, 2008.
[2]. Civilisation and its Discontents, London 1973, chapter VIII, p82
[3]. Carl Jung, Flying Saucers, a Modern Myth of Things seen in the Skies, Bollingen Series: Princeton University Press, 1978
[4]. Internationalisme 1952, ‘The evolution of capitalism and the new perspective’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/21/internationalisme-1952 [1631]
[5]. The collapse of the “Soviet Union” was indeed partly the result of the vast burden of arms spending on an economy that was inherently much weaker than that of the US. But for a more comprehensive analysis of the roots of the crisis in the eastern bloc, see “Theses on the economic and political crisis in the eastern countries”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/60/collapse_eastern_bloc [1287]
We are publishing here an article written by our comrades of Internacionalismo, the ICC's section in Venezuela, in which our organisation takes a position from the viewpoint of the international proletariat on the serious crisis which is hitting the country. Within this we denounce the hypocrisy of the world's bourgeoisie and its complicity with both the Chavist clique and the opposition which have plunged the proletariat and the population as a whole into the most barbaric conditions. Our comrades analyse how Chavism, a product and expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system, uses an ideological swindle of "the socialism of the twenty-first century" which is set up on the basis of an attack against the living conditions, consciousness and combativity of the proletariat. Similarly, they analyse how inter-imperialist tensions are a factor which contributes to aggravating the crisis. The article gives the perspective that the only possible outcome to the barbarity of the situation of Venezuela and the entire world continues to remain in the hands of the proletariat which, through its conscious struggle, can aim to overthrow the capitalist system which is plunging us into chaos and despair.
Every day the world's press and an endless number of internet and social networks are drowning us with news of the dramatic situation coming from Venezuela: the aggravation of shortages, lack of food, medicines and basic products; uncontrolled increases in the prices of the few products which remain available, now reducing a part of the population to famine; death by the malnutrition of children and sicknesses caused by the degradation of the health and hospital system. To this situation add more than 120 deaths to date, thousands of wounded and those detained, coming from the confrontations between rival factions of Venezuelan capital in their struggle for power, caused by the brutal repression of police and military forces of the Chavist regime of Maduro during the demonstrations called by the opposition and the protests of the population between April and June this year.
The despair of the population is such that thousands of people are trying to flee the country. The governments of Colombia and Brazil are faced with the arrival of thousands of Venezuelan migrants, some of whom are living in miserable conditions on the streets of towns closest to their respective borders. The increase of political tensions with the accentuation of the economic crisis threatens to create a wave of refugees similar to that produced by the exodus of populations from Syria, Afghanistan or some African countries fleeing the barbarity and misery of war.
However, the media, conforming to its ideological role, conveys a totally deformed vision of reality by taking sides with one or the other, pro-Chavist or oppositional, bourgeois factions who are fighting each other for power in Venezuela. On one hand, a great number of Latin American other governments try to outdo each other by coming forward and denouncing the "humanitarian crisis" and the repression against the population and demanding that what they call the dictatorial regime of Maduro respect "democracy" and "Human Rights". They want us to forget that the majority of them, just a few years ago, enthusiastically welcomed and saluted the government of Chavez for "taking into consideration" the fate of the disinherited and marginalised masses and which, according to them, brought millions of Venezuelans out of poverty thanks to a so-called "redistribution of social wealth"; and that the UN paid homage to the successes of the Venezuelan government for having fulfilled the objectives of the Millennium. What these governments and organisations express is the immense hypocrisy of the bourgeois class at the world level: the same goes for the Venezuelan bourgeois factions fighting for power: the Chavists regrouped in the GPP, the Great Patriotic Pole, and the oppositional forces brought together around the MUD - Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, the Democratic Unity Roundtable[i]. The ruling classes at the regional, as well as at the global level, have a responsibility for the barbarity in which the proletariat and population of Venezuela have been immersed.
In order to stand up to this ideological campaign, it's necessary for the proletariat to get to the causes of this tragedy by, in the first place, keeping in mind that it mustn't back any of the bourgeois factions confronting each other in their struggle for control of the state. This crisis is a pure product of the decadence and decomposition of the capitalist system which is no longer a factor in the development of the productive forces, in particular of labour power; instead of that, every day society sinks further into misery and barbarity. On the other hand, faced with this historic impasse the only thing that matters to the factions of capital (whether they defend the models of the pretend-left "socialists" like the Chavist/Maduro regime or the neo-liberal models of the centre-right that the opposition forces defend) is to maintain their power at any price; and in their thirst for power they couldn't care less that the working population that follows them in the circumstances, die like flies in their hundreds or thousands because of hunger and repression.
The crisis hitting Venezuela is the expression of the fact that no country or region of the world can escape the effects of the decomposition of the capitalist system. The reasons for this crisis are the same as those which provoked the barbarism which reigns in Syria, Afghanistan or in a number of African countries; or those which are expressed by the terrorist attacks which follow one another in a growing sequence in Europe, the United States and other central countries. The world finds itself in a situation of impasse, at the mercy of the actions of the most irrational factions of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.
The only way of really coming out of this situation is in the hands of the proletariat which, through its combat, its class consciousness, its unity and solidarity can serve as a reference point for the indignation of the despairing masses of the population who want to break out of poverty and suffering.
Some analysts and intellectuals, when asked for their opinion on the situation in Venezuela, try to explain why this country, having been one of the most rich and stable among the countries of South America, has fallen in such a brutal manner since the beginning of the century into such poverty and suffered a political chaos which threatens to make it ungovernable. Some see the Maduro regime as a failed state; others designate it as the retreat of another "Castro-communist" dictatorship. And as good defenders of bourgeois order they don't lose a trick in feeding the repugnant lie which assimilates the Stalinist-type totalitarian regimes with communism. They try to hide the fact that the regime imposed by Chavez, of which Maduro is a successor, is a new offspring of the decomposing capitalist system that they themselves feed with their so-called "analyses".
We have analysed the causes of the rise of the Chavez project in an article published in 2013, written after his death[ii]:
"Chavez first came to public notice when he led the attempted military coup against the Social Democrat Carlos Andrés Péres in 1992. From then on his popularity underwent a spectacular growth until he was elected President of the Republic in 1999. During this period he capitalised on the discontent and lack of trust across broad sectors of the population towards the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic Parties who had alternated power between themselves since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1958. This discontent was particularly marked amongst the most impoverished masses affected by the economic crisis of the 80s, who were the main protagonists of the 1989 revolt. The two main political parties were undergoing a process of disintegration, characterised by corruption at the highest levels and the neglect of government tasks. This was an expression of the decomposition that had engulfed the whole of society, principally the ruling class, which had reached such levels that it was impossible to cohere its forces in order to guarantee reliable governance and ‘social peace'.
Maduro has inherited from Chavez a country and a political project affected by a terrible economic crisis and capitalist decomposition. Chavez and the highest civil and military executives always underestimated the weight of the world economic crisis while the price of oil remained high. At this time the repositories of state funds had not yet been emptied by the country's new proprietors and the state still had the capacity for debt and borrowing. Already in 2012, when Chavez was still in power and the price of a barrel of oil went over $100, shortages and lack of provision of different food and basic goods had begun. The reduction in the price of oil of 2013 aggravated the situation. Since then the government of Maduro, like other oil-producing countries of the region (Ecuador, Columbia, Mexico, etc.), have used the lower price of oil as a pretext to accentuate the deterioration of the living conditions of the population and the workers. With the intent of giving a "socialist" colour to these measures, the Maduro regime opened up an ideological campaign, which continues up to today, which claims that the lower price of oil is due to an "economic war unleashed by 'North American imperialism'" allied to a bourgeois Venezuelan oligarchy whose intent is to attack the "Bolivarian Revolution". However, the world economic crisis and the fall in oil prices are not sufficient in themselves to explain the gravity of the situation in this country. The implementation of the political, social and economic measures required by the "socialist" plan of Chavez, in a context of accelerating decomposition, has also contributed to such an outcome.
Contrary to other governments of the left allied to Chavism (Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.), Chavez developed a Stalinist-type totalitarian state capitalist model. He progressively took measures to weaken and exclude private sectors of capital and the old state bureaucracy which controlled the institutions and enterprises of the state. Through expropriations in industry and agriculture, nationalisations and economic measures (price controls among others) the productive infrastructure of the country was dismantled. This economic policy, as in other countries where similar measures have been applied, created distortions in the economy which added to an irresponsible management of state funds and an unrestrained corruption which led the country into an economic collapse.
The previous state bureaucracy was replaced by a new hegemonic caste in which the military predominated but which had no experience in economic and administrative management. The Chavist nomenklatura practically abandoned economic management by the state and squandered the national resources, using it to get rich and create networks of corruption which amassed immense fortunes which were deposited in fiscal havens, showing the pathetic degree of decomposition achieved by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.
The left-populist character of the Chavist project, used to enrol masses of the poor and proletarians which served as its electoral base, transformed social programmes (called "missions") under the flag of "Bolivarian Socialism" with the pretended aim of "overcoming poverty". Maduro followed the same economic policy as his mentor by keeping up public spending, a determinant factor in sharpening the economic crisis which exists today in Venezuela[iii].
The high costs involved in the development of an imperialist policy aiming to make Venezuela a regional power within a multi-polar world which led to rivalry with the United States and other countries in the region. With this aim it developed a strategy of "selling cheap" to other regional countries, principally those of the Caribbean and Central America; it increased the purchase of armaments; it dedicated considerable resources to develop means of international communications for intervening in different countries of the region and the world with the aim of supporting parties and groups of the left opposed to the interests of the United States and other powers.
In order to strengthen its populist policy, on many occasions Chavez advanced the idea that his government wasn't going to "repress the poor who stole by necessity". On this basis, the regime developed a policy of impunity in certain areas: "laissez-faire" towards law-breaking by armed groups made up of lumpenised elements and formed by his own regime; he reduced police surveillance mainly through the night leaving the population at the mercy of bands of thugs who imposed their own laws. In this way, he used and accentuated the level of social decomposition which already existed before his arrival to power by implementing a curfew at night and part of the day which wasn't imposed by direct state terror but by the terror sown by lumpen elements. This policy multiplied the rate of criminality which made Venezuela[iv] one of the most dangerous countries on the planet; and this situation also contributed to the increase in the rate of emigration.
Chavism fashioned a state subject to decomposition: a gangster state dominated by lumpen behaviour within sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie and the new "Bolivarian" bourgeoisie; it has established a state run by new mullahs who don’t pay the external or internal debts which they have contracted with their capitalist partners, and which also don’t pay past contracts with the workers through collective agreements. Lying and impunity are the norm within this state. Chavism, aided by the very mechanisms of the democratic bourgeoisie, has implanted a real mafia at the heart of the Venezuelan state.
The Chavez project sees itself as a regional and global project. It's fed by the fact that since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, the world has ceased to be ruled by the two great imperialist poles, the United States and the USSR: the world has become multi-polar. The regime developed with a vision of being able to constitute one of these regional poles by profiting from the strategic regional position of Venezuela in South America, due to its oil reserves and the weakening of the United States as a world power. With this objective, Chavism developed an aggressive imperialist policy at the regional level, a policy of confrontation with the United States and other countries of the region. For this it has used oil as a weapon to play a role in regional geopolitics, principally aiming at the Caribbean and Central America. Its policy is fed by a radical anti-Americanism and for that it has looked for alliances with other governments of the region, as well as at the global level, who reject the imperialist policies of the United States.
With this aim, it has tightened links with Cuba which has need of oil and capital after the collapse of the imperialist bloc around the USSR. With Cuba it has formed the group of countries of ALBA to compete with ALCA[v] which is promoted by the United States; it has strengthened its alliance with Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, the Indigenists of the Cordillere (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador), the Sandinista Movement of Nicaragua, etc. It has largely opened the door to Chinese capital, to Russia (mainly through armaments purchases), to Iran and even to the representatives of the so-called "Arab Socialism" of North Africa and the Middle East.
Thus, as Cuba did some years ago, Chavez developed a strategy of posing as the victim of the United States, which is permanently accused of wanting to expropriate Venezuelan Oil and conspiring against the "Bolivarian revolution" since the time of George Bush. In effect, since the beginnings of the Obama administration, the United States has developed a policy against the Chavez regime and against its influence in the region through the OAS[vi], which hadn't been able to obtain advantageous conditions. However, Obama was able to weaken the influence of governments of the left in the region (through its strategy of "the fight against corruption and drug-trafficking") which is shown in the changes towards governments of the right in Brazil and Argentina and the policy of rapprochement with Cuba.
Before the latest US election and after the triumph of Trump, there was a period of several months of blockage of the US policy in the region, concentrating mainly on the question of the construction of a wall on the Mexican border; during this period there wasn't a clear position from the new government towards the situation in Venezuela. In mid-July, before the call from Maduro to vote for a new National Constituent Assembly[vii], the Trump administration again took the initiative in actions against Venezuela through an aggressive policy aimed against the regime by declaring that it would use all means to confront it, including the recourse "to military force if it was necessary", which showed a change in relation to the more prudent policy of Obama. The Maduro government has profited from Trump's declarations and his international unpopularity in order to pose as the victim and try to rally support domestically as well as from the outside.
Today, the regional geopolitical configuration has changed and the influence of Chavism has been significantly weakened: Argentina and Brazil are no longer its allies; it looks like the new government in Ecuador will take up a different policy than its predecessor of Correa who openly supported the Maduro regime. At the same time, important states of the region, like Mexico, Peru and Colombia, have taken a more active part in the region by supporting American policy. The tendency is towards the isolation of the Maduro regime. Much more than the actions of the leaders of these states have been the sanctions of the Trump government for the violation of human rights, narco-traffic and money-laundering. Similarly Spain and the countries of the European Union have pressured for the "return of democracy" to Venezuela. The support of the countries of the OAS is also weakening bit by bit.
Everything seems to indicate that the Maduro regime has no other outcome than to bow to domestic, regional and international pressures. But that's not quite the case. The regime has picked up the challenge: it has profited from the threats of Trump in order to look for international support. Maduro has declared that he was ready to fight "imperialist aggression" and he claims to have concluded military alliances with Russia in order to ensure his defence. Even if it looks difficult for China or Russia to directly intervene in an armed conflict in America's "back-yard", these states have certainly intervened for some years now in support of the Chavez and Maduro regimes through arms supplies, financial aid, provisions, etc. , and through blocking any action of the Security Council of the UN against Venezuela, all in the name of the "self-determination of the people"
The radicalisation of the Maduro regime is about to create a situation of destabilisation in the whole region through the emigration of Venezuelans to other neighbouring countries. On the other hand, the unpopularity of the Trump administration at the world level could allow radicalised elements of the left, including some partisans of jihadism, to come into Venezuela to support the Maduro regime by perpetrating terrorist actions or supplying the guerrillas.
The situation in Venezuela is unpredictable. The Maduro government has declared that it will use armed force to impose itself and, on the other side, it is possible that sectors of the opposition could again call for demonstrations in the streets, knowing that the government would respond to them with increased repression. All the competing cliques of the bourgeoisie in Venezuela are caught up in a cycle which is inciting them in their strategy of confrontation up to its ultimate consequences. Up to now they have shown that they haven't the will or the capacity to reach a minimum agreement to be able to govern.
Apparently, international pressure has had no effect on the Maduro regime. Worse, it serves him as a pretext to intensify his repression of the opposition and the population in general. An important factor which increases the uncertainty even more is the unpredictable imperialist actions of Trump whose engagement in a unilateral military action would be an aggravating factor of the crisis (in some way similar to his trial of strength between the US and the North Korean regime).
As in other conflicts around the world, it would be the Venezuelan population who pay the costs of military confrontation. Already, it's suffering from a vociferous ideological campaign against "North American imperialism". Anti-Americanism is the scapegoat that the factions of the left use at the global level in order to sow confusion among the population and within the proletariat; that serves them as an alibi to support other, also despotic and imperialist, regimes such as China, North Korea or Cuba. It allows them to mask the imperialist policies of the regimes of the left, like Chavez and Maduro, who, in their turn, impose their own local model of a system of exploitation and reduce the population to conditions of misery that are identical, or even worse, than the regimes of the right.
The Chavist project rests both on an ideological attack and on an attack on the living conditions of the proletariat. Like other plans of the capitalist class, the so-called "Socialism of the 21st century" is fed by the pauperisation and the precarious position of the workers. The regime has systematically worked to reduce wages and the social advantages that workers were receiving under contract; it began with the workers of the oil sector and commodity-based primary industries and then moved to the public sector. The social plans of Chavism, used to share out some crumbs to the "people", were principally financed by cuts in the wages and social conditions of the workers under contract. After the death of Chavez, he left a mass of impoverished workers and a greater number of people still more miserable and betrayed, each month receiving less state subsidies. Similarly, on the economic level, Maduro has only impoverished even more workers up to the point that wages and social payments do not even cover basic needs and each month the poor who receive sacks of provisions that the government sells them cheap are less and less numerous, while the members of the Chavist nomenklatura live like lords.
The political bi-polarisation has been a strategy permanently maintained and fed by the Chavist regime up to today; this has constituted a decisive factor whose effects reverberate on all social life and has led to the situation of disorder. Chavez was able to stoke up his policy of bi-polarisation because of the support of the most deprived masses, pariahs excluded from society, who saw in him a new Messiah who would offer them the gifts of a benefactor state as, decades before, the Social-Democratic and Social-Christian parties had offered them. But Chavism needed to dragoon the mass of workers who were constituted during these years behind him, while at the same time he began to put in place a political strategy of division and the bi-polarisation within the Venezuelan working class. Through the ideology of the "Socialism of the 21st Century", he developed an attack against the consciousness, combativity and solidarity within the working class of Venezuela. As the noxious campaign of the world bourgeoisie proclaimed "the death of communism" after the collapse of the Russian bloc, he proposed the building of "Bolivarian Socialism". Chavism, with the help of parties of the left in other countries, principally the Cuban Communist Party, developed a real laboratory of pitfalls against the proletariat: self-management, workers' control, etc., while in an increasing and systematic manner they accentuated the divisions in the ranks of the workers and made the living conditions of the most advanced sectors of the working class more precarious.
Despite this ideological attack the workers have, since the beginning of the Chavez regime, developed important struggles against the state on their class terrain. But these same workers have been systematically confronted by the unions controlled by Chavism and, when these weren't sufficient, came the repression from the police and military forces (in the same way that preceding governments had done, with the parties now opposed to the regime at their head), or those of armed lumpenised bands formed by Chavism. Up to today there are an incalculable number of expressions of struggle and of discontent of workers from different sectors, but these struggles appear sectoral, atomised and they remain strangled by the political bi-polarisation. This situation has allowed the petty-bourgeoisie to play a political role, from its radicalised sectors on the left, most of which supported Chavez and encouraged greater control by the state, up to those who have openly defended neo-liberal measures.
Because of the gravity of the economic crisis, shortages and lack of supply of basic products and ever-increasing prices, the popularity of the Maduro government has gradually dwindled. This situation was shown in the parliamentary elections of December 2015, in which the opposition largely triumphed and took control of the National Assembly, which represented the most stinging electoral rout that Chavism had received during the course of its sixteen year existence. Since then the political confrontation has sharpened due to the fact that the regime sees itself as under the threat of losing power. Its reaction, like a wounded beast, has been to look for the means to keep itself in power at any price.
For its part, the opposition grouped in the MUD today presents itself as the real defender of the Chavist Constitution of 2000 that it rejected years ago. Like the governing party it presents itself as the real defender of democracy. The two factions fight each other to show who will be the most democratic: everyone knows very well that the slogan "the struggle for democracy" represents a very powerful ideological weapon for the control of the population and of the proletariat, as well as a key to gaining recognition at the international level.
The two rival bands say to the population that we are at the final stages of the confrontation between the "dictatorship" and "democracy". The reality is that each one of these two cliques defends the dictatorship of capital through democratic republicanism or by the democratic totalitarianism of the Chavist regime. On the other hand the Venezuelan opposition and those of other countries say that the failure of the Maduro government represents the setback of "Castro-communism"; and they advocate neo-liberal policies with a human face, that's to say the old recipe of implementing "capitalism with a human face". They say that Maduro has set up a "communism" similar to that of Cuba. Left Communism has shown since the beginning of the so-called "Cuban revolution" that the regime in this country for more than 50 years is a Stalinist-styled state capitalist regime. Maduro and his allies are trying to apply the same model with their "Socialism of the 21st century".
The millions of people who are today protesting against the Maduro regime show the indignation, despair and anger of a population which doesn't want to just "survive" in such miserable conditions. Although many of them have illusions in the proposals of the MUD, many others are calling for demonstrations in order to express their discontent, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are partisans of this bourgeois oppositional regroupment; this is expressed mainly through the resistance movements formed mainly by young people, many of whom have been cowardly assassinated by the regime's forces of repression or by thugs in the pay of the regime, while others have been imprisoned after being taken to military tribunals. Hypocritically, the leaders of the MUD present these as "martyrs for the democratic cause", seeking to use them as cannon-fodder with the aim of imposing their neo-liberal capitalist model which also offers no solution to the crisis hitting the population.
The dangerous and difficult situation in Venezuela is the expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system as a whole which is expressed in a caricatured manner in this country. Different ruling factions in this region and the wider world are today pointing the finger at the Maduro regime as an example of how not to run a government. In the present situation of capitalism in Venezuela there are no guarantees about what could happen; a handful of spiteful and lumpenised adventurers, whether of the right or left, could assume control of the state and submit the population, including the proletariat, to chaos and barbarity. In fact, the United States, the main economic and military power on the planet, has as its Commander-in Chief, a populist adventurer of the right whose sole difference with Chavez is that the latter proclaims himself of the left and that he puts forward an imperialist policy marked by "amateurism".
No nation can escape the effects of decomposition, in which the future is seriously threatened by wars, poverty and famine. This impasse is the consequence of a situation in which the two principal classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, have not been capable of imposing their respective "solutions": either humanity submits to a new world war on the side of the bourgeoisie, or a world communist revolution in the perspective of the working class. Such an impasse plunges society into a growing loss of reference and a decay of the whole social body.
Venezuela, like Syria or other countries of the Middle East, Asia or Africa are the mirror in which is reflected what we, the proletarians of the world, have to see; they show us what capitalism has in store if we don't finish with this system. For some years now decomposition has been knocking at the door of the most developed countries of Europe, Asia and America through the advance of terrorism.
The populist leftist regime put in place by Chavez is the demonstration that neither the left of capital, nor its right, nor the most extreme sections of these bourgeois expressions, can represent any sort of escape from the exploitation and barbarity of capitalism: from the right to the left both must be rejected and consciously fought by the proletariat and by the minorities of the class who are fighting against the existing order. The "Socialism of the 21st century" and the so-called "Bolivarian revolution" have nothing to do with socialism. They are one and the same patriotic and nationalist movements. As defenders of socialism, we stand before everything with the spirit of the Communist Manifesto, the first political programme of the proletariat put forward in 1848, which says that "the proletarians have neither country nor national interests to defend".
We must be conscious of the strength of the working class because it is the producer class whose exploitation produces all social wealth. The indignation of the proletariat and the majority of the Venezuelan population who are fighting for a decent life, impossible under the reign of capitalism, must serve as an encouragement to develop this feeling among the proletarians of the entire world, to become conscious that the proletarian revolution is the sole way out of the barbarity that capitalism is reserving for us all. To finish with this barbarity threatening the whole of humanity, it is necessary to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus, supported by an exploitative minority which increasingly is showing its incapacity to manage and which, day after day, strengthens and imposes its terror on the whole of society. Only through its consciousness and international solidarity can the proletariat put an end to this dramatic situation.
It is a reality of the present time that the world proletariat hasn't the capacity to break this advance of barbarity. However, despite the political bi-polarisation by the factions of the bourgeoisie, whether of the right or the left, there exists in Venezuela and other countries, an immense number of the population, who do not believe that "we are coming out of the crisis". Many of those who march in an honest fashion behind one or the other of these cliques are confronted by the reality that they can see no solution to the situation. Similarly, even if they only represent a minority of the working class, elements exist who are looking for a proletarian perspective faced with the barbarity in which we are living.
It is for that reason that it's urgent that we, as a revolutionary minority of the working class, intervene with the aim of of recovering the revolutionary consciousness and class identity of the proletariat. We must take up the road of the struggle for real communism like the Bolshevik Party and the Soviets a hundred years ago, protagonists of the first great attempt at the development of the world revolution: the October revolution.
Neither the "Socialism of the 21st century", nor democracy, nor the right populism of Trump or the left populism of Chavez and Maduro. The proletariat must find its own perspective outside of capitalism by returning to the struggle for its own class interests.
Internacionalismo, section of the International Communist Current in Venezuela, September 25, 2017.
[i] The Great Patriotic Pole, GPP, regroups the political forces which have given their support to the project led by Chavez. It is formed of several parties among which the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) founded by Chavez predominates; it is also composed of other minority parties of the left as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), the Country for All (PPT), etc; the Mesa Table of the Unidad Democratica (MUD) is a coalition of parties which oppose the GPP and is made up of the Social Democratic, Social-Christians of the right and of the centre, and the liberals.
[iii] Economic indicators today show a collapsing economy. An economic recession has hit since 2014 with strong falls year on year to such a point that between 2014 and 2017 the economy has lost a third of GDP, the budget deficit has increased by 15% in 2016, one of the highest in the world whose financing has engendered an overproduction of monetary mass which has increased the rate of inflation estimated this year to be 1000% and 2000% for the year 2018; the payment of public debt is estimated around 95% of GDP making it pay an important part of foreign exchange earnings in a country which is 96% dependent on oil exports which lessen each year because of production falls; the policy of the government is to reduce imports which have fallen by 75% during the last 4 years in a country where 70% of products of consumption are imported and this has accentuated the deficit in raw materials which assures the maintenance of state production at a minimum operational level and has increased shortages for agricultural and industrial inputs.
[iv] The Venezuelan Observatory on Violence gives the figure of 28,479 violent deaths in 2016, a rate of 91.8 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. According to this report "Venezuela comes in second in the world for the most violent deaths behind Salvador". The number of homicides is estimated to be 28,000 during the course of the Chavez and Maduro governments. The NGO COFAVIC has estimated the impunity rate for this criminality at 98%. See our article on our Spanish website: https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201206/3417/incremento-de-la-... [1635].
[v] ALBA: Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which also includes among others Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba; ALCA: Area of Free Trade for the Americas, a plan born from the proposition to enlarge free-trade for North America taking in other countries on the continent with the exception of Cuba.
[vi] The Organisation of American States, created in 1948 allowing the guardianship and control of the US continent by the White House, particularly over the countries of Latin America Translator's note.
[vii] This sudden move by Maduro allowed him to exclude, purely and simply, the opposition parties from this institution. Translator's note.
For the most “responsible” factions of the world bourgeoisie, the international upsurge of populism has created a succession of problems and obstacles, not least Brexit and the unpredictable reign of Trump in the USA. In the last few months we have seen some vigorous attempts to stem the populist tide, the most evident expression of which was during the French presidential election last April/May, when weighty international figures like Merkel and Obama, plus the French Socialist Party and others gave their unqualified backing to the pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron, widely seen as the most effective barrier to the populist, anti-EU Front National. However, the underlying social forces generating the populist tide have by no means gone away and its political expressions continue to exert a real weight in bourgeois political life. The result of the general election in Austria – coming soon after the spectacular gains made by the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland in Germany - provides further confirmation that populism is much more than a political bubble and expresses a real dysfunction at the roots of capitalist society.
The winner of the recent general elections (Nationalratswahlen) in Austria has been acclaimed the new young shooting star of European politics: the Christian Democrat Sebastian Kurz. His “List Kurz – new ÖVP“ gained 31,49% of the votes, followed by the Social Democratic SPÖ with 26,86% and the right wing populists of the FPÖ with 25,97%. For the first time ever, an ÖVP leader won a general election against an SPÖ chancellor in office. It is also only the second time since the beginning of the chancellorship of the famous Bruno Kreisky in 1971 that the ÖVP won more votes at a general election than the SPÖ.
Sebastian Kurz has been mandated by the Austrian president Van Der Bellen to form a new government. If he succeeds, he will become Europe’s youngest head of government at the age of 31. Kurz is being compared with the new French president Emmanuel Macron, not only on account of his youthfulness, but also because he – like his French counterpart – waged a successful electoral campaign essentially around his own person and his own “charisma”.
But despite these similarities, there are also important differences between these two politicians. Whereas Macron created a kind of new political movement around himself (République En Marche), Kurz used the existing structure of the ÖVP for his electoral campaign. How he did this was very different from the way Donald Trump in the United States more or less hijacked the Republican Party for his own purposes. The once proud ÖVP, one of the two main parties of the Austrian state throughout the post-war epoch, gladly accepted being degraded to the status of electoral helping hands of its leader. They did so because Kurz successfully presented himself to them as the only hope they had not only of getting more votes than the Social Democrats, but also of avoiding being overtaken electorally by the populist FPÖ. In other words, what motivated the ÖVP was not a political strategy in the interests of the national bourgeois state (which was clearly one of the motives of Macron and his supporters), but the preservation of the particular interests, the influence and privileges of the ÖVP.
The gamble paid off. During the summer Kurz, who was the leader of the ÖVP as the junior partner in the social democratic-led coalition under the SPÖ chancellor Christian Kern, actively provoked a governmental crisis and the calling of new general elections. In fact, Kurz had prepared this coup step by step over a period beginning in the autumn of 2015 with the “refugee crisis”. Originally, the Kern government had supported the so-called “welcoming” policy of the German chancellor Angela Merkel. This was not difficult, since the role of Austria consisted mainly in waving the refugees on through from the Balkans route to Germany. All of a sudden Kurz, who obviously has a finely developed sensitivity for changes of mood within the electorate, initiated a radical reversal in the refugee policy of the Austrian government: the closing of the Austrian border, active assistance to Hungary and other states in sealing the Balkan Route. Kurz profited from his role as foreign minister in promoting this new policy, which became associated with his person. The refugee question was and is entangled under capitalism with foreign policy interests. The end of Austrian support for Merkel’s refugee policy introduced an element of confrontation into the relations of Vienna with Germany, and also with Turkey. Berlin wants Turkey, and also the North African coastal states, to play a leading role in preventing refugees from fleeing to Europe. In this way, it also hopes to gain in influence in these countries, and to counteract the influence of such powers as Russia or China there. By concentrating on closing the Balkan Route, Austria, under the impulsion of Kurz, is more determinedly pursuing its own interests on the Balkan peninsula, which are antagonistic to those of Turkey. However, on this point, the thinking of Kurz may have been somewhat short-sighted (in German: kurz-sichtig). Unlike Hungary, for example, Austria is not only a neighbour of the Balkans, it is also an Alpine country. With the closing of the Balkans route, the refugees started arriving instead from northern Africa through Italy into Austria. By closing one gap, Kurz helped to open another. In response to this, the government in Vienna announced the mobilisation of the army (there was even talk of setting tanks in motion) against half-starved and helpless men, women and children. Government circles in Rome were dismayed by this sudden deployment of the Austrian military close to its border with Italy. But even Austrian diplomats began to express consternation about Austria, in response to the refugee question, worsening relations with its two most important neighbours: Germany in the north and Italy in the south. However, there was no stopping Kurz, since his foreign policy against refugees managed to stir up a wave of nationalism among parts of the population. Among the ingredients of this nationalism were, alongside fear of refugees and Islamophobia, old anti-German and anti-Italian resentments which suddenly re-surfaced.
But above and beyond the refugee question, Kurz increasingly began to put in question the coalition government itself, condemning stagnation and blockages which he himself was partly helping to cause. In the end, all involved were relieved when the coalition was brought to an end and new elections called. Already when in government, Kurz had begun his electoral campaign, developing the rhetoric of an oppositional leader. He profited from his youth to present himself as the champion of a revolt against “the establishment” to which he belongs. His success with these ploys is all the more striking when you consider the failure of the neighbouring Bavarian CSU in Germany under Horst Seehofer, who as a member of the Grand Coalition in Berlin tried to profile itself as an opposition force in the refugee question. The CSU lost more votes at the recent German general elections than any of the other parties of the government coalition. At this level, Kurz seems to have something else in common with Macron: a highly developed ability to win and to wield political power. But whereas, for Macron, power is not only an end in itself, but a means of realising a political programme for the national capital, it is not yet at all clear what Kurz wants to achieve. Apart from the vague promise to lower taxes, and making Austria a safer and more homely place... nobody seems to know what he intends to do. Does he know himself?
Alongside the “List Kurz” the main winner of this election is the right wing populist FPÖ. Under its leader Heinz-Christian Strache (a rhetorical talent) it almost attained the record score achieved by the “Freiheitlichen” (“The Free”) under the notorious Jörg Haider around a quarter of a century before. It also obtained almost as many votes as the leading party of the Austrian state for many decades, the SPÖ. Today, the FPÖ is one of the most experienced, best organised and established populist right wing parties in Europe. It succeeds in avoiding many of the mistakes of similar parties in other EU countries. For instance, it strongly criticised Madame Le Pen and her Front National in France for toying with the idea of leaving the European Union or the Euro Zone. Instead, the FPÖ calls on Austria to play a leading role in making the EU “more a Union of Fatherlands”, and in making the Euro a more “Nordic” currency (getting rid of Greece and possibly other southern members). It also condemned as ridiculous the proposal of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to have the Koran forbidden. None of this means that the positions and members of the FPÖ are any less “extremist” than in the days of Jörg Haider. But it should be recalled that Haider, before he died in a car crash, split off from the FPÖ and founded his own party, the BZÖ (now no longer in parliament). The FPÖ of today is not the same as the Haider FPÖ. It is more professional, more “market liberal”, and above all a current has disappeared which under Haider played a prominent role, the “Deutschnationalen”. This was the current which, partly out of nostalgia for the Third Reich, expressed sympathy with the idea of a “re-unification” of Austria with Germany. This option is at present anathema to the main factions of the Austrian (and also the German) bourgeoisie. In the past quarter of a century, the FPÖ has succeeded in making itself more acceptable both to the Austrian and to the European bourgeoisie. When Jörg Haider’s FPÖ formed a government with the ÖVP in 2000, there were big protest demonstrations on the streets of Austria and Europe, and the European Union imposed a kind of diplomatic semi-isolation on its Austrian member. Today the situation could hardly be more different. Not only the ÖVP, but also the SPÖ have signalled their readiness to govern with the FPÖ; there are no objections to be heard from the other European states, and so far no big protests either.
The present success of the FPÖ is another confirmation of the failure of the policy of the former ÖVP Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who justified forming a government in 2000 with Jörg Haider with the argument that involving the populists in power would rob them of their anti-establishment nimbus. Now the FPÖ is not only as strong as ever, it has been able to maintain its image as a protest party. It has partly learnt this at the provincial and regional levels, and partly, as the FPÖ themselves say, from the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. Although Orban has been the head of the Hungarian government for seven years now, he still partly succeeds in presenting himself as an oppositional force: in opposition to “Brussels”, to “finance capital” or to the “Open Society Foundation” of his favourite enemy, the Hungarian-American hedge fund billionaire George Soros. In fact, the “anti-establishment” reputation of the likes of the FPÖ is largely based on their readiness to advocate – and implement – measures which contradict some interests of the “elite”, and even the best interests of the national capital as a whole, but which are “popular” among parts of the electorate. The “business as usual” reaction of the bourgeoisie in Austria and in the rest of Europe does not mean they now think the FPÖ have become a reliable representative of their interests. It reflects in the first instance a certain resignation in face of the inevitable. Unable to resolve the problem of “populism”, which is a product of the rotting of its own social system, the bourgeoisie has to make the best of it, limiting as much as possible its negative effects.
The present hobby horse of the FPÖ is that Austria should “join” the Visegrad-Group, an informal regroupment of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, originally formed to counter the overweight of the older western members within the European Union institutions. No more than a loose coordination, it has gained a new impetus and prominence through the present refugee crisis and through the rise of populism in Europe. Hungary and Poland already have right wing “populist” governments. The ANO of Andrej Babis (known as “the Donald Trump of the Czech Republic – in fact he is Slovakian) has just won the elections in Prague. All four countries are in the forefront in refusing refugees and Muslims into their countries. After his electoral victory, Babis declared that he is counting on Austria and Sebastian Kurz joining what he sees as an “anti-liberal” front within the EU. The “Visegrad movement”, as it is now being called, tends to give populism an additional dimension by establishing a policy of “popular provocation” as part of relations between European Union governments. But the FPÖ has another provocation up its sleeve: it wants to “re-pose” the question of South Tirol, presently a northern Italian province which many in the FPÖ want to see return to Austria. Depending on whether or not the FPÖ joins the government, and how far it intends to go on this question, this could amount to the first putting in question of a border between two members of the European Union (the rule is that the EU does not allow membership of countries which dispute borders with EU countries).
The partisans of political stability, and not only within Austria itself, would have preferred it if the previous coalition under Christian Kern could have continued its work. The SPÖ and even the ÖVP still have the reputation of being the two most responsible and reliable state parties. Between the two of them, they would have a stable majority to form a new coalition now, this time under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz. But precisely this option appears in many ways as the most problematic. Because Kurz campaigned against the Grand Coalition, not only the votes for the FPÖ, but also those for the ÖVP appear as votes against the Grand Coalition. To ignore this would mean putting the political leadership of the country in blatant contradiction with its own democratic ideology. The dilemma of the Austrian bourgeoisie today is that the viable alternatives to a Grand Coalition both involve having the FPÖ in government.
A few weeks before the Austrian elections, the German bourgeoisie, at its general election, was able to respond to the rise of the right wing “populist” Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) by creating a new six party constellation in parliament. The option of bringing to an end the Grand Coalition (Christian and Social Democrats) in Berlin was opened up by bringing the liberal FDP back into parliament. If the establishment of a so-called Jamaika-Coalition between the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens (presently under negotiation) succeeds, the AfD in Germany will not only be kept at arm’s length from governmental responsibility, it will also be prevented (by the SPD) from being the biggest opposition party in the new Bundestag. No such precautions were taken in Austria. On the contrary. The electoral campaign there was dominated by a brutal power struggle between the SPÖ and the ÖVP to the extent that Kern and Kurz seemed completely oblivious to anything else. The contest between the two took on such scandalous proportions (blatant defamations and intrigues) that the FPÖ (normally the provocateur par excellence) was able to remain calmly on the sidelines, presenting itself on its best behaviour. Under these circumstances, nobody paid much attention to the fact that the Greens (the only established party maintaining the “refugees welcome” slogan) were being buried beneath the monstrously xenophobic electoral campaign of all three of the bigger parties, and were splitting on account of a power struggle within their ranks. The result was that the Greens are no longer represented in the new parliament. This is a party which the Austrian bourgeoisie had been trying for years to encourage as an additional governmental option, as a possible alternative to the FPÖ.
After World War I, Vienna was still one of the great centres of cultural activity and of learning in Europe. During those years, one of the main centres of intellectual life there was the regular public, one man dialogue of the most celebrated figure of Viennese culture at the time. This person was not Sigmund Freud (the father of psychoanalysis) or Robert Musil (one of the creators of the modern novel) or Arnold Schönberg (who revolutionised modern “classical” music). It was a man called Karl Kraus. Kraus was able, on the basis of an analysis of changes in the local Vienna slang, or the way headlines in the sensationalist press, or death announcements were formulated, to detect what was going on in society – and not only in Austria. He was like someone looking at a single raindrop and seeing reflected there the whole surrounding landscape in every detail. Instead of ignoring these details, instead of getting lost in them, he strove to unlock the general truths contained in the more significant specificities. It is clear that the analysis of the elections in Austria today can also help us to better understand the world political situation as a whole. Austria is one of the countries in Europe where contemporary right-wing populism developed earliest and most. Today the FPÖ is on a par with the two traditional established parties in Austria. Like the Brexiteers in Britain, the Trumpists in the United States or the Independentists in Catalonia, they are ready to do things which mobilise people behind them, even when these things sometimes contradict the interests of capital and even their own particular interests.
Perhaps the most striking specificity of Austria, which favours the development of populism there, and which at the same time represents a general tendency in contemporary capitalism, is the decline of its party political apparatus. The SPÖ and the ÖVP have had such an undisputed monopoly of party political power and privileges for over three quarter of a century now, that they are for the most part more concerned with protecting their own vested interests than with doing their job for capital. They are also increasingly discredited in the eyes of a significant part of the population. It is in relation to this question that Sebastian Kurz has put forward something like a political project of his own: “Rationalising”, “cutting down to size” the apparatus of the ÖVP. If he is serious about this, it will entail party members losing their privileges and even their jobs. This would inevitably create new conflicts, this time within the ÖVP itself. On account of its inability to put forward a perspective for society as a whole, the ruling class has enormous difficulties in renewing its party political apparatus. With the recent elections, Austria seems to be sinking deeper into the quagmire of its political crisis in the context of capitalist decomposition.
Steinklopfer. 23.10.2017
On the 11th November, the ICC is hosting a Day of Discussion [1638] on the Russian Revolution. Several comrades have been already been reflecting seriously on the importance of this all-important episode in the history of working class struggle. A comrade on our discussion board, Link, has already reposted a presentation he prepared for a previous meeting on the topic. It can be found on our discussion forum here [1639].
The text that follows has been sent to us by a close sympathiser of the ICC. We are publishing it in the hope that as many comrades as possible will read it prior to the meeting in the hope that it will stimulate further thought and discussion.
We encourage all comrades to attend the meeting if they are able and to consider making further contributions, either in the form of texts or participating on our forum.
The revolutionary events in Russia in 1917, "the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny", (Trotsky) the uprising of millions of proletarians, poor peasants and soldiers, together with the revolutionary wave which it started from Finland to Sicily, from the Ruhr to the Urals, with influences in the USA, Spain, China or Argentina, the hopes which it raised among millions of oppressed in the world, cannot be approached from a narrow ideological affiliation. The Russian Revolution and the international revolutionary wave which it initiated, its critical assessment and its contributions to the communist programme, belongs to oppressed humanity as a whole, in its age-old struggle against the oppression of man by man, and particularly to the perspective of the communist alternative, which is still to be written, and which is led by the revolutionary proletariat.
Increasingly incapable of offering a positive project that justifies and supports the maintenance of the domination of capitalist social and production relations, the international bourgeoisie focuses above all on repeating that there is no alternative to its rule, or if any, this would be even worse, leading necessarily to Nazi or Stalinist-kind “totalitarianism”. The identification (i.e., denigration and ridicule) of the communist historical alternative with different forms of especially brutal red-wrapped state capitalism is undoubtedly the main ideological dogma, along with the one of "democracy", which uses capitalist civilization, corroded by its contradictions, to sustain itself. It is in this context that one must place the (not new of course) campaigns of ridicule and denigration of the revolutionary experience in Russia in 1917 and, by extension, of the international revolutionary wave which followed it.
In this strategy of falsification of the Russian Revolution there is at play a prominent role for the false polarization between "supporters" and "opponents" of this lie within the bourgeois ideological and political spectrum. The "supporters" with Stalinists, Trotskyists or Maoists positions (from the crude paleo-Stalinist versions to the more neo-social democratic variations which ridicule the revolution, turning it into an exercise in a “follow-my-leader” attitude on the part of powerless masses, in intrigues and manoeuvres by professional politicians and "genial bosses”, in messianism and personality cult (whether for Lenin, Trotsky, or Stalin) under a narrow Russian framework. In other words, they present the proletarian revolution as if it were vulgar bourgeois politics, of which these currents form its left wing, applying the pattern of "revolutions" (power struggles between national and international factions of the ruling class, using the discontented populations as cannon fodder for interests outside of their own) in China, Cuba, Vietnam or Venezuela. Its "defence" of the Russian Revolution is the worst ridicule.
The anarchist current bases its alleged "criticism" of the Russian experience on the same bourgeois dogma and patterns of its "defenders" from the left wing of capital: the Russian revolution as a "putsch" led by manipulative elements who use the masses for their own interests, and the identification of the marxist method and the communist historical perspective with Stalinism and similar regimes. In addition, in an exercise in cynicism typical of bourgeois politics, this current, while denigrating marxism and communism, hides or manipulates its collaboration with Stalinism in the 1930s in Spain, its "proud" participation in the "French resistance" under the bourgeois and Stalinist banner in WW2, or its support for bourgeois factions under the "democratic confederalism" discourse of Kurdish militias. Anarchism engages in a work of historical falsification by fraudulently vindicating the revolutionary sailors of Kronstadt (determined supporters of the "authoritarian coup" led by the Bolsheviks in October 1917) or the workers' insurrection in May 1937 in Barcelona (against the republican State of which the CNT was part, collaborating in its "pacification”). Actually, it should rather vindicate Kropotkin and the Manifesto of the Sixteen, the Spanish anarchist ministers, or the crypto-Stalinist Abdullah Öcalan, as a legitimate member of the extreme left of the political and ideological spectrum of capital.
The clearest and most sincerely revolutionary elements within anarchism, such as Victor Serge or some of the most combative fractions of Spanish working class anarchism, embraced the path of the need for the insurrection and the revolutionary dictatorship concretized by Bolshevism.
This strategy of denial of the possibility of a viable alternative to the dictatorship of capital by the bourgeoisie finds a fertile historical ground in the current incapacity of the proletariat to pose a political and social alternative. The phenomena which objectively show the historical crisis of bourgeois society through its inability to solve them (chronic economic crisis, mass unemployment, unending imperialist wars, terrorism and gangsterism, etc.), in the absence of a social and political alternative, become elements which underpin the rule of the capitalist class, which consciously makes use of them. The bourgeoisie consciously strikes on hot iron. In fact, for the bourgeoisie, within the limits of a certain maintenance of "public order", bourgeois property, circulation of goods, and the existence of a capable and willing labour force, given its inability to solve the contradictions of its system, the worse the better. The capitalist class has no problem in taking refuge in armed bunkers surrounded by poverty, like in the mega cities of Latin America. Without a revolutionary alternative, the capitalist mode of production will plunge society into barbarism.
The bonding and unifying organs of proletarian struggle are not to be found in the happy kingdom of "workers' democracy", but on a new battlefield, in a higher historical level, between, on the one hand, the positions of the bourgeoisie and its agents, and on the other, those which lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are a necessary but not sufficient condition to break bourgeois power. Any uncritical illusion in the formality of "workers' democracy" in its different forms (assemblyism, councilism, etc.) politically disarms the proletarian alternative.
The leftist vision (coherent with its bourgeois approach) of the Bolsheviks, and more in particular, their leaders, as a triumphal, homogenous body, acclaimed by the masses in speeches in bourgeois electoral circus fashion, is again a complete falsification of the conditions under which revolutionary activity takes place. The Bolsheviks, until a few weeks before the October insurrection, are in a clear minority, in some cases in a situation of clandestinity, with deep discussions and confrontations in their ranks, finding rejection if not hostility from wide sectors of the proletariat and poor peasants, not to mention of course the “respectable” democrats and socialists who, as in Germany the following year with the Spartacists, will incite their murder once they have posed a threat.
The great strength of the Bolsheviks is the understanding that revolutionary activity is not the adaptation to bourgeois ideology and weaknesses of the proletariat, diluting themselves opportunistically in it, but on the contrary, means standing firm and patient and trying to be an active factor in the elevation of the communist political consciousness within the revolutionary proletariat. And this can only take place in the framework of positions and theoretical-practical activity in opposition to the "respectability" of bourgeois order.
Another major merit and contribution to the communist program of the Bolsheviks is their conscious acknowledgement that the class struggle is above all a relation of forces between two projects of society, between two powers. The proletarian revolution is not a beautiful democratic ideal of the “whole people”, nor the realization of "workers” democracy". Although the formation of unifying organs (mass assemblies and workers' councils) are a necessary condition to break capitalism's normality of proletarian atomization and de-politicization, they are not sufficient in themselves to isolate the bourgeoisie and its State, to destroy its power. Without the communist programme, without revolutionary theory, the effort, combativeness and heroism of the masses is in vain. Even in a revolutionary situation, workers' councils can commit hara-kiri and dig their own grave by giving the power to the bourgeois State, through their "representatives", as was shown in Germany when the SPD and USPD dominated councils gave up their power to the National Assembly, or in Spain in 1936 with the renunciation of power by the CNT in favour of the collaboration with the Republican state.
As an irony of history, it was precisely under conditions of Russian backwardness that a challenge was made to the vulgar materialism present in a large part of the organizations of the 2nd International, which defended the need to go through a phase of bourgeois democracy (with its parliaments, legal unions, etc.) before socialism could be introduced. What was crucial in 1917 were the general historical conditions of proletarian struggle at that moment in world capitalism. And these conditions meant that the proletariat as a political and social force could only take shape and express itself in rupture with the capitalist normality which atomizes and divides it. A year later, at the end of 1918, the same question arises in Germany: either workers' councils or national assembly. That is to say: either the maintenance of the permanent mobilization of the proletariat through its unifying organs of power, or the extinction of these organs and the dissolution of the proletariat into an atomized and powerless mass.
A new period begins for the class struggle. A period in which the proletarian class can only exist as a social and political force "in rupture". The acknowledgement that the class struggle is at a qualitatively higher historical level, a level at which the proletariat, in order to exist as an autonomous and antagonistic social and political force to the existing order, as a class, must confront what every day denies and prevents it as such. This means that the methods and dynamics which the proletarian class needs to assert its living conditions and its human nature, to assert itself as a collective force against capitalist social and production relations and the bourgeoisie in this historical period demands a profound confrontation with the "everyday normality", a profound questioning of its position; in short, a rupture with the daily domination of capitalist social relations, a social, organizational, and political rupture. In other words: in decadent capitalism the proletariat as a collective social and political force can only exist in rupture with everything which denies it precisely as a collective social and political force. It is in "backward Russia," precisely because it didn't fit in the patterns of vulgar materialism of the time, because it didn't go through a phase of legality, of stable and legal mass organizations, of democratic mystification, because of the need of the proletariat and poor peasants to defend themselves against the capitalist and landlord class, where the first great act (after 1905) of the class struggle of the future took place.
As stated above, in coherence with its view of the class struggle as a confrontation and a relationship of forces between two antagonistic historical projects, and not the realization of a "beautiful ideal" or of "workers' democracy", comes the audacity and the coherent acknowledgement by the Bolsheviks of the natural consequences of the proletarian revolution: the destruction of the bourgeois state, the abolition of bourgeois democracy, and the preparation and assumption of the historical necessity of the international expansion of revolution and civil war. The abolition of the bourgeois Constituent Assembly and the disregard for the mystique of power and the results of "democratic" elections (in which the Bolsheviks and Left SR by no means had a mathematical majority) in favour of the power of the armed soviets under Bolshevik influence in a context of favourable relations of forces for the seizure of power, will henceforth stand among the major programmatic points of the communist revolution. The alternative to this would have been to hand over power to the forces of "democracy" and the bourgeois state, preparing the ground for the counter-revolution. By acting in this way, the Bolsheviks of 1917 would have placed themselves in the same counter-revolutionary historical situation as the German SPD or the Spanish CNT, instead of occupying a place of honour in the historical programme for communism.
To understand the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from beacon of the world communist revolution to a capitalist state, the theoretical and practical vanguard of international counter-revolution, it is necessary to understand the nature and acting forces of the proletarian revolution. To understand the causes and nature of a counter-revolution, it is necessary to understand the revolution. The "mystery" of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution cannot be understood without understanding that the fuel of the revolution was exhausted: the most advanced and combative detachments of the proletariat (the backbone and driving force of the revolution) were physically and morally decimated and atomized in a bloody civil war against an army of mercenaries of the international bourgeoisie, by the terrible misery caused by eight years of war and economic strangulation of the world bourgeoisie, and by the stagnation of the world revolution. With the failure of the revolutionary attempts in the rest of Europe, which could have broken this blockade and added oxygen to the revolutionary fire, the fuel and revolutionary momentum was extinguished step by step. Karl Marx's statement that "the emancipation of the working class must be the task of the workers themselves" is not a mere empty slogan or an ode to self-management, it expresses among other things the idea that only the proletariat in struggle can provide the social and political fuel necessary to lead a struggle and an alternative to capitalism.
Deprived of this fuel, what was left of the Russian revolution was its state and the institutional structure for the management of the territory, showing itself increasingly antagonistic to the interests and needs of the population, and irremediably taking an autonomous life for its own development and survival under a world ruled by capitalist social and production relations. All kinds of unscrupulous careerists and social climbers, the natural eco-system of the bourgeois state and political apparatus, occupy the apparatus of the state and the Communist Party, both in the USSR and in the organizations of the Stalinized Communist International. This regime, formal heir to and at the same time an expression of the defeat and death by suffocation of the Russian Revolution, would make use of the greatest brutality for its internal and external preservation (starting with the elimination of revolutionary militants) and the greatest cynicism using all kinds of pseudo-marxist and pseudo-revolutionary phraseology to keep its influence and prestige among the oppressed at the international level. The international bourgeoisie (with the collaboration of its left wing) will make use ad nauseam of this precious historical gift of the identification of different forms of state capitalism with the communist alternative to bourgeois society. In fact, as said above, together with the "democratic" farce, it has become one of the main ideological arguments to justify its domination. The perspective of the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism will have to break with those two dogmas, or it won't happen at all.
It is necessary not to forget that, despite the extremely valuable lessons of the Russian Revolution, and the fact that, as stated above, it expresses the general conditions of the class struggle in decadent capitalism, these historical conditions will never occur again in exactly the same way. In several respects. First, because at that time there was an underestimation of the international bourgeoisie towards the proletarian communist threat: sealed trains for revolutionaries won't occur again, nor will “foreign” revolutionaries simply be deported to the revolutionary stronghold. The conditions of a Trotsky cornered and finally assassinated with the complicity of the international bourgeoisie will be the norm.
The revolutions of the future most probably won't confront either a political and ideological apparatus of mystification and channelling as little developed as the one in Russia in 1917: they will be confronted with a whole range of left wing and extreme left organizations directly or indirectly at the service of the bourgeoisie and its state, organizations whose main task will be to disarm theoretically and practically the revolutionary proletariat.
D. August 2017
The history of Turkey, particularly its relatively recent history, is a complex one and we can't possibly cover all of it in one article. For example, we will produce a separate piece to look at the intimately-related "Kurdish Question", in which the demand for national self-determination was already an anachronism at the turn of last century. But in looking at some significant examples of the operations of the Turkish state from its inception, and particularly since the 1990's, we can clearly identify the global developments of economic crisis, repression, militarism and irrationality that have marked the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. We can ask the questions of what global components of the decadence of capitalism, and what specific elements of Turkey's past, affect and direct the present situation of a totalitarian, militarised and increasingly Islamicised state; and we can also ask to what extent this dire situation is the result of the unbridled ambition of one man and his "vision" or whether it represents the latest twists of Turkish imperialism in the increasing chaos in the Middle East imposed on it by a generalised capitalist decomposition.
The new Turkish "empire" resurrected from the past
But first let's start nearly a thousand years ago, with the Battle of Manzikert, 1071, where a Turkic tribe from Central Asia routed the Christians in Byzantium and started a chain of events which allowed the Seljuk Turks to capture the lands of modern Turkey and create an empire stretching across modern-day Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Syria, thus laying the ground for the construction of the mighty transcontinental Ottoman Empire. The rather obscure fact of the Manzikert battle is important for our investigation because it has been talked about a lot recently by Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey. The fact that much of the story is lies, exaggeration and wishful thinking doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter to any other scurrilous politician who wants to take us back to a mythical and rose-coloured "great past of the nation". It won't stop Bilal Erdogan for example, the son of Recip directing Turkey's education policy (who because of his - and his family’s - financial dealings with the 'Caliphate' earned the name of "oil minister to Isis"), drumming up the example of Manzikert in Turkey’s now heavily Islamicised schools. The religious schools, the Imam Hatip Lisesi (IHL), have grown from 23,000 to well over a million pupils in a year and, in most cases, evolution theory and physics have been dropped or downgraded, with many thousands of teachers intimidated, sacked or imprisoned so that the loaded concept of jihad can be taught to what President Erdogan now calls, the "Pious Generation" in schools under surveillance by the religious police. The Wall Street Journal recently called Turkey "the other Islamic State".
Apart from Erdogan's preparations for the millennial anniversary in 2071, he has also been laying out his vision for the challenges facing the "New Turkey" over the next two decades. At fiercely nationalist rallies, imbued with the trappings of the Ottoman Empire, including scimitar-wielding soldiers in traditional garb and soldiers playing Ottoman-style instruments, Erdogan has talked about the emergence and prospects of the "New Turkey" for the next twenty years, based on the Grand Vision he laid out in the 4th Congress of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2013. He has subsequently elaborated that Turkey would become the "Epicentre" of the Middle East, a New Middle East where Turkey holds a central and model role (New York Times, 24.9.17), "A great nation, a great power... where brother and sister Arabs with the same civilisation and common history... work together". Erdogan is prone to ranting, changing his mind and exaggeration, but there's no doubt that under his leadership Turkish imperialism is going to try to reassert itself over the region of the Middle East and beyond. Erdogan's praise for the past poses the vision for the new Turkish "empire". The hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish state in 2023, much vaunted by and campaigned around by Erdogan, carries the idea that his country will become as powerful and influential as the Ottoman Empire was during its heyday. And today Turkey is indeed becoming the "Epicentre", but the epicentre of capitalist decomposition where centrifugal tendencies, corruption, the cynical use of refugees, debt and war predominate.
The geostrategic position of Turkey and its role in the birth of the country from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire
Turkey is both a barrier and a bridge between two continents at the very centre of imperialist rivalries that date back well before the existence of the country; and its geographical position and size gives it the ability to shape events around the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Its geographical position gave it the ability to hold back Russia from its passage via the Black Sea into the warm waters of the Mediterranean, and this made it of central importance in the 19th century for France and Britain in their rivalry with the Czarist state. This was a key issue during the Crimean War, ending in defeat for Russia, which was registered in the Treaty of Paris in March 1856. The war marked the ascendency of France as a major power, continued the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which Britain wanted to maintain against Russia, thus giving it a brief lease of life. It also saw the beginning of the end of Czarist rule. It was successful for Britain in reducing and confining the Russian fleet to the Black Sea, leaving Britain free to "rule the waves" for the next two or three decades. The war accelerated the decay of the Eurasian and African-wide Ottoman Empire, with nationalist ambitions arising in its various constituent parts, sponsored or influenced by Britain and France. The Empire had already been weakening since the 1820's with the internal decay of its ruling class, originating in fetters that were more akin to Asiatic despotism than a pre-capitalist feudalism. It was unable to staunch the tide of capitalism whose framework is the nation state, and the national movements which resulted in independence for Greece in 1832, Serbia in 1867 and Bulgaria in 1878 further accelerated its decline.
There were tensions within the Ottoman state apparatus itself, with some elements welcoming capitalist relations; the same relations which when implemented gave rise to workers' struggles from the 1860's into the early 1900's, including Christian and Muslim shipyard workers striking together in Kasimpasha (in modern day Turkey) and larger strikes in Constantinople in various industries involving workers from different ethnicities and religions fighting side by side[i]. The subsequent break-up of the Empire, from Bulgaria to Arabia, would be exploited by the major powers during and after World War I where, in the image of its decadence, imperialism would draw up the new frontiers. The world war was in fact the final nail in its coffin. Turkey came into the war on the side of Germany after its resources had been greatly depleted in the Balkan Wars of 1912/13. There had already been growing German influence on the Ottomans before the war with the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway, and their attack on Russia as one the Central Powers brought Russia's now allies, Britain and France, to declare war on them in November 1914[ii].
The rise of Kurdish nationalism is entirely linked to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It first appeared in 1880 when the Ottoman rulers used mainly Kurdish forces to protect their borders against Russia. To this end they co-opted powerful Kurdish leaders to its government and the latter gave considerable support to the regime, including being involved in the massacres of Armenians at the end of the 19th century and fighting for them during the First World War. Attempts at Kurdish independence, promoted by the British for their own imperialist ends, were squashed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. A real Kurdish independence could not survive the shocks of World War One and its subsequent convulsions and many thousands of Kurds were displaced and perished, following a pattern that preceded the war. The Kurds were mainly against the secularisation policies of Kemal Ataturk and his new regime and a number of Kurdish revolts were violently repressed by the Turkish state through the 20's and 30's.
The new Turkish state, born through violence and genocide
The residues of the decomposing Ottoman Empire were carved-up by the European colonial powers, particularly Britain and France. In 1916, the French and British, with the assent of Imperial Russia, drew up the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. This plan divided up zones of interest and imposed arbitrary borders, giving rise to Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Lebanon and the formation of the modern Turkish state, the Turkish Republic founded by its first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in 1923. The terms of the Republic were codified by the major powers in the Treaty of Lausanne signed in July 1923. It brought an official end to the conflicts of the war and defined Turkey's borders and its relationship with its neighbours. Turkey was to cede all claims to the remnants of the Ottoman Empire[iii]. The break-up of the Empire and the character of the "nations" born from its ruins show the inescapable dynamics of capitalism's decadence and its descent into full-blown imperialism as outlined by Rosa Luxemburg in her 1915, Junius Pamphlet: "Imperialism is not the creation of one or of any group of states. It is a product of a particular stage in the ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognised only in all its relations and from which no nation can hold aloof".
Thus the new Turkish state was born out of the decay of the Ottoman Empire and plunged straight into the whirlpool of capitalism's decadence, a whirlpool of violence, war, state capitalism and ethnic cleansing. One of the first recorded incidents of capitalist genocide took place under the new regime, with one-and-a-half million Armenians dying as a result of forced marches, rape and murder in May 1915. Up to a similar number of Greeks were killed by the Turks and over a quarter-million Assyrians at the end of World War I. Pogroms were carried out in Turkey, including those against its substantial Alevi minority[iv]. Religion was frowned upon by the new ruling class, the nascent bourgeoisie, the leading cadres of which had fought against the old regime. The Ottoman Caliphate was abolished along with Sharia courts. They abolished all the trappings of the Ulamas (Islamic religious leaders), purged them from the state apparatus and transferred their wealth and property to the treasury. Kemalism's fight against religion was also the struggle against the old regime. Kemal was from the very first determined to crush any attempt at Kurdish resistance: "There were no Kurdish representatives at the Lausanne Conference and the Kurds played no role in the presence of non-Muslim minorities - Armenians, Greeks and Jews in Turkey"[v]. Kemal Ataturk's regime was further strengthened by support of the Bolsheviks in their disastrous foreign policy which was made official in 1921.
The secular republic was an early expression of state capitalism and this was an expression of the necessity for the Turkish "rump" of the old empire to survive and compete. The early concentration of power in the secular Turkish state explains why the army has always been central to Turkish politics.
The Kemalists had to create a secular Turkey that hardly existed in anyone's mind so it took time to take hold and its grip was far from solid. The religious fervour of the Menemen incident, an Islamist inspired revolt in 1930, and various Kurdish uprisings, are examples of these upheavals. The Kemalists allowed two official opposition parties (the Progressive Republican Party, 1924, and the Free Republican Party, 1930), but both had strong religious elements and were closed down by the state in a very short time[vi].
As far as the working class was concerned it followed and deepened the struggles that had taken place under the Ottoman ruling class. The appearance of a communist left, a left wing of the Turkish communist party (TKP) paralleled the development of these struggles and both took place in very dangerous and sometimes deadly situations for revolutionaries and workers. This was an expression of the revolutionary wave that was sweeping the world, and some of these left communists had been involved in the Spartacist uprisings in Germany and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The reality of the workers' situation meant that they clearly confronted the now reactionary nature of "national liberation" from the outset. From Mayday 1920 through most of the twenties, strikes and demonstrations broke out amongst workers in Turkey with frequent internationalist slogans and banners raised in solidarity with workers' struggle everywhere[vii].
Turkey remained a powerful component of imperialism up to and into the Second World War. Due to the historic conditions imperialist tensions had sharpened primarily in the Far East in the thirties and were just brewing in Europe. This is why in the 30's Kemal Ataturk's policy could still steer clear of foreign intervention, enabling him to focus on stabilising his internal power. This was apart from one exception in 1937-38, when he risked war with France by trying to annex the Alexandretta province of the then French-held Syria. There were also concerns about the position of Mosul, but his policy of “non-intervention” lasted after his death and into the 1939 world war. Prior to that there were factions in the Turkish bourgeoisie that wanted to align with Germany, and there was a "non-aggression" pact between the two countries but there were also secret agreements and pacts with the British. The Allies were generally satisfied with Turkish neutrality during the war and its position blocking German access to Middle Eastern oil. It also denied Germany access to its vast resources of chromium, which is vital for military production and which the Allies had plenty of access to elsewhere[viii]. In February 1945, Turkey declared war on the Axis forces.
1945 - 1990: Cold War, coups and continuity of sorts
Again, given the importance of Turkey's geostrategic position at the onset of capitalism's decadence, the same imperialist conditions applied even more so during the Cold War. Under US and British auspices, Turkey became one of the original members of the United Nations in 1945, fought for the West in Korea, and by 1952 was a member of NATO. Right after the war Russia was leaning heavily on Turkey for the establishment of military bases in Turkey and for free access for its navy through the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits (the so-called "Straits Crisis"). This move was countered by the Truman Doctrine of 1947, where America guaranteed the security of Greece and Turkey against Russia. It was followed by massive US economic and military aid to Turkey which was now a secure part of the western bloc. Turkey was one of the first countries to take part in Operation Gladio, a clandestine NATO-based structure with links to the secret services, bourgeois elites and organised crime[ix] .
The merchant and small producer class in Turkey became flush with capital from the war and their interests came up against the state capitalist imperatives of the Kemalists. Their ability to invest and accumulate was hobbled by the restrictions imposed on them by the centralised grip of Kemalism. Thus arose the legal opposition force of the Democratic Party, unseating the Kemalist Republican People's Party which had ruled during the "single party period" from 1923 to 1945. The former was made up of some elements of the latter, and while it facilitated the rise of Islam, it did nothing to endanger Turkey's membership of NATO and even encouraged moves towards the West; nor did it encourage any attempt of Kurdish nationalism. The hardships and shortages of the war, along with the government's emergency measures, badly affected large sections of the peasantry. The new electoral process gave the rural vote a great weight. The one element of difference (there wasn't much else) between the Republican Peoples’ Party and the Democratic Party was the latter's attitude to religion, demanding greater respect for it and less interference from the state. This mobilised large numbers of the rural population including many Islamist elements. The RPP was forced to go after the rural/religious vote and this led to a relaxation of interference with religion.
The tenure of the DP came to an end in the 1960 coup, the first of several such "adjustments" by the Turkish state between 1960 and 1997. The coup was led by military elements set up for Operation Gladio. One of the legacies of the DP was to see the strengthening and expansion of Islamism in Turkey which was also related to increased agricultural output and the prosperity of the merchants and petty-bourgeoisie along with the weight of the rural vote. These latter elements used Islam as a rallying cry against the regime and they eventually coalesced in the National Salvation Party founded in 1972.
As the global economic crisis hit at the end of the 60's and US aid tailed off, rapid industrialisation and rural migration in Turkey led to rising waves of workers' militancy, peasant occupations and demonstrations. Unofficial Islam grew alongside “official” Islam, producing madrasas, youth clubs, associations and a number of publications. Various religious brotherhoods flourished and armed street confrontations took place between them, the security forces and fascist and leftist groups. Around this time the Muslim Brotherhood[x] made its first appearance in Turkey. It was significant that the working class stayed well off this poisonous terrain, taking up its own means of struggle, strikes, demonstrations, etc., even if more or less controlled by the unions.
An event in the 1970's presaged the coming period of decomposition where the cement of the bloc structures was to become less stable and centrifugal tendencies were to prevail. Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus in 1974, giving rise to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus - recognised only by Turkey to this day. This was significant in that it was a war between two NATO countries. It was an indication of how the tendencies to "each for themselves" would be imposed with the collapse of the Russian bloc a decade and a half later. Another portent of decomposition, one that didn't come directly from the imperialist ambitions of the Turkish state, was the "third way" (between the two blocs) advocated by Turkish Maoist groups. These forces fought a "people's war" in the 70's and 80's, influenced the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and, not for the last time, brought together elements of the capitalist left and Islamic fundamentalism[xi].
The 1971 military coup was aimed at dealing with a state of chaos that included both workers' unrest and the rise of aggressive fascist and Islamist movements. The military high command took effective power with the support of the US and pursued the class war against workers and enacted anti-leftist and anti-Kurdish separatist policies. Turkey became all the more important for the US in the region following the overthrow of its major pawn in the region, the Shah of Iran, in the late seventies, but it was itself nearing chaos with workers' strikes and demonstrations, three-digit inflation, Maoist agitation, and the rise of the fascist 'Grey Wolves' openly working with the state. In Taksim Square on Mayday 1977, half-a-million demonstrated and dozens were killed, many injured and thousands arrested in the state's repression. The upheavals eventually resulted in the 1980 military coup backed by the US and Britain and involving the CIA, the US ITT corporation and forces of the Gladio counter-guerrilla. Military order was restored. By 1997 the Turkish army was the second largest in NATO with over 700,000 soldiers.
The rest of the 80's saw the Turkish bourgeoisie in relative control, even applying for full membership of the EEC (of which it had been an associate member since 1963). The main event in this period, which is covered by us elsewhere, was the full-scale insurgency of the 1978-founded Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), whose terror the Turkish state responded to in spades.
The 1989 implosion of the Soviet Union: consequences for Turkey and NATO
The collapse of the Russian-led bloc in 1989 also signalled the end of the two-bloc constellation and this had profound consequences for Turkey given its geostrategic history and weight. All the factors of decomposition enter the scene and worsen the situation: militaristic chaos; imperialist ambitions in the context of each for themselves; the irrationality of rising religious fundamentalism; strengthening totalitarian tendencies; outright repression against impossible-to-fulfil nationalist ambitions; up and down relations with other nations; and the arrival of millions of refugees and the displaced, a consequence of all these developments, one that has been used as a weapon of imperialism. The "new", strong Turkey emerging is thus an illustration of capitalist weakness and decomposition. Instead of the "victory" of capitalism and its dominant superpower, the USA, we see the weakening of the latter in the face of the economic and political instability, irrationality and unpredictability, of which the Middle East, with Turkey at the centre of it, is a prime example.
During the Cold War Turkey was a main bastion of the West against Russia. Once Russia collapsed, once the threat against Turkey was gone, Turkey didn't have the same need for NATO. Even the recent annexation of Crimea in 2014 by Russia hasn't seemed to threaten Turkey. In fact the growing relationship between Turkey and Russia is of some concern to the West. Turkey benefited from the Russian invasion of Crimea to the extent that it managed to obtain cheap energy sanctioned by the West. Russia continues to rely on Turkey for keeping its straits open, giving access for its navy to the warm water seas. With Russia no longer threatening its eastern flank, and accommodations between the two countries on its western, Syrian flank (though these are certainly not written in stone), Turkey's need for NATO has shrunk. On its eastern flank Turkey has deepened its relations with Azerbaijan whose oil and gas are exactly what Turkey is lacking, its "missing link". Since the collapse of Russia, Turkey has developed close cultural, economic and military ties with Azerbaijan and supported it in its 2016 war with Russian-backed Armenia, whose "independent republic of Nargono-Karabakh" Turkey still refuses to recognise. But, overall, just as Turkey's need of NATO has declined so NATO's need of Turkey has increased.
Through the pursuance of its own, independent ambitions, which means it no longer submits itself to any military alliance, discipline or agreements, Turkey has not only become unreliable but unpredictable. Already in 2003, when the US was facing problems in Iraq, the Turkish parliament refused the stationing of US troops in Eastern Anatolia that the latter hoped would be used as springboard. To be committed to confronting Russia becomes an unnecessary and unwanted burden for Turkey and instead of this we see tendencies the other way, towards rapprochement with Russia, which makes Turkey a force in itself undermining and weakening NATO. If Russia manages to pull Turkey into its orbit, along with Iran, it will strengthen the former enormously. In this direction Turkey has just finalised the deal to buy Russia's S-400 missile system and has had talks with Russia over Syria in mid-November, with further talks to come in Sochi with both Putin and Iran.
Given the large and concentrated numbers of Turkish and Kurdish emigrant workers around the world, and particularly those in Germany and the rest of Europe, there is a clear danger of these elements being mobilised behind nationalist interests. Turkish imperialism has the means for the propagation of its perceived interests to its Diaspora in the form of the Milli Gorus (national/religious vision) organisation, formed in 1969[xii].
It took some time, as it did with many western politicians, for the consequences of the collapse of Russia to sink in. The Turkish economy was performing relatively well even though debt was racking up. In the late 90's Turkey joined the EU customs union and in 2005 started negotiations around access to the EU. During this period the secular/Kemalist army coup of 1997, finally occasioned by an anti-Israeli demonstration festooned with images of Hamas and Hezbollah, removed the Islamist leader Erbakan and forced the ban on religious expressions and institutions. The Turkish army thus made another of its "balanced adjustments". Coming up on the wing at this time was former footballer and ex-mayor of Istanbul, Recip Erdogan who, though still banned from politics because of his Islamist affectations, helped set up the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. He declared that the party would not have an Islamic axis.
The rise of Recip Tayyip Erdogan
The AKP came to power in Turkey in 2002 in a landslide victory after squabbling ruling class factions drove the country to near-bankruptcy, forcing an IMF bail-out in the previous year. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 when emigration of Turkish workers, a powerful pressure-relief-valve for the Turkish economy, was slowing down and when, more generally in the Middle East, there was a weakening of the more secular powers and a rise of religious fundamentalism. Thanks to a network of mafia-type structures, corruption and clannism within the AKP, Erdogan became prime minister and immediately began putting forward strong nationalist ambitions and projects: modernising infrastructure, job creation (even if low-paid) through debt and foreign investment within a wider and more ambitious Islamic fundamentalism that was based on more backward elements. In order to weaken the grip of the military, which remained a threat to the AKP, Erdogan struck a tactical alliance with the powerful cleric Fethullah Gulen, the leader of a pragmatic, transnational Islamist Hizmet (service) movement that was strong in the Turkish police, education, journalism and the judiciary. Gulen served Erdogan well, weakening the military and its secularism through his grip on the courts and various other shady manoeuvres and intrigues. The two men, in a faction fight within the Turkish bourgeoisie, fell out over corruption charges made against Erdogan and issues over Turkish intelligence (MIT)[xiii]. The Turkish state under Erdogan has since designated Gulen and his organisation as "terrorist". Erdogan has demanded the extradition of Gulen from the United States for his supposed role in the 2016 coup attempt, but the Americans are unlikely to comply given the weight that the Gulen organisation has for US imperialism and the message it would send to any potential "exile" that was useful for the State Department.
Since the 1980s in particular, there has been a rise of Islamic influence and increasing Islamic fundamentalism throughout the whole Middle East. For example in the election campaign of 1987 the wearing of the headscarf by women in public places such as schools, hospitals and state buildings was a big issue. As one of many counter-actions the army in 1997 opposed the plans of Erbakan to give equal status to the Iman Hatip Lisesi (IHL) as state-run schools. As a result the number of students of IHL dropped from around 500,000 in 1996/7 to around 100,000 in 2004/5. In 1998 Erdogan was condemned to a prison sentence of ten months (released after four) for "inciting religious hatred" and barred from standing in elections and from holding political office. In March 2008 the General State Attorney with the backing of the army was planning to declare the AKP illegal because it was becoming a "point of crystallisation of anti-secular activities" following the ending of the ban on wearing the headscarf at universities. Shortly afterwards the Supreme Court rejected the plan of the State Attorney. Consequently, Erdogan's AKP became all the more determined to trim the power of the army. However, after the split between Gulen and Erdogan there are now even more divisions between "white and black" Turks, the "Kemalites" and the "religious". In addition the Islamic groups are now divided into two wings. Since the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, all the attempts to "contain" the influence of Islamic forces and their penetration into the state structures have failed; in fact since the 1980's - as elsewhere (for example the rise of the Mujahedeen and Khomeini in Iran at the end of the 70's) - this rise of Islamic fundamentalism of different kinds reflects the more global flight towards an extremely reactionary religious militancy[xiv]. At the same time, with the army having exercised a decade-long iron fist against all oppositional groups (whether Islamic, Kurdish or other) this set up a false polarisation between an army presented as "undemocratic" and opposed to the true "democratic" forces, the AKP, who were no less authoritarian.
Today, the Erdogan clan is running the state as his own company with all the charges of corruption against them long since dropped and those involved in the judicial process around it purged. But behind the Erdogan clan lies a particular form of state totalitarianism, built on reactionary religious exclusion, rabid nationalist speeches and strong imperialist ambitions.
The refugee question manipulated by Turkish imperialism
Again, demonstrating the importance of its geostrategic position, Turkey is also a bridgehead for all the war-torn refugees from the Middle East. But the refugees are also used as a cynical exercise in blackmailing the EU. The EU has been paying large sums to Erdogan-AKP to hold the refugees back and Erdogan has often threatened to "let them go" and head towards Europe. To this end, Turkey has recently demanded another 3 billion euros from Europe by 2018 (Reuters, 16.11.17). The Turkish bourgeoisie has also been profiting from its people-smuggling organisation from Africa to Europe, which also throws a light on Turkey's imperialist aspirations towards the continent. Turkish embassies, consulates, companies and the like have spread across Africa, as have Turkish airlines. Using cheap, subsidised flights, would-be emigrants can fly from northern and sub-Saharan Africa to Turkey from where they are taken to the borders of Europe with necessary advice[xv] from the organised crime networks that permeate the Turkish state. Several times Erdogan has proposed a visa-free zone for Muslim countries, a sort of "Islamic Schengen" that Europe would see as a serious threat.
Along with Milli Gorus mentioned above, Turkey has a number of "NGO's" that push its imperialist interests. Among these is the "International Humanitarian Organisation" (IHH) that has major health projects in many African countries and is now present in dozens more. Its strengthening has coincided with Erdogan's many trips to Africa and a general build-up of Turkey's "soft" power that goes beyond Africa. The IHH is structured along Muslim Brotherhood "charity work" lines and in fact it contains cadres of the Brotherhood. It was this organisation that, under Erdogan's direction, launched the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" in 2010 which included elements of the left wing of capital that had no problem in cosying-up to their fellow Islamic fundamentalist crew[xvi]. Most of the medicines that the flotilla was carrying in this imperialist charade had expired before running into the subsequent Israeli blockade.
Turkey's use of soft power extends into its ally Pakistan, where its NGO, Kizilay, has built Ottoman-style mosques close to the Indian border. Erdogan has given his support to Pakistan over Kashmir, and in return the Pakistan regime has facilitated his purge of "Gulenist" elements in the Pak-Turk school chain. Both these countries need each other to stand up for their own interests against the US.
Erdogan strengthens his position and authority
After posing as a "friend" and "peace-maker" to the Kurds, soon after he became head of state Erdogan could no longer keep up the facade due to the electoral success of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) which threatened the AKP's parliamentary majority. But his about-face was mainly due to the success of the Kurdish YPG in gaining swathes of territory along the Syrian/Turkish border. Just as the Israeli bourgeoisie would like to be rid of the Palestinians then so too would Turkey with the Kurds. In July 2015 the Turkish military launched a virtual blitzkrieg against Kurdish separatist positions in the south-east, wiping out the wider civilian areas that were sheltering the Kurdish armed fighters.
Following the landslide victory with 49.8% votes for the AKP in 2011, in the June 2014 election this dropped to 40.9%. In addition, for the first time the Kurdish HDP got 13.1% and thus admission to the Turkish parliament. The result meant that Erdogan had not achieved the necessary two-thirds majority needed for changing the constitution. Obsessed with his goal of becoming the "new Sultan" of the neo-Ottoman Empire, Erdogan's AKP ordered the judicial apparatus to begin outlawing the Kurdish HDP. Under the combined effect of state-provoked terror, terrorist attacks from Isis and the PKK, an intimidated population ran into the arms of Erdogan and in the November 2015 election the AKP achieved its necessary majority. Once again repression against the Kurds was reinforced as the party increased its power.
Erdogan strengthened his position by winning the 2017 referendum, changing the Turkish constitution and consolidating broad powers in the hands of his Presidency. Given the loaded nature of the election by the ruling AKP, Erdogan only won by a narrow majority of 51%. It was significant that Turkey's three biggest cities, including Istanbul, voted against him but, according to the Washington Post (17.4.17), he did better than expected among Kurdish voters (most probably terrified by the turn of events). It's not the first narrow escape that Erdogan has had: he also had one during the attempted coup of 2016[xvii]. Erdogan survived the coup stronger and after a Stalinist-type purge that continues to this day: waves of propaganda against "plotters" and "terrorists" have continually emanated from the state while all and any dissent is squashed. In its particular fundamentalist-tinged development of state capitalism, Turkey has moved further away from the European Union; its already shaky role in NATO has become even shakier, unreliable even, and while involved in various diplomatic spats with the US and NATO to the extent of pulling out of exercises with the latter (Times of Israel, 17.11.17), it has moved, tentatively, towards friendlier, almost tactical but very erratic relations with Russia.
Even though presented by the media as the "new Sultan" and Erdogan himself as the architect of the new modern "Islamic Turkey" after Ataturk's "modern (secular) Turkey", and one which differs from the Iranian "model" of a theocratic state, this project is in no way just the ambition of a megalomaniac leader. As mentioned above, it represents the revival of the imperialist ambitions of a Turkey in a fragmenting and increasingly chaotic imperialist nexus. In fact all parts of the ruling class under the AKP have been engaged in these aspirations.
What next for Turkey and the working class?
Erdogan is pressing ahead with his project with very openly defined ambitions to make Turkey a superpower in 20-30 years. That this appears a hare-brained scheme takes no account of the present irrationality of decomposing capitalism. For this new "Sultanate" to come about the "Kurdish question" needs settling once and for all and relations with Russia need to become closer. As his power has increased, Erdogan has moved away from NATO, distanced himself from the EU and Germany and sees the US as an unfriendly force. Turkey is not in a state of declared war but is engulfed in war operations outside of its own territory and is more and more the battleground with those groups which the Turkish army has attacked within or outside Turkey (PKK, Isis); the country itself now risks sliding into a spiral of militarist chaos while surrounded by millions of refugees and general imperialist instability.
There are some unpredictable factors in play though. Given the nature of present US foreign policy under Trump, the increasing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran and its backlash against Lebanon, the possibility of Israeli military strikes in the region, all these are factors that are likely to have an effect on areas of fundamental Turkish interests: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon[xviii], Gaza, etc.
The impressive economic performance of the last years in Turkey, which underpins Erdogan's "popularity", looks to be short-term and under threat from geo-political instability, which means that this advantage will be petering out at the same time as the emigration safety-valve is closing and debt is rising. No amount of religious intoxication and delusions about a new "empire" will make up for that. The weight of the war economy, which swallows up enormous sums, is also likely to have an effect on the living conditions of the working class. The Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013 followed a wave of anti-war and anti-government demonstrations in the south that brought together protesters across ethnic, gender and religious divides in places. The working class was present in these protests but not with a strong sense of class identity. Is the proletariat prepared to slave and die for Erdogan's projects? The working class in Turkey has shown historically that it has a sound tradition of struggle and has pursued it with militancy. It needs to stay on its own terrain and develop autonomous struggle, refusing to be drawn into nationalist and pro or anti-Erdogan campaigns.
Boxer, 25.11.17
[ii] Rosa Luxemburg's 1896 analysis on the "Polish question" is useful here, https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1896/07/polish-question.htm [1641], along with elements of her Junius Pamphlet. Also relevant is The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913, by Leon Trotsky.
[iii] Recently Erdogan has expressed his "...sorrow for what we lost at Lausanne" and has pronounced that the Treaty "is not irrefutable" while calling it "a disgrace to the nation" - see https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170425-turkish-ambitions-set-to-grow... [1642]
[iv] The Alevis make up about a quarter of Turkey's population. It's a broad-based, fairly laid-back branch of Shia religion, which does not accept Sharia law and in which women have a much greater degree of equality than in traditional Islam. Its leadership has tended to support secular elements in Turkey, as much for self-protection as anything else. Further pogroms against them broke out in the 1980's and 90's. Erdogan said he would support them (as he did with the Kurds) but has instead marginalised and isolated them further.
[vi] For more on political Islam in Turkey, see https://merip.org/mer/mer153/political-uses-islam-turkey [1644]
[vii] Read the very interesting ICC pamphlet Left Wing of the Turkish Communist Party (not available online).
[viii] Turkey has the largest-known stocks of chromium which is essential for strengthening steel and therefore indispensable for armament production. See the wider-ranging thesis: The Sinews of War: Turkey, Chromite and the Second World War - https://www.thesis.bilkent.edu.tr/0006102.pdf [1645]
[ix] See: https://en.internationalism.org/node/3588 [1646]. Gladio was a "stay-behind" secret military force in Europe potentially to confront moves westward by Russian imperialism. But the bourgeoisie also had the experience of what happened after WWI, and therefore had an eye on possible working class uprisings.
[x] The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Sunni Islamist group that, from the thirties at least, has built up its power base through Islamic "charity" work. The Trump administration is trying to get it designated a "Foreign Terrorist Organisation" (FTO) while the British government recognised and supported it until very recently. It was originally financed by the Saudis but they no longer recognise it. Erdogan was close to the MB when it was elected to power in Egypt in 2012. Its removal from power there cost lives, brought down repression and cost the Saudis more treasure. The election of the President Mohamed Morsi of the MB caused a shock in the west. It was both an expression of the weakening of the US in the region and the growing irrationality of capitalism. The Brotherhood is a strong force in Qatar - where Turkey has a military base and within Hamas, of whom Erdogan has been one of its main sponsors.
[xi] See The use of Political Islam in Turkey - note 3.
[xii] [xii]. Milli Gorus is an anti-western and pro-Muslim organisation. It has around 2,500 local groups, built around 500 mosques and created a number of foundations. It includes not just Islamic Turks but Sunnis from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Its main centre is Germany but it has branches in many other European countries as well as Australia, Canada and the US. The organisation was founded by Necmettin Erbakan, Islamist, anti-EU, anti-Kemalist, who was prime minister of Turkey from 1996-97. It's said that Erdogan is taking up Erbakan's legacy and he will certainly use Milli Gorus to spread it.
[xiii] Gulen resides in the USA now and is generally portrayed in the western media as a simple preacher. In fact he sits on top of a vast, penetrative organisation worth billions and is close to the Clintons and the US Democrats.
[xiv] According to the Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2009, pp 55 - 66, in 2008 "Turkey has over 85,000 mosques, one for every 350 citizens - compared to one hospital for every 6000 citizens - the highest per-capita number in the world and, with 90,000 Imams, more Imams than doctors or teachers".
[xv] See Islam in Turkey https://www.worldpress.org/Europe/3892.cfm [1647]
[xvi] In Britain a few years ago, there were a number of demonstrations called by the left that supported attacks on Israel and marched side-by-side with elements of Hamas using the odious slogan "We are all Hamas". This wasn't entirely out of tune with official British foreign policy at the time which actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
[xvii] Erdogan just got away from a commando unit that was sent to deal with him by forces involved in the attempted coup of July 2016 while he was holidaying in the resort of Marmaris and once safely aboard his jet again avoided two F-16 fighter-bombers under the control of the coup forces who were trying to hunt him down (Reuters, 17.7.17) But, like much of the goings-on behind the coup, this is surrounded by mystery.
[xviii] Visa requirements between Turkey and Lebanon have been abolished and various memoranda of understanding and cooperation established.
ICC DAY OF DISCUSSION ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
LONDON
11 NOVEMBER 2017
The following account consists of the presentations given by the CWO and the ICC, and the summaries of the discussion produced by two close sympathisers of the ICC. We hope it gives a clear enough picture of what was a very stimulating and positive meeting. Copies of the audio recording are available on request (write to [email protected] [532])
MORNING SESSION
INTRODUCTION
ICC: Welcome to one of a series of ICC meetings being held on this topic. Meetings are to be held in Berlin, Zurich, Antwerp, Paris and other places. One difference in this meeting is that one presentation will be made by the Communist Workers’ Organisation. Both organisations defend the proletarian character of 1917. 20 years ago there was a similar meeting defending the proletarian nature of 1917. There will be plenty of time for open discussion, we expect agreement and disagreements, but in a comradely manner.
PRESENTATION BY THE CWO:
On the Working Class Character of the Russian Revolution
“On the evening of October 24th [6 November new style] the Provisional Government had at its disposal little more than 25,000 men. On the evening of October 25th, when preparations were underway for the storming of the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks assembled about 20,000 Red Guards, sailors and soldiers before that last refuge of the Provisional Government. But within the palace there were not more than 3000 defenders, and many of those left their posts during the night. Thanks to the Bolsheviks’ overwhelming superiority there were no serious battles in the capital from October 24th to October 26th, and the total number of those killed on both sides was no more than 15, with no more than 60 wounded.
During these critical hours, as all the main strategic points in the city passed under Bolshevik control (telephone and telegraph exchanges, bridges, railroad stations, the Winter Palace etc.), Petrograd continued on the whole to go about its normal business. Most of the soldiers remained in the barracks, the plants and the factories continued to operate, and in the schools none of the classes were interrupted. There were no strikes or mass demonstrations such had accompanied the February Revolution. The movie theatres (called cinematographias in those days) were filled, there were regular performances in all the theatres, and people strolled as usual on the Nevsky Prospect. The ordinary non-political person would not even have noticed the historic events taking place; even on the streetcar lines, the main form of public transportation in 1917, service remained normal. It was in one of those streetcars that Lenin, in disguise, and his bodyguard Eino Rahya travelled to Smolny late on the evening of the 24th.”
Such was the picture painted by the Soviet dissident historian Roy Medvedev and you can find similar accounts in Trotsky and John Reed. The lack of drama and the apparently merely military takeover have fed a bourgeois lie which has now endured for a century that the October Revolution was simply a coup d’état by a band of ruthless adventurers who stole a democratic revolution from the working class. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the capitalist class, not to mention modern-day Mensheviks and some anarchists all over the world, still feel they have to perpetuate this myth. And of course the final coda years later in Stalinism is also be put down as the logical outcome of the actions of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October 1917.
Of course they all have their different ideological reasons for writing off the Russian Revolution. For the defenders of the capitalist order, dismissing the only time the working class anywhere was in the saddle in any capitalist state for any length of time as a coup, is essential in order to maintain the idea that the working class can never successfully overthrow the capitalist system.
Before we go any further we need to state two premises on which the CWO and others in the Communist Left base their views. The first is that socialism is not something that can be achieved by a minority but only by an active movement involving the mass of the people who alone can transform society by their own activity instead of being merely passive voters expecting someone else to rule them. The second premise is that the Russian revolution cannot be explained only in Russian terms but as the first step in an international challenge to a capitalist system which had brought humanity to its knees in an imperialist war. The Russian and other revolutionaries at the time like Rosa Luxemburg all saw that the problem of socialism could only be posed in Russia – it required revolutions everywhere else to answer the question.
As it is the tragedy of the Russian Revolution is that the force created by the working class in 1917 in the Bolshevik Party not only helped to bring it victory but that same force also later became the agent of the counter-revolution. However, we will be looking at the errors of the Revolution and the mistakes of the Bolsheviks in this afternoon’s session. We have been tasked in this session with looking at the facts of 1917 and establishing the proletarian nature of the Russia Revolution.
In this we will be addressing two basic lies:
The first lie that bourgeois histories try to perpetuate about 1917 is that the February Revolution was good and democratic and the October Revolution was bad and dictatorial. In fact we would argue that these were but two moments in the same process – the process of the Russian proletariat groping its way towards an entirely new political structure which they had discovered for themselves in their earlier revolution in 1905. February was not a “democratic revolution” but a proletarian one which the bourgeoisie and their allies in the working class tried to steal from the workers.
February to April
The February Revolution arose out of the elemental struggle of the Russian working class. It was as predicted as it was unexpected.
The prediction was easily made since three years of war had revealed the complete inability of a reactionary monarchy to muster what resources the state had to even properly clothe and arm the millions they sent into battle. The monarchy had been tottering under a crescendo of strikes from 1912 on. The declaration of war brought a temporary halt to these for about a year but from July 1915 they were on the rise again. Every workers’ anniversary brought more strikes and more and more strikes included political demands like “Down with the war”. However it was the inability of the regime to feed the population that led to the patience of the working class finally snapping.
Then unexpected was that no-one thought that a women’s demonstration at that time would be the spark. Women at first started bread riots and then on International Women’s Day came out on strike bringing hundreds of thousands of other workers out too in demonstrations attacked by the police with clubs. No-one died the first day but as the movement continued political groups joined in and brought out more factories. The regime suddenly realised the danger and now began firing on largely unarmed crowds. For 36 hours the issue hung in the balance but as more and more were killed the workers (again most often women) began to talk to the troops and win over their neutrality to the point where several regiments mutinied and came over to the revolution.
After a week or so the Tsar abdicated but not before the landed aristocracy, the industrialists and the propertied in general had realised that they needed to try to cut this revolution off by announcing the formation of a Provisional Government.
Whilst they were deciding the fate of the revolution in gilded salons the workers were still fighting the “pharaohs” (police) on the streets. In one demonstration the call went up for the formation of a soviet. The takeover attempt of the bourgeoisie was about to be challenged by the workers’ memory of 1905. However if one set of thieves is not enough Russia produced two in March 1917. The second were the left parties – the Mensheviks and SRs. Because they had cooperated with the war effort they had more political influence at first and so it was they who set up the soviet in the same building as the PG and quickly called for delegates. The most revolutionary workers were not even aware of it and in fact the first soviet was very unrepresentative as many more soldiers got in than workers. In fact Shlyapnikov reckoned that there were no more than 50 workers in it when it was formed.
This is important. In every proletarian revolution there is not just one enemy – the opposing class – but there is always within the working class itself anti-revolutionary elements who will insist that this is not the right time for the working class to take over. They may even have a lot of influence inside the working class since their promise of reforms seems a practicable way to make life just a little better. Unless there is an opposing voice inside the working class then the dominant ideas will be those for the preservation of the system.
Inside the Russian working class there was already the makings of a real revolutionary opposition. At the beginning it included anarchists, Inter-district committee (Mezhraionsty) members and even some radical SRs but the largest, best organised and most linked to the working class was the Bolsheviks. Although a minority of about 8000 in March 1917 it was overwhelmingly working class. Above all it was the one party which had a clear position on the war.
After February the class war intensified in the factories and in the villages. In the factories the class war intensified after February. Unions were formed and demands for the eight hour day increased. Organisationally though the unions were not the most significant new bodies. The most striking feature was the increase in the number and self-confidence of the factory committees. Many of these were based on an older tradition of stewards’ (starosty) committees and were mostly elected by the whole workforce with responsibility for “control” (which, except for the state’s war industry factories, meant supervision and inspection – at this point they did not aim to manage the factory). S.A. Smith compares them to the shop stewards committees on Red Clydeside and Sheffield, the obleute (revolutionary shop stewards in Germany and the “internal commissions” in Italy. (S.A. Smith Red Petrograd p.57-9).
Food prices were doubling approximately every other month during 1917 and the fact that the Provisional Government was even worse at solving the transport question than Tsarism meant that bread rations were cut from 1lb a day to three quarters of a pound by April. Worse was to come since only 230 rail wagons containing food reached St Petersburg/ Petrograd each day in April 1917, compared with a daily total of 351 a year earlier. Only one third of coal needs were reaching the capital by May and works like Putilov were closed down for weeks on end in August and September. In addition to these temporary closures 568 factories went bankrupt leading to increased unemployment. Not surprisingly this led to a massive increase in strikes as we saw in the previous chapter. These radicalised the workers still further. As the leading academic analyst of these strikes concluded:
“The strikes which swept Russia in the summer of 1917 had more than an economic significance. They were a sign of political disillusionment – a reflection of the fact that workers felt cheated of the gains they had made as a result of the February Revolution”. (S.A. Smith Red Petrograd p.119 – all figures here stem from this source or from M. Ferro The Bolshevik Revolution – A Social History p. 160ff)
In addition the Provisional Government could not or would not solve the two other desperate problems of Russia – peace and land.
And this is what makes the Bolsheviks the class party in 1917. But it was not a given in March 1917. Contrary to the myths of both Stalin and the capitalist historians the Bolsheviks were never a disciplined bunch who just blindly followed orders from on high. They were always full of different factions who debated fiercely amongst themselves. This was still true after February. At first Pravda (Truth) the Bolshevik paper under the control of the Petersburg committee campaigned against the war and was distinctly hostile to the Provisional Government as well as the Menshevik policy of cooperating with it. However when Stalin, Kameniev and Muranov returned from Siberian exile they took over the paper and suddenly it was talking like the Mensheviks in supporting the Provisional Government and even talking about carrying on the war. But these Central Committee members were totally out of touch with the Petersburg Bolshevik Party members who were outraged and demanded their expulsion from the Party.
This was the background to Lenin’s famous return from Switzerland in April where he not only gave voice to the views of the Bolshevik workers but also put it in an internationalist framework by announcing that the Russian Revolution was the first step in an international revolution and that the first task of the workers was to establish soviet power in Russia.
It took several weeks for Lenin’s April Theses to win over the majority of the Party but it now was clear as to its perspectives for 1917.
The July Days
The number of strikes continued to increase despite the Provisional Government and the Menshevik/Essaire (SR) majority in the Soviet attempting to calm them. However the political scene exploded once again when the leader of the bourgeois party the Kadets in the Provisional Government issued his Note to the Allied powers assuring them that Russia would stick to the imperialist bargain the Tsar had made with them and that the war would be fought to victory. The uproar from the workers caused Milyukov to resign and it also emboldened the Bolsheviks to plan a demonstration against the Provisional Government in June. The rest of the Soviet Executive protested at what they saw as a Bolshevik provocation and the Bolsheviks called the demonstration off. However the Mensheviks and SRs then thought to drive home their victory by calling their own demonstration in support of the Provisional Government and themselves. It backfired magnificently. The Menshevik Sukhanov tells us that of the banners carried in that demonstration 90% carried Bolshevik slogans like “Down with the Provisional Government” “All Power to the Soviets”. The demonstration also coincided with the news that the offensive of General Brusilov after initial successes had collapsed into humiliating retreat.
These events led some in the First Machine Gun Regiment, amongst the anarchists, Kronstadt sailors and even in the Bosheviks’ Military Organisation to conclude that “All Power to the Soviets” was more than just a slogan of orientation but one whose time had come.
They decided that the time was now ripe for an armed demonstration in Petersburg which has gone down in history as the July Days. This episode is often cited by reactionary historians like Pipes to show that the Bolsheviks were putschist and got it wrong; but in fact, it demonstrates that the Bolsheviks were neither putschists nor Blanquists because they refused to support a premature uprising which did not yet have the support of the majority. Lenin was actually on holiday when the July Days started and hurried back to Petersburg – addressing the demonstrators from the Bolshevik HQ he basically told them not to be provoked and have a pleasant demonstration, but told the leader of the Bolshevik Military Organisation that he ought to be “thrashed” for not preventing the movement. The demonstrators ignored Lenin and marched on the city centre only to be ambushed by soldiers loyal to the PG. Hundreds died and the PG now spread the rumour that the Bolsheviks were in the pay of the Germans. The Bolsheviks were declared an illegal organisation. It cost them at first because they accepted that those who demonstrated did so out of a mistaken reading of their policy (the Bolshevik press was smashed, some Bolsheviks were killed, others imprisoned and some fled to exile) but by remaining with the masses they held on to their base in the working class. Lenin justified it thus:
“Mistakes are inevitable when the masses are fighting but the communists remain with the masses, see these mistakes, explain them to the masses, try to get them rectified and strive perseveringly for the victory of class consciousness over spontaneity”. (Collected Works Volume 29, p. 396 emphasis in the original)
Remaining with the masses was to stand them in good stead a month later because by August society was splitting further and further into two class camps. In July Kerensky, an SR, became Prime Minister, but after the outlawing of the Bolsheviks the bourgeois right were now becoming more confident and they looked for a strong man to not only wipe out the Bolsheviks but get rid of the Soviets as well. They found this in General Lavr Kornilov who Kerensky appointed to be C-in-C after Brusilov.
August: the Kornilov Affair
“In previous crises, in April, June and July, the spontaneous initiatives of Bolshevik and anarchist soldiers had caused street demonstrations. The leading elements in the Bolshevik Party had been forced, in the end, to assume responsibility for a movement launched by the young men of the military organisation. As the cinema films show, there were considerably fewer workers than soldiers or sailors.
In the Kornilov affair, when the action was defensive, the reverse happened. The proletarian districts were the first to mobilise, recruiting 40,000 men and arming 25,000 from the factories through their committees or from weapons left by the Kronstadt sailors during the July Days ... Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Skorokhodov, this committee co-ordinated its actions with the other committees of the capital, planning for cars to go round to maintain communication, guarding factories, arranging information briefings at set times and the like ... The people were mentally prepared, and the means for defence were made available, such that when the organisations appealed, every citizen, tree, house and stone was set to oppose the advance of Kornilov, whose telegrams failed to arrive and whose locomotives got no water. The ground crumbled under his feet.”
(Marc Ferro, The Bolshevik Revolution — A Social History (1980), p. 56)
What was clear was that the Kornilov Affair had led to an enormous leap forward in class consciousness:
“The soviets, now distinctly radical in outlook, emerged from the crisis with their popularity amongst the masses immensely enhanced. Revolutionary Russia was more widely saturated than ever before with competing grassroots political organisations and revolutionary committees. Workers had become more militant and better organized, and significant numbers of them had obtained weapons. At the same time, democratic committees in the army, by virtue of their leading role in organizing soldiers against the Kornilov movement, were rejuvenated. Within the Petrograd garrison, control of many regimental committees passed from more moderate elements into the hands of the Bolsheviks”. (A. Rabinowitch The Bolsheviks Come to Power p.166)
Far from taking advantage of this to assert the Bolsheviks right to power Lenin raised the possibility that there could still be a peaceful development of the revolution if the Mensheviks and SRs would lead the soviets in the process of taking power. At the beginning of September he called for compromise.
“The Russian revolution is experiencing so abrupt and original a turn that we, as a party, may offer a voluntary compromise – true, not to our direct and main class enemy the bourgeoisie, but to our nearest adversaries, the ruling petty-bourgeois-democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
We may offer a compromise to these parties only by way of exception, and only by virtue of the particular situation, which obviously last only a very short time. And I think we should do so. The compromise on our part is our return to the pre-July demand of all power to the Soviets and a government of SRs and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets.
Now, and only now, perhaps during only a few days or a week or two, such a government could be set up and consolidated in a perfectly peaceful way. In all probability it could secure the peaceful advance of the whole Russian revolution, and provide exceptionally good chances for great strides in the world movement towards peace and the victory of socialism”. (On Compromises in Collected Works Vol. 25 p. 206 emphasis in the original)
This is hardly the picture of the power-mad vanguard partyist that bourgeois and anarchist histories paint. Lenin does not demand Bolshevik party power but soviet power even if they are headed by the Mensheviks and SRs. It was no isolated offer. He repeated the idea of a peaceful development of the revolution a fortnight later.
“Power to the Soviets – this is the only way to make further progress gradual, peaceful and smooth keeping perfect pace with the political awareness and resolve of the majority of the people and with their own experience. Power to the Soviets means the complete transfer of the country’s administration and economic control into the hands of the workers and peasants, to whom nobody dare offer resistance, and who, through practice, through their own experience, would soon learn how to distribute the land, products and grain properly”. (One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution in Collected Works Vol 25 pp 373 emphases in the original)
But the Mensheviks and SRs not only rejected any compromise - they rejected the whole idea of soviet power and did all they could to undermine it after Kornilov. They always regarded the soviets as temporary until the Constituent Assembly (which would then liquidate them). In fact they delayed the calling of the Second Soviet Congress (they were supposed to be called every 3 months) by nearly two months to avoid the Bolshevik majority replacing them as the EC.
By September the Bolsheviks are winning elections in most soviets and even in city dumas where other classes also can vote. They were now some 350,000 spread across Russia. Why were they so successful? They answered to the working class demand for soviet power and the promised that they would end the war. They were the only organisation to coherently offer this. This wasn’t just fancy theory dreamed up by intellectuals but responded to the evolution of the class consciousness of the Russian working class. John Reed tells us that in a Obukhovsky factory a meeting was discussing the seizure of power and a soldier from the Rumanian front shouted out: “We will hold on with all our might until the peoples of the whole world rise to help us”. And Rosa Luxemburg from her prison cell could also write: “The fact that the Bolsheviks in their policy have steered their course entirely towards the world revolution of the proletariat is precisely the most brilliant testimony to their political far-sightedness, their principled firmness and the bold scope of their policy”. This internationalist perspective continued even after the October Revolution. Trotsky, Bukharin, and Lenin all said on numerous occasions that without a European or at least a German revolution the Soviet republic was doomed. The final accusation against the Bolsheviks is that they only pretended that they supported the working class but as soon as they got in power they began to build up party power at the expense of the workers. This is a travesty of the facts. Obviously in the end we all know that the Bolsheviks became the agents of the counter-revolution but this was neither premeditated nor inevitable and the process of degeneration really only began in the early summer of 1918. Let’s look at their record in that first “heroic period” (Kritsman) of the revolution before March 1918. The Second Soviet Congress overwhelmingly accepted the power presented to it by the Bolsheviks and the Executive Committee approved the setting up of a Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), made up of Bolsheviks and Left SRs (although the latter did not take up their seats until December. All other parties walked out of the Soviet and refused to accept anything other than a return to a coalition with the bourgeoisie. The new government announced Russia’s withdrawal from the war. It legalised peasant land seizures and workers’ control in the factories. Officials were paid only the average wage of a skilled industrial worker. Laws brought in equal pay for women, divorce at the request of either partner, abortion and equal status for children of unmarried parents. Homosexuality was decriminalised. Church and State were separated and freedom of religion was established (thus ending the legal oppression of Jews). Other social achievements were the introduction of free education (alongside a mass literacy campaign), free maternity homes and nurseries. And “Soviet Russia was the first nation in history to witness the birth across its land of thousands of communal organizations spontaneously engaging in collective life” (R, Stites Revolutionary Dreams) Nationalities of the old Russian empire were given the right to self-determination. Most of this took place in the first six months of the revolution. During this time the soviet principle was extended. 400 or so more soviets were established across Russia, the principle of immediate recall of delegates was established and Congresses of Soviets were taking place every three months. In this same period the Bolsheviks (soon to take the name Communists) understood that the party can lead but it cannot make a revolution. This is the task of the working class itself. Lenin told the Seventh Congress of the RCP(B) “… socialism cannot be implemented by a minority, by the Party. It can be implemented only by tens of millions when they have learned to do it for themselves”. (Collected Works Volume 27 p. 135)
At the time Lenin was equally adamant:
“Creative activity at the grassroots is the basic factor of the new public life. Let the workers’ control at their factories. Let them supply the villages with manufactures in exchange for grain… Socialism cannot be decreed from above. Its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach: living creative socialism is the product of the masses themselves.” (Collected Works Vol. 26 p.288) To sum up, the Bolshevik Party of 1917 did not spring from the pages of What is to be Done?, a document forgotten by everyone including its author as belonging to a past period and no longer valid, but from the process of revolution itself starting with that in 1905. In the course of this revolutionary process the Bolsheviks were always the closest to the working class, both in Russia and internationally, and in the course of it, they alone of all the social democratic factions, abandoned dogma to become the authentic voice of the working class. And this was not in just a Russian revolution but in the international working class revolution. We know that this revolution will not be repeated in the same form again but October 1917 remains a great inspiration for anyone who can see that only world-wide workers’ revolution can save humanity from the even greater horrors which capitalism is preparing for us. Jock for the CWO
DISCUSSION
Was October a soviet revolution or a coup by the Bolsheviks?
This was posed by a comrade from the SPGB which defends the latter position.
In response, firstly the Russian Revolution is the entry of the masses onto the stage of history; revolutionaries had to run to catch up. The presentation showed clearly that the Russian revolution was not a coup d'etat. This simply doesn’t correspond to reality; there was a massive development of the movement from February to October, which is what enabled the seizure of power through the actions of a relative minority, but one organised by the soviets.
All the bourgeois propaganda pushes the idea of a coup by Bolsheviks and we have to challenge this; there was a huge development of self-organisation, much more directed and focused than in February. The fact is the Bolsheviks were the most experienced militants – otherwise the leadership would have been taken by others like the Mensheviks, and the provisional government was already extremely unrepresentative.
It was emphasised that we’re not required to defend everything that happened in Russia, or everything the Bolsheviks did, but at least to begin with they were representative of the working class, the rank and file Bolsheviks being the most militant. The Bolsheviks took up slogans raised by the class as a whole. The ability of Lenin in particular to learn from the masses, and to learn from mistakes, was crucial.
We also have to challenge the idea that the Russian Revolution is in the past and has nothing to do with today. Today people don’t think a revolt is possible and we need to stress that the working class is capable of organising and envisaging a new world. Despite the treason of social democracy in 1914 which caused a temporary crisis in the workers’ movement, the fact is the war meant the working class had to react, just as it is forced to react by the crisis today.
There was some discussion about the extent of enthusiasm for war in1914; it was argued that many militant workers remained anti-war, like the French syndicalists, Rosa Luxemburg and the future Spartacists in Germany. Other comrades stressed the extent of the patriotic orgy, described vividly by Rosa Luxemburg in the Junius Pamphlet. But despite the defeat the working class quickly recovered, with strikes and opposition movements less than a year after war began.
So the events in Russia were the culmination of the growth of resistance to the war internationally, which the Bolsheviks were able to recognise as a first step towards a world revolution. The war itself was brought to an end by the working class.
In 1914 the effects of defeat were short-lived. Bourgeois propaganda was simplistic and workers still had a clear sense of their class identity, whereas World War 2 was only possible because the working class was already defeated and bourgeois ideology was more sophisticated.
Today the conditions are very difficult for the working class, with demoralisation and widespread ideas that the working class doesn’t exist anymore. There are widespread ideas that communism has already failed and only leads to the gulag and Stalinism. This is a very strong factor in today’s situation.
But for us Russia is still the only example in history when the working class seized political power on a national scale, only three years after workers were drowned in nationalism and war. For us today, and for the Third International at the time, the war and the revolutionary wave were proof that capitalism was obsolete and in decline. As Rosa Luxemburg warned, capitalism had become not only a fetter but a clear and present danger to the future of humanity. The Russian Revolution is proof the working class can respond to this.
How the bourgeoisie is covering the events
It is significant that the bourgeoisie is not making a big campaign today about the Russian Revolution. It shows despite the difficulties of today’s situation the bourgeoisie does not feel confident about the whole idea of revolution.
There is also clear attempt to portray the Russian Revolution as particular to Russia. We need to challenge this. Capitalism today is still a decadent system.
Most bourgeois histories abandon all objectivity when it comes to the events of October; it was a ‘coup’. Today many in the proletarian camp, who want a social change, also accept this bourgeois narrative of the ‘alien’ Bolsheviks. TV ‘reconstructions’ show key figures but with little or no mention of the masses. Everything is personalised, eg. the July Days is explained as Lenin ‘bottling it’. This is the level of understanding, whereas in fact Trotsky had a whole analysis of why the workers weren’t ready, which allowed the Bolsheviks to avoid bourgeois provocations – thus disproving the myth that they were simply ‘power hungry’, whereas in Germany the Spartacists fell into the trap and suffered a terrible defeat. The lesson for us is the necessity for a party that can speak truth to the workers.
The question of the war – defeat for the working class and the internationalism of the Bolsheviks
A Trotskyist sympathiser raised two questions: on the role of the peasantry, which the presentation had not dealt with, and on the role the Bolsheviks were able to play which supports the idea that there must be at least a nucleus of experienced militants before the revolution; the massive growth of the Bolsheviks during summer 1917 of inexperienced members and the later ‘Lenin levy’ helped to destroy the Party.
On the role of the peasantry; the peasants deserted the front and slowly took over the land, often collectively, and with Bolshevik support when the Socialist Revolutionaries still in government opposed it.
There was no disagreement with the need for a nucleus of the party in the class if the workers are to make the revolution. The Bolsheviks had a solid mass of workers in Petrograd able to survive arrests.
The Bolsheviks were able to play a leading role in 1917 partly because of position they took against the war; ‘turn imperialist war into civil war’… Their loyalty to internationalism was key and ‘Socialism in one country’ was the death of this. The Bolshevik position was ‘Down with the war’; revolutionary defeatism was not active until 1917 when defencism was seen to be the key issue.
It was pointed out also that the bourgeois parties in Russia were pro-war because Russian capitalism was in hock to French and British capitalism. The factories in Russia were run under foreign contracts, while the factory committees were key to the political opposition to the factory owners, the Czar and the war.
The February Revolution – bourgeois or proletarian?
Were the workers simply used as a battering ram to get rid of the Czar and put the bourgeoisie in power? This was the view of the comrade from the SPGB
In response, the reality was that the bourgeoisie had no power – it passed to the Petrograd soviet. The fiction of a bourgeois revolution was pushed by the Mensheviks and SRs. It was the workers who made the February revolution but it remained unfinished business. We have to see the Russian Revolution as a process rather than isolate events as the bourgeoisie does in its propaganda; the return of Lenin, April Theses, July Days, October.
The anarchist interpretation of events – the role of the Bolsheviks and the factory committees
A comrade from a class struggle anarchist background said he regretted the absence of more from this political current at the meeting to put up a robust argument against the Bolsheviks.
He personally agreed with the ICC manifesto and the CWO presentation and with the discussion. But while the Bolsheviks were the most popular organisation within the working class he also felt they were also inherently authoritarian and statist.
The factory committees were the most important and militant expressions of the revolution in Russia. Re: the book by Maurice Brinton (The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1975), isn’t he right when he says that the Bolsheviks tried to crush factory committees?
In response it was pointed out that the Bolsheviks were divided over the factory committees – in fact the factory committees themselves were divided about their role! Some wanted workers control or workers’ self-management while others said there is no point: we should wait for the world revolution. Lenin thought the factory committees should run the economy on the principle that that socialism cannot be controlled from above. But he later changed his mind.
With hindsight we know how the story ends but we can’t draw a straight line from What Is To Be Done to Stalin. The Bolsheviks and Lenin changed their views due to the events of 1905 and, most importantly, the First World War. The Bolsheviks were from October 1917 to June 1918 were about as good as the working class can get. They were made by the working class and not something imposed from above.
END OF MORNING SESSION
AFTERNOON SESSION
PRESENTATION BY THE ICC
On the degeneration of the revolution
This presentation will be based mainly on the section in the Manifesto which deals with the degeneration of the revolution and the errors of the Bolsheviks. This section begins as a polemic with other currents in the revolutionary movement: internationalist anarchists and councilists, whose ancestors may have supported the revolution in the beginning, but who later decided that October 1917 had been no more than a bourgeois revolution – in which they are joined by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. For us it is necessary to face a reality of proletarian life under capitalism: the constant tendency towards degeneration and betrayal under the weight of the dominant ideas. Those who portray the Russian revolution as bourgeois evade this question. It is perhaps more ‘consistent’ on the part of the anarchists, some of whom have always rejected Marxism and trace their origins to the likes of Bakunin, but with marxist currents like the council communists or the ‘Impossibilists’ of the SPGB, it skirts round the obvious fact that they, like the Bolsheviks, have the same origins in international social democracy. Our method is that of Rosa Luxemburg, and later of the Italian Communist left, who were able to make profound criticisms of the Bolshevik party from a position of total solidarity with the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks, and who understood that the errors of the latter could only be understood in the context of the isolation of the revolution. Situating the October revolution and its degeneration in the framework of isolation and the terrible siege mounted by the world bourgeoisie is not, as many anarchists claim, an ‘excuse’ for the errors of the Bolsheviks, but it does enable us to understand why a proletarian party could make such errors and why they were to prove so fatal. The key thing for us is to draw the lessons of these mistakes so that they are not repeated, even if the conditions of any future revolution will be very far from a carbon copy of the Russian experience. These are lessons that could only be drawn in the light of the whole experience, and could not have been fully grasped beforehand. Thus, for example, in State and Revolution Lenin was able to overcome the ‘amnesia’ of the socialist movement regarding the lessons of the Commune – the necessity to dismantle the existing bourgeois state – but he could not yet clearly see why the new Commune state would itself present a danger to the progress of the revolution. The Manifesto points to the following essential lessons:
· The absolute necessity for the extension of the revolution. This of course was understood already by the Bolsheviks who knew that without the world revolution they were doomed, but they couldn’t know entirely the manner in which this doom would take place. The Bolsheviks’ main fear was that they would be overthrown by invading (and homegrown) counter-revolutionary armies: they didn’t sufficiently grasp the danger of an internal counter-revolution. Furthermore, recognising the impossibility of ‘socialism in one country’ was necessary but not sufficient. Contrary to the later views of the Trotskyists, even when they were still a proletarian current, there could not be ‘workers’ states’, albeit degenerated, surviving in a capitalist world for decades. Isolation meant not only that you couldn’t construct socialism: it also meant that you could not sustain the political rule of the working class.
· What was definitively clarified by the Russian experience was that the role of the party is not to take political power on behalf of the workers, and not to get entangled with the state apparatus. This idea of the party as a “government in waiting” was to a greater or lesser extent held by the Marxist movement in general, not just by the Bolsheviks: Luxemburg for example declared that the Spartacists would only take power on the basis of a clear majority will in the working class. But even this idea shows the weight of parliamentary ideas on the workers’ movement: the council system, with the possibility of instant recall of delegates, is incompatible with the idea of the party holding power for a given period since a majority one day could turn into a minority the next. The Bolsheviks were themselves ambiguous on this question: Trotsky, for example, saw why the October insurrection should be carried out in the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, a soviet organ, and not the party, as Lenin had at one point suggested. But with the isolation of the revolution and the disintegration of any idea of a “coalition” with other revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks began to make a virtue out of a necessity and argue for the inevitability of the proletarian dictatorship being exerted by the communist party alone. These conceptions reinforced the gulf between the party and the class, while at the same time the attempt to run the machinery of state prohibited the party from playing its true role as the most radical fraction of the class movement and culminated in the bureaucratic death of the party.
· This idea of the party dictatorship is closely linked to the question of violence, terror, and, in the end, the problem of morality: the revolution cannot be advanced by using methods that contradict its goals. For the working class, the end cannot justify the means. Socialism cannot be carried out by a minority – as Lenin constantly emphasised in the early phase of the revolution – and still less can it be imposed on the majority by force. We are with Luxemburg who argued that the idea of the Red Terror, understood as generalised state violence against all sectors of the population, was incompatible with the revolutionary project, and with Miasnikov who understood that the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt in 1921 opened the door to “the abyss”. In the wake of Kronstadt, the rejection of the use of violence to settle disputes within the working class must be seen as a principle. The idea that the revolution can use any means at hand to further its ends is most often associated with counter-revolutionary Stalinism – for whom the methods of terror are perfectly compatible with its real aim: the consolidation of a brutal capitalist regime. But the notion that the party must exert its dictatorship on behalf of and if necessary against the class as a whole lives on in the proletarian camp: it is defended by the Bordigists above all. But present day Bordigism has only arrived at this position by burying the real contribution of the Italian communist left from which it claims descent, since the latter’s investigations led it to recognise first that the party cannot use violence against the class and must not become enmeshed in the transitional state; and second, particularly through the work of its successors in the French communist left, to explicitly reject the identification between the proletarian dictatorship and the dictatorship of the party;
· The work of these fractions has led the ICC to a position which is controversial even within those parts of the communist left which reject the Bordigist idea of the party’s role: that the transitional state, though a necessary evil, does not have a proletarian character and is most vulnerable to the pressures of the counter-revolution. The experience of Russia showed that it may be necessary to create instruments (such as a standing army) which have a definitely statist function and which contain an inherent threat to the autonomous organs of the working class. In Russia, the Red Army not only quickly began to reproduce the hierarchical norms of bourgeois armies, but even more crucially, was accompanied by the dissolution of the workers’ militias, which meant that the factory committees and workers’ councils no longer embodied the armament of the working class. At the same time, the Soviet state was not only made up of proletarian organs, but also by the representative bodies of other classes, which, although allied to the working class, nevertheless had their own interests to defend. These problems will not appear in exactly the same form in the future, given the changes that have come about in the composition of the global working class, but in essence they will continue to be posed in any revolutionary situation.
· Regarding the economic and social measures to be carried out by the proletarian power, the Russian revolution has demonstrated that state capitalism is not a step towards socialism, as some of the Bolsheviks believed, but is always a means for strengthening the capitalist relationship. At the same time, the programme of self-management, the creation of a federation of ‘independent’ production units linked by commodity exchange, as advocated by the anarcho-syndicalists of the time and further theorised by the likes of Cornelius Castoriadis, also fails to transcend the horizon of capitalist relations and, like state capitalism, is seen as being achievable within the context of a single nation state. Again, the economic measures the proletariat takes in the first phases of the revolution must be compatible with the ultimate goal of communism, but at the same time they cannot be confused with the true communist transformation which can only be achieved when the revolution has triumphed on a world scale. For this reason our polemic is also directed against another current which is critical of both the state capitalist and self-management models: the “communisers”, who tend to revive old anarchist conceptions by arguing that you can by-pass the problem of political power and proceed to an immediate communisation of social life. This again tends to evade the problem of the international extension of the revolution. But above all, it inverses the real process of the communist transformation by insisting that the proletariat must immediately negate itself and merge into humanity, whereas the new human community starts with the self-affirmation of the proletariat and is completed when the whole of humanity has been integrated into the proletarian condition. This is the only abolition of the proletariat that communists can advocate.
In many ways, the problem of the self-affirmation of the proletariat is the central problem of the revolution, above all after a series of traumas and changes in the life of capital have undermined the old sense of class identity but not replaced it with a new one. This problem was in many ways posed during the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011, a movement which was predominantly proletarian in composition, and proletarian in many of its methods (assemblies, affirmation of internationalism, etc), but in which most of its protagonists saw themselves not as part of the working class but as “citizens” demanding a “real democracy”. The class struggle of the future will only become explicitly revolutionary and communist by resolving this paradox.
Alf, for the ICC
DISCUSSION
The essential content of the discussion on the disintegration of the Russian Revolution (RR) is in fact embedded in the presentation on this issue: the isolation of the RR due to the defeat of attempts to extend it through revolutionary action in other countries (notably Germany) and the exhaustion of the workers, soldiers and revolutionary layers of the peasantry through invasion and civil war, leading to a real decimation of revolutionary forces and a political degeneration accelerated by errors and erroneous conceptions held by the class as a whole and the Bolshevik Party in particular. Similarly the present-day conceptions of the ‘communisers’, also raised in the discussion, are dealt with in the presentation (and continued in the discussion thread on this site https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/mark/14433/working-class-identity [1648]
Other issues raised included:
Was the very conception of a communist bastion or beacon a hangover from the bourgeois revolution? Absolutely not. ‘History will not forgive us if we don’t act’ said Lenin, in 1917 understanding (and even under-estimating) the international extent and depth of revolt against war, privation and the ruling classes held responsible. The revolution was indeed an inspiration to the subsequent uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Italy; the massive strikes in Britain, the US and elsewhere. It was the defeat of these revolts – the failure of the revolution to extend internationally – and the subsequent attempt by the party to ‘hold on at all costs’, to make virtues out of perceived necessities (the dictatorship of the party; the Red Terror; War Communism/requisitioning; the militarisation of labour, the Cheka, etc) – which wrecked the soviet project from within.
There was a desperate need to defend the revolution from invasion by the imperialist powers (armies from the US, GB, Canada, Germany, Poland, Estonia, China, Japan, France, etc) and from the White armies backed by these powers in the civil war that followed the October revolution. This was a life or death issue. And what the soviets and the Red Army achieved in militarily repulsing these hostile forces while awaiting the eruption of the world revolution was quite remarkable. But the political price - in terms of the dissolution of the workers’ own autonomous armed militias incorporated into the Red Army – coupled with the physical decimation of the urban working class and the wrecking of production in the cities and countryside, proved to be too high in the absence of revolution elsewhere.
The Red Army, the Red Terror, the banning of fractions in the Party, War Communism and the subservience of the Party and Soviets to the state remained while the working class itself retreated in Russia and internationally. Most comrades at the meeting agreed would have been better if the revolution had ‘gone down fighting’ with a clear defeat from ‘outside’, just as it would have been better for the health of the revolution if the Bolsheviks had acquiesced to the 1921 programme of the Kronstadt ‘rebels’ whose demands were similar to those raised by fractions within the Bolshevik Party at its 10th Congress the same year.
As it was and remains, the nature of the defeat of the RR was the worst possible outcome for the proletariat: the fact that it was a communist party that was ‘in charge’ as the revolution degenerated; that it was in the name of the international proletariat that the notion of ‘socialism in one country’ was developed in contradiction to Marxist internationalism – all this allowed for the dreadful legacy that equates Stalinism with communism.
Given criticisms raised of the Bolsheviks, a sympathiser of Trotskyism asked ‘What should they have done, then?”
There were various aspects given in response:
a) The question is based on the incorrect idea that the revolution was for the Bolsheviks to save if only they made the right decisions, rather than understanding that it’s what the working class in its entirety could accomplish under the circumstances and given the international and historical balance of class forces;
b) The Bolshevik Party was not some homogeneous bloc but had many political currents within it which ebbed and flowed, some of whom opposed specific policies and actions (such as the militarisation of labour or the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt), others of which put forward correct critiques but incorrect ‘solutions’. Such oppositions – in general appearing earlier and seeing clearer than Trotsky’s Left Opposition - exemplified the fact that the Bolshevik Party was still a living organism of the working class.
c) It’s not a question of understanding of what they should have done rather than one of analysing what they did and did not do and learning from it. The conceptions they held – i.e. of the party taking power – were widespread within the entire working class at the time, a hangover from bourgeois parliamentarianism. It’s as a result of what actually happened – something which could not have been known in advance – that subsequent critiques can and must be made. However the rejection of ‘the ends justify the means’, of taking actions incompatible with the goals of communism, is certainly a notion which predates the event, even if it had not been posed concretely.
The dreadful legacy of the defeat would/could have been avoided if the class as a whole and the Bolshevik Party in particular had been able understand that the party does not take power and (for the ICC) that the state after the revolution is not simply an expression of the working class – more of which below. The same individual from Trotskyism criticised the absence of reference to the enemy Stalin as the main focal point of and for the counter-revolution. For the rest of the meeting, the counter-revolution was a process and Stalin – including the doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’ – was the result, not the cause. However: perhaps this is a wake-up call for the present revolutionary milieu not to take the standing of Stalin in the minds of the present generation for granted...
Two further elements in the discussion:
The Third Communist International was formed late (1919) and was overly-influenced by the Bolshevik Party and the needs of the Russian state. Indeed it evolved into a tool for the imperialist interests of that state. The lessons of this are the need for an international organisation of revolutionaries in advance of the revolution itself;
For the SPGB, the degeneration of the RR proved Marx correct: the workers could not establish communism in a backward country. Lenin’s last articles were full of disillusionment – he realised he’d made a big mistake. Other comrades replied that a) The aim was never to establish communism in a single country but to provide a spark for the world revolution; b) Russia was relatively well-developed at the time with giant factories housing a concentrated working class – some of the biggest in the world - and extensive rail networks; c) That even if the revolution had broken out in the most advanced country like Germany, with the most educated working class, it would still have been defeated if it was isolated. There’s no sense in blaming Lenin nor looking for any Russian ‘particularism’. Finally, the meeting was marked by a high degree of homogeneity: between the CWO and the ICC, their sympathisers (and even a lone internationalist anarchist) on the main issues under debate and on the ICC Manifesto and the CWO presentation. The two currents agree that one of the main lessons of the RR is that the party of the working class does not seek to take power, which must be exercised by the masses themselves, but that without the influence of revolutionaries within the very bowels of the working class – and certainly within its self-organised expressions such as the factory committees and workers’ councils (or soviets) - the revolution will be robbed of vital historical, political and above all visionary elements of the goal of communism and cannot therefore progress.
However ... there was no fundamental agreement between the CWO and the ICC on the question of violence within the working class which in turn masked different attitudes to the state in the period of transition between capitalism and communism, of which our only ‘real-time’ experience is the Russian Revolution.
For the CWO, the question of violence within the working class, while something to be avoided, obviously, is not something that can be proscribed or wished away. There will be disagreements within the working class itself and some of these will be settled forcibly. It depends on the material circumstances.
For the ICC, it’s not a question of this or that disagreement on a picket line or struggle committee that’s at stake here but a generalised attitude that the means can’t be separated from the end – a society of freely associated producers can’t be achieved through coercion but only resolved consciously. Behind this unexplored disagreement lies a difference of appreciation on the crucial question of what is the state in general and the nature of the state in the period of transition in particular.
For the CWO, Lenin’s State and Revolution is clear enough: the workers’ councils wield statist functions including military power and having some kind of organs removed from this nexus of power is building castles in the air. For the ICC, the state is an unavoidable excrescence – symptom of the fact that different classes still exist – and will indeed have to form organs of coercion and violence to defend the revolution... Which is precisely why the working class can’t simply identify with the ‘workers’ state’ or such organs dealing with the ‘here and now’ but above all must wield political and armed control over them, armed with a consciousness of where the revolution is heading, of what it must become....
CONCLUSION
In the ‘common sense’ view (the bourgeois view – history is written by the victors) the Russian Revolution succeeded and the result was ‘communist rule’ by Stalin and the Gulag. For the majority at the ICC meeting, this was not the case.
The Russian Revolution failed. True, the working class, through its soviets, through its party, smashed the bourgeois state and established, for a short time, a dictatorship of the proletariat (only the Socialist Party of GB regarded this as a bourgeois revolution and a Bolshevik coup). However in the view of other participants at the meeting, an indisputably proletarian revolution – the first at the level of an entire nation state - degenerated. Relatively rapidly.
Thus it is that the real issues of the Russian Revolution are largely unknown within the populace at large and the working class in particular, a working class which has tended at the present moment to lose its sense of identity, its sense of history, its sense of itself as a historic class with a past and a future. This meeting was in truth a very small one even if it did provide a focus for a number of elements interested in the positions of the communist left, and even if it saw a high level of agreement amongst the majority of individuals and groups attending.
There was also agreement that revolutionaries were still finding an echo for their positions and that such meetings were valuable. The ICC was holding similar events in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and further afield, while the CWO was holding a meeting in the North of England. This was the first coordinated meeting of the ICC and CWO for 20 years – and the previous meeting was also on the subject of the Russian Revolution And the real differences of historical appreciation, of theory about attitudes towards regroupment past, present and future – about how to build the party in practice - remain to be further developed beyond past, bitter polemics.
In order to understand the significance of the escalation of events following the September 2017 referendum about Kurdish independence on the territory of the present Iraqi State and the reactions of the governments in the region and worldwide, we have to go back to historical developments that took place more than a century ago. This article is published at the same time as "Erdogan’s ‘New Turkey’: a prime illustration of capitalism’s senility" and we recommend reading the two articles together[1].
The point of departure of Kurdish nationalism
As we have developed in the above-mentioned article and in an article on imperialist conflict in the Middle East in International Review 117[2], at the end of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire had entered a long process of decline and fragmentation. Already before World War 1, in the Balkan wars, Bulgaria, Albania, Western Thracia (and Salonika) split from the Ottoman Empire. The second phase of fragmentation occurred after the Ottoman Empire joined the German side in WW1: the European powers France, Britain and Russia worked out a plan of dividing up the remaining components of the Ottoman empire amongst themselves. In 1916, on the basis of the secret Sykes-Picot treaty, France was to receive what later became Lebanon and Syria, Britain was to gain control over Iraq (except Mosul), Jordan, Palestine and Egypt – as well as the Arab peninsula (today's Saudi Arabia). Czarist Russia was to lay its hands on most parts of northern Kurdistan and the Czar was also hoping to use the Armenians for his ambitions. However, following the Russian revolution in 1917 the Soviet power renounced any imperialist ambitions. In 1920, in the peace treaty of Sevres (Paris), the remaining Turkish heartland was to be divided amongst the colonial powers France and Britain. Large areas of Turkey were to be handed over to Greece, an independent state of Armenia was planned for Eastern Turkey, and the Kurds were to receive an autonomous status in the south-east. Only a small part of the heartland of Turkey was to remain Turkish. The army general Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize the treaty and began to organise military resistance. The Armenians and Greeks were quickly defeated, the sultanate abolished, and Kemal became the leader of the new Turkish “rump” state. After the division of the booty of the former Ottoman Empire and the setting up of new “national” units – Syria, Jordan, Iraq - by the colonial powers, the Kurdish population which had been living in one Ottoman Kurdistan for several centuries was then divided into the territory of 5 states (Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Armenia/Russia). Today, almost one century later, the Kurdish population still lives on around a third of Turkish territory, in the northern part of Iraq (Mosul, Kirkuk, Erbil, etc.), in the Iranian Western part, in Syria's north-east and a smaller number in Armenia. [3] The way the residues of the former Ottoman empire were partitioned by the two co-winners of WW1, France and Britain, meant that no space was left for the formation of a Kurdish state proper. At the same time the seeds for the ambitions of Kurdish nationalism were laid by these “partitioning” powers themselves. At the same time Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran have always feared and combated Kurdish aspirations for the formation of a separate Kurdish state. This spectre has haunted Turkish and Iraqi governments in particular, because any separate Kurdish state would have meant a large secession of territory from these countries (in the case of Turkey 30%). During the past century every Turkish government has warned they would never tolerate the formation of a Kurdish state outside of Turkish territory.
Historically, the Kurdish populated areas have been more backward in comparison to the rest of the region. Large parts of the population live in mountain areas, where economic development has been much slower. The social structure has been dominated by tribal leaders and clans. Apart from oil, which was discovered in the early 1920s, there are hardly any raw materials, and for more than a century there has not been any real industrialisation. As a consequence large parts of the population either survive through agriculture or by migrating within the larger area or looking for jobs in Europe or elsewhere. While the four Kurdish populated countries Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran all have one common interest - preventing the formation of an autonomous separate Kurdish state - the situation of the Kurds and the intensity of conflicts between the Kurds and these countries has never been the same. And within each Kurdish populated zone, the factions of the Kurdish bourgeoisie fighting for Kurdish interests have constantly been strongly divided, either due to their social dominance by some clan/tribe or because of different social and economic interests. In particular, the land-owning factions have shown no sympathy for the poorer populations and their economic and social demands. During this whole period Kurdish nationalist forces have repeatedly resorted to violence – against other Kurdish groups or against Armenians[4] And Kurdish nationalist groups have repeatedly tried to impose Kurdish identity on minorities living in Kurdish dominated areas. The entire Kurdish area is "surrounded" by other countries and it has no access to ports, making the Kurds entirely dependent on “good will” and negotiations with other countries. These can in turn blackmail the Kurds and extort high taxes for letting Kurdish oil transit through pipelines or trucks through Turkish territory. On an economic level a separate Kurdish state could never be viable.
First aspirations for Kurdish independence
The first aspirations for Kurdish independence, which were voiced when the Ottoman Empire began to show its first cracks, were those of Ubeydullah in 1880, who demanded political autonomy or outright independence for Kurds and the recognition of a Kurdistan state. This was quickly and easily crushed by the Ottoman rulers. Before the Turkish Republic was proclaimed in 1923, in the wake of WW1, the British and French colonial powers pretended to offer the Kurds help in their striving for independence, while in reality they had divided the region in such a way that there was no place for a Kurdish state. In 1925, barely two years after the formation of the Turkish Republic, the first significant Kurdish rising was organised by Sheik Said; it had a strong religious tinge. The Turkish state, which had gained experience in expelling and deporting Armenians and Greek populations, launched a severe repression and massive deportations of Kurds. Between 1927-1930 there were again repeated Kurdish risings in Ararat. The Kemal regime denounced these risings mainly because of their religious cloak in order to justify its “secularist” policy. In 1930 Iran and Turkey signed a deal in which Iran agreed to close its borders, preventing the exodus of refugees and armed Kurdish fighters. After the risings in the province of Dersim between 1936 -38 – all of which were crushed with many massacres – for more than 20 years there were almost no Kurdish armed attemps to achieve more independence from Turkey. Yet in 1960 when the army staged a coup d'état in Turkey, one of the justifications for the coup was the danger posed by Kurdish secessionist attempts. Once again the use of the Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names was prohibited. The continued repression led to the reemergence of Kurdish nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s Kurdish nationalist ambitions were propagated by a new group – the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers Party founded in 1978. The PKK claimed to oppose the local authorities and landlords who were mostly dominated by clans and chieftains. The PKK has been financing its activities through voluntary payments, donations and, despite its leftist verbiage, through blackmail, extortion, income through drugs and arms trafficking and more recently through human trafficking of refugees. In 1984 the PKK started a guerrilla insurgency until the ceasefire of 1999[5]. In 1999 its leader Öcalan was arrested and sentenced to death[6]. Following Öcalan's appeal to the PKK to stop its military fight in Turkey, the PKK ceased its military activities until 2004. This in turn led to repeated military attacks by the Turkish army against PKK hold-outs in Northern Iraq until 2011. As we shall see, it was only in 2012 that a short spell of relative calm began in the Kurdish areas in Turkey because of strategic moves by Erdogan! Looking back, we can see that the Turkish governments practiced a policy of alternating between very limited concessions and, more often, heavy repression – with waves of increasing military resistance by armed Kurdish militias, namely the PKK.
The Kurds in Iraq – 100 years of displacement and massacres
In the territory of Iraq the conditions for the Kurdish population were different.
Following their experience in India and in other colonies, the Britsh conceded the northern Kurdish region in Iraq some autonomy and recognized their nationalist claims in the hope of pre-empting Kurdish nationalist strivings on Iraqi soil. As an adjunct to their "divide and rule" policy and their backing of reactionary Kurdish elements, the British, in the face of large-scale resistance also developed terror bombing from the air with Churchill sanctioning the use of poison gas. In the meantime the Provisional Iraqi Constitution of 1921 even granted two ethnic groups (Arabs and Kurds) equal rights, and towards the Kurds the British applied a similar “divide and rule” policy: Kurdish tribes in the countryside received special legal jurisdiction and tax benefits. They were informally guaranteed seats in parliament and were outside the jurisdiction of the national courts. The Kurdish landlords in turn had to collect taxes for the British rulers.
In 1932 Iraq became an independent state. All through the 1950s Baghdad repressed Kurdish political rights, banned nationalist political parties, destroyed Kurdish villages, forcibly militarised the area and imposed resettlement (especially in petroleum-rich areas. In 1961 Iraqi Kurds began an insurgency against Baghdad. The Ba'ath party which came to power in 1963 launched a severe repression. In 1970 the Iraqi government and Kurdish leaders signed a Peace Agreement. None of the promises – Kurdish self-rule, recognition of the bi-national character of Iraq, political representation in the central government, extensive official language rights, the freedom of association and organisation - were ever implemented. During the 1970s, Iraqi Kurds pursued the goal of greater autonomy and even outright independence against the Ba'ath Party regime; but at the same time the two main Iraqi Kurdish groups around Talabani and Barzani repeatedly fought against each other. The two groups were part of the same ruling class and never divided by any class frontiers. Both could one day fight each other – with the support from one of the governments in Baghdad or Teheran – and the next day they could be allies against the governments they had been supported by. Already in the 1960s Iran had become an important force in the Kurdish autonomy movements in Iraq. Teheran and Baghdad were at odds over a border conflict in the Shat al-Arab. Iran supplied the Iraqi Kurdish group around Barzani with weapons and money. Following a rapprochement between Baghdad and Moscow in 1972 and the nationalisation of the oil industry, the USA tried to use the Iraqi Kurds to destabilise Iraq. In the next military clash in 1974-1975 in northern Iraq, between Barzani-led Kurdish troops and the Iraqi army, Iranian aviation destroyed Iraqi aircraft. Following a deal over the border question between Iran and Iraq, Iran ceased its military support to the Kurds. Again, a wave of repression and displacement began – Peshmergas withdrew to Iran, scores of Kurdish villages were destroyed. Between 1979-1982 the clashes amongst the Kurdish organisations reached a peak.
During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) Iran tried to instigate Iraqi Kurds against Baghdad. The latter retaliated in 1988: in the struggle against Kurdish combattants of the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and Iranian troops in March 1988, Baghdad ordered a massacre of Kurds in the city of Halabja, where chemical weapons were used indiscriminately. Between 1986 and 1989, Iraqi troops and militias killed between 50,000 and 180,000 Kurds, many of them civilians. About 1.5 million people were displaced.
After the first Gulf War 1991 and the rapid victory of the US-led troops against Saddam Hussein, the Kurds hoped for more independence. It was in this process, entirely dominated by imperialism, that certain groups, most notably the International Communist Group (GCI) saw a "revolutionary" and proletarian uprising. Like Rojava today, these were completely non-existent and rather showed the GCI's weakness for supporting nationalist movements and imperialist pawns[7].
During this time, NATO-enforced no-fly zones were established over the Kurdish areas, which gave them some protection against Baghdad and compelled Saddam to accept some level of self-government. The Kurdish Kurdish Regional Government was founded in 1992. Yet again between 1994-98, Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq clashed repeatedly, while Baghdad and Ankara intervened militarily as well.
Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the area was declared autonomous with some levels of self-governance. This limited autonomy (bigger than in comparison to Turkey or Iran however) would have been unthinkable without the US-led invasion of 2003. These Kurdish-controlled state structures have continued until today.
100 years of the Kurdish population's history shows that the Kurds in Iraq have been the most subjected to massacre and displacement, the most caught up in fights between rival bourgeois factions, who took sides with or were used by Baghdad or Teheran. And Turkey also used Iraqi Kurdish influence in Turkey to undermine the position of PKK.
The constellation in Iran
Although in 1920 Britain “snatched” a mandate for Iran from the League of Nations, Iran unlike Iraq or Syria was not a “new” unit set up in the area. Following the convulsions after WW1, a Kurdish tribal leader, Ismail Agas (called Simko), managed to rally Kurdish nationalists from the Turkey-Iraq-Iran triangle around him. He received the support of Kemal from Turkey, and in 1920 he fought under the Turkish flag with Kemal's support against Teheran's troops[8]. Until the 1930s Teheran had managed to tie the Kurdish population with its still persisting tribal structures to the Iranian state. Despite combined attempts by Iraq, Turkey and Iran to quell Kurdish nationalist activities in the region, Kurdish nationalists began to mobilise in the small town of Mahabad. As in the other countries, the nationalist aspirations were carried above all by tribal leaders, who had no interest in “social reforms”. In 1942 Russia tried to infiltrate the Kurdish milieu in Iran. In December 1945 the Azeri Peoples' Republic of Tabriz was proclaimed with Russian support. In Mahabad in Jan. 1946 a “Kurdish Republic”,was proclaimed, which was crushed by Teheran in December 1946, after Russia had dropped its support in exchange for concessions in oil drilling. Unlike other countries the Kurds were free to publish cultural and historical information in their own language.However, in the 1960s the Iranian regime began to clamp down on many civil rights. As showed earlier, Iran has repeatedly intervened in Iraq either to stir up or to “contain” the Iraqi Kurds according to its own interests. After the proclamation of the Islamic Republic on 1 April 1979 Kurdish and Shia militia (Pasdaran) clashed. The emphasis on Shia religion in the Iranian constitution is seen as a bone of contention for the Sunni Kurdish population. The Iranian government has been facing a low-level guerrilla warfare against the ethnic secessionist Kurdish guerrilla group Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) since 2004. PJAK is closely affiliated with the PKK operating against Turkey. Faced with the existence of several ethnic groups within Iran, Tehran is no less determined to prevent any Kurdish move towards autonomy.
These nationalist movements and imperialist maneuvers are often wolves dressed up in the sheep's clothing of workers' or "revolutionary" interests. This radical imagery adopted by Iranian/Kurdish elements was in fact based on a convergence of Iranian Stalinism and Kurdish nationalism, both subservient to the needs of the bourgeoisie. The guerilla group Komala, linked to the Communist Party if Iran, appeared sufficiently "radical" to fool the revolutionary group the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party for a while[9]. On the background of almost a century of failed attempts to gain more autonomy or to set up an independent Kurdish state the recently held referendum in Iraq was organised in a context of intensifying and increasingly complex and intertwined imperialist rivalries in the region.
We will look closer at three factors which sparked the renewed claims of Kurdish independence in the region – the development in Iraq, Syria and Turkey itself.
Iraq sinks into the abyss
We have shown in other articles how the whole spiral of imperialist chaos was already triggered in the 1980s following the collapse of the Shah's regime in 1979, which until then together with Turkey had been a strong outpost for the Western bloc against Russia. The US reacted amongst others by fostering the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988), which in turn led to rising tensions between Iran and Saudi-Arabia. In the Middle East, during the 1980s the conflicts were no longer marked by the confrontation between the two blocs, but increasingly expressed a plunge into an imperialist “every man for himself”. From Lebanon in the 1980s to Afghanistan, several zones of conflict emerged, where local guerrilla and terrorist forces fought against Russian imperialism (with US backing) or against the US with Iranian backing. And conflicts and fronts emerged in which regional rivals and terrorists became active with the backing of some other state. The initial attempt of US policy to “fight the flames of war with war” did not extinguish the fire, but only poured more oil onto it.
At the time of the 1st Gulf War in 1991 the US wanted and managed to avoid a fragmentation of Iraq – even at the price of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. In the 2nd Gulf War in 2003 the US claimed Saddam Hussein had acquired nuclear weapons capabilities. Following the quick US victory and the elimination of Saddam, a far- reaching reshuffle of power unfolded.
After the occupation of Iraq the US imposed a direct administration and they disarmed most of Saddam Hussein's supporters. Many of them belonged to the military and police forces and played a key role in setting up ISIS). Instead of integrating them into the US-led repressive apparatus, they excluded them and thus nurtured the seeds of ISIS.
The Sunni-dominated clan around Saddam Hussein was ousted and replaced by Shia-dominated governments, which in turn helped to increase Iranian influence in Iraq. In addition, a repressive policy against the Sunni population sharpened the division amongst the Iraqi population, an additional factor which drove some people into the arms of ISIS.
At the same time the Kurds in Northern Iraq were granted some sort of special relationship with Baghdad while terrorist violence spread throughout other parts of Iraq.
When ISIS conquered large areas of Iraq in July 2014, in particular the second biggest city, Mosul, the Kurdish peshmergas, who had been acting more or less like a state army force within Northern Iraq, were the first to mobilise against ISIS, while large parts of the Iraqi army had run away. The US and other western countries increased their military support both towards Baghdad and the Kurdish peshmergas[10]. In short, the US (and other western countries) supplied arms and training. Above all US planes bombed ISIS positions, and Peshmergas were used as cannon fodder.[11] Neither the US nor the other western countries wanted to have large numbers of boots on the ground because of their previous fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq and the general unpopularity of war.
The global failure of the US to stabilise the situation in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) had allowed Kurdish nationalist ambitions to revive in Iraq. And it was the need for the US-led coalition to support and arm the Kurdish peshmergas which drove them into conflict with all the governments in the region.
War in Syria – another factor compelling Turkey to attack the Kurds
The war in Syria which began in 2011 became another factor nurturing Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Syria. The Turkish strategy of increasing Turkish influence in the region required stronger ties with Syria. Up until 2011 Syria and Turkey had managed to improve their relationship. But soon after the beginning of the war in Syria, Assad, more and more under siege, responded by making a cunning strategic move. The Syrian army “abandoned” the Kurdish territory in Syria in 2012 to the Kurds, knowing that this would put Turkey under pressure to thwart any Kurdish advances. At the same time Turkey had been tolerating the forerunners of ISIS running recruitment agencies in Turkey, and Erdogan wanted to capitalise on the struggle of ISIS against the Kurds in Syria. Because of Western pressure, and following the release of footage by journalists showing the secret Turkish toleration of the smuggling of weapons, or Turkish state agencies directly delivering them and accepting the passage of terrorists from Turkey to Syria, Erdogan was forced to proclaim his opposition to Assad and promise to engage in a determined struggle against ISIS. As a consequence, ISIS began hitting targets in Turkey itself where previously ISIS had enjoyed “freedom of movement”.
At the same time the more ISIS conquered territory in Iraq and Syria, the more the Kurds began to gain importance as a tool serving the interests of the Western countries intervening in some way or other in Iraq and Syria. Towards the end of 2013 the Syrian Kurds had managed to establish a “free zone” (free of Assad's control and free of ISIS as well) named the autonomous area of Rojava. When ISIS forces began to lay siege to the Kurdish dominated border town Kobane on 15 September 2014, Turkey’s determination to block moves towards Kurdish autonomy left no doubts about Turkish priorities. Although the Turkish army was heavily present along the Turkish border within reach of Kobane, the Turkish army did not intervene to protect the Kurds against ISIS. It was only following heavy US bombardment and massive losses of Kurdish lives (civilian and militias) that ISIS was defeated at Kobane in February 2015 by YPG, PKK, other militias and Northern Iraqi Kurdish peshmergas. This episode illustrated the fate of the Kurds: their town Kobane in Kurdish hands, but in ruins, and Kurdish forces entirely dependent on US support against a ruthlessly determined Turkey. For the Kurds in Syria the question will be how the US will position themselves towards them, because without any military assistance for the Kurds in the area, they will not be able to hold out. Kobane and the idea of a "Rojava revolution" is causing big problems for the anarchist milieu today linked to PKK's "libertarian" turn. We have already written about this in some depth[12].
In order to “contain” and attack Kurdish enclaves on Syrian territory, Turkey began occupying parts of Western Syrian territory between August 2016 and March 2017(Operation Euphrates Shield [1651]). These Turkish military operations work against the interests of Assad, Russia and Iran. In response, despite the improvement of ties between Russia and Turkey, Russia has been offering some kind of “protection” to the Kurds, in order to prevent them being smashed by the Turkish army and to defend Assad's interests.
In Western Syria, Russian troops [1652] have moved into another area along the Syrian-Turkish border, acting as a barrier to Turkish and American forces in the area. In August 2017, the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, struck a deal with Russian forces [1653], aimed at provide a buffer between them and Turkish troops in and around the north-western city of Afrin. The fact that the Turkish army, in their fervor to eliminate Kurdish enclaves, “goes it alone” against the interests of all other sharks in the region, means that zones of friction between the US and Turkey have also grown stronger[13]. Some Kurdish groups in Syria have become suspicious about the US-led coalition's plans.
The next round of conflicts has begun – that of staking the claims now that the ISIS “Caliphate” has finally broken down in the region and will only be able to launch terrorist attacks here and there without any control over territory. While the US still need the Kurds as cannon fodder to fight against whatever is left of ISIS in the region, after the expulsion of ISIS from Iraq, the Kurds in Iraq felt the moment had come to claim full independence.
Fanning the flames of war in Turkey
As for the development in Turkey itself we can see some important changes, which we have explained in more detail in the above-mentioned article. Erdogan’s efforts to scale down the conflict with the Kurds by making minimum concessions, which he began in 2004-2005 following a deal with the PKK, helped him to keep the country “free” from any military confrontations with the Kurds for several years. This tactical step by Erdogan was in stark contrast to decades of a very determined policy of the Kemalist regimes in Turkey which had practiced zero tolerance towards Kurdish nationalism. And despite regular intervals of minor concessions to the Kurds, all the Turkish parties distinguished themselves by their strong anti-Kurdish position, by their agreement on the need for ferocious repression against Kurdish aspirations. Erdogan's calculation of limited concessions was successful for some time. In 2012, following negotiations with the PKK, the latter gave up claims for an autonomous Kurdistan. But the war in Syria and Erdogan’s own ambitions for a “greater Turkey” with a new emperor at its head, thwarted his plans. The fact that the Kurdish HDP scored more than 10% (13%) and for the first time had a presence in parliament strengthened the credibility of parliamentarianism in Turkey. At the same time, Erdogan's project of handing over more power to the president was blocked by the Kurdish HDP in parliament after the June 2015 elections. Erdogan's thirst for revenge and his determination to brush aside Kurdish resistance both within Turkey as well as in Syria and Iraq meant that he began declaring many HDP MPs and leaders of the Kurdish party to be terrorists. And a new military offensive against PKK began in the south-eastern part of Turkey with the occupation, bombing and deportation of Kurdish populations from the area. Thus, the war in Syria and Iraq has spilled over into a two-front war within Turkey- with ISIS terrorist attacks and with the intensification of combats between the Turkish army and PKK.
The history of the past century shows that in their obsession to contain Kurdish demands for independence all Turkish regimes, irrespective of the differences between them, whether secular or more Islamist, whether headed by the army or a civilian government, have attacked and displaced the Kurds – both within Turkey as well as in Syria and Iraq. And all Turkish regimes have been ready to come into conflict with any other country, no matter how close they have been to them in the past.
The “unwanted” Kurdish state
When the defeat and expulsion of ISIS in northern and western parts of Iraq became clear, the Kurdish nationalists announced a new referendum on independence in September 2017 – leading to the formation of something like a common front of all states against this project[14].
The reaction of Baghdad was immediate: it sent troops to seal off the area, snatched Kurdish-held oil fields and reconquered Kirkus.
Tehran's response was to offer support to Baghdad - political, economic and military. Because Kurdish territory both in Iraq and in Syria constitutes a “lifeline” for Iranian logistics supplying weapons, troops and anything else to Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is a crucial “overland connection” for Iran and its capacity to defend the vital strategic positions of its allies on the Mediterranean shores. The more Iran expands its influence into the West the more important Kurdish territory has become for Iran. Given the intensifying tensions around Lebanon between Saudi Arabia and Iran the Kurdish transit route is all the more strategically important for Tehran. And being threatened by the Trump administration over the Nuke deal, it is all the more willing to gain advantages out of the weakened position of Baghdad.
In reaction, the US have declared their opposition to a separate Kurdish state, knowing that such a state would accelerate the fragmentation of Iraq, the country they “liberated” in 2003, and that the Peshmerga fighters are still needed (even if less than before) as cannon fodder for the US. But the Baghdad counter-offensive against the Kurds has also strengthened the position of Iran, the USA’s main enemy, vis a vis Baghdad. The Peshmergas were useful for the US-led coalition in their readiness to push back ISIS – but the Peshmergas are in contradiction to the US interest if they claim a state of their own[15]. The Kurdish factions in power in Northern Iraq cannot survive without US help, but if Washington weakened or dropped its support this would make the US (even more) unreliable and unpredictable.
For the US and other Western countries, the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds have become more or less “superfluous” after their bloody but voluntary efforts to help weaken ISIS. However, since Russia and Turkey have been strengthening ties, the US and other western powers may want to keep the Kurdish card up their sleeve to be able to put pressure on Erdogan's rather unpredictable regime[16].
Turkey has already threatened a full-blown occupation of Northern Iraq if the Kurds go ahead with their proclamation of independence. And it has threatened to block the pipelines and oil transports by trucks from the oil fields in Northern Iraq via Turkey, cutting off any financial resources for the Kurdish areas. Moscow, which has gained considerable weight in Baghdad at the expense of the US, has also declared its opposition.
Following the strong reactions by Baghdad and other countries, the Kurdish nationalists at the moment seem to have backtracked – and the divisions within their ranks have once again become bigger as well.
As experience from history has shown, the present common front by all neighbouring countries and the “big guns” (US, Russia) will not last long. No sooner the Kurdish forces are weakened (or even massacred as in the past) will the divisions amongst the anti-Kurdish front become sharper. The unity of the ruling regimes in neighbouring countries does not originate in some genetic hatred of the Kurds as people, but expresses the impossibility of the system to allow for more states. It expresses the impasse of a whole system and this can only lead to more conflicts.
The history of the Kurds during the past century shows that they have been used as pawns on the imperialist chessboard by all the regional and global regimes against their respective rivals. And more than 100 years of Kurdish nationalist ambitions shows that all different factions within the Kurdish nationalist camp have been ready to act as tools in the interests of these regimes. Without the consequences of the failed US policy to try to contain chaos in the Middle East, the Kurds would not have been able to claim their independence so strongly in the recent period.
The fragmentation of the former Ottoman Empire into different units and the prevention of a separate Kurdish state has now reached a new phase, where two countries – Iraq and Syria – are faced with separatist tendencies and even break-up. Iraq has been torn by war since 1980, i.e. almost four decades. Iran has been engaged in military confrontations since 1980 with all its neighbours, in particular Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and Israel at a longer distance. Having become a regional shark, the expansion of Iranian influence has driven it into stronger cooperation with Russia in their common defence of the Assad regime in Syria[17]. And of course, Afghanistan has been engulfed in a chain of wars since 1979.
In the midst of all this the Kurdish nationalists are now claiming once again a new piece of territory in the midst of all these battlefields and graveyards.
However, this is not just an ordinary repetition of the previous conflicts. The number of sharks – smaller and bigger – has risen sharply. The weakened US are faced with a more direct presence of Russian troops in the area; US troops are active on the ground in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – even if the US have had to admit that their intervention in these countries has ended in fiasco, and every presidential candidate in the election campaigns promised a withdrawal of troops, in reality they hide the scope of their real engagement and have had to increase their presence. Particularly significant is the presence of Turkey on different fronts – its direct presence in Syria, Iraq, Qatar – with clashes of interests with the Russians and the Americans on Syrian territory.
Now that it is becoming apparent that ISIS is no longer the force which mobilised some kind of temporary united front, as with all previous spirals of war, once the common enemy becomes weakened or is decimated, the tendency towards each for himself, the war of each against all, will take on new proportions.
In the same way as the formation of new states such as Israel was only possible through the displacement of the local Palestinian population, leading to the formation of gigantic refugee camps and repeated military conflict, the formation of a separate Kurdish state could not have any other destiny. The way out for a displaced, massacred, repressed Kurdish population can only be through the abolition of all frontiers and states.
The Middle East was once the cradle of human civilisation. Today it highlights the drive towards its collapse. It is not by fighting for new nations that humanity will be liberated from this threat, but by fighting for a world where the nation state has become a thing of the past.
No faction of Kurdish nationalism has ever been progressive; none of them have ever deserved the support of the workers or the poor peasants, or of genuine communists. And yet the Kurdish national struggle continues to be presented as something that is compatible with the proletarian revolution. The image of bold, egalitarian Kurdish fighters depicted in parts of the media has even attracted significant numbers of anarchists into directly supporting imperialist war. Kurdish national liberation was reactionary in the 1920s, as was that of Turkey and everyone else. The times of a progressive bourgeoisie have long passed and imperialism, particularly the major imperialisms, dominate the globe, and nowhere more so than in the Middle East. It was one of the great mistakes and regressions that led the Bolsheviks to support national liberation struggles which were then and now inimical to working class interests.
This means the exploited parts of the Kurdish population, workers and poor peasants, have nothing to gain from mobilising behind the nationalists. For them more than ever the workers have no fatherland.
Enver, 23.11.2017
[3] There are about 24-27 million Kurds, about half of them live in Turkey, more than 4 million in Iraq, around 5-6 million in Iran, around one million in Syria; the number of Kurds in Western Europe is estimated around 700.000, in the former Soviet Union there are som 400.000.
[5] With around 700.000 soldiers Turkey had the second biggest NATO army after the US. Around 300.000 soldiers and police forces fought in the Kurdish areas, compelling some 2500 villages to be evacuated or left in ruins; about 3 million Kurds were displaced. Already the killing mountains of Kurdistan had become the area with the highest number of refugees.
[6] His death penalty was transformed into life imprisonment in 2002.
[8] Simko was a tribal leader and had no sympathy for urban culture and urban population. He was assasinated in Iran in 1924.
[10] In Syria the biggest Kurdish party is Party of Democratic Union (PYD); their military arm is YPG (Peoples' Defence Units) and the YPJ (Womens Defence Units). In autumn 2015 the Kurdish defence units entered into an alliance with other militias in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The military branch of PKK is HPG.
[11] Germany trained some14,000 Peshmerga fighters. Germany also delivered some 32.000 small weapons, 20,000 hand grenades and lots of other weapons. The US paid directly the “wages” of 36,000 peshmergas. They then started to act as mercenaries of US and other imperialisms). British Tornado jets have supported Kurdish fighters and Britain has supplied them with anti-tank missiles, radar and other military equipment along with "trainers" and British Special Forces. According to Downing Street, it's doing this for "humanitarian" reasons (Daily Mail, 15.8.14).
[13] The first firefights have occurred between American troops and Turkish supported troops near Manbij in Syria, which has been a focal point for simmering tensions between United States and Turkish-supported factions.
[14] Only Israel has publicly annonced its support for Kurdish independence, knowing that such a declaration will weaken its enemies, in particular Iran and its influence in Iraq...
[15] In the 1960s, the U.S. military secretly supported the Shah of Iran to suppress a Kurdish rebellion, as well, according to an official U.S. Air Force history. www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA533492 [1659]
[16] The recent decision to stop arms deliveries to the Kurdish YPG may be an expression of the US making concessions to Erdogan today … in order to blackmail him tomorrow.
[17] We have dealt with the recently sharpened tensions between Iran-Saudi Arabia amongst others over Yemen and Lebanon in other articles.
This article, written by a close sympathiser of the ICC in the US, is a further contribution to our effort to follow the evolution of the situation in the US after the election of Trump. It follows on from an article written by the same comrade in April[1]
One year after the shocking election of Donald Trump as President, the US bourgeoisie continues to struggle with a new constellation of political forces that threatens to undermine both major political parties and the traditional left-right division of ideological labor between them. The political tremors unleashed during the Presidential campaign of 2016 continue to reverberate under the Trump administration with the US political “establishment” now forced to deal with a rogue outsider occupying the highest office in the land, entrusted with the nuclear codes.[2]
In previous articles, we have argued that Trump’s election—along with similar political events in other countries, such as the 2016 Brexit Referendum in the UK—marks a qualitative step forward in the process of social decomposition, in which the historic crisis of global capitalism is exerting a centrifugal effect on the political apparatus of the bourgeois state—especially its “democratic” apparatus in those states that employ them. The evolution of the political situation in the year since Trump’s election has in our view confirmed this analysis and revealed a deepening crisis of bourgeois governance that the establishment, or main factions of the bourgeoisie, have yet to bring under control. The crisis is particularly pronounced in the US, where Trump was able to win the White House due to a complex set of circumstances including the effects of the antiquated Electoral College and the inability of an already compromised Republican Party to contain its more extreme factions, but also the degradation of the Democratic Party itself, which in an apparent act of hubris nominated a particularly ill-suited establishment candidate with ethical, legal and political challenges (Clinton) to face Trump, against the more popular Bernie Sanders or other more electable candidates.
Therefore, Trump’s victory, while an “accident” in the sense of occurring against the wishes of the main factions of the bourgeoisie, did not come from nowhere. It was prepared by a process of political degeneration that has its origin at least as far back as the contested election of 2000, when George W. Bush won the Presidency despite losing the popular vote, but only after the intervention of the Supreme Court. While the eight years of the ensuing Obama Presidency initially did much to repair the “democratic” image of the US state, underneath the glowing approval of the bourgeois media the Obama years were marked by political and social fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. The working class would pay heavily for this in the form of layoffs, protracted unemployed, evictions and the repossession of their homes, exploding student debt and the expansion of various forms of “precarious” employment, while the Wall Street “Banksters”—who most saw as responsible for the disaster—escaped any serious repercussions. The period 2008-2016 witnessed a growing anger in the population about the overall state of the economy, the lack of stable jobs and the declining life opportunities for the younger generations. At the same time, in certain sectors of the populace—especially the so-called “white working class”[3]—there was increasing concern about the pace of social and cultural change brought about by the forces of so-called “neo-liberalism” or “globalization,” which many saw Obama’s Presidency symbolizing. Consequently, the growing anger in the population took multiple and diverse forms and was influenced by both left and right bourgeois ideology.
While Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party appeared to share few ideological features, they nevertheless each manifested a growing “grassroots” frustration with the establishment parties and even the institutions of the state itself. On the left, there was a growing realization that establishment Democratic politicians like Obama—whatever their progressive image—would never adequately address the deepening economic troubles of the younger generations, while on the right elements associated with the Tea Party began to turn their anger against establishment Republican politicians, who they felt would always sell them out on issues like immigration, global trade deals, etc. While emanating from different ideological places and reflecting different social constituencies, there was nevertheless a broader “populist” fervor bubbling up during the Obama years that exploded in unpredictable ways during the 2016 Presidential campaign, fueling the candidacies of both Bernie Sanders and Trump.
Now that Trump is President, the main factions of the US bourgeoisie have had a very difficult time figuring out how to respond to the reality that the social and political upheaval unleashed by their favoured approach to managing capitalism’s historic crisis (neo-liberal globalization) has led to the election of a rogue element to the Presidency whose commitment to this consensus, as well as to the imperialist strategy of the main factions of the bourgeois class, is still not entirely clear.
The Democrats’ dilemma and the problems of the “Resistance.”
The Democrats, the faction of the bourgeoisie that one would expect to lead a political campaign of opposition to Trump and Trumpism, have in fact launched a fierce “resistance” effort, unleashing an intense political and media barrage around the President’s ties to Russia, and the possibility that his campaign colluded with the Russian state to manipulate the election results. They have also vigorously denounced the President’s flirtation with extreme right-wing and racist elements, especially in the aftermath of the turmoil in Charlottesville around the “alt-right”/neo-Nazi march that resulted in the killing of an anti-fascist counter-protestor[4].
However, despite the fervor of these campaigns, the Democrats are not in a particularly strong institutional or ideological position to oppose Trump at this juncture. Despite holding the Presidency for eight years under Obama, and Clinton actually having won the popular vote against Trump, the Democrats are at their lowest point in terms of number of elected offices nationwide since 1928, i.e. the last Presidential election before Roosevelt’s victory in 1932 would usher in the “New Deal.” They control no part of the federal government (save for perhaps elements of the “permanent bureaucracy” and the so-called “deep state”) and most state governments are under Republican control. With the Republicans’ blocking of Obama’s appointment of the moderate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and Trump’s subsequent successful insertion of the conservative Neil Gorsuch to the high court, the Democrats cannot confidently rely on the judiciary’s court of final say to back them up, should they take the legal route to obstruct Trump’s agenda.
Moreover, the Democrats are themselves experiencing a profound inner turmoil in the aftermath of the Bernie Sanders insurgency, which nearly upended the establishment’s choice for President even before the general election. The establishment neo-liberal factions in the Democratic Party are thus having to fight a two-front battle: on the one hand to oppose Trump and the other to not give up too much ground to the leftist insurgent forces in their own party, who openly call the neo-liberal consensus into question. Many establishment Democrats (including Hillary herself) continue to blame Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign against Clinton for Trump’s subsequent victory. They often disparage Sanders’ supporters as juvenile idealists on the one hand, while at the same time they imply that many of his white working-class supporters are really Trumpian racists and xenophobes at heart.
The reality of the division of the Democratic Party between establishment neo-liberals—heavily backed by Wall Street—who are committed to a version of the status quo—and the “Sandernistas” who eschew corporate funding and increasingly adopt a kind of populist intransigence in their political rhetoric, complicates the ability of the Democratic Party to operate as an effective opposition to Trump. The massive levels of distrust between the establishment Democrats—who see the Sanders faction as irresponsible populists not much different from the Trumpists—and the “progressive” wing of the party who accuse their establishment foes of having “sold out the working class” to court Wall Street money, have rendered the Democrats a divided force, with an incoherent message and competing loyalties to different social constituencies. Where the establishment Democrats have their electoral base in the so-called “professional managerial class” and (older) minority voters, the progressives around Sanders court the younger generations and elements of the white working class who have not succumbed to Trumpism. While Obama, with his rock star like demographic appeal, was able to cement these diverse constituencies into a winning electoral coalition, Clinton was not—hemorrhaging white working class voters by seemingly referring to them as “deplorables” and alienating younger voters with a political track record that stunk of entitlement, opportunism and broken promises.
In the months since Trump’s election, the Democratic Party’s institutions—including the newly reconstituted Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the party’s elected officials on Capitol Hill—have mostly avoided going in a populist direction and have instead decided to focus their opposition to Trump on his supposed collusion with Russia and the threat the President poses for US national security. At times, the rhetoric around Trump’s Russian connections have reached such a level of intensity that the Democrats have themselves fallen into a kind of anti-Russian xenophobic mania, seeing Vladimir Putin as a puppet master manipulating the US democratic apparatus for his own ends. The meme of Trump as a Kremlin puppet—whatever his actual connections to Russian interests—represents an ideological attack on the legitimacy of President (and the Presidency itself) many times more severe than the so-called “birther” conspiracy theories that some Republicans floated against Obama.
In their zeal to push the Russia narrative and to paint themselves as the party of American sovereignty and the national (imperialist) interest, the Democrats increasingly abandon their traditional ideological position as the party of liberal internationalism, rational diplomacy and respect for the US’s democratic institutions. While much of their campaign about Russian interference in the election is carried out in the name of restoring the integrity of American democracy, the result of this exercise is to call into question the intelligence of the American voters, many of whom they suggest can’t tell the difference between real campaign information and Russian propagated “fake news.” For the Democrats, it is not far from this conclusion to flirtation with the idea of censoring the internet. For the defeated Democrats, who purport to speak in the name of democracy itself, voters’ choices only appears to count when they make the right choice and ratify the main factions of the bourgeoisie’s preferred candidates (in 2016, Clinton), not when they choose an outsider who questions the prevailing consensus in Washington. In their eyes, Trump’s election must therefore be illegitimate and should possibly be overturned. It is in this sense that the Russia narrative undercuts the very democratic ideology the Democratic Party purportedly seeks to defend.
In choosing to focus their opposition to Trump around the theme of Russian interference, the Democrats have themselves called into question the US’s democratic image. The very meaning of democracy itself becomes unclear for large swathes of the population, not limited to Trump’s base voters. Part of this attack is actually aimed not at Trump, but at Sanders’ supporters, many of whom were supposedly duped into foolishly not voting for Clinton by an aggressive left-themed Russian backed propaganda campaign on social media and the Russia Today (RT) network that painted Clinton as a neo-liberal hag no better than Trump. For the establishment Democrats, it is not just Trumpian “deplorables” who cannot be trusted with the democratic franchise, but also the so-called “Bernie bros” and like-minded fellow-travelers whose juvenile purity ethic led many to irresponsibly risk a Trump victory by abstaining from the vote or supporting some destined- to- lose third party candidate.
Whether they realize it or not, the Democrats’ seemingly incessant campaigns about Russian interference in the election paint a picture of “democracy” as something like a technical process, whereby voters merely ratify the rational consensus choice of the main factions of the bourgeoisie. Any other outcome is by its very nature flawed and therefore illegitimate. This attitude only fuels the populist suspicion of the establishment elites who purport to know what is in the voters’ real interests, even more so than the voters themselves!
While the Russia campaigns may have stoked a certain fervor among constituencies already loyal to the Democratic Party, they likely haven’t helped the party mitigate the appeal of populism, whether from the left or the right. To many of Trump’s voters the campaigns look like an undemocratic attempt to overturn a legitimate election result. They fuel speculation about so-called “deep state” conspiracies against Trump and reinforce the image of the Democrats—and the political establishment as a whole—as dismissive and judgmental, as out of touch with the values and ethics of the “common man.”
For many of Sanders’ supporters, the Russia campaigns have only increased their alienation from the Democratic Party’s institutions. They view these campaigns as a sleight of hand to distract from the Democrats’ (and the Clinton campaign in particular) failure to connect with the working class and the economically distressed younger generations by offering real policy alternatives to the neo-liberal status quo. They are also seen as a dangerous rhetoric which threatens to escalate the US’s very real tensions with Russia to the brink of war—by proxy or otherwise. In this sense, the Democrats’ Russia campaigns, while somewhat effective in constraining Trump’s ability to maneuver on the terrain of foreign policy and preventing whatever rapprochement the Trumpists had planned with Putin from taking full shape, have nevertheless only served to deepen a certain populist contempt for the Democrats among wide swaths of the electorate.
Of course, it is also the case that the concerns over Russian interference in the election are not entirely motivated by an ideological need to delegitimize Trump. The main factions of the bourgeoisie from both major parties are understandably infuriated by what does appear to be some very real attempts by the Russian state to engage in an “active measures” campaign to either increase support for Trump or drive down Clinton’s vote (probably mostly the latter). From the point of view of the main factions of the US bourgeoisie, this interference by a foreign state in its “democratic” apparatus is wholly unacceptable. It is for this reason that many establishment Republicans have joined the Democrats in pushing the Russia narrative and calling for retaliation against Putin. John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham have all called out the Russian interference, while McCain has often been more vociferous in his denunciations of Trump than even the Democrats.
In any event, the unanimity among the main factions of the bourgeoisie on the question of Russian interference in the election underscores the near universal contempt for Trump and what he represents among key figures from both parties, even if the Republicans are more politically constrained in their ability to connect Trump personally to the interference. While the claims by some of the more radical Democratic back-benchers that Trump is a “Russian hoax” or “Putin’s Puppet” may be irresponsible from the point of view of maintaining the democratic façade and the legitimacy of the existing institutions, there is nevertheless a consensus among the main factions of the bourgeoisie that Trump represents a dangerous and unpredictable element whose loyalty to the consensus goals of US imperialist policy cannot be assumed.
Ideological disintegration and the fight to control the media
But more than this general concern about Russian interference in the election, the entire controversy about “fake news”—which is not limited to Russian planted stories online, but has as many American authors as foreign ones—reveals a growing panic in the bourgeoisie that it is increasingly losing its ability to control the political media narrative and therefore manipulate the outcome of its electoral process to ensure its consensus candidates win elections. The growth of the Internet in recent decades, the deregulation of the media and the spread of new social media technologies have in retrospect not been positive on these accounts. More and more, the populace is separated from any common media driven political narrative—getting their news and information from a variety of online sources, the veracity and responsibility of which cannot be guaranteed or easily vetted.
For the bourgeoisie, it was already a problem when the sources of these competing narrative “bubbles” were mostly domestic (Fox News, right-wing radio, conspiracy websites, leftist alternative media, etc.), but it has become a full-blown national security crisis now that foreign intelligence agencies are able to penetrate the online space and exert some level of influence on US public opinion. While it is likely that the actual import of the Russian “active measures” campaign in the 2016 US election has been grossly exaggerated (the toxic effects of home grown media buffoonery, probably put Russian fake news to shame), it is clear that from the point of view of the US bourgeoisie any foreign influence is simply unacceptable. The problem for the main factions of the bourgeoisie is that the technological development of various Internet and social media technologies have reached such a point that any attempt to rein in the forces of ideological disintegration they foster would likely require some kind of state censorship—something which would further put into question the American “democratic” façade.
While the state appears to have won some cooperation from entities like Facebook and Twitter in cracking down on suspected Russian backed or other fake news sites, this has already been denounced by civil liberties and free speech advocates as counter to the spirit of US democratic values—and tough questions are beginning to be posed about the relationship of the Internet (still dominated by private companies) and the integrity of the free exchange of ideas in the public sphere that democratic societies are supposedly based upon. For now, the US bourgeoisie appears to prefer not to open the Pandora’s Box on this subject, instead attempting to override the ideological splintering of society with a new patriotic campaign against Russian interference, carried out primarily through the mechanisms of the Democratic Party. However, the dangers that such a campaign will itself get out of control and further discredit the US democratic apparatus remain real and it is in the end unlikely to prevent further questioning about the reality of American “democracy” from emerging. In fact, it may only accelerate this process.
Trump’s flirtations with the alt-right and the perils of “identity politics”
The second prong of the Democratic Party’s resistance to Trump focuses around a campaign to denounce his flirtations with some of the more extreme right-wing and racist forces in US society. This campaign reached a certain apex in the aftermath of the Charlottesville demonstrations when Trump rather ham-fistedly blamed the violence on “both sides,” drawing a moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and “alt-right” elements that marched in defense of Confederate statues and the anti-fascist and anti-racist protestors who opposed them.
While the Democrats are on stronger ground in terms of public opinion with this line of attack against Trump, the fervor with which the Democrats have in recent times become the “party of minorities and immigrants” nevertheless now functions as a double-edged sword in electoral politics. While much of the population and nearly the entire bourgeoisie was incensed by Trump’s reaction to the events in Charlottesville (including many prominent Republicans—even some associated with the Tea Party) and loudly denounced the President’s bumbling false equivalencies around the responsibility for the violence, the same level of unanimity does not exist in regards to the ideologically intransigent position of most Democrats about removing the Confederate statues, with most polls showing a majority of the population against removing these symbols of “southern pride.”
But beyond the specific issues of the Confederate statutes, this episode highlights another key dilemma facing the Democratic Party going forward. Buoyed by Obama’s successful campaigns, the Democrats have increasingly relied on the so-called “demographic strategy” to win elections, banking on assembling a coalition of professionals with progressive social values, younger voters, minorities and immigrants to defeat a Republican party whose demographic base among downscale whites was supposedly doomed to shrink with the increasing “browning of America.” On one level, this strategy only recognizes the reality of powerful historical, social and demographic trends resulting from the neo-liberal globalization of capitalism, but when the Democrats take the next step and are seen openly “cheerleading” this process (with even one Washington Post columnist recently seeming to root for white working class communities to die)[5], they run afoul of a white working-class “backlash.”
While this backlash was not yet powerful enough to pose problems for Obama’s re-election in 2012, it has nevertheless had disastrous effects for Democrats in congressional, state and local elections, where during Obama’s Presidency the Democrats racked up loss after loss in election after election. While some of this is clearly due to the incompetent management of the party under the reign of disgraced former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, it is also the case that the so-called demographic strategy is much less effective in lower turnout elections, which are usually dominated by demographics less favorable to the Democrats’ increasingly open attempts to court minority and immigrant voters. Losing elections in off years might be acceptable as long as Democrats could retain control of the Presidency by assembling the “Obama coalition” once every four years. However, it apparently never occurred to anyone of strategic import in the Democratic Party that in the absence of a rock-star candidate on the ticket the demographic strategy could fail in a Presidential election as well.[6] The triumph of the Obama campaigns, in which the Democrats were constructed as the political vehicle of the dawning of a new age of historical progress and social/racial justice, crashed down to earth in the disaster of the Clinton campaign, where speaking for the interests of minorities and immigrants often came off more like opportunist pandering than genuine concern for their condition.[7]
Having sworn off the white working class to appeal to minorities and immigrants, the Democrats have now given themselves very little room for political maneuvering. In the absence of demographic change delivering them a permanent electoral majority in the near future, the Democratic Party appears to have no real political strategy other than to point out that they are not Trump. While it is possible they may be able to ride popular disgust with Trump to victory in the 2018 midterms and/or 2020 Presidential election, it seems likely that the problems associated with pursuing minorities and immigrants as an electoral base will not attenuate anytime soon and will continue to complicate the Democratic Party’s ability to function as an effective party of either opposition or future governance.[8]
Of course, all of these problems facing the establishment Democrats would only seem to open the door for some kind of “progressive” make-over of the party under the forces associated with Bernie Sanders. If the establishment Democrats are now too closely tied with Wall Street donors, too compromised by their support for the neo-liberal consensus than it seems only logical that the main factions of the bourgeoisie would see the necessity to give the supposed “left” party in their political apparatus a new appearance by legitimating the Sanders’ wing and refashioning the Democrats’ message around the economic plight of the working class and the younger generations. Nevertheless, several barriers appear to stand in the way of this happening at this juncture.
First, although the Bernie Sanders campaign captured the imagination of much of the younger generation and Sanders’ own social democratic vision, which includes such ambitious projects as establishing a universal single payer healthcare system and tuition-free college, is popular with the public, Sanders himself is an aging political figure who would be 78 years old at the next Presidential election. Moreover, although his campaign appeared to find a successful new model of financing that eschewed corporate donors in favor of Internet based small donations, this has not translated well into institutional politics in the post-electoral period. Sanders’ own pick to head the DNC, Keith Ellison, was defeated in an internal party election by a more centrist figure, Tom Perez, who was essentially parachuted into the campaign late in the season by Obama and his loyalists to make sure the controversial Ellison did not win. While Perez initially promised unity with Ellison, there are recent reports of an internal party purge that saw several Sanders’ supporters lose their seats at the DNC table. [9]
While Sanders remains a very popular political figure nationwide, a reality that has prevented establishment Democrats from completely snubbing him, his supporters have not yet figured out how to unseat entrenched establishment figures from internal party positions. Moreover, as an “outsider” figure, Sanders has won few friends in the Washington based consultant-pundit-media complex, who remain more or less openly hostile to him and his supporters, seeking to discredit them as part of the same populist forces represented by Trump. Simply put, the Democratic establishment does not want to relinquish control of the party to the Sanders forces, who may put the neo-liberal consensus into question and whose commitment to consensus imperialist goals is as questionable as Trump’s. They would rather lose elections than give over the party to these “populists.”
Nevertheless, the Sanders movement faces other problems based on its own internal political contradictions. On the one hand, Sanders’ political base is clearly in the younger generations, who are attracted to his unabashed critique of neo-liberalism and Wall Street and are generally sympathetic to his old-school social democratic policy commitments. But to the extent to which the Sanders movement has to construct itself as a political as opposed to a demographic movement, it must seek support outside of this base. In the 2016 campaign, this took the form of appealing to those downscale whites still registered as Democrats and thus able to vote in Democratic primaries (or registered as independents in states with open primaries) in rustbelt and otherwise predominantly white states. It was no secret that Sanders performed rather poorly among minority voters, whose votes mostly went to Hillary Clinton. The electoral coalition that would be necessary to transform the Sanders movement from an opposition campaign to a real contender for power would be very difficult to assemble in a stable fashion. Any attempt to appeal to white working class voters by compromising on issues of race and immigration would alienate many of Sanders’ younger supporters, while conversely placating his millennial base on identity issues risks driving white working class voters further into the Trumpist orbit.
Already, Sanders has come in for attack on just this point from the Democratic establishment who have always suspected that deep down the left-wing populist has harbored anti-immigrant sentiment and never really understood issues of racial oppression. Sanders’ past flirtations with a kind of nationalist-protectionism (he even appeared on the Lou Dobbs show once to denounce an immigration reform proposal, because in his words it would create a class of “slave laborers”) has already been used by establishment Democrats to drive down his credibility among minority voters. Moreover, Sanders’ post-election criticism of “identity politics” and his endorsement of a red-state “progressive” politician with a questionable history on abortion rights have all given ammunition to the establishment Democrats’ suspicions that he is not really a social progressive and will sell out minorities and immigrants to court the white working class. In other words, for establishment Democrats, Sanders is really just Trump in disguise.
While such accusations are certainly overstated, they nevertheless highlight the problems facing the Democratic Party in the current period. On the one hand, it has increasingly been discredited as a party of the working class at precisely the time when the interests of the national capital call for an effective opposition party to keep Trump in check. However, any attempt to change the image of the Democrats from a party of monied elites who cow tow to minorities for electoral purposes to a more traditional party of the working class would seem likely to flounder on the rocks of American racial and identity politics in the era of neo-liberal globalization.[10]
If Jeremy Corbyn has momentarily rescued the UK Labour Party from a similar dilemma[11], the chances of a “Sandersization” of the Democratic Party in the US seem more remote. Nevertheless, this only fuels the instability in the political system as a whole and furthers the possibility that the Democrats will eventually split (against the counsel of Sanders himself perhaps) at some point in the future, as it will prove incapable of containing the increasingly anti-neo-liberal (when not outright anti-capitalist) sentiments of the millennial generations within its ranks.[12] In this sense, it is possible that the “demographic strategy” the establishment Democrats are banking on will backfire on them, as the divisions of race, ethnicity and immigrant status are not as strong among the younger generations and they are not as easily manipulated by racist ideology and are more and more able to recognize identity politics as a distraction from underlying structural-economic problems with the capitalist economy as a whole. [13]
The Republican Party unravels under the pressure of decomposition
If the Democratic Party is racked by what appear to be some rather insoluble contradictions, the Republican Party has for all intents and purposes already come apart. This may sound ironic given that Republicans control nearly the entire federal government and a majority of the states, but in reality this apparent strength mask an underlying disintegration that prevents the Republicans from serving as an effective party of national governance.
In previous articles, we have already done much to analyze the origins of the Republican Party’s degeneration from a party of governance under Regan and the first Bush to an increasingly ideologically driven force more and more incapable of acting in the overall interest of the national capital. While the origins of the Republicans’ transition from a rational business-friendly party and capable defender of the US imperialist interests in the Cold War to the extremist right-wing force it is today go back at least to the Civil Rights movement and Nixon’s adoption of the so-called “Southern Strategy,” the current trend appeared to start during the first Clinton administration. Having ended 12 years of Republican hegemony under Regan-Bush1, mostly by moving the Democratic Party to the right on social issues and endorsing the neo-liberal economic consensus, Clinton effectively pushed the Republicans even further to the right, as they sought to outdo the “Great Triangulator” by “drowning the government baby in the bathtub.”
Clinton’s Presidency infuriated many Republicans, who were incensed that the cool and affable Southern good old boy was able to build what was increasingly looking like an unassailable electoral coalition of minorities and many downscale whites (The media often referred to Clinton as the first “Black President,” at the same time he was affectionately known by many downscale whites as “Bubba.”) Still, the Republicans were able to gain control of Congress in 1994 by exploiting the failure of the Clinton administration’s overreach on healthcare reform (“Hillarycare”) and general concern about the growth of federal government power. Under the direction of increasingly hostile and belligerent elements like Newt Gingrich, they quickly went to work irresponsibly shutting down the government—a political disaster for them they compounded with the bizarre decision to impeach Clinton ostensibly for lying to a grand jury about his sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky.
At the end of the Clinton Presidency, the Republicans looked a spent force, with Al Gore predicted to succeed to the Presidency over the intellectually inferior Republican nominee George W. Bush. Nevertheless, public disgust with Clinton’s personal antics and a rather poor campaign by Gore allowed Bush to get within striking distance. A contested outcome in Florida threw the election to the Supreme Court, which decided in Bush’s favor, at which time Gore—in the interests of the national capital to avoid any further threats of a “constitutional crisis”—conceded.
The ensuing eight years of the Bush Presidency were nothing short of a total disaster for the US national capital. While his administration exploited the 9/11 terrorist attacks to launch a major imperialist offensive in the Middle East, his decision to invade Iraq a second time, turned global opinion against the United States squandering the international political capital it had gained out of sympathy for the victims on 9/11. Domestically, the Bush administration’s embrace of the so-called “Casino economy” (which had actually begun under Clinton) to prop up growth led to a major economic catastrophe at the end of his Presidency in 2007, when the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market nearly tanked the entire global economy. Forced by circumstances to adopt a positively Keynesian trajectory, Bush acquiesced to a giant bailout of Wall Street on the taxpayers’ dime—earning the ire of many of the free market ideologues and libertarians in his own party, as well as much of the populace disgusted that the “Banksters” were going to get bailed out while their homes values plummeted, credit ratings were ruined and mortgage default and eviction loomed. In the years ahead, many of the right wing ideologues under the Republican Party banner would blame Bush’s penchant for “crony capitalism” (symbolized by his bailing out of the Wall Street financiers) as much for the problems facing the country as his successor’s supposed “socialism.”
Nevertheless, while the Republican Party had been going through a process of ideological degeneration for some time prior to Obama’s election in 2008, it was really under his Presidency that the GOP took a turn towards the abyss. Whatever the media’s triumphalism about the election of the first African-American President, something that would supposedly usher in a new “post-racial” society where meritocracy was perfected, a dark reaction was taking shape within the bosom of the Republican Party. The emergence of the Tea Party in the first two years of Obama’s Presidency signaled a qualitative step forward in the unraveling of the GOP. Partly an “Astroturf” phenomenon funded by vulgar corporate interests like the Koch Brothers to further their deregulatory agenda, but also in part a grassroots backlash reaction to the first African-American President, changing demographics and mass immigration, the Tea Party phenomenon grouped together a diverse—often incoherent—set of grievances against establishment Washington.
In the 2010 mid-term elections, a new crop of right-wing extremist Republican candidates rode the backlash fervor to control of the House Representatives, where they set about not only obstructing Obama’s agenda, but also making life incredibly miserable for establishment Republicans like Speaker of the Houser John Boehner. A vicious cycle emerged, in which fear of a primary challenge from a Tea Party opponent, pushed the Republican party ever further to the right, as more responsible members of the GOP struggled to maintain control of their caucus. The process reached something of a climax in the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis, in which Tea Party back-benchers came close to provoking another major economic catastrophe by threatening to refuse service on the ever-increasing national debt.[14]
Although Obama easily won re-election in 2012, mostly by successfully painting his Republican opponent Mitt Romney as a greedy agent of the one-percent, the Republicans would maintain control of Congress for the rest of his Presidency, winning control of the Senate in the 2014 mid-term elections. Nevertheless, now trusted with a “share in governance”, the Republican Party fell flat on its face. In an effort to demonstrate that their party could act like adults and actually help solve pressing national issues, several establishment Republicans in the Senate attempted to craft a comprehensive immigration reform package with Democrats. However, this effort was stymied in the House of Representatives as Tea Party Republicans, together with their allies in conservative media, led a vicious campaign to block any attempt at granting “amnesty” to illegal aliens. Eventually, the turmoil within the Republican caucus would force House Speaker John Boehner to resign, replaced by Romney’s 2012 running mate and intellectual heavyweight of the conservative movement Paul Ryan. Nevertheless, even Ryan himself was regarded with suspicion by many Tea Party activists as too close to the establishment with soft views on immigration.
Such was the state of the Republican Party at the opening of the 2016 Presidential campaign. It had long since ceased to be a unified conservative movement, split into several competing, but still somewhat loosely defined ideological currents: business-friendly establishment Republicans looking to rehabilitate the image of the party as a contender for national governance, Christian fundamentalists, free market libertarian-extremists and a somewhat new and still not fully politically articulated “nation-state populist” wing that was becoming increasingly energized around opposition to immigration and the establishment wing of the Republican Party’s seeming willingness to compromise on this issue.
If for much of the Obama years, this latter faction was subsumed under a broader anti-establishment Tea Party movement, it would become clear in the context of the 2016 presidential election that it was not quite the same thing. In storming the Republican primaries to win the GOP’s nomination for Presidency in 2016, the insurgent outsider Donald Trump exploited this difference to build an electoral juggernaut that saw him take down all the establishment Republican candidates like Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio, as well as vanquish Tea Party stalwart Ted Cruz, all in convincing fashion.
Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 Republican primary revealed that grassroots electoral support for the Tea Party in prior elections was somewhat of a proxy for a deeper populist revulsion at establishment Washington. Trump did not run a campaign based on conservative economic principles. While he exploited popular resentment at mass immigration, demographic change and shifting cultural values, he also defended Social Security and Medicare, denounced crony capitalism (the fact that Trump himself was a master crony capitalist notwithstanding), signaled his support for socialized medicine and denounced the Iraq War. While there was space for Trump to make common cause with some Republican factions on cultural issues, his economic policies and views on foreign affairs were wholly outside the Republican fold—indeed outside the purview of the main factions of the bourgeoisie itself.
The fact that the main factions of the bourgeoisie—including many establishment Republicans—viewed Trump as a clear and present danger to the interests of the national capital, spawning a last-ditch ”Never Trump” movement in advance of the Republican convention, did not stop him from winning the Republican nomination. Republicans realized the bind they now found themselves in: having stoked popular anger over immigration and disdain for establishment Washington in pursuing their short-term electoral interests, they now found themselves the target of the very forces they had encouraged. They could not deny Trump the nomination, without angering his millions of supporters, openly splitting the Republican Party and shattering the democratic illusion by overturning the will of the Republican voters with backroom party machinations.[15] It wasn’t worth completely dooming one of the nation’s major political parties, when everyone expected Trump to lose to Clinton in the general election anyway.
In effect, Trump had executed a kind of coup in the Republican Party, elevating the nascent “nation-state” populist currents in the Republican base into a distinct and now dominant faction separate from the “movement-conservatism’ to which it was previously subsumed. Under Trump, the Republican Party had been transformed from a peculiarly American form of conservatism to something more akin to a European populist party preaching something resembling their “welfare chauvinism,” symbolized when he elevated the incisive Steve Bannon— the populist editor of Breitbart News—to his chief campaign strategist and then special advisor once arriving in the White House.
On the eve of the 2016 Presidential Election, the Republican Party was an entity in complete chaos. Nobody expected Trump to win and one got the sense that most establishment Republicans were actually rooting for him to lose. Nobody had any idea how the Republican Party would reconstitute itself in the wake of the crushing defeat it was expected to suffer. Even in defeat, “Trumpism” would have emerged as a distinct and powerful current in its own right that all Republicans would have to respect and fear, even if many of its precepts went against their principles and instincts. When Trump shocked the world by winning the Presidency against the odds, some Republicans shouted triumphantly about an era of “united Republican government” ahead, but underneath these public pronouncements fears mounted about what a Trump presidency would mean for the party and the national interest itself.
In the year since Trump’s victory, it is clear that while the Republican Party survives as an institutional edifice, it has for all intents of purposes ceased to function as a coherent political expression. While the Trumpists find themselves sitting in the oval office and they possess a powerful electoral base with which to threaten establishment Republican candidates (a base Trump continues to stoke with campaign like rallies on something like a monthly basis), they have not been able to consolidate institutional power in Washington. In addition to facing intense push back from the structures of the so-called “deep state” in the intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracies who are mostly aligned with centrist Democrats, the Trumpists face dissensions within their own party over their alleged ties to Russia and the overall tone and trajectory of public discourse and policy under Trump. Establishment Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Flake and Bob Corker have all at one time or another loudly denounced the President, with John McCain even casting the decisive vote in derailing Trump’s attempts to claim a legislative victory in his quest to acquiesce to Republican talking points about “repealing and replacing” Obamacare.
Moreover, the Trumpists face opposition within their own party not only from establishment Republicans concerned about Trump’s erosion of “democratic norms,” but also from movement-conservatives and the rump of the Tea Party now organized as the so-called “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives[16] that held up the Republican healthcare repeal proposal because the austerity it imposed was not dramatic enough! While the Republican party seems more united on the issue of pending tax reform legislation, similar complications could emerge either from establishment Republicans who worry about the political optics of its disproportionate benefits for the rich or from Freedom Caucus members concerned about the possible expansion of the national deficit (or some combination thereof).
It has been said that the worst thing that can happen for a populist movement is to actually win power, as it is then subject to the necessities of governing. We can already see the effects of this paradox on the Trump administration. Having run an unabashedly populist campaign, almost one year into his Presidency Trump has been unable to deliver on any of his major campaign promises. Forced to deal with the realities of institutional Washington, Trump has had to toe a more traditional Republican line focusing on repealing Obamacare (a near total failure) and cutting taxes. There has been no massive remaking of the institutional environment or the culture of Washington. Having run on “draining the swamp” in DC, each day that passes reveals Trump and his cronies to be themselves immersed in it.
Similarly, Trump has failed to deliver on most of his ethno-nationalist promises: While there has been some uptick in deportations of “non-criminal aliens” from the interior of the country and Trump has tried time and again to fashion some kind of travel ban against citizens of certain Muslim-majority countries that passes court muster, there have been no mass deportations of millions of immigrants in cattle cars as some feared and others hoped for. Moreover, the architect of much of Trump’s nation-state populist ideology, Steve Bannon, has already been forced to resign and Trump appears to be relying on his entourage of retired generals to formulate most of his foreign policy agenda, while domestically he has been forced by political reality to stay rather close to the Republican Party.[17] Whatever his ties to Russian interests and his kind words for Putin, there has as yet been no open rapprochement with the Russian state (often portrayed by Trumpists as a strong state committed to the defense of Western-Christian civilization from Islamic radicalism). Trump has even attempted to make a deal with Democrats on immigration by signaling he would agree to allow childhood arrivals (the so-called “Dreamers”) to stay in the country in exchange for tougher border security (if not the actual wall he promised his base). Revelations of this deal moved Bannon’s Breitbart News to label Trump “Amnesty Don,” signaling that his populist base will not take any attempt to sell them out on amnesty for illegal immigrants lightly.
While for the moment Trump retains the support of his fervent base, there are signs that even that is beginning to slip away. Trump now enjoys the lowest approval ratings of any modern President after his first year in office.[18] While the Republican Party may enjoy the advantage of gerrymandered districts in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, there is nevertheless growing concern that Trump will hopelessly compromise the Republican brand going forward and that a “wave election” similar to 2006 when the public was fed-up with Bush’s war follies in Iraq, might just sweep the Republicans from power in Congress regardless—something which would open the door for the Democrats to possibly impeach the President.[19]
At this stage, it is not possible to say what the future direction of the Republican Party will take, but it is clearly unfavorable for the erstwhile establishment factions to retain control of the party’s political direction. Even if they maintain a hold on certain Republican Party institutions (or regain them once Trump is swept from power) Trumpism has nevertheless emerged as a powerful force that must be acknowledged and either conceded to or managed politically. The specter of a “Trump minus the baggage” type figure emerging in the future remains a constant concern for the entire political establishment of both parties. [20]
In any event, the Republicans—like the Democrats—remain a house divided, racked by internal contradictions, reflecting the centrifugal forces of social decomposition resulting from the bourgeoisie’s inability to solve the historic crisis of capitalism and the increasing difficulty of a two-party political system to contain the ideological and political fall-out. The perspective ahead then is not for the return of some kind of stable two-party normalcy, but increasing political turbulence as the bourgeois political apparatus attempts to adapt (perhaps unsuccessfully?) to the new social, political and ideological landscape created by social decomposition and their own neo-liberal mode of regulating capitalism’s historic crisis.
The ideological campaigns around the defense of democracy
Today, bourgeois officialdom is quite concerned about Trump’s ascendancy to the Presidency and the social and political forces this represents. There are many facets to the Trump phenomenon for them to be concerned about: his lack of a commitment to the consensus goals of US imperialism, his putting into question consensus neo-liberal policies, his vulgar and offensive rhetoric and personality that compromises US prestige around the world. There are even possibly legitimate concerns about his mental health. However, perhaps the most threatening aspect of Trump’s Presidency for the main factions of the bourgeoisie is his attacks on so-called “democratic norms”—his aggressive rhetoric flouting the courts, his attacks on the press, his lack of a commitment to the basic and fundamental rights of democratic citizenship, etc. It is therefore not a coincidence that the main theme of the so-called resistance to Trump has not been a traditional “left in opposition” campaign around economic issues, but has instead focused around the defense of democratic norms and democratic institutions in the face of the neo-barbarian assault on them launched by the forces of Trumpism.
From the point of view of revolutionaries, we have to reject any call to join in such campaigns as a gross diversion from the goal of intervening in the class struggle of the proletariat on its own class terrain to defend its living and working conditions under threat from capitalism’s crisis and the politicians of all political parties. We do not subscribe to the view that bourgeois democracy has always been “fake” or “staged” as some leftist and conspiracy-obsessed groups do. On the contrary, the development of democratic institutions in the period of capitalism’s ascendance was something the working class could take advantage of in that period: by putting pressure on these institutions the workers’ parties of the period won important structural reforms from the capitalists allowing the proletariat to consolidate itself as a class.
Nevertheless, in our view bourgeois democracy experienced a qualitative change with the entry of capitalism into its period of historical decadence early in the last century. Since then, with no truly durable reforms possible to win from a decadent capitalism, the entry of the working class into the parliamentary terrain could only lead to distraction, diversion and political defeat on the terrain of the enemy class. Moreover, in the period of decadence—marked by the progressive statification of society and the decline of the public sphere—bourgeois elections themselves progressively changed from real campaign contests to affairs of state managed by the state’s media apparatus to ensure the victory of a consensus favorite candidate. While electoral mistakes were still possible, it was generally the case over the course of the 20th century that elections were structured such that even the less preferred candidate/party would still pursue the consensus policies of the main factions of the bourgeoisie if they won.
If the forces unleashed in the last several decades by social decomposition have made this process of political management less effective and have returned some level of reality to electoral contests as open campaigns where the winner is uncertain before the votes are actually counted, we do not think that this means we are back in a period when the working class can advance its interests through the electoral arena. On the contrary, the putrefaction of the entire bourgeois political apparatus renders elections an even greater trap for the proletariat today. This is true even when there are “New Left” candidates on offer, such as Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, who—whatever their sincerity—are nevertheless bourgeois politicians like any other. As the experience of Syriza in Greece (and even to some extent Trump in the US) show, should they ever win power (by accident or design) the necessities of bourgeois governance will tend to override their policy commitments very quickly.
Therefore, revolutionaries and the working class more broadly should reject the call to join in the grand coalition to defend “democratic norms” and values against Trump’s transgressions and instead work to locate their specific class interests and develop their own independent struggles against capitalism’s attacks on their working and living conditions. If the concept of “democratic norms” retains some value for certain factions of the bourgeoisie today as a set of principles for regulating that class’s own internal conflicts, we must be clear that the working class—a class that depends on developing a unity of consciousness regarding its distinct class interests—has no position to take in internal bourgeois conflicts today.
Taking the road of searching for the working class’ own autonomous organs will, in our view, necessitate identifying forms of struggle outside of the bourgeoisie’s electoral arena. In pursuing this path, we can look back in history at the struggles of the period of 1917-1927 when the working class developed its own class organs—the workers’ councils—that embodied a spirit of class-consciousness and collective action truly distinct from that of the isolated monad who pulls the lever in the booth on Election Day. We can also look back more recently to the struggles of the period of 2010-2012, when the working class began to take steps to recover this more distant past, albeit imperfectly, during the mobilizations in Wisconsin and the Occupy Movement in the US and the Indignados protests in Spain. It is in taking these examples to their logical conclusion in a proletarian revolution that a future beyond the deprivations and injuries of capitalism in all its forms lies.
--Henk
11/7/2017
[1] See: The Election of Donald Trump and the Degradation of the Capitalist Political Apparatus [1660]
[2] A reality that has led to much discussion and punditry about whether or not senior military officers would refuse to obey Trump’s order to launch a careless nuclear attack on a whim.
[3] We are aware of the pitfalls of the construction “white working class” and have analyzed these in some depth elsewhere (See: The Election of Donald Trump and the Degradation of the Capitalist Political Apparatus [1660] ). In this article, we use the concept in an analytical sense of describing the various social constituencies the bourgeoisie mobilizes to manufacture electoral coalitions for their various candidates in the context of its “democratic” apparatus. As Marxists, our position is that the working-class is an international class that must reject the bourgeoisie’s attempts to divide it up along ethnic, racial, linguistic or national lines to achieve the class consciousness necessary to overthrow capitalism. Nevertheless, to the extent that the working class continues to participate in bourgeois elections, it is necessary to make an honest and accurate assessment of how the bourgeoisie uses these divisions to enroll it into the electoral circus.
[5] See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/06/06/the-real-reason-working-class-whites-continue-to-support-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.977e12996de5#comments [1662]. The phrase used is “political hospice care” taken from an interview with Jonathan Gest, author of the book, The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, which appears to be endorsed by Post columnist and arch Bernie Sanders foe Johnathan Capehart. Here is the quote (Capehart quoting Gest approvingly): “’The only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care,’ he said. ‘These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?’” Capehart appears to endorse such a conclusion, but one wonders if the uncomfortable similarities of such discourse with eugenics ever occurred to him or did he just not care?
[6] The question for 2020 will be if having an anti-rock star on the opposing ticket in Trump will be enough to revive this coalition after the failure of 2016 or if the Democrats will have to take steps to appear to offer a real substantive alternative to the neo-liberal status quo?
[7] A famous example of this was Hillary’s appearance on urban radio, where she delighted in telling the host that she carries hot sauce in her purse. Of course, this was the same Hillary who years earlier during her husbands’ administration seemingly referred to black youth as “super predators,” something that earned her the permanent distrust/disdain of groups like Black Lives Matter.
[8] Already, there are some voices emerging within the Democratic Party questioning the “demographic strategy” and calling into question the party’s “absolutism” on immigration. Figures such as Fareed Zakaria, Peter Beinart and erstwhile Bush-era Neocon—subsequently rehabilitated as a rational centrist—David Frum have protested that the Democrats’ increasingly totalistic views on immigration and immigrant rights fuel the backlash politics and leave the field open for Trump and other dangerous elements to exploit the populace’s increasing anxiety over the “loss of nationhood” for their advantage. In Frum’s words, “When liberals insist only fascists will defend the borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won’t do.” Still, these voices remain a minority within the Democratic Party. Of course, it should be pointed out that whatever their political rhetoric in favor of immigrants, Democrats in power have usually not lived up to their absolutist pronouncements. We need only remember that it was Obama himself who set a record for deportations, earning him the nickname “Deporter in Chief” in immigrant communities, something that almost certainly drove down turnout for his appointed successor Clinton. Beinart and Frum’s pieces can all be found in The Atlantic—an esteemed journal of liberal opinion making. For Zakaria, see: https://fareedzakaria.com/2017/08/04/the-democrats-should-rethink-their-... [1663]
[10] This problem is not unique to the United States. Across the advanced countries ostensibly left-wing parties have been faced with the contradiction of keeping up the appearance as the party of the working-class, while hemorrhaging “white working class” voters to right-wing populists able to mobilize their anxiety over immigration and other demographic changes.
[11] We should be careful not to overstate Corbyn’s position as he continues to face much skepticism and even disdain from the neo-liberal wing of his own party.
[12] As of this writing, the list of candidates to replace the aging Sanders as the voice of the left in the Democratic Party is short. Senator Elizabeth Warren is the person most often touted as next in line to assume the left populist mantle, but Warren lacks Sanders grumpy grandpa charm and likely comes off as too much of an uppity “Taxachussettes” liberal in the heartland. Others, such as the forty-something Ohio representative Tim Ryan (who led an unsuccessful campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi as the leader of the House Democrats in early 2017) seems better placed, but his rust belt protectionism is not particularly well suited to appeal to millennials. Similarly, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is often painted in a populist mode, but he faces a tough reelection campaign next year in a state Trump won handily and will face pressure to move right on issues like immigration to keep his seat. Establishment favorites like California Senator Kamala Harris and New Jersey Senator Corey Booker (both African-Americans) are already viewed with deep suspicion by progressives as too close to corporate interests.
[13] Of course, even if younger voters are less likely to see “identity politics” as sufficient on their own, it is nevertheless still the case that many are deeply concerned about identity issues, something which potentially puts them at odds with other working class electoral constituencies.
[14] See our article "The Debt Ceiling Crisis: Political Wrangling While the Global Economy Burns [1665]" for our analysis of this critical juncture.
[15]Ironically, it would be left to the Democrats to do that with the Wikileaks revelations on the eve of their convention that the DNC was basically in the bag for Hillary from the start and conspired to undermine Sanders’ campaign. This was given further credence last week, when Donna Brazille, an establishment Democrat par excellence who took over as interim DNC chief when Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign in shame, released a book chronicling how the Clinton campaign had been given de facto financial control over the DNC as early as 2015. Of course the response of the Clinton camp to Brazille’s revelations was to paint her with the McCarthyite brush of “buying into Russian propaganda.”
[16] Often aligned with Senators Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, depending on the particular issue.
[17] Two recent political episodes highlight the continuing rifts in the Republican Party: In the special election for Alabama Senator to replace Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump endorsed the establishment candidate, while Bannon campaigned hard for his opponent former Alabama Supreme Court Judge and iconoclastic hard right ideologue Roy Moore. Moore won handily, dealing a severe political blow to Trump—but not from Democrats, from the lunatic right-wing fringe of his own party at the urging of his own former chief advisor! Moreover, in the campaign for Virginia Governor, the establishment Republican, former Bush confidant and RNC head Ed Gillespie—having fended off a difficult Trumpist primary challenger—nevertheless went into full Trump mode himself in the general election campaign, basing his message on the defense of Confederate statues and on the threat posed to the state by Hispanic gangs and liberal attempts to coddle them in “sanctuary cities”—despite the fact that there are none in Virginia. In an interesting development, the media have been in full saturation mode in recent weeks with allegations that Moore is a serial child sexual predator—an allegation that initially caused an uproar among establishment Republicans in Washington with threats of a write-in campaign, ethics investigations and possible expulsion from the Senate should he win the election. However, this has been tempered in recent days by allegations of sexual impropriety against several key Democratic legislators, giving Republicans the opportunity to mute their criticism of Moore in the hopes that the public will not single them out as the party of sexual misconduct and conclude instead that both parties are equally guilty. Still, the nature of the allegations against Moore are of a different order than many of these other cases, and they could be a major factor in coming national elections if the Democrats can successfully paint their rivals as the party that protects “child predators” in order to maintain a Senate seat. For establishment Republicans’ part, it is clear that this threat has to be balanced against the possibility of angering the Trumpist base, who see the allegations against Moore as part of a Washington conspiracy to keep a “maverick” out of the Senate. Trump has now thrown his full weight behind Moore, even publicly attacking some of his accusers.
[18]To be fair, the Democrats’ approval ratings are nothing to write home about either. See: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-democrats-t... [1666]
[19]Republican Gillespie was soundly defeated by his Democratic opponent in the Virginia Governor’s race—something the media is taking as a sign of a coming disaster for Republicans in 2018. Whether or not this result in a state that “demographic change” has now made more or less reliably blue is an accurate predictor of what will happen in 2018 or 2020 is unclear, but the result is nonetheless contributing to much anxiety among national Republicans.
[20] Some have suggested Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton might be one such figure.
"Even by the standards of the Middle East, its irrationality, the wanton destruction, the constant, intensifying imperialist machinations and wars, then the Saudi-led attack on Yemen earlier this week reaches new levels of surrealist absurdity: the Saudis are leading a Sunni Muslim coalition of ten nations including non-Arab, nuclear-armed Pakistan in an attack on Yemen. Local gangsters like the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are involved but also the Egyptian dictator al-Sisi and the genocidal clique of Sudan’s al-Bashir. All these despots are backed by the USA and Britain, which has offered the coalition ‘logistical and intelligence’ support". This is what we wrote in April 2015 in an article called 'Militarism and decomposition in the Middle East' just after the launch of what the Saudis optimistically called "Operation Decisive Storm". The war in Yemen has since become much worse, much more dangerous and, after Syria, possibly pivotal for imperialist developments in the Middle East, not least the stakes in the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, their respective "allies" and the major powers.
In one of the poorest countries in the world, with a population of some 23 million, the Saudi "coalition" (which Pakistan has quietly ducked out of) has poured US and British-made bombs into what is essentially a confrontation with Iran for regional power. A glance at the map of the Middle East shows the general geostrategic importance of Yemen and the factor that it now plays in local and global rivalries. Ten thousand have been killed by the shelling and air-strikes during which hospitals, schools, residential areas and mosques have been hit. Three million homes have been destroyed and ancient buildings reduced to dust, in what the Romans called "Blessed Arabia". In addition to the bombing the Saudis have imposed a blockade on both emergency aid and commercial imports, which the Red Cross has called a "medieval siege", causing tens of thousands more deaths. Fourteen million people have no access to sanitation and clean water, and cholera cases have reached a million. The spread of famine and malnutrition is also accompanied by the spread of the easily-preventable ancient disease of diphtheria as well as increases in Dengue fever and malaria. In thirty long months since its declaration of war the Saudi coalition, with the assistance of the US and Britain, has pummelled the life out of an ever-greater number of civilians, reducing them to living like animals and surely feeding the next wave of refugees fleeing from this hell across the Arab Peninsula or via the African route towards Europe.
Iran increases its spread and influence in Yemen and beyond
What the Saudis and their backers are most fearful of, and what, in the "logic" of imperialism they have contributed to bringing about, is an increase of Iranian influence, not only in Yemen, but via a "pincer" movement around Saudi territory through the land connection between Iran-Syria-Iraq-Lebanon, along the Turkish border and the Gulf of Aden into Yemen and, ominously, building up its interests and forces in Africai. Iranian regional influence has never been more widespread and powerful than it is today, and this is despite the recent US attempts to thwart it at every turn. Iran now effectively controls a land corridor that runs from Tehran to Tartus in Syria on the Mediterranean coast "giving it access to a sea-port a long way to its west, and far from the heavily patrolled waters of the Persian Gulf" (Guardian, 8.10.16). The more the US has weakened and is weakening in the Middle East the more Iran has strengthened. The position of Russia has also strengthened on the back of it, but Iran is no simple pawn of Russiaii.
The Yemeni Houti forces currently fighting the Saudi-backed militias in Yemen took over and dominated the wave of anti-government and anti-corruption demonstrations that emerged in Yemen as part of the "Arab Spring" of 2011. It started as an obscure revivalist Shia movement in the 1990s called "Believing Youth", was radicalised by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and has wider support among many Sunnis showing that, though the irrationality of religion plays a role, this is no simple Sunni/Shia division (there's been no serious history of ethnic or religious divides in Yemen except what the major powers, including Britain, have stirred up). The Iranians call it the "Ansarullah" movement and despite its links with Iran its history is again not one of a simple pawn. By late 2014 large parts of the country were taken by the Houtis and as the war has gone on so the Houti-Iranian-Hezbollah links, forged in the conflict, have strengthened. In December, when the Yemeni leader and warlord Saleh turned away from the Iran/Houtis and towards Saudi, he was killed with a ruthlessness that was reminiscent of the CIA assassinations of the 60s, which is something Hezbollah is also familiar with.
There are recent reports of Iran sending advanced weapons and military advisers to the Houtis, including its battle-hardened Afghan mercenaries (New York Times, 18.9.17). These are probably overestimated by the west but the Iranians think in the long-term as they did with their build-up of Hezbollah, which has now become Iran's arrowhead against Israel and part of its general strengthening and build-up throughout the Middle East. The ballistic missiles aimed at Saudi targets do suggest a Hezbollah involvement. These are perfect weapons for the Houtis aimed at high value Saudi targets and only one has to get through eventually; in the meantime they sow terror and uncertainty among the Saudis in the same way as the Nazi V2's did for London. At any rate, the Houti leader, Abdul Malik Badreddine al Houti, addressing Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrullah in the summer, said: "Your bet on the Yemenis is proper" and he went on to talk about joint forces against Israel bringing in the Palestinian questioniii. These moves will only be bolstered by the foreign policy of Trump and his Saudi-Israeli embrace.
It's worth stepping back a bit to see how things have changed regarding the Middle Eastern imperialist snake-pit: just a short while ago US and Iranian forces were acting together in Iraq at high military levels up to and including coordinated and joint military actions against Isis, but it was clear to everyone that once the latter was defeated new tensions would break out. Again, even in Yemen, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) preferred to work with the Houtis in the fight against al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and Isis; and US generals said Saudi action in Yemen was "a bad idea" (al-Jazeera, 15.4.17) given the involvement of the Saudi-supported Yemeni secret service (PSO) being deeply connected to the terrorists. While Washington showered the Yemeni government with political and financial support, former president Saleh, an ally of the Saudis, was manipulating the terrorists’ activity in order to get Washington's supportiv courtesy of the "War on Terror".
Washington finds it difficult to cope with the quagmire of the Middle East and its attempts to do so can only make the situation worse
Trump's National Security Adviser, H. R. McMaster, said in October: "What is most important for all nations is to confront the scourge of Hezbollah, the Iranians and the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards)" (Patrick Cockburn in the Independent, 9.12.17). How the Americans plan to do this without further inflaming and destabilising the Middle East is anyone's guess. The US de-certification of the Iranian nuclear deal has, amongst other things, caused a serious rift with Europe (and won't encourage the North Koreans "to come to the table"), in particular the three major countries active in the region - France, Britain and Germany. Trump's incendiary recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - a totally stupid and unnecessary move which will mainly please his evangelical base - can only rebound on US imperialist interests. It will fan the flames of Palestinian/Arab nationalism and, despite the theatrics of the UN, particularly from Turkey's Erdogan, arouse more global protests against the US from both Shia and Sunni wings of Islam. It also gives the jihadis of Isis and al-Nusra a life-line (one of Bin Laden's strongest recruiting drives was the oppression of the Palestinians) and makes it harder for Saudi Arabia and its allies to work with Israel and the US, while furthering the interests of Tehran.
The situation of the Saudi regime is more fragile, from its embrace of Trump which was followed by a major falling out with Qatar, gangster-like purges of its enemies, including those hostile to Trump, and bizarre summonses of Lebanon's President Hariri and Palestinian leader Abbas to Riyadh. The Saudi prince, the effective ruler of the country said in April last, that he "wanted out" of the war in Yemen and had no objections to the American interceding with Iran to this endv. Whatever his wishes, or those of any individuals involved, imperialism, decomposition and irrationality are the driving forces behind the Yemeni disaster and, with Iran, these forces are only going to strengthen.
Boxer, 22.12.17
i Iran has established a growing interest in Nigeria, Cameroon and Sudan, amongst others. See https://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/19900.aspx [1668]. The Saudis have responded with a plan from crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to set up an Islamic military coalition providing logistical, intelligence and training to a revamped G5 Sahel "counter-terrorism" force after discussions with France in mid-December (Reuters, 14.12.17).
On 28 December, the first sparks of a movement which brought to mind the “Arab Spring” of a few years ago began to shake the territory of Iran. The movement seems for the moment to have run out of steam as we write, although we are seeing other expressions of anger against the deterioration of living standards, such as in Morocco, Sudan and above all Tunisia.
A spontaneous explosion of anger
Iran is a country with powerful imperialist ambitions, where military expenses devoted to intervention throughout the Middle East have risen sharply. Although Iran is still suffering from the sanctions imposed by the USA, it has spent huge amounts of money in the war in Yemen, in supporting Hezbollah and the Assad regime, and its own armed gangs operating at the international level. And it has built up its stock of arms against Saudi Arabia. All this has meant austerity for the population. In a context marked by disappointed hopes in the wake of the deal over nuclear weapons agreed with the Obama administration, the economic crisis, aggravated by the international sanctions and the corruption of the regime, has plunged the majority of the population into poverty and uncertainty. For months now there have been demonstrations of discontent by pensioners, the unemployed (28% of young people are out of work), teachers, workers whose wages aren’t being paid. Finally, the 50% rise in oil and basic foods, like the doubling of the price of eggs - there has been talk of a “revolution of the eggs” – lit the fuse. The movement erupted in Mashhad, the second biggest city, in the north east, and quickly spread to the capital Tehran and all the main urban centres: north to Rasht and south towards Chabahar. In all the crowds openly rejecting the policies of the state, the working class was present, even if somewhat diluted in the rest of the demonstrators: factory workers, teachers, many unemployed especially young people: they were all there. Also many students. It is also significant that a large number of the demonstrators were women.
At the same time, despite the courage and fighting spirit of the protesters, the working class was not able to provide a real orientation to this struggle, was not able to affirm itself as an autonomous political force. And this was the case even if a minority among the students, notably in Tehran, came out against the reactionary nationalist slogan “neither Gaza or Lebanon, I will only die for Iran” with an expression of real proletarian internationalism: “From Gaza to Iran, down with the exploiters”. These elements also called for workers’ councils and rejected any idea of being dragged into the battle between the “reformist” and “hard-line” bourgeois cliques[1]. Such attitudes really scared the authorities and the students were particularly targeted in the arrests. And in general, despite the weight of democratic illusions and other political weaknesses, the bourgeoisie was extremely worried about this “leaderless” explosion of anger. The Supreme Leader Khameini was silent for some time and president Rouhani was more cautious than firm. The government even announced that the rise in fuel prices would be cancelled. It’s true that symbols of the political and religious authorities were targeted and in some cases burned down: banks, public buildings, religious centres and above all the HQ of the Revolutionary Guards, the regime’s militias. Violent clashes with the police led not only to arrests but to a number of deaths. Bit by bit the tone of the authorities, and their reaction, grew firmer. Rouhani and Khameini announced that violence and illegal actions by “troublemakers” would be severely punished. They accused the demonstrators of being “enemies of Iran”, of being in league with foreign powers, in particular the USA and Saudi Arabia.
And indeed, on the social networks like Twitter, many of the hashtags calling for demonstrations originated in Saudi; similarly, the Mujahadin organisation based in Paris, opposed to the Iranian regime and close to the Saudis, declared its support for the demonstrations. And of course, Trump with his provocative statements and the other rival powers want a weakened Iran. But this was a movement that has its origins inside Iran. Taking advantage of the movement’s lack of perspective, the regime could prepare the ground for repression. It mounted counter-demonstrations supporting the regime and its ayatollah, shouting slogans like “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and denouncing “sedition”. The head of state could play on these divisions and announce that the alternative was “us or chaos”. By evoking the tragedy which followed the original protests in Syria and elsewhere, the leadership was clearly threatening the demonstrators, insinuating that their movement could only result in a similar chaos and bloodshed.
The difficulties of the proletariat in Iran
This spontaneous social movement is the most important since the social crisis of 2009, the year of the “Green movement”. At this time, there was a real danger of the proletariat being caught in the crossfire between competing bourgeois cliques. As we wrote at the time:
“Opposing the bloody, corrupt elements around Ahmadinajad, we see people who resemble them like two drops of water. They are also in favour of an Islamic Republic and for building the Iranian atomic bomb. All these people are basically the same because they all stand for their own personal and nationalist interests”
Today, much more than in 2009, the movement is a real expression of the exploited and the disinherited themselves, but it is without a clear proletarian orientation, apart from a few minorities. The struggles of the proletariat in Iran have without doubt been part of the struggles of the world proletariat since the 1960s, especially in the oil industry, transport, education and so on, but even when the struggles reached their high point in 1978-79, when they precipitated the fall of the Shah, the political weaknesses of the proletariat made it possible for a horde of religious fanatics led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, supported by the Stalinists and other left nationalists, to install themselves in power. Brutal repression came in the wake of the “Islamic Revolution”. Many militant workers were executed for taking part in strikes under the regime of the mullahs. The proletariat was also subjected to the terrible war between Iran and Iraq between 1980 and 1988, which left millions dead.
Since then, there have again been some important struggles, such as during the year 2007 when 100,000 teachers came out in solidarity with the factory workers, but the underlying difficulties remain today. Despite a very strong fighting spirit, and the fact that the current movement was based on economic demands which are part of any proletarian struggle, the movement has waned because of a lack of a real class identity and perspective. At the same time, the workers are still very much faced with the permanent rivalry of different bourgeois factions, and there is a real danger of the class being dragged behind one or the other[2]. On top of this, Iran is surrounded by countries at war which makes it very difficult for the workers of Iran to win the solidarity of the proletariat in these countries and strengthens nationalism within their own ranks.
But in a more profound sense, the weaknesses of the proletariat in Iran are above all those of the world proletariat, since even in the most experienced sectors of the class we are seeing a serious loss of class identity, and above all a loss of perspective that would give a real meaning and direction to the class struggle.
Nevertheless, the bravery and militancy of the demonstrators in Iran should be an encouragement to workers of the world. Fighting against austerity, raising demands in defence of our economic interests, this remains essential if the class struggle is to again raise its head. But the real solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in Iran consists in reviving and consciously taking charge of our own struggle, not only against austerity but against the capitalist system as a whole.
WH (5 january)
[2] See our online article ‘Iran: the struggle between bourgeois cliques is a danger for the working class’
As we show in our article ‘Demonstrations in Iran, strengths and limits of the movement’, although there are promising signs of working class resilience, the danger is very real, not only of bloody repression, but also of the manipulation of the popular anger by the different fractions of the ruling class. The old conflict between “reformers” and “hard-liners” within the “Islamic Republic” has entered a new stage. The reformers around president Rouhani are convinced that a major policy change is necessary in order to consolidate the considerable gains made by Iran in recent times. These advances have taken place essentially at two levels. At the level of foreign policy, the Shia militias and other forces supported by Tehran have made important advances in Iraq, Syria and the Lebanon (the so-called revolutionary sickle from Iran to the Mediterranean) and in Yemen. At the diplomatic level, the regime was able to make an “atomic deal” with the major powers, leading to the lifting of certain economic sanctions (in exchange for a formal renunciation of acquiring an Iranian atomic bomb). Today these advances are menaced from a number of sides. One of them is the alliance against Iran which the USA under Trump is trying to construct around Israel and Saudi Arabia. Another is the economic situation. Unlike at the military or diplomatic level, Iranian capitalism has made no economic progress in recent years. The contrary is the case. The economy is groaning under the cost of the operations of Iranian imperialism abroad, and weakened by the international sanctions. The United States has failed to lift economic sanctions against Iran as it had promised as part of the nuclear agreement. Instead, it has been obstructing the engagement of European companies in Iran. Now, under Trump, the US sanctions will even be reinforced. Another central problem is that the competitiveness of the Iranian national capital is being strangled by the highly anachronistic theocratic-clerical bureaucracy, which has no idea how to run a modern capitalist economy, and by the kleptomaniac system of the “Revolutionary Guards”. From the point of view of president Rouhani, breaking or at least curbing the dominance of these structures would be in the best interest of Iranian capitalism. It would also give Iran a more liberal image, better suited to countering the sanctions, the diplomacy and the rhetoric of its enemies abroad.
But on account of the dominant position of the hardliners within the armed forces, the reformers have few legal means at their disposal to put through their policy. This is why president Rouhani began to call on the population at large to formulate its own critique of the present economic policy, and of the corruption of the Guards and their business interests. The reformers were trying to use popular discontent as a lever against the hardliners. Such a hazardous policy reveals the backwardness and lack of suppleness of the ruling class in Iran, which is unable to settle the conflicts in its own ranks internally. It was all the more hazardous when one considers that Rouhani was perfectly aware of the popular disappointment once the promised economic boom which was supposed to follow the lifting of sanctions failed to materialise. Moreover, Rouhani was apparently not the only one taking chances. The president himself has accused his hardline opponents of having organised the first demonstration in Mashhad, which is the bastion of Ibrahim Raisi, the candidate of the hardliners in the presidential elections last May. The main slogan of this demonstration is indeed reported to have been “death to Rouhani”. But as soon as the protests extended, other slogans were heard such as “death to Khamenei” (the religious hard-line head of state), “down with the dictatorship”, or “What is free in Iran? Thievery and injustice!” The appearance of such slogans directed against the regime as a whole indicates that neither of the two main bourgeois fractions is able to manipulate the popular anger at will against the other.
This however in no way lessens the danger of the working people being manipulated by the ruling class. It is important, in this respect, to remember what happened in Egypt, where popular protest (“Tahrir Square”) involving mass meetings and demonstrations, but also workers’ strikes, swept away the Mubarak regime. This was at the beginning of the “Arab Spring”. But this was only possible because the military let it happen (president Mubarak intended to curb the influence of the generals on politics and above all in the economy). In Iran (as in Egypt at the time) foreign powers were also involved. The claim of the clerical leaders in Tehran today that the protests in Iran have been instigated by foreign powers (USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia) has enraged wide sectors of the population, since these claims arrogantly deny both their very real suffering and their ability to take the initiative themselves. This does not mean, however, that these and other rival powers are not trying to destabilise the Iranian regime. In an interview given in April of last year, the Saudi crown prince Bin Salman declared that the conflict between his country and its Persian neighbour would be fought out “in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia”. One of his think-tanks in Riyadh has been advising him to stir up discontent within the Sunni religious minority in Iran, as well as among ethnic minorities (one third of the population of Iran are not Persian). In Egypt, after the fall of Mubarak, a civil war between the two main fractions of the bourgeoisie – the armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood – was only averted through the ferocious repression of the latter by the former. In Syria, the social protests triggered off an imperialist war which is still raging. Whether in Egypt, Syria or Iran, the working class is not only relatively weak, it is also internationally isolated on account of the present reflux of class struggle, class consciousness and class identity at a world scale. Without the support of the world proletariat, difficulties and dangers for our class sisters and brothers in Iran are all the greater.
Steinklopfer. 9.1.2018.
Just over a year ago, the bourgeois class launched an ideological campaign around the Panama Papers. Loud publicity was given to a blacklist of fiscal havens. It was billed as the discovery of a series of murky networks and geographical areas, outside any legal controls, where enormous amounts of capital are being stashed. As it happens this is a song we have been hearing a lot since the phase of acute economic crisis opened up in 2008-9.
But now it’s all starting again! A new ideological campaign has been launched and all the bourgeois media are involved. This time they are talking about the Paradise Papers. All kinds of personalities are involved: politicians, businessmen, sports and entertainment stars. Queen Elizabeth the Second herself has not escaped the scandal. The bourgeois media and a good number of states are apparently being infected by a new virus which is obliging them to seek for truth, morality and fairness.
An ideological campaign against the proletariat
The state and the media cry about injustice: certain rich people don’t want to pay the taxes they owe to the national collective, to the state! Even some of the biggest global companies are evading their taxes! This is theft pure and simple! And in contrast to this, most of us, even when our wages hardly allow us to survive, are paying our taxes in full…
The left of capital has a particular role to play in all this. In France, it’s Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise, which shouts the loudest and proclaims that it is scandalised. Their slogan is simple: “make the rich pay, not the poor!”. All the leftist parties are on the same wavelength: The NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) and Lutte Ouvrière also join in the refrain. If the state was doing its job, none of this would be going on. There would be more money for hospitals, schools and all the other public services. In fact these arguments are not very different from what the government itself is saying. It’s the same story in all the developed countries.
A basic law we’ve learned from the history of capitalism is that you should never take the declarations of the ruling class and its media at face value. So what is being hidden behind this deafening chorus, this demand that the cheats and thieves be caught and punished? That the rich should pay what they owe and that that no one should escape from “equality before the Tax”? What’s the reality behind all this, and what do these fiscal “paradises”, these tax havens, really represent?
Tax havens: a world-wide reality linked to state capitalism
A tax haven is a country, a part of a country, or an organism where, usually quite legally, money can be stashed with impunity. Little or no tax is paid and no questions are asked about where the invested capital comes from. There are thousands of such tax havens around the world. And they are not only to be found in more or less exotic places like the Virgin Islands or Bermuda. Nor are they limited to the small states we hear about so much in the media, such as Luxemburg, Malta or Ireland. In fact the leading tax haven in the world is the City of London. London’s financial district is the centre of a spider’s web connected to any number of offshore tax havens. In other words, the capital amassing in the parallel circuits of the tax havens comes here to be invested. The biggest banks in the world, such as the HSBC and their shadowy agencies (the “back banks”), the most powerful investment funds and the world’s leading companies use these networks to circulate a large part of their capital. Money from drugs, prostitution, arms sales, floods all these networks. Reality is very far from the picture painted by the media, who focus on this or that celebrity hiding their dough in Swiss banks. This is a whole system, managed by the states themselves. One of the essential features of decadent capitalism is the concentration of capital in the hands of the nation state, which has become the entity around which the national capital organises its struggle, both against the proletariat and against other national capitals. States are not the dupes of multinational companies who escape the rules laid down for the operation of the world market. On the contrary, they are the main protagonists on these markets and in the final instance they are in control of the banks and the companies. Despite appearances, above even the most powerful banks and multinationals, the public authority of the state takes precedence. Multinational firms like Exxon, General Motors or Apple are always closely tied to the state, whether through public investments, the nomination of directors and so on. “Contrary to an opinion often expressed, by acting as the impetus for truly innovative projects, the public organisms (public investment banks and others) don’t push out the banks or private firms. They do what the latter don’t do or can’t do. Far from being victims of exclusion, the private enterprises could not develop if the state didn’t prepare the ground for them by making investments, notably in key research, which they could not do either financially or ‘strategically’”[1]. For a state, the big multinationals which are linked to it often represent a strategic sector of the national economy. This doesn’t mean that the private interests of these enterprises or banks always coincide exactly with those of the state. The quest for “tax optimisation” or the hunt for tax fraud are very current illustrations of this. But in the world’s financial markets and stock exchanges, the authority of the state remains a preponderant one. For example, the Euronext fusion of the stock exchanges of Paris, Bruxelles and Amsterdam openly depends on public financial authorities such as the Autorité des Marches Financiers in France or the Autorité Européene des Valeurs Mobilières. These state organs survey, control and can even sanction private enterprises. Here again, the interests of private operators can often come up against those of the state, but they can’t completely escape its control.
Despite the efforts at regulation, states have permitted an exponential development of what’s called the “little by little” market[2], which paradoxically makes activities and operators more opaque. This parallel market is mainly reserved for the very big investors (precisely the ones most closely linked to the state), those whose exchanges are measured in billions. More than 50% of these transactions, a good part of them highly dubious, take place at financial centres like the City or Wall Street. And the actors are not exactly unknowns: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, etc. We should also add that central banks like the European Central Bank or the FED are key players as well.
While the finger is most often pointed at the more exotic tax havens, the World Bank stresses that “the financial systems of developing countries have less depth and a more limited access than those of the developed countries”. In short, the essential job of tax evasion or “optimisation” by the grand conglomerates, acting behind a myriad of screening companies, gets done in the “domicile”. All states encourage the formation of “offshore” resources under their aegis. The tax havens are largely dependent on the big countries, who use them to attract foreign investment as well as to avoid too great a flight towards tax havens controlled by other states, or which remain more or less out of their own control. Thus, France’s favoured tax haven is the Principality of Monaco. Britain has the Channel Islands, the USA has the Bahamas or the state of Delaware, Austria and Germany have Liechtenstein. The list goes on. But more than this, states have their own investment funds destined for these parallel circuits. On 11 November 2017, the Belgian Finances Minister Johan Owerdeveldt declared that he would endeavour to make sure in the future that the state would not support investments in tax havens via the Belgian investment society which is 64% owned by the state. All this is sheer hypocrisy, theatrical speeches that have been going on for years while nothing really changes. And for good reason. Since the 1980s, the proliferation of tax havens has become a very widespread phenomenon. They would not have been able to play such a key role in the world economy if, under the guidance of the major states, there had not been so much deregulation of finance. Since then finance capital has assumed gigantic proportions across the entire planet. It is this form of capital which has become so necessary for the state itself to maintain capitalist accumulation. The search for ever-growing investment and profit has brought about an evolution in state capitalist policy on a global scale. It is this process which lies at the roots of the possibility and necessity to develop this network of tax havens to drain off a large part of liquidity. Thus Business Bourse on 18 November 2017 wrote: “the evil given the name of tax havens function like the brothels of capitalism. You do dirty business which can’t be publicly recognised but is indispensable to the functioning of the system. Like houses of ill repute in traditional society”. The Paradise Papers, like the Panama Papers, were uncovered and made public by investigative journalists who belong to 96 of the most important newspapers in the world. The leading papers in the western world are all included. In Britain, it’s The Guardian. In France, it’s Le Monde. The bourgeois press seems to be on the trail of the tax evaders. But here again the orchestra is being conducted by the capitalist state. All this investigative journalism is tied to the interests of the national economy and the states which present themselves as the guarantors of social justice and as the victims of “financial gangsters” and “greedy bankers”.
Tax havens: cogs of the capitalist economy in crisis
Tax havens have taken on a powerful weight in the reality of world commerce. Two thirds of Hedge Funds, speculative investment funds, are domiciled in tax havens and play a key role in investments in production and the financial sector. More than 40% of profits from the big global companies and banks end up in tax havens. Already in 2008, just after the appearance of the open crisis, 35% of financial flows were passing through these offshore locations. But even more significant is the fact that 55% of international trade depended directly on these flows of capital. And this tendency has increased exponentially since then.
A better control over the tax havens: a necessity for all capitalist states
A question is posed: why are the capitalist states now orchestrating this huge media campaign? It is well known that capitalist nations and their states are weighed down by global debt. True, not all of them to the same degree. Germany, for example, is a relative exception. But the USA, Japan, the other countries of Europe, all are experiencing dizzying levels of debt. And China has become a leading model in this trend. The capitalist economy has an imperious need for tax havens today, but capitalist states are desperate for funds. The finances of the central banks are not sufficient to bear the weight of state debts, so that governments have a real need for tax revenue at a time when a large part of such revenue is escaping them thanks to the tax havens. In July 2012 the “independent” foundation Réseau pour la Justice Fiscal published a study on tax havens and estimated that tax evasion accounts for 25,500 billion euros, more than the combined GNP of the US and Japan. This comes at a time when every big state has to increase its military expenses to face up to the spread of imperialist war around the world, and to deal with an explosion of unemployment and poverty. While each state is trying by all possible means to reduce the benefits conceded to the sectors of the proletariat who have been ejected from work, this also involves maintaining an increasingly expensive police control over these sectors and the population as whole. So behind the international ideological campaign around the Paradise Papers we can find a ferocious fiscal competition. As much as possible, states must prevent their rivals from attracting capital to the tax havens within their sphere of influence and thus allowing companies to avoid paying taxes in the countries where their profits are being made. In other words, in every country state capitalism is stepping up the trade war. Behind these famous “discoveries” by the so-called “independent” inquiries by all the big newspapers we can discern the demands of capitalism in crisis. Along with the need to get their hands on liquidities and deal with tax fraud, the capitalist states are above all trying to get a better control over the companies acting in their sphere of influence, and this means regulating the obscure world of finances at some level. The big international organisms have been trying to do this for some time, especially in the mid-90s:
“Following the Group of Seven summit in Halifax in 1995, a series of initiatives aimed at a better functioning of financial markets was launched, to a large extent under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. These had the object of improving transparency and the way that financial and economic data is divulged, of strengthening surveillance of national and international financial systems and putting in place mechanisms of support for periods of crisis and providing training in the supervision of the finance sector”[3]
Despite the measures taken, the reality of the economic crisis, the short-term vision and irresponsible policies of certain private or even public operators, and the overall trend towards every man for himself - all this has increased the danger of a fragmentation of trade and of the world economy. The endless scandals like the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, blown up by the media, serve to underline the need for greater control by the state, the need to rein in those who flout discipline and work in the shadows to the detriment of the economic needs of the major states. As we can see from the whole history of the complex and fragile efforts to keep finance under control, tax havens will still be useful and are not going to disappear. But the state has to remain the chief gangster, retain the monopoly of a whole mass of capital which could escape its control if it doesn’t act firmly. This is all the more true at a time when corruption, “affairs” and what the bourgeoisie prudishly calls “conflicts of interests” are becoming more and more commonplace, undermining the higher interests of the state. The height of hypocrisy is that it is the heads of government themselves who are often the leading tax cheats and specialists in “tax optimisation”. Among the revelations in the Paradise Papers, let’s not forget all the politicians who are often the most zealous defenders of austerity and of anti-working class measures[4].
The working class has nothing to gain from increasing regulations on tax havens
Capitalism in crisis breeds both tax havens and attempts to regulate them. Just as it breeds more and more unemployment, insecure jobs, and poverty. This degradation of working class living standards has nothing to do with whether tax havens are regulated or not. It’s in capitalism’s interest to make a profit from the exploitation of the working class. A worker who doesn’t add to the growth of capital is a useless commodity that is maintained at the lowest price in order to preserve social peace. It’s an unprofitable mouth to feed and the mass of workers without work is rising inexorably. Given the level of state debt today, a bit of extra tax revenue isn’t going to solve the growing budgetary difficulties. Only a reduction in what the bourgeoisie calls “social spending” is on the agenda. Behind a supposed moralisation of capitalism, the so-called struggle against tax paradises and fraud, the real future of this system is the accelerating decline of every aspect of proletarian living conditions.
Stephen, 28.12.17
[1] L’État conserve un role majeur dans l’innovation’, Le Monde, 27.1.14
[2] On a “little by little” market, transactions are concluded directly between buyer and seller, without any commission to the stock exchange through which the transaction takes place
[3] ‘The globalisation of financial markets and monetary policy’, a speech by Gordon Thiessen, a former governor of the Bank of Canada
[4] A few names revealed in the Panama and Paradise papers:
- The American Secretary of Trade, close to Donald Trump
- The former Tory treasurer Michael Ashcroft
- The Icelandic Prime Minister Gunlausson
- In Brazil, the ministers of the Economy and Agrculture, Henrique Meirelles and Blairo Maggi
- The Argentine president Mauricio Macri
- A close associate of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
- Ian Cameron, the father of David Cameron
- A number of Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin
- The business lawyer Arnaud Claude, associated with the former president of the Republic in the Sarkozy cabinet
Under the heading ‘Readers’ Contributions’ we aim to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view.
Given the fragments, literally, of the works of Epicurus available to Marx at the time, the materialist analysis that he manages to develop from them is pretty amazing. After Marx's demise much more evidence of Epicurus' philosophy has been found: on charcoal remains of papyri in Philodemus' library in Herculeum, on the wall of Diogenes of Oenoanda and writings kept in the Vatican for whom Epicurus was strictly taboo. The mere mention of Epicurus (or Lucretius) led to torture or imprisonment by the Inquisition in Naples and all of their followers were consigned to the Sixth Circle of Hell. Marx was also assisted in this work on Epicurus by the poem On the Nature of Things and works of the aforementioned Roman poet Lucretius.
Titus Lucretius Carus was a great influence on the sixteenth century Italian materialist Giambattista Vico, and an even bigger influence on the workers' movement. He developed the idea of descent with modification, and understood that energy could neither be created nor destroyed. His poem was the basis for Lewis Henry Morgan's great work, Ancient Society... and thus Engel's work The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State. He laid out the tenets and philosophy of Epicurus in his poem. The renowned Epicurean scholar, Cyril Bailey who translated his work into English, said in 1928: "Looking back on his (Marx's) work now it is almost astonishing to see how far he got considering the materials then available and he was probably the first person to see the true distinction between the Democritean and Epicurean systems". And to a large part he did this by focusing on the meaning of the Epicurean swerve.
Epicurus' study of the atom allowed him to delve into "the nature of human sensation and existence". Benjamin Farrington, noted scholar of Greek philosophy, wrote: "Oddly enough it was Karl Marx in his doctoral thesis... who first took the measure of the problem and provided the solution... making Epicurus the deeper of the two (in comparison to Democritus) inasmuch as he laboured to find room in his system both for animate and inanimate being, both for nature and society, both for the phenomena of the external world and the demands of moral consciousness" (From Marx's Ecology, materialism and nature by John Bellamy Foster).
Epicurus' work removes the gods (almost entirely) and the fear and terror that they inspire in mortal man, opening the way for chance, possibilities and freedom: "That which is abstractly possible, which can be conceived constitutes no obstacle to the thinking subject, no limit, no stumbling-block". Continuing from this, only Marx could say from the fragments that he knew of: (that) "Epicurus therefore proceeds with boundless nonchalance in the explanation of separate physical phenomena" and this from the possibilities that brought them about. In contrast to Democritus, who also contributed to a materialist analysis, Epicurus posed the question of a tiny "swerve" in the atom against the straight, deterministic lines of the former. Cicero ridiculed this idea calling it "disgraceful" and said it was "entirely impossible" that the universe came about by "complexities, combinations and adhesions of the atoms one with another". Hegel suggested that he had nothing useful to say; similar criticisms were levelled against Epicurus by the 17th century French philosopher Pierre Bayle, but the strange reality of the quantum nature of the atom is now beyond doubt. Lucretius understood this: "... if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate" nothing would change, but this process does take place "in time unfixt, imperceptible to the senses and in the smallest possible space". The further relevance to quantum mechanics is evident. For Marx the swerve represents "the soul of the atom, the concept of abstract individuality".
Epicurus suggests qualities to the atom, size, shape and weight whose declination (swerve) opposes any determinism: (the atoms) "are therefore opposed to one another as immediate realities". Marx agrees with Lucretius, saying that "the declination breaks the fati doedra (bonds of fate)", and applied to consciousness "the declination is that something in its breast that can fight back and resist". The declination lifts the atom out of the domain of determinism. If atoms didn't swerve they could neither repel nor attract, and it's from this repulsion and attraction that, according to Epicurus with Marx: "the world of appearance emerges", appearance that is transformed by consciousness from essence. Repulsion and attraction go beyond Democritus' determinism, just as the swerve of the atom goes beyond the relative existence of atoms falling in fixed lines. Democritus assumes an infinite number of shapes of the atom up to infinite size. But according to Lucretius, "it is rather by a definite and finite number of shapes that the atoms are differentiated from one another", which is also another way of expressing the modern theory of the conservation of energy.
As for weight, in the view of Epicurus it exists only as a different weight and the atoms themselves are substantial "centres of gravity" with weight existing in respect of repulsion and attraction. In this way Epicurus anticipates the fact that all bodies, whatever their weight and mass, have the same velocity when they fall through space. Time is discussed by these Greeks in some ways similar to that of modern-day physicist Carlo Rovelli, and both Democritus and Epicurus agree that time is excluded from the atom. For the latter, infinite time exists within infinite space comprising infinite worlds, giving rise to free-will against superstition and fear of the gods. Following Epicurus, Lucretius writes: "... time by itself does not exist... It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility... accidents of matter, or of the place in which things happen". Marx calls this "the 'accidens' of accidens". Time is in opposition to space, time is change as change, and further for Marx, it is the "fire of essence" which can only be seen through reason: "... this reflection of appearance in itself which constitutes the concept of time, has its separate existence in the conscious sensuous. Human sensuousness is therefore embodied time, the existing reflection of the sensuous world itself".
There's a chapter called "The Meteors", by which Epicurus means all celestial bodies; and this is doubly important for the Greeks because their "philosophers worshipped their own minds in the celestial bodies" (like a "cult" according to Marx) and this was another factor in the elevation of the gods that Epicurus flatly rejected. Once the myth is removed from the heavens everything is possible, every explanation is sufficient. For example, there's not one explanation to a lightning strike but a number of interacting properties and reactions, and the task for Epicurus is to "trace their cause and banish the source of disturbance and dread". He takes comfort in the fact that everything is impermanent and unstable, not eternal and immortal. Marx says that Epicurus "in wrath and passionate violence" rejects those that propose one method of explanation of the Unique, Eternal and Divine in the heavenly bodies. The irregularity of orbits, the number of multiple possibilities involved in heavenly phenomena, the multitude of explanations is for Epicurus the road to calm, understanding and freedom. For Marx the contingency and freedom espoused by Epicurus, which before him was mechanical determinism, brought out the "active side".
Marx's materialism has strong roots in the swerve of Epicurus, showing that it could be an element in human emancipation from the material conditions of a world characterised by the development of human relations to its basic needs, from which consciousness develops. Chance and contingency play a part in this along with human ethical considerations. Marx wasn't uncritical of Epicurus since he was only interpreting the world, but his interpretation gave the world a direction and in the thesis Marx builds on some of his contradictions. He criticised his ideas of too many possibilities and his individualism but, again, these were part and parcel of the outcome. Engels, up to his death, was, enthusiastically with Marx all the way on the materialism of Epicurus. Engel's himself rejected much of bourgeois materialism in favour of the Greek "enlightenment", particularly Epicurus and Lucretius. He continued Marx's work on Epicurus and praised what he called the latter's "immanent dialectics". Epicurus recognised the estrangement of human beings from the human world in the shape of religion, now reinforced by the alienation of the labour-capital relationship, and had profound concerns about the well-being of the earth and the relationship of nature to man, points which Engels picked up and expanded on along with Marx.
A final quote from Marx in the thesis on Epicurus: "When human life lay grovelling in all men's sight, crushed to the earth under the deadweight of religion whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightning flash and growling menace of the sky.... Therefore religion in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level with the skies.
The difference between Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature which we established at the end of the general section has been elaborated and confirmed in all domains of nature. In Epicurus therefore, atomistics with all its contradictions has been carried through and completed as the natural science of self-consciousness. This self-consciousness under the form of abstract individuality is an absolute principle.
Epicurus has thus carried atomistics to its final conclusion, which is its dissolution and conscious opposition to the universal. For
Democritus, on the other hand, the atom is only the general objective expression of the empirical investigation of nature as a whole.
Hence the atom remains for him a pure and abstract category, a hypothesis, the result of experience, not its active [energisches] principle. This hypothesis remains therefore without realisation, just as it plays no further part in determining the real investigation."
We are conscious now that far from being crushed, religion, particularly its fundamentalist versions in both east and west, has been fed and invigorated by decomposing capitalism. The task is to overcome this along with all the divisions that emanate from the breakdown of ruling class ideology and to this effect we have to salute the groundbreaking work of Marx on Epicurus.
Marx's appendix on Plutarch
At the end of Marx's dissertation is an appendix called: Critique of Plutarch's Polemic against the Theology of Epicurus, of which, like much of the latter's work, only fragments survive. Nevertheless, even here, Marx makes some significant points and looks at some new areas in these fragments that we can return to in the context of the whole. It's also worth remembering that this work of Marx developing on Epicurus showed his gradual independence from Hegel and demonstrated to him in the process the importance of religion and the unfolding necessity to try to develop a profound understanding of what religion meant for humanity and its emancipation, while contending that "No good for man lies outside himself".
For Plutarch, God was on the side of good against the wicked - the powerful nature of this aspect of religious ideology shouldn't be underestimated even to this day. Against Epicurus, Plutarch argued that if there was no God there was no joy or happiness. According to him, belief in God, as well as bringing relief from pain, fear and worry "indulges in a playful and merry inebriation, even in amatory matters!” Marx responds on the proof of God that gods are like imagined money - in the end there will be a price to pay. And anyway, proof of 'your' God is a disavowal of others and vice-versa. Plutarch divides society into the good, decent, intelligent and the bad and uncivilised whereas, according to Marx, Epicurus deals with the "essential relationship of the human soul in general". For Marx, Plutarch's objection to Epicurus' ungodly atomism poses the question of the eternal, unchangeable characteristics of man against those of change, free-will and self-consciousness. Plutarch's view of religion is based on the reform of the wicked by, first of all an animal-like fear and secondly, sentimentality: "There is no qualitative difference between this and the previous category. What in the first place appeared in the shape of an animal fear appears here in the shape of human fear, the form of sentiment. The content is the same" (Marx). After talking about sentiment Marx goes on to briefly talk about the "... naked, empirical ego, the love of self, the oldest love...".
Marx certainly has plenty of criticisms of Epicurus on the questions of mechanistics and "accidents" but wholly supports his view that events of human history are neither mere accidents nor merely arise out of necessity. Epicurus recognises and never denies necessity or subsistence but always insists that the bounds of both must be broken and this by the means of human reason and human consciousness.
In the dissertation Marx argues that Epicurus goes beyond the sceptical world of the Democratean atom and its "subjective semblance" by positing its "objective appearance". "Implicit in Epicurus' philosophy was the notion that knowledge both of the world of the atom (imperceptible to the senses) and of sensuous reality arose from the inner necessity of human reason embodied in abstract individuality and freedom (self-determination)." Marx's Ecology materialism and nature, John Bellamy Foster.
In his appendix on Plutarch Marx also takes aim at the German idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, whose positions degenerated into a defence of religion and from this a cock-eyed vision of nature. Schelling's appointment as Rector at the University of Berlin indicated the closing off of universities to the Young Hegelians and a definite turn by Marx into further profound applications of his work.
Marx took what was best about the enlightenment of Ancient Greece and defended and refined the analyses of Epicurus against the determinism of Democritus; and then he defended the materialism of the modern Enlightenment against the reactionary views of Schelling. Marx went beyond Epicurus while underlining his importance for a materialist analysis. He reined in some of his "exaggerations" and sharpened up his innate dialectics.
Baboon. 15.2.18
The publication of our article ‘Reflections on the split in the Anarchist Federation’[1] has been widely read (close to 1000 reads at the time of writing), but has also ignited a storm of virulent attacks on the ICC, led by two longstanding members of the libcom collective, Steven and Mike Harman[2].
The ostensible reason for these attacks was a short paragraph in the article describing the events at the Anarchist Bookfair which had precipitated the split in the AF, a clash between a group of radical feminists (labelled “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” by their opponents) and supporters of “transgender rights” over the question of transphobia – hatred or discrimination against transgender people. This had not been the main focus of the article – the paragraph had figured as an introduction to a more general critical analysis of the statement of the group which had left the AF. But it was the central focus of the attacks on our article. We - or “the authors of the article” – were accused either of gross ignorance of the issues (and were given sundry links to sites where the basic terminology would be made clear to us) or of outright transphobia. The main evidence provided was that at the beginning of the article we had placed the word transphobia in inverted commas, as though it was not a real thing; but more importantly, that we had referred to transgender women (ie those who have “transitioned” from a male gender identity to a female one) as transgender males. According to our critics, we were thus providing support for the radical feminists, who had distributed leaflets at the Bookfair criticising proposed government legislation which will make gender identity a matter of subjective choice, because in the view of these particular feminists it will expose women-only spaces to the presence of people who they don’t consider to be women at all.
It’s true that this misuse of the current terminology was an error on our part, and we have made certain changes in the paragraph to make it clear that we are simply describing the position of the “TERFs” and in no way supporting them. But it was clear from the approach of posts attacking us that however much we altered the formulation used, we would still be judged guilty of promoting transphobia, because we have an entirely different approach to the whole issue. This is how Mike Harman deals with it. He cites the attempt by our poster on the thread, Alf, to focus on the real questions raised by the article: “is it true that significant parts of the anarchist movement are being pulled into the politics of 'identity', whether based on gender, sexuality, race or nationality?” and replies:
“You're asking the wrong question, because you don't understand the basis of the conflict. Another question to ask would be, ‘Why did two Green party members feel sufficiently emboldened that they could distribute transphobic leaflets at the anarchist bookfair, and put up posters in the toilets?’”
Harman’s post thus provides a justification for refusing to engage with the growing impact of identity politics on the anarchist milieu. Not only that, but Steven in particular repeatedly demanded that our entire article should be taken down – a clear attempt to silence us[3].
But in insisting that the one and only issue is the action of the “TERFs”, Harman also implies that unless you side with the anti-TERF resistance, you are providing ammunition for their transphobic agenda. In other words, what the posts by the libcom collective members really show is not our insidious prejudice against trans people, but the libcom collective’s own deepening involvement in identity politics or “id pol”. Small wonder that Steven (who is a remaining member of the AF) dismisses our view of the split as being an attempt – albeit partial and inadequate – to reject the growing weight of id pol, as “bollocks”.
For our part, we want to emphasise that not only do we not take sides in this clash between different brands of identity politics: we are opposed to all of them. As our sympathiser Baboon put it in a post on our forum: “I don't think that the fight between radical feminists and trans activists has any possible advantage for the proletariat or in any way assists the pressing needs of the class … I'd seen these two groups confronting each other on the TV weeks before the bookfair on Channel 4 news where (at a Gay Pride march I think) their confrontation was turning very ugly and very nasty[4]. At the bookfair apparently the police were called by one faction and both factions were involved in mobbing and scapegoating, a situation that showed nothing positive from a working class perspective and was entirely in line with certain populist developments arising from capitalism's decomposition”[5]
At the same time, both groups are founded on deep illusions in capitalist legislation. Some feminists seem to think that women are defended by current legislation, but will be undermined by the change. Meanwhile, some trans activists seem to think that the change to the Gender Recognition Act will be a great step forward for trans people. Both milieus have profound reformist illusions. And their goals are mutually exclusive, therefore deeply divisive.
WR, February 2018
[3] Echoed, more crudely, by the poster El Psy Congroo who simply told our comrade to “shut the fuck up”
[4] The incident in question actually took place at Speakers’ Corner in September 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/26/woman-punched-in-brawl-b... [1678]
The Anarchist Federation, one of the main anarchist organisations in Britain, has just been through a major split. Members in Leicester and London, including a number of founder members, have left the organisation following the tumult over the issue of “transphobia”[1] at October’s Anarchist Bookfair.
If we were right in our assessment of the AF as an internationalist anarchist group[2], this is a significant event which attests to growing difficulties across the entire spectrum of groups who are seeking to develop an authentic revolutionary opposition to capitalism – not only among anarchists but also within the communist left. We think that it is essential to understand the roots of these difficulties if we are to face up to the challenge they pose, and it is in this spirit that we aim to critically analyse the statement issued by those who have decided to leave the AF.[3]
The attempt to break with “identity politics”
The statement of the seceders begins thus:
“It has been over a month since the London Anarchist Bookfair and as a movement we are still reeling, with deep divisions between people who had respect for each other and once worked well together. We are still shocked, horrified and saddened by events as are most people, no matter what perspective or interpretation they have on what happened and the role of the Bookfair collective.
We were, until recently, members of the AF who did not sign the initial statement that was issued by Edinburgh AF and signed by two other AF groups, nor did we support the statement issued by other campaigns and organisations. We did not want to respond immediately as there are so many issues involved and emotions are strong. We hoped that after some time we could give a political assessment of the situation rather than just a knee-jerk reaction based on our emotional response to events and statements from other groups”[4].
The former members have reconstituted themselves into London Anarchist Communists and Leicester Anarchist Communists[5].
It’s not possible here to deal in any detail with the events at the Bookfair, which caused such ructions across the anarchist milieu and even reached the national press[6]. In essence it involved a clash between a group of feminists who intervened at the Bookfair with a leaflet arguing that new government legislation on “transgender rights” is an infringement on women’s rights to organize separately, since it would allow people who they – the leafleters – don’t consider to be women at all into spaces reserved by or for women. The leaflet provoked a lot of anger from “trans rights” supporters, who saw it as an attempt to whip up fear of transgender people by a tendency they call “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” or TERFS, and one of the women supporting the leafleters, a well-known activist who was involved in the MacLibel case and has been targeted in a particularly vicious way by the undercover police, was subject to mobbing and accused of being a fascist. The Bookfair Collective, which attempted to intervene in the situation to calm it down, subsequently issued a statement saying that this would be its last Bookfair – it has experienced similar clashes in a number of other Bookfairs and its patience has run out[7].
These events are not unconnected to other scandals centred on the question of morality and behavior which have rocked the anarchist movement in the last few years, the most notable of which are “Aufhebengate” and the “Schmidt affair”[8], both of which raise the problem of the role played in the anarchist milieu by individuals with a dubious relationship with the police (in the first case) and with out-and-out racists in the second. We have also seen a substantial part of this milieu plunging into support for “national liberation” in the shape of the “Rojava revolution”, armed enclaves in Syria controlled by the Kurdish nationalists of the PKK and based on a semi-anarchist ideology of “democratic confederalism”[9], and an extremely widespread support for anti-fascism which was highlighted by the incidents around Charlottesville in the USA[10].
These developments are not taking place in a vacuum. The tendency, within anarchism, to abandon class politics and look for solutions in various forms of identity politics – whether based on gender, race, or nation – while not new, are certainly being exacerbated by the characteristics of the current historic period, in which capitalism is sinking towards barbarism while the working class, weakened by all the divisions engendered by this decomposing society, has found it extremely difficult to resist as a class and above all to rediscover its own perspective for the future of humanity. In a situation where the working class is tending to lose its sense of itself as a distinct social force, it is not surprising that the problem of class identity is being obscured by a fixation on other, more specific identities – a fixation which, while linked to genuine oppressions, tend to obscure the central problem of exploitation and the capitalist social relation.
The statement issued by the seceding groups is highly critical of the mobbing witnessed at the Bookfair. And while it affirms the importance of fighting against all particular forms of oppression, including transphobia, it also contains a questioning of the identity-based politics which it feels has become increasingly dominant within the AF, and a strong desire to return to “class struggle anarchism”. The question of internationalism is also directly posed by this split, because, although the AF published a fairly clear statement on the “Rojava revolution” some time ago[11], some of the comrades who left the organisation also consider that pro-PKK positions have also been increasingly influential within the organization[12].
These aspects of the statement are expressions of a proletarian reaction to the engulfing of the AF in the mire of identity politics and a drift towards support for radical forms of nationalism. They confirm what we wrote in our two-part article on internationalist anarchism in the UK, where we argued that for all its concessions to leftist campaigns, the AF was in the tradition of internationalist anarchism – of those currents in the anarchist movement which have stood against any participation in imperialist war[13]. The revival of the term “anarchist communism” (the AF had originally been called the Anarchist Communist Federation) is symbolic of this will to recover the healthiest parts of its tradition, which they feel can no longer be done within the AF.
And yet: the very fact that these criticisms of identity politics are carried out in the historic framework of anarchism means that they don’t – and cannot – go far enough.
Anarchist obstacles to theoretical advance
What is the evidence for this claim?
· The statement begins by admitting how difficult it has proved to overcome all the divisions within the working class and to build a revolutionary movement committed to the overthrow of capitalism. But it gives little sign of trying to situate these difficulties in the overall context of the present period – a period, as we have noted, marked by a loss of class identity and a low level of class struggle. It’s true that prior to the split the Leicester group of the AF had held a meeting in Leicester and one at the Anarchist Bookfair, as well as writing an article that started a thread on libcom, under the heading ‘Is the working class movement dead?’[14], which posed serious questions about the problems facing the working class and revolutionaries. There is a recognition in the article that the class struggle has been weakening over a long period but the approach to the problem in the presentation to the meetings is essentially an empirical one which is unable to place it in the global, historic context of capitalism’s terminal phase of decline.
· Although it affirms the central role of the class struggle, the statement does not pose the fundamental theoretical issue: the nature of the working class as a historic, revolutionary class, or as Marx famously put it in 1843: “a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it; which can invoke no historical, but only human, title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in all-round antithesis to the premises of German statehood; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete re-winning of man. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat”. (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)
It is this conception which enables us to understand why the struggle of the proletariat contains, in potential, the solution to all the particular oppressions spawned by capitalist society. But this conception of the proletariat is, of course, the one developed by Marx and the marxist movement, which affirms that the class struggle is not restricted to the economic sphere but has numerous dimensions: social, political, moral, intellectual. It was this understanding which enabled Lenin, that bugbear of the anarchists, to develop a critique of the Economist vision which limits the class movement to something that takes place in the factories and essentially on a day to day basis. And in many ways this is precisely the conception of the main currents in anarchism – most notable the anarcho-syndicalists, but also of those who produced the statement, for whom a class struggle orientation seems to boil down to “getting involved” in the workplace and the local community, which is presented almost as a panacea: “our answer to the first issue” – the reluctance of working people to get involved in revolutionary politics – “is that we need to make sure as anarchists we are directly involved in struggle, in the workplace and the community”. The issue for us here is not whether revolutionaries should engage with struggles in the workplace or the neighbourhood, but the content of that engagement – its methods and objectives, which are nowhere posed in the seceding statement. Otherwise comrades risk burning themselves out in non-stop activism whose real content is essentially a trade unionist one. This is evident in the case of the anarcho-syndicalists whose “organising” role is linked to a project of building a “revolutionary union”. But even those who appear to be more critical of trade unionism can be led back to union-building through a simple focus on day-to-day workplace organising. It was pointed out on the libcom thread about the AF split that some of those who left the AF had previously joined the IWW, which is not entirely consistent with the AF’s position on anarcho-syndicalism, while some of the campaigns of the more “autonomist” Angry Workers of the World group in West London seem to be heading towards calls to build new IWW or “independent union” branches[15].
· This restricted view of the class struggle does not offer any real alternative to the ideas of “idpol”, for whom being working class is another particular oppression, another separate identity with its own rights to defend. The statement’s critique of identity politics and the kind of mobbing witnessed at the Bookfair makes some valid points – in particular by recognising that fighting against oppressive and divisive ideologies is one that takes place inside the working class, and that those proletarians who are weighed down by various kinds of prejudices need to be won over in the course of the class struggle, not treated as enemies. And yet the ABC of identity politics is not questioned: “We support oppressed groups to organise autonomously”, without any discussion about whether such forms of organising – by gender, sexual orientation, race – tend to become inter-classist by definition and create obstacles to a wider class unity. The statement mentions that it disagrees with the statements put out by Edinburgh and two other AF groups, but it doesn’t mention the fact that one of these groups was the “Trans Action Faction” within the AF[16], and no criticism is made of the organisational model adopted by the AF, which presents itself as a myriad not only of local groups but of groups organised around sexual and other identities. Again on the organisational question, while it’s recognised in the statement that a lot of people entered the AF without really agreeing with its Aims and Principles, the new group goes no further than reprinting the original document and doesn’t appear to have an answer to the pertinent question posed by Darren P on the libcom thread: “Just out of interest how was it that people whose politics are closer to liberal idpol than anarchist-communism came to be the majority in the AF anyhow? Isn’t there any kind of screening process for new members? In other words, is there not a need to examine the ‘entry requirements’ of a genuine revolutionary organisation?”[17]
Does any of this mean that all the problems posed by the different forms of oppression and division reinforced by capitalist society have been solved by the marxist movement? Not at all: even when we are talking about authentic marxism and not its Stalinist or leftist caricature, its various currents have not been immune from workerist ideologies, reductionist visions of class, and even overtly “patriarchal attitudes”. But we are convinced that it’s only the marxist, historical method that will enable us to understand the origins of different forms of oppression and the way to oppose and overcome them, which can only mean starting from a lucid class standpoint that states openly that identity politics are a dead-end[18].
For us, the underlying problem is that, historically speaking, anarchism itself stems from deep confusions about class: the Proudhonist tendency classically expressed a reaction by the artisan to being dissolved into the proletariat; the Bakuninist current tried to respond to the development of the proletariat with a more collectivist approach but without jettisoning the attachment to the centrality of “liberty” versus “authority; the anarcho-syndicalists, while being a healthy response to the parliamentary cretinism overcoming social democracy at the beginning of the 20th century, fell into the workerist view of the class struggle we mentioned above, evading or even rejecting the political dimension of the class movement. This means that simply returning to these historic roots will not provide the basis for a real clarification and a genuine advance.
There is also an inherent tendency within anarchism towards what many anarchists themselves describe as “the Big Tent” – a kind of family conception in which almost everyone who pins the “anarcho-“ or “libertarian” label on their jacket is welcome through the door. This is typified by the Anarchist Bookfair which has always had the vaguest and most inconsistent criteria for participation, but in a narrower sense the same criticism can be made of the AF, which reveals itself to be a marsh inhabited by different and often antagonistic species.
Anarchists have often taken offense at our use of terms the marsh or the swamp to describe the milieu they inhabit, but we see it as a necessary characterisation of a real political terrain in this society – the middle-ground between the two major classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, made up not only of direct expressions of the intermediate layers (urban petty bourgeoisie, peasantry etc) but also, on the one hand, of degenerating proletarian currents heading towards the ground of bourgeois, leftist politics, and on the other hand, of groups and individuals that are seeking seriously to reach the proletarian shore. A place of transition, but not a place to get bogged down.
In our series on the communist left and internationalist anarchism, we insisted on the need for fraternal discussion between our tendency and those anarchists who indeed express a proletarian vision even if, to our mind, they have not yet left the old swamp behind entirely. Regarding the split in the AF, for all our criticisms, we remain open to further debate, not only with those who left but also with those who chose to stay in the AF. For us, political criticism is not in contradiction with fraternal discussion, and should not be confused with sectarianism[19].
Amos 23.2.18
1. This is the current “normal” term for discrimination, hatred or prejudice against people who opt for a different gender identity than the one given when they are born. However, even among those activists involved in the issue, it is not immune from criticism: "we’ve been intentionally moving away from using words like ‘transphobic’, ‘homophobic,’ and ‘biphobic’ because (1) they inaccurately describe systems of oppression as irrational fears, and (2) for some people, phobias are a very distressing part of their lived experience and co-opting this language is disrespectful to their experiences and perpetuates ableism." https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary.html [1680]
2. https://en.internationalism.org/series/1292 [1681]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/344/brit-anarchy [816]
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/345/brit-anarchy [1316]
3. Certain changes have been in this article since it was first published on 5.2.18. The reasons for these changes are explained in our accompanying article 'On recent attacks on the ICC on Libcom' https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201802/14928/recent-attacks-icc-libcom [1682]
4. https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/class-struggle-anarchist-statement-on_1.html [1683]
5. [email protected] [1684]; https://leicesteraf.blogspot.co.uk/ [1685]
6. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/26/transgender-anarchist-book-fair-transphobia-row [1686]
7. Statements by the Bookfair Collective can be found at anarchistbookfair.org.uk [1687].
8. See our statement on “Aufhenebgate”: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201305/7746/aufhebengate [1688] on the “Schmidt affair”: https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael-schmidt-fascist-25092015 [1689]
9. https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201412/11625/anarchism-and-imperialist-war-nationalism-or-internationalism [1333]
10. en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14390/anti-fascism-still-formula-confusion [1661].
We should also mention that there has also been a split in the main international organization of the anarcho-syndicalists, the International Workers’ Association, which appears to centre round its most numerous section, the CNT in Spain. See for example https://libcom.org/article/cnt-and-iwa-part-2-crisis-iwa-seen-cnt [1690].
11. https://libcom.org/article/anarchist-federation-statement-rojava-december-2014 [1691]
12. See https://libcom.org/forums/anarchist-federation/whats-going-afed-27122017 [1692], especially p 2 and 3
13. See note 2 for references
14. https://libcom.org/article/working-class-movement-dead [1693]
15. Post 184, Steven [1694]. On the AWW’s drift towards syndicalism: “Workplace groups: Currently we work in a major warehouse of a supermarket chain and factories of a major ready-meal producer and try to establish workers groups. Together with the IWW we try to organise independent union structures in ten local companies”. https://libcom.org/article/migration-and-national-social-democracy-britain [1695]
16. afed.org.uk/afed-trans-action-faction-statement-in-response-to-events-at-london-anarchist-bookfair-2017 [1696]
17. Post 19, Darren P [1697].
18. This is why we are also publishing the article ’The dead-end of racial identity politics’ by the US group Workers’ Offensive in this issue (www.workersoffensive.org/single-post/2017/10/13/The-Dead-End-of-Racial-I... [1698])
19. In this regard we note that the new group carries on a practice established for some years now by the Anarchist Bookfair (not to mention numerous other radical websites), in that it publishes a link to the Communist Workers’ Organisation, a left communist organisation whose positions are close to ours, but not to the ICC – just the Bookfair allowed the CWO to hold a stall and meetings while requests from the ICC to do the same were rejected year after year. This attitude is incoherent and a real expression of sectarianism. If anyone in the anarchist world considers that the ICC deserves to be treated like a pariah, let them argue the case, and we will respond with our own arguments.
Faced with the torrent of “celebration” about how women (or some women) were given the vote in 1918, we are pleased to publish this short response by a comrade who has moved close to the views of left communism – and thus to the ideas of Sylvia Pankurst in 1918, who exposed the granting of the vote as a deception aimed at stemming the tide of revolution that had been provoked by the horrors of the First World War[1]. ICC
The Workers’ Socialist Federation began life as the East London Federation of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the primary organisation for women’s suffrage led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. In contrast to the WSPU, the East London Federation was disproportionately composed of working-class (as opposed to middle-class) women, and open to men. Sylvia Pankhurst was therefore concerned with social reforms and industrial action for the improvement of the dire conditions of the working-class, whilst the WSPU privileged [propertied] women’s suffrage above any other cause and aimed to appeal to middle-class women. The working-class and reformist nature of the East London Federation led to its expulsion from the WSPU in 1914.
During the First World War, most of the international, women's suffrage movement – e.g. the WSPU in Britain, or National American Woman Suffrage Association in the US – rallied to the support of their countries’ war efforts, engaging in patriotic/nationalist, pro-war sloganeering. The war exacerbated the poverty and hardships of the working-class in East London, and Sylvia Pankhurst tried in vain to alleviate the suffering of workers through charity, lobbying for reforms and co-operatives.
The Russian revolution led to a radical alteration in Sylvia Pankhurst’s politics. When Pankhurst changed the name of her organisation from the “East London Federation of Suffragettes”, to the “Women’s Suffrage Federation”, to “Workers' Suffrage Federation”, and finally the "Workers' Socialist Federation", and the name of her paper from Women’s Dreadnought to Workers' Dreadnought, it illustrated this shift in her politics, away from ‘women’ (an interclassist category), towards working-class women, finally to the working class in general, and her ultimate rejection of the politics of reformist suffragism in favour of communism.
By 1918/9, Pankhurst recognised that it was pointless, and in fact reactionary, to campaign for suffrage amidst a world, proletarian revolutionary wave. At a time when the very existence of parliaments and nation-states was put into question by the revolutionary working-class, whether or not the working-class, or women, or middle-class women, should have the right to vote in elections to capitalist parliaments had simply lost all relevance. Parliaments were no longer a site of meaningful, political contestation for the proletariat, the future was to be found in the form of territorial soviets (workers' councils).
“The Communist Party, believing that instruments of capitalist organization and domination cannot be used for revolutionary ends, refrains from participation in Parliament and in the Bourgeois Local Government system. It will ceaselessly impress upon the workers that their salvation lies not in the organ of the bourgeois “democracy,” but through the Workers’ Soviets.
The Communist Party refuses all compromise with Right and Centrist Socialism. The British Labour Party is dominated by Opportunist Reformists, Social Patriots, and Trade Union Bureaucrats, who have already allied themselves with capitalism against the workers’ revolution at home and abroad. The construction and constitution of the British Labour Party is such that the working masses cannot express themselves through it. It is affiliated and will remain affiliated to the Second International, so long as that so-called International shall exist.” (The Communist Party: Provisional Resolutions towards a Programme, 1920)
This great public campaign around celebrating suffragism, and the attempt to portray Sylvia Pankhurst as a suffragette, rather than the anti-parliamentary communist she became, is part of a ruling-class ideological offensive: to recuperate what can be recuperated, to cover-up what can't be recuperated, to rewrite history, leaving-out all the revolutionary bits. In general, undermining the historical memory of the workers' movement in the centenary years of the worldwide, revolutionary wave of 1917-23.
Why is the ruling-class so loud in its celebration of the Representation of the People Act 1918, as some great moment in British history? Why does the ruling class portray suffragettes as national heroes? What would the left communist Sylvia Pankhurst have thought about this national celebration of suffragism?
“It is interesting to observe that the legal barriers to women’s participation in Parliament and its elections were not removed until the movement to abolish Parliament altogether had received the strong encouragement of witnessing the overthrow of Parliamentary Government in Russia and the setting up of Soviets.
Those events in Russia evoked a response throughout the world not only amongst the minority who welcomed the idea of Soviet Communism, but also amongst the upholders of reaction. The latter were by no means oblivious to the growth of Sovietism when they decided to popularise the old Parliamentary machine by giving to some women both votes and the right to be elected.” (Workers’ Dreadnought, 15th December 1923)
Is it not the case that all those celebrating suffrage are falling for democratism?
“Even were it possible to democratise the machinery of Parliament, its inherently anti-Communist character would still remain. The King might be replaced by a President, or all trace of the office abolished. The House of Lords might disappear, or be transformed into a Senate. The Prime Minister might be chosen by a majority vote of Parliament, or elected by referendum of the people. The Cabinet might be chosen by referendum, or become an Executive Committee elected by Parliament. The doings of Parliament might be checked by referendum.
Nevertheless, Parliament would still be a non-Communist institution. Under Communism we shall have no such machinery of legislation and coercion. The business of the Soviets will be to organise the production and supply of the common services; they can have no other lasting function. ” (Pankhurst, 1922)
Craftwork, 12.2.18
[1] This article was first published on libcom.org, https://libcom.org/forums/history/suffragism-or-communism-11022018#new [1700]. See also the article https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201512/13704/sylvia-pankhurst-... [1701]
In number 523 of its paper, Le Proletaire, dated February/March/ April 2017, the International Communist Party (PCI) published an article: Populism, populism you say?, in which it confronts this phenomenon and its current growth and, on the basis of this analysis, also undertakes a criticism of the analysis of the ICC on this question. The first part of our response to this polemic will be centred on the elements of analyses used by the PCI itself in order to evaluate its capacity to explain the phenomenon of populism.
We must say first of all though, through its positions, the PCI places itself in the defence of a proletarian point of view. Through this it demonstrates that it is still situated in the camp of the proletariat and that it globally defends the positions of the communist left.
What is populism, according to the PCI?
The comrades of the PCI correctly note:
- that other parts of the bourgeoisie use populism ideologically so as to drive proletarians onto the electoral terrain around the mystification of the "defence of democracy". We are thus in agreement with the PCI on the fact that the false opposition between populism and anti-populism is an ideological trap which serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.
- that the greatest danger for the working class is not the extreme-right but the left of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie: "(Populism) cannot however replace the infinitely more powerful counter-revolutionary role that classic reformism plays (qualified by the PCI as the parties of the left), solidly implanted as it is in the working class and thus able to paralyse it" and these comrades are equally clear on anti-fascism, which completely distinguishes them from the positions of the extreme left of capital. They were unambiguous in denouncing the call to vote for Chirac in 2002 and at the last elections they once again denounced the electoral and democratic mystifications[i] .
Also Le Proletaire rightly emphasises that demagogy is not at all peculiar to populism, and the same goes for electoral promises. We undoubtedly share the same proletarian ground.
But what is the analysis of populism advanced by the PCI? Above all, it assures us that it is of a petty-bourgeois nature. In order to support this it provides a quote from Marx taken from the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte: "Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided".
This general characterisation of the petty-bourgeoisie remains perfectly valid but what relationship, what link does that have with the billionaire Trump; with the advocates of Brexit? We have no idea... it explains nothing about the present situation. The only historic element that it gives is the reference to populism of Russia in the XIXth century. Again, we don't see any relationship between Russian populism of the XIXth century (relationships between the intellectual petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry, the methods of this petty-bourgeoisie of the time oriented towards individual action and terrorism) with the present day, except instead of referring to Trump, the Tea Party or the currents of the extreme right today (the Front Nationale and other extreme right wing populists in Europe) the PCI talks to us about populism "in general". In this way, through its indistinct rejection it mixes up in the same "petty-bourgeois" rubbish bin the populism of the extreme right (Trump, Le Pen and the partisans of Brexit) or again the zealous propagandists of bourgeois democratic mystifications (‘Democracy Now’ in Spain or the altermondialists) with authentic reactions of the working class, certainly still influenced by illusions in democracy, such the Occupy and Indignados movements...
What can one draw out of such a confusion that sees populism equivalent only to the petty-bourgeoisie, while schematically glossing over an analysis of reality and seeking to track down everything that it thinks points to the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie? Nothing! Other than it shows a total absence of an analysis of the phenomenon of populism and its historic evolution in order to understand how it corresponds to the present situation.
By substituting an assortment of ready-made schemas for an analysis of populism, Le Proletaire ends up with aberrations and stupid affirmations completely disconnected from reality: such is the case when it raises the question of a "workers' aristocracy" in order to explain the influence of populist themes in the ranks of the workers. This "theorisation", made by Engels and followed by Lenin, was already an error in their times because it aimed to explain the propagation of bourgeoisie ideology (not specifically that of the petty-bourgeoisie) in the workers' ranks. Moreover, the most experienced workers who have the best living and working conditions with the highest wages are not those most open to the present populist ideology. The reality is contrary: it is those who are most hit with the full force of the crisis and unemployment in the most grim and ravaged regions (the ex-mining basin in the north of France or the old steel-working bastions of Lorraine, where the FN made an electoral breakthrough), who are the most permeable to the themes of populism. Reality contradicts the absurd thesis of the PCI on the weight of a "workers' aristocracy" in the question of populism today[ii].
A schematic vision of a bourgeoisie without contradictions
Le Proletaire thus sees populism as a sort of rational and mechanical defensive reaction of the layers of the petty-bourgeoisie, of its particular economic interests globally compatible with, or assimilated to, the interests of the national capital. This leads them to avoid the real problem. The text even labours to show that populism doesn't pose the least problem for the bourgeoisie by using photographic empirical findings as "evidence": thus it refers to the fact that just after Trump's election Wall Street registered a stock-exchange record (along the same lines it uses a similar sledge-hammer argument of the highs of the London stock exchange after the Brexit vote in order to affirm that "the leadership of the British bourgeoisie do not at all think that this rupture is a serious problem for them"). The PCI take up the outdated and erroneous vision of the XIXth century of a bourgeoisie which plays the stock-market, whereas the stock-market is the domain par excellence of a day-to-day, short-term vision, guided by the immediate profits of the capitalists. Moreover it's for that reason that the bourgeoisie never calls into question this type of institution but make it depend on the general interests of its state, its administration, its "schedules". In reality, if the election of Trump was immediately followed by a hike in the Wall Street stock market it was simply because it was already announced that taxes would be lowered on businesses and this could only lead to a favourable welcome by the shareholders.
Another reason developed by the article doesn't get much traction either: the idea that Trump definitely serves the common interests of the bourgeoisie, since there have never been so many billionaires in the same government. There's no doubt about the capitalist nature of the government and the fact that it's full of the richest elements. That doesn't mean that it’s guaranteed to serve the best general interests of the capitalist system. We can suppose that the PCI also think that Brexit will definitively serve the interests of British capital. But we don't really see how Brexit strengthens British capital and the PCI doesn't say anything to support this notion.
It's important to reveal what the PCI doesn't say and the questions that it doesn't pose. What is the strategy followed by the American bourgeoisie with the election of Trump? What is the interest of the British bourgeoisie in carrying out Brexit? Do these results strengthen them in the defence of their economic and imperialist interests in the arena of global competition? The PCI says nothing about that and provides not the least serious argumentation in this respect. The PCI is certainly correct to affirm that nationalism is, given the competition between states, a privileged means to try to draw the ranks of the bourgeoisie together behind the defence of the national capital, but that gives no explanation nor any other framework for understanding the phenomenon of populism and still less, its present development. That makes it unfit to report on the numerous problems of present society and analyse their evolution.
The article of the PCI is obliged to pay lip-service to the idea that populism bothers or concerns a part of the bourgeoisie but it doesn't explain why when it says: "Without doubt some of its striking declarations have raised the eyebrows of certain capitalist sectors: the threat of hitting imports with raised tariffs would be a severe blow for a number of industries which have delocalised a part of their production or for the large distributions centres. But one can bet that the capitalists at the head of powerful groups of interest would make that clear to their colleague Trump". Similarly the PCI is obliged to recognise that the programmes of the populists "at certain points come into contradiction with the interests of the biggest, most internationalist capitalist groups". But they see that as an epiphenomenon that has no consequences and they depart from the presumptuous explanation that the bourgeoisie will as always use these contradictions for its own profit and overcome them. It is clear that the election and the policies of Trump a year on go in a totally opposite direction to those foreseen by the PCI, according to which the bourgeoisie would listen to reason and put a stop to the pretentions of Trump. At the present time a great part of the American bourgeoisie is plunged into disarray and several sectors, including his own camp, are trying to find the means to remove him or look for some other means to dislocate the presidential functions. For a year we've seen a growing discredit, a denunciation of Trump’s lack of seriousness, of the incoherent and chaotic policies being undertaken by the leading world power at the international level. For example, Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel constitutes, among other things, a flagrant illustration of an international policy which has only thrown oil on the fire and stirred up a new focus for uncontrolled violence in the Middle East. At the same time we see an accumulation of obstacles facing the policies favoured by the administration (including the repeal of "Obamacare", the great Trump warhorse), the incessant waltz of resignations of the highest officials, to name just some examples of this disorder at the highest levels. In Britain, for a year now Brexit has posed serious problems to the health of the national capital, particularly by weakening and considerably undermining its power through the flight of international capital that it has provoked; and this despite the financial sector always being a strong point of the British economy. Faced with a succession of setbacks and contradictory initiatives to reach an agreement with the EU, Theresa May is more and more weakened and openly accused by her peers of incompetence, lack of preparation and confusion[iii].
That doesn't at all mean that Trump becoming president, nor the victory of Brexit, are fatal blows to capitalism, no more than it will prevent the United States or Great Britain remaining dominant imperialist powers. Neither does it prevent the bourgeoisie from trying to channel the problems linked to populist decisions and even utilising and exploiting the manifestations of the weight of populism to accelerate the decline in class consciousness, especially themes like nationalism or the defence of democracy. But the PCI, by focusing on the undoubted ideological use of populism by the bourgeoisie, totally misses the problems posed by the general dynamic of capitalism today, by the accumulation and exacerbation its contradictions, including within the bourgeoisie itself. It completely misses the stalemate between the classes and the growing tendency towards barbarism, of which populism in its present form is one of its most significant manifestations. Similarly, it completely underestimates the threats, the dangers and the traps (nationalism, channelling of the false choice between populism and anti-populism) and the growing disorientation and disarray in the class identity of the proletariat.
The consequences, following the election of Trump and the referendum on Brexit, of putting populist programmes and policies into practice are totally denied and ignored, as if the bourgeoisie of these two powers, although among the most powerful and experienced in the world, were immunised from danger and the policies undertaken and the economic orientations taken since these events run no risk of disastrous consequences for the national and world capital. The recent example of the situation in Germany following the legislative elections and the first time entry to parliament of the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany), with 87 seats and 13.5% of the vote, once again confirms the historic tendency for the development of populism. This phenomenon in Germany is particularly strong in the old industrial centres, in particular the ex-GDR (East Germany) which doesn't at all correspond to the reductionist and false vision of the PCI.
"Nothing new under the sun": a fixed vision of history
Instead of analysing and explaining the growth, development and the dynamic of the populist phenomenon, the PCI stubbornly say in respect of the present phenomenon of populism there is "nothing new under the sun". Thus they have no framework of analysis. For it, the question of the growth of populism is almost an invention by the media, a simple instrument of propaganda. As it says at the beginning of the article, populism is nothing other than "a political orientation which denies the division of society into classes" aiming solely "to make the proletariat lose its class orientations". Which is an extremely reductionist view and comes down to saying that the growth in power of populism only corresponds to a manoeuvre, set-up and orchestrated by all parts of the bourgeoisie against the working class.
Rather than explain a phenomenon that it doesn't understand, the PCI denies reality and really gives the impression that there are no genuine contradictions within the bourgeoisie, as if it was a simple sum, an aggregate of different interests: bosses, shareholders, states, parties and candidates... It has the vision of a conscious, all-powerful bourgeoisie that has no internal contradictions and which puts forward such and such a card according to its needs, aimed exclusively against the working class, thus allowing it to divert the latter's discontent. It's paradoxical because at the same time as the PCI advances this need of mystification, it recognises that the threat to the bourgeoisie from the working class is actually at a very low level. The problem is that the PCI tries to shoehorn not only populism, but also the development of different national situations, into a pre-established mould, into finished schemas, fixed and "invariant" (to use its own term) without integrating them into the least framework of analysis nor grasping the reality of a movement. There is an incapacity of the PCI to provide a lucid analysis of reality.
Why do we attach so much importance to the necessity of better understanding the phenomenon of populism? Because in this debate where divergences could be taken for simple, Byzantine quarrels, a discussion in the coffee shop or a debate between "intellectual circles", it is essentially a question for revolutionary organisations to methodically draw out the clearest vision of the stakes, the dynamic and evolution of capitalism in order to better arm the proletariat in its class combat.
To be continued...
CB, December 28 2017
[i] We refer the reader to their article: Bilan of the presidential elections: restructuring of the bourgeois political theatre in order to better defend capitalism, Le Proletaire, no. 524, May/June 2017.
[ii] See our article on The workers' aristocracy: a sociological theory to divide the working class, in the International Review no. 25 (1981).
[iii] Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner appears to have encouraged de-facto Saudi ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in his destabilising adventures in the Middle East, particularly his hostilities against Qatar which go directly against US military interests. Similarly in Britain, Brexit-supporting foreign minister Priti Patel on "holiday" in Israel not only broke with British foreign policy but attempted to reverse it without the Foreign Office knowing. Prime Minister May's hesitation in sacking her showed just how weak she was.
ICC introduction
A number of comrades have been reflecting seriously on the importance of the October Revolution in Russia. The text that follows has been sent to us by a close sympathiser of the ICC in Belgium. The comrade had prepared this contribution for a previous meeting in September 2017 in Belgium on the topic of the October Revolution – we have already published a contribution by another sympathiser written at the same time (see Contribution to the discussion of the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, November 2017).
We are publishing these contributions in the hope that as many comrades as possible will read them and that they will stimulate further reflection and discussion. We encourage all our readers to consider making further contributions themselves, either in the form of texts or participating on our forum at our website.
The text aims to draw the lessons from the revolution in Russia for today and the comrade takes a closer look to how Trotsky’s three-volume History of the Russian Revolution can help us in applying the lessons of this experience in the twenty first century. The contribution discusses what it means for communists to make up a balance sheet of a movement, a theory, an author, etc. – and how this can help us to reconsider our tasks today. Drawing a balance sheet, like any theoretical work, has as its goal to create the conditions for overcoming our weaknesses and give us the strength we need to struggle.
As the author concludes: “Reviewing a work of this magnitude is part of drawing a larger balance sheet. But it cannot be seen as an isolated event, a chapter that we have now closed. Only discussion amongst the revolutionary minorities and inside the proletariat can ultimately help us understand our predicament today. We do not live at the turn of the 20th century and much has changed during the last century. Some experiences have been vital, but all in all, the proletariat has lost more than it has gained. We can only hope that future struggles will provide new experiences that will allow us to overcome capitalism”.
We are in complete agreement with the text as a whole, but in the paragraph on the Kornilov coup and the United Front, towards the end of the article, there is a passage that gives the idea that Kerensky was merely an opportunist at the time, when in reality he was the head of the bourgeois government that was continuing the war effort and aimed to liquidate the revolutionary movement. So the reference in this paragraph to “compromise with opportunists” as a tactic in certain circumstances seems rather ambiguous. There is an article on the ICC website that we think clarifies this issue, pointing out that the Bolsheviks called for support to the workers’ militias and other class organs, not for support to the Kerensky government: ‘The Kornilov coup, August 1917: military blocs or autonomous class struggle?’( https://en.internationalism.org/wr/306/1917-Kornilov [1704]).
In the centenary of the Russian Revolution the reaction of the bourgeoisie and its political and intellectual representatives has generally been twofold. On the one hand, especially from the left wing of bourgeois democracy, we are told that the Russian Revolution was one of the most singular, liberating events in history, and yet, at the same time, that “October” never died but lives on in the parties that claim historical ties to the Bolsheviks. In other words, to honour the Russian Revolution means to pay homage to the subsequent Soviet Union and the various extreme left groups of Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist and other varieties. In practice, all these different flavours of leftism invariably end up to be some variant of fervent red flag waving social democracy, different state capitalisms distinguished only by a preference either for the “democratic” form or for coming “from the barrel of a gun” [1705]. To be clear on the matter, we believe that the “positions” of these bourgeois parties, which have nothing to do with the historical positions of the Bolsheviks, have only legitimized brutal state capitalist regimes in the name of communism.
On the other hand, it has been held by conservative and liberal thinkers that the Russian Revolution had to end in political repression and economic stagnation. In other words, the uprising of the proletariat in Russia must be held as monstrous from its very inception, because it had to lead to Stalin’s dictatorship and his brutal betrayal of the revolution. It is interesting how few authors of this vulgar-teleological type are willing to use this kind of reasoning to say something about capitalism and the First World War. Other, more “sophisticated” histories of the Russian Revolution use more developed conceptual frameworks. For instance, the “Russian character” is used to demonstrate that it had to be expected that a dictatorial regime had to eventually rise in Russia - see, for example, the recent biography of Stalin published by Prof. Dr. Kotkin [1706]. An actual sociological explanation for the rise of Stalin and the state capitalist regime that bears his name, such as the isolation of the backward Soviet Union after the failure of the expansion of the communist revolutions to expand to Germany (1918), Hungary (1919) and other countries, is generally brushed aside. According to these gentlemen and gentleladies, such ideas must be dismissed as speculation and ideological babble. In the end, most of these authors tend to assume that the cause of the decline of the Soviet Union after a short revolutionary, progressive period was the return of the never-changing political struggle for “power”. In other words, according to these learned idiots, the historical significance of the Russian Revolution is that it replaced Czar Nicholas II with General Secretary Stalin.
In this review, I wish to first draw up a short balance sheet of twentieth century “communism” and the “official” story about the Russian Revolution. Then, I will ask the question how the three volumes by Trotsky can aid us in bringing back the proletarian movement in the twenty first century. Then, I take up some issues with Trotsky’s approach to the events and the Russian Revolution in general. Finally, I discuss what it means for communists to make up a balance sheet of a movement, a theory, an author, et cetera – and how this can help us to reconsider our tasks today.
I would argue that to even begin to contextualise the Russian Revolution means to draw an honest and clear balance sheet of the twentieth century. We must break with much of the intellectual garbage that has been strewn on the road to understanding what “communism” means.
After the decomposition of the Russian Revolution under the influence of the failed world revolution, the proletarian movement went into a steep decline, both theoretical and organizational. The state emerging from the proletarian revolution deformed to a state capitalist regime because it had to trade on a world market to survive. In the end, all those who resisted the new capitalist bureaucratic elite were silenced and finally murdered. The so-called ‘Communist’ movements and parties in Europa, Asia, Africa and South America, which took centre stage in twentieth century geopolitics, were nothing more than alternative bourgeois elites supported by the capitalist regimes in Moscow, Beijing or Havana. If these parties or movements were ultimately victorious in their struggle against other fractions of the bourgeoisie, they founded their own state capitalist regimes with material and ideological support from the Eastern bloc, enjoying similar despotic benefits as the political and economic elites in the Soviet Union.
Today, there is no communist party and the few groups of revolutionaries are small and have no real influence within the proletariat. Communist politics has been in a steady stagnation for almost eighty years. Despite the powerlessness of communist politics, the proletariat has had some important moments of resurgence since the end of the Second World War. So, despite all odds, the working class has not yet been defeated. But neither has the bourgeoisie yielded. The rule of capital continues to ravage our lives and holds the futures of our children to a kind of permanent ransom. The continuing civil wars in Syria and Iraq, climate change, racism, hatred of minorities: all these small and large horrors of our time, new and persisting, cannot be understood without the drive to keep the working class divided, to accumulate at all costs, to divide and conquer markets.
It remains to be seen if movements will arise that will be able to break with bourgeois ideology, whether such movements will be able to dispel the illusions of leftism. And more importantly, it remains to be seen whether the revolutionary minorities will be able to find the momentum to rebuild a revolutionary and proletarian party on a world scale when the moment arrives.
Trotsky’s History
How can an almost 100-year-old historical work aid us in rediscovering the foundations for a struggle of the class in our times? In other words, how do the three volumes by the famous Russian revolutionary Trotsky help us in recovering the “lessons of October [1707]”, in other words, the lessons of the Russian Revolution?
The importance of Trotsky’s work lies with the centrality of the Russian Revolution to the imagination of the non-communist majority when communism is mentioned, discussed or in any other way touched upon. The Russian Revolution is consciously or unconsciously held to be the only example of a proletarian revolution, although any serious survey of the last century tells a rather different story. Similar proletarian revolutions and revolts inspired by the Russian Revolution took place in developed countries like Germany (1918), Hungary (1919), and many other countries worldwide. In the case of the German Revolution, the proletariat was able to maintain its struggle for power for almost a year. The Russian Revolution was nevertheless the only revolution in which the proletariat could hold state power despite the bourgeois forces opposing it in the February-November 1917 period of dual power[1] and in the subsequent Civil War-period (1917-1922). Thus, it is also the only revolution that the bourgeoisie and its army of intellectuals have to deal with, while the other revolutions are ignored, belittled or blatantly erased. And as we have already noted, because the Russian Revolution was so completely derailed owing to its isolation from the proletariat of the industrialized core of the world, the Russian Revolution also invites us to talk about communism in the negative, dismissive manner that is constantly rewarded by the bourgeois intellectual circles and academia.
It is precisely here that Trotsky’s work allows for a critical reassessment of the Russian Revolution. In addition to the available historical sources of the Russian Revolution and his own experiences, Trotsky not only uses numerous eyewitness accounts of his allies, but also of his foes. In doing this, he brings forward the entirety of the truth without becoming apolitical or irrelevant. The three volumes deal chronologically with the various events and figures of the Russian Revolution leading up to the proletarian bid for power in February 1917 and the final dismantling of the bourgeois state in October of 1917. Both singular volumes and an abridged version of the three volumes are available for free on marxists.org in different digital formats (pdf, epub, …). The collected three volumes can also be bought at a relatively cheap price (45 dollars) in a new abridged, hardcover edition from the North America-based publisher Haymarket Books, that has been somewhat promoted in light of the centenary of the Russian Revolution.[2]
It is without a doubt a lengthy work that requires one’s full attention if one is to grasp the totality of the subject studied. Trotsky simply does not summarize, he enumerates, contextualizes, in other words, explains. There can be no doubt that the different events and dramatis personae can be confusing at times and sometimes the author seems to assume that his audience will simply understand after a first or second mention. Trotsky himself is aware of the wide, multi-faceted scope of his work and addresses the issue by criticizing some of the assumptions about what good writing means:
“Thousands and thousands of books are thrown on the market every year presenting some new variant of the personal romance, some tale of the vacillations of the melancholic or the career of the ambitious. The heroine of Proust requires several finely-wrought pages in order to feel that she does not feel anything. It would seem that one might, at least with equal justice, demand attention to a series of collective historic dramas which lifted hundreds of millions of human beings out of non-existence, transforming the character of nations and intruding forever into the life of all mankind.”
Introduction to Volumes Two and Three, Volume 2, History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky
Despite perhaps the issue of their length, the three volumes are written in an accessible style that never leaves room for obscurantism. Even more, irrespective of the seriousness of the matter, Trotsky never fails to engage his readers. One cannot pay a better compliment to a work. The author provides a good overview of the events during the Russian Revolution between February and August of 1917, but more importantly, he lays bare the meaning of these events as instances of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Most works of history suffer from the fact that they remain on the level of the phenomena, on the level of the dates and the specific figures involved. While Trotsky does not fear the individual names or the dates to the moment of a particular day, he clearly places them within the context of the broader developments of Russian class society.[3]
In what follows, we will discuss some of the insights into the Russian Revolution that Trotsky provides to contemporary communists. In particular, we focus on the original insights of the communist movement that have come under scrutiny by so-called “modernizers”, including communizers and other new tendencies. While some of the errors of the modernizers, such as the dismissal of the necessity of the party, are due to the historic ties of the modernizers to the council communists, e.g. the later Anton Pannekoek and others, other ideas are more recent, such as the dismissal of the transitional state.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is the February Revolution in which the czarist government was toppled after the formation of Soviets in the major cities. In its primary incarnation, the February Revolution was, to a certain extent, spontaneous. The figureheads that we now instinctively connect to the Russian Revolution (Lenin, Trotsky …) were either abroad in political exile or imprisoned in a Czarist punitive colony in Siberia. At the inception of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky was still living and working in New York, eating breakfast in the same Bronx-based diner almost every day[4]. The February Revolution was not planned. It was also not predicted beforehand. The first moment of the revolution is traditionally held to have been the march of women workers on International Women’s Day. However, as Trotsky points out, the march of the workers was not intended, the Bolsheviks had even tried to contain any outburst of proletarian anger due to the possibility of firm state repression:
“The 23rd of February was International Woman’s Day. The social-democratic circles had intended to mark this day in a general manner: by meetings, speeches, leaflets. It had not occurred to anyone that it might become the first day of the revolution. Not a single organisation called for strikes on that day. What is more, even a Bolshevik organisation, and a most militant one – the Vyborg borough committee, all workers – was opposing strikes.” (History of the Russian Revolution, chapter 7)
Nevertheless, the march of the women workers was soon to be joined by other workers from other industries, ultimately growing into a mass demonstration. In these mass demonstrations, the forces of the proletariat and the forces of the Czarist state measured their respective strength and resolve. To aid the proletariat in its struggle against the regime, the Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Councils arose. Ultimately, these councils ended up routing the armed forces of the Czarist state, thus becoming a state power of their own. The seamless but unplanned transition between the events seems to suggest that the revolution was “spontaneous”. The slow emergence of the revolutionary moment in the Russian Revolution might be accommodated to argue that the proletarian revolution is somehow the necessary consequence of the increasing contradictions of capitalism: the revolution as a volcano of long grinding tectonic plates, a missile that somehow hits its mark without itself knowing. Especially during the 1960’s and 1970’s, students and workers were drawn to the idea that revolutions happened spontaneously, as a means of understanding why they went out into the streets to struggle for a different world. As few of them had any prior knowledge of marxism or proletarian politics, they argued that it was the historical moment itself that leads the proletariat to rediscover the struggle against the bourgeoisie and its rule.
While the idea might sound reasonable at first glance, even dialectical in the naïve sense of the word, to argue that the revolution has nothing to do with consciousness suffers from the dualist presupposition (i.e. metaphysical confusion) that consciousness is not part of the material world but separate from it. While it is true that there will always be the contradictions in capitalism to lead the proletariat to come into conflict with the rule of the bourgeoisie, our understanding of class struggle as a revolutionary minority is as much part of the struggle against the bourgeoisie as these tensions themselves. In other words, we cannot simply “wait out” for class struggle to occur and fight the struggle “for us”. It is precisely in this idea of the revolution as somehow “occurring” that materialism is exchanged for the most vulgar metaphysics, a de-Christianised Judgement Day, the moment of its arrival promulgated but unknown to even the highest of angels. Trotsky correctly takes aim at the idea that spontaneity explains revolutionary processes by explaining that it involved a fundamental role for the party and revolutionary workers to fight for revolutionary consciousness during seemingly “calm” periods between openly revolutionary moments. He points particularly to the role of the earlier revolution of 1905, and to the consciousness of a very particular set of workers (the Petrograd and Moscow workers). More importantly, Trotsky argues for the importance of the revolutionary workers and their party, who fought tirelessly against the perspectives of the liberals and the reformists between the revolutions:
“The mystic doctrine of spontaneity explains nothing. In order correctly to appraise the situation and determine the moment for a blow at the enemy, it was necessary that the masses or their guiding layers should make their examination of historical events and have their criteria for estimating them. In other words, it was necessary that there should be not masses in the abstract, but masses of Petrograd workers and Russian workers in general, who had passed through the revolution of 1905, through the Moscow insurrection of December 1905, shattered against the Semenovsky regiment of the Guard. It was necessary that throughout this mass should be scattered workers who had thought over the experience of 1905, criticised the constitutional illusions of the liberals and Mensheviks, assimilated the perspectives of the revolution, meditated hundreds of times about the question of the army, watched attentively what was going on in its midst - workers capable of making revolutionary inferences from what they observed and communicating them to others. And finally, it was necessary that there should be in the troops of the garrison itself progressive soldiers, seized, or at least touched, in the past by revolutionary propaganda”. (History of the Russian Revolution, chapter 8)
In other words, the February Revolution was not an organized revolution, although the proletariat had been prepared by revolutionary minorities for the re-emergence of a revolutionary situation. Trotsky justifiably emphasizes the role of the individual Bolsheviks on the shop floor and in the streets before and during the revolution. His conclusion is that although the working class will come into conflict with the bourgeoisie due to the antagonistic yet interdependent interests of both classes in capitalism, it is only through the coordination of the practical and theoretical work of an organized and prepared party that a revolution can hope to succeed.
Moreover, and more importantly, Trotsky argues that the party played a vital role during the months after the February revolution, by leading the proletariat onwards to its historic tasks. No-one can argue against the important role of the communist party in realizing the Russian Revolution. It was only through the positions that party took that the broad masses came to find an explanation of why and how they felt power slipping through their hands. During the months before October, the Bolsheviks were held in contempt by a large part of the proletariat because of an immense smear campaign by all parties. But, through the dissemination of Bolshevik propaganda amongst the proletariat, in addition to the attribution of all problems to the Bolsheviks by the other parties, led them to find the Bolsheviks again due to the correctness of their positions. In a fictional situation in which the Bolsheviks would have been defeated during March or June, the proletariat would have been led into the demolition of proletarian power and the return of bourgeois rule, covered in red flags.
To say that an organized minority (i.e. the party) has an important role to play in a revolution is not to say that the higher levels of the party of the Bolshevik party were without their errors during the months after February. In the months after February, most of the Bolsheviks took it for granted that there would be workers’ councils until the creation of a Constituent Assembly. Trotsky makes note of the role that the tendency around Stalin and Kamenev played in steering the Bolshevik Party into line with the Menshevik party after the February Revolution. In their minds, the Revolution in Russia should not and could not move beyond a bourgeois revolution due to the backwardness of Russia. In other words, they had not understood that the proletarian revolution can only be an international revolution. Lenin and his current would fundamentally shake up this belief within the Bolshevik party from the end of March and the beginning of April, most importantly through the publication of the so-called April Theses. The present leaders of the Bolsheviks, with Stalin at its head, were wavering on the question of whether it was the opportune time to strike at the state. To them, the existence of the worker’s councils and the Provisional Government was not an expression of the existence of a situation of dual power. At some point after February, Trotsky argues, Stalin held that the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks should merge, because there were no substantial differences in position between the parties.
In other words, with regards to the immediate tasks that the historical situation demanded of the revolutionary party, many of the leading members of the party wavered and seemed stupefied during the months after February. Theoretical examination of the development of the class struggle was forgotten in the name of reconciliation with centrist and opportunist elements. Some believed that there was still a role to play for the bourgeoisie in creating a full-blown capitalist order. The central role of Lenin during these days of confusion, and especially the role of his April Theses [1708] in changing for the better the consciousness within the party, are thoroughly examined by Trotsky’s History. It set the task of insurrection firmly on the agenda, even when most in the party were still wavering.
Yet despite the important role of the party, if there is one specific strength for our times specifically in the historical work done by Trotsky, it is that he demonstrates very clearly that the communists in Russia stood at the head of a mass mobilization of the proletariat. There is no contradiction between the action of the masses and the party. Workers halted the Czarist war machine by coming out in the street during the February Revolution. Although it is clear that the October Revolution required active preparation by the Bolsheviks, the conquest of power by the communists was not the consequence of the covert conspiracy of a minority (commonly called “Blanquism”). To speak of a coup, or even worse, “Lenin’s coup” as some scholars have, is utterly indefensible when one takes the historical data seriously. The historical moment was present for a communist revolution. In October power was taken by the Military Revolutionary Committee, led by Trotsky (delegated by the Soviet for this task). Against the vision defended by Lenin (that the Bolsheviks should take power urgently at the end of September-beginning of October) it was Trotsky who defended that power should be taken by the organs mandated by the soviet, regrouped under the command of the MRC. The assembly of the All Russian Congress of Soviets accepted with widespread enthusiasm the taking of the power in the name of the Soviet. As Trotsky correctly points out, the fact that the working class does not come out en masse to take over the streets in the early stage of the Civil War doesn’t mean that the Bolsheviks had no support from the majority of the proletariat. On the contrary, by October 1917, the working class was in general agreement with the taking over of power by the more developed, communist layers of the proletariat – which demonstrated itself precisely in the calmness of daily life surrounding the breaking down of the surpassed capitalist state.
There is in the book also an important lesson about the necessity of a transitional period. The proletarian revolution does not immediately do away with bourgeois influences or achieve the immediate abolition of capitalist exchange and accumulation. Political power is always the first step, even before any economic steps can be taken. While the abolition of capitalist relations is a precondition for any transition from capitalism, it is not an unconscious or spontaneous process. On the contrary, the book demonstrates that it requires a clear consciousness from the proletariat to follow through on the preliminary step that is the taking of political power. Also, theorists from communization and other modernizers fail to consider the danger of immediate counter-revolution from the expropriated class and its intellectual and state supporters. Any real revolution is clearly a period of chaos and uncertainty. The outcome of a revolution is never set in stone from its outset. The period of transition and the workers’ councils are, just as the party, a tool that is necessary for the revolution to establish communism. That does not mean that we cannot and should not criticize the concrete figures and policies of the party and the instruments of proletarian power, expressed by the workers’ councils. On the contrary, it is precisely because the wielding of political power by the proletariat has the concrete goal of abolishing capitalism, that we have a clear framework from which we can and should criticize all elements that fail to aid the proletariat in its task.
For our times it is interesting to note that the book places Russian Czarism and the February regime firmly within the historical framework of capitalist decline and the moral and political failure of bourgeois rule worldwide. With regards to those who consider capitalism as a system that exists without real contradictions, Trotsky firmly argues that the nature of the Czarist regime reflected both the national and international development of forces. The chapters on the situation of the Czar and his household, the intrigues with Rasputin, that are some of the first chapters of the book, are also among its most powerful. The lack of intelligence, the absence of any passions, let alone moral passion, in the Czar, are immediately linked to the backwardness of the Russian social formation. It is also one of the few humorous passages within the book, but it is a kind of sad, ironic humour that encourages us to identify the idiocy of our times. Trotsky knows, like all communists before and after him, that societies have their ascendant and descendent phases. And, more importantly, as a world system, capitalism has phases of its own. Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and others, all knew, unlike contemporary so-called “communists” and “socialists”, that we are fighting in increasingly worsening conditions. Even the introduction to the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, a confused document of an organization headed by Trotsky, that failed to clearly see the failure and the total defeat of the proletariat in its time (1938), still clearly identifies the uphill battle that communists have to wage and the fact that time is ticking for the proletariat:
“All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet ‘ripened’ for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.”[5]
Finally, and as a warning for our times, Trotsky also points out the introduction of the parliamentary spectacle by Kerensky and his bourgeois allies to draw the attention of the proletariat away from its goals and its power in the councils. More importantly, the idea that we are “all in this together”, to create an inclusive community that supposedly communists do not want to belong to due to their principled stance regarding the revolution and the interests of the proletariat, has at its core the goal to demonstrate bourgeois power. It also creates a scapegoat of those who are supposedly working against the full deployment of bourgeois power, those who are working against the “nation” by emphasizing that the final battle has not been fought yet, i.e. the communists. But in the end, these ideological obfuscations cannot hold faced with contradictions that they cannot abolish and thus come back to haunt them. The History of the Russian Revolution demonstrates so clearly the failure of any such ideological spectacles to really confront the problems of a capitalism that is slowly imploding under its own weight:
“All those who were about to retire from the political arena behaved as though they had agreed for one last time to play their best rôles on the stage of a theatre. They were all eager to shout with all their might: Here is what we wanted to be! Here is what we would have been, if they had not prevented us! What prevented them was the workers, the soldiers, the peasants, the oppressed nationalities. Tens of millions of ‘slaves in revolt’ prevented them from demonstrating their loyalty to the revolution.”[6]
There are, however, some criticisms to be made with regards to the book. A major recurring aspect of all these different criticisms is the historical time in which it was written and the tasks that the history holds itself to. But I also wish to further explore some of the gaps within the book that I find to be important when discussing the Russian Revolution one hundred years later.
There have always been internal criticisms of the Bolshevik policies in the Revolution and the Civil War by other communists. One of the most important criticisms has been by Rosa Luxemburg, who argued that the destruction of pluralism within the proletarian democracy was a danger to the proletarian revolution and a disgrace to the emancipation of humankind communism strives for. Trotsky makes the argument in his history that it was not the Bolsheviks who closed ‘state power’ to other tendencies within the proletarian movement, such as the anarchists and the Left Mensheviks. According to him, the other tendencies simply walked out during the final destruction of bourgeois rule (i.e. the capture of the Winter Palace), leaving the proletarian democracy solely in the hands of the Bolsheviks. However, it is noteworthy that Trotsky is not willing to discuss the immediate history following the Russian Revolution, in which high-ranking members of the other parties were accused and acquitted of political crimes. In some cases, the death penalty was demanded against the former political figureheads of opposing parties. Imprisonments and shootings of opposition members simply became a daily matter very quickly after the monopolization of power by the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky is suspiciously silent about the possible consequences of this monopolization of power.
Some well-known and important examples. According to the much-repeated statement of an anarchist who went by the pseudonym Voline, Trotsky, when he stood at the head of the Red Army, was at one instance in December 1919 asked over the telegraph by one of his regiments whether to shoot a handful of anarchists who had been taken prisoner, amongst which was Voline. In reply, Trotsky is supposed to have answered “shoot them out of hand”, that is to say, shoot them out of principle. Victor Serge, who wrote an important autobiography in which he discusses his experiences during the civil war period, tells the story of the abolition of the death penalty in the year 1919. The evening before the decree would become active, the Soviet Secret Police (i.e. the Cheka) “cleared out”, i.e. executed, the approximately 600 prisoners left in its Moscow and St. Petersburg prison cells (p. 116).
Even then, we have not even touched upon the important Kronstadt uprising (1921) against the Bolshevik domination over the Soviets, an uprising which, if we take a close look at the fifteen demands raised by the sailors and workers of the rebellion, can only be deemed legitimate. But due to the exclusion of other voices than those of the Bolsheviks, there was not a platform to resolve these matters within the Soviet state itself. Trotsky and his army did not even consider the possibility of negotiation with the demands: they drowned the uprising in blood. The citadel was stormed. Even more ghastly is that Trotskyists of all shades have until this day been creating false evidence to suggest that the uprising was nothing but a plot or machination by the agents of French imperialism and the White Army. As I see it, and as most communists see it, contemporary Trotskyists insist on defending the indefensible, on both a moral and an intellectual level.
Proletarian democracy, if we are to use such a word, cannot be made a fetish. Democracy is, as Jacques Camatte argues in his Democratic Mystification (1969): "the behaviour of humans, the organisation of those who have lost their original organic unity with the community.” In other words, proletarian democracy exists because there is a contradiction within society that has not yet be resolved and must therefore be programmatically resolved. Institutions of representation, of which the councils are the primary form, are a means for the proletariat to make certain that the proletarian revolution can find a continued consensus amongst the proletariat in its task of dismantling capitalism.
Is violence a part of revolution? The answer is yes, unfortunately. History has shown that those in power never give up their privileges without a struggle. But that does not mean that violence, on the part of a revolutionary movement, can exist outside of any consideration of humanity or even proletarian legality. Even then, proletarian violence is essentially directed violence, it is not the wild and random violence of the state or of the various bourgeois terrorisms. Above all, it can never be directed against other tendencies within the class itself. The proletariat wields violence to maintain its class rule to end the bourgeoisie’s class rule, nothing more. In this sense, it is remarkable that Trotsky regularly laments in his history the “naivity” of the early revolution. He notes that the Bolsheviks tried to prevent the lynching of high officials during the capture of the Winter Palace:
“In the crowd, which had made its sacrifice of dead and wounded, there was in truth a flare up of spite against the conquered. ‘Death to them! Shoot them!’ Individual soldiers tried to strike the ministers. The Red Guards quieted the intemperate ones: Do not stain the proletarian victory! Armed workers surrounded the prisoners and their convoy in a solid ring.”[7]
It is even noted by him that to a certain extent, the bloodlessness of the October Revolution demonstrates the support of the proletariat for the Bolsheviks. But then he fails to ask the question what this says of the months and years after those bloodless days in October 1917.
Rosa Luxemburg remarked that for Trotsky and Lenin, democracy and dictatorship are opposites, while she argued that it precisely that every democracy has a form of dictatorship at its core. One might argue that this is what Camatte is referring to when he argues that democracy is unthinkable in a truly ‘human community’, a concept developed by Bordiga to clarify what communism is. We might therefore argue that it is not so much democracy that a revolution needs as a form of legality, underpinned by a form of morality that reflects the enormous potential of the proletariat. While the ICC and other left communist organizations have produced new insights into the question of morality, there is still work to be done of the questions of concrete civil rights, legal procedures and limits to the power of the state, that can aid in maintaining both the moral power of the proletariat in addition to the political and economic power of the proletariat in the period of transition. A discussion on what form a proletarian legality should take, based on the insights from earlier struggles of the proletariat and scientific and philosophical theories, is not merely an idealistic struggle. In the hands of proletarian power, there does not have to be a contradiction between a concrete tool for increasing the power of the proletariat and an increasing sensitivity to the possibility of human emancipation and the value of human life.
Trotsky writes his three volumes leading up to 1930. Nevertheless, the Russian Revolution is only discussed by Trotsky in the very narrow framework of February 1917 to October 1917. The timing of the book is remarkable because the histories and testimonies of his opponents (Miliukyov, Sukhanov and others), with whom he polemicizes in these books, had been soundly defeated in 1930. Sukhanov, with whom Trotsky particularly takes up a few questions, was to be shot in 1931 by Stalin and his allies. In many ways, it seems a little unholy to attack a man who was already scapegoated by the Stalinists yet was, by all accounts, politically marginalized and powerless. Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is primarily a polemical work in which the revolution is defended against the bourgeois distortions. Nevertheless, in the year 1930, we wonder whether Trotsky has even considered that more pressing questions are on the agenda than the remnants of a caste of mostly exiled bourgeois politicians. Only in very few instances does Trotsky polemicize with Stalin and the ‘official historians’, and generally these arguments can still be used against the Stalinists. In general, this book would have answered the questions of 1922, but it does not answer the questions of 1930 or of later periods.
But the question of Stalinism and the Russian Revolution goes further. Trotsky uses a few appendices to argue that Stalin played no part in the October Revolution despite Stalinist distortions produced to the contrary during the 1930’s. All in all, this is without a doubt correct to point out, but it fails to answer the real political questions that go with the matter of the Stalinist counter-revolution. The History of the Russian Revolution lacks any comparison or discussion of the world-historical meaning of the Russian Revolution. It might be true that Stalin was a scheming, not very bright and cowardly bastard, but that does not change the fact he became the head of the counter-revolution via the state very quickly. The explanation for Trotsky’s failure to address some of the real questions surrounding the Russian Revolution, especially for us now, can only be explained by his own problems in seeing beyond the Russian Revolution and grasping its place in the international situation. While Trotsky was always willing and able to argue that the Russian Revolution would not survive without a revolution in the more developed centres of capitalism, he was never fully able to give up on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, even when he was exiled from the country in 1929.
Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism always remained lacking. Generally, Trotsky tends to assume that the developments within the Soviet Union are still open to change. Even when the horrors of the Gulags started unfolding, Trotsky still felt able to look beyond the horrors and see a bright future ahead. In this sense, revolutionary enthusiasm, being present at the birth of a new society, is a twofold curse. On the one hand, it was this enthusiasm that the Stalinists used to mislead their own population and the rest of the world with the idea that something wonderful was unfolding in the Soviet Union and that the “issues” with the Soviet Union were merely bumps on the great road towards a future of endless possibilities. On the other hand, to those who knew what the Soviet Union really was, a slaughterhouse, their original revolutionary enthusiasm blocked them for formulating a true understanding of what was unfolding, because it was difficult to let go of the original enthusiasm and admit that all had been lost due to forces outside of one’s own power.
Especially Trotsky, with his later activity within the Fourth International, was more blind than others of his own generation to the ultimate sliding of the Russian Revolution towards state capitalism. In the History, one does not really find much with which to argue against Stalinism. Even more, he celebrates the revolution so much that one might ask whether Trotsky actually lived through the slow decomposition of the Bolshevik Party in the subsequent decade. Is the revolution still worth celebrating without some necessary remarks about its later fate? How can one, without mixed feelings, celebrate the birth of something precious that by then has already perished and withered?
This leaves one major criticism that can be directed at Trotsky and his History of the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution was a major event that not only saw the first seizure of power by the proletariat, but it also fundamentally altered the nature of the relations between the left fractions that came from the parties of the Second International, after the Second International accepted that their constituent parties would support their respective states during the First World War. In the period of 1914-1917, the left fractions were generally weak, fragmented and confused. The Junius Pamphlet, written by Rosa Luxemburg in 1915 to put into perspective the First World War as an imperialist conflict, still addresses its appeal to social democracy as a whole, not only the left fractions. Even though leading figures of the left fractions had previously fought difficult, uphill struggles inside the old parties (e.g. SPD in Germany, SDAP in the Netherlands …), they did not hold it possible that the old parties had fully lost the internationalist outlook of the proletariat.
Slowly, generally after having been expelled or pestered out of the parties of the Second International, the left fractions existed either in marginal groups or in broader, centrist groups that combined elements that favoured class struggle (i.e. the left fractions) and other social democratic elements who were against the war (“pacifists”), but who opposed the pursuit of international class struggle against imperialist war. But in Russia, the left fractions had split from the other currents within the social democratic party much earlier. The discussions going on between different German social democrats in 1914-1917 had already been finished in Russia. Already in 1903, Lenin and others on the left had actively fought against reformist tendencies within Russian social democracy, leading to the final split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1905. Due to the creation of a revolutionary party, as opposed to a party wavering on the question of revolution, the Bolsheviks could actively intervene in the proletariat to work towards the October Revolution.
After the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other Russian revolutionaries quickly became authorities amongst the different left fractions. The left fractions, significantly, now generally called themselves communists after the 1918 Russian fraction’s change of name from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) into the All-Russian Communist Party. Even before Stalinist “bolshevization” during the 1920’s (i.e. total submission of other parties to the interests of the Russian state), Russian communists actively influenced the policies of newly founded communist parties by means of their worldwide organization (the Communist International), in which the Russians wielded enormous power and prestige. The authority of the “Russian experience” led other communist parties to adopt positions and use tactics that many within those parties opposed: how could one go against the lessons of October, given that it was the only successful proletarian revolution? Much has been written on the questions of parliamentarism and trade unionism during this period, especially by some remarkable Dutch-German communists like Anton Pannekoek, Herman Görter, Jan Appel, and others, who correctly argued that the struggle for reforms is in the period of imperialist conflict and capitalist decadence is pointless. However, the German Communist Party (KPD) was influenced to adopt policies that failed to consider the material differences between the Russian revolutionary situation and pre- or post-revolutionary situations in many of the Western nations.
One tactical question is, however, of major importance: the united front. There were countless discussions in the Communist International on the scope and the intent of the united front. Especially in Italy and Germany the Communist International found that there was much resistance to the tactic amongst communist militants. The central idea of the united front was that communists were supposed to work with the social democrats to the fullest of their abilities in struggles against the bourgeoisie, against the growing fascist danger. However, as many left communists could point out, the social democrats and other supporters and legitimizers of the bourgeois state had supported the growth of the fascist movement as a means to save the state. Especially the German communists had not forgotten who had given the order to shoot communists in the streets: Friedrich Ebert, a social democrat and a former student of Rosa Luxemburg, had given his and his party’s blessing to the reign of the right-wing militias (Freikorps) in the first place. Now, the Communist International asked of the communists to work together with those same elements who were clearly a danger to the working class and its revolutionary minorities.
What does this have to do with the Russian Revolution? The Trotskyists, after having split from the Communist International much later (1928) than other left fractions of the communists (1922-1926), still held that the united front is a valid tactic to be used against fascism. They held one episode from the Russian Revolution as a primary example of the efficacy of the united front: the Kornilov Affair. In August 1917 the leaders of the bourgeois government, Kerensky at its head, felt that the situation was ripe to finally crush the revolutionary movement, expressed in the soviets and the factory committees and its revolutionary political organizations with military force. To a large extent the goal was shaped by an increased understanding amongst the proletarians (especially the proletarians of St. Petersburg) that their power was slowly being corroded by their supposed allies (Mensheviks and others); the Bolsheviks correctly felt that the moment was right to clearly state that the situation of dual power, in which proletarian and bourgeois powers contend in a final bid for dominance, is only temporary. In other words, the Bolsheviks insisted that there were still tasks ahead. In this phase, in which the revolutionary perspective was not finally crushed, General Kornilov took his soldiers from the front and departed for Petrograd with the claim that he would return Russian politics to “normality”, in other words, crush the revolutionaries. Kerensky played an important role in the rise of Kornilov. He advanced Kornilov as the “saviour” of the Russian people at different occasions and praised his military achievements. He communicated with him many times in the lead-up to the Putsch, suggesting that Kornilov should act. Now, when Kornilov was heading for St. Petersburg, Kerensky was afraid that his plan might backfire: Kornilov had no reason to keep him, the “reconciliatory” figure of Kerensky, once the Bolsheviks had been destroyed. Thus, he came to arm the proletariat, who quickly disarmed any counter-revolutionary regiments that made it into St. Petersburg in the first place.
Trotsky uses the example of the Kornilov Affair to argue that the united front had previously been used effectively and should therefore be used in Germany during the rise of fascism:
“On August 26 (old style), 1917, General Kornilov led his Cossack corps and one irregular division against Petrograd. At the helm of power stood Kerensky, lackey of the bourgeoisie and three-quarters a confederate of Kornilov. Lenin was still in hiding because of the accusation that he was in the service of the Hohenzollerns. For the same accusation, I was at that time incarcerated in solitary confinement in Kresty Prison. How did the Bolsheviks proceed in this question? They also had a right to say: ‘In order to defeat the Korniloviad – we must first defeat the Kerenskiad.’ They said this more than once, for it was correct and necessary for all the subsequent propaganda. But that was entirely inadequate for offering resistance to Kornilov on August 26, and on the days that followed, and for preventing him from butchering the Petrograd proletariat. That is why the Bolsheviks did not content themselves with a general appeal to the workers and soldiers to break with the conciliators and to support the red united front of the Bolsheviks. (Bulletin of the Opposition, No. 27, March 1932)
The problem with using the Kornilov Putsch as an example of the united front is that the Kornilov Affair was clearly a counter-revolutionary measure. In other words, that the revolutionary process was threatened with being smashed by the Kornilov Putsch. The united front tactic differs from the Russian situation, at the time, in that it stands for the defence of reformist, supposedly half- or semi-proletarian parties in a period when revolution is internationally isolated and degenerating. Communists will agree that they have to defend the proletariat in its revolutionary tasks, even if it involves ‘ad hoc’ compromises with centrist or opportunist elements in order to prevent the crushing of the revolutionary process. Kornilov was frightened and made a mistake during a critical period, and the proletariat made good use of this mistake – that is to say, the weapons in its hands – after the Bolsheviks made clear to it the real nature of the situation. But the Kornilov experience teaches us that such compromises can only be used as a tactic when there is a powerful revolutionary drive concentrated in the hands of the proletariat. At the current stage, as in the case of the German social democrats during the rise of fascism, there was only a danger to strengthen the state. Ultimately the state does not fear fascism in any form, because historical fascism only existed to aid the state in its struggle to make capitalism survive yet another few years by crushing any reminder of the subsided revolutionary moment. Bilan, the periodical of the Italian Communist Left in exile, accurately argued around the same time as Trotsky that fascism is yet another disguise of bourgeois rule, but rule of the bourgeoisie fighting for its life:
“Experience has shown – and this annihilates the possibility of any distinction between fascism and capitalism, that capitalism’s conversion to fascism does not depend on the will of certain groups within the bourgeois class, but on the necessities of a whole historical period, and the specificities of states which are less able to resist the crisis and the death-agony of the bourgeois regime.” (Bilan, no.7, 1934, ‘Anti-fascism, formula of confusion’)
Even then, we could argue that in our historical moment none of these concepts make any sense anymore: there are no centrist or opportunist elements in our current day. No-one in their right mind would still argue that the contemporary social democrats defend the interests of the masses of people. Still, much of the left continues to defend the idea of a united front, especially now (2017) that the self-styled neo-Nazis and other right-wing “historical re-enactment societies” are openly part of the entourage of the Trump presidency. They hold that we need a shared defence against the supposed return of a right-wing conspiracy. The confusion rests upon two errors. First, they falsely hold that fascism can somehow return despite that the fact that there has been no revolutionary situation, which is a historical precondition for fascism. We can sufficiently prove this by using Trotsky’s own history. Second, that such a defence would hold against fascism has historically been disproven time and time again.[8]
Trotsky correctly points out the development of the Russian Revolution, the balance of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie at critical moments in the struggle for power. But ultimately, he does not draw any lessons with regards to the revolution as a general method of the proletariat. In other words, he does not draw lessons from the Russian Revolution that might aid us in understanding the current political condition, even when there are clear possibilities to do so. For instance, in the work, Trotsky does not clearly explain what demarcates a proletarian party from a non-proletarian party. Nevertheless, the question is very important giving the important role that the Mensheviks played in confusing the proletariat in the Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky considers the Mensheviks to be at least partially proletarian, despite the fact that a general consensus within the Mensheviks was willing to continue the war in a new “revolutionary” form. For us, such a discussion would have been invaluable. It would have given up a weapon to fight against the contemporary Trotskyists that hold the social democrats are somehow proletarian. It would have allowed us, to some extent, to save Trotsky from the Trotskyists, by showing the grand distortions that underlay the idea that there is a continuity between leftism and communism. Alas, speculation will lead us nowhere. Here, we can merely conclude that much that we would have liked to see in Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution reflects the things that we would have liked to have seen in Trotsky as a communist.
Ultimately these volumes of history by Trotsky have become a historical work in their own right, distinguished by great insights, but also political shortcomings. Of course, we have the hindsight of more than eighty years. Trotsky had only ten. Still, we have pointed out that Trotsky fails in a few important instances, despite the fact that his work remains an incomparable history of the Russian Revolution.
We have drawn up a few elements of such a balance sheet in this review. We have made a balance sheet of the Russian Revolution, and of Trotsky and his work. Balance sheets serve a purpose: we do not scrutinize the words and deeds of others because we have to demonstrate that we are somehow brighter than someone else (as is the rule in academia). Neither do we draw balance sheets to demonstrate how theoretically developed our arguments are, as a purely masturbatory exercise. Our goal is the destruction of the bourgeois state and the transformation of capitalism into a truly human community, communism. To this end, we need to overcome the obstacles that are placed on our path. These obstacles do not only exist outside of the class (as in repression and the political fractions of the bourgeoisie), they also exist inside of the proletariat as errors and confusions. Drawing a balance sheet, like any theoretical work, has as a goal to create the conditions for overcoming our weaknesses and create the power we need to struggle.
By way of a conclusion: reviewing a work of this magnitude is part of drawing a larger balance sheet. But it cannot be seen as an isolated event, a chapter that we have now closed. Only discussion amongst the revolutionary minorities and inside the proletariat can ultimately help us understand our predicament today. We do not live at the turn of the 20th century and much has changed during the last century. Some experiences have been vital, but all in all, the proletariat has lost more than it has gained. We can only hope that future struggles will provide new experiences that will allow for new means of overcoming capitalism.
Pjotr, October 2017
[1] Dual power denotes the period in a proletarian revolution when there are two power centres, one bourgeois and another proletarian.
[2] Haymarket is firmly located within the leftist current of the Socialist Workers’ Party and offers other books by authors from this current (e.g. Tony Cliff) to further study the Russian Revolution. The Tony Cliff tendency is difficult to categorize within leftism. In general, they deny being Trotskyists. Nevertheless, the positions they take are generally similar to ordinary Trotskyists. Theoretically, they support the notion of state capitalism as a means to understand the former USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries. Practically however, they shamelessly support these same state capitalist regimes due to their run-of-the-mill leftist “anti-imperialism” i.e. pseudo-intellectualized anti-Americanism. In these and most other aspects, they are indistinguishable from other Trotskyists and leftists.
[3] But not so much in an international and historical context, more on which later.
[4] Trotsky in New York 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution (2017), Kenneth D. Ackerman, Counterpoint Press: New York.
[5] Transitional Programme, Fourth International (Trotsky), 1938.
[6] History of the Russian Revolution, Volumes 2 and 3, Chapter 30, ‘The State Conference in Moscow’.
[7] ibid, Volumes 2 and 3, Chapter 45, ‘Capture of the Winter Palace’.
[8] France is particularly good example. The Blum government was a social democratic and Communist Party-supported government that was simply pushed out of the state once it had served its electoral purpose as an anti-fascist veil for the French state.
I
ICC introduction
We welcome this declaration in the leaflet from Yeryuzu Postasi, an anarchist group in Turkey, which is made in the clear spirit of internationalism and the working class. If we make some comments and ask questions, that is engage in debate, we do so in the same spirit and not at all in the sense of "having a go" but because in the face of such tragic and complex events the greatest clarity is needed. Our approach is therefore similar to the one we took over the leaflet of some South Korean internationalists in relation to their declaration regarding rising tensions on the peninsula last autumn[i]. We agree with the fundamentals of the comrades from Turkey on the denunciation of the war and the need for international class struggle but nevertheless a discussion about the analysis of the situation and its underlying roots is also a major part of internationalist solidarity, and to this end we are responding to some areas that we think need clarification.
The leaflet says: "We can see that power-holders in different countries are rubbing their hands with glee about the Afrin operation. It is understood that Russia and the USA are constructing their plan for dividing Syria in line with their spheres of influence and probably they have agreed on it". "Rubbing their hands with glee" doesn't seem quite appropriate given that the Afrin situation is a crystallisation of the confrontation of all the powers engaged in the region: Turkey obviously because of its unbridled determination to eliminate any Kurdish attempts to establish strongholds in the region, which would further encourage Kurdish nationalism to set up other similar zones. For Syria, the Turkish action threatens a loss of authority and control over this region - Afrin and Manjib - which Assad had more or less deliberately left in Kurdish hands as a kind of buffer zone or what the US originally called a "border force". But with the Turkish action here the threat to Assad is that he would lose territory to a full-blown Turkish occupation, and the threat to the Kurds is that they would be overwhelmed by the military superiority of the Erdogan regime. This is why the Military Council of Afrin, part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) which is also part of the so-called Rojava revolution, has called on the butcher Assad to help them[ii] . Thus the tensions between Turkey and Assad's backers, Russia and Iran, are increased at the same time as a confrontation between Turkey and the US, who has been supporting the Kurdish YPG and the Iraqi Kurds, looms larger[iii]. The US, Britain and others want to continue to support the Kurds as cannon fodder, possibly with more destructive weaponry, in order to justify their own presence in the country. Afrin and its surrounding region therefore becomes a concentration of the antagonisms of all the imperialist sharks, big and small, in the region.
"European governments facing refugee crises are quite happy with the statement of Erdogan that '3.5 million of Syrians will be settled in Afrin'". Leaving the lunatic ramblings of Erdogan aside for the moment, here YP underestimates the misery and displacement of many more refugees that will come from the increased fighting in and around Afrin. As the leaflet suggests, many European countries have been supporting the Kurds so there's not only the Turkey/Assad/Iran/Russia/USA tensions but also those between Turkey and Europe... plus Nato, the latter being very significant. Even if they are fulfilled, Erdogan's promised refugee camps will not only be centres of concentrated misery and all sorts of abuse but also recruiting grounds for those seeking jihad or revenge. The leaflet goes on to talk about there being no "better opportunity for Turkey to prevent (a planned) strike of metalworkers". Given its largely conscript army and its intense war economy the Turkish bourgeoisie will have to reckon with any working class reaction. However there doesn't seem much evidence that the working class in Turkey is at present up to staying the military arm of the bourgeoisie which is first of all determined to crush Kurdish ambitions.
"The war in Syria... motivated capitalists and powers of the world about greater profits" and earlier the declaration mentions the plunder of resources by the major powers, including France and Britain. While profit remains a fundamental motivation, globally speaking military and strategic interests have dominated decisions on an imperialist level since World War One. The leaflet itself points out the similarities with today and the two world wars. Rather than a profit to capitalism, though profits will be taken here or there by arms manufacturers and oil companies for example, the downward spiral into militarism is towards a bottomless pit that has become totally irrational from an economic point of view. The cost of US military operations alone dwarfs any possible economic advantages. It's very difficult to get reliable figures on the cost of wars but Linda J. Bilmes estimated in 2016 that the Afghan war alone cost the US $5 trillion, $2 trillion more than her 2008 estimate and rising every year due to medical care, compensation, etc. And there's huge interest to be paid on this money as it's all borrowed[iv]. We can't estimate the costs to Russia of its war in the Middle East but they will follow the same lines as all the military regimes. We agree with the leaflet that the war has brought nothing but "... death, destruction and poverty to the labourers of Syria. And with this operation the war will intensify more and the chaos will deepen in the region. This means more death, more poverty and more misery for us" and we would add that for the rival powers there's no winner because today's victory can be reversed or transformed into disasters tomorrow - as we've already seen. The policies of weakened US imperialism are an example of these sorts of "fiascos" but it applies to all the powers involved.
There's a clear denunciation from YP of all rival powers involved but there does appear a bit of a weak link regarding Kurdish nationalism; and we think it important to clarify this given the support that Kurdish nationalism, and through this support to the wider imperialist tendencies of the major powers, has received from many anarchists. The Kurds have received the support of the US, Britain and France and now its leaders in Afrin and Manjib are asking for support from the devil himself, Assad, to defend Kurdish nationalism particularly against Turkish ambitions. The web of alliances around Syria has been scrambled and it's sometimes said that the situation in the Middle East is too complex to get to the roots of it all, but what is confirmed is the position of Rosa Luxemburg in her 1915 Junius Pamphlet that all countries, and aspiring countries, are imperialist. The leaflet is correct to talk about the lack of ethics of these imperialist manoeuvres and says that none of the powers "has intention(s) to stop the war". But it's not a matter of choice, intentions or ethics because all the powers, including the USA and Russia, are caught up in the irrational "logic" of being forced to defend their own interests through military deployments. The whole spiral of militarist cancer is dictating its "rules" to all the players. None of them has the means to stop the war because they are all in the irrational grip of imperialism. Statements from the UN and EU show that there is no strategy and there are not the troops to bring a decisive end to the war. It's all the more important therefore to make the clearest possible analysis of the situation and denounce all sides, big and small.
"We think that to struggle against this war is a historical duty for anarchists, communists and other internationalists all around the world. We are calling on all comrades to struggle against the operation in Afrin, against AKP's oppression to war resisters and against all states that are responsible for the actual situation in Syria". Calling for a "struggle against the operation in Afrin" needs a clear denunciation of the Kurdish component as well, a component that is well implicated in this war. And the drama is far wider and deeper than Afrin: another massacre is underway in Eastern Ghouta, just a few miles from Damascus and this follows Aleppo, Raqqa - where the Kurdish YPG were backed by US air power in the 4 month siege - and, probably the bloodiest of them all, the nine-month siege of Mosul (see our press for more analysis on these) with Idlib probably next. There has been so much scorched earth, so many battlegrounds, besieged towns, bloodletting, displacements that the answer cannot be to "struggle against" this or that operation here or there; the whole spiral must be broken and for this we must admit that the working class locally is not up to imposing sufficient resistance. Those doing the fighting are either professionals as from Russia, the torturers of Assad's troops, all kinds of Jihadists from a reconstituted al-Nusra, the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam militia, the Qatari proxy Rahman Legion, killer commandos, modern mercenaries (some from Latin America reportedly), Syrian and Kurdish nationalists, Isis remnants, all of them ready to fight anybody or alongside whoever's contingent. International solidarity means international class struggle and that doesn't just mean calling for action here or there. Any struggle against imperialist confrontations requires a clear analysis and a very clear and unambiguous denunciation of all the sides involved.
ICC, 27.2.2018
Led by the AKP government, an operation of invasion against Afrin has been started with a consensus between all factions inside the state. Boss organizations such as TÜSİAD, MUSIAD, TOBB, unions that defend the interests of bosses against workers and all the constitutional parties have made statements with “national reconciliation” supporting the operation. They became so wild that some bosses dared to say “You can take from workers of my factory to military operation as much as you want.”. In this way, a new phase in the imperialist fantasies of the state has begun, which is represented by AKP who has been aiming at suppression of the opposition and wild implementation of denial and extermination policies regarding Kurdish question.
We can see that power-holders in different countries are rubbing their hands with glee about the Afrin operation. It is understood that Russia and USA are constructing their plan on dividing Syria in line with their spheres of influence and probably they have agreed on it. As far as we’ve inferred from statements of England, they are willing to take a share from oil reserves and other natural resources – possibly, again, via a partnership between Shell and Koç Holding. France wants to re-establish its activity in the region. Probably, European governments facing refugee crises are quite happy with the statement of Erdoğan that “3.5 million Syrians will be settled in Afrin.” And can there be any better opportunity for Turkey to prevent the forthcoming strike of metal workers?
The war in Syria that motivated capitalists and powers of the world about greater profits haven’t brought anything other than death, destruction and poverty to the workers of Syria. And with this operation, the war will intensify more and the chaos will deepen in the region. This means more death, more poverty and more misery for us.
Powers, who seemed to be accompanying Kurdish national movement until now, made contradictory and unclear statements. From this fact, not surprisingly, we’ve seen again that dominant classes and their servile countries are not acting with ethical motivations or supreme goals. As it was in the World War 1, imperialist powers are conducting their competition for spheres of influence by forcing people in Syria and Middle East to fight each other. Even though they establish a strategic alliance with the Kurdish movement, they don’t really care what will happen to Kurdish people in the end. Although we aren’t able to know the content of secret and dirty diplomatic negotiations between states, it is obvious that they only care about their interests and this war is dragging not only the region, but also the world, into an unknown situation.
None of the dominant classes or states that are serving to their interests has the intention to stop this war. Statements of UN and EU allow us to see that they don’t have any strategy to do it and they don’t have troops they can use. Structural crises of capitalism are pushing the dominant powers to make crazy moves that will drag the humanity into a barbaric era. Just like the period before World War 1 and 2.
The only power that can stop this course of events is the working class. For now, war drums’ voice might be drowning the sigh of young soldiers forced to fight in fronts and their families’ secret cries; it might be drowning the scream of the people in Afrin that are killed or forced to leave their home. Today, the voice of politicians from different parties, the voice of clowns that call themselves experts in TVs and the voice of warmongers, in general, might be overshadowing the voice of people who are opposing war. They’re all sitting on their comfortable seats and while children of the workers are dying, they are distributing heroic ranks to themselves.
However, they also know that it will not continue in this way. Therefore, the state is trying to prevent the reaction of the mass of people, who are killed, impoverished and forced to leave their homes, by increasing the oppression. The police are wildly attacking press statements in public places, people are handcuffed just because they made posts in social media against war and arrested. Against all these attacks, as anarchists, communists from Turkey and other international comrades, we should stick together and all together continue to raise our voice against war.
Furthermore, people of Afrin and people of Turkey who are fighting against this invasion are in need of international solidarity more than ever. This international war, in which the only winners are capitalists and the only losers are workers of all nations, can only be stopped with international solidarity.
We think that to struggle against this war is a historical duty for anarchists, communists and other internationalists all around the world. We are calling all of our comrades to struggle against the operation of Afrin, against AKP’s oppression of war resisters and against all states that are responsible for the actual situation in Syria.
Internationalist Class Solidarity or Capitalist War and Barbarism
War to the Palaces, Peace to the Slums!
No to war between nations
No war but class war
Yeryüzü Postası, 18 January 2018
First published here: https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2018/01/26/to-the-international-struggle-against-capitalist-division-war/ [1710]
We have made a few minor changes to the English translation.
[i] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14385/statement-war- [1711]
tensions-around-north-korea-international-communist-perspective
[iii] See the ICC's articles on the Kurds https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14574/kurdish-nationali... [1713] and Turkey https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14538/erdogans-new-turk... [1654].
On the one hand, incessant, murderous wars, whole regions bombarded, terrible massacres of the population. On the other hand, barbed wire fences, walls, boats hunting down migrants and camps set up for the tens of thousands of people trying to flee the destruction of their homes, from misery and starvation.
Syria in the spasms of imperialism and decomposition
Eastern Ghouta in Syria, to the east of Damascus, is once again at the epicentre of the bloody conflicts raging across the planet. Like others, especially those in other parts of the Middle East, this conflict is dominated by an imperialist free for all. This is a war of each against all, implicating both global powers and regional states[1]. It is an expression of the historic dead-end reached by the capitalist system.
Further north, bringing its own sinister contribution to the military chaos, to the spreading slaughter of civilians and the mass exodus of populations, we have Operation “Olive Branch”, launched on 20 January by the Turkish army against the enclave of Afrin, in the province of Aleppo, where the Kurdish forces of the YPG are dug in and have been reinforced by pro-Assad militias[2]. Alongside these rivalries between local gangs and factions, there are the manoeuvres of imperialist powers trying to take advantage of the situation. The putrefaction of the capitalist system is expressed by the bloody actions of all the different protagonists, whether we are talking about the troops and current allies of Assad, the various opposition factions, Isis and other jihadists, or the big democratic powers.
As for the new offensive of the Syrian army, supported by pro-Iranian militias and Russian air cover, against a region that has been occupied by Isis and other jihadist groups fighting the Assad regime, it has given rise to a concert of protests, each more hypocritical than the other. The false indignation of the western media, the NGOs and the so-called “international community” in the face of attacks which systematically make use of chemical weapons (which the “international coalition” has also used without shame[3]) is only equalled by the ineffectiveness of the resolutions voted by the UN, against the use of chemical weapons, for the protection of the civilian population and respecting cease-fires. This once again shows the lack of credibility of what Lenin, describing the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, called a “den of thieves”. None of this is new in Syria: since 2012 at least, chemical weapons have been used regularly in aerial bombardments, notably in the siege of Aleppo and Homs, and then at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017. They have also been used massively in eastern Ghouta since March 2013, notably in the raid of 21 August of that same year, which left around 2000 dead. The balance sheet of death and suffering has been further increased by the continual bombing of hospitals, which are supposedly used as a shield by rebel forces, and the systematic destruction of homes. Between 2013 and October 2017, 18000 deaths have been counted, including around 13,000 civilians and 5000 children, to which must be added 50,000 wounded. Between 18 and 28 February 2018, the death toll of the aerial offensive has officially been another 780 deaths, at least 170 of them children. All this leaves out the numberless victims of the lack of essential supplies which is a direct result of the war. The Assad regime is now beginning a land offensive in Ghouta which threatens to be no less barbaric.
Migrants and refugees, victims of capitalist states
This situation can only be aggravated by another phenomenon which has in turn been amplified by the decomposition of capitalism: the mass deportation or exodus of populations fleeing massacres and misery in the Middle East, Africa or Latin America. Masses of impoverished people are heading towards the richest countries, desperately searching for a place of shelter, mainly in Europe or the USA. But none of these states have a real solution for this wave of migrants, except to block them at all cost, to set up walls and barbed wire fences, to send them back to their deaths. And the western governments have continually played on the fear of “foreigners”, even punishing those who have tried to help them.
The cynicism of the states involved, especially the European ones, knows no bounds. Turkey, seeking economic and financial aid, has the job of blocking the passage of migrants towards Greece and parking them in refugee camps where inhuman conditions prevail. This agreement is based on a real commodification of human beings, in which a select few are allowed to reach a European country while the vast majority stay in the camps. This also is nothing new. We should recall, for example, the hypocrisy of Zapatero’s “Socialist” government in Spain. In 2005, in Spain’s Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, a triple row of barbed wire fences was set up, snagging many migrants, while others were simply shot, and still others ended up on deadly bus journeys through the desert, but it was the Moroccan government which was fingered as the bad guy in all this. All the western bourgeoisies (including the Spanish government) orchestrated an intense media campaign against this “flagrant violation of human rights”[4]. The more recent contracts of this ilk, which have been drawn up with Turkey and, more discretely, with Libya, have had an immediate impact on the efforts of migrants to reach Europe.
All the media, no doubt to their immense satisfaction, have also celebrated the reduction by a third of illegal immigrants landing in Italy. In fact, “the EU has chosen to stop the influx of migrants at source instead of continuing to maintain reception centres in Italy and Greece - a strategy which seems very dubious morally” (Courrier International, no 1414). But in spite of these “good” figures from Italy, Spain saw a significant increase in those arriving by sea in 2017, so much so that a new prison built in Malaga is now being used as a detention centre.
A report by CNN which shows migrants being sold as slaves in Libya has provoked a lot of indignation internationally, the press also tells us. But the same media don’t tell us much about the joint measures adopted by the EU and Libya which have contributed to this situation. The same article from Courrier International tells us: “On 3 February 2017, the 28 EU countries agreed on a ‘declaration’ supporting the recent accord between Italy and the Libyan government of Faiez Sarraj. The principle is the same as the one between the EU and Turkey drawn up two years earlier: Europe will supply funds, training and material to the Libyan coastguards who, in exchange, will intercept migrant boats and take their occupants to detention centres in Libya…human rights organisations and the press very quickly denounced the limitations of this plan, questioning the capacity of the Sarraj government (which is only one of the rival forces on the ground in Libya) to put it into practice, and the consequences it would have for the migrants who are already known to be suffering from inhuman treatment on Libyan soil”. The concerns of the “human rights organisations” serves to pull the wool over our eyes, just like the supposed humanitarian concerns of the Spanish government in 2005. These gesticulations merely hide the repressive agreements which already allow 700,000 African migrants to be stuck in camps in Libya.
But for all the agreements and measures aimed at barring the migrants more effectively, it is clear that the accumulation of regional wars, massacres, famines, and social dislocation all over the planet, can only dramatically increase the whole refugee phenomenon[5].
Proletarian solidarity offers the only perspective to the drama of the migrants
The crisis of the capitalist system is undoubtedly at the heart of this historic wave of migration. Faced with the barbarity of its system, the bourgeoisie can only offer more chaos, more exclusion and division, all in the name of the “national interest”, that ideological mask for the cold calculations of capital.
However, for the exploited there are no frontiers. The workers have no country. The working class has always been a class of immigrants, everywhere forced to sell its labour power, from the countryside to the town, from one territory to another, from one country to the next. An immigrant class, it is also an exploited class. It can only resist the barbarism of capital by drawing on its greatest strength: its international unity, cemented by solidarity and class consciousness. Against the xenophobic, fear-mongering campaigns of the ruling class, the proletarians of Europe and of all the developed countries must become aware that the migrants and the refugees are victims of capitalism and the cynical policies of its states. They are our class brothers and sisters who are being bombed, massacred, or shut away in open-air concentration camps.
The affirmation of this solidarity can only come through the development of the class struggle, through resistance against the attacks of capital. Behind the question of the migrants is the question of the international struggle for the overthrow of capitalism. And the proletariat remains the only revolutionary class, the only social force capable to doing away with the contradictions of this dying system, of tearing down all borders and ending exploitation in all its forms.
PA, 3.3.18
[1] In another article we will look in more depth at this fragmentation of the imperialist situation in Syria, which is a symptom of the present decomposition of society
[3] "En Irak et en Syrie, les obus au phosphore de la coalition internationale dans le viseur [1717]", LCI (15 June 2017).
[4] Ceuta et Melilla : l’hypocrisie criminelle de la bourgeoisie démocratique, Révolution internationale n°362 (November 2005).
[5] See our series on the history of this phenomenon under capitalism, “Migrants and refugees, victims of capitalist decline”, parts 1 to 4.
Theresa May has been talking tough about Russia since the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent, mobilising support from the USA and the EU. 23 Russian diplomats were quickly expelled from the UK. When we remember that this is the same Mrs May who, as home secretary, refused an enquiry into the murder of Litvinenko by 2 Russian agents until 2014, because of fears that this would worsen relations with Russia, it is impossible to believe that her present response is guided by indignation at an attempted murder by a foreign power on British soil. Rather we must look first and foremost at the imperialist relations and tensions between the powers concerned.
There have also been wider international ramifications of the conflict with first the USA, France and Germany expressing support for the UK and more recently over two dozen countries, including the USA, much of the EU, NATO, Canada and Australia, joining in the diplomatic expulsions of suspected spies. The expulsion of 60 Russians from the USA is greater than any similar expulsions during the Cold War. These actions, like those of the Britain and Russia, must be seen in terms of the imperialist relations of the powers concerned. We should also note that several EU countries, including Austria, Greece and Portugal, declined to expel Russians, that the expulsions were questioned by some politicians in Italy and Czech Republic, and that Trump failed to mention this event in his tweets, even while the Russians were being expelled.
If there is such an escalation between Russia and GB and many “Western” countries behind the latter, it is not an isolated clash, but is part of a sharpening of imperialist tensions world wide, where there are a number of increasingly chaotic confrontations, with a growing involvement of the bigger imperialist sharks (US, China, Russia) as well as more regional rivals (such as Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East). Even though at first sight it might leave the impression that this is a remake of the Cold War, when two blocs were confronting each other, in reality in the present phase, , imperialist tensions are no longer marked by antagonisms between blocs, but by a more centrifugal tendency towards every man for himself, even though there is a growing polarisation between China and the US, and between Russia and a number of Western powers.
Declining powers
What is most obvious about both Britain and Russia is that they are powers in decline, although they are both nuclear powers, reflecting their former strength. In little over 100 years Britain has declined from imperialist top dog, first of all seeing its industrial strength overtaken, falling into debt to the USA in World War 2, and subsequently losing an empire it could no longer control. Its weakened state has been highlighted, and accelerated, by the disastrous Brexit decision. Russia became leader of an imperialist bloc by conquering much of Eastern Europe in WW2, a status it maintained throughout the Cold War. However its economy was too weak to sustain the arms race against the USA and it lost its empire in 1989 and then much of the former territory of the USSR. It now functions as a kleptocracy, with a great degree of melding between Mafia gangs and the state apparatus[1]. While it will never regain its former strength, it has recovered sufficiently to play a destabilising role in many areas, such as maintaining a toe-hold in Syria by supporting the Assad government militarily, invading Crimea, meddling in Ukraine, and engaging in cyber attacks and vote meddling elsewhere. The latter question of using on-line resources to influence elections, of course, is not limited to Russia as the recent allegations against Cambridge Analytica illustrate.
The collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc nearly 30 years ago ushered in a period of instability, not least in foreign relations. The USA was left as, and remains, the only superpower, but the collapse of the other superpower meant that many of its allies and clients were no longer in immediate need of its protection from the rival bloc and could play a more independent role. This was illustrated when NATO powers supported different states in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, or when France and Germany openly opposed the second Gulf War in 2003. The greatest gains have been made by China, which has taken no part in the diplomatic spat between Russia and Britain.
The use of Novichok
The use of Novichok, a nerve agent developed 500 miles from Moscow, implies that it was intended that the attack should be seen as the work of Russia. Along with the British government, the EU has thus concluded that it is “highly likely” that it was done by Russia. For Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius, Britain is being tested, “Russia is always looking for weak points, and may feel the UK does not feel very strong… The Russian assumption may be that in the process of Brexit, the UK is weaker…” (The Guardian, 16.3.18). They may also be testing NATO, already weakened by some of Trump’s less than enthusiastic statements about it and by conflicts within the alliance, as between the USA and Turkey over Kurdish fighters in Syria. We can certainly have no doubt that Russia is monitoring the response, noting how NATO, the EU and other countries have made statements in support of Britain, and which countries have followed that up with diplomatic expulsions, and which have not. They will also have noted that, in spite of the US expulsion of 60 Russian spies or diplomats, Tillerson was sacked by Trump shortly after a speech condemning Russia for the attack in Salisbury. In any case, divisions inside the US bourgeoisie are plain for all to see after 15 months of the Trump presidency and the Russiagate investigation.
Putin is, as ever, playing the strong leader, recently announcing new missiles that can get through the USA’s defences, essentially claiming to have a first strike capacity, shortly before his re-election. His response to this event projects the same strong nationalist message, standing up for Russia against the allegation of use of a nerve agent, for which there is no definitive proof, matching the initial 23 expulsions from the UK, and then adding to this by banning the British Council from Russia. This certainly did him no harm in the presidential election, not that his success was ever in doubt after the most likely rival was banned and the ballot boxes stuffed. Russia has continued in the same vein since, matching all the expulsions from countries around the world and then adding some more for Britain.
How the UK has been able to orchestrate an international response
It’s also true that the British government has turned these events to its advantage as much as it can. From a situation of looking weak, divided and indecisive over Brexit negotiations, Theresa May and her government have been able to project an image of not just the government but Parliament and the whole country united behind their strong response to an outrage committed on British soil. Statements of support, first by USA, France and Germany, and then by NATO and the EU, as well as the international wave of diplomatic expulsions, have added to this. We have even seen Jeremy Corbyn castigated for reminding the government not to rush to judgement before the police investigation has taken place, despite the fact he fully supported the actual measures taken by the government. For a large part of the bourgeoisie, this was too much opposition in words, even when there was none at all in policy!
Unfortunately for Mrs May and her government, none of this changes the very real weaknesses and divisions in the British bourgeoisie that have been highlighted and worsened by Brexit. The international response she has orchestrated from countries that have previously ignored many murders on foreign soil says much more about the need to counter Russian destabilisation than her leadership or powers of persuasion. Condemnation of Russia is simply hypocrisy on the part of countries that carry out their own murders on foreign soil, as with the drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.. However, weeks before announcing the expulsion of diplomats in support of Britain, at the time of its first statement with France and Germany, the USA imposed sanctions on 19 Russians over cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and meddling in the election of Trump. Russia is also suspected of trying to influence the Brexit referendum.
More important is the fact that Russian support for Assad in Syria, rapprochement with Turkey against Kurds there, and its support for Iran, have weakened the USA in that region, which in turn has increased Putin’s aggressive policies. Russia also has common interests with China, a much more important imperialist competitor, in Syria and Iran, and against Japan and the US. However, these can only lead to unstable and temporary alliances since the two powers are rivals in the Indian subcontinent and in Asia over the New Silk Road. Also it is unlikely Russia will easily tolerate the reversal of roles with China, which it dominated for much of the Cold War. Russia remains a nuisance that the USA and much of Europe would like to put in its place, but after its collapse nearly 30 years ago it can no longer build a solid alliance around itself. It is even possible there are some in the US (in the Trump camp for example) who would like to use it against China.
Russia’s defenders
Corbyn essentially agreed that it was most likely Russia was behind the poisoning in Salisbury, and supported the measures taken, and is therefore not one of Moscow’s open defenders. However, in demanding that the government not rush to judgement and in pointing to donations to the Tory Party by various Russian oligarchs he echoed the themes of some of those who really are defending Russia - a stance that that may be tolerated, even useful, in a back bencher with no hope of office, but not in a leader of the opposition who may be seen as PM in waiting. This has been too much for many in the Parliamentary Labour Party, who have been reminded why they – and the central parts of the British bourgeoisie – don’t trust him, particularly on foreign policy, and he has come under renewed pressure after a period of truce since the last election. Apart from direct criticism of his Commons performance on the Skripal case, they have used the issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and particularly among Corbyn supporters in Momentum to put pressure on the leader[2] Anti-semitism is certainly a reality in the Labour Party and the capitalist left, as we argued in an article on ICC online during the last furore in the Labour Party[3]. However, the fact that it is being raised so loudly today when little has really changed suggests that it is being honed as a weapon against Corbyn.
For an outright defence of Russia, we can refer to John Pilger, who wrote an article in the Off-Guardian that demands Russia be given ‘due process’ before it is condemned[4]. In an interview with Russia Today he went further and argued that Russia has demonstrated that it has destroyed all its chemical weapons, that Porton Down is not far from Salisbury, and that the Skripal case is a drama carefully constructed by Britain[5]. Essentially giving the Russian line, in other words.
We cannot trust any of the protestations of innocence, neither the claim that Russia has destroyed all its chemical weapons, nor the denial that the nerve agent used could have come from Porton Down. The UK government is just as capable of cynical extra-judicial murder as the Russian government or the mafia. And since we have no access to proof all we can rely on is an analysis of the imperialist interests of the various players in the situation. In the present situation of weakness of the UK and NATO it seems that Russia had the most to gain by probing weaknesses and divisions. It is also consistent with its role as a force for destabilisation. At the same it is possible to say that if the Russian state did order this assassination, it has not turned out particularly well for it so far, since it has not resulted in increased divisions among its main rivals.
Socialist Worker, on the other hand, echoes Jeremy Corbyn on donations, “The Russians are coming and have bought the Tories”, noting that this includes oligarchs who are both pro and anti-Putin[6], and call for a rejection of “Tory’s warmongering”[7].
Let us be quite clear, Britain, Russia and all states today are capitalist and imperialist, and so they are all capable of warmongering when this is in their national interest. There is nothing specifically “Tory” about warmongering. Russia was at war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and is at war in Syria today. The Labour Party supported the Falklands War in the 1980s and went to war in Iraq in 2003 (while the SWP called for the defence of Iraq “against imperialism”). In fact, since the Russian revolution degenerated, and was defeated, there has been absolutely nothing ‘anti-imperialist’ about the country, not in the 1930s, not in World War 2, not in the Cold War, and not today. To put about the idea that only the Tories who are warmongers is to disarm the working class in front of all the other bourgeois political ideologues who are also warmongers.
Alex 2.4.18
[1] Asked in a TV interview whether it is fair to call Russia a mafia state, former British “man in Moscow” Sir Andrew Wood said: “Yeah, I think it’s a bit unfair….on the mafia.” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/mar/26/russian-spy-assassi... [1719]
“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all”.
The celebrated cosmologist Stephen Hawking died on March 14 in Cambridge. He was one of the greatest specialists in black holes. Along with his theoretical discoveries, from the explanation of the very existence of black holes – which the scientific community had been sceptical about up until the 1960s – to the “Hawking radiation” (according to this hypothesis, black holes emit a “black body” radiation), he became known around the world for trying to make the scientific mysteries of the universe more accessible to the general public. His 1988 book A Brief History of Time became a best seller and still enraptures all those who want to understand the beauties of the Milky Way.
But Stephen Hawking had also, since the age of 21, fought against motor neurone disease, a terrible affliction which usually leads to complete paralysis and death in a few years. And yet this illness played a huge role in his way of perceiving the world and his place within humanity. In his 2013 autobiography, My Brief History, he tells us
“Not knowing what was going to happen to me or how rapidly the disease would progress, I was at a loose end. The doctors told me to go back to Cambridge and carry on with the research I had just started in general relativity and cosmology. But I was not making progress because I didn’t have much mathematical background – and anyway, it was hard to focus when I might not live long enough to finish my PhD. I felt somewhat of a tragic character. I took to listening to Wagner….
My dreams at that time, however, were rather disturbed. Before my condition was diagnosed, I had been very bored with life. There had not seemed anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of the hospital, I dreamed that I was going to be executed. I suddenly realised that there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do if I was reprieved. Another dream I had several times was that I would sacrifice my life to save others. After all, if I was going to die anyway, I might as well do some good”
Stephen Hawking is saying something fundamental here. At 21 the doctors gave him at best no more than a few years to live. He could then have burned the candle at both ends, thinking only of himself and the immediate moment – which was a bit like the way he had been living when he was a student in good health. But he chose another path: that of linking himself to a greater whole, humanity and its future: “I might as well do some good”. For him, the “good” was taking part in the general development of science and of our knowledge of the world.
In the conclusion to his autobiography, he explains the moral and intellectual flowering produced by the feeling of being a link in a very long chain, by having contributed the best of his capacities to the good of all:
“When I was twenty-one and contracted motor neurone disease, I felt it was very unfair. Why should this happen to me? At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, fifty years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life…I have travelled widely. I visited the Soviet Union seven times…I have also visited Japan six times, China three times, and every continent, including Antarctica, with the exception of Australia…My early work showed that classical general relativity broke down at singularities in the Big Bang and black holes. My later work has shown how quantum theory can predict what happens at the beginning and end of time. It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics. I am happy if I have added something to our understanding of the universe”
Today, the whole of humanity seems to be suffering from a deep and potentially fatal malady: it no longer believes in its future. More exactly, the working class has forgotten what it is and what it is capable of. It has lost the perspective of a new world, which it alone can bring into being. This perspective has been trapped in the present, where minds are more and more infected by the spirit of every man for himself, by irrationality and fear. Stephen Hawking’s spirit should be an inspiration to us: even in the face of the worst, of imminent death, he rejected the egoistic illusions of the present instant and instead projected himself into the future of humanity through his scientific research.
Today however it is necessary to go beyond all individual solutions. While science contains within itself the potential for “doing good” for all, it is up to the proletariat, the revolutionary class, through organisation, solidarity and consciousness, to lead humanity out of its prehistory by freeing it from the yoke of capitalist exploitation. However great the scientific discoveries of the future, only the international victory of the proletariat can achieve the flowering of humanity.
Sousso, 18.4.18
A leaflet currently being distributed by our section in France to the strikes and demonstrations taking place there.
In the hospitals, at Air France, in the supermarkets of Carrefour, in the care homes, in the universities, on the railways…strike days have been multiplying for several weeks now. There’s no doubt that president Macron and his government are hitting us hard. Yesterday it was the ‘Labour Law’, today the reform of the SNCF[1], tomorrow a new generalised attack on pensions. Everywhere and for all workers and their families: falling wages and social benefits, job cuts and speed ups, flexibility and precarious jobs, impoverishment of those who have retired, hassling of the unemployed.
THE WHOLE WORKING CLASS IS UNDER ATTACK!
How can we respond to this new degradation of our living conditions? How can we organise ourselves? How can we develop our unity and solidarity?
Can we push the government back?
Over the last 15 years, the only time the ruling class, its government and its democratic state have really been forced to retreat was at the time of the movement against the CPE[2] in the spring of 2006. Why? This social movement, initiated by students conscious of being the precariously employed workers of the future, developed in a spontaneous way, its mobilisations based on solidarity between working class generations. The young people involved rediscovered the vital importance of sovereign, autonomous general assemblies. As a result of many animated debates, it became aware that its fight was not a particular one but belonged to the whole working class. This is why the students in struggle opened their assemblies to high school students, the unemployed, to workers and to pensioners. At each demonstration, the numbers marching became more and more impressive. At each demonstration, other sectors of the working class joined the movement. The slogans that flourished at the time revealed this quest for unity: “Jeunes lardons, vieux croûtons, la même salade”, “Students, high school pupils, unemployed, semi-employed, public and private, the same struggle against unemployment and casualisation!” The movement of the students against precarious employment began to win over workers from the private sector, forcing the Villepin government to withdraw the CPE legislation.
This is what scared the bourgeoisie in 2006: the extension of the struggle, solidarity across the whole working class, all the generations together. The trend towards the students – many of whom had no choice but to take on part time jobs to support their studies - taking control of their struggle, the massive general assemblies, the slogans putting forward the unity of the working class, the challenging of the unions – this was what constituted the strength of the exploited class.
A huge offensive of the ruling class aimed at derailing social discontent
Is the present social movement inspired by this victory in 2006, by what forms our strength, our unity in the struggle? They certainly want us to believe this. The mass meetings of the railway workers in the train stations are well covered by the media. The trade unions present themselves as being “united”, “militant”, and even “imaginative” (the great discovery of the “go-slow strike”!). They promise us victory, even a “new May 68”.
Is this the reality? No! Because behind the façade of “trade union unity” there hide the worst sectional and corporatist divisions. The strikes are isolated from each other. Each sector puts forward its particular slogans and its own days of action.
Because behind the “inventiveness” of the unions in the go-slows lies the poison of division. The aim of the unions is to make this strike on the railways unpopular, to set workers against each other, in the end to exasperate those who can’t get to work or get home in the evening “all because of the rail strike”. It’s the old tactic of blocking any solidarity with the strikers who are “creating chaos” (as president Macron put it soon after coming to power and who is now insisting that “people should not be taken hostage”).
Because behind the “solidarity funds” set up by the unions there hides an attack on real workers’ solidarity. Active solidarity in the struggle is replaced by a Platonic support based on collecting funds for a long drawn out go-slow.
Finally, because behind the “militancy” of the unions lies the reality of a powerless, exhausting movement, totally isolated from the rest of their class, the rail workers are threatened not only with a considerable loss of wages but above all with the demoralisation of defeat.
A classic ploy: push a key sector into struggle in order to defeat it on its own
Faced with growing social discontent, the bourgeoisie has isolated a key, symbolic sector, the railway workers, to inflict a defeat that is visible to everyone and thus to spread its message: struggle gets you nowhere; struggle doesn’t pay.
This is a trap that has been used many times before, dividing the workers sector by sector and exhausting their fighting spirit in order to push through the attacks and “reforms” of the government and the bosses.
Remember the rail strikes of 1986-7. After several weeks of paralysis in the transport sector, the workers, isolated and imprisoned in their own sector by the unions, went back to work without winning anything.
Remember the strikes and demonstrations in 2003 in the public education sector. For several long weeks, the teachers were in struggle. But these mobilisations, instead of acting as a locomotive for a wider struggle, remained totally isolated because they were rigidly contained by the unions. A crushing defeat followed, allowing the Raffarin government to claim cynically that “It’s not the street that governs!”.
Today, the same trap is being set. What the ruling class wants is to prevent this very strong social discontent against Macron’s “reforms” from exploding. What it wants is to stifle this anger so that it can push through all the reforms and attacks planned by the Macron presidency.
We need to discuss the lessons of the past to prepare the struggles of the future
It has to be clear that allowing the unions to run our struggles can only lead to defeat. We need o discuss and reflect about the dirty work of the unions, these professional dividers who are united against us using the legitimate anger of the railway workers. We need to denounce their anti-working class practices, their duplicity and their complicity with the bosses and the government.
The slow-down strikes organised by the big union federations like the CGT, CFDT and FO (while at the same time negotiating behind the workers backs in the government ministries) will not allow for the development of the struggle. On the contrary, they are aimed at sabotaging it. The “stop-start” strike, isolated and “unlimited”, advocated by SUD-Rail is no less pernicious. It cuts off any solidarity and prevents the unification of our struggle. The famous “convergence of struggles”, so dear to “radical” trade unionism, is just another form of corporatism that keeps us isolated from each other. This idea of “convergence”, seen in the practice of simply juxtaposing different marches, is radically different from a real unification. A real unification demands the formation of general assemblies in which everyone can take part, in the workplaces, on the streets, on the public squares, in the neighbourhoods, in the universities.
Contrary to what the unions and the entire bourgeoisie wants us to think, the working class is perfectly capable of taking control of its own struggles without conferring it on “specialists”. All the great experiences of the past are the proof. In May 1968, the workers were capable of struggling massively, spontaneously, opposing the unions and even tearing up their union cards. The students who organised the massive movement against the CPE in 2006 did not allow the unions to confiscate their struggle. In Poland in 1980, the workers of the Gdansk shipyards were able to develop a mass strike which extended across the whole country without any union, with delegates elected and revocable at any moment by general assemblies. Only the working class can defend it own interests against its exploiters.
Today, faced with this new manoeuvre by the bourgeoisie and the its unions to sabotage any sign of struggle and any reflection on the experiences of the past, not only in France but in other countries as well, the most militant and conscious workers need to seek each other out and gather together. They need to discuss, reflect together on the increasingly dramatic situation imposed on us by capitalism. This remains true whatever clique is in power. What future can this system of exploitation offer the workers and their children? Nothing but growing poverty and endless barbarism. How can we fight not only for ourselves but also for future generations?
Questions that can only find practical answers through collective discussion and reflection.
The only possible future for society is in the hands of the working class, a class which has nothing to lose but its chains, and a world to win.
Révolution Internationale. ICC section in France, 19.4.18
[1] French national rail system, which Macron wants to make more “streamlined”
[2] Contrat Première Embauche, First Employment Contract, renamed by some students Contrat Poubelle Embauche, or First Rubbish Contract
This article, written by a close sympathizer in the US, attempts to draw a balance sheet of the recent struggle by teachers and other public sector workers in West Virginia.
For two weeks in late February and early March, public school teachers in the state of West Virginia were on strike. This strike was not a manoeuvre by the state to set the teachers up for a defeat at the hands of the union. On the contrary, the teachers’ anger, resilience, militancy and willingness to buck the established institutional channels for voicing their grievances appear to have taken the bourgeoisie, at both the state and national levels, rather by surprise. Although the strike is now over and the teachers’ have returned to their jobs having won only part of the concessions they sought from the state, this episode marks perhaps the most important development in the class struggle in the US since the mass mobilizations of 2011—in particular the resistance to public sector austerity in Wisconsin and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
In fact, the West Virginia teachers’ strike is itself a part of a broader movement, both within the United States and internationally, transpiring within education and other parts of the public sector. The mobilisations of US high school students over gun violence, the public sector strikes in France against the Macron government’s “labor market reforms,” and the mobilization of university lecturers and support staff in the UK over attacks on pensions are all part of what appears to be a developing international response to the effects of years of state budget cutting.[1]
The education sector in particular embodies the contradictions inherent in social reproduction under capitalism. While subject to the capitalist logic of productivity and valorization like everything else, the education sector is nevertheless also where the vital social function of training, preparing and disciplining the next generation of workers (the reproduction of labor power at the generational level) takes place. As such, as much as the wages of teachers and the costs of investing in educational infrastructure and services are a burden on state coffers, capitalist society would simply be unable to reproduce itself without a functioning educational system. Moreover, the need for individual national capitals to remain competitive on the international level by developing a workforce with the skills most relevant to the technical development of society mitigates against reducing educational investments below a certain functional level (at least in areas and communities deemed worthy of such investments). This is one of the major functions of state capitalism in decadence—to protect the overall national interest from the most vulgar expressions of capitalism’s logic by directing social resources to areas like education, even when a certain market logic would dictate otherwise, through “redistributive” measures like taxation.
Nevertheless, in the wake of the “Great Recession” that broke out in 2008, the resulting “fiscal crisis” of states and the often ham-fisted attempts of various factions of the bourgeoisie to manage the crisis by cutting the state budget into oblivion, the tension between education as an investment in future productivity and education as a major cost for the state to bear, was often resolved in favor of austerity. In the United States, this process was abetted by the rightward ideological degeneration of the Republican Party, which, especially at the state level, locked in on increasingly maximalist policies of tax cuts to aid wealthy campaign donors and business interests, while reducing state services as close as they could to the minimum functional level, mostly through attacks on public sector workers’ salaries, benefits and working conditions, but also by seeking to eliminate the added costs of the public sector union middle man though various state-level “right-to-work” policies.
While this process found its most extreme expression in “red states” like Kansas, it also took place in more traditionally “blue” and “purple” states in the rust belt, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, particularly in the aftermath of the so-called Republican wave election of 2010, which saw public sector austerity hawks like Scott Walker come to power in Wisconsin. In Michigan—a state whose electoral votes went to Obama twice—the state government became dominated by Republicans and many localities were subject to the cost-cutting whims of “emergency managers” appointed by the Republican Governor, resulting in outrages that shocked the public conscience, like the 2014 Flint water crisis and the Detroit school crisis.
In Wisconsin during the of spring 2011, Walker’s attempts to ram through legislation stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights was met with an unexpected mobilization of workers, students and concerned citizens, who in the spirit of the then still burning Arab Spring, occupied the state house and walked out of schools in a spirited attempt to obstruct what many perceived to be a right-wing coup. However, these mobilizations were quickly recuperated by the media-state complex, which quickly constructed a narrative that situated them as part of a broader anti-Republican resistance movement, pulling them behind the state Democratic Party and the unions. Tellingly, this movement ended without achieving any tangible concessions from the state, dissolving itself into the failed intra-bourgeois electoral effort to recall Walker from office.
Later that year, the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street Movement—really part of an international reaction to the economic fallout of the Great Recession that included the Indignados movement in Spain—challenged established and official forms of protest with the emergence of the general assembly as a kind of embryonic form of proletarian struggle reflecting a desire to go beyond electoralist, union and leftist forms. Nevertheless, since the crushing of the main centers of the Occupy Movement by state repression and the petering out of its peripheral expressions, the last six years have been marked by stagnation, if not a retreat, in class struggle. The tendency for working class grievances with stagnating or declining living and working conditions to express themselves through the distorted lens of populism, and conversely by the “democratic” resistance to populism, have largely driven the proletariat off its class terrain.
While the emergence of populism has posed new and challenging problems for the main factions of the bourgeoisie in a number of states, it has nevertheless served a perhaps unintended purpose in forming an alternative political option under bourgeois democracy that can recuperate proletarian anger and disgust at the “system.” In the United States, both the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns[2] served an important function in 2016 and beyond in appearing to offer an alternative to establishment bourgeois politics that was nevertheless fully within the realm of the electoral circus. Moreover, in the wake of Trump’s victory, a so-called “resistance” movement in both official (the Women’s March of 2016) and unofficial (Antifa, leftist and identity-based movements, etc.) forms, along with the emergence of a perverse media-driven Russophobic and anti-“deplorable” moral panic, have seemingly stunted the emergence of genuinely proletarian actions, based on the defense of workers’ living and working conditions.
However, while it is clear that the conditions of capitalist decomposition and the political effects of populism are still making it very difficult for the proletariat to find its footing on its own class terrain, the West Virginia teachers’ strike nevertheless appears to confirm our analysis that the working class, even in regions dominated by some of the crassest factions of the bourgeoisie, is not yet defeated in the historical sense.
Two weeks in winter: the unfolding of events:
The first thing to say about the West Virginia teachers’ strike is the extent to which it undercuts a certain media-constructed liberal “resistance” narrative that attempts to paint the Trumpian world as a fierce battle between two opposed Americas: an enlightened, educated, diverse, forward-moving coastal and urban metropolitan one and an angry, resentful, ungrateful, racist and xenophobic, mostly white, backward-looking heartland. Having given Trump his largest margin of victory of all states he won in the 2016 election (68.5 to 26.4 percent, with no counties going for Clinton)[3], West Virginia has often been painted by the media as the epicenter of Trumpism—a dark and frightening place metropolitan liberals only venture to when on an anthropological quest to understand the inner workings of their enemy’s mind.
When West Virginia teachers went out on strike on February 22nd, it likely came as a shock to the liberal media establishment who must have assumed the state was one solid block of impenetrable social reaction. For whatever reason, the mainstream national media virtually ignored the strike until it was clear a resolution was imminent. Limited to a few throw-away lines at the bottom of the newscast, there was no coordinated attempt to drum up the strike as some kind of anti-Republican movement, despite the fact that the teachers were confronting a Republican Governor and a Republican controlled legislature led by a particularly obdurate Senate President (Mitch Carmichael) ill-disposed to compromise. Quite clearly, something about the events didn’t fit a certain narrative.
First of all, it is clear that the strike occurred against the initial tepidness of the unions who feared that an illegal strike would result in sanctions against the union and worsen their already tenuous position in the state’s political apparatus. Nevertheless, the teachers walked out anyway, dragging the union bureaucrats behind them, in what many in online alternative media described as a “wildcat strike.”
The grievances that motivated the walk-out were situated firmly on the proletarian class terrain of the defense of living and working conditions. West Virginia public school teachers earned less than teachers in almost all other states (48 out 50) and were facing a serious erosion of their take-home pay as a result of a planned increase in their expected contributions for health care costs. The West Virginia Public Employee Health Insurance Agency (WVPEIA), which provides health coverage to state employees, was facing yet another funding crisis, this time resulting in a possible increase in employee costs of hundreds of dollars a month. When the increased health care costs were factored, the state’s proposed wage increases—originally a 2 percent increase in the first year and then a 1 percent increase in each of the next two—would likely have resulted in a cut in take-home pay for most teachers.
When the strike quickly spread to all of the state’s 55 counties, it began to become clear to more astute members of the state’s ruling class that some contrition would be necessary to contain the anger. Governor Jim Justice—once a Democrat, but now a Republican out of political necessity—met with teachers in an attempt to calm their anger. Contrary to the union’s fears, the Governor wanted to use the carrot more than the stick to end the strike. Nevertheless, any pay increase for the teachers would have to be approved by the state legislature, where more intransigent budget hawks held sway in the Senate. On Wednesday, February 28th, Governor Justice appeared to have negotiated a deal to give teachers a 5 percent raise in the first year in exchange for ending the strike.
Although the House of Delegates approved the deal, the state Senate rejected it, offering a 4 percent raise. The teachers vowed to fight on and continue the illegal strike. In addition to the rejection of the 4 percent wage increase, teachers were angry that there appeared to be no solution to the chronic underfunding of the WVEIA, meaning that the threat of future premium and deductible increases remained patent. In the recounting of one participant, teachers were furious at this lack of action on health insurance and chanted, “Back to the table, back to the table,” at their union reps.[4] Swarms of teachers, parents and students descended on the State Capitol building in Charleston in what looked like a potential repeat of the mobilizations in Madison, WI seven years earlier. Despite the national media’s lack of interest, in West Virginia public opinion appeared to be clearly on the teachers’ side.
However, by now the stage was set for various parts of the state apparatus to engage in a political division of labor to end the strike. Governor Justice, who in the first week of the strike was told by a group of teachers that they couldn’t promise not to shoot him,[5] could now attempt to pass himself off as an honest broker against the unreasonable and intransigent budget hawks in the Senate. The union played its part, sending out a memo on Friday, March 2nd, essentially blaming the continuation of the strike on one man—Senate President Mitch Carmichael. The union thus turned a general mobilization of teachers and support staff across the state against the attacks to their living and working conditions into a quest to petition one man to change his mind—a kind of plea to the Tsar. After putting up a bit of a show on talk radio, Carmichael could only relent and a five percent pay raise for all state employees was signed into law by Governor Justice on Tuesday, March 6th. The union promptly ended a strike it hadn’t called in the first place with a robo-call, instructing the teachers to show up for work the next day.
Victory or Defeat?
Much of the post-strike commentary in leftist and alternative media—but also from elements closer to the proletarian milieu—has centered around analyzing the meaning of this strike in the broader context of US labor relations and assessing the extent to which it should be regarded as a victory or a defeat. On the one hand, the teachers appear to have won a very tangible material gain in forcing the state to grant 5 percent pay raises to all public employees against the initial plans of the state to offer a much more modest increase. On the other hand, the issue of funding for the state employee’s health insurance fund remains unresolved even if there will be no premium hikes or increased deductibles for now. The only concession won on this issue was the formation of a commission, made up of various representatives from government and unions, to study the issue of how the WVPEIA could be placed on a more solid financial footing. Moreover, rumors have been swirling that the state plans to pay for the pay increases by cuts to public welfare programs like Medicaid.
For many in the emerging “social democratic” milieu in the US—expressed mainly through the pages of the increasingly popular journal Jacobin—the teachers’ strike is being regarded as a momentous event that “has the potential to change everything.” One writer, Eric Blanc, claims that this strike was, “the single most important labor victory in the US since at least the early 1970s.”[6] Another writer in Jacobin, Cathy Kunkel, described the strike as a “major victory” in that, “The strike also deepened the political understanding of school employees, as rank-and-file leaders made demands not only about funding, but also about where that funding should come from.” For Kunkel, the demand put forward in the context of the strike to fund the WVPEIA, not through cuts to social programs for the poor, but through a “severance tax” on natural gas extraction, was a major step forward in workers’ political sophistication. This demand was concretized by a Democratic political ally of the strike, State Senator Ojeda, who introduced a bill to “go after” the coal and natural gas industries who have “extracted wealth from West Virginia for decades.”[7]
Closer to the proletarian milieu, the statement “Not All Strikes Are Created Equal” at anticapital0.wordpress.com,[8] made by a politicized former West Virginia public employee, is somewhat less sanguine about the overall significance of the strike. While seeing some promise in the fact that the strike evidenced “impeccable solidarity across jobs, workplaces, geography and social divisions” and in “flaunting the law when the law is in your way,” the statement laments that it is not enough for there to be a strong mobilization in the public sector, and that “we have to confront capital on its explicit terrain—on the terrain of private property.” Contrasting the teachers’ strike with the simultaneous strike at Frontier Communications (which remains isolated), the author argues “a strong fraction of the working class in the public sector is not a substitute for a weak working class in the private sector.”
Moreover, the author suggests that the task force appointed to study the funding issue for the WVPEIA is likely a “sham” and will only lead to more austerity in the form of reduced coverage and higher premiums along with more invasive data collection in the form of “wellness programs.” The statement ends with an unambiguous declaration that “The strike did not end in a workers’ victory.”
The statement published on the International Communist Tendency’s (ICT) website regarding the strike has the somewhat curious title of “West Virginia School Employees Strike Sold Out?”[9] This statement is also much less celebratory and points to the many limitations of this strike in failing to go beyond a kind of shop floor radicalism (walking out without the sanction of the union), which would have meant forming independent assemblies and strike committees. The statement declares, “There is a stark contrast between the ability to organize a walk-out of that size and on the other hand issue instructions to go back to work with a promise and a robocall. (…) If workers can get themselves out on strike, they certainly have the capacity to form a workers’ assembly or strike committee independently of the unions and the feuding clans of the bourgeoisie.” In a sense then, the ICT see this strike as evidence of a certain level of combativity in the class—a kind of raw energy for struggle bursting forth after years of attacks and austerity.
Still, for the ICT this combativity is in and of itself insufficient to push the struggle forward: “However, without the presence of an organization representing all the workers that serves as a pole independent of the unions, the eventual suffocation of the unions and the capitalists is inevitable.” The ICT comrades thus argue against viewing this strike as a victory, “when it is more like a temporary pause than a real gain.”
Nevertheless, it is unclear how the ICT imagines that the strike might have been “sold out.” Sold out by whom? The unions? If the unions are there to “suffocate the struggle,” in what sense can they be said to have sold the strike out?
Clearly, the evaluation of this strike as a victory, defeat or something in between has tremendous import for how one views the prospects for the development of the class struggle in the period ahead, as well as the nature of the tasks facing the working class and revolutionaries. For our part, we agree with Anticapital0.wordpress and the ICT that this strike should not be understood as some kind of profound victory on the material level.
Moreover, we do not think that this strike means some kind of new age of class struggle is about to break out, one that takes place through the established institutions like the unions and their allies in the Democratic Party. Contrary to the views of the newly emerging social democratic milieu, we don’t think that capitalism is capable anymore on the historic level of offering humanity a “new New Deal” that improves the standard of living of the working class in some substantial and permanent way in a society that remains capitalist. On the contrary, this strike shows us that in order to really struggle at all, the working class will increasingly find it necessary to go beyond these outdated forms and push forward demands that the capitalist system is, in the long term, simply unable to meet. In fact, it is only in the realization of the ultimate futility of achieving lasting material victories through the existing institutions that the working class can develop the revolutionary consciousness it needs to go beyond this failing system.
But to return to the current juncture, it remains the case that globally—despite evidence of an increasing will to struggle— that the working class remains very disoriented by a series of blows to its consciousness since the break-up of the blocs at the beginning of the 1990s. The massive ideological campaigns around the so-called “death of communism” (really a particular Stalinist form of state capitalism), the illusions in material prosperity bred by repeated speculative bubbles over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, the ideological campaigns around the “war on terrorism” after 9/11 etc. have all taken a profound toll on the working class. Even with the reemergence of open economic crisis after 2008, the brutal austerity unleashed on the proletariat has itself been disorienting, accompanied by the twin ideological threats of right-wing populism and the so-called “democratic” resistance to populism.
Moreover, the restructuring of the labor market towards increasingly tenuous jobs and long-term unemployment, along with the looming retirement of the generation of workers who remember the struggles of the 1960s-1980s and the difficulty the younger generations have in integrating themselves into the labor force, have intensified the problem of a fading of “working class identity.” All of this has made the prospect of an emergence of class confrontations more difficult than we have previously imagined.
However, if we highlight all of these difficulties facing the working class today, it is not to throw cold water on events like the West Virginia teachers’ strike. Our goal is not to foster a sense of resignation and despair. Instead, we seek to avoid an immediatist and opportunist reaction that would see us compromise our revolutionary principles by celebrating apparent material “victories,” in an historical context that does not allow them.
For us, the capitalist system has long since passed into an historical phase of decadence in which it is no longer capable of granting any lasting material reforms to the proletariat. As such, it is simply not possible for the working class to win real, tangible, durable, material victories anymore on the level of its living and working conditions. In a sense, every struggle ends in defeat. As Rosa Luxemburg put it in 1919, “Because of the contradiction in the early stages of the revolutionary process between the task being sharply posed and the absence of any preconditions to resolve it, individual battles of the revolution end in formal defeat. But revolution is the only form of ‘war’ – and this is another peculiar law of history – in which the ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of ‘defeats’.”[10] While Luxemburg was referring here to the revolutionary process underway in Germany at the time, the same logic holds true to the class struggle in general under the conditions of decadence.
Of course, we are not blind. We recognize that the West Virginia teachers won a 5 percent increase in pay for all state employees and held off any immediate attacks on the level of their health benefits. However, in our view these gains, while real, can only ever be temporary. Under the logic of decadent capital, they will quickly be eaten away: whether it is through inflation, an eventual rise in health care costs, lay-offs, attrition or some other mechanism, the workers simply cannot win durable reforms from a system condemned by its own logic to permanent crisis. We can already see this logic at work in West Virginia with suggestions that the public employee pay raises will be paid for by cuts to social programs. In other words, the teachers may have only won their rises by setting in motion of chain of events that leads to cutting other sectors of the proletariat’s benefits. Even if the “progressive” legislation advocated by Democrats to make the coal and natural gas operators pay to stabilize the WVPEIA is ever adopted, it is nevertheless in the logic of the system that the capitalists will seek to recuperate their increased cost of business by making workers somewhere else in the chain foot the bill.
Even if it is not right to say that the West Virginia teachers won some kind of material victory, it is also not the case that the experience of the strike was without any benefit for the development of a proletarian response to capitalism’s continuing attacks. Contrasting the events in West Virginia with the 2011 uprising in Wisconsin, it is clear that there appears to have been some clear advancement in how the struggle took place. First and foremost, the workers went out on strike against the wishes of the unions. Second, the workers appear to have caught the state-level ruling class rather off guard and forced it to concede to demands it was not initially prepared to grant. [11]
Even if the 5 percent raises will eventually prove fleeting, it is nevertheless important that the teachers were able to force the state to make concessions, in contrast to Wisconsin in 2011 when the state rammed through almost the entirety of its agenda in spite of the mass protests. If the material gains will only be momentary, the sense of collective power that such an action and result portends may not be so temporary. In decadence, the importance of the struggle comes from the lessons learned, the gains in consciousness and the appreciation of the power proletarian solidarity can have when confronting capital and the state. Moreover, as other comrades have remarked, the struggle evidenced the power the working class can have when overcoming barriers of age, seniority and job description as was shown when school support staff, bus drivers. etc. supported the teachers. While much of these less tangible gains will undoubtedly appear to fade as the struggle dies and normalcy returns, the subterranean percolation of ideas born from this experience will hopefully continue and manifest themselves in an even more profound and conscious way in the next struggle.
In this sense, the debate over whether or not this strike was a “victory” or a “defeat” seems to us to somewhat miss the point. On the material level, it is not possible for the working class to win lasting reforms anymore from a decadent capitalist system doomed to permanent crisis—in this sense every struggle that does not generalize into a revolutionary confrontation ends in a defeat. The real question revolutionaries must ask in analyzing such events is to what extent does a particular struggle mark an advance or a retreat in the working class’ level of consciousness and combativity. In this regard, keeping the overall historical context in mind, the West Virginia teachers strike showed important signs of a proletariat that remains undefeated and is looking for ways to struggle on its own terrain despite the political and social headwinds of the period.
Beyond West Virginia: continuing unrest in the education sector
As this article is being written, teachers in several other states are mobilizing. In Kentucky, many teachers have walked off the job in protest to the Governor’s plan to make unwelcome changes to their pensions. In Arizona, teachers are demanding a 20 percent rise in advance of state budget negotiations and are threatening job action if there isn’t a serious effort made to increase education funding. In Oklahoma, teachers are now on strike and staging massive rallies at the state Capitol building, demanding increased funding of education, even as the Republican Governor Mary Fallin has offered up a spending package that purportedly includes an average additional pay increase of $6,100 per teacher. The Oklahoma teachers appear to have the support of the public and many students, parents and otherwise concerned citizens are joining the protests.
While the situation is still fluid and it is not possible to make a definitive analysis of any of these mobilizations here, it is possible to make a few preliminary observations, which suggest that the ruling class is rapidly attempting to co-opt the anger brewing among teachers and other public employees into a broader anti-Republican resistance movement that is firmly situated on intra-bourgeois political terrain. Whereas the West Virginia teachers strike appears to have caught the ruling class, including the unions, off guard, the actions in some of these other states seem to have been anticipated well in advance.[12] While the West Virginia strike was met with something of a media black-out, the mainstream media have been more actively covering these actions in other states and actually promoting them as a kind of “red-state rebellion” against the Republican ideological orthodoxy which has governed in many red-states for the last decade, based on the philosophy that tax cuts always take precedence over investment in public goods. While there are signs of teachers expressing frustration with their unions (particularly in Oklahoma), the unions in these states appear to have much better control of the situation—or at the very least of the narrative.
The bottom line is that while there is undoubtedly some serious frustration and anger among teachers and other public employees, the main factions of the bourgeoisie are now attempting to recuperate the outrage into safer channels and domesticate it into a more comfortable political narrative in advance of the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 Presidential Election, in which they will undoubtedly do their utmost to unseat Trump or otherwise hamstring him. They will attempt to make the moral indignation of the teachers and the public at the underfunding of education a theme in a broader campaign to dampen not only Trumpian populism, but also the more extreme ideological factions of the Republican party, whose budget hawkishness has reduced investment in public education below what the main factions of the bourgeoisie might consider sustainable for the national interest. [13]
For the working class, it is important to resist getting dragged behind such a campaign. We should be cognizant that the problem of a lack of investment in education is not limited to so-called “red states.” Only a few months before the outbreak of this round of struggle, there was a minor outrage in the media because public schools in Baltimore, Maryland—often considered the epitome of a “blue state”—having to close due to a lack of heat in school buildings.[14] Moreover, we should remember that blue state Democrats like Corey Booker and even Obama himself have been advocates for charter schools that divert funding from public schools and other education policies that tie funding to “performance”—inevitably meaning that schools in lower income areas suffer. Democratic mayors and governors are no strangers to the politics of demonizing public school teachers—painting them as greedy leeches sucking on the public teat and too often delivering a “failing product.”[15]
While it is critically important for the teachers to avoid getting drawn into some kind of “coalition” political campaign to defend public education itself and remain on the class terrain of defending their living and working conditions, it is also evident that there is a potential for education issues to activate a broader public moral indignation around the increasingly brazen attempts by factions of the state to disinvest in the future generations of humanity due to immediate budgetary or ideological concerns. It is here where the current teachers’ movement could potentially intersect with the public outrage over gun violence in schools. The so-called “March for Life” in response to the massacre of 17 students at Parkland High School in Florida by an emotionally deranged individual, for all its defects and for all its recuperation by the media and celebrity culture, nevertheless touched this same nerve in the populace, increasingly concerned by the decomposition of society into an ever more atrocious spiral of violence, to resist the ever more barbaric ways this process negatively impacts the younger generations, whether by snuffing out their lives in increasingly irrational outbursts of violence or by denying them the effective education they need to compete in the capitalist labor market. [16]
Nevertheless, it is clear from the point of view of revolutionary marxism that these attempts to resist society’s descent into barbarism cannot succeed on their own accord. Expressing a certain human instinct to defend the species’ young and a moral indignation at the increasingly inhuman features of a capitalist system in its period of historical rot, they nevertheless lack the proletarian perspective they need to pose a real alternative to this system. As such, these movements and marches will inevitably end by being recuperated into the state behind this or that faction of the bourgeoisie. In order to transcend the current capitalist system, which is the real author of all this misery, it is critically necessary that the working class develop its own class perspective through struggles on its own class terrain around the defense of its living and working conditions. The West Virginia teachers have shown us that a real, if imperfect in its immaturity, path forward still exists.
--Henk
04/03/2018
[1] On France see here: https://libcom.org/forums/news/revolt-france-24032018 [1727]. For the UK see:
https://libcom.org/article/lecturers-and-support-staff-rebel-union-pushes-poor-pension-offer [1728]
[2] It has been said that the Bernie Sanders campaign was the real gravedigger of the Occupy Movement, recuperating that outburst of grassroots anger into an electoral campaign inside the Democratic Party. Of course, the Democratic Party establishment’s rather rough treatment of the Sanders wing may have lessened the benefit for the bourgeois state.
[4] See: “The Strike is On, An Interview with Jay O’Neal,” https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-teachers-strike-activist-in... [1730]
[10] Rosa Luxemburg, Order Reigns in Berlin (1919). https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm [1736]
[11] While the breadth of the response to Walkers’ attacks may have caught his administration off guard in 2011, it is nevertheless clear that he was spoiling for a fight, which he didn’t hesitate to exploit the opportunity to prosecute in a way that only solidified his position.
[12] The Oklahoma strike has been discussed as a possibility for well over a month, while in Arizona the threat of a teachers walk-out appears to be being used as a pawn in state budget negotiations. The walk-out in Kentucky appears to have more of a spontaneous character.
[13] See for example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/04/02/teachers-ar... [1737]
[14] See: www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-cold-schools-201... [1738]. Maryland is ironically one of the bluest states in Presidential elections, but it currently has a Republican Governor. Of course, public schools in wealthier suburban areas of the state like Montgomery and Howard Counties have not experienced such deprivations.
[15] While it is beyond the scope of this article, it should be remarked that much of the energy of this line of attack against teachers has been made through an attack on teachers’ unions (made by many Democrats, as well as Republicans). Breaking the back of the public employee unions, of which the teachers’ unions are often the largest and most important, was a stated aim of Walker’s maneuvers in 2011. At the time, we argued that such a strategy was likely unsound for the bourgeoisie as a whole in that it threatened to deprive the ruling class of the union buffer between the state and the grassroots anger of the working class. The events in West Virginia appear to demonstrate both the danger to the state of a working class that has lost faith in its union and in the value - to the ruling class - of the union in reasserting control over a struggle and bringing it to a close before it has a chance to spread beyond a particular sector. Nevertheless, it may be too late for the ruling class to learn this lesson as the pending Janus case in the Supreme Court threatens to make the closed shop in the public sector illegal. For their part, the unions have submitted legal briefs arguing that their value to society is in their ability to enforce “no-strike” clauses and laws and defend the terms of the current contract against the rank-and-file who always want more. For our analysis of Wisconsin see here: https://en.internationalism.org/inter/158/editorial [1739]
[16] A similar potential might exist around increasing public awareness of the problem of crushing student loan debt that many in the younger generations are obliged to take on in order to get just the bare minimum of a college degree to compete in the labor market. Already, the Trump administration appears to be taking steps towards neutralizing the radicalizing potential of this issue by seeking public comments regarding liberalizing the rules for discharging this debt in bankruptcy. Of course, the capacity of a federal government racked by incompetence and conflicts of interest to effectively address this issue is unclear. What is clear is that the lack of any attempts to address this problem would further fuel the de-legitimizing effects of a system that many are already calling “debt peonage,” and “modern-day serfdom.”
From Emmanuel Macron to Daniel Cohn-Bendit, from Figaro to Marianne, from BFM TV to Radio France, the extreme-right to the extreme-left, whether criticising or celebrating it, all in their own way commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of May 68 by covering it with a shed-load of lies.
No, May 68 is not a "specificité française"!
No-one can deny that May 68 took place within a dynamic that was international. But in focusing on the night of March 22 at Nanterre, on the "electrifying" eloquence of Cohn-Bendit, the smothering paternalism of De Gaulle, the impact between "the new and old France"... this international dimension is deliberately pushed into the background in order to finally make May 68 a "specificité française". In reality, the wave of student unrest started in 1964, at Berkeley University in California with demands for the right to speak, the end of racial segregation and an end to the war in Vietnam. This wave spread to Japan in 1965, Britain at the end of 1967, Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Turkey and to Mexico at the beginning of 1968. But above all, May 68 was part of an international workers' movement. The wave of strikes which began in France in 1967, reaching its heights in 1968, reverberated throughout the world up to 1974: the famous Cordobazo in Argentina, the "Hot Autumn" of Italy in 1969, Spain and Poland in 1971, ranging through Belgium and Britain in 1972, Scandinavia, Germany...
Nor is May 68 a "student revolt"!
The proletarian character of May 68 is often masked by the emphasis put on the student movement. The most sophisticated and devious version of this mystification clearly comes from the leftists and the unions: "The strength of May 68 is the convergence of the students and the workers!" Lies! If May 68 dynamised the struggle throughout the world, it's precisely because the working class wasn't dumbly following the movement but, on the contrary, it was its motor force.
The student movement of the 1960's was of a petty-bourgeois nature, one of its clearest aspects being its desire for “immediate change". At the time, there was no major threat of not being able to find a reasonable job at the end of your studies. The student movement which began in 1964 developed in a period of prosperity. But, from 1967, the economic situation seriously deteriorated, pushing the proletariat into struggle. From the beginning of 1967 important confrontations occurred: at Bordeaux (Dassault aviation factory), at Besançon and in the region of Lyon (strike and occupation at Rhodia, strike at Berliet), the mines of Lorraine, the naval dockyards at Saint Nazaire, Caen... These strikes prefigured what was going to happen from the middle of May 1968 across the country. You couldn't say that this storm broke out of a clear, blue sky. Between March 22 and May 13 1968, the ferocious repression of the students increasingly mobilised a working class carried along by its instinctive feelings of solidarity. May 14, at Nantes, young workers launched a strike. The next day the movement won over the Renault factory at Cléon in Normandy as well as two other factories in the region. On May 16, other Renault factories joined the movement and red flags flew over Flins, Sandouville and le Mans. The entry of Renault-Billancourt into the struggle was then a beacon: it was the biggest factory in France (35,000 workers) and the saying went "When Renault sneezes, France catches a cold". On May 17, the strike wave hit the whole of France. It was a totally spontaneous movement and all over France it was the young workers who were at the forefront. There weren't any precise demands: this was the expression of a general discontent. On May 18, there were a million workers on strike; on May 22, eight million. This was therefore the biggest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. All sectors were involved: industry, transport, energy, post and communications, teaching, administrations, media, research laboratories, etc. During this period, occupied faculties, some public buildings like the Theatre de Odeon in Paris, the streets, places of work, became spaces of permanent political discussion. "We talk and we listen" became a slogan.
Neither was May 68 a "lifestyle revolution"!
Fraudulently reduced to its "student" dimension, May 68 is presented as the symbol of sexual and women’s liberation.
The great movements of proletarian struggle have always put forward the “woman question”. At the time of the Paris Commune in 1871, in the mass strike of 1905 and the 1917 Russian revolution, women workers played an inestimable role. But what the student petty-bourgeoisie of 1968 extolled is something else altogether: it's liberation “right here and now” within capitalism, it's the liberation of humanity through sexual liberation and not as a product of a long struggle against the system of capitalist exploitation. In short, it's the forsaking of all forms of reflection which aim to really call into question the roots of the established order; it's the negation of the whole process of strikes, self-organisation and discussion within the working class in France during those weeks in May. The importance to the world bourgeoisie of reducing May 68 to burning bras is thus evident.
Nor was May 68 a union general strike!
Today, with the rail workers' strike in France, the unions and leftist organisations are pretending that another general strike is possible. As in May 68, the unions are about to organise the "convergence of struggles" faced with the policies of Macron[1]. Lies! In May 1968 the workers took up their struggle spontaneously, without union slogans or union orders. The latter in fact ran after the movement in order to sabotage it all the better. The contemporary cartoon by Sine at the head of this article is very explicit about the resentment of the working class towards the dirty work of the unions.
The Grenelle Accords that the left and the unions celebrated as THE great victory of 68 were the outcome of the government and unions working hand-in-hand to stop the movement and defeat it. These accords brought in a rise in purchasing power much less than those gained in the preceding years. A fact that's hidden today is that the workers immediately felt these accords as an insult. Coming to Renault Billancourt on the morning of May 27, Seguy, Secretary General of CGT, faced plenty of booing and whistling and many union cards were torn up. On May 30, De Gaulle announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, elections at the end of June, and the opening of branch by branch negotiations. The unions took this opportunity to send back to work the sectors (such as EDF-GDF) where the bosses went beyond the Grenelle Accords. They strengthened this pressure in favour of a return to work through all sorts of manoeuvres, such as the falsification of votes, lies about who had or hadn’t gone back to work, and intimidation in the name of the struggle against "leftist provocateurs". One of their biggest arguments was that the workers had to go back to work so that the elections, which were supposed to "seal the workers' victory", could take place normally.
And May 68 is not "a thing of the past"
May 68 is presented as a movement of the period of prosperity. In other words it belongs to the past, another time. Once again, nothing is more false! From 1967, the world economic situation began to deteriorate, opening the period of the permanent crisis that we've known since and confirming that capitalism is a decadent system that it's necessary to overthrow. May 68 confirmed that the proletariat was the revolutionary class; that it had the strength to organise itself and develop its consciousness through debate in autonomous general assemblies; that it could stand up against the established order and shake it to its roots. Above all, May 68 marked the end of 40 years of Stalinist counter-revolution! The importance of this event shouldn't be underestimated. May 68, and the wave of struggles which then swept through various countries, signified that the working class was not ready to accept all the sacrifices demanded in the interests of Capital, and still less to sacrifice its life. It is this, and nothing else, which prevented the confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs from degenerating into a Third World War! Since then, the development of the proletarian movement has met many difficulties. The idea that "revolution is possible but not really necessary" has given way to "revolution is absolutely necessary but has become impossible". The proletariat has lost confidence in itself. But the reality of proletarian strength in May 68 must be a source of inspiration for the future. The bourgeoisie knows it and that's why it covers it with so many lies!
Bmc, April 28, 2018
[1] For an analysis of the present movement, which is a trap laid for the proletariat, we refer our readers to the article on this site: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201804/15124/france-rail-rolli... [1741]
The events of spring 1968 in France, in their roots and in their results, had an international significance. Underlying them were the consequences for the working class of the first symptoms of the world economic crisis, which was reappearing after well over a decade of capitalist prosperity.
After decades of defeat, disorientation and submission, in May 1968 the working class returned to the scene of history. While the student agitation which had been developing in France since the beginning of spring, and the radical workers’ struggles which had broken out the previous year, had already changed the social atmosphere, the entry en masse of the class struggle (10 million on strike) overturned the whole social landscape.
Very soon other national sectors of the working class would enter the struggle.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the struggles of 68, the ICC is holding a public meeting to discuss the meaning of these events. Anyone interested in discussing this important moment in the history of the working class is welcome to attend.
Saturday 9th June, 11am-6pm
The Lucas Arms
254A Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QY
Morning Session: The events of May 68, their context and significance.
Afternoon Session: The development of the class struggle since May 68.
A few months ago, the world seemed to be taking a step towards a nuclear confrontation over North Korea, with Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” and North Korea’s Great Leader boasting of its capacity for massive retaliation. Today the North and South Korean leaders are holding hands in public and promising us real steps towards peace; Trump will hold his face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un on 12 June in Singapore.
Only weeks ago, there was talk of World War Three breaking out over the war in Syria, this time with Trump warning Russia that his smart missiles were on their way in response to the chemical weapons attack in Douma. The missiles were launched, no Russian military units were hit, and it looked like we were back to the “normal”, everyday forms of slaughter in Syria.
Then Trump stirred the pot again, announcing that the US would be pulling out of the “Bad Deal” Obama made with Iran over its nuclear weapons programme. This immediately created divisions between the US and other western powers who consider that the agreement with Iran was working, and who now face the threat of US sanctions if they continue to trade or cooperate with Iran. And in the Middle East itself, the impact was no less immediate: for the first time a salvo of missiles was launched against Israel by Iranian forces in Syria, not merely their local proxy Hezbollah. Israel – whose Prime Minister Netanyahu had not long before performed a song and dance about Iranian violations of the nuclear treaty – reacted with its habitual speed and ruthlessness, hitting a number of Iranian bases in southern Syria.
Meanwhile Trump’s recent declaration of support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has inflamed the atmosphere on the occupied West Bank, particularly in Gaza, where Hamas has encouraged “martyrdom” protests and in one bloody day alone, Israel obliged by massacring more than 60 demonstrators (eight of them aged under 16) and wounding over 2,500 more who suffered injuries from live sniper and automatic fire, shrapnel from unknown sources and the inhalation of tear gas for the ‘crime’ of approaching border fences and, in some cases, of possession of rocks, slingshots and bottles of petrol attached to kites.
It’s easy to succumb to panic in a world that looks increasingly out of control – and then to slip into complacency when our immediate fears are not realised or the killing fields slip down the news agendas. But in order to understand the real dangers posed by the present system and its wars, it’s necessary to step back, to consider where we are in the unfolding of events on a historical and world-wide scale.
In the Junius Pamphlet, written from prison in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg wrote that the world war signified that capitalist society was already sinking into barbarism. “The triumph of imperialism leads to the destruction of culture, sporadically during a modern war, and forever, if the period of world wars that has just begun is allowed to take its damnable course to the last ultimate consequence”.
Luxemburg’s historical prediction was taken up by the Communist International formed in 1919: if the working class did not overthrow a capitalist system which had now entered its epoch of decay, the “Great War” would be followed by even greater, i.e. more destructive and barbaric wars, endangering the very survival of civilisation. And indeed this proved to be true: the defeat of the world revolutionary wave which broke out in reaction to the First World War opened the door to a second and even more nightmarish conflict. And at the end of six years of butchery, in which civilian populations were the first target, the unleashing of the atomic bomb by the USA against Japan gave material form to the danger that future wars would lead to the extermination of humanity.
For the next four decades, we lived under the menacing shadow of a third world war between the nuclear-armed blocs that dominated the planet. But although this threat came close to being carried out – as over the Cuba crisis in 1962 for example – the very existence of the US and Russian blocs imposed a kind of discipline over the natural tendency of capitalism to operate as a war of each against all. This was one element that prevented local conflicts – which were usually proxy battles between the blocs – from spiralling out of control. Another element was the fact that, following the world-wide revival of class struggle after 1968, the bourgeoisie did not have the working class in its pocket and was not sure of being able to march it off to war.
In 1989-91, the Russian bloc collapsed faced with growing encirclement by the USA and inability of the model of state capitalism prevailing in the Russian bloc to adapt to the demands of the world economic crisis. The statesmen of the victorious US camp crowed that, with the “Soviet” enemy out of the way, we would enter a new era of prosperity and peace. For ourselves, as revolutionaries, we insisted that capitalism would remain no less imperialist, no less militarist, but that the drive to war inscribed in the system would simply take a more chaotic and unpredictable form[1]. And this too proved to be correct. And it is important to understand that this process, this plunge into military chaos, has worsened over the past three decades.
The rise of new challengers
In the first years of this new phase, the remaining superpower, aware that the demise of its Russian enemy would bring centrifugal tendencies in its own bloc, was still able to exert a certain discipline over its former allies. In the first Gulf War, for example, not only did its former subordinates (Britain, Germany, France, Japan, etc) join or support the US-led coalition against Saddam, it even had the backing of Gorbachev’s USSR and the regime in Syria. Very soon however, the cracks started to show: the war in ex-Yugoslavia saw Britain, Germany and France taking up positions that often directly opposed the interests of the US, and a decade later, France, Germany and Russia openly opposed the US invasion of Iraq.
The “independence” of the USA’s former western allies never reached the stage of constituting a new imperialist bloc in opposition to Washington. But over the last 20 or 30 years, we have seen the rise of a new power which poses a more direct challenge to the US: China, whose startling economic growth has been accompanied by a widening imperialist influence, not only in the Far East but across the Asian landmass towards the Middle East and into Africa. But China has shown the capacity to play the long game in pursuit of its imperialist ambitions – as shown in the patient construction of its “New Silk Road” to the west and its gradual build up of military bases in the South China Sea.
Even though at the moment the North-South Korean diplomatic initiatives and the announced US-North-Korean summit may leave the impression that “peace” and “disarmament” can be brokered, and that the threat of nuclear destruction can be thwarted by the “leaders coming to reason”, the imperialist tensions between the US and China will continue to dominate the rivalries in the region, and any future moves around Korea will be overshadowed by their antagonism.
Thus, the Chinese bourgeoisie has been engaged in a long-term and world-wide offensive, undermining not only the positions of the US but also of Russia and others in Central Asia and in the Far East; but at the same time, Russian interventions in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East have confronted the US with the dilemma of having to face up to two rivals on different levels and in different regions. Tensions between Russia and a number of western countries, above all the US and Britain, have increased in a very visible manner recently. Thus alongside the already unfolding rivalry between the US and its most serious global challenger China, the Russian counter-offensive has become an additional direct challenge to the authority of the US.
It is important to understand that Russia is indeed engaging in a counter-offensive, a response to the threat of strangulation by the US and its allies. The Putin regime, with its reliance on nationalist rhetoric and the military strength inherited from the “Soviet” era, was the product of a reaction not only against the asset-stripping economic policies of the west in the early years of the Russian Federation, but even more importantly against the continuation and even intensification of the encirclement of Russia begun during the Cold War. Russia was deprived of its former protective barrier to the west by the expansion of the EU and of NATO to the majority of eastern European states. In the 90s, with its brutal scorched-earth policy in Chechnya, it showed how it would react to any hint of independence inside the Federation itself. Since then it has extended this policy to Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 onwards) – states that were not part of the Federation but which risked becoming foci of western influence on its southern borders. In both cases, Moscow has used local separatist forces, as well as its own thinly-disguised military forces, to counter pro-western regimes.
These actions already sharpened tensions between Russia and the US, which responded by imposing economic sanctions on Russia, more or less supported by other western states despite their differences with the USA over Russian policy, generally based on their particular economic interests (this was especially true of Germany). But Russia’s subsequent intervention in Syria took these conflicts onto a new level.
The Middle East maelstrom
In fact, Russia has always backed the Assad regime in Syria with arms and advisers. Syria has long been its last outpost in the Middle East following the decline of the USSR’s influence in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere. The Syrian port of Tartus is absolutely vital to its strategic interests: it is its main outlet to the Mediterranean, and Russian imperialism has always insisted on maintaining its fleet there. But faced with the threat of the defeat of the Assad regime by rebel forces, and by the advance of ISIS forces towards Tartus, Russia took the major step of openly committing troops and warplanes in the service of the Assad regime, showing no hesitation in taking part in the daily devastation of rebel-held cities and neighbourhoods, which has added significantly to the civilian death toll.
But America also has its forces in Syria, ostensibly in response to the rise of ISIS. And the US has made no secret of backing the anti-Assad rebels – including the jihadist wing which served the expansion of ISIS. Thus the potential for a direct confrontation between Russian and US forces has been there for some time. The two US military responses to the regime’s probable use of chemical weapons have a more or less symbolic character, not least because the use of “conventional” weapons by the regime has killed far more civilians than the use of chlorine or other agents. There is strong evidence that the US military reined in Trump and made sure that great care would be taken to hit only regime facilities and not Russian troops[2]. But this doesn’t mean that either the US or Russian governments can avoid more direct clashes between the two powers in the future – the forces working in favour of destabilisation and disorder are simply too deeply rooted, and they are revealing themselves with increasing virulence.
During both world wars, the Middle East was an important but still secondary theatre of conflict; its strategic importance has grown with the development of its immense oil reserves in the period after World War II. Between 1948 and 1973, the main arena for military confrontation was the succession of wars between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, but these wars tended to be short-lived and their outcomes largely benefited the US bloc. This was one expression of the “discipline” imposed on second and third rate powers by the bloc system. But even during this period there were signs of a more centrifugal tendency – most notably the long “civil war” in the Lebanon and the “Islamic revolution” which undermined the USA’s domination of Iran, precipitating the Iran-Iraq war (where the west mainly backed Saddam as a counter-weight to Iran).
The definitive end of the bloc system has profoundly accelerated these centrifugal forces, and the Syrian war has brought them to a head. Thus within or around Syria we can see a number of contradictory battles taking place:
- Between Iran and Saudi Arabia: often cloaked under the ideology of the Shia-Sunni split, Iranian backed Hezbollah militias from Lebanon have played a key role in shoring up the Assad regime, notably against jihadi militias supported by Saudi and Qatar (who have their own separate conflict). Iran has been the main beneficiary of the US invasion of Iraq, which has led to the virtual disintegration of the country and the imposition of a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. Its imperialist ambitions have further been playing out in the war in Yemen, scene of a brutal proxy war between Iran and Saudi (the latter helped no end by British arms)[3];
- Between Israel and Iran. The recent Israeli air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria are in direct continuity with a series of raids aimed at degrading the forces of Hezbollah in that country. It seems that Israel continues to inform Russia in advance about these raids, and generally the latter turns a blind eye to them, although the Putin regime has now begun to criticise them more openly. But there is no guarantee that the conflict between Israel and Iran will not go beyond these controlled responses. Trump’s “diplomatic vandalism”[4] with regard to the Iranian nuclear deal is fuelling both the Netanyahu government’s aggressively anti-Iran posture and Iran’s hostility to the “Zionist regime”, which, it should not be forgotten, has long maintained its own nuclear weapons in defiance of international agreements.
- Between Turkey and the Kurds who have set up enclaves in northern Syria. Turkey covertly supported ISIS in the fight for Rojava, but has intervened directly against the Afrin enclave. The Kurdish forces, however, as the most reliable barrier to the spread of ISIS, have up to now been backed by the US, even if the latter might hesitate to use them to directly counter the military advances made Turkish imperialism. In addition Turkish ambitions to once again play a leading role in the region and beyond have not only driven it into conflict with NATO and EU countries, but have reinforced Russian efforts to drive a wedge between NATO and Turkey, and to pull Turkey closer to Russia, despite Turkey’s own long-standing rivalry with the Assad regime.
- This tableau of chaos is further enriched by the rise of numerous armed gangs which may form alliances with particular states but which are not necessarily subordinate to them. ISIS is the most obvious expression of this new tendency towards brigandage and warlordism, but by no means the only one.
The impact of political instability
We have seen how Trump’s impetuous declarations have added to the general unpredictability of the situation in the Middle East. They are symptomatic of deep divisions within the American bourgeoisie. The president is currently being investigated by the security apparatus for evidence of Russian involvement (via its well-developed cyber war techniques, financial irregularities, blackmail etc) in the Trump election campaign; and up till recently Trump made little secret of his admiration for Putin, possibly reflecting an option for allying with Russia as a counter-weight to the rise of China. But the antipathy towards Russia within the American bourgeoisie goes very deep and, whatever his personal motives (such as revenge or the desire to prove that he is no Russian stooge), Trump has also been obliged to talk tough and then walk the talk against the Russians. This instability at the very heart of the world’s leading power is not a simple product of the unstable individual Trump; rather, Trump’s accession to power is evidence of the rise of populism and the growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie over its own political apparatus - the directly political expressions of social decomposition. And such tendencies in the political machinery can only increase the development of instability on the imperialist level, where it is most dangerous.
In such a volatile context, it is impossible to rule out the danger of sudden acts of irrationality and self-destruction. The tendency towards a kind of suicidal insanity, which is certainly real, has not yet fully seized hold of the leading factions of the ruling class, who still understand that the unleashing of their nuclear arsenals runs the risk of destroying the capitalist system itself. And yet it would be foolish to rely on the good sense of the imperialist gangs that currently rule the planet – even now they are researching into ways in which nuclear weapons could be used to win a war.
As Luxemburg insisted in 1915, the only alternative to the destruction of culture by imperialism is “the victory of socialism, that is, the conscious struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism. Against its methods, against war. That is the dilemma of world history, its inevitable choice, whose scales are trembling in the balance awaiting the decision of the proletariat”.
The present phase of capitalist decomposition, of spiralling imperialist chaos, is the price paid by humanity for the inability of the working class to realise the promise of 1968 and the ensuing wave of international class struggle: a conscious struggle for the socialist transformation of the world. Today the working class finds itself faced with the onward march of barbarism, taking the form of a multitude of imperialist conflicts, of social disintegration, and ecological devastation; and - in contrast to 1917-18, when the workers’ revolt put an end to the war – these forms of barbarism are much harder to oppose. They are certainly at their strongest in areas where the working class has little social weight – Syria being the most obvious example; but even in countries like Turkey, where the question of war faces a working class with a long tradition of struggle, there are few signs of direct resistance to the war effort. As for the working class in the central countries of capital, its struggles against what is now a more or less permanent economic crisis are currently at a very low ebb, and have no direct impact on the wars that, although geographically peripheral to Europe, are having a growing - and mainly negative – impact on social life, through the rise of terrorism and the cynical manipulation of the refugee question[5].
But the class war is far from over. Here and there it shows signs of life: in the demonstrations and strikes in Iran, which showed a definite reaction against the state’s militarist adventures; in the struggles in the education sector in the UK and the USA; in the growing discontent with government’s austerity measures in France and Spain. This remains well below the level needed to respond to the decomposition of an entire social order, but the defensive struggle of the working class against the effects of the economic crisis remains the indispensable basis for a deeper questioning of the capitalist system.
Amos, 16.5.18
[1] See in particular our orientation text ‘Militarism and decomposition’ in International Review 64, 1991, https://en.internationalism.org/node/3336 [1372]
[2] “US defence secretary James Mattis managed to restrain the president over the extent of airstrikes on Syria. (...)It was Jim Mattis who saved the day. The US defence secretary, Pentagon chief and retired Marine general has a reputation for toughness. His former nickname was ‘Mad Dog’. When push came to shove over Syria last week, it was Mattis – not the state department or Congress – who stood up to a Donald Trump [1744] baying for blood. Mattis told Trump, in effect, that the third world war was not going to start on his watch. Speaking as the airstrikes got under way early on Saturday, Mattis sounded more presidential than the president. The Assad regime, he said [1745], had ‘again defied the norms of civilised people … by using chemical weapons to murder women, children and other innocents. We and our allies find these atrocities inexcusable.’ Unlike Trump, who used a televised address [1746] to castigate Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, in highly personal and emotive terms, Mattis kept his eye on the ball. The US was attacking Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities, he said.that this, nothing more or less, was what the air strikes were about. Mattis also had a more reassuring message for Moscow. ‘I want to emphasise that these strikes are directed at the Syrian regime … We have gone to great lengths to avoid civilian and foreign casualties’ In other words, Russian troops and assets on the ground were not a target. Plus the strikes were a “one-off”, he added. No more would follow”. (Simon Tisdall [1747], The Guardian 15 Apr 2018)
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/09/europe-trump-wreck-iran-nuclear-deal-cancel-visit-sanctions [1749]
[5] For an assessment of the general state of the class struggle, see ‘22nd ICC Congress, resolution on the international class struggle’, in IR 159, https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201711/14435/22nd-i... [1750]
Raoul Peck’s film, which has recently been released in Britain, provides us with much to think about on the bicentenary of Marx’s birth, and we certainly recommend it to our readers. But as the following article shows, it still needs to be viewed with a critical eye…
This is a film that's surprising because it seems to rehabilitate the character of Karl Marx. Surprising because in choosing to cover five years which perhaps were the most decisive in Marx’s life - from 1843 to 1848- Raoul Peck aims to break with the caricature of a solitary genius acting outside of the world of the workers. But does he really achieve this? Without doubt the angle from which Raoul Peck deals with the life of Marx corrects somewhat the idea that Marx and Engels were inventors of abstract notions such as "class struggle", "revolution" or "communism". The film does show how these two men, who played a key role in the revolutionary movement, were won over to a cause that had been born well before them from the womb of the proletariat of the most industrialised countries of the 19th century. In this we think that the vision of Peck is totally different from the more rabid intellectuals who, not without a great deal of dishonesty, try to demonstrate that the works of Marx carry the germs of the Stalinist tragedy[i]. And yet this film doesn't totally break from the image of the providential hero, which considerably weakens the attempt to show the militant dimension of Marx, his contemporary relevance, as well as the decisive role that the proletariat will have to play in the transformation of society.
The film correctly emphasises the decisive meeting and the unshakeable collaboration between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the rebellious son of an industrialist, who opened Marx’s eyes to the political potential of the working class and to the importance of political economy. However there is a lack of subtlety in the portrayal of this meeting, where the coldness of the formal introductions in Arnold Ruge’s drawing room suddenly gives way to declarations of mutual fascination in a night of drinking and games of chess where the two men come to perfect agreement and Marx compliments Engels for having opened his eyes, drunkenly declaiming the celebrated phrase: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the task from now on is to change it". Paradoxically, it's a central scene since it announces the vision of the character that the film will develop: a Marx who is not a philosopher, a historian, or an economist but a militant of the workers' movement, addressing himself to workers in meetings, polemicising with Proudhon and his petty-bourgeois reformism or with Weitling and his Christian idealism.
What’s more the hardships of the life of a militant are not neglected. If the element of repression is somewhat flippantly depicted when Karl and Friedrich play cat and mouse with the police in the Paris suburbs, the frustrations and traumas of exile, the poverty of daily life, are shown in their cruel reality. These moments show the strengthening links of friendship and love but also those feelings engendered by militant passion. Raoul Peck thus reproduces a whole revolutionary milieu first in Paris and then in Brussels and London. But, despite all this, these scenes offer an excessively personalised image of the debates and the process of clarification within the revolutionary milieu of the time. For example, Raoul Peck seems to attribute to Marx the discredit suffered by Weitling in the League of the Just, whereas the first to call into question the idealist and messianic aims of the latter were Schapper[ii] and a great majority of workers of the German Workers’ Association in London. We know that Marx followed this polemic with a great deal of attention since it revealed a break between a sentimental communism and the scientific communism that he himself advocated. Through the creation of correspondence committees, the London Association got closer to the conceptions of Marx on the direction to give to the movement and consequently distanced itself from the conception of Weitling. Thus the virulent discussion at the Brussels Correspondence Committee of March 30 1846, shown in the film, ended up in a split that was already a long time coming. In fact the director remains a prisoner of the democratic vision of debate and political action because the attention is regularly drawn to the theoretical jousting between leaders and charismatic chiefs, which obscures what was essential: the theoretical effervescence and the complex, collective reflection which already characterised the workers' movement at that time.
This confusion increases in the way that the relationship between Marx and the League of the Just is treated. We recognise that Raoul Peck wants to show that Marx and Engels had understood that the salvation of humanity resides in the historic role that the working class has to play. They also understood that it was necessary to rid themselves of all idealism, all ethereal, illusory and utopian speeches on the means to attain a superior stage of human society; that the working class needed a practical theory in order to understand the world which had engendered it, and to understand that its situation was not set in stone but transitory. What the film tries to show, with a certain fidelity it seems to us, is the need for the working class to develop a revolutionary theory and the conviction to act upon it. On the other hand, the way in which the rapprochement between Marx and the League of the Just is shown contains the idea that Marx was ready to engage in intrigues, an ambitious Marx playing on his intellectual stature in order to win the majority of the revolutionary avant-garde to his side. In this version of events, Marx and Engels seem almost to seduce the leaders of the League; they go out of their way to get into contact with them, not hesitating to exaggerate their closeness to Proudhon in order to extend the network of correspondence committees into the east of France. Contrary to the wooliness of the film’s treatment of this event, it was the League, under the aegis of its spokesman Joseph Moll, who invited Marx to join. In their Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, Boris Nicolaevskyi and Otto Maenchen-Helfen write: "he explained in his own name and that of his comrades that they were convinced of the rightness of Marx’s views and agreed that they must shake off the old conspiratorial forms and traditions. Marx and Engels were to be invited to collaborate in work of reorganisation and theoretical reorientation”[iii]. However Marx hesitated in accepting, still doubting the real will of the League to reorganise itself and get rid of the old conspiratorial and utopian conceptions. But "Moll stated that it was essential that he and Engels should join the League if it were really to shake off all its arcane shackles, and Marx overcame his doubts and joined the League of the Just in February or March 1847”[iv].
While it’s true that the weight of personalities was quite strong in the workers' movement of the 19th century, the film, by isolating the theoretical contribution of Marx and Engels, gives the basic impression that this movement depended entirely on personalities of genius. This is confirmed in the unfolding of the congress of the League of the Just on June 1 1847, which Marx didn't actually go to - officially for lack of money but really because he wanted to await the decisions of the congress before definitively joining the League. This scene is a caricature because it presents the congress as a fight between personalities where a minority of "elite" militants are supported or contested by applause and cries from the great majority who remain passive. This is a deformed vision of the real proceedings of a congress of a revolutionary organisation.
Despite the harsh nature of their living conditions, the politicised workers attached great importance to learning and to the deepening of political questions, especially through reading pamphlets. Thus the congresses were not some sort of oratory competition where each side had its own champion, but fundamental moments in the life of a revolutionary organisation with long debates where each militant takes part in the expression and confrontation of positions whatever their theoretical capacity. In his Contribution to the History of the Communist League Engels shows the studious reality of the first revolutionary congresses of the proletariat: "At the second congress which took place at the end of November and beginning of December the same year (1847), Marx was also present and in a debate that was quite long - the congress lasted for ten days at least - he defended the new theory"[v].
To sum up: it's not a question here of denying the decisive role of Marx and Engels in the evolution of the revolutionary movement but of situating their trajectory within the proletarian movement and of underlining that their inestimable contribution could not have happened without this great movement which still makes the working class the active subject of history. The caricatures that the director sometimes gives us mask this reality by putting the accent on the preponderant place of individuals and their providential role.
Art doesn't have the job of serving a political cause. However, the content and form of a work can send a message. While we applaud Raoul Peck’s efforts to exhume Marx from the cemetery of history, the manner in which the film relates certain moments of his life tends to pervert and deform the political lessons that we can draw from them[vi] . This is what we want to try to correct with this article.
DI, 28.10.17
[i] Which is the message of the programme 28 minutes on Arte in an edition on October 1917.
[ii] Schapper was the spokesman of the German Workers' Association of London at the time.
[iii] Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, Pelican Books, 1976, p 131
[iv] ibid
[vi] All artistic works are influenced, sometimes unconsciously, by the ideas of the ruling class at the time. We see it very clearly at the end of the film where there's an accelerating succession of images which is supposed to offer a vision of the devastation produced by capitalism but in reality seems to make all kinds of amalgams, in particular between Stalinism (Che Guevara, Mao, Mandela...) and marxism. Stalin was the hangman of the real communists who followed the approach of Marx. This is the odour of a subtlety distilled poison recognised by the French Communist Party (PCF) and that's why this Stalinist party has been to the fore in publicly praising the film.
Under the heading ‘Readers’ Contributions’ we aim to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view. Here, a close sympathiser looks at recent discoveries of ‘Neaderthal art’ and the implications for a marxist understanding of ‘pre-history’.
Of late, the general tendency of scientific research into the history of humanity has been to put significant dates of certain profound historical events further and further back in time[i]. This has happened quite often over the last quarter century as dating techniques have advanced greatly and as the ideology of the bourgeoisie of the incremental rise of mankind to the natural order of an, albeit slightly imperfect, capitalism has cracked in the face of reality. In some senses science here, following the evidence it has unearthed, has shown a certain independence from the economic base that funds it. At the same time the marxist perspective on the importance of prehistory is reaffirmed through a deepening of its understanding of the past, including "primitive" communism and its means of production; the intellectual and the no less important spiritual means of production, consciousness, solidarity and the ubiquitous power of belief systems.
The discovery of Neanderthal cave art in Spain
The findings, reported in Nature, 22.2.2018, show that in La Pasiega, a cave in northern Spain there are red linear motifs on a painted stalagmite older than 64, 800 years; at Ardeles in southern Spain, there are different paintings including one between 43,300 and 48,700 years old and another up to 65,000 years old; in Maltravieso, west-central Spain, there's a red hand stencil that was made no less than 66,700 years ago. These dates go back twenty-thousand years before Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe. Providing the dating technique is correct, this shows that these depictions were made by Neanderthals. This is quite an interesting development given that cave art, whose antiquity and sophistication has always been questioned by the proponents of bourgeois ideology, is one of the main tenets of what is supposed to make us "human", and by this is meant to be Homo Sapiens as distinct from all other species. The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones is one of these bourgeois vectors, advocating "representational art" as a sole feature of Homo Sapiens. There's no doubting the power of observation in the depictions of Upper Palaeolithic animals but, leaving that aside for the moment, a concept of "representational art", i.e., painting what you see, completely underestimates the magic, complexities, meanings and fundamentally spiritual nature of cave art even if made by Sapiens. Jones suggests that Neanderthal art is the work of "three-year olds", primitive and "childish", showing himself as nothing more than yet another ignorant art critic. Homo Sapiens' Upper Palaeolithic cave art lasted in all its essentials for a period of twenty-eight thousand years and while quite stunning, its earlier development by Neanderthals is not entirely surprising. If the dates stack up it's quite a discovery that tends to break down further distinctions between Sapiens and Neanderthals.
Radiocarbon dating is difficult when applied to cave art but the uranium-thorium method used in dating these paintings is a better option and is a well established geo-chronological technique which measures the decay in the calcium deposits covering the painting. Further verification would be useful to be absolutely sure, bearing in mind the uncertainty around Neanderthal cave art at the Nerja caves in Spain where the charcoal remains besides stalagmites painted in a kind of double-helix design were dated by radiocarbon and are open to dispute. But while it's always good to have these dates confirmed, particularly with multiple lines of converging evidence (archaeological, etc.), there's plenty elsewhere to demonstrate that Neanderthals were perfectly capable of such activities.
The humanity of Homo Neanderthalensis
Even without any of these latest depictions there's already more than enough evidence to make a compelling case for the human qualities of Neanderthals. They had a common African ancestor with Sapiens in Homo Erectus and existed and evolved from northern Europe to Central Asia from 400 to 40 thousand years ago. They were the first, and remain the first, human species to survive a glaciation event, which must have required an intellectual and body strength based on a fair degree of wit and organisation. Just as bourgeois ideology and its "specialists", accompanied by the ignorant chatter of its "critics", always look to emphasise division so, since their discovery in 1829, it has sought to paint Neanderthalensis (henceforward, HN) as an ignorant savage in much the same way it used to talk about earlier Sapiens. Thus the extinction of is often described as "the first genocide" by humans, which neatly turns Sapiens back into murdering savages again[ii]. Demonstrating its fundamentally reactionary nature The Guardian, through it "science" editor Robin McKie, allows such sub-headings as: "How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans". Neanderthals and Sapiens worked alongside each other at an "industrial" flint site in France for up to a thousand years and there's evidence of a HN/Sapiens overlap of ten thousand years in Siberia (Chris Scarre, The Human Past) and, though its impossibility was clearly stated by the scientific hacks of capitalism for ages, the inter-breeding between both is beyond any doubt[iii].
Four hundred metres deep inside the Bruniquel cave in the Pyrenees there is evidence of wall-like structures built out of stalagmites by HN 175 thousand years ago, one of the earliest known building structures. They made tools from bone and had a sophisticated range of tools that would have included those which could be used in making fine etchings on cave walls. At Cueva de los Aviones in south-eastern Spain researchers found HN perforated sea-shells, beads and pigments dated no less than 115 thousand years ago, and no less than from forty thousand years ago, deep in Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, are ten-foot square etchings of Neanderthal abstract art. Evidence of their varied diet disproved the current idea that they were strictly meat-eaters incapable of cooking and processing food, and they provided themselves with fire, shelter and clothing. There's clear evidence that they buried their dead with some care in some places, that they knew about medicinal plants and cared for the sick, injured and weak (in Shanidar cave in Iraq, amongst others), again qualities that were supposed to be exclusive to Sapiens. All in all these suggest that Neanderthals were perfectly capable of producing a cave art that was some way beyond and much more profound than simple representation.
The paintings
It's very early to comment on the paintings discovered in the Spanish caves above and there's been very little said in the reports about the techniques used. There's a need for detailed text describing them from direct observation and, ideally, 3-D images of sufficient scale in order to fully examine them. Photographs don't tend to do cave paintings justice, distorts them even, particularly as prehistoric cave art is always painted on rough, craggy, uneven and fractured surfaces as flat surfaces were deliberately ignored everywhere, possibly by taboo. This fact alone shows a certain spiritual connection with the act of application, the surface, the pigment and "what lies beyond" the cave's surface. That HN should be using these surfaces, deep into the caves, in deliberately selected locations sometimes in almost inaccessible places, show that, as with Upper Palaeolithic Homo Sapien's cave art, spirituality and belief systems play a big part.
But there are some more or less speculative observations that we can make from a first look at the paintings: the red dotted curve in the composition at La Pasiega comes round perfectly before a sudden turn backwards on itself while rising in a stronger vertical column. This is reminiscent of the description of the Sapiens prehistoric cave art curve by Max Raphael that "The straight line and rigid geometrization and symmetrisation of the concave-convex curve into a sine curve are avoided everywhere. The originally complementary parts of the curve are shifted and their measures and positions become asymmetrical in relation to its turning point..". I think that Raphael would have been amazed that his analysis could be applied to and reflected within Neanderthal art. And this particular curve also raises his analysis of it being related to magic, motion, time and being. Elements of Epicurean philosophy painted on a cave wall by Neanderthals? Surely not? Why not? "That which is abstractly possible, which can be conceived constitutes no obstacle to the thinking subject, no limit, no stumbling-block" (Marx). At any rate, I think that the expression of free will is undeniable in this composition. The "ladder" symbol adjacent[iv] to the dotted curve is a common "sign" in Upper Paleolithic cave art and to the right of this there's a complex abstract design. What's immediately striking about this element of the composition is its expressive asymmetry[v] which is a feature of all Upper Paleolithic Sapiens art where the asymmetrical dominates (full face or head-on depictions of animals are very rare in Upper Paleolithic cave art). What's even more interesting in the La Pasiega composition is that "inside" the ladder there are two animals, one of which is a large quadruped, possibly pregnant, which is disappearing into the cave wall[vi]. Underneath this is what looks like a hind (a series of curves) emerging from the cave wall. As with most spiritual elements of cave art there are no ground lines and the feet of the animals disappear into the ether. As with the great majority of animal depictions in this epoch, the feet and the lower part of the leg fade away, giving a "floating" appearance and accentuate the curvature of the animal. This particular disappearance into and emergence from the surface again, possibly transformed, shows the spiritual nature of the action and its depiction of these animals as spirits. It's not clear from the reports if these two animals have been dated to the same time as the rest of the painting, but there are two interesting possibilities: either these were painted by HN which further emphasises their interest in the spiritual[vii] and takes the paintings of animals back twenty-eight thousand years further; or they were added later by HS, which itself shows an important cooperative development in the historical process of art and belief systems. And it raises the question of the African heritage for all art forms.
The hand-print at Maltravieso, red ochre blown over an outstretched hand, dated to 66,700 years, do belong to HN and points to the spiritual nature of this action. The hand was vital; it was the hand that produced everything including this work and the hand is not just stencilled onto the wall, it connects to the surface and penetrates it. This particular symbolism is absolutely everywhere in Upper Paleolithic art from Europe, to Africa, Australia and south-east Asia[viii]. This shows a solid continuity and given that it was probably the shaman who was the artist in the Upper Paleolithic caves, given the spiritual nature of this recently discovered (or recently dated) art, and given that HN would likely had medicine men or women, then these painting show the probability that belief systems, based on magic and expressed by certain individuals, played a very dynamic role and go a very long way back at least to Neanderthals and longer I suspect. But that's speculation.
To give one example of the continuity of these belief systems: Ethnological evidence shows us that when the shamans of the San Bushmen go into their trance-dance - in which everybody joins - they often suffer a nasal haemorrhage and bleed from the nose. Depiction on Upper Palaeolithic caves 40,000 years ago show significant animals in meaningful circumstances bleeding from the nose. There is continuity but it can be argued that any "specialisation" of shamanism is a comparatively recent development that, as with the San Bushmen, it is more diffused among the community, or at least there were gradations and artistic stages of shamanic ability. While there is continuity, this is not a monolithic belief system and neither is it static.
What are the implications?
I've put forward some speculative ideas above on some of the implications but first of all this discovery widens and deepens a marxist perspective on prehistory, adding more weight to a materialist understanding of the development of mankind of which Homo Neanderthalensis is an important component.
With their direct antecedents over 2 million years old, and not much different from them, Homo Nadeli, a small-brained genus of Homo, were burying their dead at a site north-west of Johannesburg (there's some debate about this) over a quarter of a million years ago. At any rate this was a persistent character roaming the African bush around the same time, 300 thousand years ago, as the first Sapiens were appearing in Jebel Iroud, Morocco. And these two species weren't alone. Around the same time, in the Kapthurian Formation of Kenya, Homo Erectus was processing ochre. Ochre is not only used for pigment, it has medicinal properties and a wide range of practical uses. Liquefied red ochre, no less than 200 thousand years old, has been found at a Neanderthal site at Maastricht in the Netherlands. The hematite material was transported sixty kilometres to be processed by heat. At Twin-Rivers, Zambia, there's evidence of a range of ochre production 350-400 thousand years ago, possibly by Homo Heidelbergensis, which includes a "startling purple". This is only (a big "only") Africa and all these "species", all around the same time and there's at least two more, raises the possibilities of inter-action, breeding across various divisions and so on, none of which precludes confrontations, regressions and struggles.
The whole question of "species" is once again raised by this art. Scientific classification delineating different species of Homo is extremely complex and contentious and not something we can go into here. Skull size is one of the factors determining species but this is somewhat fluid. Homo Nadeli, mentioned above, has a skull size about a third of ours but this species managed to survive and flourish alongside another half-a-dozen Homo divisions; and the diminutive Homo Floresiensis had a skull size less than half of Homo Erectus but still produced relatively modern looking tools. And a glance around a modern high street will see people of around the same size and age with any number of different shaped and sized skulls, just as a look around the same high street will reveal both men and women with clear Neanderthal features[ix]. The fact that there were so many extant species of Homo shows that each had in common the defence of the bonds of their society, which could well have included some kinds of belief systems and an extension and openness to others which including breeding with them (the full extent of this has yet to be revealed by DNA). It does show that there was no evolution in the sense of a gradual, linear and incremental progression, an evolutionary determinism which is just as much a distortion of Darwin as Social Darwinism. There is no deterministic outcome but a common African origin and a universal human spirit. Rather than clearly different species there's more than an element of subdivision of species, with definite species not being perennial but groups ranged under different classifications which could be fluid. Of course those less well adapted would have died out for one reason or another.
Homo Sapiens represent a conclusion to the whole period of human history from the Australopithecines onwards. And within the former, the proletariat represents the future for the whole of humanity and it has to struggle for unity against all divisions in order to bring an end to the whole period of prehistory. In the ICC text ‘The question of the relation between nature and culture (on the book by Patrick Tort, Sex, Race and Culture)’ there's a quote which I think applies to the whole history of Homo: "At the beginning of this process it's the elimination of the weakest which predominates then, through a progressive inversion it's the protection of the weak that finally imposes itself, an eminent mark of solidarity of the group". I don't think that this process of the elimination of the weakest would have lasted long given the significant advantage conferred by solidarity; and, further, I think that in order for them to survive, solidarity and some form of society would have existed among the much earlier Australopithecines[x]. The better adapted, with more numerous descendents and advantageous variations, frees them from the grip of natural selection[xi] and imposes, amongst a whole range of the species Homo a non-deterministic development towards a new synthesis. The whole process is one of transformation and, as Marx indicated, as man transforms nature he transforms his own being. This transformation has resulted in our species, Homo Sapiens, becoming the dominant species on the planet and this itself has been a struggle. Archaeological evidence of the early stages of Sapiens in Africa show significant developments in the means of production quickly disappearing and ensuing regressions - it's not been a one-way process. There's no evidence that Sapiens "wiped out" Neanderthals and what evidence there is points to other reasons for their demise. DNA shows that our species bred with them and possibly others but the main reason for the emergence and ultimately "winning out" must be that Homo Sapiens - for a whole range of historical circumstances and developments, not least theory, practice and organisation - adapted better to the spaces that they moved into.
The discovery of the cave art of Homo Neaderthalensis doesn't re-write the history of humanity but it does throw more light on it and shows the variety of the human species. I also think that it underlines the dynamic and independent role that belief systems have played from a long way back.
Baboon 18.4.2018
[i] On significant dates going backwards see ‘Finally, first of all...’ on the ICC's website: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201308/9015/finally-... [1754]
[ii] There are probably a number of reasons why Neanderthals became extinct, not least climate change for such a specifically adapted species. It only takes a very small fall in the birth-rate in any species for that to become disastrous and irreversible over a relatively short time. One could also argue that they didn't become extinct, given the amount of breeding with Sapiens and their significant existence in our genome today.
[iii] According to the experts we share 1.8 to 2.6% of our DNA with Neanderthals. This may not sound much in total but it's that amount on every single page of a very long book. At the same time as the HN/HS "overlap" in Siberia there was also the presence in this region of another genetically distinct species of homo, the Denisovans. The recently-discovered Denisovans interbred with HN and some modern humans. About 3 to 5% of the DNA of people from Melanesia (islands of the south-west Pacific Ocean, Australia and New Guinea, as well as the aboriginal people of the Philippines) comes from the Denisovans.
[iv] While terms like adjacent, inside, above, under, next to, etc., are purely mechanical and rendered virtually meaningless in the essence of this art, its mastery over perspective and the effects it makes from the use of space shouldn't be underestimated. This is not primitive; it's of the highest artistic quality.
[v] It looks like a sharper designed version of a Rorschach ink-blot cut in half.
[vi] See the photograph on this website: https://scroll.in/article/869841/when-did-we-first-become-human-neandert... [1755]
[vii] "Spiritual" can mean virtually anything but this concept of the "floating", disappearing animal, which is a constant feature of Upper Paleolithic cave art, could well describe the trans-cosmological travel of the shaman who, using the supernatural potency of the animal-spirit, soars, goes to the depths and penetrates the cave wall. If the Neanderthals had such concepts it would be significant I think.
[viii] The technique for the hand prints are either to cover the spread hand with paint and press it against the wall or to press the hand against the wall and blow or spit the paint over it. Either way, it was a process undertaken by men and women along with some adolescents, and in some places the hand prints make up a larger depiction of an animal. The hand prints are asymmetrical and tracing a line from the tip of the thumb to the little finger there is a distinct curve.
[ix] There's nothing pejorative about pointing this out; former Arsenal and Spurs players, Martin Keown and Gareth Bale for example both have clear Neanderthal features which could be described as rugged good looks.
[x] It must have done; these hominines were much smaller than us today and the big cats, who hunted in packs, would have been much larger and, after a certain point, able to get up a tree faster and higher. This is without mentioning all the other dangers. In the absence of fire solidarity, society was the only answer and those outside of it would have perished.
[xi] A quick aside on this question: A recent programme on the BBC by David Attenborough called "Empire of the Ants" showed the wood ants of the Jura Mountains renouncing war, while remaining mobilised, in favour of greater cooperation. He said that this example, which he examined in some detail, called into question many assumptions about natural selection.
This article, written by a close sympathiser of the ICC, shows that for all its political weaknesses, the British ruling class is still able to defend its imperialist interests and is as strong as ever when it comes to hypocritical justifications.
The big lies
In many ways it's useful to have a Foreign Secretary who's widely regarded as being a bumbling, incompetent fool because it tends to hide the gravity of the lies, deceit and involvement of “Perfidious Albion” in a number of wars, some of which, as in Libya, involve the direct support of al-Qaida type fundamentalists. As well as "The war on terror", there's a sort of "war alongside terror" where the latter is used for British imperialist interests. Thus the week that Boris Johnson was widely mocked across the mainstream and social media for asking for his own aeroplane, he quietly announced "the expansion of the UK's role in Yemen. The Foreign Secretary said British personnel will provide 'information, advice and assistance' to help Saudi Arabia..." (Independent, 24.5.18). That the increasingly aggressive involvement of the British military in yet another shocking and bestial war in the Middle East should arouse so little comment in the news media - as opposed to the "plane" story - shows just how subservient it is to the interests of British imperialism. Similarly, up to September 2017, the British have launched 1600 air-strikes in Syria and Iraq, often on densely populated areas; three thousand, four hundred bombs or missiles have been launched[1] and there's not been one civilian casualty - according to the Ministry of Defence. The democratic state of Great Britain and its media's perpetration of the lies of capitalism have nothing to learn from Goebbels.
At present, Britain is militarily engaged in a number of wars: Afghanistan (where, following a recent request from President Trump, Britain is considering doubling the number of troops there), Iraq, Syria and Libya (where the UN said on May 30 that fighting had reached "unprecedented levels") and has troops active in Sierra Leone, Malawi, Somalia, Rwanda and Kenya. There are probably other "engagements" that we are not aware of; in East Africa, for example, where Turkish, Iranian, Saudi, Israeli and Emirati forces are increasingly present as imperialist war "organically" spreads from the Middle East to Africa. The totalitarian nature of the British state is indicated in the deceit of government ministers who assured us that the British role in Syria was limited to its (entirely benign, it insists) air-strikes - and then a few days later a British Special Forces soldier was killed on the ground in Manjib. Another outright lie promoted by Britain is that of the "moderate, democratic, opposition to Assad" which they back and which doesn't appear to exist. The British, through the Foreign Office, have also actively supported the Syrian "White Helmets"[2] and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (based in Coventry), with the former praised by Prime Minister May and presented as a heroic, life-saving force when in reality it's closely linked to the Foreign Office and works with the permission of the jihadists. The White Helmets, whose website calls for more western bombing in Syria, must have some sort of accommodation and modus operandi with ex-al-Qaida outfit, Jahbet al-Nusra which remains a significant jihadi force in Syria.
The Labour Party contributes to the deliberate underestimation of the role of British imperialism in Syria with its right wing calling for the "protection of civilians" through more British bombing, while on the left the "Stop the War Coalition" calls for Britain not to get involved, behind which lies its objective support for Russian and Syrian imperialism. Both obscure the real implication of British imperialism in Syria, the first by asking for what's already happening on a larger scale and the second bringing discredit to any critique of Britain's role in the war while actually underestimating it.
An example of this is the reported chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma on April 7, which the US, France and Britain responded to with further air strikes on Syrian positions a week later. Why the Syrians would drop chlorine or sarin on Douma when the jihadists were giving up their heavy weapons and being bussed out the next day is a legitimate question. The war is increasingly irrational in Syria and this may just be another irrational act. But there are many doubts about the western narrative and some of these are expressed by reporter Robert Fisk, who, along with two Syrian friends, toured Douma with no minders and no cops after the event and found little evidence of a gas attack[3] and scepticism about this from the local population. He wanted to talk to the White Helmets but all of them had left the population and fled in Russian-controlled buses to the jihadi enclave of Idlib, where various Saudi and Qatari-backed fundamentalist military units are holed up. The "gas attack" could have been the result of a firestorm and brick dust - the rub is that the effect of brick dust from all the bombings in Iraq and Syria will probably kill many more people, in the short, medium and long-term, than all the explosions and gas attacks themselves.
Enemies of the state
On the present political problems and general historical weakening of British imperialism there are two articles in World Revolution no. 379, "Churchill and the Brexiteers: the delusions of British imperialism" and "Britain, the ruling class divided" which cover these issues in some depth. But the "deep state", the less visible part of the totalitarian state, adjusts somewhat and continues its dirty work in the generalisation of warfare and instability in what it sees as the "defence of the national interest", i.e., the defence of British imperialism, the defence of a decaying capitalism.
On top of this decay, and a result of it, sits the capitalist state and its propaganda machine. Any criticism of the British position and its involvement in the Syrian war (and others) is not tolerated and those that make any critique are labelled as "conspiracy theorists" and "pro-Assad apologists". Thus The Guardian began a campaign against the Sheffield University professor, Piers Robinson[4] and his academic colleagues, who have made meticulous analyses of the media coverage of British wars over the past decades, when they raised some pertinent questions over Syria and the circumstances around the increasingly mysterious Skirpal poisoning. The Times took up the witch-hunt and the BBC inevitably followed suit, with an interviewer asking one of the "dissidents" if it wouldn't be better if he just kept quiet given he was supporting Russia. The new Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, wound up the issue earlier in the year with his warning that a Russian cyber attack would "kill thousands, thousands and thousands" of Britons.[5]
On "conspiracy theories" ex-left wing "firebrand" Jack Straw said this as the Labour British Foreign Secretary: "Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States ... There is simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop".[6] But they have, and the British government have admitted it and apologised to Abdulhakim Belhadj, who was kidnapped, rendered and tortured along with his pregnant wife at the hands of the then British ally, Libyan leader Gaddifi. We don't need conspiracy theories to understand that the British state murders and tortures, plots and schemes along with the best of them, and that it's reasonable to assume that the Belhadj case, fortuitously discovered, is the tip of the iceberg.
Blood on their hands
Just over a year ago, Manchester Arena was bombed by a terrorist, twenty-three people were killed and 139 injured, half of them children. The British security services said that the jihadi bomber, Salman Abedi, was "known" to them. He was more than "known" to them: he, his family and their Manchester-based fundamentalist cohorts of ruthless killers were "assets" of the British state, working for them and their imperialist interests in the war in Libya. In the language of the state these casualties were what are generally called "collateral damage" in foreign wars. MI6 hasn't had much luck lately with the Libyans: in 2014 several hundred Libyan mercenaries (the MoD coyly called them "cadets") being trained by the British at an army base in Cambridgeshire were sent back home after they went on a violent rampage which included the sexual assaults of women and the rape of a local man.[7] However, good use of them has been made in the past with many credible reports of the CIA and MI6 transporting Libyan fundamentalists and their heavy equipment through Turkey in order to fight Assad's army in Syria along what the CIA called "the rat-run". Seymour Hersch, the investigative journalist who fleshed out this story, also reported in 2016 that there were plans in the US to send Sarin gas from Libya in order to set up the Assad regime with the blame for an attack, athough that's not been confirmed.[8]
None of this is aimed at giving any support whatsoever to the butcher Assad or his imperialist backers, the Russians, but rather to demonstrate concretely the ruthlessness, mendacity and reality of the so-called democracy of "Great Britain". We shouldn't be at all surprised that while it pursues "The war on terror" it works hand and glove with the terrorists, even if in places one stage removed. In the recent past it has given enormous direct support to the Muslim Brotherhood and in the late seventies, MI6, the CIA and Pakistani intelligence (ISI) were responsible for setting up, financing, training and directing the Mujahedeen in order to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. In short, they effectively created al-Qaida. And the desperation of the British state to defend its interests, particularly against the working class, come what may, can be gauged by examining its role and that of its intelligence services in response to the Russian Revolution. Its actions and its backing of various butchers and reactionary elements fighting against the revolution can be read in the ICC article "The world bourgeoisie unites against the October Revolution".[9]
These elements of material and moral decay, already apparent a hundred years ago, apply even more to every state today as the capitalist system rots on its feet and drives itself towards war and destruction, and us along with it. The current problems in the bourgeoisie's political apparatus and the long-time weakening of Britain's position in the world have not reversed the tendencies towards the strengthening of the totalitarian state - on the contrary they contribute to it. The British state has had plenty of practice in making the world a hostile environment for the whole working class.
Baboon 11.6.18
[1] Middle East Eye, October, 2017.
[2] The US has recently stopped funding the White Helmets but Britain has increased it through the "Conflict, Stability and Security Fund" (CSSF) led by the Foreign Office. Private contractors provide the training for the White Helmets on behalf of the British government. Also see Max Blumenthal "How the White Helmets Became International Heroes While Pushing US Military Intervention And Regime Change In Syria" https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/how-white-helmets-became-inter... [1756].
Also important in this respect is "The Guardian, White Helmets and silenced comments", showing how the "liberal" media can be the most rabid defenders of the state: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+guardian+white+helmets+and+silenced+... [1757]
[4] See "War, propaganda and smears, an interview with Professor Piers Robinson" (WSWS) https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/26/robi-m26.html [1759]
[5] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/25/crippling-russian-attack-bri... [1760] Williamson has since excelled himself in thumping the war drums by saying that defence cuts could lead Britain going to an immediate nuclear strike option (Politics Home, May 24, 2018).
In this second part we're responding to the main criticisms that the International Communist Party (Le Proletaire) makes of us by opposing their approach with our method and our framework of analysis.
The role of revolutionaries is not limited to proclaiming proletarian principles; it consists above all of contributing to proletarian consciousness, analysing and explaining the balance of forces posed by the situation in order to draw out the real stakes of the struggle. In other words, it's a question, as Lenin put it, of "making a concrete political analysis from a concrete situation". Workers trying to understand the present situation, who look to go to the roots of problems, will not unfortunately find a satisfying explanation of the international and relatively massive phenomenon of populism in the publications of the ICP but affirmations which, from our point of view, only feed confusion. The development of the populist phenomenon corresponds to a historically new concrete situation which remains to be analysed and for that a rigorous and methodical debate must be undertaken through polemics. But in order to have this debate, which is absolutely vital and necessary within the proletarian camp, we must first avoid false debates.
A clear framework of analysis: a necessity for proletarian consciousness
The ICP ascribes to us the idea that "the victories of Trump and the partisans of Brexit constitute a 'setback' for democracy" [1] by referring to an article in Révolution Internationale no. 461. In no way should it be deduced from our analysis that populism calls into question bourgeois democracy and its state. For us, all factions of the bourgeoisie are reactionary; populism, as a political expression, belongs to the bourgeoisie and is fully implicated in the defence of capitalist interests. Populist parties are bourgeois factions, parts of the totalitarian state apparatus. What they spread is the ideology and behaviour of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, cultural conservatism. They catalyse fears; express the will to fall back into individualism and a rejection of "elites". That said, populism is a product of decomposition which causes problems for the political game, resulting in a growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie's political apparatus on the electoral level. That doesn't prevent the bourgeoisie from exploiting this negative political phenomenon as much as possible for the defence of its interests, turning it back against the proletariat in trying to strengthen the democratic mystification in emphasising that "every vote counts", adding the accusation that electoral abstentionism "lays the ground for the extreme-right". In this framework, the traditional parties themselves tend to attenuate their unpopular image by, despite everything, presenting themselves as more "humanistic" and more "democratic" than the populists. This is a dangerous trap which consists of presenting to the workers a false alternative: populism or the defence of democracy.
Contrary to the ICC, the ICP reject the idea of the decadence of capitalism, although this is an essential concept for marxists, as the founders of the IIIrd International understood, inscribing it into their 1919 platform after the period of World War I and October 1917: "A new epoch is born, the epoch of the disintegration of capitalism, of its inner collapse. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat". More than a century ago, the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxemburg in particular affirmed that the historic period opened by the First World War was definitively marked by the alternative: war or revolution, socialism or barbarism. Le Proletaire on the contrary, on the basis of its "invariant" interpretation of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 continues to repeat that the crises of capitalism are "cyclical" and ignore its entry into decadence, particularly in regard to the question of war. Because it rejects the fundamental notion of the decadence of capitalism, the ICP lacks clarity on the nature of the crises and imperialist wars of the twentieth century and thus lacks clarity on the analysis of the present situation and its evolution into the final phase of the agony of capitalism, decomposition. [2]
The ICP is not armed politically to understand that decomposition has been determined by a new quality borne by the contradictions of decadent capitalism and initially "the incapacity (...) of the two fundamental and antagonistic classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, to put forward their own perspective (world war or revolution) engendering a situation of 'momentary blockage' and of society rotting on its feet". On the contrary it interprets this with irony without getting to grips with its real nature: "Proletarians who daily see their conditions of exploitation worsen and their living conditions degraded, will be happy to learn that their class is capable of blocking the bourgeoisie and preventing it from putting forward its 'perspectives'".
The ICP interpret what we are saying about the idea of the "blockage of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat" without seriously looking at the political content that we really defend: all society finds itself without a perspective affirmed by one of the two fundamental classes of society. It thus finds itself deprived of any future other than the immediate exploitation generated by capitalism. In this context, the bourgeoisie is no longer up to offering prospects or policies capable of mobilising or arousing support. Inversely, the working class cannot recognise itself as a class and does not really play any decisive and sufficiently conscious role. It is this which leads to a blockage in terms of perspective. The phase of the decomposition of capitalist society is not at all an "elaboration", a "vague idea", "invented" by the ICC. Marx himself, at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto envisaged this eventuality drawn from the historic experience of class societies when he wrote: "The history of all societies up to now, is the history of class struggle. Free man and slave, patriarch and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes". Among these "contending classes" today, we only have the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Marxism has always posed the denouement of the historic alternative in a non-mechanistic manner. Today, with the present conditions, either the revolutionary class will end up by imposing itself, opening the way to a new mode of production, communism, or through incapacity or historic defeat, capitalist society will definitively sink into chaos and barbarism: this would be "the mutual ruin of the contending classes".
The basis of the phase of decomposition
What determines and explains the current phase of the collapse of decadent capitalism into the decomposition of society? [3]
The bourgeoisie is enveloped in an endless economic crisis that compels the proletariat to submit to still more misery, uncertainty, attacks against its living conditions and exploitation. At the same time, the ruling class has been incapable of imposing its "solution" to this crisis: a new world war. Between 1968 and 1989, with the international resurgence of the class struggle onto the scene of history, the ruling class couldn't dragoon the proletariat into preparations for another world conflict. After 1989, with the dissolution of the two imperialist blocs born from the collapse of the Russian bloc, the diplomatic and military conditions for a new world war disappeared: the bourgeoisie was no longer capable of reconstituting new imperialist blocs.
However, the disappearance of the blocs hasn't put an end to military conflicts. Rather than imperialism disappearing, it has taken other forms where each state tries to pursue its own interests and appetites against the interests of others, at the expense of stable alliances; where a situation of the war of each against all predominates and which generates murderous chaos and barbaric warfare. Since 1989 we have seen the multiplication of conflicts in which the major and secondary powers confront each other through smaller states, rival armed bands or even opposed ethnicities.
Equally, the bourgeoisie can no longer mobilise the proletariat in a plan for society: the promise of a "new world order of peace and prosperity" promised by Bush senior following the collapse of the Russian bloc fizzled out almost immediately.
For its part, the working class which, from 1968 up to the end of the 1980's developed waves of resistance to the crisis and the attacks on its conditions, demonstrated in the central countries that it was not ready to sacrifice itself in a new world war. Nevertheless, it has not succeeded in politicising its combat and from that draw a conscious perspective of world revolution to overthrow capitalism, not least because of the enormous weight of the years of counter-revolution and the survival of very strong illusions in the working class nature of the parties of the left and the unions. Contrary to 1905 and 1917, it has been incapable, notably after August 1980 in Poland, of affirming itself on a political terrain as a force for the revolutionary transformation of society, of raising its defensive struggles to an international political combat that affirms a revolutionary perspective.
Moreover, the bankruptcy of the Stalinist regimes at the time of the brutal collapse of the Eastern Bloc allowed the bourgeoisie to strengthen the greatest lie of the twentieth century - the identification of Stalinism with communism - and to feed an enormous campaign of ideological overkill that proclaimed the "bankruptcy of marxism" and the "death of communism", leading to the idea that there's no longer any alternative to capitalism. This explains the present enormous difficulties that the working class is facing: the loss of its class identity, the loss of confidence in its own strength, its loss of its direction, its disorientation.
The growth of populism and anti-social phenomena
These difficulties, among other things, have allowed the development of populist ideas in society, including in the ranks of the most fragile layers of the proletariat, because this class is also affected by the noxious atmosphere emitted by the decomposition of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois politics.
In the context characterised by the absence of any political perspective, the defiance towards anything that calls itself "political" increases (so too the discrediting of the traditional parties of the bourgeoisie) to the advantage of the populist parties that preach a so-called rejection of "elites". This is all combined with a widespread feeling of “no future” and the growth of all sorts of individualist ideologies, a return to reactionary, archaic and nihilist models.
The article of Le Proletaire says: "the populist orientation is typical of the nature of the petty-bourgeoisie: the petty-bourgeoisie placed between the two fundamental classes of society, dreads the struggle between the two classes in which it risks being pulverised: that's why it loathes everything which evokes the class struggle and only swears by "the people", "popular unity", etc." For the ICP, populism since its origins is the expression of the nature and ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie and that's all there is to it. It doesn't analyse populism as an expression of a capitalist world without a future, caught up in the dynamic of the period of decomposition. If the present growth of populism is fed by different factors (2008 economic crisis, impact of war, terrorism and refugee crisis), it appears above all as a concentrated expression of the present incapacity of one or the other major classes to offer a perspective for the future of humanity.
This is the global reality which confronts the proletariat and the whole of society. It's important to see how the present growth of anti-social behaviours and the present weakness of the proletariat in developing its revolutionary perspective are essential aspects of the situation. It shows a basic problem which is not identical to that of the period preceding the 1990's, still less to the simple petty-bourgeois nature of the populism of the nineteenth century.
The ICP does not share such an analysis, but it must then furnish a general framework of alternative understanding adapted to the current situation. An ironic response on its own is insufficient.
The real stakes for the proletariat faced with populism
In time, if the proletariat turns out incapable of again taking up the road to revolutionary struggle, society will be engulfed in all sorts of disasters: bankruptcies, ecological catastrophes, the extension of local wars, rising barbarity, social chaos, famines... None of this has anything to do with a prophecy: it can't be anything other for the good and simple reason that the destructive logic of capitalism and profit that we see at work every day of the week is totally irreversible. By its very nature capitalism cannot become "reasonable", and can only get further bogged down in its own contradictions.
1. The struggle of the proletariat is not, as the PCI thinks, the mechanical "instrument" of an absolutely determined "historic destiny". In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels strongly criticised such a vision: "History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity. This can be speculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlier history, e.g. the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to further the eruption of the French Revolution".
2. It shouldn't be assumed that because a part of the working class votes for populist parties it has become xenophobic or fundamentally nationalistic. As we underlined in our Resolution on the international class struggle adopted at the twenty-second ICC Congress: “Many workers who today vote for populist candidates can from one day to the next find themselves struggling alongside their class brothers and sisters, and the same goes for workers caught up in anti-populist demonstrations”.
However, there's nothing inevitable about the class struggle, contrary to the erroneous vision that Bordiga drew from it: "a revolutionary (according to us) is someone for whom the revolution is as certain as if it had already happened". [4] The proletarian revolution is not written in advance. It can only come about through the conscious action of the proletariat, through a real historic combat faced with all the obstacles and against a bourgeoisie that will defend itself and use all its venom and bestiality like a cornered, wounded animal.
Faced with the difficulties confronting the proletariat, more than ever revolutionaries need to understand, analyse the stakes and denounce the ideological use that the bourgeoisie makes of the tendencies towards disintegration inherent in this society.
To understand populism we need to understand decomposition, that's to say the danger which weighs on the working class and all of humanity, the difficulties and the obstacles that we must confront, in order to fight them more effectively. Despite the weight of populism and its dangers, the proletariat still offers the only alternative perspective, and it retains the potential to undertake and develop its combat to the level demanded by the historic situation.
CB, March 26, 2018.
[1] ‘Populism, Populism you say?’, Le Proletaire no. 523, (Feb., March, April, 2017). https://www.pcint.org/03_LP/523/523_populisme.htm [1765]
[2] We refer readers to the polemic that we've already had with the ICP on the central question of decadence: ‘The rejection of the idea of decadence leads to the demobilisation of the proletariat faced with war’, International Review no. 77 and no. 78, second and third quarters, 1994. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/077_rejection01.html [1766]; https://en.internationalism.org/ir/078_rejection02.html [1767]
[3] We refer readers to our theses on ‘ Decomposition, the final phase of capitalist decadence’ written in May 1990 and republished in International Review no. 107, fourth quarter 2001, as well as the article ‘Understanding the decomposition of capitalism’, International Review no. 117, second quarter 2004. https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]; https://en.internationalism.org/ir/117_decompo.html [1768]
[4] The Infantile Disorder, condemnation of future traitors (on the pamphlet of Lenin "The infantile disorder of communism"), Il Programma Comunista no. 19 (1960).
An article from a close sympathiser showing that despite and even because of the omnipresence of war in the Middle East, the class struggle can still raise its head.
At the end of May this year a wave of strikes and protests by workers and unemployed in Jordan against tax increases, price rises and state corruption was widely reported in the media. In fact the movement by lower-paid workers against gas and electricity price increases began several months earlier in the provinces, building up to mass protests in the capital Amman that lasted for over a week, with the trade unions showing some difficulties in harnessing and controlling the movement. That this movement took place around the same time as the workers in Iran were striking and protesting against more or less the same conditions shows that, even in the imperialist cauldron of the Middle East, the working class is capable of raising its distinctive head and fighting back against the attacks of the state on its own ground. As in Iran, some of the attacks have been pushed back with price rises rescinded and tax increases withdrawn, although this can only be a slight and temporary relief until the attacks are renewed under other guises, with more force or a combination of both.
The leader of Jordan, King Abdullah, sacked some of his government in response to the protests and noises from the state blamed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the attacks, just as the left of capital always has its bogeymen - "greedy bankers", "the EU", "the World Bank", etc., in order to promote their own nationalist and "anti-imperialist" (i.e., usually anti-American) ideology[1] . But the problems of the Jordanian economy go far deeper than IMF loan repayments: there's a droll joke in Jordan along the lines that "we have less water than oil, and we haven't got any oil". And its problems pre-date the massive influx of refugees that it's taken in (two-thirds of its population is Palestinian and there are also Muslim and Christian refugees from across the region, not least Syria) and also pre-dates the withdrawal of "aid" from the major Gulf states. The Kingdom was a vital military outpost for British imperialism until the 1950's when the Americans took it over, continuing to work with their UK "junior partners". Jordan has a skilled working class but the country's war economy is integrated into the imperialist essentials of the Middle East, firstly by Britain, then America and also France and Germany. And there are the specific imperialist aspirations of the Jordanian state, even if subordinated to their masters: taking part in a secret war in Libya, troops in Afghanistan and other "peace-keeping" manoeuvres. Its war economy, the militarised nature of the Jordanian state directly gives rise to graft, nepotism and cronyism (Wasta, in Arabic), something that British and American imperialism has used to divide and rule over the Hashemite Kingdom.
On the imperialist level, the future of the Jordanian state becomes more uncertain as the team around Trump turn to a Saudi/UAE/Israeli axis, and this makes it all the more unlikely that there will be any sort of effective bail-out of the Jordanian economy, which spends 15.8% of its economy on military spending[2], by the wealthier but struggling Gulf States. This poses a possible turn towards Turkey or Iran by Jordan, fuelling more instability in the region; and if this is speculation at the moment what's certain is that Jordan's position will become more perilous within the regional imperialist free-for-all. On the economic level, university graduate unemployment is registered as 24.1% and unemployment overall around 18%, figures that are widely derided as substantial underestimations. In fact, across the whole of the Middle East, youth unemployment and unemployment generally is a major problem for all the states. Thus protests also took off again in Iran just over a week ago, this time focused on Tehran rather than in the provincial cities; but, as promised by them after the previous struggles, they were ruthlessly repressed by the Revolutionary Guards using the riot police, tear gas and mass arrests of "trouble-makers". Slogans were again raised against Iran's wars and the war economy. The involvement of the workers isn't clear here though the Iranian government immediately met with union bosses.[3]
The proletariat in Jordan is no stranger to class struggle, being involved in movements in 1989, 1996 and particularly from 2009 to 2012. In 2011 almost every sector in the Jordanian economy took part in strikes and protests including precarious expatriate workers.[4] Some new "independent" trade unions emerged from this, though their recent actions show them as bound to the Jordanian state as the old union structures. But for both capital and labour in Jordan, as elsewhere, the economic crisis and its consequent attacks have further deepened, presaging further attacks which are not just cyclical but ever more vicious.
There are signs from the proletariat in Jordan (and some from Iran) that the struggles are more profound than before: there is almost no mobilising role by the religious authorities (the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan's case), in contrast to events around the Arab Spring; there is a dearth in the protests of Jordanian flags or any sort of "coloured" flags denoting a nationalist movement; the appearance, numbers, diversity and solidarity of the working class is much more pronounced and the struggles better organised; the trade unions, 33 of them now, up from around 16 in 2011, have been sidelined and vocally criticised by the workers and the youth movement (mostly of the unemployed which the unions tried to separate the workers from) refused to get involved in pointless confrontations with the British-trained[5] security forces, the Darak, showing a certain consciousness and maturity.
Given their peripheral nature, their numerical weakness and the sea of imperialist atrocities that surrounds them, the struggles in Jordan further point to the centrality of the working class in the heartlands of capital to really push back against the attacks in the first place. But despite the evident difficulties that confront it, this was a clear expression of the proletariat and its attempts to unify its combat. And completely contrary to leftism's phoney "revolution" in Rojava, northern Syria, which strengthens imperialism, the class struggle in Jordan is an example of the beginnings of a potential blow against it.
Baboon, 1.7.2018
[1] This is the sort of ideology propagated by the British Socialist Worker's Party and the left wing of Corbyn's Labour Party.
[2] Middle East Eye, 7.6.2018. With 15.8% of government spending and 4.8% of GDP, Jordan is proportionally among the highest military spenders in the Middle East and the world.
[3] The latest protests are not just in Tehran but in the provinces with, for example, protests against water shortages in Khorramshahr in the southwest province of Khuzestan, July 1st where banks and public buildings were attacked and where the slogan "the enemy is here" was reported, leading to shots being fired at protesters: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/01/videos-show-gunfire-amid-iran-protests-o... [1770].
An important point to make here in respect of Iran is that its economic crisis has been greatly exacerbated by US imperialism and that National Security Advisor John Bolton has just met with the ex-terrorist Iranian group MEK, giving a strong signal of "regime change".
[4] https://www.merip.org/mer/mer264/emergence-new-labor-movement-jordan [1771]. Middle East Research, Spring 2018.
[5] Britain has well-established forces and "training" programmes in Jordan. It constantly conducts large-scale manoeuvres and Jordan is a platform for its involvement in Syria and the wider Middle East. Just recently the British military pressure group, the United Kingdom Defence Association (UKNDA), called for Britain to send an entire armoured brigade, 5000 men and their support, to Jordan.
In The State and Revolution, Lenin wrote: “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”
During the life of Marx, the bourgeoisie did everything to prevent him from operating by demonising him and persecuting him through the apparatus of the police.[1] After his death they did everything to distort his fight to destroy capitalism and open up the future to communism.
An infamous propaganda
All of the publications, radio and television programmes produced on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Marx stuck by these rules. A number of academics salute the work of Marx on the economy, philosophy or sociology, while presenting him as "out of touch with reality", totally overtaken or completely mistaken on the political terrain: it's nothing less than blunting the edge of this trenchant and militant revolutionary! One of the arguments put forward today is that Marx was only a "nineteenth century thinker"[2] , his work incomprehensible for the future evolution of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Following this reasoning, a revolutionary perspective has no validity today. The working class doesn't exist and, moreover, its political project can only lead to a Stalinist horror. Every political aspect of the works of Marx is finally thrown into the dustbin of history.
But a more subtle aspect of this propaganda affirms that it's necessary to draw from Marx, the "real" Marx, elements which in the final analysis could validate the defence of democracy and liberalism and the critique of alienation. Fundamentally, this is a question of presenting Marx not as the revolutionary that he was, but as a sort of great thinker of whom certain aspects of his work allow us to understand and ameliorate an "unregulated" capitalism which, without the control of the state, engenders inequalities and economic crises. Within the bourgeoisie, there are many who like to paint Marx as an "economic genius" who foresaw the crisis of capitalism, predicted globalisation, the growth of inequality, etc.
Numerous among the flatterers of Marx are his so-called heirs for more than a century, from the Stalinists to the leftists, including the Trotskyists who have never ceased, in the same sense, to disfigure, distort and tarnish the revolutionary Marx by transforming him, as Lenin justly denounced above, into a semi-religious icon, canonising him and putting him up on a pedestal. All this in order to untruthfully present socialism or communism as the domination of state capitalism along the models built up in the USSR, the countries of the eastern bloc and China –forms assumed by capitalism in its epoch of decadence and as a product of the counter-revolution.
Marx was a fighter first of all
Straightaway, it's necessary to say, along with Engels, that Marx was first of all a revolutionary; a fighter, in other words. His theoretical work is incomprehensible without this point of departure. Some want to turn Marx into a pure savant, surrounded by books and cut off from the world, but only a revolutionary militant can be a marxist. From his participation in the group of Young Hegelians in Berlin, 1842, the life of Marx was a combat against Prussian absolutism. This turned into a fight for communism when he tried to understand the misery of a considerable part of society and when he saw the potentialities of the working class in his discussions with the workers of Paris. It's this fight which made him an exile chased from one country to the other, pushing him into an extreme poverty which led to the death of his son. In this regard it's really obscene to attribute this poverty to Marx himself, hinting that neither he nor his wife could manage a household budget because of their well-to-do origins, which is what the French TV "culture" programme Arte did recently. In reality, Marx was totally impregnated with proletarian solidarity and regularly used his small income for the cause of the revolution!
Moreover, and contrary to what Jonathon Spencer says, Marx wasn't a "journalist", but a militant who knew that the struggle, first of all against the authoritarian Prussian monarchy then against the bourgeoisie, demanded a work of propaganda that he took on in Rheinische Zeitung, then in Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung and Les Annales franco-allemande and finally in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. As a fighter Marx was fully involved in the combat of the Communist League and responded to a mandate from it to write a major text of the workers' movement: the Manifesto of the Communist Party. It is also because he was a fighter (as indicated in the title of his biography written by Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen, Marx, Man and Fighter) that the regroupment and organisation of revolutionaries was at the heart of his activities. In the same way, the whole of his theoretical work was a driving force for the struggle for clarity going on within the working class.
The theoretical work of Marx
Marx developed an immense theoretical elaboration since he started off from a working class point of view, a class which had nothing to defend within capitalism and had "nothing to lose but its chains" through its struggle against exploitation. It was in going on from this postulate that he understood that this combat potentially contained the end of the exploitation of man by man, a condition in which humanity had floundered since the appearance of social classes, and that the liberation of the working class would bring about the reunification of humanity through communism. When Jaques Attali affirms that Marx is a "founding father of modern democracy", it is just a lie in the service of the bourgeoisie, a lie which claims that the present society is the best there is. The aim of this propaganda is to prevent the working class from understanding that the sole perspective possible for emerging from the horror of a dying capitalism is communism.
It is also by proceeding from the needs of the working class that Marx established a scientific method, historical materialism, allowing the working class to direct its combat. This method criticises and goes beyond the philosophy of Hegel while "turning on its head" what the latter had discovered, which was that the transformation of reality was always a dialectical process. This method allowed Marx to draw the lessons from the great workers' struggles, such as 1848 and the Paris Commune. The transmission of this same method to subsequent generations of revolutionaries, like those of the communist left, also made it possible for the lessons to be drawn from the failure of the revolutionary wave of 1917. Marx's approach is effective: it's by examining reality with his method and confronting it with the results obtained that revolutionaries are able to enrich the theory.
Starting off from the point of view of the working class also facilitates the essential understanding of what the working class was up against and what it had to destroy in order to free itself from its chains. Marx was thus engaged in a study of the economic fundamentals of society in order to make a critique of it. This study allowed him to show that the basis of capitalism was commodity exchange and that it's this exchange which is at the basis of wage labour, that's to say the form taken by the exploitation of man by man in capitalism. It is interesting to compare this fundamental result with what Liberation says in its celebration of the anniversary of his birth: "Karl Marx shows that the purchase of labor power by the capitalist raises a problem of uncertainty as to the reality of the effort made by the wage earners"; in other words, if one could measure the labour of the worker so that their effort is endurable, the exploitation of man by man would be a good thing. Here's an example of the way in which Marx is used to justify capitalism! Whereas for Marx, "the purchase of labour power" signifies "production of surplus value" and thus exploitation!
It is also through the profoundly militant aspects of his theoretical works that Marx was able to conclude that capitalism wasn't an eternal system and that, like other modes or production which preceded it, this system would come up against its limits and historically fall into crisis because: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution." (Contribution to a Critique of the Political Economy). On the other hand Marx demonstrated that capitalism gave rise to its own gravedigger: the proletariat, which is both the last exploited class in history, dispossessed of everything, and the only social class with revolutionary potential because of the associated character of its labour. It is a class which, by unifying across frontiers, is the sole force capable of overthrowing capitalism at the world level in order to establish a society without classes and without exploitation.
At the end of the day, the "great analyses" of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries pretend either that Marx has been overtaken, is a thing of the past, or that he is still valid by virtue of his "economics" or as a "great prophet" in the current theory of the anti-globalists who aim to "correct the excesses" of capitalism. All of this ideological confusion has the function of obscuring the struggle for proletarian revolution.
Marx’s concern for the organisation of revolutionaries and the working class
For Karl Marx, the identification of the working class as the sole actor able to overthrow capitalism and bring about the arrival of communism went hand-in-hand with the necessity for the proletariat to organise itself. On this level, as on others, the contribution of Marx is essential. He was involved in the "Correspondence Committee" in order to put German, French and English socialists in touch with one another because, according to him: "at the time of action, it is certainly of great interest for everyone to be educated about the state of affairs abroad as well as at home". The necessity for self-organisation is concretised in his constant participation in struggles for the defence and constitution for an international revolutionary organisation within the proletariat. The fight for communism and the most profound understanding of what this represented pushed him to fight for the transformation of the League of the Just into the Communist League in 1847. It's because they had an acute understanding of role of revolutionaries that Marx and Engels defended the necessity for the Communist League to adopt a programme, which resulted in the writing of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848.
The Communist League couldn't withstand the blows of the repression after the defeat of the revolutions of 1848. But after that the struggles took off again at the beginning of the 1860's and other efforts of organisation appeared. From its beginnings Marx involved himself in the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), formed in 1864. He had a major role in writing up its statutes and was the author of its Inaugural Address. His conviction about the importance of the organisation and his theoretical clarity made him central to the organisation. In the IWA as in the Communist League he undertook a determined struggle for the organisation to fulfil its function. His theoretical preoccupations were never separated from the needs of the struggle. It's for this reason that in the Communist League he said, when faced with Weitling, "up to now ignorance has been of no use to anyone" because of the latter's utopian and idealist vision of communism. It's for the same fundamental reasons that he fought in the IWA against Mazzini who wanted the organisation to be focused on the defence of national interests, and against Bakunin who plotted to take control of the IWA and got involved in conspiratorial adventures substituting himself for the mass action of the proletariat.
The theoretical elaboration undertaken by Marx shines a formidable light on bourgeois society as much in the nineteenth century as in the following two. But if one considers this elaboration merely as a means of "understanding the world", like the pseudo-experts of the bourgeoisie celebrating his year of birth, his work remains surrounded in a fog of mystery. On the contrary, while the bourgeoisie cultivates the idea of "no future" the working class must free itself of its chains. In order to do that it must not only make use of the theoretical studies of Marx, but take inspiration from his life of struggle, his life as a militant. The means that he was able to develop were always in accord with the very aim of proletarian struggle: "to transform the world"!
Vitaz, June 1, 2018
[1] Thus, Engels declared at Marx's funeral: "Marx was the man most hated and the most lied about of his time. Absolutist and Republican governments deported him. Democratic and conservative bourgeois were united against him".
[2] Notably in the recent biography of the American academic Jonathon Spencer who benefited from a wide-scale promotion throughout the media. This book is precisely called Karl Marx, a Man of the Nineteenth Century
This article was written soon after the formation of the new populist coalition government in Italy. It places immediate events in a global context, so its overall analysis has in no sense lost its validity a few months later. In future, we will try to update the analysis, particularly given the need to examine the swollen growth of Salvini's political influence, and the encouragement, by his government, of a pogrom-like atmosphere in Italy.
It's certainly not the first time that the Italian bourgeoisie has suffered a serious crisis in its political apparatus that has impacted on its ability to form a government, as for example the Monti government in 2011 and the Letta government in 2013, which only lasted for ten months. However the troubled management of the League-5 Star government coalition has taken on a particularly serious political significance which could even bring about a constitutional crisis, with the threat of a demand for the dismissal of the head of state of the 5-Star Movement (5-SM) and the Brothers of Italy.
After a very hard and confrontational election campaign from the forces in play, in which each one declared that they would never govern with the others, and where the most audacious promises were made in the name of the defence of families, young people and the insecure, the result saw the triumph of populism, but without a clear government majority and an intersecting series of vetoes (the League against the Democratic Party (PD), the PD against the League, 5-SM against Berlusconi, etc.). After several rejected attempts by the distinguished Christian-Democrat President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, he returned to negotiate with the parties concerned and finally an agreement was reached to form a government, avoiding the immediate prospect of another election, which would have been an additional problem for the Italian bourgeoisie both because of prolonging a period of great instability with major economic consequences, and because the result of a new vote was far from predictable, risking an aggravation of the problem. How can one explain this political storm?
Populism, a problem for the bourgeoisie at an international level
The main problem is that the bourgeoisie is confronted with the development and weight of populism at an international level, as it is with the effects of decomposition on its political parties, with the dominant tendency of "everyman for himself".[1] As we've already shown in other texts[2] this development is the consequence of the present historical phase of capitalism. Deep layers of the population, above all the proletariat, have suffered daily from the effects of the aggravation of the crisis: an increase in economic instability, the rise of uncertainty and social insecurity, the causes of which are extremely difficult to understand. This generates a great deal of anger but also a profound loss of references, a feeling of impotence and a fear of everything which seems to contain more dangers for present and future situations. Furthermore, the "historic" parties, who, by reason of their political experience have been essential instruments for the bourgeoisie in diverting and containing discontent in the alternating right/left game of democracy, have suffered a great loss of credit. In particular the social democratic parties, historically portrayed as defenders of the workers, have for a long time themselves had to adopt all the measures of economic reform which have seriously degraded the situation of the working class, thus revealing their anti-proletarian character.
As we said regarding the victory of Brexit, "populism is not another actor in play between the parties of the left and right; it exists because of the generalised discontent which can find no other means of expressing itself. It is entirely on the political terrain of the bourgeoisie but is based on opposition to elites and the establishment, an aversion towards immigration, on distrust towards the promises of the left and the austerity of the right, expressing a loss of confidence in these institutions of capitalist society but at this stage blinded to the revolutionary alternative of the working class".[3]
From this point of view these forces, in a certain way, can also be useful to the bourgeoisie because they can channel this anger and distrust onto democratic and institutional grounds. As Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the 5-SM, Luigi Di Maio, affirmed, it is they who have brought back onto the domain of democratic protest and elections the majority of those distancing themselves from it due to disgust, disillusionment and anger against the political class and its institutions. But, contrary to the "historic" parties of the bourgeoisie (the right as well as the left) who, despite everything, still retain some sense of state, the vision of the populist forces is shown through the concrete policies which frequently come up against the global interests of the national bourgeoisie, as much on the economic as the political and ideological levels. For this reason, they constitute a threat to the coherence and political interests of the same ruling class.
The presence of the populist phenomenon and the discrediting of the historical parties also explain the growing difficulties for the bourgeoisie internationally and, particularly in Italy, its capacity to control the electoral circus and predict its outcome. This unpredictability is seen for example with the Democratic Party where Matteo Renzi (PM from February 14 to December 16), on the basis of 40.8% votes obtained at the elections of 2014, took a slap in the face with the referendum on the constitution in 2016 which anticipated the current collapse of this political formation. In the past, voters maintained a certain loyalty to the traditional parties because that also corresponded to political ideals and programmes which, at least in words, suggested different choices. The right and left of capital expressed different choices for the management of society; the voter, however critical, identified with one or the other of these parties. Today, this distinction no longer exists because the economy no longer allows alternative global options. Any party or coalition in power can only follow a policy of austerity and impoverishment for the great majority of the population and can do nothing about the deterioration of living conditions at other levels (precariousness, insecurity, degradation of the environment, etc). The vote is thus cast for the political force which, at that moment, seems to be the "less worse", the one which perhaps doesn't seem to make false promises or responds more closely to doubts. It's not by chance that the electoral "battle bus" of the 5-SM has been the "minimum payment for the citizen" and the promise of reductions in the cost of living, above all in the south of Italy where poverty, insecurity and the lack of perspectives weigh heavily in the daily life of the majority of the population. For the League (ex-Northern League, with the "northern" dropped in order to broaden its appeal) however, it's security with the expulsion of migrants and more police on the streets, the right to self-defence and the flat rate tax which gives advantages to small and medium entrepreneurs who are strong in the north.
We've recently seen a similar phenomenon with the difficulties of the British bourgeoisie to manage the effects of Brexit, of the Americans to contain the irresponsible policies of Trump, of the German bourgeoisie to form a coalition government which, although it must include the anti-European CDU, will have to maintain internal and international policies which conform to the interests of the German state. It was only in France, faced with the danger of an eventual victory of Marine Le Pen, that the bourgeoisie found the Macron solution which ensured the continuity of the national and international political choices and which, at the same time, was presented as "a force for renewal", "neither right nor left", thus responding to growing distrust and discontent.
That also explains why, in relation to the elections in Italy (just prior to and during the political crisis), there was a strong preoccupation (particularly from the European countries) and pressure from influential personalities in the EU and the business world, insisting that whatever the composition of the new government, it shouldn't call into question the results obtained by Italy thanks to reforms put into place in recent years, with a strong recommendation not to change tack towards thoughtless and irresponsible policies for Italian capital which would create international instability.
... and for the Italian bourgeoisie
We can look a little closer at the Italian situation in order to understand a series of important stages in the policies of the national bourgeoisie. For example, why has the President of the Republic, Mattarella refused to sign the nomination of Poalo Savona for Minister of the Economy? Why this desperate struggle over just one name? In reality, Mattarella, who represents the most responsible part of the national bourgeoisie and has a broader and longer term vision of the interests of the national capital and the instruments necessary to defend it, finds himself managing a situation characterised by:
1. The electoral victory of two forces which, although in different ways, are both expressions of a populism characterised by a strong irresponsibility, combined with lack of experience and lack of political depth. 5-SM, born with the slogan "Screw you!" aimed against "the cast of parliamentary buffoons and crooks", once in parliament had to take on a more moderate and institutional role in order to enlarge its consensual base and move into the corridors of power, but it remains a force totally bereft of experience in managing the state and is strongly characterised by policies which are based on immediate knee-jerk reactions of the "people". That means it's an uncertain force, difficult to rely on in a situation which demands rigour and responsibility by taking drastic and unpopular measures. After all, it's enough to see the irresponsible and infantile reaction of Di Maio and Di Battista (also 5-SM, and both in good company with Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy) immediately after Mattarella's rejection of their proposed government. The repeated threats to resign in various interviews and at the Naples meeting, as well as declarations from the League through its leader and joint Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, have stirred things up against Mattarella and the higher functions of the state. Finally, despite present assurances, the 5-SM still stands out against interference from the EU in the political economy of Italy and for the return of a national currency.
The League, having already assumed some governmental responsibilities in the past with Umberto Bossi, former League leader, presents itself today as less variable and more coherent and (after dumping its regionalist character), as a national force. However, it remains a force with a strong anti-European significance ("Italy must not be restrained by Germany"), as Russophile and xenophobic ("If I get into government, I'll begin with a big clear-out, make rules to arm and protect the frontiers from the Alps to Sicily)[4].
These two parties could call into question Italy's choice of imperialist alliances, both being more or less favourable to an "overture" from Russia:
2. A governmental programme (that of a deal between 5-SM and the League), which behind a torrent of words hides a total incoherence on some crucial choices regarding the economy, such as employment, while on others it proposes measures such as the "citizen's income", the low "flat rate tax" and the abolition of the "Fornero reform" on pensions (which envisaged higher retirement age, higher contributions, etc.). There's not only no financial budgeting for all of this, but it also dangerously calls into question the positive results (from the point of view of capitalism's interests) obtained by the state over the last years from this so-called reform. This deal moreover, was associated with the economics minister Savone who, although he says today that he doesn't want to come out of the EU, is a declared fervent anti-European. Putting his policies in place would mean evident problems for the Italian state within the EU;
3. A strongly discredited political apparatus (the Democratic Party and the Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi, this latter fraction of the centre-right having only gained power in the past as a member of a coalition with the League and the Brothers of Italy), incapable of setting up a real alternative to the populist forces and equally torn apart by internal divisions and conflicts.
All this is in the context where beyond such phrases as the "defence of Italian interests", each element tries to defend their own interests, to maintain and strengthen the place they have on the political stage to the detriment of the others. For example, in the case of the refusal of the DP to accept 5-SM, which would have probably discredited it even more, or the League, which has played on its electoral success as much in negotiations with 5-SM as with the centre-right coalition.
Taking account of this framework and of the absolute priority of the Italian state to assure a relative stability in its budget, of its hard-won capacity to negotiate within the EU and its respect for present imperialist alliances, it is clear that the planned government would cause a great deal of concern to the dominant class. The veto on the nomination of Savona comes from this, with Mattarella fulfilling the role conferred on him through the Constitution to the President of the Republic as the guarantor of the defence of the national interest. In fact Di Maio has a point when he said at a meeting in Fiumicino: "In this country, you can be a condemned criminal, condemned for fiscal fraud... you could have committed crimes against the public administration, you could be subject to an enquiry for corruption and become a Minister. But if you've criticised Europe, you can't even be allowed to become a Minister of the Economy". In fact that's how it works because contrary what to what he, Grillo (comedian and co-founder of 5-SM) Salvini, Meloni, Travaglio (a journalist investigating corruption among Italian politicians) and their consorts want us to think, the Italian Constitution, as well as that of any other state, is nothing less than a tool in the hands of the ruling class for controlling and managing its domination over society in the best way possible, in a democratic framework, safeguarding the national capital on the economic level and on the international political scale.
However, the bourgeoisie, as much in Italy as Germany, Britain or the United States, has another problem: it can't exclude from the populist forces which win elections from forming governments, because that would demolish the democratic mystification which constitutes the most powerful tool of its domination. The extremely prudent and patient waiting-game of Matterella is based on this recognition and his attempt to form a government that is as weak as possible is similar to what Angela Merkel is manoeuvring around in Germany. The supplementary problem posed by the situation in Italy is that here there isn't the possibility of deploying a third force along with Salvini and Di Maio. It's not by chance that the first attempt by Matterella was to try to form a government of all of the centre-right forces with 5-SM and with the presence of Forza Italia, because despite all the discredit he has suffered, Berlesconi (who has served in four governments as Prime Minister), has nevertheless shown his loyalty to NATO and the EU.
The finally constituted Conte government maintains all its problematic nature and it will have to be mastered. But the firmness of Matarella on the Economy minister and on the institutional role of the President of the Republic have at least forced 5-SM and the League to fall into line from previously irresponsible attitudes of protest and to express their opinion on the position of Italy at the international level.
What are the consequences for the proletariat?
As we've already said, the programme of this new government will do nothing to stem the increase in poverty and precariousness, the lack of perspectives, the social degradation that the vast majority of the exploited are living through, many of whom can't even sell the only thing that they have: their labour. Or, if they have a job, it's in conditions of slavery which often doesn't even allow them to survive. The great measures promised by the government are the "citizen's income" and the flat rate tax (a 15 - 20% tax rate). The first, already largely re-scaled down from the electoral promises, doesn't rise much more than 80 euros and carries with it growing conditions of blackmail: either you accept any type of job with whatever wages going or you get nothing. In fact that means that you must live on 780 euros a month which hardly covers the rent or the cost of a roof above your head. For its part, the flat rate tax raises nothing and adds nothing for lower incomes but allows a lot of saving for higher incomes. Paradoxically it favours businessmen of the Berlesconi type and certainly not the ordinary wage earner. It's clear that in judging the first steps of the Conte government, the consolidation of the public accounts and international politics can only be made at the expense of the workers who are the producers of all the national wealth.
However, the greatest effect of this electoral farce and the recent events on the proletariat is situated on the ideological level.
Democracy at work against the proletariat
There's no doubt that events over the last months have caused incredulity and confusion but they have also further discredited a divided political class that is hesitant in its political choices and incapable of facing up to a tragic situation. There's no doubt that this gives rise to some reflection and questioning and an attempt to understand the reasons behind it, beyond the contingencies of the formation of a government. But this process of reflection is trapped and skewed by a whole series of mystifications used by the League and 5-SM in order to push the proletarians to look for the reasons for their suffering in this or that particular evil, this or that institution, but never in the economic system of capitalism itself which, based on exploitation, competition and the struggle between nation states, can only favour a small, dominant minority to the detriment of the rest of humanity. Thus, in this lying framework, refugees and immigrants become the scapegoats, "invaders" against whom it's necessary to protect ourselves; together with dependence on Germany, all this is presented as being responsible for crippling taxes and the loss of life savings, for people losing their jobs and living on miserable wages of misery, for depriving the new generation of a decent life.
However, the most damaging mystifications which have regained their full force over the last months are those of the defence of democracy and nationalism. Matterella’s veto on Savone has unleashed a ringing choir from 5-SM, the League, the Brothers of Italy and a whole series of media representatives such as Travaglio, according to whom democracy has been trampled underfoot, preventing the parties freely chosen by the "sovereign people" from governing. For this reason Matterella and his clique are painted as puppets manipulated by other nations who want to dictate their law to the Italian "people".
This campaign has had a certain echo in the population and also among the proletariat, provoking a division between two opposing camps: between those defending the institutions (represented by Matterella in this business) and those defending the sovereignty of the "Italian people" against interference by foreign states. This opposition is more apparent than real because the idea that unites the two positions is the defence of the democratic state as expressing the interests of the "citizens" of a given nation who decide their own destiny through voting.
But it's precisely the weight of this mystification which prevents the development of consciousness within the working class on the fundamental nature of this system and its political apparatus. Democracy carries with it the idea that the basis of society is not that of classes but of the individual and that the individual as a "citizen" can only act by delegating the defence of their interests to a larger group (party, union or institution). This is what leads millions of workers to vote, to think that such and such a party can change anything despite the growing disillusionment and distrust towards the parties, despite the anger faced with the inhuman living conditions imposed upon them. Nationalism strengthens this idea by posing the defence of the individual as part of a national whole, in which our interests as the exploited are the same as those that exploit and oppress us, and where we all have an interest in a minimum of security faced with a common enemy (whether this takes the form of the interference of other powers or an influx of migrants). This strengthens still more the difficulty of the proletariat in seeing itself as part of one class with distinct interests from the rest of society; a world class where millions of workers are in the same position and must defend themselves against the attacks of capital whether in Italy, Germany, China or America. The two aspects of this mystification thus tend to keep the workers attached to the state and to its institutions but, above all, they hold back the development of class consciousness in a collective, social force which can not only defend itself but can also radically change society.
Populism feeds these mystifications which are the main weapons of the bourgeoisie. It is only by taking up its class identity, its status as a class that is both exploited and revolutionary, that the proletariat will be able to confront the traps of democracy and populist ideology and, above all, overcome the capitalist system and its noxious consequences for humanity.
From Rivoluzione Internazionale, the ICC's section in Italy, June 13 2018.
[1] See our Theses on decomposition, the ultimate phase of capitalist decadence, written in May 1990 and re-published in the International Review no. 107.
[2] Contribution on the problem of populism and Resolution on the international situation of 22nd International Congress of the ICC.
[3] Growing difficulties for the bourgeoisie and the working class, 13.7.16, ICConline.
[4] Interview of Fattie/Misfatti with Matteo Salvini, ex- Federal Secretary of the Northern League, now joint Deputy PM and Minister of the Interior, 29.1.2018.
In a region scarred by imperialist war and sectarian divisions, the recent social protests in Iran, Jordan and Iraq offer hope that there is another possibility: the united struggle of the exploited against capital and its brutal violence. This article, written by a close sympathiser, looks at the massive demonstrations that have swept through central and southern Iraq.
Starting on July 8 a number of spontaneous protests broke out in central and southern Iraq involving thousands of demonstrators. It spread through eight southern provinces very quickly and, about a fortnight later, onto the streets of Baghdad. These followed significant protests in Jordan and Iran on exactly the same issues. The movement in Iraq would have been aware of these protests and inspired by them given the basic similarities.
The working class in Iraq is numerically and generally weaker than in the two other countries and though there are reports of protesters and oil workers meeting up, the content and context of those meetings are not known. But the driving forces of the protests are class issues:
- Unemployment: the official figures of 18% youth unemployment are believed by no-one as over four-hundred-thousand youths come onto the labour market every year with little prospect of a job;
- Lack of basic services: the 50 degree heat has further increased the misery resulting from restrictions on and outages of electricity which is only available for a short part of the day and this is despite $40 billion allocated since 2003 to rebuild the country’s network.
- Healthcare: cancers and other serious congenital illnesses of the brain and the body in children and numerous other serious health failings are rising throughout Iraq. As long ago as 2009, Reuters reported that many families were making the terrible decision to let their children die (December 1)[1]. The lack of care in these serious instances is reflected in all levels of health care in Iraq.
- Water: similar to the demonstrators in Jordan and Iran (where in the south the military was siphoning vast amounts off to feed their agri-businesses), the protesters have demanded access to clean drinking water. The demand for this basic need of potable water shows a convergence of economic and ecological issues within the protests. [2]
- High rents and unpaid wages (Rudaw Media, 20.7.18).
- Corruption and cronyism: as in Jordan and Iran these are essential elements of the war economy and those that live high on it incur the indignation of the masses as living conditions decline throughout the country. Protesters have also denounced the "election fraud".
Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, Ali al-Sistani, has called on the government to accept the protesters’ demands; similar "support" for the protests has come from the populist Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr[3] who, subject to a recount, won the May 12 elections with the help of the Iraqi Communist Party; the Prime Minister of the ruling Sawa Party, Haider al-Abadi, has promised funding and projects to respond to the protests; and the Saudis, sniffing an opportunity to counter Iranian influence, have promised "aid".
Not only have government and municipal buildings been the target of demonstrators’ attacks but so have the Shia institutions belying their hypocritical "support" for the wave of protests. The "radical" populist al-Sadr had his delegation to the protesters attacked and seen off – this was shown in footage on social media. Every major Shia institution has been rejected and their offices attacked and what makes this even more important is that the attacks have come from their own constituents in the Shia heartlands, with the protesters ironically using the term Safavids to describe their leaders, an expression referring to past Shia dynasties by often used by Sunnis as a term of abuse. Iranian planes were ransacked at the airport of the Shia holy city of Najaf and the HQ's of pro-Iranian militia including the Popular Mobilisation Units have been targeted and burnt along with government offices. According to Kurdistan News 24, 14.7.18, regular Iraqi army units joined the protests in at least one province. When the protests took a step forward and hit Baghdad, Middle-East Eye, 19.7.18, reports the slogan "Not Sunni, not Shia, secular, secular!" coming from large crowds.
Prime Minister al-Abadi has sacked a minister and some officials and promised reform but the overwhelming response of the state has been repression, round-ups, arrests and torture, while further protests have seen the release of detainees. The government declared a "state of emergency" and imposed an internet crackdown early on, and tear gas, water cannon and live ammunition has been used against the protesters. Counter-terrorism units were mobilised against the protesters in Baghdad, unthinkable without the say-so of the US and British high command in the "Green Zone". At least 14 people have been killed and 729 injured according to Human Rights Campaign, 20.7.18. But the protests, going on for some three weeks now, have continued up to this week-end when security forces attacked demonstrators outside the provincial council and oil field of Qurna, Basra.
Like Iran and like Jordan these outbursts are directed against a war economy and all its parasitic detritus. Like Iran and like Jordan the protests of 2018 in Iraq are more widespread and more profound that the previous outbreaks (in 2015 in Iraq's case) and it's fairly obvious that the religious leaders have much less influence. The promises of the government and the influence of the religious leaders are losing their sway as the proletariat and the masses fight for their own interests in these skirmishes against capital and its war economy.
Baboon, 30.7.18
[1] Much of this wholesale poisoning has been put down to the US/British-led Coalition's bombing campaigns and particularly through the spread of depleted uranium. The greatest scale of the damage and deformities are in the places bombed most: Fallujah and Basra. In London, the Ministry of Defence uses the old "there's no evidence" line and British politicians who are quick to denounce the chemical bombings of others haven't a word to say about their own atrocities.
[2] It's not just in the Middle East that there's a lack of clean drinking water; according to the US Environmental Protection Agency more than five million Americans are exposed to drinking water containing toxins over safe levels (WSWS, 27.7.18). And, on a wider level, if Trump has generally rejected climate change, the Pentagon has not and, entirely in the interests of US imperialism, sees this, including water shortages, as a present danger - referenced by its National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate, 27.5.15.
[3] Al-Sadr has been touted by the west as "the new face of reform", New York Times, 20.5.18.
The following article is one of several through which we plan to deal with the rise of China and its consequences for imperialist relations worldwide. For reasons of space we will focus in this article on the New Silk Road. In future we look in more detail at Chinese ambitions in Africa and Latin America and examine its overall rivalry with the US.
“For now however, China is not looking for direct confrontation with the US; on the contrary, it plans to become the most powerful economy in the world by 2050 and aims at developing its links with the rest of the world while trying to avoid direct clashes. China’s policy is a long-term one, contrary to the short-term deals favoured by Trump. It seeks to expand its industrial, technological and, above all, military expertise and power. On this last level, the US still has a considerable lead over China”. ICC Report on Imperialist Tensions, June 2018
In May 2017 with the presence of 27 heads of states or governments the Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) project also called the “New Silk Road”. This project is composed of two elements: the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), and Maritime Silk Road (MSR). This project involves around 65 countries, making up for 60% of the population of the planet and around 1/3 of the GNP of the world. The Chinese president announced investments over a period of the next 30 years (2050!) up to 1.2 trillion dollars. This is not only the biggest economic project of this century, but it is also the outline of the most ambitious imperialist projects that China has made public. Behind this Xi Jinping declares the goal of overtaking the US and becoming world power number one by 2050.
This project corresponds to the ambitions of China to reconquer its old leading position in the world – which it occupied until the penetration of the capitalist powers into China in the early 18th century.[1] With this proclaimed goal China aims at the biggest shift in the imperialist power constellation for more than a century. The Silk Road project is only one, albeit essential, move in China’s ambitions. After having expanded massively on an economic level, China also began laying a “String of Pearls” in the Indian Ocean, allowing China to encircle India via Burma, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Maldives. After this maritime expansion, the Silk Road project aims at a new overland expansion on the Asian Continent.
China has become the most populous country on the planet: almost 1.4 billion people live there (India ranks second with 1.32 billion). It is the second economic power in the world and in many branches it has already become number one; and it has the third largest land mass. After more than three decades of capitalist modernisation and opening-up, China has become the world's largest trading country, e-commerce country, and consumer market. Between 1979 and 2009, in thirty years, Chinese GDP in constant 2005 dollars has grown from about 201 billion to about 3.5 trillion; Chinese exports have grown from almost 5% of their share in GDP to about 29%; imports from about 4% to 24%. Trade surpluses have led to a large growth in China’s reserves, which has allowed Chinese capital to move out for investments, mergers and acquisitions and to become an important FDI[2] source on the world’s financial stage. It is expected that by 2030 China will account for one fifth of the global economic output of the world. The country has been investing massively in the most modern industrial techniques such as quantum technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As for its military expenses they amount to the total of all European countries put together. No other country could entertain such ambitions, and no other country could develop such a vision, stretching out its tentacles across the Asian continent. For the moment not through direct military occupation (except for the coral reefs in the South China Sea) but through building an economic network with a whole geo-strategic policy behind it: developing new infrastructure, implanting outposts, forging privileged links. Chinese ambitions are shaking the entire imperialist constellation and not only in the surrounding Asian area: it has an impact on the Pacific countries, on the Indian Ocean, on Africa, on South America, on Europe and of course on its relationship with the US. In short, it has the most far-reaching international and long-term repercussions. At the same time, its ambitions will bring it into conflict not only with the US, but also with other countries. Already resistance has been gathering from some of its closest neighbours (Vietnam, India, Japan), and China’s plans will also pose a new challenge for Russia. This project also aims at thwarting any possibility of strangling China by blocking maritime transport in the strait of Malacca or the South China Sea. By establishing railway connections to Iran, Pakistan, Burma and Thailand China hopes to circumvent possible means of strangulation or to alleviate some of the worst effects.[3]
The New Silk Road project will be linking China via Central Asia and Russia with Europe, and the maritime connection will allow it to establish new links with Africa and Europe through the China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Six corridors between China and Europe are to be established.
The first major corridor: railway connection and pipelines connecting China and Europe via Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.[4]
The other two major corridors: Western China – via Central Asia – and the Middle East towards Turkey via Iran; and the China-Pakistan corridor linking it to the Indian Ocean.[5] Three of the six corridors pass through the Central Asian part of Xinjiang.
In addition three “secondary” corridors will be connecting a) China-Mongolia-Russia, b) Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM), c) China-Indochina – (through northern Laos – stretching into Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia-Singapore -i.e. to South East Asian waters). In Asia a railway line of 873 km is to establish a link between China and the Thai coast.
In Africa China has financed and constructed a railway line between Djibouti and Addis Ababa (Djibouti Silk Road Station); it will be financing a railway line of 471 km in Kenya between the capital Nairobi and the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. The long-term goal is to establish a network of railway connections between the new port of Lamu (Kenya), South Sudan, and Ethiopia (LAPSSET). Following Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt and Djibouti, Morocco has also started cooperating in the New Silk Road project.[6]
A whole chain of ports and big investment projects is to offer the logistical basis for further investments in the area.
In addition to the overland railway connections, and building on the “String of Pearls”, the Maritime Silk Road is the second plank of the mega-project, which requires the expansion and construction of ports along the main sea routes connecting China via the South China Sea, the Malacca Strait, the Indian Ocean to the coasts of Africa. Plans in the Arctic of an “Ice Silk road” to establish a short cut between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic along the Northern Siberian route, as well as plans to build a second canal in Central America through Nicaragua, are part of the global Chinese strategy.
Furthermore, China also plans to build fibre optic cables, international trunk passageways, mobile structures and e-commerce links along its Silk Road corridors. While this will certainly boost connectivity and information exchange, it can easily enable China to carry out electronic surveillance and increase its cyberspace presence, raising its espionage capabilities…
An enormous gamble
Of course this “master plan” will need a long time to implement and it faces a number of obstacles. The capacities of resistance by other powers are impossible to assess realistically at the moment. However, the Chinese State seems to be ready to throw maximum resources at it:
- China’s state-owned commercial banks are being pushed to supply money for the government plans;
- the State controlled China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) have already provided $200 billion in loans to several of the countries participating in the project;
- CDB and EXIM have imposed debt ceilings for each country and set limits on borrowers’ credit lines;
- most infrastructure loans were negotiated primarily between governments with interest rates below the commercial ones. For example CDB offered Indonesia a 40-year concessionary loan, without insisting on Indonesian government debt guarantees to finance 75% of the $ 5 million Jakarta-Bandung railway;
- China has facilitated loans to countries that would have difficulty getting loans from Western commercial banks;
- 47 of China’s 102 government-owned conglomerates participated in more than 1600 Belt and Road projects;
- the China Communications Construction Group snatched $40 billion of contracts.
And so forth … So while this may be seen as a huge economic and financial gamble, it certainly reflects the determination of the Chinese state to fortify its position at all costs. At the same time, the project, whose implementation is planned over a period of 30 years, will have to face the storms of world-wide escalations of the economic crisis, trade wars, political turbulences and the growing resistance by China’s rivals – from the US to a number of other countries.
In short, all the mounting contradictions of the capitalist crisis and the sharpening antagonisms between the US and China make it impossible to answer the question whether the project will ever be completed. Not to mention the unpredictable development of the Chinese economy and its financial resources in the long-term.
In addition, the speed with which China built its railway lines within China during the past years – with the State mobilising all sorts of resources and brushing aside any ecological doubts or resistance from the local population – will not be easily duplicated on an international level. Several of the projects pass through areas under attack by jihadists. And a number of countries participating in the project will be piling up so many debts implying that any future financial storms may mean the end of their solvency. For example, building the Kunming-Singapore Railway through Laos will cost the country $6 billion, nearly 40% of GDP of Laos in 2016. Pakistan’s external debt has risen by 50% over the past three years, reaching nearly $100 billion, and around 30% of that is owed to China. Turkmenistan is facing a liquidity crunch due to debt payments to China. Tajikistan has sold the right to develop a gold mine to a Chinese company in lieu of repaying loans. And many of the participating countries have been marked and will be marked by political instability, civil unrest and armed conflict.
However, while the question marks hanging over the project are almost endless, these high risks have not prevented the Chinese government from drafting this plan.
China’s re-emergence in the context of decomposition
The fact that China is now openly putting forward such ambitions is based on the new position which China occupies in the world economy and in the imperialist pecking order. As we have developed in previous articles[7] China had been a world leading power until the turn of the 18th century, when it was dismembered mainly by the European colonial powers Britain and France, and when it was partly occupied by Japan until 1945. When Mao Zedong took power in 1949, the Chinese state did not have the means to revive the old Chinese ambitions. In the context of a long period of dependence on Russia, the Peoples’ Republic of China desperately tried to overcome its backwardness. Already in the early 1950s in the Korean war it showed its desire to break US domination in the region, and later, in the 1960s, China began to clash with India, and above all with Russia. In relation to Russia and the US China was the underdog for decades. Neither the “Great Leap Forward”, nor its decade-long autarky, nor the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s enabled it to develop the power to compete with its bigger rivals. And the division of China into Taiwan and mainland China, the permanent stand-off with the US over Korea, in Vietnam and the Pacific (Taiwan, Japan), the year-long conflict with Russia along the Ussuri River, left China surrounded and dead-locked on the geo-strategic and military level.
However, having suffered a military humiliation at the hands of the much smaller Vietnam in the 1979 conflict, the Chinese army was determined to modernise its forces. And in the context of a collapsing Stalinist regime in Russia and Eastern Europe, the Chinese Communist Party resolved to adapt the country to the new conditions which have existed since 1989. Its spectacular economic growth and its determination to reconquer its position in a world where the US has been on the decline for decades, meant that China would have to throw in its economic weight to translate this into geo-strategic, imperialist triumphs.[8]
Its prodigious economic development of the last few decades unleashed a strong push for putting forward its interest on the imperialist chessboard, which since the late 1980s has been marked by: a) the fact that the former Soviet bloc began to fall apart and imploded in 1991 and b) the US - as the only remaining super-power – has and is being undermined and challenged in many areas; by India, Iran, Turkey and many other countries advancing their own imperialist ambitions. In other words, a world where there has been a “free-for-all” of imperialist tensions. The confrontation between the US and China in the region is but one polarisation (even though the most dangerous in the long-term) in the midst of an increasingly complex minefield of imperialist tensions.
The New Silk-Road – only an economic project?
For two decades the Chinese economy recorded very high growth figures, in some years even double-digit growth rates. These have now slowed down (in 2017 to 6.5%) and it is undeniable that the New Silk Road project is also a response to these difficulties. Chinese national capital must find more outlets for its gigantic overproduction. In particular in the branches developing infrastructure, or the sectors of iron and steel, cement, and aluminium, overproduction is at its highest. Between 2011 and 2013 China produced more cement than the US during the entire 20th century. With insufficient demand on the Chinese market Chinese companies must at all cost find outlets abroad.
Infrastructural projects offer not only the necessary logistics for conquering new markets and installing new corridors for the transport of troops; they also require massive investments themselves. Of the 800 million tons of steel produced in 2015 by Chinese state-run companies, 112 million tons were exported at giveaway prices, because sales possibilities have shrunk on the internal market. Thus with the new Silk Road project the Chinese state is launching one of the biggest ever state capitalist interventions to boost the ailing economy. And the Chinese state has planned to invest the most massive financial resources to achieve this. China is said to have already released $1000-$1400 billion for the first financing of the Silk Road projects, but the total cost is expected to amount by 2049 (the year of 100 years of existence of the Peoples’ Republic of China) to twice the size of the present GNP of China If we compare the amount of funds already available, proportionately they supersede by far the USA’s Marshall Plan funds of 1948, through which the US granted $5 billion in aid to 16 European nations[9].
Unlike Russia and the US, China can still mobilise such enormous amounts. Russia never disposed of such funds, largely because of the weight of the war economy at the time of the Cold War and its traditional “backwardness” linked to the mechanisms of Stalinist rule.
Russian capitalism under Putin has not become more competitive on the world market. The strong dependence on the income it generates through energy resources and the weight of its war economy mean that it simply does not have the funds to develop projects comparable to the New Silk Road. And the US, also, among other reasons, as a result of its gigantic military expenses, can no longer play its “financial joker” as it could in the past. In many sectors US industry is lagging behind and in many areas parts of its infrastructure are derelict. Thus China is presently the only country able to make such colossal amounts available, even if much of this is financed with state seconded credits. But while the past two decades allowed for China’s dizzying ascent, future conditions of the development of world capitalism are unlikely to offer the same advantageous framework for China.
Can we compare the construction of such a new gigantic railway network across Asia and in other continents to the role which the construction of the railways played in the expanding phase of capitalism in the US in the 19th century?
As Rosa Luxemburg developed in her writings (The Accumulation of Capital and An Introduction to Political Economy) the construction of the railways in the US and their advance to the Far West was accompanied by the conquest of land from the native population through a combination of force and the penetration of commodity relations. The railways pushed into a zone dominated by pre-capitalist production. The combined efforts of the railway companies, the state with its judicial apparatus and its armed forces, began to eliminate any local resistance and paved the way for the integration of the area into the capitalist system. With the construction of the Silk Road railways across Central Asia and elsewhere, it is true that some areas which have hitherto been in the periphery, or even existing outside of the capitalist market, will be faced even more with a flood of Chinese products. And since Chinese workers have been often been engaged in the construction of infrastructure or other major projects, probably only a small portion of the local population will find (temporary or permanent) jobs thanks to these new transport corridors. On the whole this construction is unlikely to have an economic spin-off similar to the extension of the US railways had in the 19th century. The most likely scenario is that of a widespread ruin of local producers and shop owners crushed by more competitive Chinese products...
Competition between China and Russia
China’s economy is about eight times larger than Russia’s (and its population is 10 times larger), but China is extremely dependent on energy supply from abroad, and Central Asia plays a particularly vital role for China’s energy supply.
The Chinese state is trying to reduce its dependence on energy delivered by Russia (it receives 10% of its oil and 3% of its gas from Russia). And China is now aiming to secure new energy supply routes to its west, by-passing the dangers hanging over the Middle East and the transport routes from there to China. 43% of Chinese oil and 38% of gas consumption come from Saudi Arabia. The maritime transport passes along the coasts of Hormuz, Aden and the straits of Malacca, all within the reach of the US 5th and 7th fleets, stationed in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. In other words, China is attempting to make the energy resources of Central Asia more accessible to its needs.
However any Chinese plans to establish closer links with Central Asia and beyond will profoundly alter its relationship with Russia. This comes after a period when, during the past 20 years, China has already been expanding its influence into Siberian territory to its north.
Since 1991 the Russian Far East (RFE) has lost about a quarter of its population. The number of Chinese immigrant workers in the RFE has gone by up 400,000 since January 2017, while Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District has lost two million people since 1991 (about a quarter of its population) as a result of higher death rates and emigration. Russia has been leasing land – hundreds of thousands of hectares – to Chinese companies and allowing cheap timber extraction. There is the possibility that the Chinese population will at some stage outnumber the Russian population and that Chinese commercial influence will become dominant. For Russian nationalists this means the goal of the Russian Czar when constructing the Siberian Railway - to keep control over Siberia and to be able to play a crucial role in Far East - is being threatened.[10] And after its expansion into the Russian Far East, with the new Silk Road project China is now launching another offensive to its west.
Up till recently, Russia could consider Central Asia as its “backyard” but now Russian trade with Central Asia has been falling continuously. In 2000 the Chinese share in trade with Central Asia was only 3%, whereas in 2012 it had risen to 25% - mostly at the expense of Russia.[11] Moscow’s means of avoiding further damage resulting from Chinese expansion are limited. Even before the project was announced officially by the Chinese president Xi Jinping, Russia had tried to stabilise its position in Central Asia by setting up, in 2014, the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union) which excluded China.[12]
But for the Central Asian countries the Silk Road project seems to be more attractive, because of the promise of Chinese investments in the region and more free trade. The Russian-dominated EEU only offers a tariff union, while Russia itself is short of funds. This sheds light on the chronic lagging behind of Russian capital. Russia has been trying to compensate for its economic inferiority through the increasing role of its military. But China is also acting as a growing rival to Russia on the military level in Central Asia. For example China has begun delivering military equipment to Central Asian countries. Common manoeuvres have begun between Chinese and Central Asian troops. Even though Russia still dominates the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)[13] (Armenia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia belong to it), China has been declaring its intention of safeguarding security in the region, counting on its own forces. Negotiations have begun with Turkmenistan to open a military base in the country (the second after Djibouti). And China also engaged in a security alliance with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan to fight terrorism. Military cooperation between Central Asian countries and China mark a turning point, because previously China had abstained from establishing a military presence and won sympathy among many regimes because of its “non-interference in the affairs of other countries”. Its policy of either keeping a low profile or acting more aggressively, as in the South China Sea, correspond to the “push” and “pull” tactics.
More globally the development of Russian-Chinese relations show the contradictory nature of their relationship, where one country has either been heavily dependent on the other (as China was on Stalin’s Russia in the early days of Mao,) or where they have been developing their rivalry and even directly threatening each other with mutual destruction (as in the 1960s). Each time both countries had major antagonisms with the US (even though temporarily, in the early 1980s, China supported the US in Afghanistan against Russia). Since 1989 China has aimed at a closer cooperation with Russia in order to counter the US wherever possible, and in an initial period China also received most of its weapons and military technology from Russia. This is changing.
China has also always used Russia as a source of energy. After the Russian occupation of Crimea and Russia’s hidden presence in Eastern Ukraine, China benefited from the Western sanctions against Russia. Looking for a counter-weight to the sanctions, Russia had to find markets in China, but China could put pressure on Russia and lower both Russian prices of energy products and receive concessions for investing in Russia. Thus while Russia scored points by occupying Crimea and being present in Eastern Ukraine, it paid a heavy price by getting somewhat blackmailed into bargain deals for China. This shows that the Russian war economy comes at a high price. At the same time, Russia, which feels threatened by the Chinese “invasion through the backdoor” in East Asia and its Silk Road ambitions westwards, is aware of the asymmetric nature of the relationship between the two rivals. The more China develops its own armaments industry and technology the less dependent it will be on Russian arms exports and arms technology transfers. China could not openly welcome the Russian occupation of Crimea, because it would have discredited China’s intransigence on territorial integrity – indispensable with regard to Uighur independence aspirations in Xinjiang. Russia is also in a dilemma vis-a-vis China’s expansion in the South China Sea (SCS), especially after China has more or less occupied a number of coral reefs in the South China Sea, transforming them into military bases. Military ties between Russia and Vietnam could also create tensions between China and Russia.[14]
However, as we have shown elsewhere,[15] Russia and China work together as much as possible against the US. The two countries have held common military manoeuvres in the Far East, in the Mediterranean and in the Baltic Sea. But the Silk Road project is certainly one of the Chinese schemes which will force Russia to react. At the same time it will push other countries to try and deepen any antagonistic interests between China and Russia.
With the Chinese advance in Central Asia, China has managed to benefit from the weakening of both the US and Russia in the region. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet empire the US managed to develop privileged links and even to open some military bases in Central Asia. However, in the context of US decline worldwide, the US has also been losing ground in Central Asia – with China being the main beneficiary.[16]
But the Central Asian countries fear both Russian military hegemony and Chinese expansion and may try to gain as much as possible for themselves by taking advantage of divergent interests between Russia and China.
China’s push towards Europe is also driving a wedge between Europe and Russia
Since Europe presently absorbs 18% of Chinese exports, any improvement of trade connections would strengthen the Chinese position in Europe itself.[17] It is therefore particularly keen on speeding up freight traffic from the recently acquired port of Piraeus near Athens to Central Europe. The project of building a high speed train between Athens and Belgrade and further on to Budapest reflects China’s attempts to achieve a growing influence in Central Europe. China will use the Silk Road as a way of “sidelining” Russia (or if necessary enter into an alliance with it), in order to expand its position in Europe. This would at the same time threaten in particular the interests of European rivals in Central Europe itself, where Germany above all has achieved a dominant position. Reactions by German capital have already signalled that – in addition to the efforts to fend off Chinese attempts to get a stronger foothold in hi-tech sectors - German capital will counter-act the Silk Road project on different fronts. This may even mean that this will compel German capital or other national capitals to make tactical alliances against rising Chinese influence in the region. This brings in another unpredictable element - possible common steps by European countries together with Russia against China.
Turkey has also been a major target of Chinese investments. Chinese companies are involved in several of the megalomaniac projects of President Erdogan. Over the next three years the number of Chinese companies active in Turkey is expected to double. At the same time, China and Turkey have had tensions over the role of the Islamic Uighur in Xinjiang. Since Turkey is in a key position on the imperialist chessboard where Russian, European, American, Iranian ambitions are all clashing with each other, any Chinese move towards Turkey will add more explosive elements to this deeply conflicted area.
The Maritime Silk Road and its counter-moves
As part of the “One Belt - One Road” project, Iran has a specific importance. New transport corridors between Iran and China have been opened, and new port facilities in Iran are under construction.[18] At the same time, renewed US sanctions against Iran will make it possible for China to gain more influence in Iran – almost similar to the effects of the Western sanctions against Russia, which also led to increased dependence of Russia on China and thus to a globally increased weight of China.
The Chinese expansion in the Indian Ocean compels all bordering states to position themselves. On the one hand China must push its Maritime Silk Road along the coasts of the Indian Ocean up to the Iranian coast. This creates additional tensions between Pakistan and India. In Pakistan, the port of Gwadar, not far from the Iranian border, will be connected to the extreme west of China after the construction of a 500 km road connection. The port should give Chinese trade easier access to the Middle East than by sea through the Strait of Malacca (between Malaysia and Indonesia). India is protesting against this road project that crosses the part of Kashmir claimed by New Delhi. A new international airport is to be built in Gwadar.
And the Maritime Silk Project also pushes India to take counter-measures. On the one hand Iran does not want to be too dependent on China: this is why it seeks to strengthen its ties with India. India contributed to the construction of the new Iranian port of Chabahar, allowing India to avoid passing through Pakistan to reach Afghanistan. At the same time, India itself which has had special links with Russia for decades, has intensified these, despite the fact that on a military level India has also tried to diversify its arms purchases at the expense of Russia and that India is seen by the US as an important counter-weight against Chinese expansion. It has received American backing for its stronger militarisation, in particular increasing its nuclear capabilities. And together with Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, India has been attempting for some time to establish an International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) which is to connect Mumbai to St Petersburg via Tehran and Baku/Azerbaijan.[19]
In addition India and Japan have launched the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), trying to intensify links between Japan, Oceania, South-East Asia, India and Africa…. with the plans to build an India-Burma-Thailand motorway. As for the scramble for port facilities in the Indian Ocean, China has signed deals to set up new port facilities in Hambantota in Sri Lanka and begun the modernisation of ports in Bangladesh. Both in Pakistan and in Sri Lanka this led to spiral of new debts. The construction of the port facilities in Hambantota will give China a 99 year control over the port.
The development in Afghanistan sheds light on the main beneficiaries of the almost 40 years of war in the country.
Russia had to withdraw its troops after its occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-1989, following a 10 year- long war of attrition, which contributed to the implosion of the Soviet Union. The US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan have also experienced a real fiasco, where after more than 15 years of occupation of the country by western troops, the coalition has not been able to stabilise the country. On the contrary, in the midst of widespread terror across the country, their own troops fear for their lives wherever they go. While the western countries poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan for waging war and have stationed thousands of troops (many of whom have become traumatised), China has bought mines (for example at the price of $3.5 billion for a copper mine in Aynak) and is building a railway line connecting Logar (south of Kabul) with Torkham (a Pakistan border town) without any military mobilisation as yet. But while China has so far been spared from military attacks in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that this will continue. [20]
The increasing Chinese influence along the “String of Pearls” in South-East Asia and the geo-strategic advance along the Maritime Silk Road will thus sharpen contradictions in this part of the Asia.
Africa: China set to challenge European domination
In addition to the expansion of Chinese influence on the Asian continent in different directions, China has also begun advancing its pawns into Africa, where Chinese boats arrived as early as 1415. At that time China did not settle in Africa. This left room for the European colonial powers, whose expansion across the world began shortly afterwards. Now, 600 years later, it is above all European influence in Africa which China is pushing back. In 2018 it is estimated that around one million Chinese live on the African continent (workers, shop and company owners). The construction of the above mentioned railway lines in Ethiopia and in Kenya and plans for more extensive railway connections highlight their long-term ambitions in Africa. A number of countries (Djibouti, Egypt, Algeria, Cape-Verde, Ghana, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola) have begun buying Chinese military technology; Namibia and Ivory Coast plan to have centres facilitating the supplies for the Chinese navy. As mentioned above, we will deal with Chinese expansion into Africa in a future article.
Concluding this article, when we examine the ambitions behind the “One Belt One Road” project, we are left in no doubt that this huge undertaking is more than an economic “recovery” program. Building such a gigantic infrastructure is inseparably linked to long-term Chinese ambitions of becoming the leading power, with the goal of toppling the US. Even if nobody can predict at the moment whether this project can be implemented in view of the unpredictable factors and risks mentioned above, such an expansion is not only bound to reshape the imperialist constellations in Asia - it will also have far-reaching implications in Europe and in the other continents.
Gordon, September 2018
[1] Foreign Direct Investment
[2] Foreign Direct Investment
[4] By 2018 the railway connected China already with around 30 European freight train stations. The 3 week long railway journey is shorter but still more expensive than the maritime route.
[5] In Turkey, three Chinese state-owned companies have acquired the country's third port, Kumport, near Istanbul. 10 billion dollar investments in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, Hambantoto in Sri Lanka, major investments in Cebu and Manila are scheduled. As for industrial parks, China is building a high-tech industrial park in Minsk/Belarus , the largest ever built abroad by the Asian giant. A similar project comes out of land in Kuantan, Malaysia for steel, aluminum and palm oil.
[6] In less than 20 years, China has become Africa's leading economic partner. Their trade reached $190 billion in 2016 and is now larger than that of the continent with India, France and the United States combined, according to figures released at https://www.capital.fr/economie-politique/nouvelles-routes-de-la-soie-le... [1777]
[8] quote from Diplomatie p. 65, « Gépolitique de la Chine »
“ In current dollars, Chinese GDP represented only 1.6% of total world GDP in 1990. This ratio rose to 3.6% in 2000 and 14.8% in 2016. Strategically, the key ratio between Chinese GDP and US GDP rose from 6% in 1990 to 11.8% in 2000 and 66.2% in 2017. (...) Compared to Japan, China accounted for only a quarter of the Japanese economy in 2000, surpassed Japan in 2011 before representing 225% of Japan in 2016 and probably over 250% in 2017)”.
[9] President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan on April 3, 1948, granting $5 billion in aid to 16 European nations. During the four years the plan was in effect, the United States donated $17 billion (equivalent to $193.53 billion in 2017) in economic and technical assistance to help the recovery of the European countries that joined the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. The $17 billion was in the context of a US GDP of $258 billion in 1948, and on top of $17 billion in American aid to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Plan that is counted separately from the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was replaced by the Mutual [1778] Security Plan [1778] at the end of 1951; that new plan gave away about $7 billion annually until 1961 when it was replaced by another program
[11] Diplomatie, January, 2018, p. 33
[13] https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/csto.htm [1781] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization [1782]
[16] After having relied on the logistics of Central Asian airports in the US-led war in Afghanistan, the US closed their military base in Manas (Kyrgyzstan) in 2014.
[18] The first train from China arrived at the time when US President Trump announced the cancellation of US participation in the Iran-nuclear deal in May 2018, thus making it possible for Iran to thwart parts of the US sanctions through Chinese railway connections.
On 25 May, Harvey Weinstein, the now notorious American film producer, was led in handcuffs from a New York police station to a court where he was charged with rape and sexual abuse. He was freed on bail while awaiting trial and fitted with an ankle bracelet to monitor his movements.
Ideological uses…
The “Weinstein affair” has been known all over the planet since the New York Times and the New Yorker published an inquiry into the numerous cases of sexual abuse committed by Weinstein, who has been denounced by dozens of women. Since then an even greater number of women have exposed similar aggressions and crimes by other men in all sectors: cinema, business, politics, etc.
At the beginning the media coverage of the “Weinstein affair” served mainly as a pretext for embarrassing Trump and pushing towards his impeachment. In the days of Bill Clinton, sexual abuses committed by a man who had a feeling of impunity because of his powerful position were used to weaken the president: the famous “Lewinsky affair”[1]. In October 2017, when the Weinstein affair came to light, the ignoble behaviour of this character was an open secret in American intellectual and cultural circles. By mediatising the resulting public anger, the American bourgeoisie had found yet another way of implicating the president, who also has form in this same area (among other things, the difficulties he now faces for his pay-offs to two women, a playboy model and a porn star, to keep them quiet about extra-marital affairs early in his marriage.)
At the same time, the international impact of this case shows that there is much more involved than yet another Machiavellian strategy of the bourgeoisie. It reveals a real and profound indignation around the condition of women in this society. The participation in International Woman’s Day demonstrations on 8 March 2018 was much bigger than in previous years and held in more countries (there were demonstrations in Turkey, Russia, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Switzerland, South Korea, Congo, the Ivory Coast, etc) and with more determined slogans denouncing rape and other forms of aggression against women.
This legitimate anger was however rapidly recuperated by the bourgeoisie through a social network campaign orchestrated by the media and entertainment industry, marked by a tendency to blame men in general and to spread feelings of victimisation and guilt. The truth is that the ruling class only wants people to express themselves freely when they are dragged into false dilemmas: men against women, good men against chauvinist pigs, while at the same time making full use of traditional reactions of puritanism and prudery. Righteous speeches proliferated; in several countries governments passed new laws or planned to do so, claiming to strengthen “equality between the sexes” around issues of pay, or to ensure harsher penalties for sexual harassment and attacks. The ruling class could not remain silent in the face of widespread anger which was, however, unable to break out of an inter-classist, sectional framework, unable to raise itself onto a class terrain, and which thus posed no real threat to the bourgeoisie’s class privileges. The bourgeoisie thus took advantage of this situation to keep everything inside the mystifications of democracy, inside the illusion that discrimination could be eliminated in the context of existing society.
This is a mystification. When prisons are full of men who have harassed women in the street or beaten up their wives, what has to change in society to remove the material basis of such behaviour? The bourgeoisie knows perfectly well that imposing harsher penalties on base behaviour towards women is just applying sticking plaster to a deep wound, and this makes its empty gestures even more despicable. By offering women the protection of the state, the bourgeoisie is simply imprisoning the “woman question” in the cage of bourgeois democracy, reducing it to a matter of deviant behaviour in a society where there is supposedly no inbuilt obstacle to “equality between men and women”.
This is precisely the trap that has to be avoided by this wave of legitimate indignation. If women are viciously exploited, mistreated, considered as slaves and sexual objects to men, this is not the product of a kind of “deviation” in this society, or of a tendency for it to go backwards, but an expression of its real nature as a system of class exploitation and oppression.
…of a real oppression
The workers’ movement didn’t take long in highlighting the specific condition of women in capitalist society. In 1845, Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in which he described how capitalism was destroying the health, the future, the lives of children and women by integrating them into the inhuman conditions of production in the big factories and mines. He also explained how a boss could easily abuse women in his employ because he wielded the power of life and death over them. But it was above all in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State that Engels showed that the subordination of women was deeply linked to the division of society into classes, to the existence of private property, arguing that the historic struggle of the proletariat contained within it the possibility for the real emancipation of women. Basing himself on the work of Morgan, Engels demonstrated that the appearance of private property gave rise to the family, the initial economic cell of class society. The man was now in charge and the woman was turned into an object, the property of the man and the procreator of children who would inherit the property of the male head of the family.
In the same period August Bebel, in his classic work Women and Socialism, described how capitalist relations perpetuated this position of women in the service of the man and how the social structures of capitalism were based on this position, especially bourgeois marriage. In capitalism women remain the property of men, reduced to a useful object at the beck and call of masculine desire. Bebel demonstrates that the logical expression of this situation is the fact that prostitution is necessary to the good functioning of capitalist society.
Marxism was thus very early on able to show that the subordination of women to men was not fundamentally a moral or even physical question, but a material and social one. With the development of the productive forces, humanity was led to abandon the collective social forms of primitive communism and adopt a form of organisation based on private property and the division into social classes. Capitalism, by integrating men, women and children into production has got rid of the old sexual division of labour but its social structures retain the framework of the subordination of women to men, particularly through marriage and the family.
The behaviour under the media spotlight today fully confirms this. Social evolution since the days of Engels and Bebel, far from putting women in a better place, has perpetuated her situation as an object for use. Women are still considered as fundamentally inferior beings, and the material development of the system has led to a growing dehumanisation of women’s relationships with men. Advertising, for example, makes brutal use of the female image, treating women as sexual objects. Pornography has become increasingly widespread thanks to the internet and acts as a vehicle for educating young people in completely reified relations between the sexes, normalising the most degrading behaviour and justifying sexual violence and harassment, especially at work where relations of domination and submission are more visible than elsewhere.
Furthermore, the workplace less and less supplies the minimal conditions for a social life. The decomposition of the social fabric and current conditions of exploitation produce and accentuate an atomisation of the individual which plunge many into solitude and sexual misery.
At the same time, the bourgeoisie has also developed a concern for the “woman question”. Feminist movements are nothing new and have appeared regularly throughout the history of capitalism. After all, don’t bourgeois women also suffer from the rule of their husbands? No doubt: but the feminist movement begins from a basis of inter-classist demands which, on the one hand, can only have a very limited effect in the context of this society, and, on the other hand, present a real danger for the proletariat in the sense that, like all inter-classist movements, feminism draws us away from the class demands and positions which alone contain the solution to the problem.
The necessity for a fight on class lines
Through a deep understanding of the inextricable link between the oppression and exploitation of women and the organisation of capitalist society, the workers’ movement was able to take up the concern for the situation of women while demarcating itself very clearly from the feminist movement developed by a part of the bourgeoisie that was calling for women to have access to education, the right to vote and so on. Clara Zetkin and August Bebel, within German social democracy, and Alexandra Kollontai in the Bolshevik party, to mention only a few, all emphasised the primary responsibility of capitalist society in the condition of women and thus the importance of linking this question to that of the working class as a whole, to the united struggle of male and female workers for the construction of a new society where men and women will live without chains.
What’s more, it was the workers’ movement which was behind International Women’s Day, the first of which took place on 28 February 1909. After 1914, International Women’s Day saw militant marches against the imperialist war, and in Russia, on March 8 1917[2], the mass demonstration of women (and male) workers raised slogans against war and hunger and was the spark that lit the fires of the proletarian revolution.
What has changed for women under capitalism since the situation described by Engels in 1845? In the developed countries, women have gained a certain number of rights: access to education, the vote…some are even at the head of big companies or even big countries! But their condition, in a more subtle and hypocritical way, is not that different. If women are no longer forced to work up until the day they give birth as Engels saw in English industry, an unemployed woman is bound to remain unemployed if she is pregnant and the chances of young women finding jobs is reduced by the “risk of maternity”. As in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the working class is basically faced with the same problems. But in the past workers’ parties could take up these questions and develop propaganda and education which had a real impact on the working class. Today, when capitalism can only keep going by engendering the decomposition of social relations, the working class is experiencing great difficulties to recognise its class identity. This is a major obstacle to understanding the necessarily revolutionary character of its struggle, which has to integrate the fight for a radical change in the feminine condition. What the workers’ movement has always put forward - that women will only lose their chains when the whole of humanity is freed by the victory of the proletarian revolution and the building of communism - the proletariat is finding hard to understand because of the low level of its class consciousness.
In this situation the bourgeoisie is posing the problem on the rotten and dangerous ground of inter-classism. According to this ideological standpoint, which derives from the ruling class, women must unite to free themselves from men and seize some of the power that men try to conserve for themselves and against women. Not only does this conception hide and exclude the antagonistic character of social relations (as though female workers have the same social or economic interests as bourgeois women), it also encourages the illusion that the state is the guarantor of “equality”, the force that restrains the powerful and slightly reduces their advantages in favour of the weak. In this framework, the feminist struggle is supposed to put pressure on the state to obtain more rights and more equality. Above all, it’s the old formula of divide and rule, the cultivation of obstacles to the unification of the class struggle, both in the future and in the immediate.
The indignation being expressed against the unjust, humiliating, and degrading treatment of women reveals the visceral incapacity of the capitalist system to allow a real improvement in the living conditions of the exploited. In complete opposition to all the arguments about the existence of social and economic progress, these conditions are getting worse given the continuing tendency towards the unravelling of the social tissue. All the “oppressed categories” (women, immigrants, homosexuals, this or that race or ethnicity, etc) who feel threatened or rejected are not suffering as a result of their particular condition as such but because the capitalist system only operates on the basis of two categories of human beings - the exploiters and the exploited - and through the competition of each against all which, under the pressure of the crisis, and above all of social decomposition, tends to exclude any form of difference, to restrict solidarity to the ghettoising framework of the defence of particular interests or identities.
What August Bebel wrote in the introduction to Women and Socialism remains impressively relevant today:
“The woman question deals with the position that woman should hold in our social organism, and seeks to determine how she can best develop her powers and her abilities, in order to become a useful member of human society, endowed with equal rights and serving society according to her best capacity. From our point of view this question coincides with that other question: in what manner should society be organized to abolish oppression, exploitation, misery and need, and to bring about the physical and mental welfare of individuals and of society as a whole? To us then, the woman question is only one phase of the general social question that at present occupies all intelligent minds, its final solution can only be attained by removing social extremes and the evils which are a result of such extremes”. GD, 2.7.18
Picture: International Women's Day, March 8 1917, a spark for the revolution in Russia
[1] See also the article written at the time of the “Strauss-Kahn scandal”, when “DSK” was president of the International Monetary Fund and a potential candidate for the Socialist Party in the presidential elections in France: “Affaire DSK: la femme est toujours le ‘prolétaire de l’homme’”, Révolution Internationale no 424.
[2] Last Sunday in February in the Russian calendar. Subsequently the 8 March became the official day of the event.
On November 4 1918 the sailors of Kiel on the Baltic coast mutinied, refusing the order to engage in yet another futile naval battle. Faced with the threat of brutal repression against the sailors, the workers of Kiel responded with a massive strike movement. Within days armed workers’ and soldiers’ councils were springing up all over Germany. This revolt spelt the end of the imperialist slaughter: the bourgeoisies of the world, who had been at each others’ throats for four long years, now united to face a bigger threat: the extension of the proletarian revolution from Russia to the most industrialised countries in Europe. In December the revolutionary groups who had opposed the war came together to form the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which stood for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the political power of the councils.
Germany was to be the theatre of a whole series of major class confrontations for the next five years. But the great hope that a Soviet Germany would break the isolation of the proletarian fortress in Russia was never to materialise. The German workers faced a far more sophisticated ruling class than their Russian comrades, a bourgeoisie that showed itself to be highly skilled in diverting the revolution towards false goals and in defeating the centres of proletarian resistance one by one.
Thus as soon as the threat of revolution took shape, the bourgeoisie understood the need to jettison the Kaiser, bring the war to an end, and call on the loyal services of the “workers’ party”, the German Social Democracy, the majority of which had already come to the aid of the ruling class by throwing its energies into the national war effort. The social democrats still enjoyed the confidence of a large part of the German working class and they were able to act inside the councils with the aim of persuading them to hand over power to the newly “democratic” capitalist state. But the bourgeoisie also understood the need to provoke premature uprisings by different sections of the working class – a strategy employed with tragic results in Berlin in January 1919, which resulted in the massacre of thousands of workers and revolutionaries, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
The defeat of the revolution in Germany, and the stemming of the revolutionary tide in numerous other countries, was to have catastrophic consequences for humanity: the degeneration and demise of the revolution in Russia, the rise of Stalinism and Nazism, the march towards the second imperialist world war.
A century later, the German revolution has almost been written out of history. It is still in the interests of our rulers to present the revolution in Russia as a purely Russian affair and to pretend that the world revolution was and is an idle dream. And yet the revolution in Germany showed that it was indeed a possibility, despite its failure. It is up to us to draw its principal lessons for future revolutionary movements of the working class, and this will be the main focus of the meeting.
Below are some lengthy extracts from an article in our territorial press of the ICC section in Mexico.
The electoral campaign, running from 2017 to June of this year, has been so overpowering and invasive that it succeeded in turning out 56 million people to vote, that's 63.4% of electors which represents the highest level of participation in the history of the country. The six-yearly ritual[1] of promises about change in order to mobilise people has resulted this time in an unusual victory for the candidate "of the left", Lopez Obrador (or AMLO, as he's known from his initials). Everything has been done to feed the image of democracy and elections among the population, in particular among the exploited.
For that, the bourgeoisie has played on the present disorientation of the workers and their difficulties in expressing themselves as an exploited class whose interests are opposed to the capitalist system. Even if the bourgeoisie is also experiencing more problems and divisions in trying to reach agreements and define its choice for the head of the state apparatus (as we've seen with fractures within the PRI and the PAN and the breaking up of the PRD[2], the violence of the confrontations between political clans and the large number of candidates threatened or assassinated during the electoral campaign), it has nevertheless been able to exploit its own difficulties by turning them against the workers, turning these same problems into supplementary arguments to push the population towards the polling booths.
For this reason, even if Lopez Obrador wasn't the first choice candidate of the clans holding political and economic power, the whole of the bourgeoisie has profited from his anti-corruption and patriotic speeches in order to polish up the illusion of change and also reinvigorate an electoral terrain around a population exasperated by violence, permanent insecurity, fraud and corruption.
Through its candidates, its institutions and its media, the bourgeoisie has continually hammered home the idea that voting is a matter of choosing someone and respecting individual will, thus trying to spread the idea that the individual alone and in isolation equipped with "the freedom of the citizen" can transform society, whereas the atomised workers are reduced to maintain the system that exploits them. The bourgeoisie pretends the voice of a worker carries as much weight as that of a capitalist boss and that, consequently, the resulting government is the product of a collective decision and the "will of the people".
It's precisely because of this fallacious image that elections and democracy are the rulers’ best weapons of submission. Let’s recall the words of Lenin on the democratic republic, who said that it was nothing other than: "a governmental machine to crush labour by capital" and that "all the cries in favour of democracy in reality only serve to defend the bourgeoisie and its class privileges and exploitation" (Theses and reports on the democratic bourgeoisie and the proletarian dictatorship, 1919)[3].
Each speech and each appeal is accompanied by summoning up the "citizen's responsibility" and phrases making allusions to the "country", thus injecting a nationalist poison in order to try to anesthetise the workers and throw them into even greater confusion, preventing them from recognising themselves as a class suffering from misery and condemned to exploitation, but also as the "gravedigger of capitalism". It's for this reason that the nationalist speeches and the use of "patriotic symbols" have been fundamental to the election campaign of Meade (PRI candidate) and Anaya (PAN candidate) and included in this is the most marginal campaigns as those of the EZLN[4] through its candidate Marichuy.
The electoral triumph of Lopez Obrador is the victory of the bourgeoisie not that of the exploited.
Lopez Obrador (standing for the third time for the presidency, this time under the banner his new MORENA [5] party) has thus benefitted from the discontent of the population because of the generalised violence, the precariousness of living conditions and the widespread, open corruption at all levels of previous governments, that's to say from the weariness and frustration expressed towards the traditional parties. Never before have the elections so dominated and weighed so heavily; not in 2000 with the "fight for an alternative" which led to the PAN government with Vincente Fox as president, nor in 2012 with the anti-PRI mobilisations led by the #yosoy132 movement. The context in which the elections took place in Mexico is, as elsewhere in the world, strongly affected by the weight of capitalist decomposition, characterised on one hand by the tendency of the bourgeoisie to lose control of its political apparatus, marked by deep internal fractures and a desperate, competitive fight among the big parties, making its unity difficult; and, on the other hand, a disorientated working class, badly placed to find the ground to develop its struggle against capitalism.
All this has been utilised and exploited by the bourgeoisie against the workers, strengthening its left political apparatus and bringing forward a charismatic and demagogic character. In order to convince the whole of the bourgeoisie of its seriousness to govern, it has profited from these political fractures by offering a hand to various capitalist groups that it was in competition with, even obtaining the support of business sectors who, in previous electoral campaigns in which it took part, accused him of being "a danger to Mexico". Some businessmen, assembled within the Council for Mexican Business (CMN) were until recently stubbornly keeping up attacks on AMLO, but these became counter-productive because it made him look like a victim, adding credibility to his image as the "defender of the poor and oppressed".
By allowing the different factions of the national capital to come to a consensus, the elected candidate looked for agreements and cooperation with big business and his political competitors by putting in these agreements an emphasis on the supposed fight against corruption (while promising to forget about certain indiscretions and wrongdoing of the past) and, above all, the promotion of national unity. In this way AMLO has not only reached agreement with a large number of employers but also with the union leaderships such as the CNTE[6] . This is evidently not a lasting solution but it does allow the Mexican state to better prepare for the ALENA[7] negotiations for example, and in the perspective of an intensification of the trade war, of being able to ride the consequences and justify the coming attacks on the workers.
In its majority the bourgeoisie was thus convinced that another election fraud was pointless and risky; it was easier to accept the electoral win and that of the new left party.
Its election victory, which has been hyped as a "glimmer of hope", does not change the situation of the millions of exploited who voted for it one iota. There will be no modification in the exploitation of the workers; on the contrary the new government, invoking the defence of the economy and national sovereignty, will try to justify policies making their living conditions worse, claiming the necessity for a "republican austerity" in order to justify job cuts and other measures against the workers. The only thing that will change is the representatives of the bourgeoisie at the head of the state; but the mandate that they must defend is the same as that defended by Pena Nieto and all the governments of the world whether right or left: to maintain and protect the system of capitalist exploitation.
As in all elections it's the bourgeoisie which has won, but the results of this particular election has allowed for the strengthening of patriotic sentiments: the proliferation of national flags and the patriotic cries of "Long live Mexico!", present throughout the campaign and intensified with the victory of AMLO, show that there has been good use made of the emotions behind the victory of the left, aimed at implicating the workers in the defence of capitalism through the call for national unity.
On this occasion, and in a particular way, the elections have deepened the confusions of the workers, and the bourgeoisie is preparing to profit from this in order to strengthen its control and class domination.
AMLO and MORENA, in opposition or government, always the enemies of the workers
The living conditions of the exploited in the towns and countryside, marked by the violence of mafias, the police and the army, as well as the degradation of conditions caused by the advance of the world economic crisis, has facilitated the rise of illusions in Lopez Obrador, as well as the lying idea that capitalism can be "ameliorated" by simply putting a new government into place.
The partisans of AMLO pretend to be "radical" by defending the idea that the main problem of the system is corruption rather than exploitation. It's not surprising that a faction of the bourgeoisie tries to disguise the fact that capitalism is nothing other than a system of exploitation; but it also disguises the fact that corruption, which is the central theme of MORENA's propaganda, cannot be eradicated within capitalism because, like fraud and violence, it is a permanent part of the life of capitalism and more particularly in the present phase of capitalism's decomposition.[8]
Even the groups of the left who pose as critical or sceptical about the promises of the winning candidate collaborate to reinforce this illusion when they present AMLO's motto of "the poor first of all" as contradictory with the fact that he has formed a team (first of all for his campaign and now for government) with businessmen, made alliances with "conservative" groups or strengthened his links with the most rotten figures in the PRI or PAN, the unions, or is engaging with them to follow their economic or "neo-liberal" orientations. These observations certainly illustrate the pragmatism with which he acts and his systematic recourse to lies and hypocrisy, but they hide the bourgeois nature of MORENA and that of its representative, AMLO. If we take what they say then Lopez Obrador continues to be a representative of the exploited classes, but has turned out to be a "renegade" or a "traitor", whereas, in reality, he has never ceased to be an expression of the same corrupt and exploitative bourgeoisie.
The most incisive critique of AMLO came from the EZLN which, in mid-July, made reference to the change of government teams in these words: "the foremen, the butlers and the team leaders can change but the owner of the building remains the same". With this declaration, the EZLN, tried to distance itself from the other cliques of the bourgeoisie's political apparatus, but this guerrilla group itself was a product and integral part of the system which it pretends to criticise. Just remember that in the middle of the 1990's, the EZLN gave its support to the candidate for the PRD, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, but it also expressed its "respect" for the Chamber of Deputies (in which it took the floor in 2001) and other bourgeois institutions, and it tried to participate in the latest elections...
Faced with the false promises of AMLO, the proletariat has no other way except to struggle
Whereas a few years ago AMLO pretended to send bourgeois institutions to the devil, now he confirms his position as a defender of capitalism; and he defends it so much better when he affirms that it's necessary to strengthen democracy and its instruments, because that reinforces the bourgeoisie's tools of exploitation and control. When it talks today of the defence of the national economy, it shows its determination to keep capitalism going and in order to fulfil this task, it again takes up, while shaking the dust off a little, the promises made by the PRI over the years.
Lopez Oprador, with his leftist chatter, promises a "fourth transformation" , an illusion and a false promise which is aimed at concealing his efforts to support and maintain the capitalist system. It’s a smokescreen which produces more confusion among the workers and exploited.
But the confusion spread amongst the proletariat today doesn't mean that their capacity for reflection and their will to fight back has been eliminated. We know that the world economic crisis is going to continue and show that all the speeches and promises of AMLO are pure lies; above all it will push the workers to fight because as long as capitalism exists, whether under governments of the left or right, the exploitation of the proletariat will not only continue but can only get worse .The proletariat has no other way to go forward faced with the new government but to once again take up the road to struggle on its own class ground.
From Revolucion Mundial, press of the ICC in Mexico, 20.7.2018
[1] The presidential elections take place every six years in Mexico (the outgoing president cannot stand again). At the same time, the election of deputies and senators goes ahead as well as the renewal of a part of the governors at the head of the federal states.
[2] PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) is the faction that's been in uninterrupted power since the "national revolution" of 1910; PAN (National Action Party) is a party of the right and partisans of a close alliance with the United States; PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution), a "leftist" split from the PRI but largely discredited by the "Pact for Mexico" (2.12.12) which it signed with the very unpopular preceding government of Pena Nieto (as did the PAN) at the investiture of the latter.
[3] This document was written by Lenin in March 1919 and was adopted by the First Congress of the Communist International (3rd International). We republished it in no. 100 of our International Review (1st quarter 2000).
[4] EZLN: Zapatista Army of National Liberation were the animators of a guerrilla war led by sub-commander Marcos who, after attempting a failed armed uprising in Chiapas in the south of the country in 1994 in the name of the so-called defence of the rights of the local peasants and the indigenous cause, organised a march in 2001 to support signing an agreement with the "Panist" government of Fox, signifying its return to the legal, institutional and parliamentary framework.
[5] This movement appeared in Mexico during the 2012 elections. It was launched by private university students then joined by public university students. It presented itself as a "citizens’ movement" demanding the "democratisation of the media" and stood against the propaganda of Enrique Pena Nieto, the PRI candidate. MORENA is the acronym for the Movement for National Regeneration showing its strong patriotic connections and how far it is from the preoccupations and interests of the working class.
[6] National Coordination of Education Workers: a teachers’ union whose ex-Secretary General (also the old Senate deputy of the PRI), Alba Esther Gordillo (imprisoned, amongst others, between 2013 and 2018 for money laundering) has been designated among the ten most corrupt people in the country.
[7] The turnaround by Donald Trump and the renegotiation of the ALENA (North American Free Trade Treaty) between the United States, Canada and Mexico existing since 1994 notably implies an enormous fight between the US and Mexico, particularly in the automobile and agricultural sectors.
[8] For example, remember the "clean hands" campaign in Italy which provoked a very severe political crisis between 1992 and 1994 and did nothing to put an end to corruption but on the contrary deepened and spread it. The fight against corruption was thus one of the motifs on which Lula and Dilma Rousseff came to power in Brazil and we've seen that even these characters have recently been implicated in the business of corruption.
In August Internationalist Voice posted a position on the ICC's web forum[1] on the wave of protests in the Middle East affecting the countries of Jordan, Iran and Iraq. It defends fundamental class positions and the proletarian perspective of revolution and, within this, the necessity for the self-organisation of the class against the various traps of the bourgeoisie. The text raises a number of pertinent questions: what is the content of the demonstrations? What is the role and attitude of revolutionaries to these protests? Is there a revolution going on here? What is the role of the bourgeoisie? But on a secondary level there are a number of important ambiguities in the text, particularly on the class nature of these events.
For our part, we do view these protests as expressions of the working class, as part of the class struggle at a certain point of its unfolding. This is not a revolution, but a class that won't fight for its basic conditions of life is not going to make a revolution, and street protests have historically always been part of the class struggle.
The text is fairly dismissive of the protests and strikes in Jordan and underestimates the strengths of both. Like Iran and Iraq, the demands of the protesters in Jordan were clearly demands of a working class struggle: jobs, healthcare, rent, services, against corruption (the latter easily recuperated but in this context part of the indignation of the class). In all three countries, the struggles immediately came up against the trade unions who were ill-equipped to deal with them, including the "new" unions in Jordan set up by the bourgeoisie following the intense wave of struggle a decade ago. Workers actively sought out protesters and were explicit about the unions trying to divide them and keep them away from the protests. For It the protesters here weren't "fully radical", but what does that mean? The protests did seek to join up with workers on strike; and the workers, who refused to be isolated in the factories and places of work by the unions, which can easily become a prison even in the most advanced struggles, joined them on the streets. Indeed we can say that any workers’ struggle that doesn’t seek to come out onto the streets cannot advance towards a wider class unity.
So the demands of the class were there and the proletarian method of struggle was there, and while it wasn't a "fully radical" revolution it showed some important indicators of the class struggle, not least the hostility towards the unions, the rejection of the clerics in all three countries as well as the rejection of "national sacrifice". Moreover, the strength of the movement to some extent pushed back the bourgeoisie and obliged it to pause its attacks.
It's clear that there are enormous problems and potential dangers confronting the working class in these countries, coming from the specific forces in play and the wider dynamics of the major imperialisms. The ICC laid out these potential dangers in a position right at the beginning of this phase of struggle in January, though these related to Iran particularly[2]. But, even given the imperialist cauldron of the Middle East, or partly because of it, the combativity of the class is an important starting point and an example to workers everywhere. It is somewhat contradictory about this: it says that there is no future context for these protests but describes how youth "has provided the necessary social force for street protests" and placed the movement squarely in the crisis of capitalism and its attacks. It says that, along with the class composition of those who participated in them, "the demands and objectives of the protests determine the nature of that movement". That's true, but more generally the nature of the movement can also determine its demands and objectives. It seems to want to "fix" situations whereas the nature of these movements is fluid. And It draws a conclusion that's nowhere verified by the facts: "The fact is that... nationalist slogans overshadow the protests". Without underestimating the dangers of nationalism, especially in countries which have been dominated by bigger imperialist powers for a long time, we can say that nationalist slogans in all three countries were by no means the distinguishing feature of the strikes and protests. And even where nationalist slogans are raised, the only way they can be fought is through resolute action on a class basis, which can only bring the workers into conflict with the national interest.
It's on Iraq that the position of It most clearly goes off the rails. The workers are atomised, it says, but the proletariat in Iraq is in "a better position" and from this "contrary to the anarchist view, the power of labour is not on the street but in the workplace where it disturbs the process of capitalist accumulation" and consequently "... if the Iraqi working class stops oil exports, the regime will collapse and the workers will assert their power as a social class".
It’s true that the power of the working class can indeed be to prevent the factories or oil refineries from functioning, but their real power does not lie in the paralysis of the production and the circulation of goods, but in their unification across all sectors of the economy, not by isolating workers from each other through “besieging” places of production, but by spreading a movement and overcoming any attachment to a specific work place.
Indeed, we've seen from specific struggles of oil workers in France relatively recently that concentrating on one sector, even the oil sector, is the kiss of death for class struggle. The lessons of the isolating function of corporatism, which litter the history of class struggle, apply just as much to Iraq as France and everywhere else - isolation and division are the exact opposites of the needs of the struggle.
The oil industry in Iraq has erected many obstacles to the development of class struggle; various countries of the west and Iran and Russia have their installations guarded by their own militias and special Iraqi units have responded ruthlessly against protest around the oil plants. Indeed, mafia-like, the Iraqi militias have put their own soldiers on the books of the oil companies in exchange for "protection", and the Americans and British in the Green Zone fortress unleashed their "anti-terrorist" forces against the protesters in order to protect their own interests.
To make matters worse, Iraq could be descending into a post-Isis[3] phase of fracture, more and more dominated by centrifugal tendencies which are being expressed by the local gangs and manipulated by the major imperialist powers. There is a danger of Iraq turning into another Libya or something like it. Neither nationalism nor democracy are the main cards being played here – rather we are seeing the remorseless spread of capitalist decomposition. The flourishing of various militias in constant rivalry with each other is a clear expression of this, and this could sideline and overwhelm any class movements. In the meantime the response of the Iraqi state has been lethal gunfire, mass arrests and torture.
For It workers in these protests do not have "a clear horizon or class outlook to their aims". But these attempts of street protests and strikes to complement each other are parts of attempts to push forward the collective struggle and It makes a false division between protest and strike, the street and the workplace. The "unclear goals" of the struggle are certainly weaknesses in the sense that they do not yet pose the question of overturning capitalism, but at the same time the recent protests and strikes in the Middle East should give us encouragement: the willingness to come out and fight is an absolute necessity for the class struggle, not a weakness.
The workers in the Middle East, beset by imperialist war and ethnic conflict, have a particular difficulty in developing a political perspective which looks towards a communist society, and they will not be able to achieve this in isolation from the central battalions of the working class in the heartlands of capital. But this lack of perspective is a problem which affects the working class everywhere today. Workers in all countries are confronted with growing social decomposition precisely because the important waves of class struggle between 1968 and 1989 remained on an essentially defensive terrain. And yet it remains the case, both in the peripheries and the centres, that the extension and unification of defensive struggles is an indispensable basis for any future evolution from the defensive level to the level of the revolutionary offensive.
Baboon, November 2018
[2] The text is here in French: https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201801/9649/ma... [1791]
[3] Isis is not entirely defunct and remains a potent force for imperialist chaos in the region.
It's been estimated that between 300 and 500 people were massacred by the army on October 2 1968 on Tlatelolco Square. While the exact number, and still less the official list of the victims, is unknown to this day, the bourgeoisie has been able to exploit its own crimes. Some years after the massacre, the Mexican bourgeoisie began to consider this date as the starting point for the advance of democracy, as if the blood spilt had washed away all traces of this crime and consigned authoritarianism and repression to a distant past.
The speeches and commemorations around the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre have been used to re-launch the democratic campaign and, making the link with past elections, they pretend to show that the Mexican state has changed its face because democracy has taken power and even allowed for alternate governments. The bourgeoisie has also resumed its hypocritical wailing, letting its crocodile tears flow in order to try to distance itself from the crimes of 1968 and profit from the memory and from the still-present indignation among the exploited.
The demonstrations led by the students between July and October 1968 were, without any doubt, the expression of a strong social discontent which, even if their claims were limited by a desire for "democratic freedoms"[1] and even if the political scene was occupied by a heterogeneous social mass, had a certain continuity with the combative spirit re-awakened by the strikes of the rail workers in 1958 and the doctors in 1965. This movement didn't succeed in moving onto proletarian ground, or in raising demands belonging to the working class, but it did succeed in deploying and arousing strong forces of solidarity. That's why, 50 years after the events and the massacre, it is necessary to reflect on this by trying to go beyond the lack of conscience displayed by the Mexican state in its "celebration"[2] of the Tlatelolco massacre and the campaign of mystification created by the bourgeoisie through its "intellectuals" and its left political apparatus.
What triggered the demonstration?
In 1968 the Mexican state said that the student mobilisations could be explained as an "imitation" of May 68 in Paris, and that it had been incited by "foreign infiltration". A month before the government of Diaz Ordaz carried out the massacre against the students, the official trade union, CTM, repeated this idea: "Foreigners and bad Mexicans acting as active agents for communism, used the relatively unimportant scuffles of two small groups of students in order to launch a serious attack against the regime and the institutions of the country, adopting tactics similar to those adopted by extremists of these tendencies in other events and very recently in the outbursts in Paris..." (Manifesto to the Nation, September 2, 1968). Although there really was a global tendency towards social agitation influenced by the Paris demonstrations, it's false to suggest that these demonstrations were developed as no more than a sort of "fashion".
It was the return of the economic crisis onto the world scene which led to the workers' response of May 68[3] and it's the same trigger which opened the perspective for workers' responses in Italy (1969), Poland (1970-71), Argentina (1969) and even in Mexico which, without being a source of workers' mobilisation, aroused wide-scale social discontent.
It was also true that in the framework of the Cold War the dominant and competitive imperialist factions (the US and the USSR) used espionage and conspiracies, but up to now there's been no evidence that the USSR was implicated and still less the Cuban state, which had finalised an agreement with Mexico not to give its support to any opposition group[4]. It was similar for the "Communist Party", the Stalinist PCM which, although it was a pawn of the USSR, hadn't the strength or sufficient presence to lead the demonstrations.
On the other hand, the United States was keeping an eye on its "back-yard" and took an active part in the repression[5] during these years as during the whole of the Cold War.
In order to explain the origins of these demonstrations and the strength that they showed, it's necessary to go beyond the accusations of the government, but also to go deeper than the simplistic arguments about a "generational conflict" or an absence of "democratic liberties".
The students, as a social mass made up of diverse social classes but in which petty-bourgeois ideology dominates, were certainly held back by their illusions in democracy[6]. But another element pushed these students, who were often of proletarian origins, towards politicisation: the growing uncertainty that they felt in the future that awaited them. The promise of "social promotion" that the industrialisation of the 1940's to the 60's offered to the university students more and more clearly appeared as a come-on, given that, although capitalist profits increased, the life of workers got no better and threatened on the contrary to get worse under the pressure of the re-emergence of the world economic crisis which had already begun to make itself felt. But even more than this uncertainty, the repression of the state against the protests of workers claiming higher wages exacerbated the anger. Time and again bullets and prison were the responses of the state against the workers: the miners of Coahuila (1950-51), the rail-workers’ strikes (1948-58), teachers (1958) and doctors (1965). It was evident that even while increasing the rhythm of production, capitalism was not able to offer lasting reforms to a new generation.
In these conditions, the demonstrations were fed by the courage and indignation of the workers who, in the preceding years had also been hit by state repression.
Democratic hopes sterilise the strength of solidarity
From the 1940's to the 70's, the Mexican bourgeoisie unleashed an intense propaganda in order to make it known that industrialisation, the motor of economic growth and the stability of prices, would ameliorate the quality of life of the active population. In this process of industrialisation, the state played a fundamental role in taking responsibility for direct investments and supporting private capital through the sale, often underpriced, of energy resources, but above all through a policy of wage controls combined with subsidies for goods consumed by the workers. With these measures it presented itself as the "welfare state" while reducing the cost of labour for business, thus favouring the growth of capitalist profits. In the process of industrialisation there was a growing need for qualified workers, hence the state’s expansion of enrolment in the universities and the higher education schools. This increased the number of students of proletarian origin, thus making these institutions poles of social tension.
In this sense, the student movement in Mexico 1968, organised within the National Strike Committee (CNH), represented an important force, but structured around oppositional visions which never went beyond the stage of democratic demands it wasn't able to free itself from its links with nationalist ideology. However there was a certain class instinct which had germinated in the heat of the demonstrations and which pushed the young students to aim to meet up with the workers through the continued presence of the "information brigades"[7] in the industrial areas and workers' quarters. They thus succeeded in awakening a force of solidarity among the workers, but this potential social force was contained and cancelled out through the CNH’s lack of political perspectives.
Only the working class has an alternative to capitalism
From the first demonstrations of the student movement at the end of July 68, the granaderos riot police and regular police units acted with great ferocity. Mexican Chief of Police, General Luis Cueto, justified the repression in a press conference, saying that it was: "a subversive movement" which was tending "to create an atmosphere of hostility to our government and country on the eve of the XIX Olympic Games" (El Universal, July 28, 1968).
A period of continued street fighting thus opened up during the course of which the riot police were outnumbered. The army was then called into action and unleashed its repression. From the first days of the protests the army attacked with such savagery that on the night of July 30, it fired a bazooka at a school.
As the police and the army intensified the ferocity of their interventions, solidarity among the workers grew but it didn't take an organised form that could stamp its presence on the social scene.
The sympathy of the workers was demonstrated by their individual presence or in small groups joining the street protests. It was the same workers who, in the previous years, had already suffered repression for giving their support or direct participation to the social movements. Attempts were also made to openly express their solidarity with the students: on August 27, doctors at the General Hospital organised a strike in solidarity. The next day, municipal workers of the capital, forced to participate in an official action aiming to discredit the protesters, spontaneously rejected the government's move, by chanting "we are sheep" making it clear that they were obliged to be there and thus undermining the wished-for participation in this demonstration; they were then vigorously attacked by the riot police.
The student movement succeeded in arousing sympathy and solidarity and although numerous groups had shouted in the streets and painted on the walls "We don't want the Olympic Games, we want revolution", the truth is that these movements went forward without any real perspective. This is not because of a "strategic error", but because of the absence of the working class as a class on the social scene. It's not enough to be present individually or expressing solidarity in an isolated way, that is only formally occupying the social ground while leaving one's own political perspectives to one side. In 1968, although great numbers of the students were of proletarian origin and although the workers themselves showed their sympathy towards them, the proletariat did not find itself as an organised and conscious force able to confront capitalism.
The Tlatelolco massacre is a product of capitalism
By September, the response of the state became more and more aggressive. The army occupied the buildings of the UNAM on the 18th, reporting back on the political activity of the IPN[8] and the quarters around them, and the reason for this was that four days later the buildings of the polytechnic school were attacked. There were violent conflicts during this period in which solidarity again developed with a remarkable presence integrating school students and with the strengthened support of the population of the area...The massacre was being prepared.
On October 2nd, at the end of a demonstration on Tlatelolco Square, military and paramilitary squadrons attacked the students, showing in its naked form what the domination of capitalism meant.
The savagery of this response by the state is often presented as "a moment of madness" by the then Secretary of the Interior, Luis Echeverria, feeding the paranoia of the President Diaz Ordaz, but the brutality of this repression was neither accidental, nor the result of one pathological individual, it was part of the essence of capitalism. One of the main supports of the state is its repressive apparatus. To reflect on this properly we shouldn't forget that as long as capitalism exists, massacres like this one of 50 years ago will continue.
State violence is not a problem of the past, it is part of the very essence of capitalism, as Rosa Luxemburg had already analysed: "Violated, dishonoured, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretence to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ Sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form" (The Crisis of Social Democracy, 1916).
Although the bourgeoisie does have a need to ideologically justify its existence as a dominant class and present its system as a perfect expression of democracy, the truth is that it bases this existence on exploitation, which involves the permanent use of violence and terror and which it uses on a daily basis in order to maintain its power and its domination; bloody repression is also a part of its way of life.
Tatlin for Revolucion Mundial, Mexican section of the ICC, September 2018
[1] The six inoffensive and somewhat naive points claimed by the National Strike Committee (CHN) were:
- Freedom for political prisoners;
- Resignations of Generals Luis Cueto Ramirez and Raul Mendiola;
- Disbanding of the grenaderos, the special police units used against the struggle;
- Abrogation of Articles 145 and 145 (2) of the Penal Code (dealing with subversion and social agitation);
- Compensation for the families of the dead and wounded caused by the repression;
- Going after and arresting those within the police and the special forces of the army responsible for the repression.
[2] In this pretentious manner, the bosses of the university have proudly announced that they've planned a series of commemorative events beginning October 2, during the course of which they will spend 37 million pesos (about 2 million dollars).
[3] See our article "Fifty years since May 68" and "May 68 and the revolutionary perspective" parts one and two on our internet site.
[4] Jose Luis Alonso, a Mexican guerillero exiled to Cuba in the 1970's, declared in an interview: "Three days after our arrival (in Cuba) Manuel Pineiro, Cuban Information Minister, read a statement to us: "(...) The first condition for admission to the territory (is that) there will be no guerrilla formation in the framework of the priority given to the respect for the good relations between Mexico and Cuba..." El Universal, May 22, 2002. In the same vein is the witness of Alfredo Campa who said: "We welcome those who come but we give priority to our cordial relations with the Mexican government..." (Proceso, May 4, 1996).
[5] The ex-CIA agent, Philip Agee, in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary named the direct collaborators with the CIA as the Mexican presidents Lopez Mateos, Diaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverria, but also members of the political police like Gutierrez Barrios and Nazar Haro.
[6] That was the motive for the speech at the time by Barros Sierra, Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in which he called for the defence of the Constitution, autonomy and freedom of expression while appealing to nationalist sentiments by lowering the flag to half-mast and singing the national anthem. This was generally used as a reference by the student movement of July 1968 in Mexico.
[7] Already in 1956, on the backs of the rail and teachers' strikes, the "Information Brigades" took a variety of forms but were clear elements of the self-organisation of the students which included reaching out to workers by going directly to factory gates, schools and markets. They organised and sometimes appropriated transport for the distribution of leaflets and facilitated open spaces in the streets for spontaneous discussion and mass meetings. See: Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest, Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties by Jaime M. Pensano.
[8] The Autonomous National University of Mexico, (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) are the principal higher education centres of the public sector.
November 11, 2018: exactly one hundred years after the Great War was ended. The "celebrations" planned and organised by the ruling class have been many and spread widely by the media. At a ceremony in Paris, Trump, Putin and Erdogan, amongst others, paraded themselves in the limelight; kings, queens, generals, bishops and politicians from right to left were all wheeled out to do their bit; ceremonies took place in cities, towns, villages and hamlets supported by various businesses, charities and supermarkets; youth events were organised, including "peace concerts" aiming to indoctrinate the young; marches, events and "silences" were organised way in advance across Europe, particularly Britain, France and Belgium with further commemoration events in Australia, New Zealand, India and Northern Ireland.
This was a deliberate, massive, organised and oppressive campaign, the primary function of which is to take one of the biggest atrocities of capitalism and turn this crime against the main victims of its imperialist wars, the working class, while trying to instil false conclusions from it. Not only does the working class have to suffer the atrocities of capitalist war, it is then forced, shamed, into "celebrating" its anniversaries with such hypocrisies about "sacrifices for freedom, justice and peace" and "the war to end all wars", and "never again". But there is no justice, peace and freedom for the working class: the war to end all wars was just the beginning of a worsening spiral downwards and rather than "never again", imperialist war has not stopped for a hundred years to the point that its ever-developing production of the means of destruction now threatens the very existence of humanity. The whole armistice celebrations have nothing to do with respecting the war dead but on the contrary insults them with lies and crocodile tears about "worthy sacrifice". With fake news we have fake history where words are turned into their opposite: massacres become sacrifice, ruin becomes civilisation and war becomes peace. In short, the whole armistice "remembrance" anniversary is nothing but a generalised attack on the consciousness of the working class, aimed at hiding the necessity for its revolutionary struggle for a peace and freedom that capitalism will fight tooth and nail against.
1. The armistice: a pause in order to prepare for new wars
In November 1918, Europe was plunged into enormous chaos; millions of people had been driven out of their houses and regions and were looking for somewhere to continue and rebuild their lives. Thus millions of Belgium's were refugees in Holland and more than 100,000 returned after the armistice: 300,000 Belgian refugees lived in France and returned in 1918. Further, there were hundreds of thousands of wounded, mutilated and invalided soldiers roaming across Europe looking for their town or village. Because of the chaos of the world war, the massive migrations that accompanied it and the exhaustion of the population, Spanish Flu made terrible ravages and in the final account caused more deaths than the world war itself. The thinkers of the bourgeoisie are in agreement on the fact that the conditions imposed by the Allies through the Treaty of Versailles posed the germs of a new war twenty years later. The "Peace Treaty" aroused the development of sentiments of revenge and retaliation which spread through wide layers of the German population during the 1920’s. The commentator for the Social-Democratic (SDAP) daily paper in Holland 1919 gives a taste of it: "This peace for all is viewed with bitter disillusion; a deception felt as a catastrophe (...) The Peace Treaty sets the status for a Europe in decline, of its retreat to an inferior level of civilisation. Most people on the continent are enchained and condemned to forced labour (...) humiliation and bitterness. Rancour here, sufficiency there, the thirst for power, fear: these are the new ‘civilised traits’ generated by the peace treaty" (Het Volk, 21.06.1919).
The bourgeoisies of various countries was fully aware that this peace was condemned to failure. It wasn't only the policy towards Germany that aggravated the anger but also, "the creation of new states like Poland, Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia led to incessant conflict over the new frontiers of these countries. That particularly concerned Hungary which lost two-thirds of the territory it had before the war (...) In a word, the peace was a failure" (Jay Winter, interview with Le Monde, 12.11.2014).
The November 11 1918 armistice was based on a peace that put an end to any form of peace. The First World War marked the entry of capitalism into its decadence and the era opening up led to a semi-permanent state of war. Some examples of the two decades following the signing of the armistice demonstrate this:
- After the end of the war, Greece was awarded a zone of occupation within Turkey. During the summer of 1920, the Greeks wanted to enlarge this zone but they came up against strong resistance by the Turks. This was the beginning of the Greek-Turkish war which lasted up to 1922. The war led to atrocities on both sides as, for example, the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians by the Turks. In 1920, the northern Moroccan tribes of the Riff unified and unleashed a war against Spanish domination and during summer, 1921, around 19,000 Spanish soldiers perished. This war against Spain, later supported by France, lasted into 1926 and during it both Spanish and French used asphyxiating gases which caused thousands of deaths.
- In 1929, the Chinese occupied the Manchurian railway which led to a conflict with the Soviet Union. When Russian troops crossed the Chinese frontier on November 15, ferocious fighting broke out, causing the deaths of more than 2000 soldiers with ten thousand wounded. The "Moukden incident" (Manchuria), where the railway line was bombed, probably staged by the Japanese, was used as an excuse for the latter to invade and occupy parts of north-eastern China. In 1937, the war spread through an attack on the whole Chinese subcontinent, the greater part of which was occupied by Japan. During this war hundreds of thousands of Chinese, mostly civilians, were killed with Japanese troops responsible for numerous massacres.
- October 3 1935: Italy unleashed a war against Ethiopia. After seven months of intense fighting it succeeded in conquering the country. In their attacks against the civilian population the Italians used mustard gas on a grand scale. More than 25,000 military personnel were killed in the fighting and the conflict cost the lives of a quarter-of-a-million civilians. In 1936, a number of generals began a war against the Spanish Republic, with the support of Italy, Germany and Portugal. On its side the Republic was supported by the Soviet Union and Mexico. This war, which lasted three years and which ended with a victory for the generals, resulted in more than half-a-million dead. March 12 1938 the Germans returned to Austria and by March 15 they occupied part of Czechoslovakia, while Hungary occupied the other part. These military conquests constituted the first actions which led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
2. The armistice: an attack against the proletarian revolution in reaction to the war
The armistice allowed the bourgeoisie to declare war on the proletariat: (a) by dividing the workers into countries of victors and vanquished and: (b) by turning the armies against the revolution. In Russia the counter-revolution developed with force (cf. "The world bourgeoisie against the October Revolution", International Review no. 160). In Germany as well the bourgeoisie were ready to unleash its counter-revolutionary terror. Eaten up with a fierce hatred of the working class, it prepared to wipe it out with force and exterminate the hotbeds of revolutionary communism.
Divide the working class
The bourgeoisie were conscious of the danger: "all Europe is petrified by the spirit of revolution. There's not only a profound feeling of discontent, but also anger and revolt among the workers (...). All of the existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects, is being called into question by the popular masses from one end of Europe to the other" (Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, in a secret memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau, March 1919). Through the signing of the armistice, the working class in Europe was divided into two parts: on one side the workers who found themselves in the camp of the defeated nations and on the other side those that lived in the victorious capitalist states, who were then submerged by a wave of national chauvinism (above all in France, Britain, Belgium and the USA). In this way the bourgeoisie succeeded in limiting the revolutionary movement of the first group of states (plus Italy).
The situation of Belgium some days after November 11 perfectly illustrates the consequences of this division: German soldiers who were barracked in Brussels and strengthened by detachments of sailors of the Kriegsmarine coming from Ostend, revolted and elected a revolutionary soldier's council. They demonstrated in the streets of Brussels with German, Belgium and red flags and called for the solidarity of the Belgium workers and their organisations. Faced with some fraternisation with members of the Young Socialists, the union organisations rapidly called on workers not to join in, and, under the influence of chauvinist propaganda, the workers in Brussels remained passive and compliantly waited for the triumphal entry of the victorious Belgian army some days later.
The armies aimed against the revolution
"The different national bourgeoisie's tried first of all to grab territories off each other on the battlefields of the imperialist war at a cost of 20 million dead, along with an incalculable number of wounded. But, confronted with a class which fought on its own class ground, they straightaway closed ranks. It confirms, once again, that the dominant class, divided by its own nature, can unite faced with a revolutionary situation in order to confront the working class" ("1918-1919: Seventy years ago - the German revolution", International Review no. 56).
When the soviets took power in October 1917, the reaction of the imperialist forces was immediate. A bourgeoisie, united at the international level, confronted the young soviet republic with armies coming from 21 countries. The counter-revolutionary attack began in 1917 and lasted up to 1922, during which the White Armies unleashed a terrible civil war. The armies of the capitalist states of Europe, the United States and Japan caused an unknown number of casualties in their attacks against the working class in Russia. Among the victims of the civil war there were about one million soldiers of the Red Army killed, and several million people died because of the indirect consequences of the war, such as famine and epidemics. The number of deaths caused by the terror of the White Armies is estimated to be between 300,000 and one million people[1] .
The unfolding of the revolution in Central Europe, Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc., meant that the German army wasn't completely disarmed: "The idea was shared that the German army had to be sufficiently strong in order to maintain domestic order and for preventing a seizure of power by the Bolsheviks" (Lloyd George at war, George H. Hassar). Thus the German High Command, which was demanding 30,000 armed soldiers, was allowed to keep 5,000 machine-gunners.
In Germany the insurrection broke out at the end of 1918. November 10 1918, General Groener, the successor of Ludendorf in charge of the headquarters of the German army, proposed a pact over the telephone to the head of government, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert. The general proposed loyal collaboration to quickly put an end to "Bolshevism" and to ensure the restitution of "law and order". "It was a pact against the revolution. 'Ebert accepted my proposition of an alliance' wrote Groener. 'From this moment, we discussed every evening through the means of a secret connection between the Chancellery and the High Command the necessary measures to take. The alliance functioned well'"[2].
Because of the influence of the revolution the bourgeoisie could no longer trust large parts of the land army and sailors. In the perspective of the class war, the Social Democrat Gustav Noske, who re-joined the Ebert government in December 1918, got the job of setting-up the Freikorps. These units brought together loyal professional soldiers, conservatives and ultra-nationalists who wanted to defend their country against Bolshevism and who had found themselves on the margins of society at the end of the war. Thus by January 1919, the German state could once again deploy loyal military units of some hundreds of thousands of soldiers, among which were 38 Freikorps units. In the fight against the revolution, the SPD shamelessly used these most reactionary armed forces against the revolution. By affirming that "someone must play the bloodhound" and denouncing the workers and soldiers in revolt as "the hyenas of the revolution", Noske sent his Freikorps against them: the war against the working class had begun. From mid-January the military attack against the insurgents and revolutionary organisations (parties, groups, press, etc.) began. Entire workers' areas of the large towns were attacked one after the other and terrible massacres were perpetrated everywhere (read the articles on the German revolution on this site).
The war against the working class wasn't only undertaken in Germany but also in other countries. One of these was Hungary where the workers' revolt had also brought to power a revolutionary leadership. Here also the revolt was bloodily wiped out after some months by a military invasion of capitalist forces. On August 1 1919, Romania invaded Hungary and overthrew the revolutionary government. Supported by France, Britain and the White Army, Romanian troops entered Budapest and set up a trade unionist government which liquidated the workers' councils. When the unions had finished their dirty work, they transferred power to one Admiral Horty (later a Nazi collaborator) who instituted a regime of terror against the workers, resulting in 8,000 executions and 100,000 deportations, with Jews particularly targeted.
3. Peace cannot exist within capitalism
Capitalism is violence and peace within capitalism is a complete illusion. The history of the twentieth century demonstrates that an "armistice" is only reached in order to start new wars. While the guns were never silent between World Wars One and Two, the tendency to permanent war became even more evident after the Second World War. Thus the Cold War period wasn't, as is often suggested, one of a "simple" armed peace, but one of dozens of intense armed confrontations (Korea, Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East, etc...) taking place over the whole of the planet and resulting in millions of deaths.
Wishful thinking about peace doesn't prevent war even when supported by massive demonstrations. July 25 1914, the SPD called for a mass demonstration against war. The call was heeded by large numbers: on July 29 and 30, 750,000 people participated in protests throughout Germany. That didn't prevent the bourgeoisie from continuing its course towards war[3]. Quite the contrary, this same social democratic SPD decided some days later to betray the working class and support the bourgeoisie in its war fervour.
A mass mobilisation can be a moment in the resistance against war but it must take place within the framework of a generalised workers' revolt and aimed against the bourgeois state, as in 1917 in Russia. And even in Germany 1918, the revolt's only aim in the first instance was the end of the war. And the war was effectively stopped because a real threat of the workers taking power existed. In fact, only a revolutionary overthrow and the seizure of power by a revolutionary class can eventually put an end to all forms of war.
"Either the bourgeois government makes peace, as it makes war, and then imperialism will continue, as after each war, to dominate and war will be followed by a new rearmament, destruction, reaction and barbarism. Or, you must gather your forces for a revolutionary insurrection, fight in order to take political power which will allow you to impose peace both inside and outside the country" ("Spartacus Letters" no. 4, April 1917, Rosa Luxemburg).
Dennis, 10.11.2018
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-died-during-the-Russian-Civil-War [1794].
[2] Sebastian Haffner, The revolution betrayed:https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/51018/170627_A%20... [1795].
[3] A more recent example was in February 2003 where estimates of the numbers protesting in London against the impending Gulf War run into a million-and-a-half. There were hundreds of thousands more in protest elsewhere in the country and millions more world-wide. Unperturbed, the ruling class continued with its preparations for and execution of the war.
Our comrade Elisabeth has left us at the age of 77. She died from breathing difficulties which provoked a cardiac arrest, on the night of Saturday/Sunday 18 November.
Elisabeth was born during the Second World War, on 19 May 1941, in Bane, a village in the Jura close to Besançon. Her father owned a saw-mill and a mother was a housewife. Elisabeth grew up in a family of nine children in a rural environment. It was a relatively comfortable Catholic family. Her aunt, a school teacher, provided her primary education before she was sent to a Catholic secondary school run by nuns, in Besançon then in Lyon[1]. She then entered the University of Lyon and developed a passionate interest in oceanography. In 1968, aged 27, she moved to Marseille, renting an old house with a small garden and a terrace on the roof, a few steps from the sea. She was employed by the Centre d’Océanologie of the CNRS[2] in Marseille, after spending a year in Canada. She obtained her PhD in 1983, which enabled her to take on a teaching role and to supervise her students’ research.
Elisabeth was part of that generation of young elements seeking for a revolutionary perspective in the wake of the May 68 movement. She began to be politicised when she was still a student, joining the Parti Socialiste Unifié in Lyon[3].
It was in Marseille that she discovered that the working class was the only force in capitalist society capable of transforming the world. At a demonstration she met Robert, a young element who had been politicised before 1968 in the anarchist movement. She took part in the meetings of the group Informations et Correspondances Ouvrières (ICO) along with Robert, who since 1968 had been publishing Les Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils. In this way Elisabeth discovered the workers’ movement, marxism, and the revolutionary perspective of the proletariat. Having received a Catholic education, she broke with religion and became an atheist, while maintaining very close relations with her family.
In 1972 the group Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils fused with the group that was publishing the review Révolution Internationale. The new group kept the name RI. In 1973 Elisabeth became a sympathiser of RI. In 1974, she joined the group, which would become the section of the ICC in France.
Elisabeth was present at the international conference that founded the ICC in 1975 and the first congress of our organisation in 1976. So with her death a founding member of the ICC, a militant of the first generation, has suddenly left us.
Elisabeth took on important responsibilities in the organisation, always with the utmost dedication. She regularly wrote reports on the international class struggle. She travelled a lot within the ICC and learned Italian in order to be able to participate in the organisation’s work in Italy. She also knew English very well and made many translations, without ever seeing this task as something routine and boring. On the contrary, in translating texts for our internal discussion bulletins Elisabeth was often one of the first French-speaking comrades to be acquainted with the positions and contributions of her English-speaking comrades. And above all, Elisabeth helped establish the ICC’s nucleus in Marseille. For 45 years, alongside another comrade, she maintained the ICC’s political presence in the city.
What animated her militant commitment was her revolt against the barbarity of capitalism, her will to fight against this decadent system, her passion for communism and her conviction in the fundamental role of the revolutionary organisation in the emancipation of the proletariat. Her militant activity was at the centre of her life. Elisabeth had a deep attachment not only to the organisation but also to her comrades in the struggle.
Despite her social status as a CNRS researcher, Elisabeth was extremely modest. She accepted political criticism without ever reacting with wounded pride, always trying to understand and to put forward the general interests of the organisation above her own personal interests. Despite her university degrees, her title as doctor, and her considerable general culture, she was not an “academic”, an “intellectual”, marked by what Lenin, in his book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, an “aristocratic anarchist”, which is so characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie.
Elisabeth never felt her militant engagement in the ICC as a “prison” or a fetter on the blossoming of her personal life. She did make a career in the university milieu, published scientific books and articles in her sphere of competence, because she had a great deal of knowledge and loved her work. But like Marx and other militants, she chose to devote her life to the cause of the proletariat. We could add that, like all the comrades of the ICC, she had the same conception of happiness as he did: to fight![4]
Thus, at the end of her life, far from being burnt out or crushed by militancy, she showed an astonishing dynamism. Despite her breathing difficulties and her fragile health (in particular since she had fractured her collarbone soon after her last birthday), she participated enthusiastically in a recent ICC weekend of study and discussion. At this meeting she intervened in the debate in a very clear and pertinent way. Before leaving her comrades to go back to Marseille, Elisabeth went with some of them, notably comrades from other countries, to visit the Père Lachaise cemetery and showed the comrades the Mur des Fédérés[5]. This was 15 days before her death.
All the militants of the ICC were thus shocked to receive the tragic news of her sudden death. No comrade imagined that she would be leaving us so soon, without any warning, because she wasn’t so old. Despite her 77 years, she had kept the freshness of youth, and had personal friends from the younger generation.
Elisabeth adored children. One of the great regrets of her life as a woman was that she never had any of her own. This, among other reasons, was why she became friends with the children of comrades who she always welcomed into her home with much affection.
Elisabeth was an extremely warm and welcoming person. She had a deep sense of hospitality. Her old house, in which she had been renting for 45 years, was a place of passage for comrades not only of the section in France but from other territorial sections. They were always welcome, along with their families. She opened her door to all militants of the ICC, without exception. Elisabeth hated private property. When she was away from her house, she always left the key for her comrades (sometimes excusing herself for not having had time to tidy up!).
Elisabeth had her faults of course. But they were the faults of her qualities. She had her own character. Sometimes she would have rows with certain comrades (including those who were closest to her). But she knew how to get over it, always looking for reconciliation because she never lost sight of what united the militants of the ICC: a platform of common principles, the combat which they are all waging against capitalism and the pressure of the dominant ideology. Elisabeth had a deep political esteem for the militants of the ICC, including those whose style or character didn’t suit her. In our internal debates, she listed attentively to all the interventions, all the arguments, often taking her own notes in order to deepen her reflection and, as she put it, “out of a need to clarify”.
Elisabeth was also very sentimental and had a tendency to see the organisation of revolutionaries as a large family or a group of friends. She used to have a certain illusion that the group Révolution Internationale (which she had joined in a period very much stamped by the student movement of May 68) could become a sort of island of communism. What allowed her to overcome this confusion were our days of study and discussion on the circle spirit in the workers’ movement, as well as our internal debates on the difficulties of our section in France, with the aim of moving from “a circle of friends to a political group”[6].
Thanks to her ability to reflect, Elisabeth was able to understand that the organisation of revolutionaries, while being the “beginning of the response” to capitalist social relations, cannot already be the response (to use a term of our comrade MC), a little island of communism within this society. It was her unbreakable commitment to the cause of the working class, her disinterested devotion to the ICC, which allowed Elisabeth to hold on patiently through all the crises the ICC has undergone since its foundation. Despite her “sentimental” approach to the organisation and the pain she felt when certain of her friends deserted it, Elisabeth was never drawn outside the ICC out of a misplaced loyalty to them. Every time she was confronted with a “conflict of loyalties” Elisabeth always decided in favour of the ICC and its struggle for communism (unlike other militants who left the organisation out of loyalty to their friends and with hostility towards the ICC). She never lost her convictions. To the end she remained faithful and loyal to the ICC.
Up until her last breath, Elisabeth was a real fighter for the proletarian cause. A militant who gave the best of herself to the collective and associated work of the main group of the communist left.
Elisabeth loved reading. She loved the sea, flowers, art: baroque music, literature, painting. But above all she loved the human species. Her love for humanity was the backbone of her passion for communism and her militant commitment within the ICC.
The passing of our comrade leaves us with a big hole. For the ICC, every militant is an irreplaceable link in the chain. Elisabeth can’t be replaced, so the only way to fill the hole, to pay homage to her memory, is to continue our combat, her combat.
Elisabeth gave her body to science. She has left us without wreaths or flowers.
To her brother Pierre and all her family;
To her friends Sara and Fayçal who immediately told us of her death;
To her friends in Marseille, Chantal, Dasha, Josette, Margaux, Marie-Jo, Rémi, Sarah…who helped us arranging her house with the greatest respect for her political activities and her final wishes:
We send all our sympathy and solidarity.
Farewell Elisabeth! You departed on a night in November, on your own, which is also a blow to us. But you were not really alone, for all of us you remain alive in our hearts, in our thoughts, in our consciousness.
In January the ICC will organise a meeting of political homage to our comrade. Our readers, sympathisers, fellow travellers, as well as militants of the groups of the communist left who knew Elisabeth, can write to the ICC if they want to take part in this homage which will take place in Marseille.
Révolution Internationale, ICC section in France, 24.11.18
[1] What's more Elisabeth had some very bad memories from her time as a pupil of the "good sisters"
[2] Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique
[3] The PSU was formed in 1960 and dissolved in 1989. It was composed of members of the Socialist Party opposed to the latter’s colonialist policies, left wing Christians as well as elements coming from Trotskyism and Maoism. One of its main leaders was Michel Rocard who eventually rejoined the Socialist Party, where he was at the head of its right wing. In the May 68 movement, the PSU took up positions that were much more “radical” than the Communist Party and was in favour of “self-management”
[4] See Karl Marx’s ‘Confession’, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm [1796]
[5] The wall where 147 fighters from the Paris Commune were shot and thrown into a trench
[6] This formulation is from a very important contribution to our internal debate written by our comrade MC in 1980. The following extract from it was published as a footnote to our text ‘The question of organisational functioning in the ICC’, International Review 109, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_functioning: [1797] "In the second half of the 60s, small circles of friends, were constituted by elements for the most part very young with no political experience, living in the student milieu. On the individual level their existence seemed purely accidental. On the objective level - the only one where a real explanation can be found - these circles corresponded to the end of the post-war reconstruction, and the first signs that capitalism was returning to the open phase of its permanent crisis, giving rise to a resurgence of class struggle. Despite what the individuals composing these circles might have thought, imagining that their group was based on friendship, the attempt to realise their daily life together, these circles only survived to the extent that they were politicised, became political groups, and accomplished and assumed their destiny. The circles who didn't become conscious of this were swallowed up and decomposed in the leftist or modernist swamp or disappeared into nature. Such is our own history. And it is not without difficulties that we have survived this process of transformation from a circle of friends into a political group, where unity based on affection, personal sympathy, the same life style, gave way to a political cohesion and a solidarity on a conviction that one is engaged in the same historical combat: the proletarian revolution (...)
One of the banes affecting revolutionary organisations of the Communist Left is the fact that many of their militants previously went through parties or groups of the left and extreme-left of capital (Socialist and Communist parties, Trotskyism, Maoism, official anarchism, the so-called "New Left" of Syriza or Podemos). That's inevitable given the simple reason that no militant is born with a complete and immediate clarity. However this stage bequeaths a handicap that's difficult to overcome: it's possible to break with the political positions of these organisations (trade unionism, national defence and nationalism, participation in elections, etc.) but it's much more difficult to rid oneself of attitudes, of ways of thinking, ways of debating, behaviours, conceptions which these organisations introduce you to with some force and which constitutes their way of life.
This heritage, which we are calling the hidden legacy of the left of capital, helps to stir up tensions in revolutionary organisations between comrades, provoking mistrust, rivalries, destructive behaviours, blockage of debate, aberrant theoretical positions, etc., which, combined with the pressure of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology, can cause these organisation serious damage. The objective of the series we're beginning here is to identify and combat this oppressive weight.
The left of capital: capitalist politics in the name of "socialism".
Since its first congress (1975), the ICC has addressed the problem of organisations that make false claims of "socialism" while practicing capitalist politics. The ICC's Platform, adopted by this congress, put forward in point 13: "All those parties or organisations which today defend, even ‘conditionally’ or ‘critically’, certain states or fractions of the bourgeoisie whether in the name of ‘socialism’, ‘democracy’, ‘anti-fascism’, ‘national independence’, the ‘united front’ or the ‘lesser evil’, which base their politics on the bourgeois electoral game, within the anti-working class activity of trade unionism or in the mystifications of self-management, are agents of capital. In particular, this is true of the Socialist and Communist parties."
Our Platform also concentrates on the problem of groups who put themselves "on the left" of these larger parties, often making "fiery criticisms" of them and adopting more "radical" poses: "All the so-called ‘revolutionary’ currents – such as Maoism which is simply a variant of parties which had definitively gone over to the bourgeoisie, or Trotskyism which, after constituting a proletarian reaction against the betrayal of the Communist Parties was caught up in a similar process of degeneration, or traditional anarchism, which today places itself in the framework of an identical approach by defending a certain number of positions of the SPs and CPs, such as ‘anti-fascist alliances’ – belong to the same camp: the camp of capital. Their lesser influence or their more radical language changes nothing as to the bourgeois basis of their programme, but makes them useful touts or supplements of these parties."
In order to understand the role of the left and extreme left of capital, it's essential to remember that, with the decline of capitalism, the state shows that "the tendency towards state capitalism expresses itself in the increasingly powerful, omnipresent, and systematic control over the whole of social life exerted by the state apparatus, and in particular the executive. On a much greater scale than in the decadence of Rome or feudalism, the state under decadent capitalism has become a monstrous, cold, impersonal machine which has devoured the very substance of civil society"[1]. This nature applies as much to openly dictatorial single party regimes (Stalinism, Nazism, military dictatorships) as to the democratic regimes.
In this framework the political parties are not the representatives of different classes or layers of society but totalitarian instruments of the state whose task is to submit the whole of the population (mainly the working class) to the imperatives of the national capital. They equally become the head of networks of cronyism, pressure groups and spheres of influence which combine political and economic action and become the breeding ground of an inescapable corruption.
In the democratic systems, the political apparatus of the capitalist state is divided into two wings: the right wing linked to the classic factions of the bourgeoisie and responsible for controlling the most backward layers of the population[2], and the left wing (the left with the unions and a series of extreme left organisations) essentially given over to the control and division of the working class and the destruction of its consciousness.
Why did the old workers' parties become the parties of the left of capital?
Organisations of the proletariat are not exempt from degeneration. The pressure of bourgeoisie ideology corrodes from the inside and can lead to an opportunism which, if not fought in time, leads to its betrayal and integration into the capitalist state[3].Opportunism takes this decisive step at the time of crucial historic events in the life of capitalist society: up to now the two key moments have been world imperialist war and proletarian revolution. In the Platform, we try to explain the process which leads to this fatal stage: "This was the case with the Socialist parties when in a period of subjection to the gangrene of opportunism and reformism, most of the main parties were led, at the outbreak of World War I (which marked the death of the 2nd International) to adopt, under the leadership of the social-chauvinist right which from then on was in the camp of the bourgeoisie, the policy of ‘national defence’, and then to oppose openly the post-war revolutionary wave, to the point of playing the role of the proletariat’s executioners, as in Germany 1919. The final integration of each of these parties into their respective bourgeois states took place at different moments in the period which followed the outbreak of World War I, but this process was definitively closed at the beginning of the 1920s, when the last proletarian currents were eliminated from or left their ranks and joined the Communist International.
In the same way, the Communist Parties in their turn passed into the capitalist camp after a similar process of opportunist degeneration. This process, which had already begun during the early 1920s, continued after the death of the Communist International (marked by the adoption in 1928 of the theory of ‘Socialism in one country’), to conclude, despite bitter struggles by the left fractions and after the latter’s exclusion, in these parties’ complete integration into the capitalist state at the beginning of the 1930s with their participation in their respective bourgeoisie’s armament drives and their entry into the ‘popular fronts’. Their active participation in the ‘Resistance’ in World War II, and in the ‘national reconstruction’ that followed it, has confirmed them as faithful agents of national capital and the purest incarnation of the counter-revolution".[4] In the space of 25 years (between 1914 and 1939) the working class first lost the Socialist parties, then, in the 1920's, the Communist parties and finally, from 1939, the groups of the Left Opposition around Trotsky which supported the still more brutal barbarity of the Second World War: "In 1938, the Left Opposition became the Fourth International. It was an opportunist adventure because it wasn't possible to constitute a world party in a situation that was going towards imperialist war and thus a profound defeat of the proletariat. The outcome was disastrous: in 1939-40, the groups of the so-called IV International took a position in favour of world war under the most diverse pretexts: the majority supporting the ‘socialist fatherland’ of Russia, but there was even a minority supporting the France of Petain (itself a satellite of the Nazis).
Against this degeneration of Trotskyist organisations, the last remaining internationalist nuclei reacted: particularly Trotsky's wife and a revolutionary of Spanish origin, Munis. Since then the Trotskyist organisations have become ‘radical’ agents of capital which try to stir up the proletariat with all sorts of ‘revolutionary causes’ which generally correspond to the ‘anti-imperialist’ factions of the bourgeoisie (like the celebrated sergeant Chavez of today). Similarly, they sweep up workers disgusted with the electoral circus by mobilising them to vote in a ‘critical’ fashion for the ‘Socialists’ in order to ’block the way for the right’. Finally they always have great hope of taking over the unions through the means of ‘fighting candidates’".[5]
The working class is capable of generating left fractions within proletarian parties when they begin to be affected by the sickness of opportunism. Thus within the parties of the 2nd International, this role was played by the Bolsheviks, the current of Rosa Luxemburg, Dutch Tribunism, the militants of the Italian abstentionist fraction, etc. The history of the combats undertaken by these fractions is sufficiently well known because their texts and contributions are concretised in the formation of the 3rd International.
And from 1919, the proletarian reaction, faced with difficulties, errors and the subsequent degeneration of the Third International, was expressed by the communist left (Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, etc.) which led (with great difficulties and unfortunately in a very dispersed way) a heroic and determined struggle. Trotsky's Left Opposition appeared later and in a much more incoherent manner. In the 1930's, the gap between the communist left (principally its most coherent group Bilan, representing the Italian Communist Left) and Trotsky's Opposition became more evident. While Bilan saw localised imperialist wars as expressions of a course towards a globalised imperialist war, the Opposition became entangled in ramblings about national liberation and the progressive nature of anti-fascism. While Bilan saw the ideological enrolment for imperialist war and the interests of capital behind the mobilisation of Spanish workers for war between Franco and the Republic, Trotsky saw the 1936 strikes in France and the anti-fascist fight in Spain as the beginning of the revolution... However, what's worse is that even if Bilan wasn't yet clear on the exact nature of the USSR, it was clear to it that it couldn't support it, above all because the USSR was an active agent in preparing for the war. Trotsky on the other hand, with his speculations about the USSR as a "degenerated workers' state", flung the doors wide open for supporting the USSR, which was a means of supporting the second world butchery of 1939-1945.
The role of the extreme left of capital against the resurgence of workers' struggle in 1968
Since 1968, the proletarian struggle took off again across the entire world. May 68 in France, the "Hot Autumn" in Italy, the cordobazo" in Argentina, the Polish October, etc., were among its most significant expressions. This struggle brought up a new generation of revolutionaries. Numerous working class minorities appeared everywhere and all that constituted a fundamental strength for the proletariat.
However, it is important to note the role of groups of the extreme left in the weakening and destruction of these minorities: the Trotskyists whom we have already mentioned, official anarchism[6], and Maoism. Regarding the latter it's important to stress that it's never been a proletarian current. The Maoist groups were born from imperialist conflicts and wars of influence like those between Peking and Moscow which led to the rupture between the two states and the alignment of Peking to American imperialism in 1972.
It's been estimated that towards 1970 there were more than a hundred thousand militants around the world who, although with enormous confusion, pronounced themselves in favour of revolution, against the traditional parties of the left (Socialist and Communist parties), against imperialist war, and looked to advance the proletarian struggle that was breaking out. A striking majority of this important contingent were recuperated by this constellation of groups of the extreme left. The present series of articles will try to demonstrate in some detail all the mechanisms through which they undertake this recuperation. We will talk not only about the capitalist programme printed on their radical and “working class” standards but also their methods of organisation and debate, their mode of functioning and their approach to morality.
What's certain is that their actions have been very important in the destruction of the potential for the working class to build up a wide-scale avant-garde for its struggle. Potential militants have been turned towards activism and immediatism, channelled into sterile combats within the unions, municipalities, electoral campaigns, etc.
The results have been clear:
- The majority have quit the struggle, profoundly frustrated and prone to scepticism towards working class struggle and the possibility of communism; a significant part of this sector fell into drugs, alcohol and the most absolute despair;
- A minority has remained as the core troops of the unions and parties of the left, propagating a sceptical and demoralising vision of the working class;
- Another, more cynical minority, has made careers in the unions and parties of the left and some of these "winners" have become members of parties of the right[7].
Communist militants are a vital asset and it's a central task of the groups of the present communist left, who are the inheritors of Bilan, Internationalisme, etc., to draw all the lessons from this the enormous bloodletting of militant forces that the proletariat has suffered since its historic awakening in 1968.
A false vision of the working class
In order to carry out their dirty work of confinement, division and confusion, the unions, the left and extreme left parties propagate a false vision of the working class. They impregnate communist militants and deform their thoughts, their behaviour and their approach. It is thus vital to indentify and combat this.
1. A sum of individual citizens
For the left and extreme left, the workers do not make up an antagonistic social class within capitalism but are instead a sum of individuals. They are the "lower" part of the "citizenship". As such, all the individual workers can only hope for is a "stable situation", a "fair reward" for their work, "respect for their rights", etc.
This allows the left to hide something that is fundamental: the working class is a class that is indispensable to capitalist society because without its associated labour capitalism couldn't function. But, at the same time, it is a class excluded from society, foreign to all its rules and vital norms; it is thus a class which can only realise itself as such when it abolishes capitalist society from head to toe. Instead of this reality, the left pushes the idea of an "integrated class" which, through reforms and participation in capitalist organisations, can satisfy its interests.
With this overall view the working class is dissolved into an amorphous and inter-classist mass of "citizens" aka "the people". In such a disorder, the worker is assimilated to the petty-bourgeoisie which cons it, to the police which represses it, to the judge who condemns it, to the politicians who lie to it and even to the "progressive bourgeoisie". The idea of social classes and class antagonisms disappears, giving way to notions about the citizens of the nation, to the false "national community".
Once the idea of class is erased from the mind of the working class, the fundamental notion of a historic class also disappears. The proletariat is a historic class which, beyond the situation of different generations or geographical place, has a revolutionary future within its hands, the establishment of a new society which goes beyond and resolves the contradictions which lead capitalism towards the destruction of humanity.
In sweeping away the vital and scientific ideas of social classes, class antagonisms and historic class, the left and extreme left of capital reduce revolution to a pious wish that should be left in the hands of political "experts" and parties. They introduce the idea of the delegation of power, a concept that is perfectly valid for the bourgeoisie but absolutely destructive for the proletariat. In fact the bourgeoisie, an exploiting class which holds economic power, can entrust the management of its business to a specialised political personnel which makes up a bureaucratic layer that has its own interests within the complex needs of the national capital.
But it's not the same for the proletariat which is both an exploited and revolutionary class which has no economic power but whose sole strength is consciousness, unity and solidarity and its confidence in itself. These are all factors that are rapidly destroyed if it relies on a specialised layer of intellectuals and politicians.
Armed with the idea of delegation, the parties of the left and extreme left defend participation in elections as a way of "blocking the road to the right", that's to say that in the ranks of the workers they undermine the autonomous action of a class to turn it into a mass of voting citizens: an individualist mass, each one locked into their "own interests". In this vision, the unity and self-organisation of the proletariat no longer exists.
Lastly, the parties of the left and extreme left also call for the proletariat to place itself in the hands of the state in order to "reach another society". They thus use the trick of presenting the capitalist hangman, the state, as "the friend of the workers" or "its ally".
2. A vulgar materialism that sees only a mass of losers
The left and the unions propagate a vulgar materialist conception of the working class. According to them, workers are individuals who only think of their families, their comforts, a better car or home. Drowned in consumerism, they have no "ideal" of struggle, preferring to stay at home watching football or in the bar with their pals. In order to complete the loop, they affirm that because workers are up to their necks in debt to pay for their consumerism, they are incapable of undertaking the least struggle[8].
With these lessons in moral hypocrisy they transform the workers' struggle, which is a material necessity, into a matter of ideal will, whereas communism - the ultimate aim of the working class - is a material necessity in response to the insoluble contradictions of capitalism[9]. They separate and oppose the immediate struggle from the revolutionary struggle whereas in reality there's a unity between the two since the struggle of the working class is, as Engels said, at once economic, political and a battle of ideas.
To deprive our class of this unity leads to the idealist vision of an "egotist" and "materialist" struggle for economic needs and a "glorious" and "moral" struggle for the "revolution". Such ideas profoundly demoralise the workers who feel shame and guilt at being concerned for their own needs and that of their nearest and dearest, and are made to feel like servile individuals who only think of themselves. With these false approaches, which follow the cynical and hypocritical line of the Catholic Church, the left and extreme left of capital sap the confidence of the workers in themselves as a class and try to present them as the "lowest" part of society.
This attitude converges with the dominant ideology which presents the working class as losers. The famous "common sense" says that workers are individuals who remain workers because they are not good enough for anything else or they haven't worked hard enough to progress up the social scale. The workers are lazy, have no aspirations, don't want to succeed...
It really is the world turned upside-down! The social class which through its associated labour produces the majority of social riches of society is supposed to be made up of its worst elements. Since the proletariat makes up the majority of society, it seems that it is fundamentally composed of cowards, losers, uncultured individuals without any motivation. The bourgeoisie not only exploits the proletariat, it mocks it as well. The minority which lives off the efforts of millions of human beings has the audacity to consider the workers as lazy, useless, unsuccessful and without hope.
Social reality is radically different: in the associated world-wide labour of the proletariat, it develops cultural, scientific and, at the same time, profoundly human links: solidarity, confidence and a critical spirit. They are the force which silently moves society, the source of the development of the productive forces.
The appearance of the working class is that of an insignificant, passive and anonymous mass. This appearance is the result of the contradiction suffered by the working class as an exploited and revolutionary class. On the one hand it's the class of global associated labour and, as such, it is what makes the wheels of capitalist production function and has in its hands the forces and capacities to radically change society. But on the other hand, competition, the market place, the normal life of a society where division and each against all prevails, crush it into a sum of individuals, each one impotent with feelings of failure and guilt, separated from the others, atomised and forced to fight alone for oneself.
The left and extreme left of capital, in complete continuity with the rest of the bourgeoisie, only want us to see an amorphous mass of atomised individuals. In this way they serve capital and the state in their task of demoralising and excluding the class from any social perspective.
We return here what we said at the beginning: the conception of the working class as a sum of individuals. However, the proletariat is a class and acts as such each time it succeeds in freeing itself from the chains which oppress and atomise it with a consistent and autonomous struggle. Thus we not only see a class in action but we also see each one of its components transform itself into active beings, fighting, taking the initiative and developing creativity. We've see it in the great moments of class struggle, as the revolution in Russia of 1905 and 1917. As Rosa Luxemburg underlined so well in The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions: “But in the storm of the revolutionary period even the proletarian is transformed from a provident pater familas demanding support, into a ‘revolutionary romanticist’, for whom even the highest good, life itself, to say nothing of material well-being, possesses but little in comparison with the ideals of the struggle."[10]
As a class, the individual strength of each worker is set free, gets rid of it shackles and develops its human potential. As a sum of individuals, the capacities of each are annihilated, diluted, wasted for humanity. The function of the left and extreme left of capital is to keep the workers in their chains, that's to say, as a mere sum of individuals.
A class with the clock stopped on the tactics of the nineteenth century
Generally in the ascendant period of capitalism and more particularly during its greatest heights (1870-1914), the working class could fight for improvements and reforms within the framework of capitalism without immediately envisaging its revolutionary destruction. On the one hand that implied the formation of large mass organisations (socialist and labour parties, trade unions, cooperatives, workers' universities, women and youth associations, etc.) and on the other hand tactics that included participation in elections, petitions, strikes planned by the unions, etc.
These methods became more and more inadequate at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the ranks of revolutionaries there was a widespread debate which opposed Kautsky, a partisan of these methods on one side and on the other, Rosa Luxemburg[11] who, drawing the lessons of the 1905 revolution, clearly showed that the working class had to move towards new methods of struggle which corresponded to the opening of a new situation of generalised war and economic crisis – in sum, capitalism's descent into its decadence. The new methods of struggle were based upon the direct action of the masses, on the self-organisation of workers into assemblies and councils, on the abolition of the old division between the Minimum and Maximum programme. These methods come face to face with trade unionism, reforms, electoral participation, and the parliamentary road.
The left and extreme left of capital concentrate their policies on keeping the working class locked into the old methods which today are radically incompatible with the defence of the latter's immediate and historical interests. Interestingly, they have stopped the clock at capitalism's "golden years" of 1890 to 1910 with all their routines aimed at disarming and dispersing the working class with voting in elections, union actions, demonstrations programmed in advance, etc., mechanisms which reduce the workers to "good, worker citizens", passive and atomised, submitting with discipline to all the needs of capital: work hard, vote every four years, march behind the unions, don't call into question the self-proclaimed leaders.
This policy is shamelessly defended by the Socialist and Communist parties while their annexes on the "extreme left" reproduce it with their "critical" touches and "radical" excesses while defending a vision of a working class as a class for capital; a class which has to submit to all its imperatives while waiting for some hypothetical crumbs which, from time to time, fall from the golden table of its banquets.
C. Mir. 18.12.17
[1] Point 4 of the Platform of the ICC.
[2] The classical parties of the right (conservative, liberal, etc ) complement their part of the control of society through the parties of the extreme right (fascist, neo-Nazi, right populists, etc.). The nature of the latter is more complex; see in this regard "Contribution on the problem of populism", International Review no. 157
[3] For a close look at how opportunism penetrates and destroys the proletarian life of an organisation, see "The road towards the betrayal of German Social-Democracy", International Review no. 152.
[4] Point 13 of our Platform.
[5] See our Spanish article: "Cuales son las diferencias entre la Izquierda Comunista y la IV Internacional?"
[6] We are not talking here about the small internationalist anarchist groups, who, despite their confusions, lay claim to many working class positions, showing themselves clearly against imperialist war and for the proletarian revolution.
[7] There are a number of examples: Durao Barroso, ex-President of the European Union, was a Maoist in his youth; Cohn-Bendit, European Parliament Deputy and councillor to Macron; Lionel Jospin, ex-Prime Minister of France was a youthful Trotskyist; Jack Straw, ex-British Home Secretary and the state's renditioner-in-chief was a left-wing, "firebrand" student leader.
[8] We should recognise that consumerism (promoted during the 1920's in the United States and after the Second World War) has helped to undermine the spirit of protest within the working class, since the vital needs of each worker are deformed by the part played by consumerism, transforming its needs into individual affairs where "everything can be had through credit".
[9] See our series "Communism isn't just a nice idea but a material necessity": https://en.internationalism.org/go_deeper [1798]
[11] See the book in Spanish: "Debate sobre la huelgade masas" (texts of Parvus, Mehring, Luxemburg, Kautsky, Vandervelde, Anton Pannekoek).
In 2008, the financial crisis which hit the United States hard, with several banks failing one after the other, suddenly plunged millions of proletarians into misery. Among the main symbolic characters of the banking sector, Lehman Brothers, one of the great pillars of the American economic system, quickly fell into bankruptcy, provoking panic throughout the entire international banking system of which it was one of the star players.
Behind the sub-prime crisis, the barbarity of capitalism
Thanks to the loans given to the banking establishments by the investment bank of Lehman Brothers, hypothecated (pledged) housing credits at variable rates (sub-primes) were granted to households with weak incomes. The workers in these households, among the poorest in the United States, were conned into thinking that these long-term credits would allow them to buy their homes. In reality, the rates were "interesting" (favourable) as long as the price of houses increased. The new potential buyers could then re-sell their houses at a profit allowing them to pay off their borrowings if they could no longer pay their debt. But at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, the American housing market collapsed. The variable rates of sub-prime credit increased and the workers couldn't keep up with them. In this situation, the lending banks wanted to take back the hypothecated properties and ruthlessly launched a sordid and massive operation of repossessions. From one day to the next, some seven-and-a-half million workers were brutally expelled from their homes and thrown onto the streets, sometimes in military-type operations with the aid of the police. While these families found themselves without a roof over their heads, some obliged to sleep in shelters or find some other form of accommodation, the majority of the repossessed buildings remained unsold and empty.
It is clear that the workers were quite simply swindled into naively thinking that they would be able to buy these properties thanks to the "interesting" rates of credit that attracted them. Many of them didn't even know what they had signed up to! These families of workers were thus direct victims of the capitalist sharks in the "world of finance", a particularly corrupt and rotten sector of the dominant class.
The American state evidently did nothing to prevent this human catastrophe. On the contrary, it quite deliberately allowed Lehman Brothers to put the key back through the letterbox and walk away. It thus bears the major responsibility for plunging millions of proletarians into the misery and destitution worsened by the explosion of the "housing bubble".
The state comes to the rescue of its financial system
If the US banking system decided to let Lehman Brothers collapse (whereas it had supported other banks on the edge of insolvency) it's because the major world power wanted to make an example out of it and send out a warning to the bourgeoisies of the main industrialised countries to mobilise in order to save the international financial system, raising the spectre of a similar or even worse crash than that of 1929. The main European banks had also invested heavily in sub-primes, thinking they were a judicious investment. After the bankruptcy of Lehman's, the shock was felt immediately in the other major industrialised countries. The threat of other bankruptcies and the announcement of a "domino effect" immediately accompanied the bursting of the housing bubble. In order to prevent the risk of a succession of insolvencies, the states and their central banks, in Europe as the United States, were obliged to put urgent rescue plans in place. In Britain, the government immediately nationalised some banks, notably Northern Rock. In France and Germany, the state decided to inject a colossal amount of liquidity into the coffers of the big banks in order to avoid bankruptcies and the collapse of the world's financial system. But these rescue measures increased state deficits even more, aggravating unemployment and precarious working. The cures of austerity deployed by the ruling class in order to lessen somewhat the state's deficits made themselves rapidly felt in the most vulnerable countries, namely Greece, Portugal, Ireland and, progressively, in every developed country on the planet.
An intense propaganda...
Today, when the threat of new financial storm appears again on the horizon, the media have a launched a devious propaganda around the ten-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. In the name of the "rescue" of the world economy, the states have put the responsibility for this crisis on the "world of finance", embodied in "rogue traders" and "crooked bosses". All this is aimed at absolving the capitalist system as a whole.
By efficiently exploiting nationalism and the role of the central banks in the bailout of those funds threatened by bankruptcy, the bourgeoisie have waged an ideological offensive which presents the state as the regulator of "excesses" of the financial sector and the protector of the small saver. And it's really thanks to the role of the state as "the saviour of the world economy" that governments of all kinds have been partly able to justify the necessity to keep wages down so as to increase the competitiveness of their economies on the world market and reduce their respective national debts.
Contrary to the lies which fed and still feed the official lines of the bourgeoisie, it is not the financial crisis of 2008 which initiated the train of "reforms" which have severely degraded the proletariat's living conditions and undermined so many of its so-called social benefits. If these great "reforms" and the massive attacks against the proletariat's living and working conditions have worsened throughout the world after the dramatic events of 2008, they had already been going on for decades. These attacks were orchestrated by states and governments of the right and left, without of course succeeding in resolving the crisis[1].
This better explains the ideological propaganda unleashed in 2008. It had the aim of giving a fraudulent explanation that tried to pass off the symptoms of the financial crisis for the sickness; that of the historic crisis of the capitalist economy. Since the return of the open crisis of capitalism at the end of the 1960's, more and more profound recessions have punctuated social life. And every time the bourgeoisie has come up with justifications and scapegoats. In 1973, it was put down to the "oil price shock". At the time the troublemakers were the Gulf countries and their princes rolling in money. In 1987, 1998, 2001, and 2008, it was the turn of finance and the banks to be blamed. But never have these ideological attacks been as intense as in 2008. Thus all sorts of fallacious speeches were made on the necessity to cleanse the banking system, to "moralise" the banks by sanctioning shady speculators and "irresponsible" bankers, such as the CEO of Lehman's, who was presented in the media as "the most detested man in America".
... to hide the bankruptcy of capitalism
In the very words of all the bourgeois leaders, of all the economic "specialists", the crisis of 2008 is the most serious that the capitalist system has known since the great depression that began in 1929. However, the explanations that they give do not allow any clear understanding of the real significance of these convulsions and the future that they announce for the whole of society and notably for the working class.
What is obscured today by all these economic specialists is the system’s crisis of the overproduction, its fundamental incapacity to sell the mass of the goods that it produces. Of course there is no overproduction in relation to the needs of humanity (which capitalism is incapable of satisfying), but overproduction in relation to solvent markets, to the buying power of the masses. The official lines of the bourgeoisie focus on the financial crisis, on the weaknesses of the banks alone but the reality of what these bourgeois sycophants call "the real economy" (as opposed to the "fictitious economy") is illustrated by the fact that factory closures, massive job losses and bankrupt businesses are being announced every day.
At the time of the 2008 crisis, the fall of world trade revealed the incapacity of businesses to find buyers to keep their production going. Thus, it wasn't the "financial crisis" (and still less the bankruptcy of Lehman's) which was at the origin of the 2008 open recession; quite the contrary. This financial crisis showed clearly that the amassing of debt as a remedy to overproduction could not be continued indefinitely. Sooner or later the "real economy" has its revenge, i.e., that which is at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism (the impossibility of businesses being able to sell the totality of the goods they produce), comes back to the forefront. The crisis of overproduction is not the simple consequence of a "financial" crisis, as the majority of bourgeois specialists would have us think. It comes from the very inner workings of the capitalist economy as marxism showed a century-and-a-half ago.
As Marx and Engels said in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" of 1848, society has become too "rich"! Capitalism produces too many goods whereas solvent markets become more and more restricted, as we can see with the bitter commercial war between the United States and Europe, which moreover must confront the competitiveness of Chinese goods.
Capitalism today is being suffocated by the staggering weight of its debt. At the same time it can only keep itself going, artificially, thanks to credit. The only "solution" that capital can come up with is a new advance into a vicious spiral of debt. With the development of speculation, this mode of production which is based on the pursuit of profit, seems more and more like a casino economy. The remedy, which consists of injecting financial liquidity into the coffers of the banks and other major financial institutions, can only, in the real world, make the sickness worse, notably by increasing the sovereign debt of the banks.
Ten years after the seismic events of 2008, despite the urgent rescue plans for the financial system and despite a certain, very fragile "recovery" in the growth rate of 2012-2013, the bourgeoisie is once again becoming restless. Ten years of the austerity cure have changed nothing fundamental. States remain overburdened with debt and the central banks have been force-fed with dubious assets. World growth has again slowed down and all the players are taking more and more risks. Since the middle of 2018, the media and bourgeois economists have sounded the alarm, fearful of a similar or worse situation than that of 2008. By developing these alarmist statements and campaigns around the excesses of the financial world, the bourgeoisie tries to terrorise and paralyse the working class behind the defence of the "saviour state". In order not to obstruct its (illusory) rescue plans for the financial system, proletarians are called upon to tighten their belts even more and accept new sacrifices, new inroads into their incomes.
Faced with this capitalist barbarity, notably shown in 2008 by the scandalous eviction of millions of workers from their houses in the richest country in the world, the proletariat has no other choice but to once again take up the fight for the defence of its living conditions and against the social order of its exploiters. It must understand that far from being a "neutral protector", regulating the speculative excesses of financial traders, the bourgeois state is first and foremost an organisation of repression charged with the maintenance of all the wrongs of capitalism. Insolvent banks and businesses only expose the weakness of the capitalist mode of production which has no future to offer humanity. The only solution to the crisis is the overthrow of this system and the destruction of the state by the class which produces all the riches of society: the international proletariat.
Sonia, November 17 2018
[1] It's this which partly explains the substantial discrediting of the traditional political parties in the eyes of the working class. In the United States it's the rejection of the "establishment", particularly in the heavily affected industrial areas, which pushed a large part of the working class to vote for Trump
October 10, two truck drivers from Seine-et-Marne launched an appeal on Facebook for November 17, entitled: "National blockage against the rise in fuel prices". Their message spread very quickly on social media, attracting up to 20,000 "interested" people while initiatives and appeals multiplied. Without trade unions or political parties a whole series of actions, rallies and blockades were spontaneously organised.
The result: November 17, according to the government, 287,710 people spread over 2,034 places, paralysed crossroads, roundabouts, autoroutes, toll-booths, supermarket car parks... These official figures issued by the Interior Ministry (given with admirable precision!) are largely and deliberately underestimated. On the other hand the "gilets jaunes" say that it's twice that number. In the following days some blockades were maintained, others took place here and there, mobilising thousands of people each day. A dozen Total oil refineries were disrupted by a simultaneous action of the CGT and the "gilets jaunes".
A new great day of action was launched for November 24, called: "Act II, all of France to Paris". The objective was to block prestigious networks and the running of the capital: the Champs-Elysées, the Place de la Concorde, the Senate and above all, the Elysée. "We have to deal a decisive blow and make our way to Paris by all means possible (car-pooling, train, bus, etc.). Paris because it's here that the government sits! We await all, lorries, buses, taxis, tractors, tourist vehicles, etc. Everyone!" said truck driver Eric Drouet from Melun, the co-initiator of the movement and figurehead of the mobilisation. But this great unitary gathering didn't take place, with a number of "gilets jaunes" preferring to demonstrate locally, often because of the cost of transport. Above all the mobilisation was lower in numbers. Only 8,000 protesters appeared in Paris, 106, 301 in all of France and 1600 events. Even if these government figures greatly underestimate the reality of the mobilisation, the tendency is clearly on the decrease. However, many in the movement are claiming a victory. Most important for the "gilets jaunes" are the images of the Champs-Elysées "occupied and held for the whole day" thus showing "the strength of the people against the powerful"[1]. Then, in the evening, an appeal was launched via Facebook for a third day of action for Saturday December 1: "Act III; Macron resign!" and putting forward two claims: "Increase buying power and cancel the fuel taxes".
Journalists, politicians and other "sociologists" warned of the unknown nature of the movement: spontaneous, outside of union and political frameworks, adaptable, organised essentially through social networks, relatively massive, globally disciplined, generally avoiding destruction and confrontations, etc. On the TV and in newspaper columns the movement is qualified as a "sociological UFO".
Anger against the government's attacks
Initiated by the truck drivers and as written by one of them, Eric Drouet, the movement mobilised "trucks, bus, taxis, tractors and tourist vehicles", but not only them. Numerous small entrepreneurs "devastated by taxes" are equally present. Salaried and precarious workers, unemployed and retired, wear the "gilet jaune" and make up its most important contingent. "The 'gilets jaunes', is rather a France of employees, supermarket cashiers, technicians, infant school assistants who intend to defend the life that they have chosen: live a life apart, peaceful, with neighbours who look like them, with a garden, etc., and the increase in fuel taxes, because of their cars, calls into question their private space", is the analysis of Vincent Tiberi. According to this Professor of Sciences, the "gilets jaunes" "doesn't only represent peripheral France, the forgotten of France. They represent what the sociologist Olivier Schwartz called the people of average means. They work, pay their taxes and earn too much for subsidies "[2].
In reality, the breadth of this movement is above all witness to the immense anger which eats away in the entrails of society, and notably within the working class, faced with the austerity of the Macron government. Officially, according to the Observatoire français des conjonctures economiques, the annual household disposable income (i.e., what's left after taxes and costs) has been reduced between 2008 and 2016 by 440 euros at least. This is only a small part of the attacks suffered by the working class. Because to this general increase in all kinds of taxes can be added the growth in unemployment, the systemisation of precarious jobs, including in the public sector, inflation particularly hitting essential goods, the unaffordable price of housing, etc. Pauperisation is rising inexorably and with it, the fear of the future. But even more, what feeds this immense anger according to the "gilet jaunes" is "the feeling of being neglected"[3].
It is this dominant feeling of being "neglected", ignored by governments, the hope of being listened to and recognised by "those on high" to use the terminology of the "gilets jaunes", which explains the means of action chosen: wearing the hi-viz yellow fluorescent jackets, blocking roads, going to the Senate or to the Elysée underneath the windows of the grand bourgeoisie, by occupying "the most beautiful avenue in the world".[4]
The media and the government have put the emphasis on violence in order to make it known that any struggle against the high cost of living and the degradation of the life of the exploited can only lead to chaos and anarchy with vandalism and blind acts of violence. Under the reins of the bourgeoisie the media, specialists in making amalgams, want us to think that the "gilets jaunes" are "extremists" who also want "a fight with the police"[5]. Before anyone else, it's the forces of repression which are aggressive and provocative! November 24 in Paris, tear-gas grenades were incessant, as were the charges of the CRS on groups of men and women marching peacefully along the Champs-Elysées. Moreover there were very few windows broken[6], contrary to events around the football World Cup in the same area four months earlier. Even if some excited masked "gilets jaunes" wanted a fight with the forces of order ("black-blocs" or ultra-right thugs), the great majority wasn't interested in fighting or destruction. They didn't want to be "wreckers" but only "citizens", respected and listened to. That's why the appeal to "Act III" stated "this must be done properly. No fighting and 5 million French in the street". And even: "In order to securitise our next meeting, we propose setting up "gilets rouges" who will have the responsibility of throwing the wreckers from our ranks. Above all we don't want the population on our backs. Pay attention to our image friends".
An inter-classist movement of "citizens"
The movement of the "gilets jaunes" has, on the other hand, a common point with the celebration of the world championship French football team: the presence of the tricolore everywhere along with regional flags, regular singing of the national anthem, fierce pride in the "la peuple français", which, united is capable of moving the powerful. The reference in many heads is the French Revolution of 1789 or even the Resistance of 1939-1945[7] .
The inflamed nationalism, the references to "the people", the beseeching pleas addressed to the powerful, reveals the real nature of the movement. The great majority of the "gilet jaunes" are active, retired or pauperised workers, but they appear here as citizens of the "French people" and not as members of the working class. They are acting in an inter-classist movement or are mixed-up in the classes and layers of the non-exploited of society (active, retired, precarious, unemployed) with the petty-bourgeoisie (liberal professionals, artisans, small entrepreneurs, farmers and smallholders). A part of the working class is tagging along with the initiators of the movement (small business people, self-employed drivers of lorries, taxis, ambulances). Despite the legitimate anger of the "gilets jaunes", among who are numerous proletarians who cannot make ends meet, this movement is not a movement of the working class. It is a movement which has been launched by small business people who are angry about the increase in fuel prices. As witnessed by the words of the truck driver who initiated the movement: "We are waiting for everyone, lorries, buses, taxis, tourist vehicles, tractors, etc. Everyone!" That is "Everyone" and all "the French people" behind the self-employed drivers, taxi drivers, farmers, etc. The workers are thus diluted into the "people", atomised and separated one from the other as individual citizens, mixed-up with small businessmen and women (many of whom were part of the electorate of the Rassemblement National - ex-FN - of Marine Le Pen).
The rotten terrain on which a great number of proletarians, including the most pauperised, have situated themselves is not that of the working class! In this "apolitical" and "anti-union" movement, there is no call to strike and for its extension to all sectors! No appeal for sovereign general assemblies in enterprises in order to discuss and reflect together on the actions to be taken to develop and unify the struggle against the attacks of the government! This movement of "citizens' "revolt is a trap to drown the working class in the "people of France" where bourgeois cliques are found as "supporters of the movement". From Marine Le Pen to Olivier Besancenot, with Mélenchon and Laurent Wauqiez, "everyone" is there from the extreme right to the extreme left of capital, supporting an inter-classist movement, with their nationalist poison.
…with the support of all kinds of bourgeois cliques
It's the inter-classist nature of the "gilets jaunes" which explains why Marine Le Pen salutes it as a "legitimate movement" of "the French people"; it's why Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, President of Debout la France (Stand-up for France), supports this movement: "We should block the whole of France (...) the population should say to the government: enough is enough!"; it's why Laurent Wauquiez, President of Les Républicains qualifies the "gilets jaunes" as "worthy, determined people who rightly demand that the difficulties of the France that works is listened to"; it's why the Deputy Jean Lassalle, at the head of Résistons, is one of the figureheads of the movement and wears his yellow hi-viz jacket in the National Assembly as well as in the street. The right and extreme right clearly recognise in the "gilets jaunes" a movement which in no way puts the capitalist system in any danger. Above all they see it as a very efficient means of weakening their main opponents in the next elections, i.e., the Macron clique, whose authority and capacity to manage social peace has been severely dented.
As to the left and extreme left, they denounce the recuperation by the right and extreme right, rejecting the "fashos who are polluting the movement" while supporting it more or less openly. After being cold to it at first, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of La France insoumise (Rebellious France) can't find words enough to salute it: "The revolutionary movement in yellow", a "popular" and "mass" movement. He's taken to it like a duck to water and him and his rebellious France, his red-white-and-blue flags, his tricolour scarf worn on every occasion and his will to "unite people against the oligarchy" through the ballot box.
The support from all over the bourgeois political chessboard[8], and above all the right and extreme-right, shows that the "gilets jaunes" movement has no proletarian nature and has nothing to do with the class struggle! If all parts of the political apparatus of the French bourgeoisie are using the "gilets jaunes" in the hope of weakening Macron and gaining some electoral success from it, they know that this movement does nothing to strengthen the struggle of the proletariat against its exploitation and oppression[9]
In this type of inter-classist movement, the proletariat has nothing to gain because it's always the petty-bourgeoisie which gives it its weight (yellow is moreover the colour of strike-breakers!). And among the eight speakers designated for November 26, there's a large majority of small bosses and entrepreneurs.
Thus, these are the objectives of the petty-bourgeoisie: its slogans, its methods of struggle are imposed upon everyone. In appearance, this social layer shows a great deal of radicalism. Because it is crushed, de-classed by capitalism, its anger can explode violently. It can denounce the injustice and even the barbarity of the grand bourgeoisie and its state. But at root, it aspires to be "recognised" and not be "neglected" by the elites and "those on high" or, even better for some of its members, to be raised up into the superior ranks of the bourgeoisie and for that their businesses need to be flourishing. This is what explains its demands through the "gilets jaunes" movement: cheaper fuel, less taxes so that their businesses function and develop, blocking roads dressed in yellow so as to be seen and respected, a focalisation on the person of Macron ("Macron resign") symbolising the hope of being the leader in the place of the leader and a preoccupation with the "most beautiful avenue in the world", a real window on luxury capitalism.
This movement of the "gilets jaunes" is also partially infiltrated by the ideology of populism. An "original", "adaptable" movement which says it's against the political parties, denouncing the inertia of the unions and... supported from the beginning by Marine Le Pen! It was not an unfortunate coincidence or the action of a small group of individuals against the flow of the movement, when, on November 22, some "gilets jaunes", on discovering some migrants hidden in a lorry, denounced them to the gendarmes. Some demonstrators wanted to save these migrants who were at risk of their lives; but other remarks by some "gilets jaunes" filmed at the time were nauseating: "What a fucking smile", "What a load of fuckers", "This is where our taxes are going", etc.
The breadth of the inter-classist movement is explained by the difficulty of the working class in expressing its combativity as a result of all the union manoeuvres sabotaging these struggles (as we've recently seen with the long strike at SNCF). It's for that reason that the discontent with the unions that exists within the working class has been recuperated by those that launched this movement. What many supporters of the "gilets jaunes" want to happen is that the methods of workers' struggles (strikes, sovereign general assemblies, massive demonstrations, strike committees...) lead to nothing. Thus it's necessary to have confidence in the small bosses (who protest against the increases of taxes and costs) in order to find other methods against the high cost of living and come together as the "people of France"!
Many workers in "gilets jaunes" reproach the unions for not "doing their job". And now we are seeing the CGT trying to catch up by calling for a new "day of action" for December 1. You can be sure that the CGT and the other unions will indeed "do their job" of keeping the workers under control in order to prevent any spontaneous movement taking place on a class terrain.
The proletariat must defend its class autonomy and count only on itself!
Numerous workers have been mobilised against poverty, incessant economic attacks, unemployment, and the precariousness of work... But in joining up with the "gilets jaunes" these workers are being momentarily misled and taken in tow by a movement that only leads to an impasse.
The working class has to defend its living conditions on its own grounds, as an autonomous class, against the national unity of all the "anti-Macron" forces manipulating the anger of the "gilets jaunes" in order to corral them into the polling booths. They mustn't delegate or entrust their struggle, neither to reactionary social layers, nor to the parties which pretend to support it, nor to the unions which are its false friends. This entire bunch, each one with their own creed, occupies and carves up the social terrain in order to prevent the autonomous struggle of the proletariat from affirming itself.
When the working class affirms itself as an autonomous class by developing its massive struggle on its own class grounds, it brings behind it a larger and larger part of society, behind its own methods of struggle and its unitary slogans, and finally it own revolutionary project for the transformation of society. In 1980 in Poland, an immense mass movement started from the naval dockyards of Gdansk following increases in prices of basic necessities. In order to confront the government and make it retreat, the workers regrouped themselves, they were organised as a class faced with the red bourgeoisie and its Stalinist state[10]. Other layers of the population largely came behind this massive struggle of the exploited class.
When the proletariat develops its struggle, it's the sovereign, massive general assemblies open to "everyone", which are at the heart of the movement, places where the proletariat can come together and organise, reflect on unifying slogans and watchwords for the future. There's no place here for nationalism, on the contrary the drive here is for international solidarity because "The workers have no country"[11]. The workers must refuse to sing the national anthem and wave the tricolore, the flag of the Versaillais who killed 30,000 workers at the time of the Paris Commune in 1871!
Today the exploited class has difficulty in recognising itself as a class and as the only force in society capable of developing a rapport de force in its favour faced with the bourgeoisie. The working class is the only class able to offer a future for humanity and it can only do this by developing its own struggles on its own grounds beyond all corporate, sectoral and national divisions. Today, proletarians boil over with rage but they don't know how to struggle to defend their living conditions faced with the growing attacks of the bourgeoisie. They have forgotten their own experiences of struggle, their capacity to unite and organise themselves without awaiting the orders of the trade unions.
Despite the difficulties of the proletariat in recovering its class identity, the future still belongs to the class struggle. All those conscious of the necessity for proletarian struggle must try to regroup, discuss, draw the lessons of the latest social movements, rely on the history of the workers' movement and not be lured by the apparently radical sirens of "citizens", "popular" and inter-classist mobilisations of the petty-bourgeoisie!
"The autonomy of the proletariat faced with all other classes and layers of society is the first condition of the spread of its struggle towards a revolutionary aim. All alliances, particularly those with fractions of the bourgeoisie, can only end up with it being disarmed in front of its enemy leading it to abandon the sole terrain where it can solidify its forces: its class terrain" (Platform of the ICC[12]).
Révolution Internationale, ICC section in France, November 25, 2018
Edited on December 17, 2018, for a more precise translation of the original French article.
[1] Witnessed by militants of the ICC on the Champs-Elysées
[2] "The gilets jaune, an original movement in French history", Le Parisien (November 24, 2018).
[3] This idea is omnipresent on social media.
[4] The title awarded to the Champs-Elysées.
[5] We should say that this isn't done in a direct fashion but "subliminally": on BFM-TV, for example, while journalists and "specialists" insisted that it was necessary to distinguish the "real gilets jaunes" from "wreckers", the images focus on the deteriorating situation on the Champs-Elysées.
[6] These outbursts were above linked to the construction of barricades from street furniture and projectiles fired by the police.
[7] On the Champs-Elysées, one "gilet jaune" was heard to say that "do to Macron what the Resistance did to the Boches, harass him daily until he goes".
[8] Including the leftist NPA, (New Anti-capitalist Party) and Lutte Ouvrière
[9] Only the unions are criticising the "gilets jaunes", while the latter largely rejects the union grip
[10] See the article in the International Review no. 27, "Notes on the Mass Strike"
[11] One of the main slogans of the Indignados in 2011, was "From Tahrir Square to the Puerta del sol", thus underlining the feelings of the demonstrators in Spain who wanted to be linked to those who a couple of weeks before had been mobilised in the Arab countries with real risks to their lives.
We are publishing here large extracts from a reader who, while welcoming the overall approach of the leaflet on the Yellow Vest movement distributed by our section in France[1], also criticises certain of our positions, in particular the idea that nothing good for the proletariat can come out of this inter-classist movement. These questions touch on extremely important aspects of the proletarian struggle: what is the working class, its struggle, its perspective.
It’s only through a broad, open and animated debate that we can elaborate deeper responses, participate in the development of class consciousness, arm ourselves with the weapons of theory. We thus encourage all our readers to write to us, to formulate their criticisms, their agreements or their questions in order to fuel a debate that is vital for the proletariat. This is the spirit in which we are replying to this letter.
Reader’s letter
I have gone through various statements of position including those of the leftist groups who see this movement as a re-edition of 1968. The differences are obvious right away, but this comparison is used to justify their unbridled support
We can recognise, as your leaflet does, that the spontaneous outbreak of these blockades expresses a very deep social anger. An anger that is very diverse, if not contradictory, expressing the inter-classist nature of the movement and its “citizen” or even nationalist expressions. I basically agree with your critique about this.
On three points there can be a discussion:
There is also in the leaflet the idea that the working class is being prevented from struggling:
“This whole jolly scene, each with its particular credo, is occupying and patrolling the social terrain to prevent the workers from mobilising massively, from developing their autonomous struggle, their solidarity and unity against the attacks of the bourgeoisie”. Are the workers simply being “prevented” from openly struggling on their class terrain? Obviously not
This is indeed a mixed social movement, in which the balance of forces is not favourable to the working class and is giving a free hand to other strata out to defend their interests, which is hardly surprising today. In this sense, I agree with the passage that says “The proletarians want to express their deep anger but they don’t know how to struggle effectively to defend their living conditions against the growing attacks of the bourgeoisie and its government”;
************************************************************************************
Our reply
Starting from a shared observation of the Yellow Vest movement, characterised by “an anger that is very diverse, if not contradictory, expressing the inter-classist nature of the movement and its ‘citizen’ or even nationalist expressions”, this reader poses three important questions:
A trap for the workers?
Our leaflet asserts that this movement is a real trap for the workers. But the comrade says: “What meaning should we give to this term ‘trap’? A trap presupposes an organisation that prepares and organises it. But we see nothing of that sort here”. It’s quite true that this movement was spontaneous. A young entrepreneur from Seine-et-Marne launched on social media a petition against the increase in petrol prices. Then a lorry driver, dressed up in a yellow vest, from the same department, called for roads to be blocked. Through a whole chain of clicks, these two cries of anger were propagated everywhere, testifying to a general feeling of being fed up throughout the population.
So this was not a trap laid by the bourgeoisie, its state, its parties, its unions or its media; it was a movement which was a trap for the workers because of its inter-classist nature. Because in an inter-classist movement where the workers (employed, students, pensioners, unemployed) are diluted as individual citizens in a milieu made up of all the other layers of society (petty bourgeoisie, peasants, artisans), the social aspirations and methods of struggle of these intermediate layers were dominant.
This why the point of departure for the movement was the explosion of anger among self-employed lorry drivers, taxi drivers and small bosses from the PME[2], in response to the tax increase on petrol that served to penalise their enterprises. This is why the main means of action was the occupation of roundabouts and crossings, then of the “the most beautiful avenue in the world”, the Champs-Élysées, a hi-viz yellow vest on their backs, in order to “be seen”, to “be heard” and above all “to be recognised”. This is why the Tricolore flag, La Marseillaise and the references to the French revolution of 1789 were omnipresent alongside the shouting about “the people of France”. These are methods which in no way express a mobilisation of the working class on its own terrain, putting into question capitalist exploitation through demands such as wage rises, opposition to lay-offs etc.
Furthermore the methods of struggle of the working class were never expressed. The absence of strikes in the different sectors of the class or of general assemblies, in which the exploited can debate and draw out the aims of their struggle, clearly confirms this.
Even worse, the rotten terrain of populism and xenophobia gangrened a large part of the movement. We saw some of the most nauseating expressions of the current historic period. Like the appeals to strengthen anti-immigrant laws and even xenophobic actions. Over 90% of the sympathisers of Marie le Pen’s Rassemblement National support the “Yellow Vests” and over 40% say that they are themselves taking part in the movement. This indeed is the snare that those workers who don the yellow vest are caught up in. This movement has been a real trap for them.
What are the causes of the political difficulties of the working class?
In a few lines this letter poses a central question: “There is also in the leaflet the idea that the working class is being prevented from struggling… Are the workers simply being “prevented” from openly struggling on their class terrain? Obviously not”. What are the causes of the current political difficulties of the working class? The answer can’t be found by taking a snapshot of the proletariat today – you have to examine the whole film of its history. So we can’t reply fully here to this complex question[3]. We can simply insist on one point. We should not underestimate the permanent work of sabotage by the trade unions whose specific role for the past century has precisely been that of undermining the struggle in the workplace and the consciousness of the class. A single example: just a few months before the Yellow Vest movement the trade unions organised the “stop-start strike of the railway workers”; thousands of very militant workers engaged in numerous strike days, completely isolated, cut off from other sectors of the proletariat. And yet at the same time, in the old age homes, in the post office, in the day nurseries, the hospitals, in certain factories etc, struggles were breaking out on a regular basis, each sector in its own corner. Then the CGT issued the call for the “convergence of struggles”, a simulated unity consisting of marching in the street, one sector behind the next, each with its own slogan, its own corporate demand … and then going home without any common general assembly, without discussion, without solidarity in the struggle. These union movements, which are repeated year after year, have the sole function of spreading the poison of division, of despair, of powerlessness. So yes, the systematic sabotage of working class unity is one of the major ingredients in the current weakness of the proletariat, a weakness which creates favourable soil for the explosion of inter-classist anger which has no perspective. In fact, the bourgeoisie is exploiting the weakness of the working class to try to drive it further into the ground. The working class has indeed been going through a very difficult period. Since 1989, with the campaigns on the collapse of Stalinism, which was identified with the so-called “failure of communism”, the proletariat has not been able to rediscover its class identity, to recognise itself as a revolutionary class. Unable to put forward the perspective of a society without exploitation, the exploited class remains very vulnerable, but above all extremely passive when it comes to the struggle. While large sectors of the proletariat have not recognised themselves in the popular revolt of the Yellow Vests, neither have these central sectors been able to mobilise themselves in a massive and unified way against the attacks of the government, on their own class terrain and with their own methods of struggle. However, despite these difficulties, the proletariat has not been defeated. Taking into account the general level of discontent and the new attacks to come, the great mass of the proletariat can still throw off its lethargy in the period ahead. The future still belongs to the class struggle.
The Yellow Vests, a springboard for the class struggle?
“Doesn’t the class struggle become autonomous in the course of the movement itself? Even if I share the critique of the content and methods of the movement, I remain open to the possibility of an evolution. You noted the spontaneous way in which these blockades emerged, and some are showing a concern for self-organisation, to function through real general assemblies, etc”
Even if it started on a bad basis, could the Yellow Vest movement transform itself into something different, into an authentic movement of the working class? In favour of this thesis, you could point to the widening of the demands raised, since the rejection of the tax increase on petrol took a back seat to a broader protest against poverty and in favour of increased buying power. Furthermore, the sympathy for the movement in the population was certainly real. If the movement has never been massive (around 300,000 Yellow Vests at the high point) and while the majority of workers in the big plants and public sector remained spectators, it remains the case that it enjoyed a lot of popularity. Again in support of this thesis, there are historical precedents. Here are three, by no means the least of them: the Paris Commune of 1871 began as an explosion of anger that in appearance was nationalist and anti-Prussian; the mass strike in Russia in 1905 began under a religious banner, led by a priest, Father Gapon; May 1968 in France was initiated by a movement of students who, at the time, had often come out of the petty bourgeoisie. Each time, the working class was finally able to put itself at the head of the struggle, with its own methods, its forms of organisation, its strength. To paraphrase our reader, “the class struggle became autonomous by emerging as such during the movement itself”.
So could the Yellow Vest movement transform itself into something else, into a real workers’ struggle? In fact, the comrade himself answers his own question in his letter: “This is indeed a mixed social movement, in which the balance of forces is not favourable to the working class and is giving a free hand to other strata out to defend their interests, which is hardly surprising today”.
But why is this? Because we are not in 1871, 1905, or 1968. In 1871, the Paris Commune was not an exception. In many regions of Europe, but particularly in France, the working class was in struggle and several “Communes” appeared. The mass strike in Russia in 1905 was preceded by a deep process of rising proletarian struggle, of developing consciousness and organisation, again at the international level, since the 1890s (Rosa Luxemburg masterfully described this process in her book The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions). May 68 broke out after a year marked by very important workers’ struggles, particularly in the big factories in the west of France.
Today, we are not seeing any of this. As we saw above, the working class is going through major difficulties. It is not even conscious of its existence as a social class antagonistic to the bourgeoisie and distinct from intermediate social layers like the petty bourgeoisie. It has lost the memory of its own past and is not able to refer to its immense historical experience; it’s even ashamed of it since the bourgeoisie is constantly assimilating the working class to an extinct species and uses the word “communism” to describe the barbarity of Stalinism.
In this situation, the Yellow Vest movement can in no way function as a kind of springboard or spark for an authentic struggle of the working class. On the contrary, the proletarians who have come out behind the slogans and methods of the petty bourgeoisie, drowned in the interclassist ideology of “citizenship”, diluted among all the other social strata, can only suffer the pressure of bourgeois democratism and nationalism.
In this sense its fortunate that the majority of the working class has contented itself with giving platonic support and that the mass of proletarians have not participated in a movement that has no perspective. This reticence reveals that, leaving aside the sympathy for some of the demands about poverty, the working class has from the start been very circumspect about the fixation on taxes and about the methods used (occupation of roundabouts) and concerned and even disgusted by the immediate support that has come from the right and extreme right.
This distrust shows that, despite its difficulties in engaging in the struggle on its own terrain, the proletariat has not been crushed, defeated, or massively mobilised behind the putrid ideology of the petty bourgeoisie and behind populist, anti-immigrant xenophobia.
In the last few weeks, amidst this whole swamp, there have been a few shafts of light: the high school students came out in struggle against the reform of the baccalauriat (without the Marseillaise and the Tricolore), not for themselves directly, but in solidarity with future pupils who will experience a much degraded education. At the same time, university students mobilised to oppose increasing fees for foreign students and raised the slogan “Solidarity with the immigrants”. The anger of the young educated generation – who are mainly future workers – is a sharp response both to the iniquitous measures of the government and the anti-immigrant slogans raised by the Yellow Vests. Solidarity is key to the strength of the working class.
The proletariat has momentarily lost its class identity. It has been cut off from its history and its experience. But it is still there, still alive. In its depths, reflection about the lack of perspective offered by capitalist society continues, especially among the most conscious and combative elements. Driven by the aggravation of the economic crisis, not yet conscious of its own strength, not yet confident in its capacity for self-organisation, the proletariat will be obliged to engage in the combat for the defence of its own living conditions.
Faced with the momentary paralysis of the class struggle, revolutionaries have to be patient, not fear isolation, all kinds of criticisms and misunderstandings. They have to unmask all the enemies of the proletariat, all the ideological traps and dead-ends, in order to participate, to the maximum of their still limited forces, in the real development of consciousness within the working class, with the conviction that only the class struggle can provide a perspective for the future of humanity.
Révolution Internationale, 24.12.18
[1] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/9801/face-a-misere-et-a-degradation-nos-conditions-vie-comment-lutter-faire-reculer [1805]. A machine translation of this leaflet is available on our discussion forum: https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16600/france-yellow-vest-protests-about-fuel-and-taxes-general [1806], post 15
[2] PME: petit ou moyenne enterprise, small or medium enterprises
[3] See for example “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism”, International Review 103 and 104
In November 2018 the two main groups of the communist left in Britain, the ICC and the Communist Workers Organisation[1], held meetings in London on the centenary of the German revolution. From both meetings it was evident that there is fundamental agreement on a number of key points arising from this experience:
And yet there were also definite disagreements between our two organisations, which emerged at the CWO meeting and were further debated at the ICC meeting the following week, which was attended by a member of the CWO[3]. These disagreements are raised in the CWO article just mentioned:
“Given the above scenario it was therefore surprising that a member of the Internationalist Communist Current (the only other organisation present in the meeting), and whose other comrades made positive contributions to the discussion, should pose the question that August 1914 was too early for the Internationale group to split from German Social Democracy. He surprisingly argued that August 1914 was not a definitive betrayal of the international workers’ movement.
He went to say that as the ICC and ICT both came from the tradition of the Italian Communist Left that we should recognise that this was just like the members of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) who went into exile in the 1920s. They had seen the party they founded taken over by the ‘centrists’ like Gramsci and Togliatti, with the support of the Communist International (even though the Left still had the support of the majority of the PCd’I). However as they had no clear evidence that this meant that the Third International had finally and irrevocably broken with the international revolution (and given the abrupt changes of policy of the Comintern this was a period of great confusion) they decided that they would form themselves into a ‘fraction’. The aim of the Fraction was either to persuade the Comintern to stick to revolutionary internationalism or, if that failed and the International did something which definitely showed that it had betrayed the working class, then the fraction should form the nucleus of a new party. In actual fact the Fraction did decide in 1935 that the Comintern had gone over to the other side of the class barricades (with the adoption of the Popular Front). However it was then divided between the followers of Vercesi, who now argued that the party could only be formed in conditions when it could win a mass following (similar to Luxemburg), and those who wanted to begin to build it in the 1930s. The issue was never resolved and the Fraction collapsed in 1939.
We replied that the two cases of Germany in 1914 and the Italian comrades in the 1920s were not the same. As the foregoing analysis shows, the SPD’s vote for war credits was a clear and obvious betrayal of the working class cause. And this judgment is not the product of hindsight. There were other socialists at the time (like Lenin, but not just him) who loudly said so. The need was for a new banner around which the revolutionary working class could rally. The sooner that banner was raised the quicker the revolutionaries could get to work to build for the movement which would break out, sooner or later, against the war. And the fact that Germany was a federal state saturated in localism made this task all the more urgent”.
The real tasks of a revolutionary fraction
We have quoted the CWO at length because we want to make sure our response deals accurately with their views. But in doing so, we will have to take up some important inaccuracies in the CWO’s account, regarding both certain historical elements and our own understanding of them.
To begin with, it is misleading to say that, for the ICC, “August 1914 was not a definitive betrayal of the international workers’ movement”. On the contrary: the capitulation of the majority social democrats, inside and outside parliament, was indeed a definite betrayal of everything that international social democracy had stood for and had voted on at major international congresses. It confirmed that the opportunist right wing of social democracy, against which militants like Luxemburg had been waging a determined struggle since before the end of the 19th century, had crossed the line into the enemy camp – a step from which there could be no turning back.
Our point however was that the betrayal of a substantial part of the organisation did not yet signify that the entire party had been integrated into the capitalist state; that precisely because - contrary to what some anarchists claim – social democracy had not been bourgeois from the beginning, the treason of August 1914 gave rise to a huge battle within the party, to a flood of reactions against the betrayal, many of them confused and inadequate, bounded by centrist and pacifist conceptions, but still expressing at root a proletarian internationalist reaction against war. The clearest, most determined and most famous amongst them were the Spartacists. And as long as this battle continued, as long as the various oppositions to the new official line could still operate within the party, the question of the fraction, of an organised, internal fight for the “soul” of the party - until either the purging of the traitors or the expulsion of the internationalists - was still entirely relevant[4].
In an internal discussion text on the nature of centrism, which we published in 2015, our comrade Marc Chirik gave a whole number of examples of the oppositional movement within the SPD after August 1914, both within parliament and in the party as a whole. The most determined expression of this reaction was provided by the group around Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who did not wait for the class to mobilise in massive numbers, but from the first day of the war began to organise their resistance in what later became the Spartakusbund and tried to regroup internationalist forces within the party around the slogan “don’t leave the party in the hands of the traitors”. Not long after this there was the decision of numerous deputies not to vote for further war credits; the resolutions from many local branches of the SPD that the leadership abandon the policy of the Union Sacrée; the formation of the “social democratic working collective” that would constitute the nucleus of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the UPSD; the publishing of leaflets and manifestos, and the calling of demonstrations against the war and in solidarity with Karl Liebknecht for his intransigent opposition to the militarism of the ruling class. For Marc this was a confirmation that
“what is not true even for the life of individual human beings is a total absurdity at the level of an historic movement such as that of the proletariat. Here the passage from life to death is not measured in seconds or even minutes but in years. The moment when a workers’ party signs its own death certificate and its actual, definitive death, are not the same thing. This is perhaps difficult to understand for a radical phraseologist, but it is quite understandable for a marxist who doesn’t have the habit of deserting a ship like a rat when it begins to take in water. Revolutionaries know the historical meaning of an organisation which the class has given birth to, and as long as it still contains a breath of life they fight in order to save it, to hold onto it for the class”[5].
Neither is it true that the situation of the German revolutionaries in 1914 was fundamentally different from the comrades of the Italian left who decided to form a fraction to fight against the degeneration of the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s. On the contrary: in both cases, you have a party that is being increasingly dominated by an openly bourgeois faction (social chauvinists in the SPD, Stalinists in the CP), and an opposition divided into a vacillating centre and a revolutionary left, which has rightly decided that, even if the tide is turning against the class, it remains an elementary duty to fight as long as possible for the real programme and traditions of the party as long as there is any proletarian life left in it. In contrast, the method of the CWO in describing the situation of the SPD in 1914 bears a curious resemblance to the old (essentially councilist) CWO position about the Bolsheviks and the Communist parties – that they were already totally bourgeois in 1921 and anyone who thought otherwise was basically an apologist for their subsequent crimes.
We could also take up the extremely simplistic presentation of the history of the debates within the Italian fraction up to 1939, but it would be better to come back to that in a separate article, since the CWO has recently republished an article by Battalgia Comunista [6]on the question of fraction and party, with a long introduction by the CWO which voices many of their criticism of the ICC, not only on the question of the fraction and the party but also on our analysis of the world situation[7]. But one of the key points that emerge from both the BC article and the new introduction is the idea that a fraction is basically just a discussion circle which has little interest in intervening in the class struggle: as they put it at the end of the article on the public meeting, “This is not a time for fractions or discussion circles. It is time to form nuclei of revolutionaries everywhere and for them to converge in the creation of an international and internationalist revolutionary party in preparation for the inevitable class conflicts of the future”.
If – despite their many weaknesses – the Spartacist group was fundamentally playing the role of a fraction within the SPD, whose long dynamic of degeneration accelerated dramatically towards a final point of rupture after the watershed of August 1914, then fraction work is clearly something very different from a retreat into academic debate removed from the daily reality of war and class struggle. On the contrary, there is no question that the Spartacists did “raise the banner” of the class struggle against the war. Within the SPD the Spartakusbund had its own organisational structure, published its own newspaper, put out many leaflets and was able, along with some of the most radical elements in the class (in particular the “Revolutionary Shop Stewards” or “Obleute” in the industrial centres) to call for demonstrations which regrouped thousands of workers. This distinct organisational structure was retained as a precondition for the Spartacists entering the USPD almost 3 years after the beginning of the war in April 1917, following the mass expulsion of the opposition from the SPD. This decision was taken, as Liebknecht put it, “in order to drive it forward, to have a platform for our position, to be able to reach thousands of elements.” As Marc comments in his text: “It is more than doubtful if this strategy was valid at this moment, but one thing is clear: if such a question was posed for Luxemburg and Liebknecht, then it was because they rightly considered the USPD to be a centrist movement and not a party of the bourgeoisie”. In sum, the fraction work of the Spartacists continued whether inside or outside a larger party, as an independent force seeking to create the conditions for a new party purged of both bourgeois and centrist elements – just as it continued for the Italian left in the late 20s and 30s after their expulsion from the party and even after their recognition that the CPs had passed over to the enemy.
Thus a part of the CWO’s criticism of the Spartacists for staying too long in the old party is founded on this misconception of the role of a fraction as a discussion circle whose activity is in some sense opposed to the formation of revolutionary nuclei who prepare the ground for the future world party. On the contrary: that was precisely the concept of the fraction as elaborated by the Italian left. The difference lies elsewhere: in the recognition (shared by both Luxemburg and the Italian left) that the constitution of a new international party was not the product of the will of revolutionaries alone, but was dependent on a much wider and deeper process of maturation in the class.
Bolsheviks and Spartacists
The CWO presentation at the meeting and the subsequent article lays great stress on the contrast between the Spartacists and the Bolsheviks:
“In Russia the Bolsheviks were estimated at only 8000 – 10,000 in number at the start of 1917 but they were present in almost every town or city and, more importantly, embedded in the wider working class. Thus when the revolutionary movement arose they were not only able to give a lead but grew inside it. Workers had called spontaneously in February 1917 for ‘soviet power’ (based on the memory of 1905) but by the summer of 1917 it was clear that only one party supported ‘all power to the soviets’ and this party in most estimates now had 300,000 members”.
It is certainly true that the Bolsheviks were in the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the years 1914-19. On the question of war, the Bolshevik delegation to Zimmerwald defended a much more rigorous position than that of the Spartacists: they, along with the German “left radicals”, raised the slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war”, whereas the Spartacist delegation showed a tendency to make concessions to pacifism. In their actual practise in a revolutionary situation, the Bolsheviks were able to analyse the balance of class forces with great lucidity and thus play a key role at decisive moments: in July, when it was necessary to avoid the provocations of the bourgeoisie who were trying to draw revolutionary workers into a premature military confrontation; in October, when Lenin insisted that the conditions for the insurrection had definitely ripened and it had become vital to strike before the moment passed. This was in tragic contrast to the young German Communist Party which made the monumental error of taking the bourgeoisie’s bait in January 1919 in Berlin, in no small measure because the Spartacist leader Liebknecht broke party discipline in pushing for an immediate armed uprising.
However, the capacity of the Bolsheviks to play this role cannot be reduced to the notion of being “embedded” in the class. It was above all the product of a long struggle for political and organisational clarity within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which made it possible for the Bolsheviks to grasp what was really at stake after the February uprising, even if it required a determined struggle inside the party to chase out a very strong tendency towards support for bourgeois democracy and a “defencist” position in the war – this was the whole meaning of the debates around Lenin’s April Theses[8]. The fact that the Bolsheviks came out of this debate strengthened and more determined to fight for soviet power was the product of two essential factors: on the one hand, their organisational solidity, which made it possible to maintain the unity of the party despite the very sharp divergences that appeared within it during the revolutionary process; and on the other hand, the fact that, from the beginning, their political programme – even when it was not yet as clear as it became after 1917 – was always based on the principle of class independence from the bourgeoisie, in contrast to the other main tendency in Russian social democracy, the Mensheviks. But what all this really points to is that in the years between the birth of Bolshevism and the outbreak of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had themselves carried out the central tasks of a revolutionary fraction inside the Russian party and the Second International.
The Bolsheviks’ rigour on organisational and programmatic issues was one side of this capacity to make the transition from fraction to party; the other side was the rapid maturation within the Russian proletariat as a whole. This was a proletariat which was far less vulnerable to reformist illusions than its class brothers and sisters in Germany: both at the level of their living conditions, and of the political conditions imposed by the Tsarist regime, their struggle necessarily took on an explosive and revolutionary character which, in a sense, already indicated the circumstances that would face the working class in the most advanced countries in the new epoch of decadence. This was a proletariat which, largely denied the possibility of building mass defensive organisations inside the old system, gave rise in 1905 to the soviet form of organisation and gained an inestimably valuable foretaste of what it means to make a revolution. It must also be remembered that the Russian proletariat faced a much weaker bourgeoisie, whereas the German workers would be catapulted into revolutionary struggles against a powerful ruling class which knew it could count on the support of the SPD and the trade unions as well as that of the international bourgeoisie. From this point of view, we can better understand why the question is not reducible to a kind of physical presence of revolutionaries within the working class, however important that is. The German social democrats certainly had a huge presence within the working class, in all areas of its life – economic, political, cultural. The problem was that this influence within the class was increasingly geared towards institutionalising and thus neutralising the class struggle. The key difference between the SPD and the Bolsheviks was in the latter’s capacity to maintain and develop the class autonomy of the proletariat.
Finally, to really understand the contrast between the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists, to go deeper into the immense problems confronting the communist minority during the revolutionary wave after 1917, we must integrate the particular situations pertaining to this or that country into a wider international vision. The Second International did indeed fall apart in 1914: faced with the betrayal of substantial parts of its national components, it simply ceased to exist. This posed immediately the necessity for a new International, even if the conditions for its formation had not yet come together. The late formation of the Communist International - and its accompanying programmatic weaknesses - was to be a major handicap not only for the German revolution, but for the Russian soviet power and the whole revolutionary wave. We will come back to this in other articles. We have argued that the prior work of the left fractions is an indispensible basis for the formation of the party on a solid basis. But we also have to recognise that, in the early part of the 20th century, when the danger of opportunism within the social democratic parties was becoming increasingly evident, the left fractions who opposed this drift towards integration into the politics of the bourgeoisie were shackled by the federal structure of the Second International. This was an International which largely functioned as a kind of co-ordinating centre for a collection of national parties. There was solidarity and cooperation between the different left currents (for example, when Lenin and Luxemburg worked together to draft the Basel resolution on war in at the International Congress of 1912), but there was never an internationally centralised fraction which could develop a coherent policy in all countries, a unified response to all the dramatic changes that were being wrought by capitalism’s passage to an epoch of wars and revolutions.
Today’s revolutionary groups are not literally fractions in the sense of being an organic part of a former workers’ party, but they will not be able to prepare the ground for the party of tomorrow if they fail to understand what we can learn from the historical contribution of the left fractions.
Amos
[1] The CWO is the British affiliate of the International Communist Tendency; a comrade from their German group, the GIS, also took part in the meeting. While it was positive that both organisations recognise the historic importance of the revolution in Germany – which effectively put an end to the First World War and for a brief moment threatened to extend the political power of the working class from Russia to western Europe – it was a mark of the disunity of the existing revolutionary movement that two meetings on the same theme were held in the same city within a week of each other. The ICC had proposed the holding of a joint meeting to avoid this partial clash, but the CWO rejected our proposal for reasons which are not clear to us. This was in contrast to the meetings on the Russian revolution held in 2017, where the CWO agreed to give a presentation at our day of discussion in London https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14536/icc-day-discussion-russian-revolution [1808] For us, the fact that the groups of the communist left are more or less alone in preserving and elaborating the essential lessons of the revolution in Germany is sufficient reason for them to coordinate their response to the ideological distortions of this event put out by all factions of the ruling class (which also include its virtual erasure from the records of history).
[3] This disagreement was the main focus of the discussion at the CWO meeting. The discussion was again central at the ICC meeting, although there was also a debate around the questions posed by an internationalist anarchist comrade about whether there is a need for a party, and whether centralisation corresponds to the organisational needs of the working class. On this question of the need for centralisation as an expression of the tendency towards unity, the comrade later said that he found our arguments clear and convincing.
[4] See in particular the articles on the German revolution in International Review 81,82 and 85:
[6] Publication of the Internationalist Communist Party, the Italian affiliate of the ICT
[7] In the meantime comrades can refer to a series of articles which we have published criticising the views of Battaglia and the CWO on the question of the fraction: see International Reviews 59, 61, 64, 65 (https://en.internationalism.org/series/2042 [1810].)
At the end of December 2018, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz died at the age of 79. As well as being a distinguished writer of novels that chronicled the troubled history of the modern Israeli state, he was also a consistent critic of its increasingly militarist policies. In 1967, amid the euphoria of victory in the Six Day War, Oz was one of the few who warned of the morally corrupting influence that the occupation would bring to Israeli society. He advocated an immediate end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This view might have seemed radical at the time, but it was not long before it entered the mainstream, being at the heart of the Camp David accords in 2000.
In the era of unrestrained populism, however, even this moderate proposal seems utterly utopian. The right wing Netanyahu government in Israel , which has done all it can to scupper any progress towards the formation of a Palestinian state, is facing increasing pressure from those even further to the right who openly demand a “Greater Israel” - a one state solution which would certainly involve the mass deportation of Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile the Palestinian national movement is increasingly dominated by Islamist factions who will settle for nothing less than the military destruction of the Zionist state, a solution which would no doubt demand another mass deportation - that of Israeli Jews.
In this increasingly poisonous atmosphere, we can only welcome the appearance of an article which is one of the rare expressions of a genuinely internationalist standpoint emanating from inside Israel. The author of the article takes up the marxist position that all national struggles and slogans in the epoch of capitalist decline have become reactionary, and does not hesitate to argue that the only way out of the trap created by imperialism in Israel-Palestine is the unification of Israeli and Palestinian workers on a class basis, leading towards a proletarian revolution against all bourgeois states.
The comrade quite rightly calls for the formation of a revolutionary party which would stand for this perspective. We would argue that this is only possible as part of an international development in which the working class, above all in the main centres of world capital, is able to re-appropriate its historical project of communism. By the same token, it is more than probable that any durable unity between Israeli and Palestinian workers will only be possible as part of a world-wide revival of class struggle, of a movement which is able to push back the waves of nationalism and xenophobia that have been growing in strength everywhere in recent years, but which because of its particular history exert an added force in Israel-Palestine.
Nevertheless, the appearance of even a tiny minority advocating a proletarian alternative in the Middle East is a vitally important link to this revolutionary future, which is still possible and more than ever necessary.
ICC
The early general elections in Israel, to be held in April 2019, will be marked by the instability of the Zionist state. The decision made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call for early elections represents the dead- end in which the government in Tel Aviv is facing. Besides the expected decision of Israel's attorney-general to accuse Netanyahu of bribery and fraud, a factor that contributed to his decision to initiate early elections, the Zionist regime faces terrible economic and political crises.
In economic terms, the Israeli working class feels an awful deterioration in terms of its living conditions as well as its ability to continue paying the price for decades of military occupation. The healthcare and education system are underfunded, the costs of consumer goods and services are rising, and many layers among the impoverished workers of the country feel incapable of coping with their poor economic situation. Thus, 20 percent of the Israelis live in poverty and the country is one of the most unequal societies in the West.
In political terms, Israel is challenged by the Palestinian armed factions in the West Bank and Gaza that resist the Israeli occupation forces. Its Southern border is unstable due to continued attempts of the Hamas Islamic militants to advance armed resistance near the separation fence; the Islamic militants launch missiles against the Israeli population in the South and dig tunnels in order to attack the Israeli army. In the Northern border, Israel is busy with ongoing military attacks on bases of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Syria. In addition, the Israeli forces and Hezbollah are closer than ever to another war. Supported by the US administration, Israel is carrying out aggressive policies on its borders in order to bring down the Islamists in Gaza (the enclave faces a terrible humanitarian situation due to the Israeli blockade) and drive the Iranian militias out of Syria (it fears that the latter might aid Hezbollah in a future war).
This situation of the Israeli regime indicates its instability and ongoing crisis. Being an Apartheid state, Israel seeks to maintain a condition in which the working class will pay the price for the occupation and the country's military aggressiveness, and at the same time will accept the capitalist way through which the government runs the economy. The Israeli ruling class, which fights the nationalist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and is aided by right-populist and fascist leaders abroad, oppresses the masses in order to keep the Zionist colonization project alive. There are many Israeli workers and youth that are not ready anymore to accept the Israeli condition of national oppression and cruel capitalist exploitation. Some of them are already mobilized by the Israeli opposition parties against the Netanyahu government although these parties serve the Israeli bourgeois elite.
The Israeli political system is fragmented and fragile. The political right parties are traditionally organized around the Likud party led by Prime Minister Netanyahu. However, even among the right parties that rule the country there are splits and crises. While the biggest political faction in the Knesset is the Likud, an ultra-chauvinist and neo-liberal formation that was established in 1973, there are other parties, smaller than the Likud, whose policies are far more nationalist and chauvinist. These parties carry forward policies that aim to form the Greater Israel from which the Palestinians will be driven out. The only 'centrist' political faction that joined the Netanyahu coalition was formed by some former Likud members. However, this faction collaborated with Netanyahu and the political right in pushing the country's economy to the capitalist extreme.
The parties that constitute the opposition to Netanyahu are not homogeneous in terms of politics and ideology. Among them there are the Labour party whose opportunistic and social-chauvinist politics are distrusted by most of the Israelis and the small social-democratic and Zionist party Meretz whose political electorate is narrow. The Palestinians in Israel are represented in a joint list of nationalist political parties in which the Stalinist Communist Party of Israel plays a central role. The problem of this Left-Center mishmash block is not just its heterogeneity in political terms but also consists in the fact that none of them propose a way forward to the Israeli and Arab working class. Neither the pseudo-Left Zionist factions nor the anti-Zionist Arab and Communist parties propose a way out of decades of occupation, brutal capitalism, austerity and ongoing social crises.
This situation is regrettable but understandable as Israel as a settler-state continues to colonize the Palestinian masses. The problem of the Israeli occupation plays a central role in the politics of the country. While the political right desires to intensify the occupation and colonization, the political pseudo-left carries forward the already dead Two-State solution in which a small Palestinian Bantustan state will be established alongside Israel. While there is a great desire among the masses to see the end of this bloody conflict, the right prospers as it spreads radical chauvinism and poisonous nationalism in order to split the working class along national lines. The pseudo-left suggests nothing but a solution based on the imperialist order in which the capitalist system will continue to oppress the masses and exploit them. With no genuine alternative to more than 100 years of bloody conflict, nationalism flourishes and chauvinism continues to foil any change to real reconciliation between the Israeli workers and their Palestinian counterparts.
The new trend among some Leftist circles is the idea of one, bi-national state of Israel/Palestine, a state which will provide 'self-determination' for the two nations. This idea is becoming popular in the radical milieu that express its despair of the prospect to build two independent nation states in Palestine. However, the 'self-determination' slogan is deceiving. In the epoch of imperialism and the decadence of capitalism, the demand for self- determination means the establishment of a bourgeois regime. From the point of view of the working class, the idea of building a bourgeois state is a dead- end in terms of the class struggle. Besides the fact that calling for self- determination within capitalism constitutes a risky illusion in the bourgeois order, it brings about a situation in which the working class is not differentiated from the national bourgeoisie. In this situation, there is a split in the working class along national lines. Revolutionaries in countries in which the proletariat exists and is capable of revolutionary action cannot be satisfied with the call for 'self-determination.'
Furthermore, to support the 'right for self-determination' is to claim that this very right stands in contrast with the interests of the national bourgeoisie. This position contradicts the reality in Palestine as the bourgeoisies can only benefit from a situation of unified capitalist economy in one state. The interest of the Israeli and Palestinian proletariats is their unification along class lines; nationalism and the reactionary call for self- determination constitutes a weapon in the hands of the national bourgeoisie that wish to prevent the working class from achieving socialism. To this we should add the fact that in the epoch of imperialism, the struggle for national independence cannot be successful as capitalism seeks to destroy the nation- states as well as their economies and build a world market through the process of colonization. The radical impulse to return to the age in which it was possible to build truly independent nation-states is utopian and even reactionary.
Thus, the call for the establishment of one state of Palestine within the capitalist order means in fact a call for the bourgeoisie to build another capitalist country in which the working class will be oppressed and incapable of defending its rights against the capitalist ruling class. There is however a tiny minority, mainly Trotskyist groups, that call for the establishment of one socialist state of Palestine, namely a nation-state with socialist characteristics, based on the right for self-determination of the 'oppressed' people, namely the Palestinians. This distinction between 'oppressed' and 'oppressor' contradicts the revolutionary project that aims at empowering the working class; it blurs the class differences between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The unity of the masses will be achieved only upon the basis of proletarian revolution.
There are calls among these or those Leftists to vote for various parties – liberals, reformists, Stalinists or Trotskyists – in order to save the Israeli bourgeois democracy from being crushed by fascism. However, this call reflects the belief that, in the epoch of imperialism, the bourgeois democracy is a genuine democratic regime and not a sheer illusion. The masses do wish to see a democracy and the fascists do want to destroy the remnants of bourgeois democracy. Nonetheless, the idea that fascism will not triumph if bourgeois-democratic/liberal parties will win the general elections is not only an illusion but also a political strategy that reduces the power of the working class as a revolutionary agent. Fascism is to be defeated by the masses in direct and independent revolutionary action, not by those who support capitalism or defend it.
The current 'Left' parties in the Israeli political system do not differ from other parties across Europe and the US in the sense that they defend the capitalist order and spread illusions regarding the possibility of solving the national question within capitalism. They defend an order in decay, an order that suffers from its death agonies. These parties cannot rally the masses around them as the proletariat despises them and do not trust either their leadership or their programme. The proletariat needs its own revolutionary party that will carry forward the communist programme; however, the game suggested by some reformists and Stalinists, namely, to participate in the bourgeois parliament and thus to wait until the revolution will come from nowhere, is false and deceptive. The mystification of bourgeois democracy stems from a false analysis made by those who firmly believe in notions like 'citizenship'. In fact, in a class society the only true democracy, i.e. the rule of the proletariat, is to be achieved by proletarian revolution. This assertion doesn't mean that the revolution is close or nearing; it requires the conscious intervention of the proletariat. However, with illusions about working in bourgeois parliaments, the workers won't be emancipated.
This analysis is not aimed to call the working class in Israel/Palestine to spoil their ballots but rather to get organized in a unified revolutionary party based on a communist programme. The only way to get rid of capitalism as well as of nationalism and wars passes through revolution. Workers have no fatherland and therefore must be united together to build their future in a communist society.
DS
President Emmanuel Macron broke his silence by addressing the French on 10 December at 8 p.m. on all television channels: "French men and women, here we are together at the rendezvous of our country and the future. The events of recent weeks (...) have mixed legitimate demands with an outburst of unacceptable violence. (...) This violence will not be treated leniently. There is no anger to justify attacking a police officer, a gendarme; to damage a business or public buildings. (...) When violence breaks out, freedom ceases. It is therefore now time for calm and republican order to prevail. We will do everything in our power to do so. (...) I have given the government the most rigorous instructions to that effect.
But, at the beginning of all this, I do not forget that there is anger, indignation. And this indignation, many of us, many French people can share it (...) But this anger is deeper, I feel it as fair in many respects, and it can be our chance (...) It is forty years of unease that reappear.
We have probably not been able to provide a quick and strong response to it for the past year and a half. I take my share of responsibility. I know that I have hurt some of you in the past with my words. (...) We will not return to the normal course of our lives, as too often in the past during crises. We are at a historic moment in our country. I also want us to agree with the nation itself on what its deep identity is. That we address the issue of immigration".
No "republican law enforcement" justifies, in fact, police officers shooting flash-balls at adolescents (without helmets or shields) who are minors, educated, and whose injuries are much deeper than those of the police officers assaulted, on Saturday, December 1, in front of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. No "republican law enforcement" justifies police firing tear gas grenades at demonstrators peacefully marching on Avenue des Champs-Élysées, demonstrators among whom there were elderly people (many of whom were women). No "republican law enforcement" justifies crippling teenagers with their hands ripped off by the explosion of an offensive grenade (a weapon not used in other European countries).
When police violence is unleashed against teenagers, it can only lead to urban riots (as in 2005), it can only aggravate social chaos. Violence can only generate violence! Shooting at teenagers is a crime. If the officials of the "republican order" kill children (as almost happened with a seriously wounded high school student in a commune in Loiret), it means that this republican order has no future to offer to humanity! This infanticidal police violence is despicable and revolting! It is certainly not with intimidation and threats that "calm" and "social peace" will be restored.
The President of the Republic's speech is addressed only to "French men and women", while many workers who pay their taxes are not "French". Our ancestors were not "Gauls" but Africans (whether the Gaul Madame Le Pen likes it or not!): Africa is the cradle of the human species, as scientists, anthropologists and primatologists know. Only the churches still affirm that God created man. As the philosopher Spinoza said: "ignorance is not an argument".
Macron has declared a "state of economic and social emergency"
All economic indicators are back in the red again. Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, which further aggravated sovereign debt, the threat of a new financial crisis is once again looming with the risk of a new stock market crash. But now the "people" are rebelling! Because it was the "people" who were made to pay for the 2008 crisis by all governments with austerity plans in all countries. Workers have been required to accept additional sacrifices to get out of the crisis "all together" (since 2008, the average loss of purchasing power of workers is 440 Euros per household). The state had to "protect" us from the risk of a chain of bank failures where the "people" placed their small savings to be able to secure their old age. These sacrifices, particularly on household purchasing power, were intended to restore growth and protect jobs.
After ten years of sacrifices to save banks from bankruptcy and to absorb the national state's budget deficit, it is normal that the "people" can no longer make ends meet and are indignant to see the "rich" living in luxury while the "poor" no longer have enough money to fill the fridge or buy toys for their children at Christmas.
The President is therefore quite right to declare a "state of economic and social emergency". It absolutely needs new "social firefighters" to put out the "fire" of class struggle, as the big trade union centres have carefully done their dirty work to sabotage the workers' struggles to help the government and employers to push through their attacks on our living conditions. The "rich" being those who exploit the labour power of the "poor" for profit, surplus value, and to maintain their privileges. This is what Karl Marx clearly explained in 1848 in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party".[1]
To get out of the crisis in the executive branch and open a "dialogue", "our" President announced the following measures: increase the minimum wage by 100 Euros per month, cancellation of the increase in the CSG[2] for pensioners who receive less than 2,000 Euros per month, tax exemption for overtime. He also asked the bosses, who can, to pay end-of-year bonuses to their employees (which will also be tax-free). "Our President of La République En Marche" has therefore taken "a step forward". The lesson to be learned would therefore be that only "modern" (and not "old-fashioned") methods of fighting, as citizens in "gilet jaunes" (yellow vests), pay and can make the government "back down"!
For our part, we remain "old-fashioned", convinced that petanque balls and other projectiles to counter intensive tear gas bombardment are totally ineffective and can only contribute to the escalation of violence, social chaos and the strengthening of the police state. The proletarian class struggle is not a revolt. The main weapons of the proletariat remain its organization and consciousness. Because "when theory takes hold of the masses, it becomes a material force," as Karl Marx said. Unlike the "gilet jaunes" movement, our "Gallic" reference is not the French Revolution of 1789 (with its guillotine, its tricolour flag and its "old-fashioned" national anthem), but the Paris Commune.
Social chaos in France and the crisis of executive power
Since "Black Saturday" on December 1st, the media has given us a real live thriller on all television screens and social networks: will the "President of the Rich", Emmanuel Macron, finally "back down" under the pressure of the "gilet jaunes" movement? Will he give in to the determination of the "gilet jaunes" that camp on the roundabouts and have followed the watchwords of Éric Drouet, a leading figure and initiator of the movement?
The "gilet jaunes" march on the Champs-Élysées on Saturday, December 1, had turned into a veritable urban guerrilla warfare turning into a riot with hallucinatory scenes of violence under the Arc de Triomphe as in the Kléber and Foch avenues in the 16th arrondissement. Two weeks earlier, on 17 November, the "police forces" had not hesitated to use tear gas and run at groups of "citizens", men and women in yellow vests, quietly walking on the Champs-Élysées singing La Marseillaise and waving the tricolour flag. These police provocations could only stir up the anger of the citizens in "gilet jaunes" against the citizen in suit and tie of the Elysée Palace. The call for "Act III" of the "gilet jaunes" has thus provoked emulation among the declassed elements of the French "people". Organized gangs of professional rioters, black blocks, far-right bullies, "anars" and other mysterious unidentified "casseurs" (wreckers) took the opportunity to come and make a mess on the "most beautiful avenue in the world".
But what set the powder on fire was a mistake in the Ministry of the Interior's "strategy" for maintaining order: the establishment of a "fan zone" on part of the Champs-Élysées to secure the beautiful districts. In the aftermath of "Black Saturday", the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, acknowledged his mistake: "We got it wrong!” Another mistake was also acknowledged: the lack of mobility of the CRS and gendarmes, completely overwhelmed by the situation (despite their water cannons and the incessant firing of tear gas canisters), terrorized by the beating of one of them and by the projectiles thrown at them. The media continued to broadcast this ugly CRS scene on television screens throughout the week, forcing them to retreat against groups of "gilet jaunes" around the Arc de Triomphe. The recorded comments, which were rarely broadcast by the media: "Next Saturday, we will come back with weapons!", as well as the anger of shopkeepers and residents of the beautiful districts against the negligence of the police forces, were clearly heard by the government and the entire political class. The danger of the French Republic becoming bogged down in social chaos has been further reinforced by the willingness of part of the population of the 16th and 8th arrondissements to defend themselves if the police were not able to protect them from the spiral of violence during the fourth "demonstration" of the "gilet jaunes" scheduled for Saturday 8 December (Act IV with the childish slogan: "All to the Elysée!").
The most dramatic event in the crisis of executive power is the loss of credibility of the "protective state" and its "law enforcement" apparatus. This flaw in Macronian power (and the underestimation of the depth of discontent brewing in the bowels of society) could only give wings not only to "radical" "gilet jaunes", but also to all those who want to "break cops", to set fire everywhere in the face of the lack of a future, especially among the younger generations facing unemployment and precariousness. Many young people leaving universities with degrees do not find jobs and are forced to do "food jobs" to survive.
Faced with the risk of losing control of the situation and the government's stampede, President Macron, after having come to see the damage (including in terms of the "morale of the troops" of the CRS shocked by the urban guerrillas for which they were not prepared), decided to lock himself in his Elysian bunker to "reflect" by soaking the entire political class and sending his Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, backed by the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, to “the front”.
In addition to the haughtiness of the youngest President of the French Republic, he appeared as a coward who "hides" behind his Prime Minister and finds himself unable to come out of the shadows to "speak to his people". The media even spread the rumour that Emmanuel Macron was going to use Edouard Philippe, or even the Minister of the Interior, as "lightning conductors", i.e. to blame them for his own mistakes.
After "Black Saturday" the political class lined up against its scapegoat, Jupiter Macron, designated as the one and only person responsible for social chaos. The "arsonist President" allegedly set the fire with his "original sin": the abolition of the wealth tax and his arrogant and provocative attitude. The announcement of the latest austerity measures (increases in petrol, gas and electricity taxes) was just the spark that set the powder on fire. From the far right to the far left, all the bourgeois cliques joined the hue and cry and tried to clear themselves of blame. All the cliques of the bourgeois political apparatus that "supported" the citizen movement of the "gilet jaunes" cowardly abandoned the little President and called on him to finally hear the cry of the "people" who can no longer make ends meet. Some have called for a referendum, others for the dissolution of the National Assembly. Everyone called on the President to assume his responsibility. The heads of state of the other countries (Trump, Erdogan, Putin...) also began to lay into the young President of the French Republic by giving him a dunce’s cap for having shown too much repression against his people. It is really the pot calling the kettle black, the unleashing of every man for himself and devil take the hindmost!
The Pandora's box of the Macron government
As early as Tuesday, December 3, the Prime Minister announced three measures to get out of the crisis, "ease" social tension and prevent the escalation of violence: a six-month suspension of fuel tax, a three-month suspension of the increase in the price of gas and electricity and a reform of roadworthiness tests for vehicles which, in the name of the "ecological transition", condemned many of them to scrap. But this "scoop" only aggravated the anger of the working poor in yellow vests. No one was fooled: "Macron is trying to screw us!" "He thinks we're stupid!" Even the PCF sang his verse: "We are not pigeons satisfied by crumbs!" A fire cannot be extinguished with a dropper (or water cannons).
Faced with the outcry caused by this "announcement", Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, came back the next day, with remarkable composure, to speak to the French "people" to announce that, finally, the increases in fuel taxes would not be suspended but simply cancelled. After the announcement of the latest Republican government "sidestep" (the tax exemption on overtime bonuses), the "green vest" Benoit Hamon said that "it’s not enough!” The government had no alternative but to give up its efforts to "calm" people's minds and prevent the urban guerrilla warfare on the Champs-Élysées from intensifying even further, even though this violence would not discredit the "gilet jaunes" movement.
Since "Black Saturday", the government has wielded the stick and the carrot. These small diplomatic concessions were accompanied by a gigantic media hype about the "exceptional" deployment of the police for the "Act IV" of the "gilet jaunes" on Saturday 8 December. In order not to damage the bourgeois "democracy", the government has not banned the rally. Nor is there any question of declaring a state of emergency (as envisaged and even demanded by certain sectors of the political apparatus).
After discussing the "problem" with all the senior officials in charge of homeland security, our debonair Minister of the Interior sought to reassure "everyone" by announcing that another public order strategy had been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice. The police were no longer to retreat in the capital as throughout the country. A state of emergency was not necessary: there was no "imminent danger" for the Republic.
What has happened in the beautiful districts of Paris, including looting, is more similar to hunger riots, such as those in Argentina in 2001, and suburban riots such as those in France in 2005. The slogan "Macron resign" is of the same nature as the "dégagisme" (rejection of “elites” and politicians) of the 2011 Arab Spring which circulated on all social networks. That is why we also read on cardboard signs: "Macron out!"
This exceptional deployment of the police forces did not succeed in reassuring "everyone", to such an extent that the Minister of the Interior had to patiently explain on television screens that the armoured cars of the gendarmerie are not tanks but simply vehicles intended to clear any barricades and protect the police in their mission. The aim of such a system is to avoid deaths on the part of both demonstrators and police forces, even though there were many injuries and 1,723 arrests (not to mention material damage).
The President has therefore given a lot of "thought" with the support of his close guard of "specialists" and "advisers" and, behind the scenes, with that of all the "intermediate bodies" and professional social firemen of the trade unions. The indefinite truckers' strike called by the CGT was cancelled 48 hours later, as the Minister of Transport immediately guaranteed truck drivers that the increase in overtime would continue even before they went on strike!
The President of the Republic was faced with a "puzzle". By being forced to let go of the ballast (too late!) in the face of the "cry of the people", he opened a Pandora's box: there was a risk of the whole "people" mobilizing, as we have seen with the massive demonstrations of high school students (without "yellow vests" or tricolor flags) against the reform of the Bac and the Parcours Sup (university entrance). But if Emmanuel Macron continued to refuse to give up, he took the risk of a tidal wave of "gilet jaunes" demanding his resignation.
How will the government now close this Pandora's box? The government faced another dilemma that it had to resolve quickly to contain the danger of a spiral of violence, with deaths, during the December 8 demonstration. After the CRS attacks were forced to retreat in front of the Arc de Triomphe, the priority was to show that "force must return to the law" and restore the credibility of the state as "protector" and guarantee of "national unity". The Macron government could not take the risk of making the French democratic state appear as a common banana republic of the "third world" that only holds out with a strong military junta in power.
This focus on the "D-day" and the problem of violence was intended to ensure that the government did not "back down" on one of the central issues: that of wage increases. Above all, the "President of the Rich" remained firm and tranquil regarding the abolition of the Wealth Tax, which was seen as a profound injustice. It is out of the question to "unravel what we have done for 18 months", according to his own words relayed by the media.
This allowed Marine Le Pen to make a new statement about Macron, "this man" whose "disembodied" function shows that he is "devoid of empathy for the people". Pure hypocrisy! No head of state has "empathy for the people". If Madame Le Pen (who aspires to one day become "head of state") has such "empathy for the people", why did she say in front of the television sets that she was not in favour of increasing the minimum wage so as not to penalize the small business owners of SMEs (who constitute a part of her electoral clientele)? All these bourgeois parties that support the "gilet jaunes" and focus all their attention on Macron's detestable personality want us to believe that capitalism is personified by this or that individual when it is a world economic system that must be destroyed. This will not happen in a few days, given the length of the road that remains to be covered (we do not believe in the myth of the "great day"). Macron's resignation and his replacement by another "satirical puppet" will not change the growing misery of the proletarians. Poverty can only continue to worsen with the tremors of a global economic crisis that has no end in sight.
In the inter-classist movement of "gilets jaunes", the petty bourgeoisie is revealed
The inter-classist movement of the "gilets jaunes" could only result in a break between "extremists" and "moderates". Eric Drouet, who initiated the movement on social networks, put on a piece of theatre with its different "acts". Invited onto television programmes, he clearly affirmed that his appeal for "Act IV" on Saturday December 8 was aimed to lead the "gilet jaunes" to meet up at the Elysee Palace in order to confront "King" Macron. Maybe this limited megalomaniac adventurer imagined that the "gilet jaunes" could do the business faced with the Republican Guard who protected the presidential palace. You can't just waltz in like any old building with no guards and no security! Let's be clear, the "King" would have been able to give a good-hiding to the "leader" of the "sans-culottes".
On the eve of the December 8 demonstration, a young lorry-driver was the object of a judicial enquiry for the "provocation of the commission of a crime or offence" which could lead to five years in prison! The adventurist and activist methods of Eric Drouet (and his "virtual" friends) are typical of the petty-bourgeoisie. They show the despair that these "intermediate" social layers (situated between the fundamental classes of society: bourgeoisie and proletariat) that are also hit by pauperisation.
The government has also tried to take control of the situation thanks to the constitution of a collective of the "free gilet jaunes", which differentiate themselves from the "radicals" who rally behind the flag of the "bad citizen" Eric Drouet. The three main representatives of this collection of "moderate" gilet jaunes have distanced themselves from their "comrades" who took part in "Black Saturday". Who are these three new stars wearing yellow vests?
- a blacksmith, Christophe Chalecon who called for the government to resign and suggested nominating General De Villiers as Prime Minister, after announcing on Facebook June 28 2015, that he was against immigrants and had contemplated joining the Front National, before becoming a "Macronist", then an unsuccessful candidate at the last legislative elections!
- A woman, Jacline Mouraud, a hypnotherapist, liberal and accordionist.
- Benjamin Cauchy, close to the extreme-right.
These "free gilet jaunes" became more royalist than the king. Whereas the government never banned the December 8 demonstration in Paris, this self-proclaimed triumvirate called on the "gilet jaunes" not to take part in it (in order to avoid playing "the game of the Executive"!). The three of them, with four other spokespeople, were received by the Prime Minister as privileged negotiators of the "free gilet jaunes". They showed themselves as "good citizens", responsible, open to dialogue and ready to collaborate with the government so that "we can talk". As Jacline Mouraud declared after meeting Edouard Philippe at Matignon: the Prime Minister "listened to us", recognised that the government had made mistakes and "we were able to talk about everything".
Also we can see on the TV after "Black Saturday", some "gilet jaunes" affirmed that they wanted to protect the CRS against the "casseurs" (wreckers). It's the world turned upside-down! Also on the screens was the pitiful spectacle of a group of "gilet jaunes" offering croissants at a police post in Frejus and to the gendarmerie in order to be "friendly" to the force of order. The gendarme who welcomed them found them sheepish and repentant, apologising for the violence of "Black Saturday": "We would have liked you to have been with us, but as this is not possible, we want to say to you (say it with croissants) that we are with you and are fighting for you also". That in a social movement, demonstrators try to demoralise the forces of repression, even appeal to them to change sides, is a good thing to do, as numerous historical examples confirm. But never have we seen the repressed apologising so much to the repressors! Did the police ever apologise for the multiple crimes that they committed, as the young student seriously wounded by a flash-ball in Loiret or the death of two children which sparked-off the riots in the capital's suburbs, autumn 2005?
It was these same cops who stirred up the hatred of the police among the adolescents who set fire not only to some rubbish bins but also schools. These outbursts of despair contained the idea that it's not worth going to school to get a job because dad is unemployed and mum is obliged to clean in order to put food on the table and a little butter on the bread. In some quarters of Paris, in parallel with this, there continues to be drug trafficking of all sorts, thefts, and looting from shops! Migrant children live in the streets, in the ghetto of the "Goutte d'Or" (sic) of the 18th arrondissment, without family, without being able to go to school and who are the real "delinquents" (but not through genetics as ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy imagined).
Whereas certain elements of the petty-bourgeoisie plunge into acts of violence, others have kept things together. At the end of the day, in the present circumstances, this unstable and opportunistic intermediate social layer has not come down on the side of the proletariat, which has been the case in other moments of history, but on the side of the big bourgeoisie.
It is really because the "gilet jaunes" movement is inter-classist that it has been infiltrated not just by the idea of patriotic nationalism but also by the nauseous reek of populist anti-immigrant ideology. In fact one finds in the middle of the list (a hodgepodge) of the "42 claims" of the "gilet jaunes" that of the strengthening of the frontiers from clandestine immigrants! Moreover it's for that reason that "our" President in a speech of December 10, gave a little treat to the "gilet jaunes" members or sympathisers of the Rassemblement national (ex-FN) of Marine Le Pen by raising the question of immigration (while this party has gained 4% in the polls since the beginning of this movement).
This "popular revolt" of all the "poor" of "working France" who can't "make ends meet" is not as such a proletarian movement, despite its sociological composition. The great majority of the "gilet jaunes" are workers, paid, exploited and precarious with some not even affected by the SMIC (minimum wage), without counting the retired who don't have the right to the minimum pension. Living in isolated urban or rural areas, without public transport to get to work or children to school, these poor workers need a car and they are thus the first to be hit by the increase in petrol taxes and new technical requirements for their vehicles.
These minority and dispersed sectors of the proletariat of the rural and peripheral zones have no experience of class struggle. For the great majority of them these are their first demonstrations having never participated in strikes, general assemblies or demonstrations in the street. It's for that reason that their first experience of demonstrations in the large urban concentrations, and notably in Paris, takes the form of a disorganised crowd wandering from here to there without any direction and discovering for the first time in vivo the forces of order with their coshes, tear-gas grenades, water cannons, flash-balls as well as the armoured vehicles of the gendarmerie. Had they seen the armed sniper posted on the roof of a building on "Black Saturday"? The image was published by Reuters.
The explosion of the perfectly legitimate anger of the "gilet jaunes" against the misery of their living conditions has been drowned in an inter-classist conglomeration of so-called free individual-citizens. The rejection of "elites" and politics in general makes them particularly vulnerable to the most reactionary ideologies, notably extreme-right xenophobia. The history of the twentieth century has largely demonstrated that these are the "intermediate" social layers (between proletariat and bourgeoisie), notably the petty-bourgeoisie who make the bed for the fascist and Nazi regimes (with the support of bands of hateful and vengeful lumpens, blinded by prejudice and superstitions which hark back to the dawn of time).
It is only in situations of massive and pre-revolutionary struggles, where the proletariat openly affirms itself on the social scene as an autonomous independent class, with its own methods of struggle and organisation, its own culture and class morality, that the petty-bourgeoisie (and even clear-sighted elements of the bourgeoisie) can abandon its cult of individualism and "citizenship", lose its reactionary character and come behind the proletariat, the only class that's capable of offering a future to the human race.
The movement of the "gilets jaunes", from its inter-classist nature, can only end up with no perspective. It can only take the form of a desperate rebellion in the streets of the capital before breaking up into different tendencies, the radical "friends" of Eric Drouet, and those of the moderate "collective of free gilet jaunes". By putting on the yellow jackets, the poor proletarians who have committed themselves to the slogans of the petty-bourgeoisie now find themselves as fall guys (or the cuckolds of history, whose colour is also yellow). They don't want representatives who negotiate behind their back with the government, which is what the unions always do: the government has refused all engagements of discussion with the “spokespeople” of the "gilet jaunes".
Now, they have (unelected) representatives: notably the "collective of free gilet jaunes". This informal, disorganised movement, initiated through social networks, began to be set up after December 1. The self-proclaimed representatives of this so-called apolitical movement proposed registering for the European elections. Here then is the petty-bourgeoisie in hi-viz yellow jackets dreaming of being able to play in the corridors of power with the big boys.
Even before the threat to "public order", Emmanuel Macron himself put forward the idea of organising "educational" conferences around the question of the "ecological transition" which resulted in the price rises. The citizens involved could thus bring their ideas into a vast democratic debate which was supposed to move the Republic forward after a period of "blockage" of executive power. This so-called apolitical citizen's movement was packed with trade unions, members of political organisations and all sorts of not very clear individuals. Anyone can put on a yellow jacket, including the casseurs. The majority of citizens in yellow jackets make up the electoral clientele of Jean-Luc Melenchon[3] and Marine Le Pen. And this is without counting the Trotskyists, notably the NPA (the New Anti-capitalist Party) of Olivier Besancenot and the Trotskyist Lutte ouvriere. The Trotskyists particularly always come out with the same story: "Take the money from the rich!" The proletariat isn't a class of pickpockets! The money which is found in "the pockets of the rich" is the result of the exploitation of the labour of the "poor", that's to say, the proletariat. It's not a question of emptying "the pockets of the rich", but to struggle today in order to limit this real theft of capitalist exploitation and, in doing so, gather up the forces necessary in order to abolish the exploitation of man by man.
At the time of the climate change march December 8 in Paris, numerous "gilets jaunes" met up with a procession of "gilets verts" (green vests) who had an understanding that the "end of the month and the end of the world", "all this is tied together". Some "gilet jaunes" decided to set their jackets on fire along with their election ID cards. It is true that the "end of the month" difficulties and the end of the world are linked as these are the two faces of the same reality: that of a system which is based on the profit of a small minority and nowhere on the needs of humanity.
After "Black Saturday", a national police union raised the question of an "unlimited" strike of cops who also wanted to put on the yellow uniform! They don't have much difficulty "making ends meet" but are fed up with hellish working hours, burn-out due to stress and the fear of taking a petanque ball in the head. So the government had to unblock funds in order to offer a bonus to the CRS and other professionals involved in the maintenance of order. The government thus created more jobs in this totally unproductive sector, further increasing financial deficits, in order to keep order in a decomposing society where social fractures can only accentuate with the deterioration of living conditions and the strengthening of repression. Everyone knows that the French cops are not without fault and will hit first and ask questions afterwards!
What are the perspectives for the proletariat?
What concerns the government and the entire bourgeois class is the fact that, despite the violence of the casseurs in yellow vests during "Black Saturday", the popularity of the movement has not weakened: after December 1, opinion polls said that 72% of the French population continued to support the "gilet jaunes" (even if 80% condemned the violence and 34% understood it). The "gilet jaunes" even became world stars: Belgium, Germany, Britain, Holland, Bulgaria and even Iraq, where in Basra they wore the yellow vest! The Egyptian government even decided to restrict the sale of hi-viz jackets for fear of "contamination" and to buy one you had to have police authorisation!
Such popularity is essentially explained by the fact that all the working class, which constitutes the majority of the "people", shares the anger, indignation and economic demands of the "gilet jaunes" against the cost of living and social and economic injustice. After doing a stint with ex-President Hollande, our President of the Republic has put forward, with his wooden language, a totally incomprehensible theory for the "people": the theory of "trickle-down economics". According to this theory, the more money the "rich" has, the more it can "trickle-down" towards the "poor". It's the argument of rich old dames who make the miserable better through their generosity by giving away some of their fortune. What this doesn't say is that the wealth of the moneyed classes doesn't grow on trees - it comes from the exploitation of the proletariat.
This Macronist theory is concretised by the abolition of the ISF, an annual wealth tax on assets over a million pounds: this fiscal gift will, the theory goes, allow the "rich" (in fact most of the bourgeoisie) to use the money given back to them for investment which, at the end of the day, supposedly, creates jobs, reabsorbs the unemployed and, in this way, profits the working class. And so, the theory goes, it would be in the interests of the proletariat that the ISF law is revoked! Despite their "illiteracy" and "resistance", the "poor" in their yellow vests have understood perfectly that Macronism is trying to "con" them (as one pensioner in a yellow jacket said on a TV interview).
And during the time that it takes for the abolition of the ISF to "benefit" the working class, it's still necessary to ask it to tighten its belt while the capitalist class continues to live in luxury. It's not at all surprising to read on a cardboard sign during the December 8 demonstration: "We also want to be paid the ISF! Give us the money!"
Despite the general anger of all the "people", of "working France", the workers in their great majority don't want to join up with the "gilets jaunes" even if they have sympathy for their demonstrations. They don't recognise themselves in the methods of struggle of a movement supported by Marine Le Pen and by all the right. They don't recognise themselves in the blind violence of black blocks, death threats, the pogromist mentality, verbal xenophobic and homophobic assaults by some "gilet jaunes".
The popularity of this movement, including after the violence of "Black Saturday", is indicative of the immense anger which is grinding away in the entrails of society. But for the moment, the great majority of proletarians (industrial and transport workers, distribution and health, teaching, civil servants in their lower-grade numbers, social services...) are still paralysed by the difficulties in re-establishing their class identity, that's to say a consciousness that they belong to the same class that submits to the same exploitation. The great majority of these workers have taken part in sterile "days of action", pointless, divisive promenades called by the unions, and union go-slows, on-off strikes, etc., as those of the rail-workers last spring. As long as the proletariat doesn't take up its road to struggle and affirm its independence as an autonomous class with a developing consciousness society can only continue to sink into chaos. It can only continue to rot in the bestial unleashing of violence.
The inter-classist movement of the "gilet jaunes" has thrown light on the danger which threatens the working class in France as well as in other countries: the growth of the populism of the extreme-right. The "gilet jaune" movement can only favour a new electoral push, notably at the next European elections, of the party of Marine Le Pen, the main and first supporter of the "gilets jaunes" movement. This advocate pleads the case for a "hexagonal protectionism": the frontiers must be closed to foreign goods and above all to foreigners with a darker skin who are fleeing the absolute misery and barbarity of war in their country of origin. Le Pen's party has already announced that to increase the buying power of the French the government must make "economies" on immigration. The party of the Rassemblement national tries to find another argument for sending immigrants back: our "people" who can't make ends meet "can't take in all the misery in the world" (as Prime Minister Michel Rocard said in December 1989 during a TV discussion).
The xenophobic verbal abuse, grassing up to the police clandestine migrants who were hidden in the back of a truck ("we pay our taxes for these fuckers", one "gilet jaune" said), the demands of some "gilets jaunes" to take the clandestine immigrants back across "our" borders, should not be minimised! The empathy felt for this movement throughout the world should not blind the proletariat and its most lucid elements.
In order to re-establish its class identity and the road to its own revolutionary perspective, the proletariat in France as everywhere else must not be trampled underfoot by the crowd, or draped in the tricolore, but stick to the old slogan of the workers' movement: "The proletariat has no country. Workers of the world unite!"[4]
In this atmosphere of violence and nationalist hysteria which has polluted the social climate in France, a small gleam of light nevertheless appeared after "Black Saturday". This positive spark came from working class students obliged to take on part-time jobs triggering their claims, put forward in their mobilisations and assemblies, for the withdrawal of registration costs for their comrades who didn't belong to the European Union. At the Tolbiac school in Paris a placard read: "Solidarity with foreigners!" This slogan went against the nationalist wave of the "gilets jaunes" and showed the proletariat the way to the future.
It's thanks to their "box of ideas" that the student fighting against the Contrat premiere embauche (CPE - First Employment Contract giving the bosses power to fire at will and reducing the rights of these first-time workers) of the government of Dominique de Villepin, were able in 2006, to once again spontaneously take up the methods of the proletariat. They organised themselves in order not to be attacked by the casseurs from the suburbs. They refused to get caught up in the violence which only strengthens the force of state terror.
Faced with the danger of social chaos at the heart of Europe, today more than ever, the future of the class struggle belongs to the young generations of the proletariat. It's to these new generations that the flame of the historic struggle of the exploited class returns, the class which produces all the riches of society; not only its material wealth, but also its cultural wealth. As Rosa Luxemburg said, the struggle of the proletariat isn't only a "bread and butter" question in order to fill stomachs.
The proletarians of France are no longer "sans culottes". They must continue to give the example to workers of other countries as their forebears did in the June Days of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871 and May 1968. It's the only way to regain their dignity, continue to walk upright and look ahead, and not on all-fours like the wild beasts who want to impose the law of the jungle on us.
Faced with the danger of the "sacred union" of all the exploiters and casseurs:
Workers of the world unite!
Marianne, December 10 2018
[1] In which there is a chapter entitled: "Bourgeois and Proletarians".
[2] General social contributions, a tax like National Insurance in the UK.
[3] Jean-Luc Melenchon is a leftist politician, ex-long time MEP and the presidential candidate for the left in 2017. In 2016 he launched the leftist movement "France unbowed" (La France insoumise), which tells you quite a lot about him.
[4] Found in the opening chapter entitled: "Bourgeois and Proletarians".
The confrontation between the bourgeois factions in Venezuela - between Chavismo and the opposition parties - has undergone a qualitative leap since the beginning of 2019. It takes place in a context of an unprecedented worsening of the economic and social crisis, the most evident sign of which is the increase in poverty experienced by a large part of the population. But it is also part of a scenario marked by worsening rivalries between the great powers - some giving their open support to the regime of Nicolás Maduro, others to the proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó.
It is the U.S. which has set the tone: after recognizing Guaidó as president of Venezuela, it has unleashed a more intense and comprehensive strategy that proposes to definitively remove Nicolás Maduro from power. The US threat, as voiced by senior officials and Donald Trump himself, does not exclude a US military intervention, using "humanitarian aid" as a justification. Support for Nicolás Maduro has come mainly from countries such as Russia and China, the main allies of Chavismo. However, rather than a direct military confrontation between the great powers, the potential danger lies in the use of the population and workers as cannon fodder in a war between bandits, resulting in greater bloodshed. More than 40 deaths and the brutal repression of the population (more than 900 detainees in the last two weeks of January alone) are just a small sample.
Faced with this escalation of the confrontation between the bourgeois factions of right and left in Venezuela, which transcends the borders of that country, it is important and urgent to call on the Venezuelan and world proletariat to understand the imminent danger of a massacre; to refuse to line up with any of the internal or external factions of capital, to remain on its class terrain and to reject this infernal slide into chaos and barbarism in the region, an expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system as a whole[1].
Guaidó's emergence does not come out of nowhere; his sudden appearance has been scrupulously prepared by the US, with the support of members of the Venezuelan opposition in that country and other countries of the so-called international community (the Lima Group, with the exception of Mexico), which support the US strategy against Maduro's regime. The aggressive and determined action of the US against Maduro has been reinforced at a geopolitical level since it was supported by the triumph of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (to which the USA also made a considerable contribution). It is no coincidence that the first declaration of Mike Pompeo (US Secretary of State) at Bolsonaro's inauguration was to call for a fight against "socialism" and re-establish democracy in Venezuela. Venezuela is being hemmed in at its most important borders, in the west by Colombia (the main US ally in South America) and in the south by Brazil. Several EU countries have also recently recognised Guaidó , although they have tried to develop their own policy of intervention through the so-called "Contact Group", which is trying to weaken US action.
This energetic reaction of the US and its allies in the region is taking advantage of the situation created by the emigration of Venezuelans fleeing from the misery and barbarity imposed by the left bourgeois regime of Chavismo-Madurismo (according to the UN, this already exceeds 4 million migrants).The Venezuelan opposition is now launching this offensive against Maduro, even though it was the conflicts of interest and the decomposition in its own ranks that opened the way for the rise of the adventurer Chávez in 1999. The opposition is seeking to take advantage of the protests and indignation of the workers and the population as whole, who do not have the strength to develop a coherent response to both the Chávez regime and the bourgeois opposition, precisely because of the divisions created by the incessant political confrontations between these factions of capital[2].
The opposition sectors, weakened by the conflicts of interest among them, now seek to unite behind the figure of Guaidó, in another adventure that is gaining support within the population due to the desperation caused by hunger and misery. The action of the majority of the regional and world bourgeoisie that have now turned against Maduro demonstrates the hypocrisy of the exploiting classes, since they now speak of "respect for human rights", after years of praising Chávez as the "defender of the poor”, who supposedly managed to "lift millions of poor people out of poverty and invisibility" in Venezuela and distributed gifts to the population thanks to high oil prices, when in reality Chavismo was laying the bases for the barbarism that we see today, enriching the military and civilian elites that today defend their privileges with blood and fire[3].
For its part, the Chávez regime declares itself "socialist" and "revolutionary", when in reality what it has implemented in Venezuela is a regime of integral state capitalism, in the style of the dictatorial regimes of Cuba, China, North Korea or so-called "Arab socialism"[4]. The regime declared itself to be fighting against "unrestrained neo-liberalism", but the effects of its "socialism" have been equally devastating for the population: extreme poverty has reached 61. 2% of the population and poverty measured by family income 87%; more than 10% of the child population suffers severe malnutrition: in 2017 between 5 and 6 children died per week, due to malnutrition and diseases; between 2017 and 2018 hyperinflation surpassed one million per cent. In addition, Chavismo effectively eliminated collective negotiations and established a repressive regime in the workplace.
These models of capital management like the Chavista regime have nothing to do with the communism fought for by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg , who proposed to put an end to the bourgeois state (whether governed by the right or the left) and to the blind laws of the capitalist mode of production. We must keep in mind that neither the left of capital nor the bourgeois right can offer a solution to the crisis of decaying capitalism. We see for example how the right in Argentina, after displacing the left governments of the Kirchners, is now plunged into a much worse crisis which it is duly unloading onto the workers. The same will happen with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil.
Both Chavismo and its leftist sidekicks in the region and the world, as well as the different oppositions of center and right, by spreading all kinds of lies and confusions, have tried to deform or erase completely the historical and theoretical heritage of marxism and the lessons handed down by the struggles of the working class. This is true whether they proclaim themselves "marxists," or when they vilify "21st century socialism" as an example of "communism”. They have all tried to maintain their class domination; now it is the turn of the right and center-right, saying that "communism" must be extirpated from Latin America, with which they identify Chavismo or Castroism.
As already mentioned, Guaidó has been promoted by the US in order to re-establish as close a control as possible over its backyard. China, with its penetration into Latin America and other countries of the world, and now with the vast "Silk Road" programme, intends not only to expand the markets within its reach but also to achieve a strategic imperialist implantation on a world scale. Using economic means, China wants to set up an imperialist network on a world scale, in order to undo the siege that the USA had woven around it since the Obama administration (using Japan, South Korea, Philippines, India, etc.). In this sense, alliances with Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, etc., are very important for China's imperialist ambitions. The "Guaidó operation" on the part of the US is a counter-attack that adds to the positions won in Argentina and Brazil, and through the traditional loyalty of Colombia.
The first step of the US imperialist operation is the deployment of so-called Humanitarian Aid. It is the height of cynicism and hypocrisy that hunger, the shortage of medicines, the desperate situation of millions of workers and exploited in Venezuela, are used to carry out the first phase of their strategy against the Maduro regime. The trucks carrying food and medicine and parked on the famous Tienditas Bridge in the Colombian city of Cúcuta are the equivalent of missiles and bombers. With them, US imperialism tries to put its Chavista imperialist rival in an uncomfortable position, where it might have to reject food and medicine for the hungry and ailing population. The repugnant cynicism of both the Americans and the Chavistas, the supporters of Guaidó and those of Maduro, is thus revealed. The first exploiting the hunger of the population as a weapon of war, repeating an operation that in 1998-99 Clinton carried out in Serbia where tons of food were thrown from planes to weaken Milosevic's regime, or a similar manoeuvre in Haiti in 2004[5]. The latter, led by Maduro, rejecting the aid, thereby demonstrating what is obvious: they don't give a damn about the hunger and unspeakable suffering of the population.
Maduro will resist as long as possible and, no doubt, China and Russia will do their best to support him. So far, the army and repressive forces have closed ranks with Chavismo. The aim now is to weaken the "unbreakable" adhesion of the military-repressive apparatus to Maduro. In carrying out this destabilising operation, the danger of armed confrontations is appearing on the horizon. Given the imperialist rivalries lurking in the background, and the high degree of ideological, political, economic and social decomposition taking place in Venezuela, there is a real potential that the situation will end up in a civil war or, at least, in a succession of bloody confrontations, an increasingly chaotic spiral that could lead the country and the region to collapse. This perspective is also fed by the information provided by the Observatorio Venezolano de la Violencia, according to which there are 8 million illegal firearms in the country. In addition there is no precise data on the number of weapons in the hands of the organised underworld, to which can be added the threat of the Chávez government to hand over 500,000 rifles to its militias.
The massive exodus of the Venezuelan population to countries in the region such as Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Peru (with walking caravans similar to those going from Honduras to the United States) is also a factor in the spread of chaos. It is a problem that cannot be underestimated, and the bourgeoisies of the most affected countries have responded by launching racist and xenophobic campaigns presented as a means of opposing the threatened chaos[6].
The crisis of capitalism is unstoppable; it feeds day by day on the contradictions of the capitalist social relation. For this reason, the solution to the crisis by the exploited will only be possible through the unified struggle of the proletarians of Venezuela, the region and the world. In the current period of the decomposition of capitalism, there is no country in the world that is not threatened with the barbarism that is being lived through now in Venezuela. Neither the populisms of the left nor of the right, nor the defenders of neo-liberalism, represent a way out.
The workers in Venezuela must reject any enlistment in the ranks of the warring factions, rejecting the siren songs of the opposition bourgeoisie that call the exploited masses behind their struggle; in the same way, they must resist falling into the mesh of the parties, groups and unions of the left, including the leftists that oppose the regime, so-called "Chavismo without Chávez", which peddles a more radical version of Maduro’s regime of exploitation.
We have seen that in Venezuela there have been a large number of protests during the Chávez regime. In 2018 alone, there were more than 5,000 demonstrations (an average of 30 protests a day), most of them demanding basic necessities such as food, water, services and better wages. In recent years, we can point in particular to the struggles of doctors and nurses, who have not only dared to challenge the repressive forces of the state, but have also shown a very class-based solidarity, identifying with patients who have no medicine or possibilities of care, calling for unity with other sectors, such as teachers and lecturers. However, these struggles have not been spared the penetration of trade unions who aim to control and sabotage them, although it is worth noting the fact that there has been a tendency to reject both Chavismo and the opposition, to try to keep their struggles more independent. The workers must continue their struggles against the regime of bourgeois exploitation on their own ground. In their struggle, the workers must seek to bring other non-exploitative layers behind them; only the proletariat has the capacity to transform social indignation into a real political programme for social transformation.
The revolutionary organisations that descend from the communist left, as well as the most politicised minorities in Venezuela, the region and the world, must call for the development of a movement on the proletarian basis of solidarity and common struggle with the exploited masses who are experiencing situations comparable to what is happening in Venezuela. The world proletariat has the answer to the prospect of sinking into barbarism; for this reason, it must defend its class autonomy tooth and nail. That means rejecting all sides in the conflict and affirming its own demands as a class; it means fighting for the unity of all workers around the slogan: Here or Abroad, the Same Working Class!
International Communist Current 12-2-19
________________________________________
1] To understand in depth this notion of the decomposition of capitalism, see our Theses on Decomposition, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
2] See “The crisis in Venezuela: the proletariat suffers the misery, chaos and repression of capitalism”, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201710/14408/crisis-venezuela-... [1814]
3] See Un proyecto de defensa del capital. Un gran engaño para las masas empobrecidas https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201303/3694/un-proyecto-de-de... [1815]
4] We have denounced on numerous occasions the Great Lie of the 20th century, the supposed "communism" of countries such as the USSR, China, Cuba and North Korea. See “The Russian Experience: Private Property and Collective Property”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/russian-experience [1816]. Also “Five Questions on Communism”, https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200510/246/5-preguntas... [1817]
5] See “Behind the ‘humanitarian’ operations of the great powers, imperialist barbarism is unchained” https://en.internationalism.org/content/3568/international-situation-beh... [1818]. Also: “The fraud of ‘humanitarian aid’ in Haiti”, https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2010//331/ [1819]
6] See “Migrations in Latin America: Only the proletariat can stop the barbarism of decaying capitalism”, https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoameric... [1820]
For the last two months, the question of the ecological catastrophe threatening our planet has been at the centre of attention in Belgium. With the march on 2 December 2019, which brought together 75,000 people in Brussels, this mobilisation around climate change has taken on an unprecedented breadth. Faced with the disdain of the government and the political parties, obsessed with all their squalid manoeuvres around the May elections, it got even bigger with 80,000 demonstrating in Brussels on 27 January.
But the most significant expression of this indignation about the inaction of the political parties is without doubt the wave of Thursday school strikes, initiated by the high school students from the beginning of January, in order to go and demonstrate in Brussels. Launched by high school students in Antwerp, there were 3,000 students at the first demonstration and over 35,000 on Thursday 24th January, coming from both Flanders and Wallonia. Other more local demonstrations took place in Antwerp, Liège and Namur.
The main motivation for this mobilisation of the high school students is the absence of perspective offered by this society on the issue of climate change. Scandalised by the lack of government action, the movement aims to put “maximum pressure on the authorities” to take responsible decisions about the climate problem.
Indignation about the inaction of the governments is quite justified, and so is the disquiet of the students about their future, which also means their future as workers. The search for an alternative to this society which is heading towards disaster is more necessary and urgent than ever. But can we expect anything from the “authorities”? Should we not first and foremost think deeply about the real reasons behind the threat to the planet and its inhabitants? And about what kind of fight we need to deal with this threat?
In order to provide some elements of a reply to these questions and to stimulate reflection, we are republishing here two articles on the question of ecology. Even though they were written in 1990 and 2009, they remain as relevant as ever when it comes to analysing the roots of the ecological problem and the perspectives that need to be put forward.
Brazil is wracked by increased repression, growing poverty and greater insecurity; further attacks on workers, threats of war and risks of chaos - all linked to the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on 1 January, 2019. Bolsonaro symbolises the epoch in which we are living which produces the most sinister and repugnant elements. It is a law that we can be sure will be verified, whatever the political moves of the new president and his ministries, whatever his personality ... that the exploited will pay more than their predecessors and the crisis of capitalism will only get worse.
Faced with all these dangers, only the working class, through its struggles of resistance and its opposition to the fatal logic of capitalism, can open up another perspective. While sharing the global difficulty of recognising itself as a class with antagonistic interests to those of capitalism, it is by basing itself on the experiences of past struggles that the proletariat will be able to respond to the drastic attacks that have been announced and do so in the context of a social crisis of a society in decomposition[1]. But the more the consciousness of the class is liberated from all the deceptions and lies of the bourgeois class from both right and left, the more its combat will be strengthened and, in time, the goal of establishing a society without classes or exploitation.
The Brazilian crime hell and the remedies of Bolsonaro
The extent of criminality is fundamentally the consequence of the economic and moral poverty of society, a product of capitalist society rotting on its feet. The depths reached by this make daily life unliveable in some countries of Latin America such as Honduras or Venezuela; here they are the prime reason for the massive and desperate attempts at emigration. The situation has got so bad in Brazil in recent years, it has propelled the country, and some of its towns in particular, to a place high up in the world league of criminality. The following statistics give a concrete idea of the daily hell to which the most disadvantaged parts of the population are exposed.
"Brazil is one of the world's capitals for homicide, with 60,000 a year out of a population of close to 208 million inhabitants. Each year 10% of people killed in the world are Brazilian. Nearly 50 million Brazilians aged 16 or over - almost a third of the adult population - know someone who has been violently killed, according to research undertaken by the "Instinto de Vido" (Life Instinct) (...) Nearly 5 million people have been wounded by firearms and about 15 million know someone who has been killed by the police, one of the most murderous forces in the world."[2].
"According to another study, the rate of homicide in 2017 was 32.4 per 100,000, with 64,357 killed. In 2016, Brazil registered a record number of 61,819 murders, or 198 per day on average, a rate of deaths of 29.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. Seven of the twenty most violent towns in the world are in Brazil because of the increase in street violence"[3] .
Growing criminality and insecurity are plunging more and more important layers of the population into a total impasse, into the most profound despair. This scourge eating away at society has no possible solution under capitalism nor even the least possibility of its attenuation[4].
In Bolsonaro's election campaign a priority was given to the fight against violence and corruption. He was taking on these issues by advocating measures which reflect the trade-mark of the person. Behind his promises declaring war on criminality the real perspective is in fact that of an aggravation of barbarity. Drawing a critical balance-sheet of politics up until now, he expressed himself in these terms: "We can't fight violence with the politics of peace and love". So, it's necessary "to increase the performance of the police", "to double the number of people killed by the police". Just imagine the possible carnage when, "from 2009-2016, 21.9 thousand people lost their lives following police actions. Nearly all were males between 12 and 29, three-quarters of them black" (Guaracy Mingardi, a specialist in security questions and National Secretary of Public Security in an interview with Huffpost Brasil).
In fact, not only will criminality not be reduced but the number of victims of the police will increase and the first victims will be from the poor areas which are already suffering from the expansion of crime[5]. The accentuation of the violence doesn't only come from criminals and the police but also from those on the sinister and classical appendages of the extreme-right, the bands recruited from lumpen elements who were already active and have been for a while.
Regarding the fight against corruption, Bolsonaro has immediately taken "strong measures" consisting of nominating ex-anti-corruption judge, Sergio Moro, as Minister of Justice. Groomed by the CIA for operation "Lava Jato" ("Operation Car Wash") from 2014 to 2016, Moro aimed at some political figures while sparing many others even more corrupt.
Why was Lula removed from political life and Bolsonaro elected?
The election of Bolsonaro takes place within a global dynamic, verifiable at the international level, of the rise of strong leaders with bellicose language, as illustrated to the point of parody by the election of Duterte in the Philippines. It is one of the consequences of the decomposition of capitalism, mired in its inextricable contradictions. The phenomenon exists in Brazil through insecurity and criminality and the fear that they give rise to, thus laying the ground for the ascension to power of people like Bolsonaro.
Nevertheless, as important as this factor is, it wasn't determinant in the election of Bolsonaro. And the proof is that another candidate, who had been the best politician in the service of Brazilian national capital since Vargas, would have been elected in the first round according to the polls if he'd been able to stand, and that despite accusations of corruption aimed at him. This is Lula, who has been put in prison so that he couldn't stand.
How do you explain the persistence of Lula's popularity? You explain it quite simply by the fact that he doesn't come across as shady as all the other contending candidates. In fact, it's the contrary, because what is clear and conforms to reality, is that the accusation and sanction against him has been particularly severe taking account of the charges against him and the fate reserved for other politicians immersed in scandal who have come out of them with just a slap on the wrist. This is true of Michel Temer of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, which is a "centre" party in the political set-up of the bourgeoisie) for example.
The high results for Lula in the polls doesn't mean that his image hasn't been eroded at the end of the day and among the working class notably because of his attacks on the class during his two successive mandates. But he has largely appeared as a lesser evil, taking account of his stature and faced with all the other candidates. His popularity was greater than that of his own party, the PT, whose defeated candidate would be presented once Lula was definitively out of the race. In effect, whereas Lula would have beaten Bolsonaro in the first round, Addad, the PT's candidate, was heavily beaten by Bolsonaro in the second round. The difference between Lula and the PT is not surprising when one takes into account that, for three successive mandates, the latter was enmeshed in many areas of corruption and equally supported all the policies of austerity: those of two mandates of Lula and the still-more drastic ones of Dilma Rousseff during the first mandate and months of his second mandate before being dismissed[6].
The contrast between the political suitability of Lula on the one hand and the notorious incapacity which seems to affect Bolsonaro on the other, is striking. Why did the bourgeoisie keep back one of its own who was its main figure (during the two mandates of 2002 to 2010) during the emergence of Brazil on the international scene and the second economic miracle?[7] In fact Lula's ousting was part of a strategy within which the United States played a major role, aiming to bring Brazil under its direct influence, given that the world's 7th economic power has been continually disengaging itself from US influence since the beginning of 2000.
After the dissolution of the western bloc, Brazil frees itself from the tutelage of the United States
For a long time before the formation of the two antagonistic rival blocs, Russia and the USA after the Second World War, Latin America constituted the back-yard of the United States up to when the eastern bloc collapsed followed by that of the west. Up to 1990, Uncle Sam could effectively defend its back-yard from any intrusion from its rival imperialist bloc. In the same way, it integrated the different countries of the South American continent into networks of bi- or multi-lateral commercial agreements primarily benefitting the United States. In order to serve its interests Uncle Sam did what it pleased in setting up governments by installing, for example, extreme right-wing dictatorships to fight against any attempts to set up left-wing governments who could express the interests of the rival bloc. This was particularly the case with Argentina, Chile and Brazil in the 1960's and 1970's. Similarly, when that threat receded, the United States could also support the democratic process putting an end to dictatorships. This was the case in Brazil in 1984 in order to get a democratic government which put an end to the rigidity in the management of the national capital from a state led by the military, thus making it more open to American penetration[8]. It is moreover this management of the state by the military which then inspired Bolsonaro when he promised to "shoot the president who privatises"[9] and who now envisages privatisation.
Following the dissolution of the western bloc, Brazil, as other countries in South America and the world, used this relaxation of pressure in order to play its own geopolitical cards. Thus, it was able to take its distance from the United States on both economic and political grounds. In fact, during the whole period corresponding to the presidency of Lula (2003 - 2007 - 2011) the country distinguished itself through important economic developments but also through certain political positions opposed to the United States. In particular the opposition of the Lula government was crucial in aborting the North American ALCA project (free-exchange zone of the Americas) in 2005, a multi-lateral free-exchange deal which covered all the countries of the continent, with the exception of Cuba. A similar opposition was also shown through the promotion of non-aligned countries in Latin America and elsewhere. Thus, in 2010, Brazil opposed the United States on the question of Iran. At the same time, it established international economic relations (BRICS) which strengthened its independence in relation to the United States. A fact which marked this trajectory and distancing from the United States, in April 2009, China became the main commercial partner of Brazil in place of the United States[10]. Brazil gained a more and more hegemonic position over the whole South American continent, thanks to its economic and diplomatic power. So much so that during the Lula government Brazil became the main competitor to the US in the region; competitor but not declared enemy. In fact, Lula established relations with both China and the United States, while clearly favouring China; it's much more comforting to have a powerful "partner" some geographical distance away, in contrast to the United States.
Some cheating which was also an Achilles heel in the growth of Brazil's power
An expression and factor in the growth of Brazil's power at the economic level was the large Brazilian businesses dynamised by investments from the state banks[11]. These imposed themselves on the international scene, notably through the energy sector, food, naval construction, armaments, services, etc...
Among the above figures were the businesses of Petrobas (oil production and derivatives) BRF (animal proteins, meat and derivatives), Odebrecht (heavy construction, armaments and services to Petrobas). Thus, for example, thanks to intensive public financing, the BRF became the principal producer and exporter of animal protein in the world, present in more than 30 countries. The Brazilian multinational Odebrecht (twelfth in the world), which had business in almost every country of South America, in some old Portuguese colonies in Africa and even beyond, certainly constituted an important instrument for the economic penetration of Brazil outside the frontiers of South America.
Moreover, protectionist measures were equally applied, aiming to impose the presence of Brazilian businesses in different circumstances: cooperation with foreign businesses wanting to extract oil from Brazilian territory; all equipment put together in Brazil had to integrate components made in Brazil as soon as they were available.
Another type of protectionist measure favourising the large Brazilian enterprises was "illegal" even if practiced around the world. Odebrecht, for example, had a service specialist in bribery for obtaining bigger contracts and this in every country it operated in. This enterprise, the same as others such as the AOS, were organised in a cartel in the BTP, remunerating the staff of the group Petrobas and complicit politicians through an estimated amount of 1 and 5% of contracts. A system was put in place to hold back billions of reals (the Brazilian currency) with the aim of financing political parties and/or enriching personnel ("Brazil: everyone understands how 'Lava Jato' works". Le Monde, published March 26, 2017 and again, April 2018).
The pressure of the United States on the Brazilian state and operation "Lava Jato"
Evidently, none of the economic rivals of the United States can counter the fact that the world's main economic power draws the economic part of its ranking in the world to the detriment of its competitors, particularly from the fact that its currency is the currency of international exchange. On the contrary, the United States has been particularly vigilant in making sure that there are punishing sanctions against any country guilty of not observing the laws of competition. Thus, cheating by Brazil has served as a pretext and target for a massive offensive aimed at dismantling the entire economic organization on which they relied. The reprisals were all the more draconian since they acted through them not only to inflict economic sanctions for the failures regarding competition, but above all to disorganise the protectionist measures of the Brazilian economy (legal or not, such as the systematic use if bribes), and to bring a pliant Brazil back under exclusive American influence by neutralising the political forces most influential and hostile to such an orientation. Witness the treatment meted out to the most popular politician in Brazil, Lula, condemned to 12 years in prison (a sentence which has since been more than doubled) during an expedient procedure lacking significant proof concerning so-called personal enrichment[12]. It is moreover not insignificant that it’s the accusation most difficult to prove, that of personal enrichment, which has nevertheless been retained against Lula, because it was most likely to be considered by the electorate, whereas other accusations from numerous witnesses, relating to the malpractices of the Brazilian state, seem not to have been taken into account.
The term "Lava Jato" made its first public appearance in March 2014 and was then closely followed by leaks of confessions of an ex-high official of Petrobas, conceded in the hope of a lenient sentence regarding the existence of a vast system of bribery to the management staff of this business, aimed at being awarded contracts. Following which, the opposition daily - "Veja" - published the names of forty suspect deputies from the centre-left in power, essentially from the PMDB, the PT and the Brazilian Socialist Party.
Cases of corruption going back to 2008 led to the mobilisation of the bourgeois state’s organs of control. This led to operation "Lava Jato" whose work was constituted by the federal police, members of the public ministry and judges. Its first public interventions went back to 2014. For its work, this task force appealed to the tribunals responsible for verifying the state's accounts, to the judicial power, to the public ministry and the federal police, with the constitution of special groups of the latter set up to "fight" organised criminality under all its forms.
Some strong elements allow us to consider that this judicial mobilisation took place through a powerful interaction with the highest authorities in the United States, even the product of the overt interference of the latter. Thus documents divulged by Wikileaks talked of a seminar in Rio de Janeiro in October 2009 showing the cooperation of the federal police, Justice, the public ministry of Brazil and representatives from North America[13]. In fact, there was nothing surprising about this seminar when one is aware that, on one hand, the United States had an interest, but also given the fact that, since the 1960's, the leaders of judicial and ministerial power in Brazil were ardent defenders of American institutions which gave them courts, training, conferences, assistance to enquiries, etc. Such cooperation is nowhere denied by the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Rodrigo Janot, someone central to "Lava Jato", when he explained that the "Brazilian results" were the outcome "of an intense exchange with the United States which had provided Brazil with training courses and recycling for Brazilian research and with more technology and planning techniques for research". The prosecutor punctuated this with: "All this means that Brazil has a relationship of equals with all other states"[14]; in case there was any doubt of the relationship with United States! We can quote here the title of another article: "The FBI has been involved in operation Lava Jato since the beginning and prided itself on that fact in front of everyone"[15].
In the context of this pressure of the United States on Brazil, we should also note the recordings made by the NSA of presidential conversations, of ministries, the director of the Central Bank and military chiefs[16].
We shouldn't be surprised at the leaks of the first results of "Lava Jato" in 2014 regarding the system of bribery at Petrobas. In fact, these came at "a good time", weakening Dilma Rousseff and the PT in the re-election campaign whose result was uncertain, while, in the incriminating period in question, Rousseff was the President of the administrative council of Petrobas and the PT was also implicated through some of its members being involved in the management of this state enterprise.
Nevertheless, this first flurry of revelations from "Lava Jato" wasn't enough to remove Dilma Rousseff from carrying out the business of the country. In fact, the outgoing president was re-elected against the candidate for the PSDB, even if it was difficult given that she was tainted by the affair and weakened by the worsening of the economic situation of Brazil. However, the fact that she was re-elected in this context showed the confidence that an important part of the bourgeoisie had in her to assume the defence of the interests of the national capital. In fact, for this electoral consultation, as the previous one, she called upon a significant level of financial resources provided by large industrial businesses, the finance and service sector.
However, she was rapidly and more deeply discredited through the severe anti-working class measures that she had to take (reneging on her electoral promises). She was again confronted in the street early in 2015, through demonstration initiated by the right but avoiding the appearance of political parties. In these demonstrations, which brought together millions, there were also conservatives, liberals and partisans of the military taking power. It's worth mentioning here that these demonstrations served as a springboard for promoting speeches in defence of the military candidate and notorious homophobe, Bolsonaro.
The previous "allies" of Dilma Rousseff then constituted, without her and the PT, a new and striking parliamentary majority in alliance with other opposition parties notably the PSDB and of sections of parties such as the PMDB (Social Democratic Party of Brazil), the PDT (Workers' Democratic Party), the PSB (Socialist Party of Brazil), all of the DEM (Democrats) and other minor parties. Dilma Rousseff was removed in August 2018 by a vote in the Senate at the end of a controversial procedure.
The consequences of "Lava Jato" on the political life of the bourgeoisie.
All the important political formations of Brazilian politics have been affected by the revelations of "Lava Jato". Major figures of the Brazilian bourgeoisie were targeted for investigation, even humiliated (particularly the boss of Odebrecht) by deafening revelations of suspicions, of proofs against them and they were thrown to the wolves by the press who broadcast them immediately. News and specialist programmes became the theatre of "popular judicial deliberations" to which the viewer was invited. The "all powerful" judiciary seemed to cut off the head of the state and even make it submit. No boss or high-level management, or parts of the party could feel safe.
But far from strengthening the image of its institutions and democracy "Lavo Jato" has discredited them still more. If the corruption and the rot have effectively been shamelessly and publicly exposed, the means used for this end was at least questionable. This was the institutionalisation and banalisation of denunciations[17] . Further it quickly became clear that all the defendants were not equal in front of the justice of "Lava Jato", and that the most severe sanctions were applied to those that they wanted to remove from power. The example of Lula alone sums up this situation.
We find the same iniquity regarding the sanctions levelled against the "guilty" Brazilian businesses. In this case it's the United States handing out the punishment and "generously" accepting arrangements in order to avoid colossal penalties. For example, the American government demanded that the J&F business (BRF) transferred its operational control by setting itself up as an American business if it wanted to avoid sanctions. As for Odebrecht, it paid a very heavy penalty.
The return of a Brazil to the exclusive influence of the United States and its consequences
During the election campaign Bolsonaro made it very clear to the United States and China that he would break with the latter if elected by making an official visit to Taiwan. Doing this he clearly showed the orientations of the "Washington candidate", supported by part of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, to be put in place after his election became certain with the removal of Lula. It was the end of the relatively comfortable position of unequal equilibrium between the United States and China[18].
"Lava Jato" constituted an essential link of the "recuperation" of Brazil by the United States, dismantling all economic protections - legal and illegal - and the state subsidies favouring Brazilian business. The consequences will be very heavy for Brazil. In fact, the removal of these protections has already begun to dangerously expose Brazilian business to the competition of the United States. This will only worsen with the strengthening of the economic "cooperation" between the two countries. Added to that, in the context of a more and more difficult world economy, are the devastating consequences of the debt policy of the country under Lula and Dilma Rousseff.
On the level of international relations, like a poodle, Bolsonaro treads in the footsteps of Trump and his erratic diplomacy by deciding, in a move towards Israel, to transfer the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem. More recently the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, went to Brazil for Bolsonaro's investiture and talked in an interview with the new president about the "opportunity to work together against authoritarian regimes", in an allusion to Venezuela and Cuba, and made veiled references to putting the brake on Chinese expansionism. Brazil thus finds itself fully implicated in the global imperialist maelstrom as clearly illustrated by ex-US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley: "It's good to have a new pro-American leader in South America, who will join the fight against the dictators of Venezuela and Cuba and who clearly sees the dangers of the growing influence of China in the region" [19].
With the election of Bolsonaro the United States has effectively re-taken control of its back yard since Brazil occupies almost half of the South American continent, with frontiers with the majority of other countries in the continent, and it is the main military power in the region. And Brazil will be at the forefront of the United States' strategy to put an end to the Maduro regime in Venezuela. As soon as Trump quickly recognised the self-proclaimed new president, Juan Guaido, Bolsonaro did the same. Now Venezuela finds itself practically confined behind its frontier's walls by the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil. This situation has created a climate of confrontation in the region with unpredictable consequences at the military level, since the Maduro government is ready to resist with the support of Russia, China and Cuba; but also on the social level because this will only aggravate the terrible conditions in which the Venezuelan population are living and provoke a new mass exodus, a source of instability at the borders of the three countries as well as Guyana.
What can we expect with Bolsonaro?
Through a vast enterprise, lasting years and mobilising its own significant forces (without counting those mobilised in Brazil through "Lava Jato"), the United States has finally achieved its aim, which is to fully integrate Brazil under its influence. It is thus a success of American diplomacy and all the services which go along with it: judicial power, the FBI, espionage... But nevertheless, the success is perhaps not complete.
The last stage of the manoeuvre consisted of providing Brazil at the election with a candidate who can carry out the new orientation. The candidate has been found and has won the election[20] thanks to the manoeuvres that we know about. But the least one can say about him is that he is not very "presentable". It's true that there wasn't really much choice given that "Lava Jato" had rendered the traditional political forces and formations unusable for a period. They were even more discredited than before and, equally, someone like Lula, an incomparably more accomplished politician, was incompatible with the new orientation.
If for a time Bolsonaro could seduce a fringe of the population which voted for him at the election, he could also become a weak point in the set-up if he doesn't change his style.
Bolsonaro has a caricature personality and even Marine Le Pen refuses to support his misogyny and homophobia. An old military man, he's nostalgic for the military dictatorship that existed in Brazil between 1964 and 1985. He has promised to cleanse the country of “reds". His political family clan also make up part of this decor. One of his sons, Edouardo Bolsonaro (Federal Deputy of the state of Sao Paulo) decidedly follows his father's footsteps, but is even more “excessive": he wants to label Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement as a terrorist organisation and for him "there's no problem" if "it's necessary to put a hundred thousand in prison". He also wants to classify communism as a crime.
Riding the "Lava Jato" wave, Bolsonaro is prepared to put on the costume of the White Knight. To this end, in 2016 he quit his old party, the Progressive Party (PP), the party most implicated in the scandals which hit the country (of 56 deputies affiliated to the PP, 31 were accused of corruption). But his first false step occurred before his investiture. Among the political figures that he chose to be part of his future government, some have already been accused of corruption. It's as if Mr. Clean has already stained his white presidential finery even before taking office. Worse, the total absence of restraint from his clan[21] has already made him appear as a sinister clown. In talking about discords in the Bolsonaro camp, one of his sons regaled us with the sordid details. The disagreements were such, he tells us, that, "There are some that would like the death of Bolsonaro". Whether it is bluff or not, it demonstrates the stupidity and hypocrisy of the Bolsonaro clan, its links with criminal militias of Rio de Janeiro[22], or the involvement of his son, Flavio, in dodgy bank deals (the “Queiroz affair”[23]). These are clear proof of the rottenness at the heart of the clan which has been put at the head of the state.
Unfortunately, we can have no joy in the deep stupidity of Bolsonaro and a part of his entourage by thinking that there could be a good defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Either it will be a puppet manipulated backstage or there could be a tendency for things to spiral out of control, notably on the level of imperialist tensions, which could have disastrous consequences for much of the population.
Against the traps of anti-fascism and anti-Yankee imperialism, develop the class struggle
There are some harsh tests awaiting the working class in Brazil via the economic attacks already underway and those in the pipeline. Pension reform is "the first great challenge" among others, as the ultra-liberal Minister of Economics announced at his investiture and characterised by the media as "The thorny question of a costly regime for the state, with the markets insisting on these steps"[24] ("Brazil: the Bolsonaro government saluted by the stock-exchange").
The general difficulty of the working class at the global level in recognising itself as a class with antagonistic interests to those of capital has affected its reaction faced with a deluge of attacks which will hit it in Brazil. But it's also through the necessary riposte, the criticism of its own weaknesses that it will be able to take a step forward towards a more united, massive and unified struggle and abandon the mystifications weighing on its consciousness, particularly those peddled by the left (PT) and the extreme-left of capital (Trotskyists etc). It's for that reason that it is necessary to re-appropriate past experiences, remembering in particular:
- the massive and spontaneous mobilisation of the metal-workers of 1979, going well beyond the annual mobilisation of this time around wages launched by the unions with the aim of keeping wages in line with inflation.
- the way in which Lula repressed the air-traffic controllers in 2007 who spontaneously went on strike faced with a dramatic deterioration in their working conditions. They organised outside of the union confines (strikes in this sector were forbidden) and this despite threats of imprisonment from the military command of aeronautics. Lula in particular publicly accused them of "irresponsibility and treachery" (read our articles in Portuguese: "Diante dos embates do capital, os controladores aereos respondem com a luta"[25] and "Repressao e marginalizacao do movimento dos controladores aereos"[26].)
- from the experience of the spontaneous movement of 2013, following the increase in transport fares, which was at the initiative of young proletarians and mobilising thousands in more than a hundred towns generalising into a protest against the reduction of the social wage. There was a massive rejection here of the political parties, mainly the PT, as well as the union and student organisations. Other expressions of the class struggle appeared, although in a minority, through assemblies deciding what action to take[27].
New difficulties will probably emerge as a consequence of the present situation and are likely to get in the way of the class struggle in Brazil. It's important to prepare for them.
Bolsonaro is so detestable that he is capable of polarising the anger provoked by the economic attacks around him. The danger would be to only see the personality and not the crisis of capitalism behind the attacks. The possibility exists of a similar danger concerning the political orientation of Bolsonaro and the extreme right, as the extreme left don't hesitate to blame him for the worsening of living conditions. It's possible that in the future Lula and the PT will again assume the responsibility of diverting discontent against the right and extreme right towards a left alternative. It's also necessary to keep a clear head regarding any party, from extreme right to extreme left, taking the reins of the state if necessary, and assuming the responsibility to defend the interest of the national capital to the detriment of the exploited class. Further, it is important to remember that the injustice of which Lula was a victim through "Lava Jato", particularly when one compares his fate to the clemency reserved for many of his notoriously shady political "colleagues", doesn't at all mean that the old metal-worker can be characterised as honest and still less a defender of the workers.
Similarly, there's no lack of voices trying to divert the workers towards opposing " Yankee imperialism which oppresses Brazil" and from which it's necessary to be "liberated". This is a tragic impasse which has already been demonstrated. It implies the mobilisation alongside a part of the Brazilian bourgeoisie against the American bourgeoisie. The proletariat has no country to defend, only its class interests. Faced with such a mystification there is a single slogan: class struggle in every country against capitalism!
That's not immediate and can only be a perspective, but it is always with this aim and this perspective which must guide the action of the proletariat and seen as a link in the chain leading to the world proletarian revolution.
Revolução Internacional, 6 February 2019
[1] The decomposition of society concerns every country, even if unequally, and is expressed through a number of different phenomena making it more and more difficult for the emergence of a perspective to overcome and go beyond capitalism. Among its most salient manifestations, we have already put forward the unprecedented development of criminality, corruption, terrorism, the use of drugs, sects, and the religious spirit, each for themselves... As a consequence of the deepening of this phenomenon of decomposition of society we also find more and more disastrous "accidental" and "natural" catastrophes, a recent example of which was the tragedy caused by the rupture of the Vale dam at Brumadinho in Brazil made up of millions of cubic metres of mining residues from the exploitation of a neighbouring mine. The result was more than 200 deaths, one illustration in millions of others in the world of the deadly irrationality of a capitalism gasping for breath.
[4] According to some propaganda from the bourgeoisie, the possibility exists of lowering the figures of criminality. These ideas use the case of Colombia where it's thanks to the elimination of the main drug cartels. The problem is that the example of Colombia can't be generalised, particularly from the fact that in the majority of countries with rising criminality it is essentially from the existence of a multitude of small gangs and, above all, isolated individuals.
[5] It's for that reason that Bolsonaro's election results were very weak in these areas
[6] In fact, the lengths of the attacks led by the government of Dilma Rousseff blurred the memory somewhat of the "less brutal" attacks of the preceding Lula governments.
[7] Brazil's "economic miracle" took place between 1968 and 1973 when the average rate of industrial growth was over 24%, double that of the economy of the country in general. The first "miracle" was financed by so much debt that at the beginning of the 1980's the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.
[8] See https://www.cartacapital.com.br/mundo/entenda-porque-a-crise-politica-e-... [1825]"Understanding the influence of the United States in the political and economic crisis in Brazil".
[9] Reproduced in different articles, including "Bolsonaro - uma analise marxista d sua politica". "Bolsonaro - a marxist analysis of his politics", "#carta" (a Trotskyist current within the PSOL).
[10] "In April 2009, for the first time in the history of Brazil, China became its main commercial partner, replacing the United States. A month earlier it had already become the main importer of Brazilian goods (...) Since the 1930's the United States has been strongly implanted in the first position (...) This change of situation points first of all to the contraction of American commerce with the rest of the world that's linked to the economic crisis, a phenomenon which also affects the European Union with its relationship with Brazil. But above all it shows a strong and continual rise of buying by China. Exports from Brazil to China have, in value, multiplied 15 times between 2000 and 2008. They progressed 75% between 2007 and 2008. This increase allowed Brazil to draw up, in the first four months of 2008, a commercial surplus double that of the same period of 2008. Brazil's three main commercial partners are now, in order, China, the United States and Argentina”. "China has become the main commercial partner of Brazil", Le Monde, 8.5.2009.
[11] The BNDS (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento) which distributed the finances thus benefitting the regime, Lula directly led the lobby with some leaders in the PT being associated to represent the corporations.
[12] The accusation rejected the demand of Lula's collaboration with the judiciary, which meant a reduction to his sentence while the system of appeal to the deletion implemented in "Lava Jato" was inseparable from these judicial proceedings.
[13] The documents divulged by Wikileaks, particularly of a training team of Americans teaching Brazilian pupils (and other nationalities as well), reveal the secrets of "enquiries and sanctions in the business of money-laundering, notably formal and informal cooperation between countries, the confiscation of assets, methods of collecting proof, complaints procedures, control and relationships to non-governmental organisations (NGO's), suspicions of financial irregularities". The report concluded that “the Brazilian judicial sector is clearly very interested in the fight against terrorism, but it needs tools and training in order to effectively use its forces" "Wikileaks: EUA criou curso para treinar Moro e Juristas" (US training for Moro and the jurists). The article of Wikileaks quoted is "BRAZIL: ILLICIT FINANCE CONFERENCE USES THE "T" WORD SUCCESSFULLY"
[14] https://www.jota.info/paywall?redirect_to=//www.jota.info/opiniao-e-anal... [1826]"How the Americans see 'Lava Jato'"
[15] https://www.diariodocentrodomundo.com.br/fbi-atua-na-lava-jato-desde-o-s... [1827],"The FBI was involved in 'Lava from the beginning and is proud of it".
[16] "Wikileaks: Dilma, inistros e aviao presidencial foram espionados pela NSA". "Dilma: her ministries and presidential plane spied on by the NSA".
[17] Thus, for example, the 77 managers of Odebrecht heard by the courts denounced 415 politicians responsible belonging to 26 parties (out of 35) in 21 states (out of 26 within the Federation). Among them 5 ex-presidents of Brazil: MM. Jose Sarney, Fernando Collor de Mello, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva and Mme. Dilma Rousseff. M. Temer was equally cited a number of times but he wasn't questioned about acts prior to his mandate, according to the Constitution. During the course of his deposition, M. Marcelo Odebrecht declared bribes of a hundred million euros between 2008 and 2015 to the Workers' Party (PT) and further official contributions during the election campaign. "The old presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff were looking for our support even if they never asked for money directly", he added. "In Brazil the ramifications of the Odebrecht scandal" (Le Monde diplomatique - date lacking).
[18] We evidently don't know how long this forced marriage will last nor what will come out of the adventure. One thing is certain is that it is in the interests of the premier world power not to take the risk of distancing itself from Brazil which, inevitably, would open up another door to the intentions of China to ensconce itself in South America, and the prospect of a direct and perilous threat for American supremacy both on the economic and military levels.
However, we should remember that operation "recuperate Brazil" began, in the main, during the years of the Obama administration. Will the unpredictable Trump be capable of not compromising it? Moreover, even if China has received very strong signals from Bolsonaro and the Trump administration, that's not the end of its privileged relations with Brazil and it's clear that it's not going to completely withdraw; far from it. On the economic level first, it is impossible because it would have dramatic consequences for the Brazilian economy which even the United States wouldn't want. Further, it's evident that China is far from accepting its eviction, as seen by the fact that it has already moved for the acquisition of Brazilian businesses which Bolsonaro aims to privatise.
[20] With the official support, open or not, of all the parties of left and right.
[21] Made up particularly of all Bolsonaro's sons who have made their career supporting "papa"
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
Leaflet on Global Climate Change Protests by Youngsters [1834] | 420.21 KB |
Over the past few months, there have been successive demonstrations by young people in 270 cities around the world protesting against the deterioration of the climate and the destruction of the environment.
Young people are taking to the streets to express their fully justified concern for the future of the planet and the human species itself, a future increasingly compromised by the effects of a system of production that destroys the natural environment, while also destroying the lives of millions of human beings through exploitation, war and poverty. It is now evident that this system is causing changes in the planet's climatic, atmospheric and reproductive conditions with ever more catastrophic consequences.
Similarly, the young are expressing their indignation at the cynicism and hypocrisy of the leaders who have their mouths full of statements expressing "their concern" for the "environmental problem" and who organize countless forums (Kyoto, Paris, etc.) to adopt spectacular and ineffective "measures" while at the same time, in the service of their imperialist and economic designs, they only aggravate the deterioration of the planet further.
The trap of the movement “for the climate”
We fully share the concern and indignation of these tens of thousands of young people, but we must ask ourselves whether this movement, in its objectives, approaches and methods, is a real struggle to solve the problem, or whether it is a trap that can only lead them to discouragement and bitterness about being used and misled.
The history of the past 100 years is full of this kind of repugnant deception perpetrated by governments and parties that serve capitalism. In the 1930s and 1980s, major "peace" demonstrations were organized by governments and "democratic" parties, and experience has shown that this was a terrible manipulation because with these "pacifist" mobilizations they were preparing for war: the Second World War with its 60 million dead or the countless local wars that continue to afflict death, ruins and pain on many parts of the planet.
The current demonstrations focus on "asking the authorities to do something", to put pressure on them, even to fill their computers with emails, tweets etc. full of threats.
But it is these same authorities that, in order to defend the capitalist interests of maximum profit and the occupation of strategic positions on the world market, adopt measures that only aggravate the deterioration of the climate and the environment. Such an approach of "pressure" on governments to "move" is like asking a hacker to take care of computer security or a fox to take care of the chickens.
State leaders are not "at the service of citizens" nor do they seek to "listen to their demands". The state is not the organ of the "people" but a machine that exclusively defends the interests of each national capital, of the minority that exploits us and is responsible for environmental degradation.
The initiators of the movement denounce the fact that "for 40 years, political parties of all colours have been losing the war against climate change!" These parties only promise and mislead the public, while in practice they make economic, military or warlike decisions that contribute to the destruction of the planet. An 18-year-old high school student from Geneva denounced this farce: “There is a great deal of mistrust in institutional politics, but also in environmental organisations like Greenpeace, which are perceived as too moderate and institutionalised”.
The demonstrations focus on conducting "conversations" with ministers, parliamentarians, pressure groups and environmental activists. This only serves to wash the face of the democratic state and to get lost in the maze of laws and government policies. Attempts at "dialogue" with political mouthpieces only lead to grandiloquent promises that do not solve anything.
The motto of the demonstrations is to "Save the climate, change the system", a vague formula that translates into "getting down to business" and getting lost in a series of local or regional measures that solve absolutely nothing and cause fatigue and disappointment.
In different schools, for example, "climate committees" have been created to develop "climate projects" for each school. Under the slogan "Change the world, start with yourself", the proposed objective is to reduce your own "ecological footprint".
This kind of orientation is particularly perverse because it makes us feel responsible for the climate catastrophe, transforming a historical and global problem caused by capitalism into a "domestic" problem caused by individuals. Reducing our "ecological footprint" would mean doing things like using less water to wash dishes, showering only once a week and not flushing the toilet.
This approach of "empowering people" is particularly dangerous. First, because it serves to exonerate capital, and the states and governments that serve it, from any liability.
Secondly, because it prsents these thousands of young people who are today schoolchildren or students but who will tomorrow be workers or unemployed, as "citizens" who "demand things from their governments". This leads to a false image of the society in which we live. Capitalism is not formed by "free and equal citizens" but by social classes confronted with antagonistic interests: a minority, the capitalist class, which owns almost everything and is increasingly rich, and an immense majority, the proletariat, which owns nothing and is always getting poorer.
And, thirdly, and most importantly: the individualistic approach of "let us each do something for the climate" leads to division and confrontation within the working class itself. When car factories or other industrial or logistical branches are closed in the name of the "climate fight", the authorities will point the finger at workers who resist redundancies by denouncing them as accomplices in the degradation of the climate.
With the same approach, but reversed ("let's stop talking about climate change and keep jobs"), the populist demagogue Trump won many votes in the stricken industrial states of the American Midwest ("the rust belt") that allowed him to win the presidential election.
It is a dilemma in which they want to trap us: to maintain employment at the expense of the climate or to lose living conditions and employment itself in order to "save the planet"? A vicious trap which capitalism uses to preserve its selfish interests, wrapped in the attractive flag of "saving the planet”.
The alternative is in the hands of the world proletariat
The problems of global warming, of the destruction of nature, of the depletion of natural resources, can only be solved on a global scale. The bourgeoisie cannot and will not do so because, in capitalism, the nation-state is the highest form of unity it can achieve. As a result, nations clash like vultures, however "green" their governments may be, despite the existence of international conferences and supranational organizations such as the UN or the European Union.
International organizations such as the United Nations do not aim to "solve the problems of the world's population". There is no "international community of nations". On the contrary, the world is the scene of a brutal imperialist confrontation between all states and a competition to the death to make the most of it. The UN or the multitude of international "cooperation" organizations are dens of thieves used by each national capital to impose its own interests.
The only class that can affirm a true internationalism is the working class.
What social forces can achieve such fundamental change? Unlike the bourgeoisie, the working class is able to unite at the global level, to overcome divisions and oppositions between nation-states and has no privilege to defend in today's exploitative society. It is only within the framework of a revolutionary struggle of the world working class that environmental problems can be tackled.
As the most exploited class in society, the working class has no interest in defending this decadent system; and because of the associated way in which it is organized in capitalism, it can sow the seeds of another society, a society that does not impose a division between peoples, between nature and the products that flow from it, between humanity and its natural environment. When the working class asserts itself as an autonomous class by developing a massive struggle, on its own class ground, it can draw an ever-growing part of society behind its own methods of struggle and unitary slogans and, finally, its own revolutionary project for the transformation of society.
The movement against global warming is developing in a context of an almost total absence of struggles by the working class, which is also facing a loss of self-confidence and even a loss of its own class identity. As a result, the working class is not yet in a position to answer the question that some of the participants in the climate movement are asking themselves, namely what is the future perspective in the face of a capitalist society heading towards the abyss?
What can we do about it? It is not a question of doing nothing, it is a question of rejecting the pretext of "doing something" that boils down to supporting the parties and governments that serve capitalism.
Indignation and concern for the future of the planet will begin to find a historical framework with the development of the struggles of the world working class against attacks on its living conditions, against redundancies, etc. because there is a unity between the struggle against the effects of capitalist exploitation and the struggle for its abolition.
The young people who participate in the present movement must understand that they are not "future citizens" but, in their vast majority, future precarious workers, future unemployed, future exploited, who will have to unite in their struggle against capitalist exploitation the fight against war, environmental catastrophe, moral barbarism, etc. that this system of exploitation secretes from all its pores.
This is what the movement against the First Employment Contract in France in 2006 or the Indignados movement in Spain and other countries began to do, albeit very timidly, in 2011. These were youth movements that saw their future not as "free and equal citizens" but as the exploited who must fight against exploitation and ultimately abolish it.
In capitalism, there is no solution: neither to the destruction of the planet, nor to wars, nor to unemployment, nor to precariousness. Only the struggle of the global proletariat along with all the oppressed of the world can open the way to an alternative.
International Communist Current 14.3.2019
en.internationalism.org
If you agree with this article, you can download it in the form of a two-sided leaflet for further distribution. See the Attachment at the top of the page.
Further Reading:
Copenhagen Summit: Save the planet? No, they can't!
https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/copenhagen [1836]
Capitalism and climate change: more evidence of the growing disaster
Ecological crisis: myth or real menace?
https://en.internationalism.org/wr/317/eco-disaster [1838]
Capitalism is Poisoning the Earth
https://en.internationalism.org/ir/63_pollution [1839]
In the first part of this series[1] we saw that the programme of the parties of the left and far left of capital for transforming capitalism into a "new society" leads to nothing more than an idealised reproduction of capitalism itself.[2] Worse still, the view of the working class they present is a total denial of its revolutionary nature.
In this second article, we will look into the thinking of these parties and their method of analysis, especially by those that consider themselves the "most radical".
The unity between programme, theory, functioning and morality.
In the first article, we denounced the programme for the defence of capital put forward by these mystifiers; now we need to deal with another matter: their way of thinking, the relations between the members, their organisational methods, their vision of morality, their conception of debate, their vision of militancy and finally the whole experience of working inside these parties. Freeing oneself from this way of looking at things is much more difficult than exposing the political mystifications they are peddling, because in these organisations thinking has been conditioned and behaviour poisoned, and this influences their organisational functioning.
The revolutionary organisations of the communist left, being quite fragile, with small numbers of militants, have had to confront this crucial problem. The organisations have been able to reject the programmes of the left and far left capitalist organisations, but what we call their hidden face, namely their way of thinking, their functioning and behaviour, their moral vision, etc., all which is as reactionary as their programme, has been underestimated and has not been subject to relentless and radical criticism.
It is therefore not enough to denounce the programme of the left and far-left groups of capital; it is also necessary to denounce and fight the hidden organisational and moral face that they share with the parties of the right and far right.
A revolutionary organisation is much more than a programme; it is the unitary synthesis of programme, theory and mode of thinking, morality and organisational functioning. There is coherence between these elements. "The activity of the revolutionary organisation can only be understood as a unitary whole, whose components are not separate but interdependent: 1) its theoretical work, the elaboration of which requires a constant effort and the result is neither fixed nor completed once and for all. It is as necessary as it is irreplaceable; 2) the intervention in the economic and political struggles of the class. It is the practice par excellence of the organisation where theory is transformed into a weapon of combat through propaganda and agitation; 3) the organisational activity in developing and strengthening its organs and in the preservation of its organisational acquisitions, without which quantitative development (membership) could not be transformed into qualitative development”[3]
It is clear that we cannot fight for communism with lies, slanders and manoeuvres. There is a coherence between the aspects mentioned above. They prefigure the whole way of life and social organisation of communism and can never be in contradiction with it.
As we have said in the text "The organisational functioning of ICC":
"The question of organisation concentrates a whole series of essential aspects that are fundamental to the proletariat's revolutionary perspective: 1) the fundamental characteristics of communist society and the relations between the members of the latter; 2) the being of the proletariat as a class which is the bearer of communism; 3) the nature of class consciousness, the characteristics of its development, deepening and extension within the class; 4) the role of the communist organisation in the coming to consciousness of the proletariat."[4]
The left and far left of capital, heirs to the falsification of marxism by Stalinism
It can be said that the left and far left groups of capital are political conjurers. They serve up the political positions of capital with a "proletarian" and "marxist" language. They make Marx, Engels, Lenin and other proletarian militants say the opposite of what they wanted to say. They twist, truncate and manipulate the positions they may have defended at a given moment in the workers' movement, to turn them into their absolute opposite. They take quotations from Marx, Engels or Lenin and make them say that capitalist exploitation is good, that the nation is the most precious thing, that we should allow ourselves be supporters of imperialist war and accept the state as our benefactor and protector, etc.
Marx, Engels and Lenin, who fought for the destruction of the state, have magically, for these groups, become its most enthusiastic defenders. Marx, Engels, Lenin, unconditional fighters for internationalism, have become champions of "national liberation" and defenders of the fatherland. Marx, Engels, Lenin, who spurred on the defensive struggle of the proletariat, have become the champions of productivism and in favour of workers sacrificing themselves in the service of capital.
Leading the promotion of this work of falsification was Stalinism[5]. Stalin systematically led this repugnant transformation. We can refer to Ante Ciliga's book, The Russian Enigma to illustrate this[6]. It describes in detail this process that began in the mid-1920s:
"The very unique social regime that developed in Soviet Russia was able to inculcate its own ideology in all branches of science. In other words, it tried to merge its own worldview with that of established science, as well as with the traditional ideology of marxism and new scientific discoveries" (page 103 of the PDF edition in Spanish).
To explain it, he recalled that "Hegel (..) had demonstrated that a phenomenon can retain its form while its content is completely transformed; (...) hadn't Lenin said that often the destiny of great men is to serve as icons after their death, while their liberating ideas are falsified to justify a new oppression and a new slavery?" (page 109).
During his time at the "Communist Academy" in Moscow, he noted that "every year the curricula were changed, historical facts and their appreciation were more and more impudently falsified. This was done not only with regard to the recent history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but also with events as far back as the Paris Commune, the 1848 revolution and the first French Revolution. (...) And what about the history of the Comintern? Each new publication provided a new interpretation, in many respects quite different from the previous ones" (p. 100), "As these falsifications were introduced at the same time in all branches of education, I came to the conclusion that they were not isolated accidents, but a system for transforming history, political economy and other sciences according to the interests and worldview of the bureaucracy (...) In fact, a new school, the bureaucratic school of Marxism, was being formed in Russia." (p. 101)
Accordingly, the left and far left parties would use three methods:
- taking advantage of mistakes made by the revolutionaries;
- defending positions that were right when defended by revolutionaries at a previous time, as if they were still valid now, when they had become counter-revolutionary;
- blunting the revolutionary dimension of these positions by reducing them to a harmless abstraction.
The mistakes of the revolutionaries
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, were not infallible. They made mistakes.
In contradiction with the mechanistic viewpoint of bourgeois thought, mistakes are often inevitable and can be a necessary step towards the truth which, itself, is not absolute, but has a historical character. For Hegel, mistakes are a necessary and evolving moment of the truth.
This is much clearer when we take into consideration that the proletariat is both an exploited class and a revolutionary class and that, as an exploited class, it suffers under the full weight of the dominant ideology. Therefore, when the proletariat - or at least part of it - dares to think, to formulate hypotheses and to put forward demands and to set itself objectives, it rises against the passivity and stupor imposed by capitalist common sense; but at the same time it can make serious misjudgements and fall back into accepting ideas that social evolution itself or the very dynamics of class struggle have already overcome or cast aside.
Marx and Engels believed that in 1848 capitalism was mature enough to be replaced by communism and advocated an "intermediate" capitalist programme that would serve as a platform for socialism (the theory of "permanent revolution").
However, their critical thinking led them to reject this speculation, which they abandoned in 1852. Similarly, they believed that the capitalist state should be seized and used as a lever for revolution, but the living experience of the Paris Commune helped convince them of this error and into concluding that the capitalist state must be destroyed.
We could refer to many other examples, but what we want to show here is how the leftist groups use these mistakes as a justification for their counter-revolutionary programme. Lenin was a committed internationalist, but he was not sufficiently clear on the question of national liberation and made serious mistakes with it. These errors, taken out of their historical context, get divorced from the internationalist struggle he waged, and then get turned into "laws" that are valid for all time[7]. These errors are transformed, hypocritically, into a defence of capital.
How is this falsification possible? One of the most important ways is by destroying the critical thinking of militants. Coherent marxists share with science what it does best: critical thinking, that is, the ability to question positions that, for various reasons, come into conflict with reality and the needs of the proletarian struggle. Marxism is not a set of dogmas produced by the brains of geniuses that cannot be altered; it is a combative, living, analytical and constantly developing method, and for this reason critical thinking is fundamental to it. Suppressing this critical spirit is the main task of the leftist groups, like their Stalinist masters who, as Ciliga said during his time at the "Communist University" in Leningrad, about students and future party leaders, "if it was not written down in the manual, it did not exist for them. You did not question the Party programme. Spiritual life was totally regulated. When I tried to push them beyond the narrow horizon of the programme, to arouse their curiosity and critical senses, they remained deaf. It seemed as if their social skills were blunted." (p. 98).
Thus, faced with the blind adherence advocated by leftist groups (from the Stalinists to the Trotskyists and many anarchists), proletarian militants and revolutionary groups must struggle to keep alive their critical thinking, their ability to be self critical; they should be constantly willing to scrutinise the facts and, based on a historical analysis, know how to re-appraise positions that are no longer valid.
Positions that had once been correct can become blatant lies.
Another characteristic of the leftist method is to defend previously correct revolutionary positions that have been invalidated or become counter-productive by historical events. Take, for example, Marx and Engels' support for trade unions. Leftism concludes that, if trade unions were organs of the proletariat in the days of Marx and Engels, they must be so at all times. They use an abstract and timeless method. They hide the fact that with the decadence of capitalism, trade unions have become organs of the bourgeois state against the proletariat.[8]
There are revolutionary militants who break with leftist positions, but fail to break with their scholastic method. Thus, for example, they simply restrict themselves to reversing the leftist position towards trade unions: if the leftist position was that trade unions have always been in the service of the working class, these revolutionary militants conclude that trade unions have always been against it. They make the position on trade unions a changeless, timeless position, so that, if they seem to have broken with leftism, they still remain prisoners of it.
The same applies to social democracy. It is difficult to imagine that the 'socialist parties' existing today were parties of the working class during the period from 1870 to 1914, that they contributed to its unity, its consciousness and the force of its struggles. Faced with this, the leftists, especially Trotskyism, conclude: social democratic parties have always been and will never cease to be workers’ parties, despite all their counter-revolutionary actions.
However, there are some revolutionaries who say the same thing, but the other way round: if the Trotskyists speak of social democracy as a party that is and will always be a workers’ party, they then conclude that social democracy is and always has been capitalist. They ignore the fact that opportunism is a disease that can affect the workers' movement and can lead its parties into betrayal and integration into the capitalist state.
Trapped by their leftist heritage, they replace the historical and dialectical method with the scholastic method, not understanding that one of the principles of dialectics is the transformation of opposites: a thing that exists can be transformed to act in an opposing manner. The proletarian parties, because of the degeneration due to the weight of bourgeois ideology and of the petty bourgeoisie, can transform themselves into their diametrical opposite: becoming unconditional servants of capitalism[9].
We see this as another consequence of the leftist method: they reject the historical dimension of class positions and the process by which they are formulated. This eliminates another of the essential components of the proletarian method. Each generation of workers stands on the shoulders of the previous generation: the lessons that were produced by the class struggle and by the theoretical effort it made give rise to conclusions that serve as a starting point, but which are not the end point. The evolution of capitalism and the very experiences of class struggle make it necessary for new developments or critical corrections to previous positions to be made. Leftism denies a critical historical continuity by propagating a dogmatic and ahistorical vision.
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, the thinkers who heralded the bourgeois revolution elaborated a materialism that was revolutionary in its time because it subjected feudal idealism to relentless criticism. However, once power was seized in the main countries, bourgeois thought became conservative, dogmatic and ahistorical. The proletariat, on the other hand, has in its own genes a critical and historical thinking, an ability not to remain trapped by the events of a specific period, however important they may be, and to be guided not by the past or the present but by the perspective of the revolutionary future of which it is the bearer. "The history of philosophy and the history of social science clearly show that marxism has nothing in common with ‘sectarianism’ in the sense of a doctrine that is inward looking and ossified, emerging from the long road in the development of world-wide civilisation. On the contrary, Marx, the man, was ingenious in that he answered the questions that advanced humanity had already posed. "[10]
The trap of abstraction
Like bourgeois thought, leftist ideology is dogmatic and idealistic on the one hand, and relativistic and pragmatic on the other. The leftist raises his left hand and proclaims some "principles" elevated to the rank of universal dogmas, valid for all possible worlds and for all time. But, with his right hand, invoking "tactical considerations", he keeps these sacred principles in his pocket because "the conditions are not right", "the workers will not understand", "the timing is wrong", etc.
Dogmatism and tacticism are not opposed but complementary. The dogma that encourages people to participate in elections is complemented by the "tactics" of "using them" in order to "get ourselves known" or to "block the advance of the right wing", etc. So dogmatism appears to be something theoretical, but in reality is an abstract vision, placed outside historical evolution. The "tactics", nonetheless, seem "practical" and "concrete" but are in fact a crude and cretinising vision, typical of bourgeois thinking, that does not come from coherent positions but from a purely adaptive and opportunistic daily activity.
This leads us to an understanding of the third characteristic of the leftist method of thinking: it needs to turn the correct positions of revolutionaries into abstractions, taken out of context, in order to blunt their revolutionary edge; as Lenin had said, to render them harmless to capital by presenting them as abstract and inoperative "principles". Thus, communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ councils, internationalism... become a rhetorical flurry and a cynical verbiage in which the leaders have no belief, but which they use shamelessly to manipulate the faithful supporters. Ciliga, in the aforementioned book, underlined "the ability of the communist bureaucracy to do the opposite of what it was claiming, to disguise the worst crimes under the mask of the most progressive slogans and the most eloquent sentences" (page 52).
In leftist organisations there are no principles. Their vision is purely pragmatic and changes according to the circumstances, that is, according to the political, economic and ideological needs of the national capital they serve. The principles are adaptable to circumstances and specific moments, like during party conferences and major anniversaries; and are used as a pretext for accusing militants of "violating the principles"; they are also used as weapons in disputes between factions.
This vision of "principles" is radically opposed to that of a revolutionary organisation, which is based on "the existence of a programme valid for the whole organisation. This programme, because it is a synthesis of the experience of the proletariat of which the organisation is a part and because it is produced by a class which doesn't just have an immediate existence but also a historic future, expresses this future by formulating the goals of the class and the way to attain them; gathers together the essential positions which the organisation must defend in the class; serves as a basis for joining the organisation"[11]
The revolutionary programme is the source of the organisation's activity, its theoretical works a source of inspiration and a spur to action. It must therefore be taken very seriously. The militant who comes from leftism and has not found how to detach himself from it, often believes unconsciously, that the programme is just for show, a collection of simple phrases that are invoked on solemn occasions, and so he would like the "rhetorical" stuff dropped. At other times, when he is angry with a comrade or thinks he is being marginalised by the central organs, he tries to "blame them" by using the programme to make his point.
Against these two false visions, we claim the essential function of the programme in a proletarian organisation to be that of a weapon of analysis shared by all the militants and to which all are committed in order to further its development; it is a means of intervention in the proletarian struggle, an orientation and active contribution to its revolutionary future.
The pragmatic and "ingenious" sophisms of leftism do much harm because they make it difficult for a global approach to move from the general to the concrete, from the abstract to the immediate, from the theoretical to the practical. The leftist method breaks the bond that unites these two facets of proletarian thought, by preventing the actual realisation of the unity between the concrete and the general, the immediate and the historical, the local and the global. The tendency and pressure is towards unilateral thinking. The leftist is a localist every day, but displays an "internationalist" approach on public holidays. The leftist sees only the immediate and the pragmatic, but embellishes it with some "historical" references and salutes "the principles". The leftist is pathetically "concrete" when it comes to developing an abstract analysis and he goes into an abstract haze when a concrete analysis is required.
The destructive effects of the theoretical method of leftism
We have seen, in a very synthetic way, some of the features of leftist thought and its effects on the position of communist militants.
We can look at some of these. The Third International used a formula that only makes sense under certain historical conditions: "behind each strike is the hydra of revolution".
This formula is not valid if the balance of power between the classes is favourable to the bourgeoisie. Thus, for example, Trotsky used it schematically, considering that the 1936 strikes in France and the courageous response of the Barcelona proletariat in July 1936 against the fascist coup d'état to be "opening the doors to revolution". It did not take into account the unstoppable course towards imperialist war, the crushing of the Russian and German proletariat, the enrolment of workers under the banner of antifascism. He left out this historical and global analysis and applied only the empty recipe of "behind each strike there is the hydra of revolution".[12]
Another consequence is a vulgar materialism imbued to the core with economism. Everything is determined by the economy, which reflects the greatest mental short-sightedness. Phenomena such as war are separated from their imperialist, strategic and military roots, in an attempt to find the most fanciful economic explanations. Thus, the Islamic state, a mafia gang, a barbaric by-product of imperialism, could be equivalent to an oil company.
Finally, another consequence of the manipulation made by leftism of marxist theory is that it is conceived of as a matter for specialists, experts, brilliant leaders. Everything that these enlightened leaders cough up should be followed to the letter by the "rank and file activists" who will have no role in theoretical development because their mission is be distributing leaflets, selling the press, carrying chairs for meetings, sticking up posters... i.e. serving as the manpower or cannon fodder for the "beloved leaders".
This conception is essential for leftism since its task is to distort the thinking of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. and for this they need militants who will unquestioningly believe their stories. However, it is harmful and destructive when such a conception infiltrates revolutionary organisations. Today's revolutionary organisation "is more impersonal than in the 19th century, and ceases to appear as an organisation of leaders guiding the mass of militants. The period of illustrious leaders and great theoreticians is over. Theoretical development has becomes a truly collective task. Like the millions of ‘anonymous’ proletarian combatants, the consciousness of the organisation develops through the integration and transcending of individual consciousness into one common collective consciousness”.[13]
C Mir, 27.12.17
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16603/hidden-legacy-left-capital-part-one-false-vision-working-class [1841]
[2] The left and far left of capital could be seen to correspond to this passage that the Communist Manifesto devotes to bourgeois socialism: "They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightaway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires, in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but to cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. (...) It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois - for the benefit of the working class."
[3] “Report on the function of the revolutionary organisation”, (International Review 29), https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR029_function.htm [1532]
[4] “The question of organisational functioning in the ICC”(International Review 107) https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_functioning [1284]
[5] In turn, Stalinism was inspired by the dirty work of social democracy, which betrayed the proletariat in 1914. Rosa Luxemburg, in 'Our Program and the political situation; Address to the Founding Congress of the German Communist Party (Spartacus League)', 31 December 1918, 1 January 1919, denounced it: "You see from its representatives where this Marxism stands today: it is enslaved and domesticated by the Ebert, David and others. It is here that we see the official representatives of the doctrine that, for decades, has been passed off as pure, true marxism. No, this is not where true marxism leads us, into the company of the Scheidemanns and counter-revolutionary politics. True Marxism fights against those who seek to falsify it.”
[6] Ante (or Anton) Ciliga (1898-1992) was of Croatian origin. He joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and lived in Russia from 1925 onwards, where he became aware of the counter-revolutionary degeneration of the USSR. He joined Trotsky's left-wing opposition. He was arrested for the first time in 1930 and sent to Siberia and was finally freed in 1935. After this he settled in France where he wrote a very lucid account of everything that had happened in the USSR, in the Third International and in the CPSU, in the book cited above. The PDF version in Spanish, whose quotations have been translated, can be found at: https://marxismo.school/files/2017/09/Ciliga.pdf [1842]. Subsequently Ciliga moved further and further away from proletarian positions, sliding towards the defence of democracy, especially following the Second World War.
[7] On this subject see: "Communists and the national question (1900-1920) Part 1" (International Review 37, 1983) https://en.internationalism.org/ir/037_natqn_02.html [1843]
[8] See our pamphlet, Unions against the Working Class https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/unions.htm [1505]
[9] See https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201502/12081/1914-how-2nd-international-failed [1844]
[10] Lenin, The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913)
[11] "Report on the structure and functioning of revolutionary organisations", International Review No. 33 (1983), point 1
[12] This error byTrotsky was even used by Trotskyism to describe any situation of revolt and even a guerrilla-based coup d'état like the one in Cuba in 1959 as a "revolution".
[13] “Report on the function of the revolutionary organisation”
This article, written by a close sympathizer in the US, looks at the adoption of “identity politics” by the left wing of the bourgeoisie – an international phenomenon, but one which, for historical reasons, has reached a particularly advanced level in America. The endless divisions created by this kind of politics are certainly a means for exacerbating divisions within the working class, but they can also bring numerous problems for the bourgeoisie, whose control of the political apparatus is growing less and less secure.
When asked what the greatest achievement of her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was, Margaret Thatcher once quipped it was how she forced the Labour Party to change. By this she meant that even though Labour defeated the Tories in the 1997 election, the party that took over government was no longer the old “social democratic” institution it was when she took office a decade and a half earlier. It had been transformed during her time in office into New Labour, a party thoroughly committed to the neo-liberal consensus.
When the light finally goes out on Donald Trump’s Presidency, one wonders if a similar thing might be said about him. Will the most meaningful effect of his time in office be a change in the political face of the Democratic Party? Has Trumpism had something of the opposite effect of Thatcher’s domestication of Labour, “radicalizing” the Democratic Party to such an extent that the old slightly left of center party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has now become a “socialist” party moving ever so dramatically to the left? Will the Republicans, after a decade of Tea Party rage and the rise of Trumpist populism within its ranks, start to look like the rational adults in the room to the suburban core of the American electorate once again?
Obviously, reality is quite a bit more complicated than this emerging media narrative would suggest. As quantum mechanics teaches us, causality can often be difficult to parse out. If the Democrats’ apparent lurch to the “left” is one of the unitentended effects of Trumpism, it is nevertheless the case that Trump himself is an effect of even deeper historical, social and political forces that precede his candidacy.
Moreover, the narrative of the Democratic Party moving steadily “leftwards,” towards “socialism,” conceals a number of contradictions permeating the political and social field today that makes the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition extremely volatile and increasingly prone to internal strife. If the opposition, or “resistance,” to Trump, keeps the party united on the immediate need to end his Presidency in 2020 (or sooner), this only hides deeper fractures that are likely to erupt as soon as the next Democrat assumed the Presidency.
In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats rode popular revulsion at President Trump to a stunning take over of the House of Representatives. The Democrats were able to capitalize on a wave of female candidates running for office in something like a “Me Too” repudiation of Trumpist disdain for women. Nancy Pelosi, who is now painted by the media as a kind of second “Iron Lady,” is once again Speaker of the House. The Democrats had no hesitations about selling their candidates in the terms of “identity politics.” The freshman class of representatives elected on the Democratic ticket was the “most diverse ever,” they have frequently reminded us, representing a stark rejection of all the bad “isms” that Trump represents.
Among the freshman class of representatives are: Rashida Tlaib (Palestinian-American from Michigan), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, who unseated the fourth ranking member of the Democratic House delegation in a primary), Ayanna Pressley (African-American from Massachusetts, another primary victor over an establishment Democrat) and Ilhan Omar (Somali-American from Minnesota, who often proudly wears an hijab to work in Congress). Some of this group, who call themselves the “Squad,” describe their politics as “socialist,” others as mere “progressive,” but all readily engage in the celebration of their “identities” as core features of their politics and the meaning and purpose behind their lives and work in Congress.
If the stunning primary victories by leftists like Ocacio-Cortez and Pressley, and the subsequent media attention they have received, undoubtedly worry establishment Democrats, they nevertheless welcome the opportunity to promote these young “women of color” as evidence of their party’s moral opposition to the Trump administration. They have repeatedly reminded us that their mid-term election victory made history by bringing the first two female Muslims to the halls of Congress. In February, Pelosi herself appeared in a photo op with members of the Squad for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. What better contrast to the Trump administration could the Democrats’ make than to champion their new and highly diverse crop of freshman legislators that include members from communities Trump is said to hate: Hispanics and Muslims.
Nevertheless, less than two months into the new Congress, Democrats’ attempts to marketize the diversity of their new members and politicize their identities has hit a bit of a snag. Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar have both been accused of making anti-Semitic comments in their criticisms of Israel. First Tlaib suggested that supporters of Israel were more loyal to that country than America.[1] Then, a 2012 tweet from Omar surfaced in which she wrote that “Israel has hypnotized the world;” on top of this, she authored tweets suggesting that the US’s staunch support for Israel was mostly down to the lobbying efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), suggesting that it was “All about the Benjamins, baby!” [2]
Omars’s tweets led to an immediate outpouring of condemnation from Jewish groups and Jewish members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, who accused her of dealing in age-old anti-Semitic tropes. Senior Democratic leaders quickly rejected her statements and urged her to apologize. Omar bowed to the leadership, tweeting out an apology that acknowledged “Anti-Semitism is real.” However, just a week later, she was caught on camera at a fundraising event, denouncing “The political influence in this country that says its OK to push for allegiance to a foreign power.” [3]
Condemnation from senior Democrats was again swift, with Eliot Engel the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee (on which Omar sits) denouncing her latest comments as “vile anti-Semitic slurs.”[4] Momentum built over the weekend of March 2nd for a formal House resolution rebuking anti-Semitism, but curiously early in the next week a delay in bringing a motion to the house floor suggested the Democratic caucus was far from united on what to do about Omar’s latest comments. Moreover, this time Omar did not back down. She issued no apology. Realizing that much of leftist social media had her back, she appeared ready this time to fight the Democratic leadership over the issue of support for Israel, backed up by an emerging consensus from leftists that she was being unfairly targeted for correctly denouncing Israeli policy and Israeli influence in Washington.
What started as a brief delay by Democratic leadership to “get the language right” on the resolution, turned into a veritable political debacle for the party leadership by mid-week. Legacy media began to worry that Pelosi was losing control of her caucus, while more credentialed commentators fretted a coming “Corbynization” of the Democratic Party. A near rebellion ensued, led by “progressives,” angry from their perception that justified criticism of Israel and its lobby in Washington were being considered “anti-Semitic,” and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), dismayed over what looked like an attempt to gang up on one of their own. Both groups balked at leadership’s attempt to bring a resolution calling out Omar and specifically denouncing anti-Semitism to the House floor.
Voices within the party begin to emerge defending Omar, including House Majority whip Jim Clyburn, who suggested Omar’s comments must be understood in light of her experience and pain as an immigrant refugee. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris worried about Omar’s safety after posters connecting her to the 9/11 terrorist attacks appeared in the West Virginia State House and even Bernie Sanders opined that Omar was being unfairly targeted for criticizing Israel. Media star and socialist celebrity Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped to Omar’s defense, suggesting that any denunciation of anti-Semitism that did not also denounce the anti-Latino bias of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should not go forward.
Apparently, there was now a political dynamic afoot in the Democratic Party that makes an outright rejection of perceived anti-Semitic tropes controversial, without watering it down into a near meaningless condemnation of all things bad. There was simply now no consensus to condemn the specific act of questionable comments from one of their own Congresswomen, without denouncing all forms of bigotry.
The immediate drama concluded with the House voting on a broad condemnation of multifarious forms of “hate,” not specifically mentioning Omar. Over 20 Republicans voted against the measure, with most denouncing it as a cowardly farce. Days later, in typical Trumpian overstatement, the President pronounced the Democrats were now an “anti-Jewish” party.[5]
Whatever the President’s hyperbole, this episode certainly reveals growing tensions within the Democratic Party’s political and electoral collation. The Democrats, whatever their continued united opposition to Trump, appear more and more fractured. With each episode of intra-party fighting, they begin to resemble a loose coalition of competing interest groups suspicious of one another, held together only by the flimsy sticky tape of anti-Trumpism. Barely two months after retaking the House, with a Presidential election against an extremely unpopular President on the horizon, the Democrats are having trouble containing the inevitable political fissures resulting from an increasing reliance on “identity politics” as their legitimating ideology.
Anti-Semitism, “Intersectionality” and the Neo-Liberal Left:
In the span of just several weeks, Omar’s tweets and recorded comments, from 2012 to the present, ran the gamut from accusing Israel of pulling off mass hypnosis, to suggesting that the American government was bought off by Israeli-Jewish money and accusing those who support Israel of having “dual allegiances.”[6] Earlier Congresswoman Tlaib had also made suggestions of conflicted loyalities.
We won’t get into the metaphysical debate that has been playing out in the media over the last several weeks about whether the Congresswomen’s comments were really anti-Semitism dressed up as criticisms of Israeli policy or were really fair criticisms of Israeli policy unfairly attacked as anti-Semitism. It’s pretty clear on this score that in a world defined more and more by ideological polarization and motivated reasoning people are going to see what they want to see in these statements. Suffice it say, while themes of “hypnosis,” political bribery and dual loyalty run right up to the line of some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes that have given rise to pogroms and even the Holocaust itself, Omar’s comments have been generally phrased in a way to leave her true personal intentions debatable. [7]
Nevertheless, it is also clear that the recent row in the Democratic Party over anti-Semitism is only the latest episode in a growing trend towards such provocative anti-Israel activism in the name of “anti-imperialism” emanating from elements associated with the left-wing of the left-of-center parties in major Western states.[8] The long campaign over anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party is the best-known example, which the ICC has previously analyzed here.[9] However, what is most important in the recent controversy surrounding the Democratic Party is the extent to which the underlying ideology of “identity politics,” which has formed the core of the party’s message for some time, has now seemingly come back to bite it in dramatic fashion.
With the ascendancy to power of Bill Clinton, backed by the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC), in the early 1990s, the Democratic party’s underlying ideological justification began to shift away from being the “party of the working class,” in close alliance with the unions, towards becoming the party of educated professionals in alliance with minority and immigrant communities. Although the Democrats have retained the formal alliance of most unions, the party has been hemorrhaging electoral support from blue-collar whites since at least the so-called “Reagan Revolution” of the early 1980s.
The Presidencies of Clinton and later Obama cemented this process, so that by the time Hillary Clinton was nominated for the Presidency in 2016, the Democrats had largely become the party of professionals that eschewed economic messaging towards the working class in favor of promoting racial, ethnic, gender and other forms of identity “diversity” and “equity” and championing the rights of immigrants. The Democrats’ underlying ideology became less about advancing economic programs for improvement of all and more about leveling the playing field in the neo-liberal meritocratic quest for self-improvement. Universal programs were generally frowned upon, while racially targeted measures to supposedly “set the playing right” became the party’s focus.
Barack Obama’s abandonment in office of universal “Medicare-for-All,” in favor of a convoluted private health care delivery system enforced through an individual mandate—a plan originally designed by policy wonks at the free-market Heritage Foundation and championed by Republican Governors—demonstrated the priorities and commitments of the Democratic establishment.
Democrats became the party of the “risk society,” albeit one that was supposedly balanced towards equality of opportunity for all the diverse identity groups that now make-up American society. This turn was theorized in 2002 by the political scientists Ruy Teixeira and Jonathan Judis, whose book The Emerging Democratic Majority,[10] laid out a strategy for building an unassailable electoral majority to rival FDR’s New Deal Coalition. This involved appealing to the young, professionals and the traditionally marginalized elements of American society, who it was argued would only grow in number, primarily as a result of increased immigration.
Not surprisingly, by adopting such a “demographic strategy,” Democrats only hastened the flight of blue-collar whites to the Republicans. While enough of these voters remained loyal to the party to help elect Obama in 2008 and 2012 in the midst of economic crisis, the apparent betrayal of their interests by the Democratic establishment in the post-crisis years led to an increased openness to the kind of populism trafficked by Trump. When Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables,” in the 2016 campaign, it only confirmed for many working class whites that the Democratic Party would not advance their interests.
Meanwhile, as the Republican Party was transformed by Trump in a populist direction, taking up the economic and cultural grievances of the Rust Belt working class, the Democratic Party was accelerating into a headlong flight into “identity politics,” backed up by academic theories of so-called “intersectionality.” In the intersectional worldview, the multifarious identity grievances are supposed to overlap with one another to produce a kind of coalition of the oppressed against white male privilege and to advance the recognition of sub-altern identities.
In this worldview, standing up to speak about oppression is a function of certain innate qualities of individuals that give them moral authority to express the interests of the group identities they claim. The more sub-altern identities one can assert, the more authority one has to speak, and the more personal virtue as a multiply oppressed person one is regarded to hold. Oppression of one’s identity becomes a road to a kind power—a power to speak and define the terms of politics that only the oppressed can have as a function of their “lived experience.”[11] The world is thus divided into oppressors and oppressed in concrete life situations that grant deference to the rights and power of the oppressed to “speak their truth” to power, whether on the stage of national politics or on the micro-level of daily interactions in the lifeworld or in cyberspace.
Intersectionality has long had its academic critics who often derisively describe it as a kind of “oppression Olympics,” and point out the practical difficulties of mitigating just who is an oppressor and who is oppressed in the real world. Moreover, what happens when different kinds of oppression, rather than overlapping, actually come into conflict with one another? Which claims take priority?
Nevertheless, whatever the practical difficulties, the theory and approach were tailor made for the Democratic Party seeking a new legitimating ideology in a world being rapidly remade by neo-liberal capitalism and mass migration. As long as the possible contradictions of intersectionality did not emerge into full view behind the unifying rallying cry of anti-Trumpism then the Democrats could convince themselves they could control the obvious centrifugal tendencies underlying the illusion of a “grand collation of the oppressed.”
However, now, within months of taking power in one house of Congress, the contradictions of this approach are already on full display. Many Democrats who supported Omar initially rejected the idea that her comments were really anti-Semitic, asserting instead that they were reasonable criticisms of Israel and its role in US politics. Of course, this kind of interrogation of claims against a standard of objective reasonableness would seem to violate one of the cardinal rules of intersectionality: it is the oppressed and offended group alone that gets to decide what is offensive speech. Nobody else has the “lived experience” necessary to make this judgment. The fact that there were Jews who defended Omar would not really matter. If some quorum of Jews believed her comments were anti-Semitic, their judgment must be accepted as right. There is no Archimedean point outside of the oppressor-oppressed relationship from which a kind of objective reason can be exercised to pronounce on the legitimacy of the outrage. We must listen to the oppressed and offended group and defer to their judgment. Omar herself seemed to recognize her conundrum at first, walking back her original comments about the role of AIPAC and apologizing for her comments about hypnosis.
But then the intersectional absurdities of the situation hit a new level after Omar’s recorded comments denouncing “dual loyalties” emerged. Faced with a second round of criticism in the span of a week and the threat of an official House resolution denouncing her comments, Omar decided not to apologize this time, but instead play the victim herself. She and Congresswoman Tlaib were being unfairly signaled out for criticism because they were Muslim. Attacking perceived anti-Semitism was thus itself Islamophobic, when it is Muslims making the allegedly anti-Semitic statements.
In a particularly damning illustration of the conundrum into which intersectionality had apparently driven the Democratic Party, Congressman Clyburn defended Omar by comparing her “lived experience” of oppression as a Somali immigrant and former resident of a refugee camp in Kenya to the “lived experience” of Holocaust survivors. Perhaps without knowing what he was doing, Congressman Clyburn—an old school African-American Democrat unlikely to be particularly well versed in the academic intricacies of intersectional theory—confirmed what many had suspected all along: the controversy wasn’t just about Israel and its policies, it was also about the comparative moral weight of Muslim vs. Jewish trauma and pain.
For Clyburn, Omar’s pain was more powerful because it was more recent. Jews were now far removed from the historical reality of the Holocaust. Their group trauma and pain could not compare to Omar’s as a Muslim refugee.[12] Islamophobia thus beats out anti-Semitism in the oppression Olympics and assumes a higher place in the hierarchy of pain and suffering. Of course, just what Omar’s pain as a refugee had to do with her statements was never made clear, other than it may have influenced her poor choice of words somehow. In defending Omar, Clyburn also infantilized her as someone whose personal experience as a sub-altern meant she should not have to take full moral responsibility for having harmed some other oppressed group, whose oppression wasn’t quite so bad anyway. Of course, this only begged another troubling question: can the oppressed also be oppressors in their own right?
Congressman Clyburn’s remarks were revealing in that they demonstrate that in order for Omar’s questionable comments to be mitigated, they either have to be explained away as the effect of some kind of trauma or they have to be placed above the absurd competition of different oppressed groups. One way to do this, which has now been adopted by many of the bourgeois left, is to proffer that Jews are no longer a really oppressed group anyway. In this view, Jews are accepted as “white” in most Diasporic locations and have now, centuries of anti-Semitism aside, become oppressors themselves, as evidenced by their communities’ support for and loyalty to the state of Israel—a state that engages in the ruthless oppression of the Palestinians and its internal Arab minority, violates human rights constantly and has become for all intents and purposed an “apartheid state” in own right that must be overthrown.
This is where the connection between the policies of Israel are tied back to the various Diasporic Jewish communities, through their ability to influence foreign policy in their nations of residence in favor of the Israeli apartheid state, through campaign contributions and other motivated uses of “Jewish money.” Jewish communities’ ability to serve as a kind of “fifth column” of Israeli influence in their nations of residence, something the South African apartheid state couldn’t really rely on, is what makes their loyalties open to question.
Delegitimizing Israel is thus the intended purpose of the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which seeks to use the model of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to delegitimize Israel in international public opinion, deprive it of critical support from the West and force it to abandon its supposed policy of “Jewish Supremacy.” The fact that Israel was itself ostensibly founded as a sanctuary for the oppressed Jewish people following the Holocaust is no longer relevant. In line with Congressman Clyburn’s relative minimization of Jewish pain, BDS supporters suggest the Holocaust can no longer be seen as a legitimate reason to support Israel; the moral authority granted from having been the victims of genocide has long been rendered moot by the Israeli state’s subsequent actions against the oppressed Muslim and Arab populations of the region.
Unsurprisingly, the BDS movement has proven hotly controversial. Popular on many college campuses, it still does not count many supporters in the halls of power. Senior Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Cardin loudly oppose it, even sponsoring legislation to penalize companies who advocate it by forbidding them from getting government contracts. Many of BDS’s opponents see it as a thinly veiled attempt to erase the Jewish state from the map - considered to be the anti-Semitic act par excellence. While Democratic Presidential Candidates, especially Bernie Sanders (himself Jewish), have recently increased their willingness to criticize Israel, none has yet endorsed BDS. Although with the election of Omar and Tlaib, there are at least two proponents now in Congress.[13]
Clearly, many people today are increasingly and rightly concerned about the condition of the Palestinian people and the overall nature of Israeli policy. As communists that believe in objective standards of reasonableness, we confirm that it is not in itself anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. But it is also the case that the increasing polarization of society around these issues may be pushing otherwise well meaning critics to seek less than savory allies and to make excuses for those who cross the line into questionable tropes out of a pressure to support one’s perceived anti-imperialist team. There is little reason to expect these trends to mitigate. With President Trump attempting to exploit the turmoil in the Democratic Party over this controversy and to make support for Israel a partisan issue, it is likely that the rancor will only increase, tempting others to cross the line from real criticism into questionable tropes.
It is unlikely that this episode will result in major electoral effects right away: Jews are mostly reliable Democratic voters in the US and it is unlikely many will switch to support Republicans due to outrage over what remains a phenomenon largely isolated to the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party. Nevertheless, it is the case that this episode reveals the tensions and cleavages emerging in the Democratic Party and the real instability and fissures that result from attempting to construct a governing ideology out of identity politics and intersectionality.
While for now, Bernie Sanders has been obliged by his own political vulnerabilities in the Democratic primary around race and identity issues to support Omar, it is also clear that intersectionality is not his kind of politics and that he is seeking to rebuild the party’s message along a more class-based populist position that champions universal uplift, refashioning the party along social democratic lines and restoring the classic left-right divide in bourgeois politics in the hopes of building a more durable electoral coalition.
Nevertheless, given the depth of the cleavages in the party today, it is not clear if this vision is the right message to make it through a Democratic primary. Sanders has already been attacked for being “insensitive on race.” As a result of these attacks, he risks overcorrecting — delving into racial disparity discourse, championing his new campaign’s diversity and inclusion, etc. — diluting the universal message that would appeal to the blue collar whites he needs to win in the general election.
However, Sanders problems come not only from the cynical deployment of identity politics against him by the Democratic establishment. Many of Bernie’s most die hard “millennial socialist” supporters are also the most committed to identity politics and intersectionality. Bernie thus must placate this section of his base in the primary, hoping to pivot to more universalist and economic populist themes in the general election. Whether or not this will prove a successful strategy is unclear, but we can say is that it is unlikely that any Democratic candidate who might win the Presidency in 2020 will have the kind of New Deal electoral coalition at their back, that FDR once did. The tensions and the fractures within the neo-liberal body politic run too deep.
What this episode of supposed anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party really shows us is that there are no pure figures, no saintly candidates and no especially virtuous group identities in bourgeois politics. As capitalist society more and more devolves into competing identitarian claims as a result of its inability to offer a truly universal human perspective, it more and more attempts to trap us in a pointless and fruitless exercise of ranking the importance and virtuousness of various group claims among the multiple injuries inflicted upon the entirety of humanity by capital on a daily basis.
Attempts to render capitalist society more palatable by making it more “inclusive” or “diverse,” or by granting recognition to supposedly oppressed group identities, are illusory and self-defeating. In a world that is being sliced by bourgeois ideology into ever thinner slices of humanity defined by more and more particular and stylized identities, no level of inclusion is ever inclusive enough; every act of inclusion is by nature also an act of exclusion.[14] No amount of diversity will ever be definitive. For every group that achieves inclusions in the name of diversity, another will emerge to yell, “But what about our claims?!”[15]
Only a working class that is uncompromisingly putting forward the defense of its living and working conditions can overcome the divisions forced onto us by bourgeois politics and offer a way out of this morass. A genuinely proletarian movement will necessarily include the struggle against all forms of oppression and prejudice, because the proletariat, as Marx put it, is “an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it”[16]. In sum, the working class will overcome the manifold divisions within its ranks because it will need to understand them both as obstacles to its immediate struggle, which must tend towards increasing unification, and as barriers to the conquest of real freedom, defined as the ability to achieve our individual potential in a world that has finally become humanized.
--Henk
03/14/2019
[2] For the details of the tweetstorm see here: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/10/ilhan-omar-israel-aipac-money-... [1847]
[3] For the video of these comments see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnRC6gFrUao [1848]
[6] In framing support of Israel as a matter of “dual loyalties,” Omar and Tlaib reveal their own will to power to act as judges of what constitutes real loyalty to the US state, not to mention effectively calling into question the patriotism of all those with dual or multiple citizenships, an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in a globalized world characterized by mobility and migration, which the bourgeois left generally celebrates. Previously, denunciation of the loyalties of dual citizens had been the province of the “right-wing,” such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
[7] The hypnosis trope appears to reflect a certain idiom Omar learned somewhere. While this is not enough to pass definitive judgment on her intentions, it certainly raises questions about her influences. In any event, most Democrats’ and leftists have little problem finding something racist even in Trump’s more subtle comments, but when it came to addressing one of their own’s questionable use of tropes, many preferred to circle the wagons.
[8] Conversely it may be the case that in Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism is currently more a feature of the populist right, but its clear that neither side of the traditional division of bourgeois politics has a monopoly on it. See for example the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, in which the perpetrator appears to have been motivated by right-wing conspiracy theory around George Soros’s activism in pushing global migration.
[9] See for example: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13931/labour-left-and-jewish-problem [1472]; https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201805/15151/difficulties-bourgeoisie-s-political-apparatus [1851]
[10] Ruy Teixeira and Jonathan Judis, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York: Scribner) 2002. More recently, Judis had moved away from the conclusions of the book suggesting that Hispanic immigrants will likely come to see themselves as “white” and therefore will no longer be fiercely loyal Democrats. See: Redoing the Electoral Math, in the 09/14/2017 The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/144547/redoing-electoral-math-argued-demographics-favored-democrats-wrong [1852]. Conservative commentator Reiham Salam complements Judis’ new conclusions, suggesting that second generation Hispanic immigrants will develop their own populist tendencies, faced with competition from even cheaper imported labor from Africa and South Asia, See: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/the-next-populist-r... [1853]
[11] For a recent critique of “victimhood chic,” in which one’s status as a victim has itself become a form of privilege today, see John McWhorter’s analysis of the politics surrounding the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/jussie-smollett-story-... [1854]
[13] In another illustration of the tensions within the Democratic collation, Omar was elected from a district (Minnesota-5) that while it has a sizable Somali-American refugee community is nevertheless majority white and has its own Jewish community. During her campaign for office Omar supposedly told local Jewish community groups that she did not support BDS, only to change her mind once winning the election. It is likely that in the interests of anti-Trump intersectional coalition-building, many Jews in the district voted for her. However, there are now rumblings of a possible primary challenge against Omar in 2020. But, for this to have any chance of succeeding, Democrats would have to find the right candidate to run against her—one with intersectional credentials of their own, lest accusations of Islamophobia sink the challengers’ campaign. One name that has been mentioned is Andrea Jenkins, a transgender African-American woman who currently sits on the Minneapolis city council. See: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/433970-democrats-upset-over-omar-s... [1856]
[14] For example, the increasing availability of Spanish language services in the public sphere in the United States does nothing for those who speak Portuguese—except that for reasons of geographic and linguistic proximity they might also speak some Spanish and therefore they can struggle to get services in a language that is not quite their own and which has, in the terms of identity politics, itself become “hegemonic” in relationship to their Lusophonic identity. Interestingly, the issue of language hegemony and inclusivity is not something entirely foreign to the workers’ movement, as prior debates over Esperanto demonstrate.
[15] In fact, it may be the case that these kinds of “What about us?” claims lie at the heart of the so-called “white identity politics” that appeal to Trump voters. In a culture that increasingly gives recognition and assigns public virtue to the claims of groups with all sorts of hyphenated identities, the populist rallying cry of “What about regular/real/true American citizens?” expresses something meaningful to those with no other politically marketable identity to deploy and no particular group grievance to claim.
[16] “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, 1843
The overwhelming consensus of serious scientific opinion is that we are already entering a global ecological catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. This is not the place to itemise all the various aspects of the disaster facing humanity, from the pollution of the sea, air and rivers to the impending extinction of innumerable of plant and animal species, culminating in the threats posed by the accelerating process of global warming. Suffice it to say that the combination of all these tendencies, if unchecked, could make the planet itself uninhabitable, and at the very least unfit to sustain a decent human existence.
It is our contention, however, that it is not enough to examine this problem through the lens of ecology, or the natural sciences, alone. To understand the underlying causes of ecological devastation, and the possibility of reversing it, we have to understand their connection to the existing social relations, to the economic system that governs the earth: capitalism. And for us that means using the only really scientific approach to understanding the structure and dynamics of human society – the method of marxism. One excellent point of departure here is Engels’ 1876 essay ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’, an unfinished movement that has been included within a broader unfinished symphony, The Dialectics of Nature[1].
Engels’ essay is an application of the understanding that only by looking at the human past from the standpoint of a class of labour – and of associated labour in particular – does it become possible to understand the emergence of the human species. Contrary to the mechanistic view that it is the result of the development of the human brain seen in isolation – its growth in size and complexity as the simple result of random mutations – Engels argues that in the final analysis man makes himself; that it is the dialectical interaction between hand and brain in the collective production of tools and the transformation of our natural surroundings which determines the “mechanical” capacities of the brain, the dexterity of the human hand, and the evolution of a specifically human consciousness. This consciousness is one in which planned, purposeful activity and cultural transmission outweighs the more instinctual actions of previous animal species.
“It goes without saying that it would not occur to us to dispute the ability of animals to act in a planned, premeditated fashion. On the contrary, a planned mode of action exists in embryo wherever protoplasm, living albumen, exists and reacts, that is, carries out definite, even if extremely simple, movements as a result of definite external stimuli. Such reaction takes place even where there is yet no cell at all, far less a nerve cell. There is something of the planned action in the way insect-eating plants capture their prey, although they do it quite unconsciously. In animals the capacity for conscious, planned action is proportional to the development of the nervous system, and among mammals it attains a fairly high level… But all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man[2].
In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction”.
There is no question that humanity acquired these capacities through collective activity, through association. In particular Engels argues that the evolution of language – a prerequisite for the development of thought and of cultural transmission from one generation to the next – can only be understood in the context of a developing social connection:
“It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another”.
The human capacity to transform nature has brought it enormous evolutionary and historical advantages, undeniably making humanity the dominant species on the planet. From the utilisation of fire to the domestication of animals and the sowing of crops; from the construction of the first cities to the development of vast networks of production and communication that could unify the entire planet: these were the necessary stages towards the emergence of a global human community founded on the realisation of the creative potential of all its members, in other words, of the communist future which Marx and Engels predicted and fought for.
A warning against arrogant assumptions
And yet The Part Played by Labour is anything but an arrogant hymn to human superiority. In the footsteps of Darwin, it begins by recognizing that everything that is uniquely human also has its roots in the abilities of our animal ancestors. And above all, no sooner has Engels noted the fundamental distinction between man and animal than he issues a warning which has a very clear resonance in the face of today’s ecological crisis:
“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”.
In this passage, Engels provides us with a concrete example of the marxist theory of alienation, which is predicated on the recognition that, in given social conditions, the product of man’s own labour can become a hostile power, an alien force that eludes his control and acts against him. Without entering into a discussion into the more remote origins of this human self-estrangement, we can say with certainty that the qualitative development of this process is linked to the emergence of class exploitation, in which, by definition, those who labour are compelled to produce not for themselves but for a class that holds the power and wealth of society in its hands. And it is no accident that the development of exploitation and of alienated labour is connected to mankind’s progressive alienation from nature. The examples of “unforeseen consequences” of production that Engels provides us with in the passage just cited are taken mainly from pre-capitalist forms of class society, and it is precisely with these earlier forms of civilisation that we find the first clear example of man-made environmental disasters.
“The first cases of extensive ecological destruction coincide with the early city states; there is considerable evidence that the very process of deforestation which allowed civilisations such as the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Sinhalese and others to develop a large-scale agricultural base also, in the longer term, played a considerable role in their decline and disappearance”[3].
But these were, relatively speaking, local catastrophes. In contrast to previous modes of production, capitalism is compelled by its deepest inner drive to dominate the entire planet. As it says in the Communist Manifesto,
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere…
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image”.
This necessity to “globalise” itself, however, has also meant the globalisation of ecological catastrophe. For Marx, the capitalist social relation marked the high point of in the whole process of alienation, because now the exploitation of human labour is no longer geared towards a personal relation between master and servant, as it was in previous class societies, but towards the expansion and growth of a fundamentally impersonal power – “Das Kapital”, or the profit system. The universal advent of production for the market and for profit means that the tendency for the results of production to escape the control of the producer has reached its ultimate point; moreover, the capitalist exploiter himself, though benefiting from the proceeds of exploitation, is also driven by the remorseless competition for profits, and is, in the final analysis, merely the personification of capital. We are thus confronted with a mode of production which is like a juggernaut that is running out of control and threatening to crush exploiter and exploited alike.
Because capitalism is driven by the remorseless demands of accumulation (what it calls “economic growth”), it can never arrive at a rational, global control of the productive process, geared to the long-term interests of humanity. This is above all true in a period of economic crisis, where the pressure to penetrate the last untouched regions of the planet and ransack their resources becomes increasingly irresistible to all the feverishly competing capitalist and national units.
The extreme point in the alienation of the worker in the process of production is thus mirrored in the most extreme alienation of humanity from nature. In the same way that the workers’ labour power is commodified, our most intimate needs and feelings seen as potential markets, so capitalism sees nature as a vast warehouse that can be robbed and ransacked at will in order to fuel the juggernaut of accumulation. We are now seeing the ultimate consequences of the illusion of ruling over nature “like a conqueror over a foreign people”: it can only lead to “nature taking its revenge...” on a scale far greater than in any previous civilisation, since this “revenge” could culminate in the extinction of humanity itself.
“Taking back control”
Let’s return to the last passage from Engels, where he writes that “all our mastery of (nature) consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”. He goes on thus: “And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities”.
The paradox of capital is that while the development of science under its reign has allowed us to understand the laws of nature to an unprecedented degree, we seem increasingly powerless to “apply them correctly”.
For Engels, of course, the capacity to control the consequences of our production depended on the overthrow of capitalism and the appropriation of science by the revolutionary working class. But Engels, confident that the victory of the socialist revolution was not far off, could not have foreseen the tragedy of the centuries that followed his: the defeat of the first attempt at world proletarian revolution, and the prolongation of the capitalist system that has reached such a level of decay that it is undermining the very bases for a future communist society. In the nightmare world that decadent capitalism is shaping before our eyes, scientific knowledge of the laws of nature, which could and should be used for the benefit of humanity, is more and more being enlisted to aggravate the mounting calamity, by bending it to the intensification of the exploitation of man and nature, or the creation of terrifying weapons of destruction which themselves pose a major ecological threat. Indeed, a measure of capitalism’s decadence is precisely this growing gap between the potential created by the development of the productive forces – of which science is a vital part – and the way this potential is blocked and distorted by the existing social relations.
On its own even the most disinterested scientific knowledge is powerless to turn back the tide of environmental despoliation. Hence the endless warnings of concerned scientific bodies about the melting of the glaciers, the poisoning of the oceans or the extinction of species are endlessly ignored or counteracted by the real policies of capitalist governments whose first rule is always “expand or die”, whether or not these governments are ruled by crude climate change deniers like Trump or by earnest liberals and self-proclaimed socialists.
The solution to the ecological crisis – which, increasingly cannot be separated from capitalism’s irreversible economic crisis and its drive towards imperialist war – can only come about if mankind “takes back control” through the suppression of capital accumulation, with all its outward expressions, not least money, the state, and all national frontiers. Labour must emancipate itself from capitalist exploitation: the entire process of production must be organised on the basis of the needs of the producers and their long-term interaction with the rest of nature.
This is a precondition for the survival of our species. But it is also much more than that. In the last-cited passage, Engels continues: “the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity”.
Here Engels returns to some of the most audacious hypotheses of the young Marx about the nature of communism. Fully realised communism means the emancipation of labour not only in the sense of getting rid of class exploitation: it also demands the transformation of labour from a penance into a pleasure, the unleashing of human creativity. And this in turn is the precondition for the subjective transformation of the human species, which will “feel and know” its oneness with nature.
Such notions take us into a far-distant future. But it will only be our future if the class which embodies it, the world proletariat, is able to fight for its specific interests, to rediscover its sense of itself as a class, and to formulate a perspective for its struggles. This will mean that its immediate, defensive struggles will more and more have to incorporate the struggle against capitalist oppression and barbarism in all their forms; at the same time, it is only by fighting on its own class terrain that the proletariat can draw behind it all those layers of society who want to call a halt to capitalism’s cannibalisation of nature. The recognition that capitalism is a threat to all life on the planet will be central to this broadening of the class struggle towards a political and social revolution.
Amos
[2] Anthropologists, geologists and other scientists have coined the term “Anthropocene” to designate a new geological era in which man has definitely stamped his will upon the atmosphere, climate and biology of the Earth. They put forward different moments to mark this transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, some seeing the invention of agriculture as crucial, while others opting for the beginning of the industrial revolution, i.e. the beginning of the capitalist epoch, but also including a phase of considerable acceleration after 1945.
[3] “Capitalism is poisoning the Earth”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/63_pollution [1839]
“...Social relations are no longer the same as when the Republic was founded. The introduction and development of large-scale industry have produced a new revolution, dissolved the old classes, and above all, created our class, the class of propertyless workers. New relations require new institutions.” (Preamble to the demands of the American Workers’ League, 1853) [1]
Introduction
In the first part of this occasional series we looked at the birth of the proletariat in North America and its earliest struggles, showing how black chattel slavery was introduced to keep black and white workers divided along racial lines.[2]
The second part exposed myths surrounding the birth of democracy in America, showing that by successfully harnessing the struggles of white workers to the creation of a separate state, the Revolution of 1776 strengthened capitalist domination in North America and entrenched black slavery while deploying racist ideologies to ensure the working class remained divided.[3]
In the third and final part of the series we will look at the first attempts by the US working class to organise itself into trade unions and political parties and the first mass struggles of the early workers’ movement against American capital. These deserve to be better known today if only because they highlight the vanguard role played by the American working class as a fraction of the world proletariat at this time.
But we also need to understand the extremely difficult conditions imposed on the American working class by the development of capitalism in the USA, where a highly intelligent and flexible ruling class actively prevented the building of solidarity by reinforcing divisions between white and black, ‘free’ workers and slaves, immigrant and ‘native-born’ workers – divisions that still weigh heavily on the struggle for class unity today.
The struggle to organise against American capital
For all the noble phrases of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, workers in the new republic had no right to organise or defend themselves. The new ruling class did not hesitate to use the democratic state to enforce colonial-era laws which treated strikes and trade unions as criminal conspiracies; corporal punishment, the whipping post and branding by the state were all perfectly legal, not only for black slaves but also for ‘free’ men, women and children. Strikes by women workers were called ‘mutinies’…
But workers had no choice but to defend themselves against such a rapacious capitalist class. The earliest struggles of American workers tended to unify around the demand for a shorter working day which was seen by the most politically advanced workers as vital to enable the development of class consciousness. In 1827 unions in Philadelphia formed the city-wide Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in order to build solidarity between trades and fight for political reforms. This led to the formation of the Working Men’s Party (1828), the first independent working class party in the world. For the party’s leaders –.men like William Heighton[4] – the trade union struggle to raise wages and shorten hours was not enough, because “All our legislators and rulers are nominated by the accumulating classes and controlled by their opinions - how then can we expect that laws will be framed which will favour our interest?”[5] It was therefore necessary to call on workers to elect their own representatives to enact the ten-hour day. The formation of working men’s parties in New York and Boston followed and by 1834 the movement had spread to 61 towns and cities.
This early political movement was led by skilled craft workers who found their role and status undermined by speed-ups, lower wages, longer hours and the use of unskilled labour. Having fought as the radical wing of the bourgeois national liberation struggle (see part two) these workers tended to identify with the republican ideology of the American Revolution (Paine, Jefferson et al); by demanding a shorter working day they considered they were seeking the ‘equal rights’ they were entitled to as American citizens. This undoubtedly showed illusions in the democratic state and its founding myth of a republic of ‘free men’, but by de-skilling previously independent craft workers and creating a growing class of wage labourers, capital itself revealed the contradiction between the supposedly “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and the reality of industrial wage slavery – a contradiction the early workers’ movement did not hesitate to ruthlessly expose.
More significantly, the ‘workies’ drew on the ideas of the Ricardian and utopian socialists to develop a political strategy based on the argument that as the producers of all wealth in society workers should receive the full product of their labour. While it was utopian to believe that wage labour could, in effect, be voted out of existence through electing working class representatives, by demonstrating that the working class was the source of all wealth in society, these early American militants boldly ‘threw down the gauntlet to the theory of the capitalists’ (Marx) and challenged the political power of the American bourgeoisie.
The great mass of the American proletariat remained unorganised. Unskilled workers, women, children and freed slaves possessed few or no legal rights or representation and their attempts to defend themselves from ferocious exploitation were treated as dangerous acts of rebellion. Nevertheless, the struggles of these workers, often led by women and children, were among the most militant in this period, frequently leading the way and winning the solidarity of organised workers. On the canals and turnpikes, where an army of unskilled, often recent immigrant workers toiled in murderous conditions, there were hundreds of strikes and violent uprisings as well as acts of sabotage and resistance, reaching a peak in 1834-38. State militias were regularly called out to crush rebellions and shoot down workers; dozens were killed and hundreds arrested, a pattern repeated later in the construction of the railroads,[6] while in the new prison-like mills of New England, where workers – mostly women and children – toiled long hours for miserable wages in appalling conditions, resistance to the repressive regime was led by militant women workers. There was frequent solidarity between factory and skilled craft workers; in the first recorded strike by factory workers in 1828, for example, children supported by parents and local artisans in Paterson, New Jersey, struck over a proposed change in their dinner hour and won.[7] There were also early attempts to organise factory workers, with the formation in 1832 of the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workmen, which despite being unsuccessful played an important role in advancing the struggle of the early US workers’ movement for the shorter working day.[8]
The first great wave of workers’ struggles in the USA
From the beginning of the 1830s we can see a rising wave of workers’ struggles in the USA focused on the demand for a ten-hour day, reaching a high point in 1835 with the first general strike in working class history. The strike wave spread from Baltimore to Boston, with militant workers sending delegations to other cities and distributing a manifesto calling for solidarity, which had an ‘electric’ effect on the movement, extending it to Philadelphia where workers quickly shut down the city and held mass meetings to demand the ten-hour day and higher wages for both men and women. Faced with this demonstration of class solidarity employers were forced to concede most of the workers’ demands and when the news of the victory spread it provoked a renewed wave of strikes by factory and skilled workers across the eastern United States.
This wave of struggles showed a real strengthening of class solidarity, uniting skilled and unskilled, men and women, recent immigrants and native-born proletarians around the demand for a shorter working day, which was also reflected in the development of permanent organisations: membership of trade unions reached a peak of around 300,000 in 1836, a proportion of workers not matched until the New Deal 100 years later.[9] There were also initiatives to form national organisations; the National Trades’ Union formed in 1835 existed for three years. But the most significant development was undoubtedly the formation in more than a dozen cities of general unions to co-ordinate the struggles of skilled, unskilled and factory workers; there were probably the most advanced union organisations created by the working class up to this point in its history.
This growth of class solidarity also had an international dimension. The strike wave in the US can only be understood in the context of the whole wave of class struggles in Europe at this time and the 1830 July Revolution in France was a definite influence on American workers, who sent messages of solidarity to their Paris comrades: “Fellow laborers! We owe you our grateful thanks. And not we only, but the industrious classes – the people of every nation. In defending your rights, you have vindicated ours.”[10]
The development of capitalism and the strategy of capital to manage the class struggle
In this way, in the first three decades of the 19th century, the American working class, led by the skilled craft workers of the northern cities, formed one of the most advanced fractions of the world proletariat, creating its first political parties and city-wide general unions. This early US workers’ movement was militant, internationalist and, in the context of this phase of capitalist development, highly class conscious. One of its key strengths was its recognition of the importance of political action to secure permanent reforms alongside the trade union fight for immediate demands. But, led by the skilled craft workers, it was destined to be eclipsed by the development of capitalism itself and the rise of the industrial proletariat.
With the economic depression of 1837-44 this pioneering fraction was plunged into the depths of defeat. The organisations so painfully built up by the American workers were effectively wiped out and the capitalist class went onto the offensive. When workers’ struggles finally began to revive after 1844, it was in changed conditions due to the development of capitalism itself; in particular the rapid growth of capitalist methods of production based on manufacturing, which hastened the destruction of artisan and skilled craft roles and the emergence of a permanent class of wage labourers in the factories and port cities of the eastern seaboard. These changes were reflected in the strategy of capital to manage the class struggle.
The American working class fought for and won important gains in this period, including higher wages and a shorter working day – although these were paid for through increases in productivity – and the legal right to (peacefully) organise. Still, strikes remained illegal and unions were still considered an alien import into the US. The 1850s saw several waves of struggles by industrial workers culminating in the largest strike in the USA so far; the New England shoemakers’ strike of 1860 (“The Revolution in the North”). From 1844 onwards we see the organisation of the factory workers, with women playing a leading role.[11] This period also saw the growth of permanent organisations including renewed efforts to create city-wide and national unions – although these tended to be short-lived owing to the cycle of boom and ‘Panic’ (ie. financial crisis) which necessitated their rebuilding almost from scratch.
The capitalist class put up bitter resistance to a reduction in the working day and despite some extremely militant struggles – like that of women textile workers supported by men and boys in western Pennsylvania in 1845 – all attempts by the workers’ movement to organise a general strike to win this demand failed, forcing it to resort to exerting pressure on the institutions of the bourgeois state for legislative reform.
With the ‘take off’ of the American economy – by 1860 the USA was the fourth most powerful capitalist industrial nation in the world – the bourgeoisie was able to create a more flexible political apparatus and to grant limited reforms, at the same time diverting potentially threatening class struggles into safer political channels. The independent workers’ parties of the early 1830s rapidly declined and broke up, due partly to the deliberate attempts of the bourgeoisie to destroy them, but also to the success of the left-wing of the Democratic Party (‘Jacksonian Democracy’) in winning a base of support among white male workers and small farmers with policies specifically aimed at mobilising working class electoral support, combining the slogan of ‘equal rights’ for rich and poor and the use of anti-elitist, anti-monopolist rhetoric. As a result, political action by the working class tended to focus on pressuring the Democratic Party to adopt its demands by threatening to withdraw its support and run its own candidates for election. The response of the Democratic bourgeoisie to the Equal Rights Party or ‘Locofocos’, originally a protest against corruption in the New York party and conspiracy charges against striking workers, was to adopt many of its demands, combining reform of the banking and legal systems with an end to conspiracy laws..[12]
There were some significant attempts to create a working class party at this time, in particular by the German-speaking workers (who in some important industrial centres like St Louis were the dominant force in the workers’ movement). The American Workers’ League, formed in 1853 by 800 delegates at a mass meeting in Philadelphia, called on workers “without distinction of occupation, language, color, or sex” to organise into “a closely knit and independent political party”.[13] This met resistance from the narrow craft unions and proved short-lived, but, led by supporters of the ‘Marx party’ in the US, the League attempted to build links between German- and English-speaking workers and link struggles for economic and political demands, in this way laying down important principles for the construction of a future class party in the US.[14]
Reinforcing ethnic, religious and racial divisions in the working class
The biggest challenge to the building of class unity in this period – aside, of course, from the continued existence and growth of black slavery – was mass immigration. In one of the greatest migrations of labour in human history, between 1840 and 1860 4.6 million migrants arrived in the USA, mainly from Britain, Ireland and Germany.
For the working class, this brought a huge influx of fellow proletarians and allies: British workers brought their invaluable experience as pioneers of union organisations and of economic struggles; Irish workers brought their own traditions of violent resistance to landlords, while German workers, some former fighters from the 1848 revolutions, also formed a strong contingent in the trade unions and went on to found the first scientific socialist organisations in the USA.[15]
For the American ruling class, mass immigration brought not only a vital supply of labour but a weapon in its counter-offensive against the working class, to lower labour costs and put pressure on wages and conditions in order to prevent the growth of class solidarity. The fear and hostility of ‘native-born’ workers towards immigrants was carefully exploited by bourgeois propaganda and promoted by religious institutions like the Catholic Church and the two-party system, which mobilised native-born workers behind the Republican Party and Irish workers, for example, into the Democratic Party. Some sections of the working class joined in the pogromist campaigns whipped up against German, Irish and black workers, especially during the period of defeat in 1837-44 when mob attacks, lynchings and destruction of churches were common in the large eastern cities. In 1844, for example, there were violent battles between Protestant Irish native-born workers and Catholic Irish immigrants in Philadelphia which were only ended by militia firing cannons into the crowd.
Skilled craft workers facing the destruction of their role tended to combine a militant defence of working class interests with calls for restrictions on immigration.[16] But the sheer numbers of immigrants continuing to arrive made such a stance increasingly unrealistic, while the periodic economic crises of US capitalism tended to break down divisions, at least temporarily, in the face of mass unemployment; in the 1857 crisis, for example, there were mass meetings of German, Irish and American workers in New York to demand work and in Philadelphia a Central Workingmen’s Committee was formed uniting skilled and unskilled, American- and foreign-born workers to fight for unemployment relief.[17] Some unions actively worked to organise immigrant workers in their trades and combat anti-immigrant campaigns, warning that hostility towards immigrant workers was being deliberately used by employers to distract workers’ attention from class issues.
Above all solidarity was built through struggle. Common experience of industrialisation and repression tended to break down initial hostility and suspicion between groups of workers; impartially meted-out police brutality during an 1850 strike in New York helped to build solidarity between German and native-born American members of the Tailors’ Union, with German workers protesting against the imprisonment of their fellow workers.[18] The 1860 New England shoemakers’ strike – the most extensive struggle in the US before the Civil War – was also significant for uniting Irish immigrant and American-born workers, with militant women again taking a leading role.
It was precisely these tendencies for the struggles of the growing industrial proletariat to overcome ethnic, religious and sexual divisions that forced the bourgeoisie to deploy a strategy based on the racist concept of white supremacy. The reactionary idea that ‘whiteness’ entitled European workers to political rights and jobs was used to justify the systematic exclusion of ‘free’ black workers in the northern states from employment and basic democratic rights, turning them into scapegoats for the poverty of the poorest white workers and easy targets for pogroms. Despite initial support among Irish workers for the abolition of slavery, for example, this was presented with some success – primarily by the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church – as bringing the threat of a ‘flood’ of black labour. This led to so many examples of racial violence that black workers called the bricks hurled at them “Irish confetti”.[19]
The roots of these racial divisions were not simply economic. In fact Irish Catholic workers found themselves in competition for unskilled jobs not with black but other white European workers and their more recent immigrant compatriots. Irish and black workers often lived, worked and struggled side-by-side and were even joint targets of racist attacks (eg. in Boston 1829). But with the growth of Irish immigration, especially after the 1845-49 Great Famine, and the increasing importance of the Irish vote for the two main bourgeois parties, ruling class propaganda cynically manipulated the feelings of powerlessness and anger engendered by the experience of being torn from the land and surviving the horrors of hunger only to be thrown into the brutal world of wage labour, or lack of it, accompanied by the desperate poverty that was the introduction to capitalism in the USA for the poorest immigrants.
Conclusions
The US proletariat in this period faced immense difficulties imposed on it not just by the development of capitalism but the conscious strategy of a highly intelligent and flexible ruling class which understood the need for policies specifically designed to mobilise working class support while at the same time using violence and repression against militant struggles to divert workers’ energies into legal channels of reform. With no need to struggle against pro-feudal forces, the American bourgeoisie was free to use the two-party system to operate an effective division of labour against the working class, developing the Democratic Party as a specific means of diverting growing class struggles while at the same time reinforcing ethnic, religious, sexual and racial divisions in the working class.
Such a strategy was of course far from unique in ascendant capitalism; the most obvious example, dealt with extensively by Marx, was the antagonism between English and Irish workers, deliberately fostered by the capitalist class to force down wages and maintain its political power.[20] Divisions within the proletariat are inevitable in an exploiting system based on the wage labour relationship and competition between human beings; capitalism is above all a social relation between classes in which the ruling class, in order to maintain capitalist private property, must continually and consciously act to prevent the unification of the proletariat.
What was specific to the USA was the existence of black chattel slavery in such a large and potentially powerful capitalist economy. As a result, the industrial revolution in the US was shaped by the political rule of a slave-owning class whose plantation economy was essential to the survival of the capitalist regime installed by the American Revolution and by the racist ideologies developed to justify it, based on pseudo-scientific concepts of biological inferiority and white ‘Anglo-Saxon’ supremacy.[21]
What we see from the 1830s onwards is the development of such ideologies by the American capitalist class in response to the rapid and massive growth of a racially and ethnically heterogeneous industrial proletariat as part of a deliberate strategy to prevent the tendency towards class unity. The concept of white supremacy was – and remains today – deeply embedded in the apparatus of capitalist domination in the USA, as part of the means to control the development of class struggles.
For its own part, despite all these obstacles, and in circumstances definitely not of its own choosing, the American working class was ceaselessly confronted with the necessity to struggle to defend itself and for its forces to come together, to fight for its unity, which required a struggle against all the forces that sought to divide it. For the US proletariat black slavery was thus not only a moral outrage but a practical obstacle to its unification and for this reason, despite the real gains made, in this historic period it was impossible to separate the difficult struggle for class unity from the struggle against black slavery.
We will return to this question in a future article.
MH
NB: This article was revised on April 16 to include the author's latest version.
[3] ‘The birth of American democracy: “Tyranny is tyranny”’, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201402/9461/birth-american-dem... [1861]
[4] William Heighton was an immigrant English shoemaker, influenced by the ideas of the Ricardian and ‘primitive’ socialists. He played a key role in organising the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations, founded and edited the Mechanic’s Free Press (probably the first workers’ paper in the US), and became leader of the Philadelphia Working Man's Party.
[8] A key role in the Association was played by Seth Luther, a carpenter, whose widely-read Address to the Workingmen of New England (1832) was a powerful denunciation of conditions in the cotton mills. A talented speaker and organiser, Luther was very active in the early trade union movement and the struggle for the ten-hour day, including moves to form a national union.
[13] See American Workers’ League Wikipedia entry and Karl Obermann, Op. Cit., p.35.
[16] For example, the Address to the Working Men of New England by Seth Luther (1833) ended by insisting on the right of Congress to protect them from the “importation of foreign mechanics and laborers, to cut down wages of our own citizens”.
[19] David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class, 1991, p.136.
[20] See for example Marx to S. Meyer and A. Vogt, 9 April 1870, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm [1863]
[21] The highly ideological nature of such concepts is underlined by Benjamin Franklin’s exclusion from the so-called ‘white race’ not only of “swarthy” Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes but all Germans except for Saxons… (Observations concerning the increase of mankind, etc., 1751)
On 15 April, the spectacular images of Notre-Dame in flames were broadcast throughout the world. A powerful emotion seized hold of all who saw it: this cathedral is one of the most beautiful and impressive masterpieces of Paris, a jewel of gothic architecture which took no less than two hundred years to build and inspired so many artists: Victor Hugo, of course, but also the film-maker Jean Delannoy or the anarchist singer Léo Ferré. The flames destroyed the cathedral spire, the work of Viollet-le Duc, and the striking oak roof structure that dates back to the 12th and early 13th century. The sublime architecture of Notre-Dame has nothing in common with the Sacré-Coeur basilica, that pompous cream cake built in a hurry at the summit of Montmartre to celebrate the repression of the Paris Commune and to exorcise the “misfortunes which have desolated France and the misfortunes which perhaps still menace it”[1] – in other words, the “odious” proletarian revolution….
The heritage of humanity under threat from the decomposition of capitalism
The fire had not abated before the politicians, with the government at their head, rushed to the scene, or to the TV studios, crocodile tears in their eyes, to follow the example of Esmeralda in their circus acts in front of the cameras. “Tomorrow we will rebuild everything, stone by stone, beam by beam, slate by slate” declared the former government spokesman (and candidate for the mayor of Paris), Benjamin Griveaux. “Bruising for us all. We will rebuild Notre-Dame” intoned the flamboyant mathematician (and candidate for the mayor of Paris) Cédric Villani. “Everyone in solidarity faced with this drama” cried the euro MP (and also a candidate for the mayor of Paris) Rachida Dati. At the same moment, the mayor of Paris (and candidate for re-election) Anne Hidalgo hugged the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, who had come with somber mien to play his role as father of the nation: “it’s the cathedral of all the French people, even those who have never been inside it”.
No surprise, the bourgeoisie and its media began looking for scapegoats: who was responsible? Who forgot to turn off their soldering iron? Who didn’t check this or that electrical circuit? Others more clearly denounced the flagrant lack of funding, affirming that the preservation of heritage only represents 3% of the 10 billion euros of the Ministry of Culture’s budget – implying that artists, theatres, concert halls (live spectacles in technocratic terms) are costing too much!
But behind these ardent declarations of love at Notre-Dame and the hunt for scapegoats, the cold reality of capitalism remains. In order to ensure that the national capital remains competitive, the state imposes budget cuts wherever possible: education, hospitals, social benefits, culture…Thus, with the exception of the most visited monuments (ie the most profitable, as well as being the ones most damaged by being visited too much), Macron and his consorts are concerned that all these “old stones” are becoming too expensive to maintain. Since 2010, the already ridiculous budget allocated to heritage preservation has been cut by 15%[2]. This year, the government proposes to devote only 326 million euros to conserving or restoring no less than 44,000 “historic monuments”. Happily, the Jupiter-like president has conferred on the chronicler of royalty, now converted into a historian of shoddy goods, Stéphane Bern, the mission of saving the “patrimony of the French”. A lottery and a few polemics later, the TV presenter raised 19 million euros…a drop in the ocean against what’s needed.
The case of Italy is even more revolting. The exceptional heritage of this country is literally on the verge of ruin following massive budget cuts demanded by the crisis and the sharpening of international competition: the archaeological site at Pompeii is in a decrepit condition, the Coliseum of Rome is showing serious signs of fragility, as is the Uffizi Museum in Florence. Monuments which are not on the tourist highway are simply being abandoned. The fire at the national museum of Rio de Janeiro on 2 September 2018 shows the same attitude by the Brazilian state which is directly responsible for the loss of nearly all the 20 million objects housed by the building, including a 12,000 year old human fossil.
All the specialists who have talked about the Notre-Dame fire, art historians, conservators, heritage architects, have told us that there is a cruel lack of funds and a very worrying degradation of monuments. Didier Rykner, the chief editor of La Tribune de l’Art, denounced the lax security measures at historic sites: “there has already been a series of fires like this. The rules about works done on historic monuments were insufficient…a heritage architect told me that his could have been avoided if certain measures had been taken”[3]. The fire at Notre-Dame is by no means an isolated case: “Not long ago I visited the church of la Madeleine. I took digital photos from all angles. The rules were not at all being adhered to. Tomorrow, la Madeleine could also go up in flames”. In 2013, the Hôtel Lambert and its 17th century décor, situated not far from the cathedral on the Isle Saint-Louis, also burst into flames during renovation work. More recently, on 17 March, fire broke out at the Saint-Sulpice church in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Now a new “great debate” has started: was Macron being realistic when he promised the French people that “their” cathedral would be rebuilt “more beautiful than ever” within five years? Should the roofing be rebuilt as it was, in oak, or in concrete, etc.
The barbarism of capitalism deliberately destroys the heritage of humanity
When it comes to making war, the bourgeoisie spits on heritage. Bombing, deliberate destruction and fires…the ruling class doesn’t lack imagination when it comes to pulverizing the “world’s great treasures” (Trump).
When Macron says that “we have built towns, ports, churches” he forgets to add that they have so often been built on the ashes of what other “building peoples” once erected. For example, the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, which is full of extremely beautiful pagodas, was brutally sacked by French colonialism at the end of the 19th century with the blessing of the Catholic church: the Bao Thien monstery (which went back to the 11th century) and the Bao An pagoda were deliberately burned down in the name of evangelising the native Buddhist population. Between 1882 and 1886, on the ashes of the Bao Thien monastery, the colonialists erected, on the model of Notre-Dame, the very ugly and dominating Saint-Joseph cathedral, a symbol of colonial France, all of it paid for – irony of history – by a national lottery! The Bao Thien monastery represented 8 centuries of history ravaged by the flames of a criminal act of arson by the French republic!
It was the same with the destruction of the old temple and the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, razed to the ground by the Spanish conquistadors on the orders of Hernan Cortes, who put up a church which later became a cathedral designed by Charles Quint but which had little in common with Gothic, roman or baroque works of art.
In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the allies of the democratic camp bombed the city of Dresden, raining a torrent of iron and fire on one of the most beautiful cities of Germany, “Florence on the Elbe”. Dresden had no strategic interest at the military level and was even called the “hospital city” with its 22 hospitals. Nearly 1300 planes dropped incendiary bombs which killed around 35000 victims and entirely destroyed the old city. Democracy at work against fascism! For the victorious bourgeoisie it was a matter of razing big working class cities like Hamburg or Dresden to make sure that there was no proletarian uprising against the barbarism of war (as had been the case in 1918 with the German revolution).
According to UNESCO, the institution which the UN den of thieves has set up to protect “world heritage”, “the degradation or disappearance of so much cultural and natural heritage is an insidious impoverishment of the heritage of all the peoples of the world”. When the UN’s “member states” are turning the Middle East, from Syria to Yemen, into a field of ruins, when the great democratic powers like the US, France or Britain are involved everyday in the carpet bombing of the planet, all this hypocrisy is sickening. No one was surprised when Trump, president of the world’s top imperialist power, advocated the use of “water bombers” to extinguish the Notre Dame fire[4]
A new campaign for national unity on the ashes of Notre-Dame
“It’s up to us, today’s French women and men, to ensure this great continuity of the French nation” declared Macron the day after the fire broke out. To ensure the “great continuity of the French nation”, on the very first evening of the catastrophe, the government called on the “generosity of the French” and set up a “national collection”.
The bourgeoisie has always had its hands in our pockets and has no scruples about setting up a racket which asks for contributions from the citizens in the name of saving this symbol of the French nation. All the “people” of France, both bourgeois and proletarian, must come together around the reconstruction of the cathedral because that is “our destiny” (Macron). And indeed the wealthiest bourgeois families have indeed been outdoing each other to show off their philanthropy.
The bourgeoisie knows how to exploit emotions to launch a nauseating campaign of national unity where all the people of France are urged to share their tears alongside the Catholic church, the big bosses, the politicians from Sarkozy on the right to Melanchon on the left. When Macron promises to rebuild Notre-Dame, “and I want it done in five years”, there is only one, chauvinist aim: to finish the work before the Paris Olympics in order to put a shine on the “image of France”.
The working class can only base its revolutionary perspective on the real conservation of the cultural, artistic and scientific heritage of humanity, a heritage which capitalism can only continue to destroy or leave to decay bit by bit. For the proletariat, art is not a juicy market or a lure for tourists. Its aim is to build the first universal and fully human culture in history, a culture in which no monument or work of art will be a symbol of national prestige, because the ultimate aim of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against capitalism is the abolition of national frontiers and states. In the communist society of the future, works of art will all be considered as “wonders of the world”, symbols of the creativity and imaginative power of the human species.
In homage to the great artist Leo Tolstoy, Trotsky wrote: “And though he refuses a sympathetic hearing to our revolutionary objectives, we know it is because history has refused him personally an understanding of her revolutionary pathways. We shall not condemn him. And we shall always value in him not alone his great genius, which shall never die so long as human art lives on, but also his unbending moral courage which did not permit him tranquilly to remain in the ranks of THEIR hypocritical church, THEIR society and THEIR State but doomed him to remain a solitary among his countless admirers”[5].
EG, 22.4.19
[1] Alexandre Legentil, one of the initiators of the building of Sacré Coeur, cited by Paul Lesourd, Montmartre (1973)
[2] Quelle politique patrimoniale la France va-t-elle mener pour éviter que ne se répètent ces tragédies ? [1865]”, Le Monde19.4.19
[3] “Pourquoi les historiens de l’art et spécialistes du patrimoine sont en colère [1866]”, France Info (16 April 2019).
[4] Trump is such an idiot that he was not aware that dropping so much water on the fire would have produced a thermal shock resulting in the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.
[5] Trotsky, “Tolstoy, Poet and Rebel”, September 1908, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1908/09/tolstoy.htm [1867]
After waves of popular protests flooding the streets of Algiers, Oran or Constantine, demanding the resignation of president Bouteflika and his clique, the former president seems to have finally given in to the pressure of his “people”. “There won’t be a fifth mandate and this has never been a question for me, my state of health and my age mean that my final duty to the Algerian people can only be to have contributed to laying the foundations of a new Republic as the framework for a the new Algerian system which we all want” (Bouteflika’s message to the nation, broadcast by the media on 11.3.19). The media tell us that this is the first step of the people’s victory, of a new democratic project. But while the crowds cried victory, the outgoing president announced that “there won’t be a presidential election on 18 April. It was a question of satisfying a demand which so many of you have addressed to me”. This declaration provoked further popular anger. For the Algerian population, this departure was seen clearly as a fake departure, a contortion by Bouteflika and his clique to prolong its mandate without having to go through fresh elections. What a farce! In the demonstrations you could hear people saying things like “the people must be sovereign, it must decide its destiny, its future, and its president”; “with the departure of Bouteflika, we can have new political parties which can give us a new Algeria”.
These crowds of young people, precarious or unemployed, students and school pupils who headed the demonstrations, bringing whole families out with them, along with all kinds of social categories, small shop keepers and entrepreneurs, functionaries etc, have been mobilising in their thousands since 22 February against Bouteflika’s candidature for a fifth turn in office, denouncing his corrupt system. Bouteflika’s discredit among the population is so strong that no one believed his speeches about resigning. Massive demonstrations have continued to demand the end of the “Boutef” system and the establishment of “true democracy”[1].
The working class in Algeria should not believe in fairytales. Whatever clique is in power, it will remain an exploited class. In this “popular” national unity that aims to chase out this hated clique of leaders, the proletariat is totally drowned in the “Algerian people”, among “progressive” sectors of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals and all kinds of nationalist “democrats”. The terrain of defending bourgeois democracy, the nationalist terrain of aspirations for a “new Algeria”, is not the terrain of the working class. To defend bourgeois democracy and its electoral circus, to aspire to the renovation of the Algerian nation, is to abandon the struggle against exploitation.
It’s always the ruling class that wins elections! Whichever faction is in power, all governments, all heads of state in all countries of the world have only one function: to manage the national capital, to defend the interests and preserve the privileges of the bourgeoisie on the backs of the working class. No doubt the Bouteflika clan has shown itself to be particularly arrogant and contemptuous, ostentatiously piling up its riches while the great part of the population lives in frightful poverty. But you only have to look at what happens in “pluralist democracy’, where governments of left and right perpetually succeed each other: the working class is subjected to the same exploitation, to unemployment, the degradation of living and working conditions, attacks on wages that get worse year after year. The proletarians of Algeria must not be taken in by the siren songs of the trade unions who call on them to join up with the popular protests by organising a general strike. A strike not against poverty and exploitation, against the deterioration of living standards, but to replace Bouteflika with a “good” head of state who cares about the needs of the “people” and wants to build a “new Algeria” for all classes. All these lying parties, these “saviours from on high”, these trade unions who specialize in sabotaging the class struggle, all of them promise the exploited in Algeria a more democratic, more prosperous Algeria at a time when the entire capitalist world is plunging into an economic crisis which is hitting the world working class very hard.
The proletariat of Algeria knows what it means to fight against exploitation. In the past, it has organised strikes in different sectors, it has faced up to the repression handed out by the Bouteflika clique. It should have no illusions: tomorrow, even if Bouteflika goes, the same repression will descend of the working class if it dares to defend its own interests - a repression under the command of a “new look”, democratically elected government.
In Algeria, as in the whole capitalist world, the proletariat has to reject the mystification of bourgeois elections and the poison of nationalism. Bouteflika, this senile potentate, is just a personification of a senile world capitalist system which has nothing to offer the exploited except more poverty and more repression. In Algeria, as in all countries, there is only one alternative: the autonomous struggle of the proletariat against its exploiters!
Raymond 13.3.19
[1] Since this article was written, fresh demonstrations broke out in early April when it became clear that Bouteflika would merely step aside for another well-known figure in the old clan, Abdelkader Bensalah, supposedly an interim leader for a maximum of 90 days until an election. The military hierarchy, with whom the reigning clique is intimately linked, will not of course be seeking re-election. The demonstrations raised the apparently radical slogan “get them all out”, but this is aimed not at the bourgeoisie as a ruling class, but at a particular clique within the bourgeoisie. The proletariat will only be able to “get them all out” when it breaks through the chains of democracy and the nation.
"In honour of what cause do we perish?"
On April 26 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, exploded with around the force of four Hiroshima-type bombs and spewed out a consequent volume of radioactive fallout that had its own fingerprints on it. The response of the Russian authorities was completely chaotic, totally insufficient, and mendacious. The rulers of this "socialist paradise" left hundreds of thousands of their citizens to their fate, to the growing ambient decomposition of "every man for himself" that was to be the hallmark of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the political and social tremors around the wider world three years later.
Panicked authorities gave no significant warnings such as staying indoors, or point out the dangers to food, milk and drinking water. The May Day parades in Kiev of thousands of schoolchildren were forced to go ahead a few days later and group after group of them marched. The kids struggled for breath and for many their skin showed unusual purple sunburns. Technology was used to seed rain clouds and bring the radioactive fall-out away from Moscow and down into Ukraine and Belarus. Soldiers, workers, prisoners showed exceptional bravery in trying to put the reactor's fire out but the official disaster death toll of 54 of these "liquidators" is plainly another big lie.
There was a military dimension to Chernobyl in that it produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. There had already been 1042 nuclear accidents in the USSR over five years, with 104 at Chernobyl alone. Forget about the usual lie of "operator failure", Chernobyl's RBMK reactor was inherently unsafe and efforts to stop it melting down fed more fuel to the fire. By summer 1986, 15,000 people exposed to Chernobyl's radiation were treated in Moscow's hospitals; 40,000 checked into hospitals in Kiev, Gomel and elsewhere in the east of the country. Half of the 11,600 treated in Belarus were children. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was told by the Minister for Health that 299 people were hospitalised; part of "the Politburo's alternative universe", says Kate Brown. Not that being hospitalised did much good in the face of an already patchy and overburdened service that sorely lacked ed beds, equipment and, most of all, knowledge about what they were dealing with. What they were dealing with was not only ignorance, but also the lies and smoothing words of a state that called itself socialist but was in reality a highly statified form of capitalism.
Widespread contamination and official cover-up
The spiralling wind carried the radioactive debris from Chernobyl right around Europe and the heavy rain brought it down to accumulate the poison into "hot-spots", with for example three in Britain, Cumbria, Wales and Devon, about which there was no official explanation - not a word. In the years after the explosion the amount of strontium-90 in the bones of people living in Zagreb, nearly a thousand miles away, doubled. In Ukraine and Belarus and other parts of the USSR, people continued to eat the meat, fruit, vegetables, drink the milk and water, and burn the peat fuel and timber that were all repositories for accumulated and accumulating radioactive cocktails. Lorries were way above the "safe" levels for contamination - given that the safe levels were arbitrary and deliberately underestimated - after carrying sheep's wool and other by-products saturated with radioactivity. Some produce taken through EU contaminated areas was chopped-up with "clean" stuff and sent as aid to Africa. Blueberries from Ukraine and Belarus continued to be picked, warehoused, put in fancy containers and sent to the EU. All the blueberries from this region were radioactive, some of them highly so. They were mixed up with the lower doses and sold in supermarkets and delis across the EU, after which ubiquitous TV food programmes extolled their "miraculous health benefits".
Kate Brown has done a real service in her research and analysis and though no revolutionary her analysis clearly indicts a system of production for profit and militarism for the unfolding public health disaster. Her odysseys in and around the exclusion zone, talking to workers, farmers, peasants and officials at every level, are interesting and revealing, giving this book a much more urgent feel. She was in the Soviet Union before and after its collapse where she clearly identifies a chaotic situation where everyone was left to their own devices, the plunder and ruthlessness of the security forces that harassed, jailed and tortured anyone who suggested that a public health disaster was unfolding.
But this is not a "this is where communism gets you" diatribe that runs alongside the "victory of capitalism". Kate Brown rightly exposes the calculated callousness, stupidity and cruelty of the Russian bourgeoisie but also talks to many brave individuals throughout Russia who raised the alarm and continued to do research and ask questions, with some of them paying a heavy price. In Ukraine, Belarus and other parts of Russia there were widespread strikes and disquiet and cynicism regarding official "explanations" and their advice (the Manual reference in the book's title refers to the manuals that the Russian authorities put out after the disaster along the lines of there being "no problem", with the actual problems being obliquely referred to afterwards). The book goes far wider and deeper than one incident and Kate Brown makes the point that the Chernobyl event is only one part of a continuum of nuclear pollution from the Cold War until now, and she clearly illuminates the cover-up that necessarily accompanies it.
In East and West – the ruling class is careless about life
The US general in charge of the nuclear bombing of Japan, Leslie Groves, rejected claims of nuclear poisoning, and the medical section of the US army report on the physical damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is missing from the US National Archives to this day. It was dismissed as "something small", "to be disregarded". In the Three-Mile-Island disaster, Pennsylvania 1979, scientists estimated one or two extra cancers. When State Health Commissioner Gordon McLeod announced 9 months later that child mortality in a ten-mile radius had doubled, he was sacked. Apart from all the nuclear "accidents" before and since Chernobyl - Windscale, Dounreay, before, St. Louis and Fukushima after, to name only a couple, nuclear testing has set off bombs, sometimes in secret, high in the atmosphere and deep into the ground with no concern as to their effects. The normally conservative US National Cancer Institute estimated that nuclear tests in Nevada caused between 11,000 and 220,000 thyroid cancers downwind. To this can be added all other nuclear testing, secret or not, British, French, Pakistani, Indian and Chinese.
In 2015, the physicist James Smith published a one-and-a-half page paper stating that wildlife was abundant in the alienation zone of Chernobyl. Smith had never been to Russia but the media lapped it up, reporting and re-reporting it along the lines that "nature will sort everything out". It even gave rise to "Green" eco-tourism around the Chernobyl zone, documentaries and TV wildlife programmes showing how everything was returning to "normal". But as Kate Brown shows, intrepid scientific researchers in the same area at the same time were finding radioactive damage "under every rock they turned over". Nature has bitten back against nuclear pollution with a vengeance on a global scale and in the long term. Despite all the evidence the UN and its offshoots continue to deny the scale of the problem. The idea that a little radioactivity is good for you persists. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues with high and arbitrary thresholds. In 1995 Unscear (UN Scientific Committee for the Effects of Nuclear Radiation) said nothing needed to be done because there was no problem and that they had been "exaggerated and incorrect", with the UN saying that increasing thyroid problems are "easily treatable".
The cynical balance-sheets of capital
Nuclear fallout permeates a human body through the skin and through every orifice. It's not the sole cause of cancers but a major cause. It also causes respiratory problems, heart problems, gut problems and those of the brain and nervous system. We were told that the rise in cancers was mainly due to the fact that "people are living longer" and through advances in medical care. The "living longer" line is one the bourgeoisie uses a lot: you're getting ill - it's because you are living longer; it's your fault - die earlier and save the state some money! In any case life expectancy is now falling in the US and Britain and much more dramatically in poorer areas while the male fertility rate is falling, particularly in the northern hemisphere where radioactivity tends to cluster. And the argument about living longer doesn't explain the rise in childhood cancers; twenty to twenty-five years ago a child with cancer would bring doctors and specialists from far and wide. Now? Now they appear in clusters everywhere in young bodies which soak up and accumulate nuclear pollution.
And while nuclear energy has a strong military component, it is also an important source of energy in the capitalist economy. And as such it is a typical showcase of the short-sighted, unsustainable) approach inherent in capitalist economic balance-sheets. Thus for example the calculation of the cost of energy production in a nuclear plant never takes into consideration the huge technical difficulties involved in getting rid of nuclear waste. All the different ways of getting rid of it or even just storing it involve astronomical costs, which will be an ecological and economic burden for centuries. All this is of no interest to the respective energy companies.
**************************
Kate Brown notes with disgust that in the 1960's the western bourgeoisie came up with the concept of the "collective dose" of radiation (ignoring its accumulative and complex interactions) giving a cynical and arbitrary "cost benefit" which weighed the negatives of nuclear testing on the population against the "positives of increased security" from possessing tested nuclear weapons. Decadent capitalism is driven to develop its weapons of destruction in order to defend itself against the historical obsolescence of the national state, which is a central factor in its permanent drive towards war. It is irrational and dangerous but capitalism is enmeshed in this logic and will continue this deadly drive whatever the cost; nature is already having its revenge. This is the “cause in whose honour we perish” in answer to the question raised by those immediately affected in Ukraine. The calculated indifference to the suffering masses by the state, the lies, the blatant cover-ups of the facts, the deceit are not aberrations but an inevitable part of a system based on exploitation, profit and national defence..
Baboon, 3.5.2019
In reality the working class has no stake in the Brexit imbroglio, no camp to choose among the many factions or the umpteen ‘solutions’. All the arguments in the Brexit debate are ultimately to do with the best conditions in which to manage the capitalist economic crisis, the best way to compete with other capitalist swindlers on the world market, with the ultimate aim of extracting the maximum surplus value from the working class and deciding amongst the bourgeoisie who gets the biggest cut.
The inexorable decline of workers’ living standards - now there are 14 million in poverty in Britain according to the latest UN report - began long before Brexit and will continue whatever ‘solution’ is found to the EU conundrum.
And behind Brexit is the question of Britain’s imperialist role in the world and which military conflicts the proletariat will have to pay for.
Workers have no interest or benefit in any of these ‘national interests’. Even if, in the fantasy of the no-deal Brexiteers, immigration were to stop, the erosion of workers’ livelihoods would continue. Even if Britain remained in the EU, workers would still be the target of austerity measures like those imposed on the Greek proletariat.
Indeed, the ongoing media circus about the Brexit mess is used as a means of obscuring the central questions for the working class and pretending that the latter has no interests and perspective of its own.
The different factions in the Labour Party play a full part in creating and maintaining this smokescreen concerning the real interests of the working class, and are barely distinguishable from the Tory factions. Jeremy Corbyn and the ‘hard left’ only provide a subsidiary diversion, with the promise of ‘nationalisations’, the pretence of ‘redistributing wealth’ - which means in reality making poverty more equitable - or on the world arena supporting an alternative set of imperialist gangsters. The Trotskyists and other leftists have still more radical variations on these illusions.
All these political games of the bourgeois parties help to reinforce the present disorientation of the working class.
However, sooner or later, the further worsening of the economic crisis will oblige the working class to revive the struggle to defend its living conditions, to recognise itself as an autonomous class once more and expose more clearly the fact that the present social system has no alternative to the decline of its system other than a growing barbarism.
This renewed class struggle will reveal itself as a political struggle. But the working class has nothing to gain from the bourgeois state or the parliamentary game which, as Brexit shows, excludes the political interests and participation of the proletariat. In the future the working class will therefore have to re-create its own mass organisations of political power and a revolutionary political party. Como 25.5.19
1. The historical and international significance of the UK’s exit from the EU marks a qualitative acceleration of the impact of decomposition on the political life of the world bourgeoisie. Brexit demonstrates the increasing impact of populism, the political expression of the deepening of capitalist decomposition, which has also taken the form of populist governments in eastern Europe and Italy, and the strengthening of populist parties and factions in Western Europe and the US. The Brexit mess has become a veritable caricature of political crises internationally.
With the impasse over Brexit, the whole of the British bourgeoisie, state and society has been thrown into a political crisis due to the irresponsibility of minority factions of the bourgeoisie, the result of the contamination of these factions by the upsurge of populism.
To this can be added the other manifestations of the deepening historical crisis: the growing undermining of the post-World War Two institutions of the Pax Americana: the EU, WTO, the World Bank, NATO, and, underlying all this, the irresolvable global economic crisis.
2. Brexit has been able to have such an impact in Britain because of the historical tensions within the ruling class over Europe that have been generated by its decline as an imperialist power. Before 1956 the British ruling class believed it could influence Europe from outside, but after the humiliation of Suez it had to accept the end of its time as an international power of the first rank. Being part of Europe was not only about economic stability but also, very importantly, about continuing the long-term British imperialist policy of trying to keep the continental powers divided, and particularly of opposing the influence of German imperialism.
At the same time, British imperialism also needed to balance its involvement in Europe with the “special relationship” with the USA, a relationship that only really had substance if the UK was part of Europe.
Fundamentally British imperialism had been grudging about having to be part of the EU; nevertheless it had bitten the bullet in order to further the national interest.
3. The end of the division of the world into two imperialist blocs in 1989 unleashed powerful centrifugal tendencies. The Eastern bloc collapsed and the Western bloc lost its reason for existence. This pushed all the major imperialist powers into a new historical period, trying to find the best way to defend the national interest in a much more chaotic world. At the imperialist level this meant all of the secondary powers having to navigate international waters in which the US was in decline, and thus all the more determined to maintain its role.
This placed great pressure on the British bourgeoisie, exacerbating the already existing divisions within it, especially in its political apparatus, over how best to defend the national interest in relation to Europe. The rise of German imperialism over the last 30 years and the weight of French imperialism in the EU have both underlined the weakened role of Britain. Thatcher’s stated disquiet about the impact of the rise of Germany expressed a deep historical fear haunting British imperialism, fueling Euroscepticism within the Tory party and xenophobia amongst its electorate. By the early 2010s the ability of the British bourgeoisie to manoeuvre within the EU was thus being undermined due to the increasing weight of Euroscepticism within the Tory party and to the electoral successes of UKIP. It was this that led to the decision to hold the referendum in 2016.
4. The political gamble of calling the referendum to counter the growing influence of Euroscepticism and populism ran up against a number of fundamental problems. In particular, the bourgeoisie underestimated the depth of the impact of populism within the population and parts of the working class, the result of:
- the proletariat’s loss of confidence in itself over the last 30 years under the impact of a series of important defeats;
- the growing weight of despair and lumpenisation in areas and regions which have been abandoned to rot;
- a growing cynicism and distrust towards the parliamentary system, not in the context of a developing proletarian alternative but rather in one of confusion, frustration and anger which has left parts of the proletariat prey to the influence of populism. The fact that the Leave campaign was able to mobilise 3 million to vote who had previously abandoned voting enabled them to win the referendum;
- the use of Euroscepticism as a panacea for austerity, the blaming of immigration for the decrease in workers’ living standards.
- the ideology of blaming the economic recession of 2008 on the bankers and the traditional political elites, rather than capitalism itself.
5. Brexit has thrown the British bourgeoisie, one of the oldest and most experienced in the world, into a profound political crisis. It has faced other crises but never one which has so fundamentally weakened every aspect of its political life.
In the Theses on Decomposition of 1990 the ICC showed that this was one of the manifestations of decomposition:
“Amongst the major characteristics of capitalist society’s decomposition, we should emphasise the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation. Obviously, this is a result of the ruling class’ increasing loss of control over its economic apparatus, the infrastructure of society. The historic dead-end in which the capitalist mode of production finds itself trapped, the successive failures of the bourgeoisie’s different policies, the permanent flight into debt as a condition for the survival of the world economy, cannot but effect the political apparatus which is itself incapable of imposing on society, and especially on the working class, the ‘discipline’ and acquiescence necessary to mobilise all its strength for a new world war, which is the only historic ‘response’ that the bourgeoisie has to give. The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilise as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’”[1]
30 years ago, when the Theses were published, the main expression of this dynamic was the collapse of the Eastern bloc. However, as we said at the time:
“The spectacle which the USSR and its satellites are offering us today, of a complete rout within the state apparatus itself, and the ruling class’ loss of control over its own political strategy is in reality only the caricature (due to the specificities of the Stalinist regimes) of a much more general phenomenon affecting the whole world ruling class, and which is specific to the phase of decomposition”.
6. The political destabilisation of the ruling class in Britain has been most graphically expressed in the chaos that has developed as the date for the UK’s exit from the EU has drawn ever closer. This has led to the paralysis of parliament. The British state was once seen as a master of controlling the political situation; now the political apparatus is being openly mocked, but also distrusted, due to its inability to manage the Brexit process.
The main factions of the state accepted that they had no option but to accept Brexit following the referendum. Nevertheless, British state capitalism has sought to do all it can to try and make the best of a very bad situation. The main factions in the Tory and Labour Parties around May and Corbyn accepted this policy. But with the deepening tensions generated by the realisation of the full implications of Brexit, each of the parties has become increasingly divided by numerous factions pushing their own solutions to the irreconcilable contradictions of Brexit. Even within the main factions of the Tory and Labour Parties there are divisions over how to achieve a planned Brexit. May has to struggle against the hard-line Brexiteers of the European Research Group, while Corbyn seeks to reconcile supporting a planned Brexit in a party that is overwhelmingly Remain. This situation has resulted in more than two years of conflict in both parties as all the factions have battled it out. Both May and Corbyn have had to fight off ‘coup’ attempts in the form of parliamentary confidence motions.
This situation of increasingly irresponsible political conflict has been exacerbated by the faction-fighting as the state desperately seeks to avoid crashing out of the EU. Through May the state has been reduced to attempting to bribe MPs into supporting the Withdrawal Agreement, with millions of pounds being offered to the most pro-Brexit Labour constituencies, which are usually the most deprived. This has generated even more tensions within the Labour Party, with pro-Remain MPs denouncing other MPs for accepting these bribes.
These divisions are not limited to the main political parties but extend into the unions and the leftist groups, which underlines just how integrated they are into the state structure.
7. The state’s efforts to negotiate a deal have not only had to cope with the political crisis domestically but have increased the political crisis in Europe. The result of the referendum poured petrol onto populist bonfires across Europe. The populist governments in Hungary and Poland drew renewed strength from the result. In France, the Front National gained inspiration, whilst in Italy the populists of the Northern League and Five Star Movement rode to power on the coat tails of Brexit. Faced with this upsurge of populism, the main factions of the EU have no choice but to make Brexit as difficult as possible. The most responsible parts of the European bourgeoisie are particularly angry about this fall-out from the British bourgeoisie’s inability to control its own political situation.
8. It is very difficult to make a precise analysis of the perspectives for the unfolding of this crisis because the bourgeoisie is engaged in an increasingly desperate effort to avoid a no-deal Brexit. However, what can be said with certainty is that this crisis and political instability will continue and worsen. Even if the bourgeoisie was able to achieve a planned Brexit it is still faced with the increasingly complex question of steering its way, in a weakened state, through the deepening chaos of the international situation. Given the chaos already inflicted on the British bourgeoisie by the process leading up to Brexit, the accentuating pressures towards political irresponsibility, ‘every man for himself’ and the fragmentation of the political apparatus can only continue.
9. Over the course of the last 100 years British state capitalism has maintained a two-party system in order to contain and control the political situation. However, even before Brexit this system was being weakened by the emergence of nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. Now we are witnessing a process of fragmentation of the Tory and Labour Parties themselves. The last two years have exacerbated these tensions to levels that threaten the very existence of the Conservative Party. Post Brexit these divisions will widen as the party’s factions blame each other for the deepening problems faced by British capitalism, entering into new battles over which policies to follow. This is assuming that the party does not fracture under the pressure of achieving Brexit.
10. The situation in the Labour Party will not be much less fractious. The rise of Corbyn enabled the bourgeoisie to establish a clear difference between the Labour and Tory Party. This is now in danger as Corbyn’s strategy - trying to please the Leave faction by agreeing to Brexit, but at the same time insisting on the need for the closest possible relationship with the EU in order to contain the Remainers - comes under increasing strain. Fundamental to these tensions is the fact that the greatly increased party membership, who joined in support of Corbyn, in a large majority support a second referendum. This is being used by the Remain MPs to put pressure on Corbyn. The Blairites in particular will continue to use this tension in order to undermine Corbyn. As with the Tory Party, if the party survives Brexit, there will be a sharpening of these tensions as the anti-Corbyn factions try to depose him for allowing Brexit to take place.
The fragmentation of either of the parties would be a major problem for the British ruling class, because it would open up a political arena that could be exploited by the populists, thus further deepening the tensions and difficulties in its political apparatus. Such a collapse of the two-party system would be a further expression of a growing loss of control of the political situation.
11. To this political instability has to be added the prospect of the strengthening of moves towards independence amongst the Scottish fractions of the British bourgeoisie. Such a threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom would provoke unprecedented tensions within the ruling class. Not only between the Scottish Nationalist Party and the rest of the national bourgeoisie, but also within the Scottish bourgeoisie, as not all agree with independence, and also within the national bourgeoisie as a whole, as those who wanted to Remain blame the Brexiters for undermining the territorial integrity of British capitalism.
12. Tensions will also worsen in Northern Ireland between the Loyalist and Irish Nationalist factions of the bourgeoisie. The Good Friday Agreement that brought about the ceasefire was based upon the UK being in the EU, thus providing the Nationalists with the ability to appeal to the EU over the UK. The loss of this framework is not discussed by the bourgeois media. However, the Irish bourgeoisie is very aware of the potential for renewed instability in the North and that is why they are insistent upon the withdrawal plan which tries to ensure there is no hard border and the subsequent potential for reigniting the ‘Troubles’.
The majority in the North voted to Remain in order to avoid this. However, the hard-line Democratic Unionists are fervent Brexiteers, while Sinn Fein was for Remain. These divisions in the context of political instability in the wider political apparatus will accentuate pressures towards the outbreak of open conflicts between the different factions of the bourgeoisie in the North.
The Welsh Nationalists who also supported Remain in order to have a counter to the national bourgeoisie will renew their calls for independence.
13. Leaving the EU marks a qualitative moment in the 100-year decline of British imperialism:
- being forced out of the EU through its own political weakness means that British imperialism has retreated from one of its most important areas of interest. The whole imperialist policy of Britain within the EU was to contain and undermine a resurgent Germany. For example, Blair’s push for the extension of the EU into Eastern Europe was aimed at bringing into the EU states who historically have opposed Germany. Leaving the EU undermines this ability. British imperialism will now have to stand on the sidelines as its main European rivals Germany and France are given a freer hand. It will only be able to have an influence by provoking tensions within the EU, supporting those countries opposing Germany. However, these countries distrust the UK as it walks away from Europe.
- The ‘special relationship’ with the US is threadbare and will become even more exposed because, without Britain in the EU, the US no longer has the UK to counter German and French imperialism. Trump has already made it clear that he sees Britain as a state whose political life he can openly seek to destabilise, with his support for Brexit. This may have helped to deepen the political crisis in Britain and the EU, but once Britain leaves what role can Britain play for the US in its efforts to undermine the EU and confront Russia and China? A profoundly weakened British imperialism will find itself marginalised and forced into desperate actions in order to try and assert itself.
- For China, Britain outside the EU becomes a secondary European power that it will try to use as a counter-weight to the US.
In this context tensions within the bourgeoisie will be worsened as the ruling class desperately seeks ways to maintain some international influence. The idea of moving closer to the US will provoke strong opposition given the bitter experience of the US’s undermining of Britain’s imperialist role over the last 100 years, intensified by the loss of international reputation caused by the Blair government’s support for the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. The EU will keep the UK at arm’s length. British imperialism will be left looking increasingly like a third-rate imperialist power.
14. Brexit has already had a very important impact on the economy. A central part of the manufacturing base is the car industry but this has seen a 50% fall in investment since 2016. The main business bodies, the City, the Confederation of British Industry, the Chambers of Commerce, have all expressed their anger about the political crisis and paralysis. They, along with other more responsible parts of the bourgeoisie and the state, are determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit, hence their support for the Withdrawal Deal. However, the political instability caused by trying to get this deal agreed holds out a grim prospect for the future trade deal with the EU and this will reignite the tensions over Brexit. The achieving of a trade deal with the EU is of huge importance to the economy not only because of the size of the EU, but also because, as Japan has made clear, until such a deal is agreed it will not discuss a deal with the UK. Given that the EU and Japan in January 2019 signed one of the biggest trade agreements in the world, they will not want to give British capitalism any advantages when it comes to an agreement between them. The signing of this deal underlines just how damaging Brexit is: British capitalism is being forced to leave one of the world’s biggest free trade areas. All the talk of a new, expanding ‘global Britain’ is just hot air.
This is further underlined by the situation facing the UK in relation to the USA. The Brexiteers made much of being able to strike a deal with the US rapidly. The brutal use of US economic, political and imperialist power by Trump to openly attack its main rivals, to rip up existing free trade arrangements and to impose bilateral deals are the most obvious indications that any hopes placed in the US being ‘nice’ to British capitalism are delusions.
15. The referendum campaign and the period since have seen an unprecedented ideological onslaught, outside of a situation of world war, on the proletariat in Britain. Five years of being suffocated by a blanket of democratic, nationalist and xenophobic ideology has seen important divisions generated within the proletariat. The social atmosphere is saturated with manufactured tensions between Leave and Remain, the North and South, City and Country, the poor white working class and the rest of the class. A climate of irrational hate, social tension and boiling potential violence pervades society.
These destructive forces are not new but express the advancing ideological decay of bourgeois society, the noxious fumes seeping from its rotting flesh. The proletariat cannot escape this poisonous atmosphere. As we said in the late 1980s the decomposition of bourgeois society, as its contradictions tear at the fabric of society, would have an impact on the very qualities that are the strengths of the proletariat:
“The different elements which constitute the strength of the working class directly confront the various facets of this ideological decomposition:
· solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look out for number one’;
· the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of the relationships which form the basis for all social life;
· the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society;
· consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch”
The impact of these tendencies is clearly manifested in the present situation. Already, before the referendum, these toxins were seeping into the working class.
16. The series of defeats suffered by important bastions of the working class in the 70s and 80s combined with the international retreat in the class struggle following the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 led to a sense of disarray and loss of confidence within the working class. This was strengthened by the growing impact of the abandoning of whole regions, cities, towns and villages to a process of social decay following the destruction of the regional and local economies under the impact of the crisis. Workers were abandoned to the crushing poverty of long-term unemployment, or the desperate search for increasingly temporary and insecure jobs. These areas were also faced with a rising tide of destructive drug use, gang rivalries and criminality.
The weight of this decay was also reinforced by the bourgeoisie with its campaigns against asylum seekers, people on benefits, etc. The central message was that the problems of society are the responsibility not of capitalism but of scapegoat communities: shirkers, migrants etc. This ideology is all the stronger because of the lack of open class movements in the recent period (for example, the Office for National Statistics says that the number of strikes in 2017 was the lowest since records began in 1891); but it can also have an impact on struggles around unemployment and low pay, as we saw in 2013 during the Lindsay construction workers’ strike when workers took up the slogan “British jobs for British workers” which had been promulgated by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The whole Brexit campaign fed on and deepened this putrid atmosphere, and all the factional divisions it stirred up have had the result of obliterating any alternative to the proletariat lining up behind one faction or other of the bourgeoisie.
The key to the situation is for the working class to recognise that it has separate interests from all factions of the ruling class. A sober analysis of the present situation must admit that the proletariat’s sense of its own identity as a revolutionary class has weakened. A central aspect of the activity of revolutionary organisations is to contribute to the process that leads to the revival of a conscious class struggle. WR January 2019
This resolution, adopted by a conference in January 2019, seeks to draw out the main perspectives for the British situation in the coming period. It is one of the core responsibilities of a revolutionary organisation to put forward the most coherent understanding of the perspectives for the national situation. This takes on even more importance when the whole social situation is dominated by the ruling class’s unprecedented political crisis around Brexit – a crisis that is going to continue to worsen in the coming period. Without an understanding of the roots and consequences of this turmoil it is impossible to draw out the probable implications of this for the proletariat in Britain and internationally in the coming years.
The role of the resolution is not to provide a detailed analysis of dynamics at work - this is done in the report on the national situation from the same conference - but to lay down a general theoretical framework and its implications. In the last issue of World Revolution we published the historical section of the report, which readers can refer to[1].
In this introduction we want to examine if the resolution has been verified by the unfolding of events.
The resolution argues that Brexit is the product of the combination of the century-long decline of British imperialism, the divisions within the ruling class that this has generated, the deepening of the impact of the decomposition of capitalism since the 2008 financial crisis, and the rise of populism. The resolution demonstrates that the bourgeoisie is caught up in irreconcilable contradictions. These are not only represented by the rise of populism, but also by the already existing divisions over Europe within the main parties, which have been pushed to a point where they could destroy the carefully constructed parliamentary political apparatus that has served the British bourgeoisie so well over the last two centuries.
This has been fully confirmed by the paralysis of the parliamentary machine over the last 6 months. Both the main political parties have been torn by factional struggles over Brexit. The Withdrawal Agreement drawn up by the May government and the EU, aimed at preventing Britain from simply crashing out of the EU, has been undermined by the inability of the main factions of both parties to agree on how to carry out this plan. May was unable to compromise because of the pressure exerted by the pro-Brexit hardliners, whilst Corbyn was constrained by the divisions within Labour where important factions want a Customs Union or a Second Referendum. The last desperate effort to get this Agreement were the common talks between both parties but these were doomed because it became obvious that May was going to be driven from power by factions in the Tory party opposed to a deal with Labour, as proved to be the case when May announced that she would resign on 7 June. This paralysis has now produced a leadership contest in the Tory party, with the most rabidly pro-Brexit figures easily in the lead, but whatever the result it will not resolve the stalemate.
This political vacuum has stimulated a new upsurge of populism, fed by anger and frustration at the inability of parliament to progress on Brexit. Farage and his wealthy bourgeois backers have taken full advantage of this void by forming the Brexit Party. This new party expresses a serious danger to the main parties. It represents a new face to populism. Gone is the strident anti-immigration rhetoric and the odd and bizarre characters that made UKIP unacceptable to many. The new party is very slick, it has a very sophisticated internet campaign and sells itself as being both multi-cultural and supported by younger voters. Farage has made much of his rejection of UKIP’s increasing racism and Islamophobia. This operation is a serious effort to make inroads into the main parties, based on being the only party able to defend the democratic vote of “the people”.
The rise of the Brexit Party, has thrown a spanner in the works. A new leader of the Tory party will not want to call a general election, as long as Brexit is not solved, because as one former Cameron aid put it, they will be “toast”. Labour will also be very reluctant to go for an election because the Brexit Party is making an effort to sell itself as the party of working people.
This means that three years after a referendum that was meant to push back the tide of populism the ruling class is now faced with a re-invigorated and more sophisticated populist party pouring petrol onto its political crisis.
As the resolution says, this crisis is threatening the territorial integrity of the British state. The election of a hard-line Brexiteer as Tory leader and/or the arrival of the Brexit party in parliament would worsen tensions with the pro-Independence Scottish fraction of the bourgeoisie.
The impact of this is not confined to Britain. As the resolution explains Brexit contributed to the strengthening of populism in Europe and the US. The EU and the main European powers have responded with a very hard line towards the British bourgeoisie. This line has paid some benefits, because the political chaos has produced a real fear even amongst the European populist parties and governments, who have now abandoned or toned down the demand to leave the EU. However, the populist far right still poses a serious threat to the future of the EU.
The Brexiteers hopes of a new “global” Britain able to strike up free trade deals have already started to hit the hard rock of reality. The developing trade war between the US and China has made it clear that the US has no hesitations to undermine the interests of its former allies in its increasingly desperate struggle with China. The Huawei scandal has seen China threatening its investment in Britain if the British government gives in to US pressure to ban Huawei from its infrastructure.
The struggle with China for global dominance, along with its intention to undermine its European rivals, means that the US has little interest in a weakened Britain outside the EU. Trump was happy to encourage Brexit in order to hurt the EU, but, once Brexit takes place, what role can the UK play for the US?
The resolution’s perspective of the deepening of the political crisis has been verified by events. Its warning of the threat of populism in this situation of paralysis was justified. The emergence of the Brexit Party is another factor of chaos and instability, further endangering the British state’s efforts to ensure an orderly Brexit.
The implications of this situation for the working class are grim. More than a decade of austerity has taken place with hardly any response from the class. This does not mean there is no discontent but it has not found expression through the class struggle due to the proletariat’s profound lack of self-confidence. This disorientation and demoralisation have been exacerbated by Brexit and the political crisis. The support for populism and its simplistic promise of a better tomorrow among parts of the proletariat is an expression of this despair and hopelessness. However, an even greater danger to the proletariat is being mobilised behind anti-populism and its defence of democracy and the democratic state. At present and in the coming period the proletariat will find it hard to avoid being mobilized behind these different bourgeois factions.
But the economic crisis will continue the deepen, and no matter which bourgeois faction dominates, they are all going to have to attack the proletariat. It is only through struggling against these attacks that the working class can defend itself. Such struggles will see the same response from the Tories, Labour or populists, because in the end they all defend capitalism. WR, 25.5.19
Those born in 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks will be 18 in 2019. What have they grown up with? What have they been exposed to on the news? What sort of world have they been living in?
Following 9/11 there was Bush’s “global war on terrorism”. In reality, it was just “war” where, in invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and in other campaigns as well) US imperialism attempted (and failed) to assert its position as the only surviving super power.
But what about terrorism? That seems to have gone from outrage to atrocity, from unspeakable massacre to indiscriminate terror. To take a handful of examples, there were the 2002 bombings in a tourist area of Bali where more than 200 people were killed and hundreds injured. In 2004 there were the bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid which killed 193 people and injured 2000. In 2011 there were the attacks by Anders Breivik: a car bomb in Oslo which killed 8 and injured more than 200 - followed by the attack on a summer camp where he killed 69 and injured more than 100. In Paris in November 2015 there were mass shootings and suicide bombing at cafes and restaurants, culminating in the attacks on the Bataclan theatre; 130 died and more than 400 were injured. There was the attack in Nice in 2016 where a lorry was driven through crowds of people celebrating 14 July where 86 died and nearly 500 were injured. Also in 2016, there was the attack on the gay club in Orlando, where 49 people were shot and many injured. More recently we have seen bloody attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego.
And how does the capitalist media explain terrorism? The perpetrators are typically described as Islamist fanatics, or white supremacists. Their crime is “extremism”. But there have been other massacres with individuals “on the rampage” as in the US school shootings such as Parkland, Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. How do they fit into the picture? Or what about the October 2017 shootings in Las Vegas where a man fired more than 1000 rounds of ammunition into a crowd of concertgoers, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds? For the media people are bad or mad, or sometimes there is just no explanation.
The shootings at two mosques in March this year in Christchurch, New Zealand, added one grotesque element to the horror as it was live-streamed on the internet for all the world to see. There were many stories about the 51 Muslim worshippers who were killed, some of whom had moved from other countries (including Iraq, Palestine, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkey) in the hope of finding a haven from war and persecution in their country of origin. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was praised for her empathy and sensitivity, while she tried to find ways to censor the internet
In Sri Lanka the attacks in April on Christian churches and luxury hotels by suicide bombers left 258 people dead and more than 500 injured. The government had received warnings in advance from Indian Intelligence Agencies that the attacks were imminent, but did nothing to stop them. After the events the Sri Lankan government strengthened its apparatus of repression with a number of measures including the need for all sermons in mosques to be submitted to the relevant ministry.
A framework to understand terrorism
How are this year’s 18-year olds supposed to make sense of terrorism? The only possible approach is to look at the phenomenon in class terms, and historically. In 1978 the ICC published an article and a resolution on terrorism, terror and class violence. These were attempts to re-assert the marxist position, on, among other things, the distinction between capitalist state terror and the terrorism of intermediate social strata.
The terror of the bourgeoisie, whether by the state or other bodies, has as its goal the perpetuation of exploitation and the rule of the capitalist class. “Terrorism on the other hand is a reaction of oppressed classes who have no future, against the terror of the ruling class. They are momentary reactions, without continuity, acts of vengeance with no tomorrow”. (https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html [1462]). Terrorism is “not directed against capitalist society and its institutions, but only against individuals who represent this society. It inevitably takes on the aspect of a settling of scores, of vengeance, of a vendetta, of person against person and not a revolutionary confrontation of class against class.” (https://en.internationalism.org/content/2649/resolution-terrorism-terror... [1872])
In the 19th century two notable exponents of terrorism were the Narodniks in Russia and certain French anarchists in the 1890s. Three consecutive examples of the latter give an idea of their “propaganda by the deed”. In December 1893 Auguste Vaillant threw a home-made bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies, causing only limited injuries to a few of those present. In February 1894 Emile Henry set off a bomb in a bar in the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. When asked why he had hurt so many innocent people he said “there are no innocent bourgeois”. In Lyon in June 1894 Sante Caserio stabbed and killed the French President Carnot. It was episodes like these that gave anarchism a violent image for decades. The leading anarchist Peter Kropotkin distanced mainstream anarchism from this tendency: “an edifice which is built on centuries of history will not be destroyed by a few kilos of explosives”. The classic expressions of petit-bourgeois ‘revolt’ were not so prevalent in the twentieth century, although we can point to the Red Army Faction (Baader–Meinhof Gang) in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy in the 1970s and 80s, and the Angry Brigade in the UK in the 1970s.
In contrast to these petit-bourgeois expressions of ‘revolt’, the methods of terrorism, bombs detonated in public places, indiscriminate shootings etc, became part of the arsenal of factions in intra-bourgeois conflicts, in inter-imperialist wars. The US State Department’s standard definition of terrorism is appropriate here: “politically motivated attacks on non-combatant targets”. Examples that come to mind are the activities of the Stern gang and Irgun in Palestine in the 1940s, the bombings and massacres of the factions in the Algerian War (1954-62), the car bombs, shootings and retaliations of paramilitary gangs in Northern Ireland, or the decades long bombing campaigns of ETA in Spain. All these show terrorism in the service of identifiable bourgeois goals.
Some academics see these as examples of a period of ‘old terrorism’. This changes to a ‘new terrorism’ in the 1990s with, as an early example, the 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre with a massive truck bomb beneath the North Tower (which was supposed to collapse into the South Tower) “So‐called ‘new terrorists’, on the other hand, are nihilistic, are inspired by fanatical religious beliefs, and are willing to seek martyrdom through suicide. They rarely set out aims that appear remotely attainable; they give no warnings; they do not engage in bargaining; they find compromise solutions to problems unappealing; they are willing and even eager to carry out the mass slaughter of non‐combatants; and they frequently do not even claim responsibility for their deeds.” (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics)
Other examples of this ‘new terrorism’ are the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo underground or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh in which hundreds were injured and more than 150 died, in revenge for the attack on Waco
However, neither the analysis of academics nor the sensational accounts of tabloids give any real explanation for this development. For all the talk of irrational hatreds, racism, fanaticism, alienation, nihilism etc, the commentators who serve the bourgeoisie cannot give any truthful answers because the roots of terrorism lie in a global capitalist system that has outlived its usefulness, but will continue its decay until it is destroyed. With a stalemate between the two main social classes in capitalism - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie - terrorism is just one of the phenomena, along with fanaticism and nihilism, which proliferates with decomposing capitalism. For some, desperation in the face of the miserable reality of capitalism leads to the flight into religion or other drugs; for others the certainties of religious or political dogma inflame a desire for destruction, of self or of others. But where the impotent terrorist acts of intermediate strata in the nineteenth century were fleeting moments of ‘revolt’, today’s terrorism is an expression of the nihilism at the heart of a rotting social order.
In Northern Ireland in April, the journalist Lyra McKee was killed by the paramilitaries of the “Real IRA” as they shot at the police. Politicians rushed to condemn the action, while still maintaining their various roles to sustain the society that produces terrorism. In an article published in 2016 (“Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies”) McKee showed that, in Northern Ireland, more people committed suicide in the 16 years after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 than died in the 29 years of violent conflict before it. This shows what capitalism really has to offer; its ‘peace process’ led to a world without prospects, with, for many, seemingly, nothing to live for. The prospects of war are horrifying, the reality of ‘peace’ in capitalism unbearable. Those in the marxist tradition argue that capitalism has its own gravediggers, the working class, which offers the perspective of revolution against a society where fear and terror are endemic, and for a society based on relations of solidarity.
Car 24/5/19
It is nothing new for capitalist industry, and mining in particular, to cause health problems and pollution. We have only to think of the lives lost to pneumoconiosis, to mining accidents and the collapse of slagheaps. However, mining companies in the Appalachian Mountains have taken this to a new extreme, clearing and blowing the tops of mountains and creating about 16 tons of “overburden” (the waste polluted by iron, sulphur and arsenic) for each ton of coal. Over 1,000 square miles of forest and soil has been destroyed, and 2,000 miles of streams buried, and the local water poisoned to the point that residents, mainly mineworkers themselves, have to travel miles to buy water to wash and cook, as well as to drink. Homes are damaged as orange water destroys pipes, sinks and washing machines.
Health is ruined as well. “Professor Michael McCawley, an environmental engineer who has spent time researching the health impacts of mountaintop removal.
‘It’s kind of like dumping geological trash,’ he explains. ‘It ends up increasing the concentration of acidic ions and metals [in the water], things like arsenic and nickel.’
This pollution, according to his research, has taken a catastrophic toll on the health of those whose water supply lies in its path.
‘This population is under assault from both water and air,’ Professor McCawley says. ‘What we’re finding in the water is likely to cause inflammation in the body, which can set off a lot of other chronic diseases. The big [problems] we have found are certainly cancers. Name a cancer and they’re seeing it here’.”[1]
Dividing up the victims
Various websites describe various ways to tackle the problem. First, rely on the state to restore “the Stream Protection Rule in 2016 to mitigate some of mountaintop mining’s harmful effects. The rule required mining companies to monitor and restore streams polluted by their activities, but Congress got rid of it in one of its first acts under the Trump administration.”[2] This form of mining has been developing since the 80s, with or without the Stream Protection Rule and with or without Trump in the White House. Relying on the state and democracy is a false hope when the state itself belongs to capital.
Secondly, the citizen can take the mining companies to court. “That company is facing a lawsuit from a number of residents … who are seeking compensation for the costs of dealing with their water issues. It won a similar lawsuit a few years ago, and Jason, who was part of that legal battle, said it left the entire community divided between those who supported the coal industry and those who wanted to fight back.”1 For “supported the coal industry” we should read: fear to lose their jobs in an area which has no other industry.
This division, based on the false hope of regaining clean water or compensation by political or legal action as private citizens, is most destructive. Often the media portray the concerned public defending the environment against workers who need to make sacrifices for it, such as higher fuel prices. However, as the Appalachian situation shows, there is an impossible choice between needing to make a living and needing clean water and good health. You simply cannot do without either. And in this situation the division in the community created by this impossible choice is particularly destructive because it is dividing a mining community, which means dividing the workers, and when workers are divided they lose the one strength they have to struggle against capital.
Alex 23.5.19
“For most of my adult life I’ve railed against ‘corporate capitalism’, ‘consumer capitalism’ and ‘crony capitalism’. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective but the noun. While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I’ve done so slowly and reluctantly. Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism. I was also inhibited by its religious status. To say ‘capitalism is failing’ in the 21st century is like saying ‘God is dead’ in the 19th: it is secular blasphemy. It requires a degree of self-confidence I did not possess.
But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system”[1].
Monbiot accepts that there are two elements of capitalism which are inherent to the system and which are utterly inimical to maintaining a sustainable environment: the drive towards perpetual growth, and the institution of private property, which allows you to do what you want with the land and nature as long as you have enough money to buy it. He also explains that his lack of enthusiasm for “state communism” derives from the fact that “Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth [1876]”
Of course Monbiot is right that the problem is not this or that form of capitalism but the system itself. The drive to perpetual growth and expansion is the drive to accumulate capital – extracting surplus value from your workforce, producing for the market to realise your profit, then reinvesting to expand your enterprise and outdo the competition. This is not some by-product of the system, it is the system, and anyone who follows a no-growth model of capitalism is doomed to extinction. Similarly, the system can’t be separated from private property, from competition between separate enterprises, even if the older model of individual ownership has to a large extent been superseded by ownership by faceless corporations or nation states, some of them claiming to be “socialist”.
Monbiot humbly tells us that he has no ready answers to the problem but is making inquiries into the work of ecological thinkers like Jeremy Lent, Naomi Klein and Amitav Ghosh, and in particular the “doughnut economics” of Kate Raworth. But while the latter’s model seeks to factor social justice and ecological consequences into an overall economic diagram, it is telling that Monbiot himself considers that Raworth is “the John Maynard Keynes of the 21st century”[2]. But Keynes was the perfect example of someone who tried to find a way of preserving capitalism while lopping off its worst bits (in his case, the crisis of overproduction in particular); and none of the authors that Monbiot recommends, for all the insights they offer us, are able to go beyond the confines of capitalism when it comes to proposing an alternative society.
Monbiot’s anti-capitalism (which is increasingly shared by august institutions like the IMF who are getting very concerned about the growing gulf between rich and poor) shows how hard it is to pronounce the God of capitalism to be dead, to make a real break from its ideological grip.
And yet the real alternative is, at one level, childishly simple: if the problem is a system that can’t help but invade the very last corner of the planet, the alternative is to suppress the whole spiral of accumulation by attacking it at its roots: the system of wage labour and generalised commodity production, replacing it with production for direct use. If capitalism equals the privatisation of the planet then private property in land, resources and the means of production needs to be got rid of, whether in its individual, corporate or state form.
In other words, the alternative is communism. Not Monbiot’s contradiction in terms, “state communism”, but a stateless world human community. To make this small step in thinking would seem to be uncomplicated, but in fact it means putting into question the entirety of bourgeois politics and economics and recognising the necessity for a proletarian revolution, because the present rulers of the earth are certainly not going to give up their private property without a fight.
Amos, 23.5.19
The city of Matamoros is in the state of Tamaulipas which is considered one of the most dangerous regions of the country. There are constant confrontations between the mafia gangs over the control of these areas, sowing terror and death. Kidnappings, extortion and murders are common occurrences faced by the inhabitants of this area, but also for those using it as a crossing point, both Mexicans and those from Central America, in their quest to reach the US[1]. Matamoros, in spite of being marked by this terrible environment, is part of a broader industrial zone, formed at the end of the 1960s, but strengthened and expanded in the mid-1990s as a result of NAFTA[2]; nearly 200 maquiladora[3] factories been installed in this stretch of the frontier alone. These are no longer small and medium-sized units as in the 1970s; some of them are giant companies with different plants and with a workforce of up to two thousand workers.
The maquila factories are characterized by the intense rhythms of their working practices. Since 2002 their working week has been extended from 40 hours per week to 48, wages have stayed at almost the same level for the last 15 years, with minimal annual variations. In order to maintain these rates of productivity and high profits, it is necessary to maintain powerful technical and political vigilance and control within the factory by supervisors and foremen, but above all through the union structure. High productivity and low wages (competing with or equal to the measly wages of workers in China) are the combination that has allowed these investment projects to make big profits. Nevertheless the vigilant presence of trade unions is essential to ensure workers’ subjugation and the continuity of those conditions.
Given the environment that dominates on the border, the fierce political control imposed in the factories of Matamoros by the unions and management, it could be surprising that there has been a workers’ response in this area and one expressing a great combativeness and a broad capacity to build ties of solidarity. But while this situation demonstrated the potential of the working class’s struggle, the workers involved were unable able to take control of their struggle due to the weight of confusion and lack of confidence in their own strength. The leftist apparatus of capital says that the recent event in Matamoros was a “workers’ rebellion”, others affirm that it was an offensive against Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) and his “fourth transformation”,[4] and there are even those who say that there was a “wildcat and mass strike”[5]. In addition to being false, these statements are deceptive and are a direct attack on the workers, because they pull a veil over the reality in order to prevent the workers from drawing the lessons of their struggles.
The slogan that unified and mobilised workers for a little more than a month was “20-32”, which simplified their demands: a wage increase of 20% and payment of a bonus of 32 thousand pesos (1,660 dollars). It was the degradation of workers’ lives that propelled the discontent and animated the struggle, but union control trapped this combativity. From the beginning of the mobilisations there were expressions of distrust towards the unions, though at no point did they lead to an understanding that the unions are no longer instruments that the workers can use to defend their interests; therefore they submitted to their practices. At the beginning whilst still showing indecision there was a certain ingenuity when the workers’ discontent began to spread, nevertheless workers believed that it is possible to “pressure” the “union leader” and force him to “defend” them. This indecision was transformed into a widespread confusion that it was enough to receive “honest legal advice” to assert their “rights”.
By focusing its hopes on the law and the lawyer Susana Prieto, the workers’ mobilisation was weakened and confusion spread. Feeling “protected” by the lawyer, they no longer looked for control of their struggle. This underlines a serious problem facing the working class today: loss of confidence in its own strength and the lack of class identity.
This difficulty led to a situation where, in spite of showing distrust towards the union structure, the struggle remained under the unions’ control and on its terrain, which is the framework of labour laws. It is these laws that give power to the union, as they are the signatories of the collective bargaining agreement. By remaining tied to the union framework, the workers handed over control of the struggle to the union itself, allowing it to contain workers’ discontent, shackling their militancy, forcing compliance with bourgeois laws, thus preventing them from achieving a true unification of the workers’ forces by organising themselves outside of the union.
By reducing the struggle to compliance with the laws, the workers, even when they were marching in the streets and holding general assemblies, when they confronted the bosses, the State and the union, they did so separately, factory by factory and contract by contract, because this is how bourgeois legality stipulates it should be done. This divides and isolates the workers. After all, laws are made to subdue the exploited.
But is it possible to fight outside the union and the law? The history of the working class has diverse experiences that confirm that it is possible to do so. For example, in August 1980 the workers in Poland carried out a mass strike really controlled by the workers themselves. Neither the outbreak of the strike, nor the construction of their unitary combat organs complied with legal guidelines and yet they were able to extend the struggle throughout the country and impose public negotiations with the government. The massiveness of the mobilisations and their capacity to organise allowed them to create a gigantic force capable of preventing repression[6].
The very mechanism that the Polish state used to divide the workers and weaken them was the same one that the bourgeoisie all over the world uses: the trade unions. With the creation of the trade union “Solidarity” (led by Lech Walesa), the state broke the organisation and unity of the workers, and only in this way could it carry out the repression. Sometime later, the trade union leader Lech Walesa was made the head of the Polish state...
The mass strike in Poland is the best example that the workers and especially those in Matamoros should draw on because it makes it clear that the union is a structure that operates against the workers and that it is not enough to distrust it, it is necessary to organise outside it.
The first main lesson of the struggle of the maquila workers is that unions are a weapon of the bourgeoisie[7]. The blatant attitude of the trade unions, tricking them into accepting a smaller increase and rejecting the bonus, makes it clear that they are no longer an instrument of the proletariat (as they were in the 19th century). The threats and direct aggression carried out by the unions of Day Labourers and Industrial Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SJOIIM) and by the Industrial Workers in Maquiladoras and Assembly Plants (SITPME), openly confirmed that the interests they defend are not those of the workers. They are weapons of the bourgeoisie at work within the ranks of the proletariat... they are like wolves in sheep’s clothing.
During the course of the strikes the unions acted to defend the interests of the bosses: that is why the majority of the workers repudiated the union leaders Juan Villafuerte and Jesús Mendoza. The shouts of “outside the union!” were also repeated in each factory and in each demonstration. They did not advance any further however, because the workers’ lack of confidence in their strength prevented them from taking control of the struggle, from organising themselves in a unifying structure that would have enabled them to break completely with the domination of the unions and the divisions they imposed. The workers appeared to have stopped passively following the “traitorous” union leadership, but instead fell into the same trap by passively follow the informal “new leadership”, personified by its legal advisor, who used her skill in litigation[8] to submit the class struggle to the framework of bourgeois legality and sow hope in the creation of an “independent” union that would dispute the collective contract with the old union structures.
The work of confusion, subjugation and control carried out by the unions does not take place only in some regions or some unions, all of them are weapons of the bourgeoisie. Is there is a difference between the SNTE and the CNTE?[9] One uses a traditional language, the other resorts to phrases and actions to appear radical, but its aim is the same: to subdue and control the workers.
There is nothing strange about the AMLO government, in a very silent way, encouraging the creation of union structures that allow it to use the discontent of the workers and direct it into confrontations with the old union structures, associated mainly with the old governing party, the PRI (as is the case of the CTM, CROM and CROC[10]). López Obrador has not only “rescued” the mafia boss of the miners’ union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia (“Napito”) from the so-called exile where he lived luxuriously in Canada during the last two Presidencies, to turn him into a senator; but fundamentally this was done in order that he could form a “new union”. A few months after his return to Mexico, “Napito” created the International Confederation of Workers (ILC), integrating unions that have broken away from the CTM and CROC, but he has also secured alliances with unions in the U.S. and Canada, particularly the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers.[11]
In his February 14 speech, AMLO stated that his government will not intervene in the life of the unions. However, he adds: “We cannot prevent workers or leaders from requesting to form unions, because this in accordance with the law...”. (La Jornada). On the same lines, “new” unions are emerging, that are seeking to take power from old unions that defend the interests of bourgeois factions different from those aligned with the new government. We have seen the formation of “alternative” union projects in the IMSS, PEMEX and UNAM.[12]
The trade unions in the 19th century were an important instrument for the unity and combat of the workers. This was a period when capitalism itself, by developing the productive forces, allowed the implementation of economic and social reforms that improved the lives of the workers. At present it is impossible for the capitalist system to ensure lasting improvements for the workers. This situation led to the union losing its proletarian nature and being assimilated into the state.
That is why every struggle the workers carry out finds the union trying to contain and sabotage the struggle, submitting discontent to the guidelines of bourgeois laws, creating confusions and fears in order to weaken confidence and impeding the unity and extension of the struggle.
The mobilisation led by the workers of the maquilas was undoubtedly a very combative one. However, it could not avoid the domination of illusions in the law and of confused hopes that the unions, if run “honestly”, can change their anti-proletarian nature. The references to López Obrador’s decree (“Decreto de Estímulos Fiscales de la Región Frontera Norte”[13]) in order to justify the “legality” of the wage increase in the maquilas, demonstrates that the confusion goes even deeper, because it nurtures the hope that the new government can improve the living conditions of the workers. But, in addition, AMLO’s own government took advantage of the workers’ mobilisation to show its North American partner its willingness to comply with the wage increases in the factories of the automotive and electronics sector, installed in Mexico, as demanded by the Trump government in the NAFTA 2.0 (or USMCA) tables.
In order to make a balance sheet of this struggle it is not enough to count up the number of factories which have accepted the demands. That aspect is important, but it is not definitive. In order to have a broader perspective it is necessary to evaluate the massive forces that were unified, but above all it is necessary to consider the level of consciousness reached and its expression in the forms of organisation adopted. For example, the lack of control of struggle by the workers themselves and the dispersion at the end of the movement broke the bonds of solidarity and allowed reprisals to be taken against workers. According to official figures, 5,000 workers were dismissed for having taken part in the strike.
To summarise, the strikes showed a real workers’ combativity generated by the degradation of their standards of living, but the bourgeoisie soon undermined the courage of the workers, feeding illusions in “democratic respect” for the laws and impeding the development of consciousness.
More serious though is the danger that the problems that developed during the mobilisation could spread and deepen. Enthusiasm for the strikes and lack of reflection has created a very propitious environment for renewing illusions in the law and in new union structures. The same legal advisor has argued that the “second phase” of the “20-32 movement” will be orientated towards the formation of an “independent” union that will compete with the old union structures; in addition she will establish in Matamoros a law firm of “honest” lawyers to “defend” the workers. More illusions and more confusion will be propagated, and the workers only way to counter this offensive is the struggle, ensuring that they take control and reflect deeply about the way in which the unions operate.
Tatlin, from Revolución Mundial, ICC publication in Mexico, April 2019
[1]. In 2010, there was the macabre discovery of 79 bodies of Central American migrants, and then in 2011, a grave containing about two hundred bodies was found again, although some sources reported that there were about 500 corpses. Concerning the recent caravan of emigrants from Central America see https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoameric... [1820]
[2]. NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the USA, Canada and Mexico, came into force in 1994.
[3]. “A maquiladora, or maquila, is a company that allows factories to be largely duty free and tariff-free. These factories take raw materials and assemble, manufacture, or process them and export the finished product. These factories and systems are present throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Specific programs and laws have made Mexico’s maquila industry grow rapidly.” Wikipedia.
[4]. Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected President last year and leads a coalition government of his party “Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional”, which describes itself as being nationalist, the left wing Labour Party and right wing Social Encounter Party, and has been presented as a “ray of hope” after years of corruption. He also made all sorts of promises to the poor and workers, which he is selling as the “fourth transformation”, a completion of the ‘Mexican Revolution’ of 1910.
[5]. These affirmations are put forward by: “Socialist Left” (https://marxismo.mx/rebelion-obrera-en-matamoros-tamaulipas [1880]), the MTS (www.laizquierdadiario.mx/Matamoros-donde-late-fuerte-la-lucha-proletaria [1881]...) and “New Course” (https://nuevocurso.org/dos-mexicos-dos-alternativas-universales-tlahueli [1882]...). There are other leftist groups that repeat those same arguments with certain variations, but we take these as a sample to illustrate the way in which they use exaggeration, lies and deceit, helping the ruling class to feed the confusion among the workers.
[6]. On the experience of Poland 1980 see ‘Mass Strikes in Poland: the proletariat opens a new breach’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/023/mass-strikes-in-poland-1980 [1883] and ‘One Year of Workers’ Struggles in Poland’ https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-... [1884]
[7]. See our pamphlet Trade Unions Against the Working Class
[8]. We do not intend to dwell on conjectures about the honesty of the lawyer S. Prieto: the principles of her profession lead her to move within the framework of bourgeois laws, but the fact that she maintains a sympathy and support (as she herself has declared) for the government of López Obrador places her on a clearly bourgeois terrain.
[9]. SNTE: National Union of Education Workers (official union). CNTE: National Coordination of Education Workers (“dissident” union).
[10]. CTM: Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), created in 1936. CROM: Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, founded in 1918. CROC: Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), formed in 1952. The PRI is the “Institutional Revolutionary Party” that governed Mexico for decades.
[11]. The “American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations” (AFL-CIO) is the largest of the US trade union structures, also grouping unions such as the United Steelworkers (USW) of Canada.
[12]. IMSS: Mexican Social Security Institute; PEMEX: Mexico’s main oil company with international projection. UNAM: National Autonomous University of Mexico, considered one of the best in the world.
[13]. On December 10, 2018, AMLO’s government presented a programme to boost investment and employment in the border area. Its objective is to co-opt a portion of Mexican and Central American migrants, in order to slow the flow of migrants to the United States. In summary, this programme offers: i) Reduction of the Income Tax (ISR) from 30% to 20%; ii) Reduction of the Value Added Tax (IVA) from 16% to 8%; iii) Equalization of the price of fuels with the United States; iv) Increase in the minimum wage at the border to $8.8 dollars.
This article, written by a close sympathiser, examines a contribution by the group Internationalist Voice on the strengths and weaknesses of recent workers’ struggles in Iran. While these struggles are extremely important, we think that there has been a tendency among certain parts of the proletarian milieu to overestimate the level of self-organisation in this movement, even implying that soviets were on the immediate agenda. We will return to this question in other articles. Meanwhile, Internationalist Voice has also produced a long polemic with the ICC in response to articles we have published on the street protests erupted in Iran, Iraq and Jordan in 2017-18. This text can be found on our discussion forum https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16670/polemic-international-communist-current-working-class-or-masses [1886]. We will reply to this in due course.
On the ICC's discussion page website there's a text from the proletarian political group Internationalist Voice in the slot dated January 29, titled "Lessons from strikes, labour struggles and internationalist tasks"[1]. The main focus of this text is the class struggle in Iran over the last few decades and particularly over the last year or two. But as the title suggests the text poses wider and deeper issues and questions. It is a text we welcome as a contribution to a discussion on the current necessities of the class struggle.
Internationalist Voice defends a proletarian perspective
Before we go onto the specifics of Iran it's important to say that the whole of the text uses a communist analysis in which to frame those specifics: the irresolvable and fundamental economic crisis of capitalism (and not its "... imperfect and corrupt expressions") necessitating its revolutionary overthrow; the vanguard role of revolutionaries preparing for the revolutionary party - an absolute necessity for a revolution; a crystal clear analysis of the trade unions, once bodies and expressions of the working class in the rise of capitalism, now organisations that are firmly the expressions of state capitalism. No equivocation here about the unions being "negotiators" between capital and labour, but a concrete demonstration of how what were once workers' organisations were turned by the bourgeoisie after World War I into very effective organs of ideological and material state repression against the workers. This is what they have been ever since and it's the strength of IV's analysis of capitalist decadence that gives them their strong theoretical basis for its development. And also from this basis there are further positions on the role of imperialism in the Middle East and globally that we would have no hesitation in agreeing with.
On Iran itself, the text lays out some of the developments in the Iranian state since the mass workers' strikes of 1978, the fall of the Shah and the taking of power by an Islamic theocracy in 1979, directly leading to the subsequent defeat of the wave of struggles. It details the capitalist nature of the Mullah's regime, its inability to provide jobs or adequate living conditions, its imperialist nature and its utter ruthlessness and Machiavellianism when faced with workers' independent struggles. IV rightly emphasise the developing intensity of the workers' struggles over the past couple of years, the tendencies for self-organisation, the simultaneity of struggles, the will for extension and solidarity between different enterprises in struggle (even if they remained largely symbolic), the waning influence of the religious leaders (a phenomenon across the Middle East in workers' struggles), the involvement of women in the struggle and the protests, the involvement of students in following the workers' strikes, and the way the strikes and the bourgeoisie's ugly reaction to them brought workers, their comrades and families onto the streets in protest[2]. IV make the interesting point that it is this very class struggle and its development that has helped to hold back Iran’s war drive and has at least contributed to Iran not suffering the same fate as Syria, which at one time seemed a distinct possibility. Faced with a permanent war economy, with all its consequences, both material (scarcity of goods, inflation, repression etc) and ideological (incessant nationalist campaigns) it is extremely important that the resistance of the proletariat in Iran continues. With the sharpening of imperialist tensions between Iran and the USA, this capacity of the workers to resist will face even bigger challenges in the coming period.
Some questions on the class struggle
We do however have some questions about IV's analyses of some important elements of class struggle as it's unfolding in Iran. Among its long list of workers involved in escalating strikes, teachers, truckers, steelworkers, miners, etc., are the bus workers and their “workers' syndicate” which IV assesses is an independent workers' organisation ("with all its ups and downs"). There’s no doubt that its members have been involved in the struggle for better conditions, for the release of arrested workers and against repression, but its "semi-legal" position does not make it a dynamic, independent force for the struggle and we think it's important to be clear about this. The syndicate has existed for a number of years, originally from the self-organisation and assemblies of the class; but its dubious position as a functioning trade union opens it up to getting involved in such mystifications as the International Labour Organisation. Its delegates have had "worthwhile meetings" with ILO officials in Paris 2018 (they were allowed to leave Iran) which were fronted by the French trade unions, the CGT and CDFT, "with a view to meeting class demands in Iran". None of this gives any indication of a genuine independent, autonomous organisation of the workers from and for the struggle. What there seems to be here is a familiar story - what was once a workers' committee, or the remnants of it, which can't see a way forward and thus gets trapped in a semi-legal union framework.
We have similar reservations about the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company Workers' Council, which has received a lot of international publicity, even giving rise to speculations about the existence of “soviets” in Iran today. We think that more research is needed about the origins of this organ – was it initially a spontaneous factory committee on the model of the “shuras” that arose in the massive struggles of 1978-9, or was it essentially a creation of another union type body? In any case, we know that it has also been around for several years and that, even more so than the bus syndicate, it now seems to be propagating illusions in self-management. One of its leaders, Ismail Bakhshi, writes in November 2018: "Have confidence, believe in yourself. We can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company. It is my wish that, one day, we can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company”. Bakhshi gives two options to the workers: "the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company is completely manned by the workers. We will set up a committee and run the company on a consultative basis. Do not be worried. We have all the skills. Until today, who has run the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company? Have confidence, believe in yourself. We can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company. It is my wish that, one day, we can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company." The second option that Bakhshi gives is that the government takes over the company and should "work under the supervision of the workers' council". In sum, he says, "this plan (the setting-up of the council) looks like a supervisory organization, and it monitors the performance and durability of these managers. We can then decide on the company’s management. Haft Tappeh is a small symbol of Iran".
Elsewhere in its text Internationalist Voice puts forward a clear position on the trap that self-management presents for the workers, saying that it was "utopian during the infancy of the working class" and is now economically and politically destructive to it. But it should really be applying its analysis more consistently to the current situation. Self-management is a dangerous dead-end, not only because it can only offer workers the chance to manage their own exploitation, but, more importantly, because it has in the past been used during massive upsurges of the class struggle to trap the workers in their factories and prevent them from creating real soviets – organs which can unify the whole class across sectional divisions and establish a “dual power” against the capitalist state. This was precisely the critique that Bordiga made of Gramsci’s Ordino Nuovo group in Italy in 1920, which played the role of cheerleader for the factory occupations in Turin and other industrial centres. .
At the same time, Bakhshi offers us a corrective to some of the more extravagant claims made about soviets already being formed in Iran: "When we say that the independent workers’ council was formed in the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company, some think that this council is the same as the final council, which has reached the highest level. No! We are just beginning and it takes time for even the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company workers themselves to understand what the work of the council is...".
The problem here is that Bakhshi, who unquestionably emerged as a very courageous militant of the class and has suffered the most brutal repression at the hands of the Iranian police and hired thugs, is now contributing to the general confusion about what workers’ councils are and what they are not, in particular by putting forward the idea that the future soviets can be the next stage in the life of a permanent and trade unionist organ. To fight against this confusion demands a particular kind of courage – the courage that goes along with swimming against the stream to defend a clear proletarian position, which in the end can only mean adopting a revolutionary political standpoint. It would be far better for the most militant and class conscious workers in Iran to regroup around such positions rather than trying to artificially maintain “mass” organisations which no longer serve the needs of the struggle.
Workers' committees, factory committees, workers' councils, all attempts at the self-organisation of the working class, will make mistakes, misjudgements, etc., and this is entirely natural - a necessity even. But what we see here with the Bus Workers' Syndicate and the Haft Tappeh Workers' Council are - at best – former workers' organisations that have both existed for many years and, in the face of the struggles dying away, their dynamic has been lost, leaving accommodation with structures of capitalism as the only way they see to keep going.
This text of Internationalist Voice on the class struggle in Iran is important for the whole revolutionary milieu, important for the whole region of the Middle East and for workers' struggle globally. That is why we want to point out what we think are the current weaknesses in the struggles of the working class, so that the struggle can go forward in the future.
Baboon, 4.4.2018
[2] We discussed with IV recently over what we thought were its underestimation of street protest as part of the class struggle, https://en.internationalism.org/content/16599/internationalist-voice-and... [1888], but there's no question of that here.
Thirty years ago, a terrible, particularly bloody repression took place on Tianenmen Square and in the main Chinese metropoles. The recently-released Tiananmen Papers fully confirm the facts as we published them at the time, detailing a savage repression involving machine-gun fire, round-ups, massive arrests and executions. Today as yesterday we insist that "the police-military terror and the democratic lie are complementary and both strengthen each other". Behind this dismal anniversary the same propaganda is being spewed out, not only to discredit the growth of Chinese imperialism, incidentally strengthening the idea that this was "communism", but also and above all to strengthen the democratic myth and mask the responsibility of the capitalist system in all the world's horrors past and present[1]. This propaganda is much more important given that it takes place in the context of the growth of tensions between the new Chinese giant and its direct imperialist competitors, the United States and the European Union. As our communiqué of 1989 showed, the only real perspective faced with such barbarity lies with the proletariat. The communiqué was correct to highlight "the particular responsibilities of the proletariat of the central countries”. On its shoulders rests the greatest responsibility to show a way forward, a revolutionary perspective aimed at putting an end to capitalist barbarity
*****
On June 3rd, 1989, the Chinese bourgeoisie unleashed its wound-up killer-dogs onto the population of Peking. With several thousand killed, tens of thousands injured, the inhabitants of Beijing paid a heavy price for resistance to the tanks of the "People's Liberation Army". The repression also raged in the provinces where little by little the massacres reached Shanghai, Nanking, etc. Far beyond the students, who were said to be the victims by the media, the whole proletarian populations of towns suffered the repression: after the gunfire, the round-ups, appeals for informers, mass and arbitrary arrests, terror reigning everywhere.
The world's bourgeoisie has profited from the justified anger caused by this barbaric repression with its crocodile tears and the strengthening of its campaign of democratic diversions. The media hubbub around democracy is intense but we shouldn't be blinded by it because it's a trap for the working class; as much at the international level as in China itself.
Stalinism, democracy and repression
Western propaganda has used the events in order to accredit the idea that only Stalinist or military dictators have the monopoly on repression, that democracy itself is peaceful, that it doesn't use such methods. Nothing is more false. There's plenty in history that shows that western democracies have nothing to learn from the worst dictators and from this viewpoint there is the historical example of the bloody massacre of workers' struggles in Berlin, 1919. Since then they have shown themselves murderously adept in colonial repressions and in sending employing torturers to maintain their imperialist interests over all over the planet.
Today, Deng Xiaoping has been put in the dock by the good conscience of international democracy, whereas, for the whole of the western bourgeoisie just a few years ago he was the post-Mao symbol of light and one of the "reformers", the man opening up towards the west, the privileged negotiator. Will that change? Nothing is less sure. Once the wall of silence was in place, whoever comes out the winner, our democracies, full of indignation, will wipe away their hypocritical tears in order to get in with the new leadership.
There's no antagonism between democracy and repression; on the contrary they are the two interlinked faces of capitalist domination. Police/military terror and the democratic lie complement and reinforce one another. The "democracies" of today are the executioners of tomorrow and the torturers of yesterday; Jaruzelski for example, plays the democratic card[2].
While the democratic barrage echoes around the planet from East to West, massacres follow massacres, Burma, Algeria where, after ordering a fusillade against protesters, President Chadli turned towards democracy. In Argentina, it's the friend of Mitterand, the Social-Democrat Carlos Andres Perez who launched his soldiers against the revolts over misery and hunger. In Argentina, Nigeria, the USSR (Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan), etc., there have been thousands of deaths imposed by capitalism in a few months. China is part of a long, sinister list.
In China, the war of cliques
The world economic crisis imposes an economic rationalisation/"modernisation" on all the factions of the bourgeoisie, as shown by:
- the elimination of anachronistic systems and those in deficit, the "lame ducks" of capital, provoking growing tensions within the ruling class;
- more and more austerity programmes which polarise a growing discontent among the proletariat.
In China, the "liberal" economic reforms enacted over the last dozen years have led to a growing misery in the working class and stronger and stronger tensions within the Party in which the dominant class regroups. The establishment of economic reforms faces a double trap, firstly through the weight of underdevelopment and then by the specifics of a Stalinist-type state capitalism. While more than 800 million Chinese live in conditions basically unchanged for centuries, widespread quasi-feudal fractions control entire regions, fractions of the army and police and are not happy with the reforms which risk calling into question the basis of their domination. The most dynamic sectors of Chinese capitalism, industry in the South (Shanghai, Canton, Wuhan) are closely linked to world trade, the banks which deal with the west and the military-industrial complex which crystallises advanced technologies, etc., have always had to take account of the enormous force of inertia of the anachronistic sectors of Chinese capital. For some years, Deng Xiaoping has personified the fragile equilibrium which exists at the head of the Chinese CP and the army. Since his old age makes it more difficult for him to undertake his functions and the rivalries between cliques are being aggravated, the faction regrouped around Zhao Ziyang launched a war of succession. Gorbachev produced some imitators, but China is not the USSR.
In the pure Maoist tradition, Zhao Ziyang launched a massive democratic campaign through the medium of students' organisations in order to try to mobilise the discontent of the population to his side and impose himself over all of Chinese capitalism. Representing the reformist faction which dreams of a Chinese "Perestroika" in order to better corral and exploit the proletariat, he wasn't able to impose his point of view and the reaction of rival state factions was brutal. Deng Xiaoping, who had been the father of economic reforms, ridiculed the illusions of his ex-protégé. A dominant sector of the Chinese bourgeoisie thought that it had more to lose than to gain by bringing in forms of democratic control. Perhaps, even, there are grounds for thinking that it's an impossible task and that the only result would be a destabilisation of the social situation in China. However, even if they partially represent divergent interests of Chinese capital the cliques confronting each other today only use ideological arguments as a smokescreen; the organisers of the repression can just as well transform themselves into "democrats" tomorrow in order to better attack the workers. Jaruzelski and Chadli are examples of it.
These dramatic events are part of the process of the destabilisation of the world situation under the blows of the economic crisis. They translate into a growing barbarity imposed by an accelerated decomposition into which world capitalism is sinking. China is entering into a period of instability which risks greatly disturbing the imperialist interests of the two major powers and will open the door to dangerous global tensions.
A trap for the proletariat
On the grounds of a war of succession, engaged in by the different cliques of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the proletariat is not fighting on its class terrain. It has nothing to gain from this fight. The proletarians in Peking who heroically tried to resist the repression - more through hatred for the regime than through the depth of their illusions in the democratic fractions within the Party - paid dearly for their combativity. More than the enthusiasm for demonstrations for democracy from the student apprentice-bureaucrats, the workers in the large industrial towns of the South showed their prudence. The call from the students for a general strike (who also called for support to Zhao Ziyang, facing repression) was not followed.
For the proletariat there's no choice between the military and democratic dictatorship. It is a false choice which has served to mobilise the proletariat and drag it into its worse defeats at the time of the war in Spain, 1936 for example, and then in the second world imperialist butchery. To call for the workers in China to strike today while the repression is being unleashed is to lead the combat into the abattoir for a fight which isn't their own and in which they have everything to lose.
Even if through its strikes these last years and its desperate resistance these last days, the Chinese proletariat has shown a growing combativity, we shouldn't overestimate its immediate capacities. It has had limited experience and nowhere in these last weeks has it had the occasion to really affirm itself on a class terrain. In these conditions, and while the full force of the repression is being deployed, the perspective cannot be the immediate entry of the proletariat onto the social stage.
The effects of the crisis which is shaking the capitalist economy more and more profoundly, particularly in the lesser developed countries such as China, as well as the aggravation of the proletariat’s hatred for the dominant class, violently reinforced these past weeks, announce that it will not stay that way for long.
The events which have shaken the most populous country in the world once again highlight the importance of the global combat of the proletariat against the bloody barbarity of capitalism. Also underlined is the particular responsibility of the proletariat of the central countries which has a long experience of the democratic bourgeoisie and which can, through its struggles, undermine the influence of democratic illusions on a world scale.
ICC, 9-6-1989
[1] There's a similar edge to the recent western campaign around a new Beijing-dominated extradition treaty applying to Hong Kong. The Independent, reporting on the "large, peaceful demonstrations against the new law in Hong Kong (11.6.2019) denounces "the Communist dictatorship in Beijing". On the same day, the Guardian piece attacks Beijing and supports the "freedom" protesters who have been "denied democracy". There's genuine anger against the Hong Kong government about the cost of living and the threat of repression, but the movement is one that is isolated and drowned in "freedom and democracy for Hong Kong". There was a similar deafening campaign around democracy over Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" in 2014 - see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201410/10506/hong-kongs-umbrel... [1889]
[2] Jarulzelski was the main architect of the repression unleashed against the Polish workers in 1981.
At the end of May, a report into austerity in the UK by the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty was issued - to the accompaniment of protests by the British government. The report records 14 million people in poverty, the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”, and that, despite high levels of employment, “close to 40% of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now, 16% of people over 65 live in relative poverty and millions of those who are in work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope”. It describes the record levels of hunger, the extent of food banks, the fact that many people have to choose between heating their homes or eating, the extent of homelessness, the numbers of rough sleepers, falling life expectancy in some parts of the country, the denial of benefits to the disabled, a whole catalogue of the impact of the government’s “harsh and uncaring ethos” with its “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach”.
The government retaliated by saying that the UK was one of the happiest places in the world (15th on a UN list, apparently) and that the rapporteur was “biased”. The latter point is not wrong. The report says “UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available”. It says that the attacks are “ideological”, implying that there are other ‘options’ for capitalism which don’t involve the impoverishment of the working class. The last hundred years of examples show that, internationally, left and liberal governments, in response to the state of the capitalist economy, have also tended to make policy choices that reinforce capitalism at the expense of the exploited and dispossessed. In this context, it’s not the choices of the Tories, or the threat of Brexit that’s to blame but the nature of capitalism impulsed by its economic crisis. However, the UN report’s empirical observations are accurate, despite the bias of the author. We intend to highlight, in a series of articles, the reality of poverty in Britain, starting with some points on child poverty.
Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,
When you grow old, your wages will stop,
When you have spent the little you made
First to the Poorhouse and then to the grave
(Anonymous verse from Yorkshire.)
The use of Universal Credit is one of the British state’s most recent welfare weapons. Financial support from tax credits and Universal Credit has been limited to two children since 2017. Whenever they DWP tinker with UC they proclaim another triumph. In May the DWP announced the latest changes with the Secretary of State hypocritically saying “I feel very strongly about making sure that the policies of this department are fair, compassionate and that they work for everybody”. The May announcements are the latest in a series of changes to welfare policies. In January the DWP announced a delay to the roll-out of Universal Credit, the introduction of which is extremely delayed and causing untold misery and payment arrears to claimants switching to UC.
There is a two-child limit for UC which means that the child element of tax credits and Universal Credit is limited to the first two children in a family (with a small number of exceptions), and so families do not see any increase in entitlement for the third and other children. Prior to the two-child limit, a family could receive the child element of child tax credit – currently worth £2,780 per year – for each child, subject to a means test. This is in addition to child benefit, which is currently worth £1,079 per year for the first child and £714 for each subsequent one and which, subject to its own rather different form of means test, continues to be available for all children. In total this means that, in the absence of the two-child limit, an out-of-work family with three children would be entitled to £10,840 per year from these benefits; one with four children would be entitled to £14,330. Many of these families are also entitled to other benefits, such as housing benefit and Jobseeker’s Allowance. The DWP’s relaxation of the two-child system only means that those claiming a third child before April 1917 are exempted. The cuts in children’s allowance will continue and for the very poorest of working-class families throw them into child poverty.
By capping the number of child elements that a family can receive at two, the two-child limit reduces benefit and attacks the very weakest of the working class – children.“The UK has some of the highest levels of hunger and deprivation among the world’s richest nations, according to a wide-ranging United Nations assessment of child health and wellbeing. The Unicef report ranks 41 high-income countries against 25 indicators tracking progress against internationally agreed goals to end child poverty and hunger, promote health, ensure quality education, and reduce inequality.” (The Guardian, 21/5/19)
The Tories’ “cruel and harmful policies” are forcing children into hunger according to a new report. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that austerity and benefit cuts mean tens of thousands of families across England don’t have enough to eat. It said the introduction of Universal Credit (UC) has “exacerbated the hunger crisis”. HRW said ministers have “largely ignored” the impact of their cuts. This includes “skyrocketing food bank use” and “children arriving at school hungry and unable to concentrate”.
The 2015 Budget introduced a four-year freeze on most working-age benefits and tax credits. If the freeze does not end until April 2020 (as currently planned), it will have increased the number of people in poverty by 400,000 and affected 27 million people, including 11 million children. The vast majority of those affected live in working families with children, many working on low pay but still affected by the freeze of child benefits. People living in poverty will be on average £560 worse off, equivalent to around three months of food shopping for an average low-income family. This information was contained in a report written for the Rowntree Trust “In 2018/19, foodbank network the Trussell Trust handed out 1.6 million emergency food packages – a 19% increase on the previous year. More than half a million of the packages went to children.”
When campaigners point out that more than one in four children in the UK lives in poverty they usually do so with a view to strengthening the ‘welfare state’. In reality the welfare state imposes and presides over poverty. In the 1800s poorhouses often had a plaque at the entrance with the slogan “Protect the poor” or “Save the children”. It was a lie then, just as much as the bourgeois state’s claim to ‘help the disadvantaged’ is today.
Melmoth 22/5/19
Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen… the infernal spiral of imperialist conflict continues to plunge the Middle East into the depths of barbarism. This region is a concentration of everything that is most disgusting about decadent capitalism. After decades of instability, invasions, “civil” wars and all kinds of murderous conflicts, Iran is now in the eye of the storm.
In 2015, during the Obama years, Iran signed, together with the members of the UN Security Council and Germany, an agreement aimed at controlling its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of the economic sanctions which had been crippling the country for decades. But since he came to power, supported by the American hawks, the Israeli prime minister and the Saudi monarchy, Donald Trump has been denouncing the “worst deal in history” prior to announcing, in May 2018, that the US would be pulling out of the deal for good[1].
Since then we have seen a sharpening of provocations and tensions on both sides. The US opened the dance by re-establishing a ferocious embargo. A year later, Iran threatened to suspend its commitments by increasing its levels of enriched uranium, unleashing a new salvo of sanctions. A few days before that, invoking obscure “indications of a credible threat”, the US dispatched the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and a number of bombers to the Persian Gulf. According to The New York Times, the Pentagon has envisaged deploying no less than 120,000 extra soldiers in the Middle East. The USS Arlington and the Patriot air defence missile system have already been sent to the Straits of Hormuz, a transit route for an important part of world oil production.
On 13 June, a month after the sabotage of four naval vessels in the same waters, pressure mounted again following an attack on two tankers, Norwegian and Japanese. Trump blamed Iran despite the denials of both Iran and Norwegian and Japanese spokesmen[2]. A week later Iran shot down an American drone accused of flying over Iranian territory. This time it was Trump who issued a denial and mobilised his bombers, only to cancel the strike at the last minute. And all this stoked up by a surge of warlike invective, rhetoric and threats[3].
It would seem that Trump, who hardly bothers any more with mystifications about “clean” and “humanitarian” wars, is again using the strategy he calls “maximum pressure”. The American army is not in a position to invade Iran. But it has to be said that the conditions for a spiral into war are coming together: a strategy whose ineffectiveness was proved in the case of North Korea, troops ready for combat on both sides of the frontier, cynical war-mongers at the head of both the American and Iran regimes…The strategy of “maximum pressure” above all contains the maximum risk of war!
The weakening of American leadership
Trump can play the tough guy all he wants, but these tensions are really a clear expression of the historic weakening of American leadership. In the military adventures in Iraq (1990 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001), the US showed its incontestable military superiority, but it also showed its growing powerlessness to maintain a minimum of stability in the region and to oblige its allies in the former Western bloc to close ranks behind it. This weakening would end up with the incapacity of the US to engage its land forces in Syria, giving a free hand to its regional rivals, in the first place Russia but also Iran.
Tehran was thus able to open up a military corridor via Iraq and Syria to its historic ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon, provoking the anger of its main Arab rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, and of Israel which has already carried out air raids against Iranian positions in Syria. Similarly, in Yemen, the theatre of a truly atrocious war, Iran is seriously denting the credibility of Saudi Arabia, the main military power in the region and the American pivot in the Middle East.
In this context, former president Obama had to resign himself to negotiating a deal with Tehran: the US would allow Iran to find a place in the world economy if Tehran agreed to rein in its imperialist ambitions, in particular by giving up its nuclear programme. Obama had in mind the old strategy of destabilizing an enemy state through opening up its economy, thus weakening the local bourgeoisie’s grip over the population and then encouraging revolts to unseat the existing regime.
Still bogged down in Afghanistan, facing European allies that were breathing down its neck, the US was forced to count more and more on its regional allies to push through its policy of isolating Iran. This is why Trump has recently multiplied his commitment to supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia: massive arms supplies to Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, Trump’s continuing support for the Saudi crown prince after the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi…if the muscle-bound and spectacular gestures by Trump are in line with immediate tactical considerations, this strategy will only end up further accelerating the weakening of the US leadership in general and the chaos in the Middle East in particular.
“Populist” or “progressive”, the bourgeoisie sews chaos
While it’s clear that the American bourgeoisie is aiming at the downfall of the ayatollahs’ regime, it remains divided on the way to proceed. Trump’s entourage is partly made up of notorious warmongers like the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, cowboys who want to shoot first and ask questions later. Bolton has already shown this with his ardent advocacy of the invasion of Iraq under the presidency of Bush junior. Iran and its imperialist ambitions are now his target. This is what the man responsible for US foreign policy was already writing in 2015 in The New York Times: “The inconvenient truth is that only military action… can accomplish what is required….. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.[4]. You can’t reproach Bolton with not following through with his ideas, or of being a hypocrite! Not one word, not an ounce of compassion for those who would fall under American or Iranian bombs.
But the ambiguities and contradictory decisions of Trump, leaving aside his tendency to act without thinking, can also be explained by the fact that part of the American bourgeoisie, more conscious of the weakening of the US, is still attached to the more skillful methods of Obama. Three Republican congressmen, led by Kevin McCarthy, have signed a communique, in harmony with the Democratic Party, calling on the government to act in a more “measured” way towards Iran. But the “measure” these bourgeois politicians are talking about is just another word for contortion, because the US is faced with an insoluble dilemma: either they encourage the offensive of their rivals by not intervening directly, or they fuel the slide into chaos by deploying their troops. Whatever they do, the US cannot, any more than the other imperialist powers, escape the logic and contradictions of militarism.
From the great powers to fanatical gangs, from regional powers to the wealthiest oil kingdoms, the vultures are thirsty for blood. Concerned only for the defence of their sordid imperialist interests, they care nothing about the corpses, the countless refugees, the ruined cities, the lives wrecked by bombs, the misery and the desolation. All these war-makers vomit words about peace, negotiation and stability but the barbaric reality that results from their actions bears witness to the utter putrefaction of the capitalist system they all serve.
EG, 1.7.19
[1] Lured by the prospect of a new market to conquer, the other countries who signed the treaty, including the Europeans, have tried to maintain the agreement with Iran. In revenge, Trump has threatened to sanction enterprises which don’t stick to the new American embargo, which has clearly put a damper on European ambitions.
[2] At the time of writing, it’s necessary to be cautious about who carried out this attack. While it’s perfectly possible that Iran wanted to send a message to Trump, given the tradition of manipulation by the great democracies (witness the invention of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”), it can’t be excluded that the US or one of its allies organised a coup aimed at raising tensions.
An article written by a close sympathiser which uses the marxist method to try to get to the roots of the American Civil War, a momentous event which still has an impact on contemporary capitalism, and the class struggle, in the USA.
“In the United States of America, every independent workers’ movement was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.” (Marx)[1]
Introduction
The American Civil War (1861-65) was one of the most significant events for the working class, both in the US and internationally, in the period of capitalism’s progressive growth.
This was in many ways the first industrialised war and the carnage was certainly on an industrial scale: over one million casualties or 3 percent of the US population. Not until the Vietnam War did the total number of American deaths in foreign wars finally eclipse the number who died in the Civil War.
It is well known that Marx and Engels strongly backed a military victory for the Northern bourgeoisie in this bloody conflict, with Marx even penning an address from the First International personally congratulating Lincoln, “the single-minded son of the working class”, on his re-election.[2]
Given that the Communist Left has always stood for the most intransigent defence of internationalism, do we still believe this support for one side in a war between two capitalist factions was correct and if so for what reasons?
The aim of this article is not to try to deal with the whole subject of the Civil War but to contribute to a discussion on this question by setting out some key points for a Marxist understanding.
Slavery was integral to the genesis of capitalism but became an obstacle to its further progress
In a previous article[3] we saw how the English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America were founded by the merchants of the City of London on a commercial basis, primarily for the production of crops (tobacco and later, on a much larger scale, cotton) to be sold as commodities on the world market, and how the huge regimented labour force required for this early capitalist enterprise was ensured by using tens of thousands of men, women and children as slave labour.[4] Until the end of the 18th century the majority of these slaves were white Europeans.
Far from being a vestige of feudalism or a historical anomaly, forms of slavery were integral to the genesis of capitalism, especially in areas of the world like South America and the Caribbean as well as North America. What was specific to slavery in North America was, first, the change that took place in the main form, from a dependence on convict, forced and indentured labour by black and white slaves to racially-based chattel slavery. This change was motivated by the growing shortage of these forms of labour and the availability of cheap black slave labour from the Atlantic slave trade, but above all by the need of the colonial ruling class to find a more effective means of controlling black and white labour and preventing a dangerous class struggle against private property.
Second, and in global historical terms more significant, was the pivotal role that plantation slavery in the US came to play in the development of industrial capitalism, which for Marx depended as much on the existence of plantation slavery in the United States as it did on the development of machinery; in fact slavery was just as much the ‘pivot’ of bourgeois industry as machinery and credit because, very succinctly, “Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry.”[5]
But if slavery was integral to the genesis of capitalism, over time it became an obstacle to its further progress.
The American Revolution had cemented the political rule of the slaveholders, whose plantation economy was essential to the survival of the new bourgeois republic. But the rise of an industrial capitalist class in the North and its drive to colonise the west and introduce capitalist methods of production into agriculture met with the resistance of the slaveholding class, whose political and economic power depended on the continual extension of slavery to new territories. Unable to expand, the slave economy was doomed, but every step in its expansion threatened the new industrial economy and brought it closer to a political confrontation with the North. Eventually this led to the so-called ‘secession crisis’ and the outbreak of the Civil War.
This conflict was firmly rooted in the objective laws of capitalism; in the need of capital to rid itself of all obstacles to its own self-expansion; from being a ‘pivot’ of the growth of industrial capitalism, plantation slavery became a barrier to its further advance. For Marx, the Civil War was “nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of slavery and the system of free labour”, which could “only be ended by the victory of one system or the other”.[6] But this struggle was not simply the clash of blind economic forces, it was the product of, and was shaped by, the struggle between the classes; by “the violent clash of the antagonistic forces, the friction of which was the moving power of its history for half a century”.[7]
The need to maintain white racial solidarity exacerbated class conflicts in the South
The class struggle in the South was shaped by the need of the slaveholding class to preserve the façade of white racial solidarity. As Marx pointed out, this class was a ‘narrow oligarchy’ of only some 300,000 which, due to its greed for the best land, created a dangerous and ever-expanding mass of millions of poor whites, “whose condition is only to be compared with that of the Roman plebeians in the period of Rome's extreme decline”. [8] The rule of this narrow oligarchy depended on diverting the struggle of these poor white landless farmers and labourers, who were essential as a bulwark against the threat of slave revolt, by offering them the prospect of becoming slaveholders themselves, or at least preserving the illusion that they had a stake in slaveholding society.
In industry the oligarchy relied heavily on the use of slave labour, in skilled as well as unskilled roles. This not only had the effect of driving down wages and conditions to subsistence levels but inevitably led to unemployment among ‘free’ white workers, provoking struggles against the use of black slave labour as the only way to protect jobs and prevent further wage cuts.[9] Even these struggles posed a threat to the slaveholders’ rule, as shown by the 1847 strike of skilled white workers at the Tredegar Iron Works to demand the removal of skilled black slave labour, which for the employers struck not only at their profits but “the roots of all the rights and privileges of the masters”[10].
The influx of militant white immigrant labour to the South created an explosive situation for the slaveholding class, which increasingly faced a dilemma: either to make more use of slave labour and risk provoking the protests of white workers; or to exclude slaves from industry and threaten the façade of racial unity on which its rule depended. Its response was to try to resist the growth of industry, which temporarily preserved the basis of its power but only at the cost of exacerbating economic backwardness and conflicts with other factions of capital.
Slave resistance in the South threatened the stability of the capitalist system
Due to the pivotal role of plantation slavery in the US in the development of industrial capitalism, a major slave insurrection in the South threatened to precipitate a crisis of the entire system. This is why, on the eve of the Civil War, Marx considered the struggles of the plantation slaves as in the US one of the two most important world developments.[11]
The threat of slave rebellion was certainly real (Gabriel’s rebellion, 1800, Denmark Vesey’s revolt in South Carolina, 1822, Nat Turner’s insurrection in Southampton County Virginia, 1831, the crews of the Amistad and Creole in 1839 and 1841).[12] In fact slave resistance was continuous, involving not only individual acts such as stealing property, sabotage and slowness, burning down plantation buildings and escaping, but also forms of collective action including work stoppages in protest against brutality, and running away leaving one slave to negotiate with the master until grievances were addressed. Marx talked about the value of labour power having a “historical and moral” element,[13] and it is surely true that, deprived of any right to organise or formally negotiate the price of their labour, slaves nevertheless showed by their courage, determination to resist and capacity for collective action, the ability to push back the worst excesses of the slave regime and win some amelioration in their conditions.
And of course behind every act of slave resistance there lurked the spectre of an alliance of poor whites and slaves against the rich that had haunted the ruling class from the origins of capitalism in North America. Stern police measures were taken against whites who fraternised with blacks, suggesting that such instances were frequent enough to cause concern.
In response to this threat, the South was in effect turned into a combination of armed camp and police state and the machinery of repression was further reinforced by the refinement of white racist ideology. There were also attempts to minimise the danger of revolt by conceding some reforms, with laws enacted in some slave states to limit the exploitation of slave labour. Nevertheless, the slaveholding regime constituted a weak link in the chain of capitalist domination, not only in the US but globally.
The threat of class struggle was a constant concern of the bourgeoisie
The period leading up to the Civil War saw a massive growth of the industrial proletariat in the North and several important waves of struggles culminating in the largest strike in the USA so far (New England shoemakers’ strike, 1860).
The strategy of the bourgeoisie to manage this growing threat at first involved developing the Democratic Party while reinforcing ethnic, religious and racial divisions between workers (‘Jacksonian Democracy’). But the Democrats also expressed the interests of the slaveholding bourgeoisie in the US state and as the struggle between North and South grew more acute the party split into two opposing factions, leading to a shift in the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus.
The rise of the Republican Party reflected the political advance of the industrial capitalist class and the need to more effectively manage the class struggle. Recognising the inevitability of the conflict with the slaveholding regime, the Republicans fought the 1860 election on a platform to stop any further extension of slavery. But the ruling faction around Lincoln continued to pursue a policy of compromise with the South, at least in part due to awareness that war could open the floodgates to a more dangerous class struggle against private property.
2. What was the response of the workers’ movement to the Civil War?
The majority of the white working class in the US did not support the abolition of slavery
In the North, in response to the rapid growth of a racially and ethnically heterogeneous industrial proletariat, the American ruling class had deployed the racist concept of white supremacy as part of a deliberate strategy to block the tendency of workers’ struggles to build solidarity. White wage slaves were encouraged to see themselves as superior to chattel slaves and the abolition of slavery was presented, with some success, as the threat of a ‘flood’ of black labour in direct competition with white workers.[14]
In the South, the concept of white supremacy was explicit in the system of black chattel slavery, which co-opted the white working class to police the slave system on the basis of white racial solidarity.
For the entire working class, therefore, as long as slavery continued to exist, it was not only a moral outrage but also a practical obstacle to its unification as a class. As Marx powerfully put it:
“While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned labourer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labour, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation…”[15]
But the majority of the white working class in the US before the Civil War did not support the abolition of slavery. Encouraged by bourgeois propaganda, many white workers, especially unskilled recent immigrants, continued to fear that freeing black slaves would increase competition for jobs and drive down wages and conditions. Some also feared that support for abolition would split the Democratic Party and strengthen the enemies of ‘Jacksonian Democracy’.
What eventually won more workers to the view that slavery must be abolished was the extension of slavery to new territories of the US, which threatened to extend slave labour to the factories of the North, lower wages to subsistence levels and overturn hard-won democratic reforms. But fear that abolition would result in throwing millions of black workers onto the labour market and driving down wages remained a powerful influence on sections of the white working class.
The most politically advanced minorities of the US workers’ movement recognised that slavery must be destroyed if the working class was to emancipate itself
The most politically advanced minorities of the US working class did recognise that no significant progress for the labour movement was possible until slavery was destroyed.
Among the mechanic’s associations and workingmen’s parties of the early workers’ movement there was a tradition of support for abolition as an integral demand in the struggle for democratic rights, and the New England factory workers – the vanguard of the early industrial proletariat – consistently voiced support for the struggles of the plantation slaves.
The most advanced political minorities in the US – the communist nuclei that emerged from within German-speaking workers’ movement– explicitly argued that as long as chattel slavery continued to exist the working class could not emancipate itself, and that it was necessary for the working class to take a lead role in the struggle against the slaveholders.
But the failure of early attempts to form an independent class party weakened the movement. In its absence supporters of the ‘Marx party’ in the US (see box) worked with the Republican Party and actively campaigned for its electoral victory, on the basis that this was the best guarantee of the capitalist development necessary to ensure social progress. However, some radical workers refused to support a party that defended the interests of the industrial capitalists and many remained within the Democratic Party, despite its defence of the slaveholders’ interests.
On the outbreak of war the working class in the North was mobilised in defence of the Union but the class character of the conflict quickly asserted itself
The effect of the outbreak of war was to immediately cut short the rising wave of workers’ struggles and to rally the northern working class in defence of the Union. In the patriotic fervour unleashed after the surrender of Fort Sumter (April 1861) so many workers enlisted in the Union army, including entire local trade unions, that some branches of industry faced labour shortages. Whole units were raised of German, Italian, Irish and Polish workers. The tiny marxist movement in the US suspended its activity and, viewing the war as a continuation of the 1848 revolutions, put its position into practice and fought arms in hand for the abolition of slavery in the ranks of the US army.[16]
Throughout the war, it was the working class that bore the brunt of the slaughter, constituting almost half the military strength of the North. The vast majority of the Union army, even after the draft was introduced, were volunteers.
But the class character of the conflict also quickly asserted itself. Workers’ struggles revived in response to soaring prices and hardship due to the needs of the war economy, provoking a concerted counter-offensive by the northern bourgeoisie backed by the federal government and the use of troops for strike-breaking.
As the death toll mounted and conscription was introduced by both sides, there was also growing opposition to the discriminatory class basis of the draft, with the slogan “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” becoming popular among workers in both North and South. Many evaded the draft. In the South it became almost unenforceable. About one in ten in the Union army deserted and it was a far greater problem for the Confederacy.
The Draft Riots in New York (1863), in which white workers, many of them Irish recent immigrants, indiscriminately attacked blacks, resulting in 400 casualties before being put down by troops, highlight both the class character of the war and the effects of racial divisions in the proletariat due to the fear of competition. The draft exempted blacks, who were not considered citizens, and allowed those who could afford to pay to avoid it, hitting poor white workers hardest. Irish unskilled workers in particular feared competition if the slaves were freed. Although only a small fraction of the working class joined the rioters and organisations of the workers’ movement denounced it, similar riots occurred in Cincinnati, Chicago, Pennsylvania and other northern cities. There were also draft riots in the South and widespread disaffection by the end of the war.
The political movement against the war was primarily an expression of bourgeois interests rather than proletarian internationalism
Despite its mobilisation in defence of the Union, throughout the war a large section of the working class in the North, possibly a majority, supported a policy of compromise with the South, but despite workers’ struggles in response to the effects of the war and opposition to the class basis of the draft, there was no significant political movement to oppose the war as a fight between two capitalist factions.
The anti-war movement in the North primarily expressed the interests of those factions of the bourgeoisie dependent on trade with the South. The pro-southern faction of the Democratic Party – the ‘Peace Democrats’ or ‘Copperheads’ – argued that the working class should be neutral or indifferent to the war. They opposed conscription, with some encouraging desertion, and when the Confederacy was losing the war they called for a negotiated peace.
Copperhead propaganda naturally fed on working class discontent with a war in which the bourgeoisie cynically sent the proletariat to be massacred, and this was undoubtedly a factor that led to the Draft Riots. Opposition to the draft and the large numbers deserting on both sides at least in part reflected an elementary proletarian class consciousness, but this did not find expression in an explicit working class anti-war movement.
3. What were the results of the Civil War for the working class?
The abolition of slavery removed an obstacle to working class unity and accelerated the development of the workers’ movement
The policy of compromise with the South pursued by the ruling faction around Lincoln changed in the course of the war, firstly because the continuing ability of the South to use the institution of slavery to wage war was a source of military weakness for the North, and secondly because of concern at the reaction of the white working class to the class character of the war which was leading to draft riots and unwillingness to fight for the Union. This change resulted in the gradual enlistment and arming of former slaves by the North and the declaration that the abolition of slavery was now an aim of the war.
The effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slavery abolished in those areas no longer in Confederate control, was to encourage around half a million slaves to leave the plantations. In effect this was a mass refusal to continue to work for the slaveholding regime and the ending of slavery was thus due in part to the collective action of the black slaves themselves. Nearly two hundred thousand black soldiers served in the Union army – 10 per cent of its strength. Many more supported the war effort of the North in noncombat roles.
The abolition of slavery was completed by the Confederate surrender and constitutional amendments. For Marx, the “moral impetus” the freeing of the slaves gave to the working class movement was the most important result of the Civil War, immediately reflected in an acceleration of the struggle for the eight hour day, “which ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California, with the seven-league boots of a locomotive”.[17]
This development of the workers’ movement was also reflected in the building of the first national union federation (National Labor Union, 1866) and renewed calls for the formation of an independent workers’ party. Of equal importance was the rise of a workers’ movement in the South and perhaps the single most significant result of the abolition of slavery was the organisation of black workers, who began to form their own associations (“Colored” National Labor Union, 1869) and to engage in militant strike action.
Many of these gains were swept away by the economic crisis of 1873 but the foundations had been laid for a national workers’ movement and, finally, the formation of a socialist party (Workingmen’s Party, 1876).
In the North, unity between white and black workers continued to be impeded by fear of competition
However, despite these historic gains, the struggle of the US working class for unity remained confronted by extremely difficult obstacles.
With the end of the Civil War, an increasing number of black workers, skilled as well as unskilled, moved to the North, where they were met with hostility from white workers and trade unions influenced by bourgeois propaganda that this would lead to higher unemployment and lower wages.
At first the organised workers’ movement evaded the need to take clear position on the exclusion of black workers, although there was a recognition that in the absence of class solidarity the capitalists would be able to exploit any division between black and white workers, and black workers’ leaders powerfully called for class unity (Isaac Myers). In the end it was the self-organisation of black workers and their engagement in strike action that practically posed the need for joint organisation and forced the workers’ movement to take a position. The National Labor Union eventually ended the exclusion of black workers and began to organise black workers, albeit in separate unions, but there was continued hostility from other unions and black workers continued their own efforts to organise separately at a national level.
It is clear that fear of competition remained a potent force within the US workers’ movement, reinforced by the concept of white supremacy which remained deeply embedded in American capitalist society.
In the South the defeat of the slaveholding regime led to real democratic reforms but a regime based on white supremacy was re-imposed
To consolidate its victory over the slaveholding regime the northern bourgeoisie implemented a raft of measures to ‘reconstruct’ the South. Leading Confederates were disenfranchised and state governments re-constituted under the direct control of the US Army, with new state constitutions based on universal male suffrage and federal troops stationed to ensure the voting rights of former slaves. However there were no moves to redistribute land, and there were even measures to ensure unpaid labour to former slaveholders (the ‘Black Codes’), leading to protests by plantation workers.
In fact black workers did not wait for these reforms but took action themselves, agitating, educating, organising and arming, in some places occupying the land of their former owners. In two states with black majorities, South Carolina and Mississippi, there were brief experiments in more radical democratic reform, with former slaves and poor farmers active in drawing up new constitutions and new Reconstruction parliaments voting for social reforms and full civil rights.
Having achieved its own objectives, and alarmed at the spectre of an alliance of former slaves and poor whites pursuing a more radical struggle against private property, the northern bourgeoisie conspired to withdraw federal troops from the South, unleashing a wave of white racist terror which led to the crushing of the Reconstruction parliaments and the re-establishment of a regime based on forced segregation and violent repression.
In this way, despite some lasting democratic reforms, the victory of industrial capital was only ensured in the South by crushing the radical struggles of the black proletariat and reinforcing racial divisions with the poor whites.
Conclusions
The marxist movement’s critical support for the military victory of the North in the American Civil War was based on a global, historic vision which was premised on the materialist conception that the development of capitalism was a necessary step in order to create the conditions for the proletarian revolution; and that, given the system was still waging struggles against feudal remnants and expanding into new territories, these conditions did not yet exist. In the US, in order to ensure the further advance of capital, it was therefore necessary to destroy the economic and political power of the slaveholding regime, and thus hasten the growth and development of the industrial proletariat, the system’s gravedigger, and create the conditions for capital’s eventual overthrow.
As long as the power of the slaveholding regime remained, the threat of the expansion of slavery, both to the industrial capitalist economy of the North and to the wages and conditions of the working class, continued to exist. And even if the North, with its economic superiority and endless supply of manpower, must eventually prevail, every delay not only prolonged the existence of this threat to the development of the proletariat but also of the moral outrage of the slave system itself in all its inhumanity.[18]
The watchword of the workers’ movement was “proletarians of all lands, unite!” But for Marx, the continued existence of slavery paralysed the development of the workers’ movement, both in the US and internationally, preventing this unity because it allowed the ruling class to present wage slavery as superior to chattel slavery, encouraging white workers to believe that, however exploited and oppressed, they were still better off than black slaves, driving a wedge between these fractions of the proletariat.
As a revolutionary class that is also an exploited class in society, the proletariat can oppose capitalism only with its own organisation and its own consciousness. Above all the proletarian revolution depends on the development of class consciousness and this is why the emancipation of the proletariat and the liberation of society from all forms of exploitation is not an inevitability. And this is also why for Marx the “consequent moral impetus” the freeing of the slaves gave to the working class movement was the most important result of the Civil War. [19]
Despite the continuing difficulties of the struggle for class unity imposed by capitalism, it was due to the active, conscious intervention of the working class, both black and white, that a crucial obstacle to the development of proletarian consciousness was removed. Nor was this ‘moral impetus’ confined to the USA; Marx hailed the “heroic example” of the British workers who, despite the acute hardship and severe unemployment caused by the northern blockade, expressed their sympathy with the struggle against slavery, giving the world a practical example of proletarian internationalism. We can also see this impetus in the development of the First International itself which, with the help of its supporters in the US and the European movement, saw a definite growth of its influence as a result of its position on the Civil War[20] and consequently found itself better placed to play a role in the new phase of the class struggle signalled by the North’s victory.
With hindsight we can see the Civil War as signalling that the epoch of progressive bourgeois revolutions was drawing to a close – at least in Western Europe and the USA – and the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat was moving to the centre stage of history. Two years after Marx’s prescient announcement that the Civil War had opened up “a new epoch in the annals of the working class”,[21] the Paris workers “stormed the heavens”, seizing and exercising power in the first historic example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The difficult struggle of the international working class movement for unity continued in new conditions and at a higher level.
*********
Joseph Weydemeyer: leader of the ‘Marx party’ in the US
The life of Joseph Weydemeyer (1818-1866) as a communist militant vividly illustrates the approach of the marxist movement at the time to the question of the American Civil War and the development of the working class movement.
A surveyor and engineer who served in the Prussian army, Weydemeyer was won to communism by the proletariat around 1845-46, becoming a member of the Communist League after visiting Marx and Engels in Brussels.
Active as a newspaper editor during the 1848 revolutions, he attempted to keep the Communist League intact, escaping the ensuing repression by emigrating to the USA where, in contact with Marx, he immediately became active in efforts to regroup revolutionaries.
In effect Weydemeyer was leader of the ‘Marx party’ in the US, playing a leading role in early attempts to create a class party in the US along marxist lines (Proletarierbund, 1852, American Workers’ League, 1853). Later, with the reflux in workers’ struggles, he moved to the Midwest and devoted himself to a deeper study of the economic roots of the conflict between the industrial North and the slave-based South, his writings undoubtedly influencing Marx and Engels’s view of this question.
Moving back to New York, his activity became more focused on the struggle against slavery and on pressuring the Republican Party to adopt more radical positions and he personally participated in Lincoln’s successful 1860 presidential campaign.
In the Civil War, due to his military experience he served as an artillery officer and technical aide to General Frémont, an abolitionist, and was made Lieutenant Colonel, commanding a volunteer artillery regiment; later he was given the task of defending St. Louis from Confederate guerrillas.
In contact with Marx and Engels, Weydemeyer continued his political work in the army, distributing copies of Marx’s Inaugural Address of the IWMA among the soldiers and workers in St. Louis and building branches of the First International in the US.
His last political struggle before his death in 1866 was alongside Marx and Engels and their supporters against the influence of Lassalle’s state socialist ideas in the First International.
MH
[1] Capital Volume One, Chapter 10, Penguin, 1976, p.414.
[2] See the ‘Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln’, 1865, in The Civil War in the United States by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels [CWUSME], Citadel, 1961, p.279 .
[3] “Notes on the early class struggle in America - Part I: The birth of the American proletariat”, https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201303/6529/notes-early-... [1860].
[4] See Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2, Chapter XII: “In the second type of colonies - plantations - where commercial speculations figure from the start and production is intended for the world market, the capitalist mode of production exists, although only in a formal sense, since the slavery of Negroes precludes free wage-labour, which is the basis of capitalist production. But the business in which slaves are used is conducted by capitalists. The method of production which they introduce has not arisen out of slavery but is grafted on to it. In this case the same person is capitalist and landowner".
[5] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Progress, 1975, p. 104.
[6] Marx, ‘The Civil War in the United States’, 1861, in CWUSME, p.81
[7] Marx, ‘The American Question in England’, 1861, Op. Cit., p.8.
[8] ‘The North American Civil War’, 1861, Op. Cit., p.69.
[9] At the same time there were places in the South where white and black skilled workers worked side by side without serious racial tensions, eg. in the cotton mills of Athens Georgia and the workshops of St Louis (See Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 1, 1979, p.261.
[10] Foner, Op. Cit., p.262.
[11] Marx to Engels, 11 January 1860. The other development was the movement of the serfs in Russia.
[12] For more on early slave insurrections see “Notes on the early class struggle in America - Part I: The birth of the American proletariat”, https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201303/6529/notes-early-... [1860].
[13] Capital Volume One, Chapter 6, Penguin, 1976, p.275.
[14] See ‘Notes on the early class struggle in America: Part 3 - The birth of the US workers’ movement and the difficult struggle for class unity’, https://en.internationalism.org/content/16657/notes-early-class-struggle... [1893]
[15] ‘Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln’, 28 January 1865, in CWUSME, p. 279.
[16] Due to their political experience the communists had an influence out of proportion to their numbers in the Civil War: for example, August Willich, Engels’ commander in the 1849 uprisings in Germany and former Communist League member, was active in recruiting German volunteers to the Ninth Ohio Infantry regiment and later commanded the all-German 32nd Indiana Infantry, being promoted to major general. See also box on Joseph Weydemeyer.
[17] Capital Volume One, Chapter 10, Penguin, 1976, p.414.
[18] Could the South have won? We know that in private Engels, who followed the military campaign closely, thought this was possible. Marx disagreed; arguing that while the war could be a long drawn out affair the North must eventually prevail, due not only to its economic superiority but also the inner laws of the slaveholding economy, which meant that even if the North made peace with the Confederacy, the latter, because of the economic and political imperative to extend its territory, must still eventually collapse (See in particular Marx’s letter to Engels, 10 September 1862, in CWUSME, pp.254-255).
[19] ‘Address of the IWMA to the National Labor Union of the United States’, May 1869.
[20] The address penned by Marx, personally congratulating Lincoln, “the single-minded son of the working class”, on his re-election, was written on behalf of the IWMA which at this time included bourgeois democratic elements, and did not represent his personal views. These were expressed in private to Engels: “...I had to compose the stuff (…) in order that the phraseology to which this sort of scribbling is restricted should at least be distinguished from the democratic, vulgar phraseology…”(9 November 1864, in CWUSME, p. 273).
[21] ‘Address of the IWMA to the National Labor Union of the United States’, May 1869.
Eighty years ago, one of the most important events of the 20th century, the Spanish Civil War, came to an end. This major conflict was at the heart of the world situation in the 1930s. It had been at the centre of international political attention for several years. It would provide a decisive test for all political tendencies claiming to be proletarian and revolutionary. For example, it was in Spain that Stalinism would play a part, for the first time outside the USSR, as the executioner of the proletariat. Likewise, it would be around the Spanish question that a decantation would take place within the currents that had fought against the degeneration and betrayal of the communist parties in the 1920s, a decantation dividing them into those who would maintain an internationalist position during the Second World War and those who ended up participating in it, such as the Trotskyist movement. Even today, positions on the events of 1936-1939 in Spain are central in the propaganda of the currents that claim to support proletarian revolution. This is especially the case for the different tendencies of anarchism and Trotskyism which, despite their differences, both agree that there was a "revolution" in Spain in 1936. A revolution that, according to the anarchists, went much further than that of 1917 in Russia because of the constitution of the "collectives" promoted by the CNT, the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, an analysis rejected at the time by various currents of the Communist Left, by the Italian Left and also by the German-Dutch Left.
The first question for us to answer therefore is: was there a revolution in Spain in 1936?
What is a revolution?
Before answering, we need to agree on what exactly is meant by "revolution". It is a particularly overused term since it is claimed in France for example by both by the extreme left (Mélenchon with his "Citizen Revolution") and by the extreme right (the "National Revolution" of the Front Nationale). President Macron himself entitled the book setting down his political programme, "Revolution".
In fact, beyond all the fanciful interpretations, the term "Revolution" has historically expressed and entailed a violent change of political regime where the balance of power between social classes is overturned in favour of those representing progressive change in society. This was the case with the English Revolution of the 1640s and the French Revolution of 1789, both of which attacked the political power of the aristocracy in the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Throughout the 19th century, the political advances of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the nobility represented progress for society. And this is because at that time the capitalist system was experiencing growing prosperity and setting out to conquer the world. However, this situation would change radically in the 20th century. The bourgeois powers had finished sharing out the world between them. Any new conquests, whether colonial or commercial, would involve challenging the claims of a rival power. This gave rise to the increase in militarism and the outbreak of imperialist tensions that led to the First World War. This was a sign that capitalism had become a decadent and obsolete system. The bourgeois revolutions were no longer relevant. The only revolution on the agenda was the one to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a new society free of exploitation and war, i.e. communism. The only subject of this revolution is the class of wage earners that produces most of the world's social wealth, the proletariat.
There are fundamental differences between bourgeois revolutions and the proletarian revolution. A bourgeois revolution, i.e. the seizure of political power by the representatives of a country's bourgeois class, is the outcome to a whole historical period during which the bourgeoisie has acquired a decisive influence in the economic sphere through the development of trade and techniques of production. The political revolution, the abolition of the privileges of the nobility, constitutes an important (although not indispensable) step in the growing control by the bourgeoisie over society, which enables it to achieve and accelerate this process of control.
The proletarian revolution does not in any sense emerge at the end of a process of economic transformation of society, but on the contrary is active from the very start. The bourgeoisie had been able to establish its own economic “islands” within feudal society, with trade in the towns and other commercial networks, 'islands' that gradually would grow and be consolidated. It's nothing like this for the proletariat. There can be no islands of communism in a global economy dominated by capitalism and market forces. This was the dream of the utopian socialists such as Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen. But, despite all their goodwill and their often profound analyses of the contradictions of capitalism, their dreams clashed with and were shattered by the reality of capitalist society. The fact is that the first stage of the communist revolution consists in the seizure of political power by the proletariat worldwide. It is only through its political power that the revolutionary class will be able to gradually transform the global economy by socialising it, by abolishing private ownership of the means of production along with market relations.
There are two other basic differences between bourgeois revolutions and the proletarian revolution:
- Firstly, while bourgeois revolutions have taken place at different times depending on the economic development of each particular country (there is more than a century between the English and French revolutions), the proletarian revolution must be concluded within the confines of the same historical period. Should it remain isolated within a single country or within a few countries, it would be condemned to defeat. This is what happened to the Russian revolution of 1917.
- Secondly, bourgeois revolutions, even extremely violent ones, still retained most of the state apparatus of feudal society (the army, police, legal system and bureaucracy). In fact, the bourgeois revolutions took charge of modernising and perfecting the existing state apparatus. This was possible and necessary since this type of revolution provided for a process of succession between the two exploiting classes, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, to the helm of society. The proletarian revolution is completely different. In no way can the proletariat, the exploited class at the heart of capitalist society, use the state apparatus designed and organised to guarantee this exploitation, and to suppress the struggles against this exploitation, for its own benefit. The first of the tasks of the proletariat in the course of the revolution will be to arm itself in order to destroy the state apparatus from top to bottom and to set up its own organs of power based on its mass unitary organisations with elected delegates revocable by general assemblies: the workers' councils.
1936: a revolution in Spain?
On July 18, 1936, following a military coup against the Popular Front government, the proletariat took up arms. It was successful in defeating the criminal enterprise led by Franco and his associates inside most major cities. But did it then take advantage of this situation, of its position of strength, to attack the bourgeois state? A bourgeois state which, since the establishment of the Republic in 1931, had already distinguished itself in the bloody repression of the working class, particularly in the Asturias in 1934 where 3,000 were killed. The answer is 'absolutely not!'
For sure the workers' response was initially a class action, preventing the coup from succeeding. But, unfortunately, the workers' energy was quickly channelled and ideologically recuperated behind the state banner by the mystifying force of the Popular Front's "antifascism". Far from attacking and destroying the bourgeois state, as was the case in October 1917 in Russia, the workers were diverted and recruited into defending the republican state. In this tragedy, the anarchist CNT, the most powerful trade union movement, played a leading role in disarming the workers, pushing them to abandon the terrain of the class struggle and capitulate, handing them over, with their hands and feet bound, into the arms of the bourgeois state. Instead of leading an attack on the state aimed at destroying it, as they have always claimed to want to do, the anarchists took charge of some of the ministries, stating, as Federica Montseny, anarchist minister of the republican government did:
"Today, the government, with the power to control the state organs, has ceased to be an instrument of oppression against the working class, just as the state no longer acts as an organism that divides society into classes. Both will oppress the people much less now that members of the CNT are involved in them”. The anarchists, who claim to be the state's "worst enemies", were thus able, using this type of rhetoric, to lead the Spanish workers into a pure and simple defence of the democratic state. The working class was diverted from its own political goals into supporting the "democratic" faction of the bourgeoisie against the "fascist" faction. This reflects the full extent of the political, moral, and historical bankruptcy of anarchism. Where it was politically dominant in the Iberian peninsula, anarchism showed its total inability to defend class politics, to stand up for working class emancipation. The class was simply led to defend the democratic bourgeoisie and the capitalist state. But the bankruptcy of anarchism did not stop there. By pretending it could lead the revolution on the basis of local actions that gave rise to the "collectives" of 1936, it actually rendered a proud service to the bourgeois state;
- on the one hand, it made possible the reorganisation of the Spanish economy in the interest of the war effort of the republican state, i.e. it supported representatives of the democratic bourgeoisie, against the "fascist" faction of the same bourgeoisie;
- on the other hand, it diverted the proletariat away from taking a generalised political action and into taking direct charge of the management of the factories and plants. This also benefitted the State and therefore the bourgeoisie. The workers were recruited into the "collectives" to deal with day-to-day production, into abandoning a global political activity and all concern for the real needs of the working class in favour of managing local enterprises, leaving them with no contacts between them.
While the proletariat was master of the streets in July 1936, in less than one year it was displaced by the coalition of republican political forces. On May 3, 1937, it made one last attempt to challenge this situation. On that day, the "Assault Guards", police units of the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia - in fact they were tools of the Stalinists who had gained control over them - tried to occupy the Barcelona telephone exchange that was in the hands of the CNT. The most combative part of the proletariat responded to this provocation by taking control of the streets, erecting barricades and going on strike; an almost general strike. The proletariat was fully mobilised and certainly had weapons, but it didn't have a clear perspective. The democratic state had remained intact. It was still on the offensive, contrary to what the anarchists had said, and had in no way given up plans to suppress attempts at resistance by the proletariat. While Franco's troops voluntarily brought an end to the offensive at the Front, the Stalinists and the republican government crushed the very workers who, in July 1936, had defeated the fascist coup d'état. It was at this moment that Federica Montseny, the most prominent anarchist minister, called on the workers to stop fighting and to lay down their arms! So it was a real stab in the back for the working class, a real betrayal and a crushing defeat. This is what the magazine Bilan, publication of the Italian Communist Left, wrote on this occasion: "On July 19, 1936, the proletarians of Barcelona overpowered the attack of Franco's battalions THAT WERE ARMED TO THE TEETH USING THEIR BARE HANDS. On May 4, 1937, these same proletarians, NOW DISARMED, left behind them many more fallen victims on the streets than in July when they had had to repel Franco; and now it was the antifascist government (even including the anarchists, to which the POUM indirectly gave solidarity) that unleashed the scum of the repressive forces against the workers".
In the widescale repression that followed the defeat of the May 1937 uprising, the Stalinists were actively engaged in the work of physically removing any "troublesome individuals". This was what happened, for example, to the Italian anarchist activist, Camilo Berneri, who had had the lucidity and courage to make a damning criticism of the CNT's policy and the action of the anarchist ministers in an "Open Letter to Comrade Federica Montseny".
To claim that what happened in Spain in 1936 was a revolution that was "superior" to the one that took place in Russia in 1917, as the anarchists do, not only totally turns its back on reality, but constitutes a major attack on the consciousness of the proletariat by discarding and rejecting the most precious experiences of the Russian revolution: in particular those of the workers' councils (the Soviets), the destruction of the bourgeois state, the appeals to proletarian internationalism and the fact that this revolution was conceived as the first stage of world revolution and gave an impetus to the constitution of the Communist International. Despite the anarchists’ assertions to the contrary, proletarian internationalism was proven to be quite alien to the majority of the anarchist movement, as we will see later.
The Spanish Civil war, a preparation for the Second World War
The first thing that confirms our view that the Spanish Civil War was only a prelude to the Second World War and not a social revolution, is the very nature of the fighting between different fractions of the bourgeois state, republicans and fascists, and that between nations. The CNT's nationalism led it to call explicitly for the world war to save the "Spanish nation": "Free Spain will do its duty. In the face of this heroic attitude, what will the democracies do? It is to be hoped that the inevitable will not be long in coming. Germany's provocative and blunt attitude is already unbearable. (...) Everyone knows that, ultimately, the democracies will have to intervene with their air squadrons and armies to block the passage of these hordes of fanatics..." (Solidaridad Obrera, CNT newspaper, 6 January 1937, quoted by Proletarian Revolution No. 238, January 1937). The two battling bourgeois factions immediately sought outside support: not only was there a massive military intervention by fascist states that delivered air support and modern army weapons to the Francoists, but the USSR was also involved in the conflict, supplying arms and "military advisors". There was enormous political and media support, all over the world, for one bourgeois camp or the other. By contrast, no great capitalist nation had supported the Russian Revolution in 1917! Quite the opposite: they had all done what they could to isolate it and fought against it militarily, trying to drown it in blood.
One of the most spectacular illustrations of the role of the war in Spain in preparing the ground for the Second World War was the attitude of many anarchist militants towards it. Thus, many of them became involved in the Resistance, i.e. the organisation representing the Anglo-American imperialist camp on French soil that was occupied by Germany. Some even joined the regular French army, notably the Foreign Legion or General Leclerc's Second Armoured Division; this same Leclerc would later be actively involved in the colonial war in Indochina. Thus, the first tanks that entered Paris on 24 August 1944 were driven by Spanish soldiers and sported the portrait of Durruti, an anarchist leader and commander of the famous "Durruti column", who himself died outside Madrid in November 1936.
All those who, while claiming to be part of the proletarian revolution, took up the cause of the Republic, of the "democratic camp", generally did so in the name of the "lesser evil" and against the "fascist danger". The anarchists promoted this democratic ideology in the name of their "anti-authoritarian" principles. According to them, even if they admit that "democracy" is one of the expressions of capital, it still constitutes a "lesser evil" for them compared to fascism because, it is obviously less authoritarian. That's total blindness! Democracy is not a "lesser evil". On the contrary! It is precisely because it is capable of creating more illusions than the fascist or authoritarian regimes, that it constitutes a weapon of choice of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
Moreover, democracy is not to be underestimated when it comes to suppressing the working class. It was the "democrats", and even the "Social Democrats", Ebert and Noske, who had Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg murdered, along with thousands of workers, during the German revolution in 1919, bringing to a halt the extension of the world revolution. Where the Second World War is concerned, the atrocities committed by the "fascist camp" are well known and documented, but the contribution of the "democratic camp" cannot be forgotten: it was not Hitler who dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations, it was the "democrat" Truman, the president of the great "democracy" of the United States.
And in looking back at the Spanish Civil War, we should remember the welcome that the French Republic, the champion of "human rights" and "Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité", gave to the 400,000 refugees who fled Spain in the winter of 1939 at the end of the civil war. Most of them were housed in concentration camps like cattle surrounded by barbed wire, under the armed guard of the gendarmes of French democracy.
The proletariat must learn the lessons of the Spanish War:
- Unlike those who want to bury the proletariat and seek to discredit its struggle, those who think that the tradition of the Communist Left is "obsolete" or "old fashioned", that we should free ourselves from the revolutionary past of the proletariat, that Spain was a "superior" revolutionary experience and that finally we should forget the past and "try something different", we affirm that the workers' struggle remains the only way forward for the future of humanity. Therefore it is essential that we defend the working class's legacy and its traditions of struggle, in particular the need for class autonomy in fighting uncompromisingly for its own interests, on its own class terrain, with its own methods of struggle and its own principles.
- A proletarian revolution is not at all the same as the "antifascist" struggle or the events in Spain in the 1930s. Quite the contrary, it has to situate itself on the political terrain of the conscious workers' struggle, based on the political force of the workers' councils. The proletariat must maintain its self-organisation and its political independence from all factions of the bourgeoisie and from all ideologies that are alien to it. This is what the proletariat in Spain was unable to do since, quite the contrary, it bound itself, and therefore surrendered, to the left-wing forces of capital!
- The Spanish Civil War also shows that it is not possible to begin "building a new society" through local initiatives at the economic level, as anarchists choose to believe. Revolutionary class struggle is first and foremost an international political movement and not limited to preliminary economic reforms or measures (even through seemingly very radical "experiments"). The first task of the proletarian revolution, as the Russian Revolution has shown us, must be a political one: the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of power by the working class on an international scale. Without this, it is inevitably doomed to isolation and defeat.
- Finally, democratic ideology is the most dangerous of all those promoted by the class enemy. It is the most pernicious, the one that makes the capitalist wolf look like a protective lamb and "sympathetic" to the workers. Antifascism was therefore the perfect weapon in Spain and elsewhere used by the Popular Fronts to send workers to be massacred in the imperialist war. The State and its "democracy", as a hypocritical and pernicious expression of capital, remains our enemy. The democratic myth is not only a mask of the state and the bourgeoisie to hide its dictatorship, its social domination and exploitation, but also and above all, the most powerful and difficult obstacle for the proletariat to overcome. The events of 1936/37 in Spain amply demonstrate this and it is one of their most important lessons.
ICC, June 2019
The following article was written before many of the most recent twists in the continuing Brexit drama, such as the confirmation of the prorogation of parliament, the bill designed to prevent a No Deal Brexit, Boris Johnson’s attempt to have a general election, and the expulsion of 21 moderate Tory MPs from the party. Events have confirmed that the “situation is a clear expression of the fragmentation resulting from the present phase of capitalist decline”. The fact that the opponents of a No Deal Brexit have made advances in parliament shows that the Brexiteers do not have things all their own way. But defeats in parliament for Prime Minister Johnson do not mean the cause of Brexit is lost, especially if the threats to break the law by Johnson and Gove are followed up in practice.
It is possible to see other expressions of the rally of moderates elsewhere. In Italy, for example, when Matteo Salvini’s League withdrew from the government, instead of being a step towards a Salvini takeover, it led to a coalition between the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party. This might only be a short-lived interlude, but it does show that the battle between the factions of the ruling class is not a one-way street toward populism and the extremes.
However, the underlying problem is still there for the bourgeoisie. The loss of control of the political apparatus, the escalation of the conflicts between different factions means the deepening of the political crisis, which will be further worsened by the development of the economic crisis.
The formation of a new government in London under Boris Johnson does not resolve the political crisis and the power struggle within the British ruling class which became a dominant factor in the political life of that country since the Brexit Referendum of June 2016. On the contrary: with the appointment by the Conservatives of Johnson as their new leader and Prime Minister, this crisis has reached a new stage, the power struggle a new degree of intensity. The new phase of this power struggle is not in the first instance one between Johnson and his so called moderate inner party opponents, or between Johnson and the Labour opposition, or between the PM and the staunchly Remainer first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon. As the London Sunday paper The Observer and the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung both concluded, the opponent Johnson and the Tories are mainly trying to counteract is Mr. Brexit himself: Nigel Farage. The calculation (or the gamble) of Johnson is to ‘deliver Brexit’ by October 31, with or without a deal (as Johnson puts it, ‘do or die’) and if possible without calling a General Election beforehand. Otherwise he risks being obliged to form a coalition government with the new Brexit Party of Farage in order to deliver his Brexit. Farage, the reckless outsider of British politics, would thus gain a direct say on government policy (something the established so-called elites want to avoid). On the other hand, should he be prevented by the present parliament to deliver his Brexit on time as promised, this would be likely to give considerable additional momentum to the political career and ambitions of Farage. The problem for Johnson about this (at the time of writing) is that it is not sure that the present parliament would accept whatever deal (or no deal) Johnson presents to it. It would also be possible for the Prime Minister to sidetrack parliament (for example by temporarily suspending it). But some of his opponents in Westminster have already declared they would consider such a procedure to be a coup d‘État, a veritable Putsch. In a word: The mess is becoming a quagmire. This situation is a clear expression of the fragmentation resulting from the present phase of capitalist decline, of each for himself, at every level: economic, military, social, political. The actors in this process, while not being passive, are largely determined by it.
The political situation (which, for the moment, is much worse than the economic one) is going from bad to worse. The creeping paralysis of the past three years threatens to get out of hand. In this context, it should be noted that, if the new PM is putting all his bets on a quick Brexit at all costs, this is not because he thinks this course of action is necessarily in the best interest of British capitalism. In fact it is well known that Johnson was not particularly convinced of the benefits of Brexit at the time of the referendum, that he reacted with surprise and some dismay to the result. His main motive for supporting the Leave camp seems to have been his ambition to build up his own power base in the Conservative Party in order to challenge the party leader and PM of the time, David Cameron. Caught on the wrong foot by the victory of the Leave camp at the referendum, he soon realised that the putting into practise of this verdict would prove to be a thankless task. He thus momentarily withdrew (or rather: postponed) his bid for party leadership, preferring to leave the dirty work to someone like Theresa May. The main concern of Johnson, therefore, seems in reality not to have been Brexit, but his own political career. The fact that today, three years on, he has successfully bidden for party and state leadership, tells us something about the changes in the balance of forces within the ruling class which have taken place since 2016. At the time the Referendum was called, the two opposing camps were clearly drawn up, each behind their respective leader: Cameron and Farage. Farage was an upstart, operating outside the established party-political apparatus. Cameron, as opposed to this, was not only Prime Minister, he had the support of a majority of the Powers That Be both within his own Tory party and in Labour (the main opposition party) as well as that of the even more firm Remainers from the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists. Initially, the outcome seemed almost a foregone conclusion. But the more the campaign of Farage’s UKIP gathered momentum, the more Tories (including Johnson) began to join in with the Brexiteers. For the most part, this was probably not because they had been convinced by UKIP’s arguments. Not that they did not share the latter’s resentment against Europe for having made the country turn its back on its former Empire. But their main motivation seems to have been a tactical one: that of taking the wind out of the sails of Farage in order to sidetrack him.
But the Tories miscalculated.
The Remainers lost.
And this, in turn, altered the balance of forces within British bourgeois politics. It will suffice to recall that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ Theresa May, who became the successor to Cameron, had originally been a Remainer, as had been many of those who today present themselves as hard-line Brexiteers within the Conservative Party. Indeed the remaining clear cut, Cameron-style Remainers in the Tory Party (‘grandees’ like Heseltine, or current MPs such as Dominic Grieve) are currently having a hard time. As of now, the Brexiteers have more or less taken over the Party, and above all they have taken over the government. One of the architects of the Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings, has become chief advisor to the government.
The situation transformed by the referendum result
Before the Referendum, the choice was between leaving or remaining in the European Union. As long as this was the case, a majority within the ruling class clearly favoured the latter option. But after the Referendum this choice was no longer on the table. Theoretically, of course, it could still be attempted to hold a second referendum with the aim of winning a majority for Remain. But such a manoeuvre would be difficult. It is by no means certain that the outcome would be any different from the first time round. And such an attempt would even be dangerous. It would risk deepening the already existing divisions around the Brexit issue, including those within the ruling class itself. This is why this option is at present not much favoured among its representatives. So today, the momentum is heading towards a no-deal Brexit, although, as shown in the European parliament elections, there is a polarisation between no-deal and no Brexit. Theresa May spent most of her premiership trying to persuade the ‘political class’ that her Brexit with a deal should be accepted as the lesser evil. Without success. From the point of view of the ruling class, May’s deal is certainly a much less attractive option than remaining in the EU had been. The lesser evil? For many of the country’s ‘policy makers’ and ‘opinion makers’ it is not really an option at all. They see it as amounting to the UK still by and large having to follow EU policy on many issues, but no longer having a say in formulating them.
This dilemma has caused a growing disorientation within sizeable parts of the state apparatus. One of the products of this mess has been the development of a whole swathe of what we might call waverers. Their state of mind is brought to light by the rhetorical and voting behaviour of a number of members of parliament: MPs who either advocate one thing today and the opposite tomorrow, or who have no idea how to position themselves, and who apparently would prefer not to do so for as long as possible. Impossible to know in advance which side they might take in the end.
Another result has been the crystallisation, within the Conservative Party, of a growing axis of real hardline Brexiteers. ‘Real’ in the sense that they advocate a no-deal Brexit, not out of career opportunism or tactical considerations, but because they really agree with Nigel Farage. This hard core regroups around figures like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who argues that a no-deal Brexit is the best thing which could possibly happen. This group undoubtedly played a leading role in the downfall of May (after repeatedly sabotaging her different attempts to get her deal accepted) and her replacement by Johnson. Although possibly still a minority within the party, it has the advantage over the other Tories right now of knowing exactly what it wants. And indeed, its internal party opponents are at present pushed very much onto the defensive, their radius of action restricted by the fear that their time-honoured Conservative Party is in existential danger. Their fear is that the hard-liners, if they do not get their way, might rebel and, by one means or another, join up with Farage. Possible scenarios: a split in the party, or its ‘hi-jacking’ along the lines of what Trump has done with the Republican Party in the United States.
Populism and the manipulation of social discontent
One thing at least emerges clearly, which is that the established so-called elite has underestimated the factor of political populism in general, and the role of Farage in particular. We can readily agree that the term ‘populism’ is not very precise and in need of further elaboration. This notwithstanding, the term ‘populism’ itself already contains an important kernel of truth, as the present example of Britain clearly illustrates. One of the main reasons for the success of Farage has been that he knows how to mobilise popular discontent, stoke up diffuse resentments, and manipulate widespread prejudices, in order to counter the propaganda of the leading factions of his own capitalist class. Britain was far from being the only European country where the ruling class, whenever it could, blamed the effects of its attacks against its ‘own’ working population on ‘Brussels’. But in Britain, this ploy was used consistently over such a long time, with an intensity, and to a degree of hysteria, almost unparalleled anywhere else. Moreover, this policy reached a new crescendo at the beginning of the new century, when a number of Eastern European countries joined the European Union. Part of the deal accompanying their integration was that the already existing member states were allowed to restrict the influx of labour from the East during a transitional phase of up to eight years. The concern behind this was to ensure that the downward pressure on wages in Western Europe which the competition from the east on the labour market was going to exert could be phased in, in order to avoid a too-sudden exacerbation of social tensions. Only three countries renounced the use of this transitional mechanism: Sweden, Ireland and… the United Kingdom. In the case of the latter, the main motive was not hard to detect. Whole sectors of British industry were losing out to a German competition which was benefiting, among other things, from radically lowered wages thanks to the (in)famous ‘Agenda 2010’ austerity policy put in place there under the Social Democratic/Green government of Gerhard Schröder. In face of this, an enormous influx of cheap Eastern European labour was exactly what British capitalism needed in order to counteract this German offensive. And at the level of labour market policy, the measure was a complete success. Many workers in Britain lost their jobs, replaced by imported ‘EU citizens’ in a more or less desperate economic situation, and as such obliged to work more for less. Not only were the latter correspondingly ‘highly motivated’ (as the capitalist euphemism likes to put it), many of them were also highly qualified. This policy did not only help to lower real wages. It had a series of additional drastic consequences at the social level, best described under the term: capitalist anarchy. Almost no preparations had been made for such an influx of hundreds of thousands of new inhabitants. The already acute situation at the level of housing, health care and public services like transport and health, was brought to the brink of collapse. And this not only in the Greater London area, but also in regions which until then had been much less a destination of European Union labour migration. An example of the mood reigning at the time was the announcement by the National Health Service in the London area that it was contemplating ceasing to train nurses, since more than enough already trained ones from abroad were now pouring in.
But that is not all. More or less with a single voice, the UK government and the allegedly so democratic and pluralistic media presented this influx as something being imposed on the country by the EU, which London could do nothing about: a good example of ‘fake news’! So when Cameron made his capital blunder of calling his referendum about the continuation or not of Britain´s EU membership, Farage knew exactly what he was doing when he made ‘taking back control of our frontiers’ a lynchpin of his Brexit strategy. In so doing he was able to kill two birds with one stone: directing popular frustration against his own bourgeois rivals, and at the same time turning worker against worker and thus undermining working class solidarity. The only difference, at this level, to his populist counterparts in Europe such as Salvini in Italy or the AfD in Germany is that he mobilised against European Union migrants more than against refugees.
A transatlantic cooperation against the European union
But there is also a second means which enabled Farage to take his political opponents by surprise. This was the support he obtained from powerful bourgeois factions outside the UK. Much has been said about the role of Russia in the Brexit campaign. It is evident that Moscow had an interest in the UKIP side winning the Referendum, and probably did everything in its power in favour of it. However, it is nothing new that the British ruling class likes to blame everything and anything on Russia, and in fact has a vested interest in exaggerating its role. No, the foreign aid we are referring to here is that coming from the other side of the Atlantic. It’s not for nothing that the US media have started to refer to the Brexit Referendum as having been a kind of dress rehearsal for Trump’s victory at the 2016 American presidential elections. Both were, to an important degree, taken in hand by the same structures such as the (now defunct) electoral algorithms of the Cambridge Analytica firm owned by the American mathematician and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, or the media empire of the Australian Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch.
There is a long tradition of close collaboration between leading factions of the British and American bourgeoisie, including on economic questions. Famous (or infamous) is the leading role in the establishment of the ‘neo-liberal’ world economic order played by the combined efforts of Margaret Thatcher (GB) and Ronald Reagan (US). More recently, in face precisely of the Brexit Referendum, Barack Obama tried to come to the rescue of David Cameron by throwing in his own political weight and rhetorical skills in his favour. But on this occasion (perhaps the first time ever on such a scale), the ‘official’ support of the Obama administration for the British government was counteracted by a second, ‘unofficial’ transatlantic collaboration: that of the future ‘Trumpists’ for the Brexiteers. The latter collaboration was motivated by a shared conviction that, in the present historic phase, ‘multilateralism’, whether in the form of the European Union or, for example, of the Chinese One Road One Belt Initiative are increasingly likely to be used as battering rams against the interests of the remaining world power, the United States, but also against those of the former world leader, the United Kingdom. Above all, they suspect structures such as the European Union of being prone to manipulation by potential challengers such as China and Germany. The two latter powers in particular are seen in London and Washington as profiting from the single EU market to spread their influence throughout continental Europe. According to this point of view, held by Trump and others, in a more fragmented world deprived of much of its previous ‘multi-lateral’ structure, the strongest power, the USA, would fare best, being in a better position to impose itself on the others. But according to the Brexiteers, the UK could also benefit from a more unilateral/bilateral (dis)order thanks to its historic experience, its longstanding world-wide connections and its status as a world financial power. In this context, the long-term goal of the hard-line Brexiteers cannot restrict itself to taking the UK out of the European Union. As has been pointed out again and again (already by Cameron during the Referendum campaign), in a world in which Britain coexists with, but is outside of the EU, London risks finding itself considerably at a disadvantage compared with the EU. This is why the hard-line Brexiteers cannot be satisfied with withdrawing the UK from the EU. Their final goal is to contribute to the demolition of the EU, at least in its present form. Brexit, in their eyes, is a first step in that direction.
It goes almost without saying that this policy is a gamble of the most hazardous kind. No wonder it was not at all what the traditional political establishment wanted. It is the objective world historical situation – the crumbling of the existing capitalist order – which lends this unlikely project a degree of plausibility.
The response of the European Union
It certainly did not go unnoticed in London how, in recent years, Germany has taken important steps towards affirming its leadership ambitions within the European Union. It has in particular used economic means to that end. It has largely succeeded in converting Eastern Europe into a kind of extended assembly line of Western European, but above all of German industry. And it has profited from its key role as guarantor for the Euro (the currency shared by a majority of EU member states) to at least partly impose its economic policies on Southern Europe. These measures helped, at least for a while, to counter the centrifugal tendencies within the European Union. However, the past few years have witnessed a series of developments threatening this cohesion. As we have discussed in this article, both Brexit and the policy of Trump in the United States at least partly represent an attack against the EU. But also within the European Union itself, in continental Europe, the already fragile cohesion has been more and more strained by developments such as the rise of populism (which in general tends to be more or less hostile towards ‘Brussels’) or the growing discontent of other member states with German economic policy (including the two heavyweights France and – in particular – Italy).
The interaction of these different tendencies and counter-tendencies is complicated and always good for surprises. Indeed, the 27 Remainer EU states have surprised themselves by how well they have succeeded so far in closing ranks in the Brexit negotiations, resisting, up until now, all the attempts of London to divide them against each other. Indeed, the very global turbulences of which Brexit is a part, and in particular the explosion of trade wars centred around, but not restricted, to the big two USA and China, have reminded the Remainers of the benefits of being part of a commercial bloc which is a real heavy weight on the world economic scene. This goes all the more so for the smaller EU member countries who, in addition, are devoid of the economic and political advantages which the British bourgeoisie can at least place its hopes on. There is also the fact that a number of populist governments have been made to consider how difficult leaving the EU can be because of the example of Britain – hence the EU’s uncompromising stance on the question. Another factor of the present resilience of the EU has been the concern of many of its member states about the successes of Russia in recent years. Germany, which does not dispose of the military might which would be needed to impose itself on the European continent, and is thus obliged to employ elements of collaboration and the search for common denominators in its attempt to develop its leadership, has responded to this by developing a foreign policy increasingly hostile towards Russia (with whom it could also have common interests). In the process, it is trying to get the celebrated Franco-German ‘motor’ going again, and to improve its strained relations with Poland.
It is evident that the evolution of the political crisis in London will be influenced by events not only in Europe but also in the United States. The radical Brexiteers (the likes of Farage, Cummings, Rees-Mogg) have little choice but to pin their hopes on the re-election of Trump 2020. But what if he isn´t re-elected? And even if he is, can the Brexiteers be sure that the man in the Oval Office might end up thinking that the break-up, not only of the EU, but also the UK might be in US interests?
Capitalism has always been, in a sense, a casino game, a gambling den, and London is one of its centres. Today, in the phase of capitalist decomposition, this is more than ever the case. A reckless game at the expense of the well-being and the future of humanity. When does this roulette game become a form of ‘Russian Roulette’? We will not even attempt to predict the outcome of the Brexit Game. Except that it will certainly not be to the benefit of the working class either in Britain or anywhere else in the world.
Steinklopfer. 06/08/2019.
In the past month hundreds of thousands, even millions of the inhabitants of Hong Kong have engulfed the streets and squares in protest against an amendment to the Extradition Law [1], proposed by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam. The amendment would make it possible to extradite Hong Kong citizens to the mainland of China. The biggest rally against this amendment took place on 16 June, when nearly two million people gathered in a street protest.
The first protests in June were made possible by “The Civil Human Rights Front” (a coalition of more than fifty bourgeois organisations). This organisation was instrumental in making the June 9 and the June 12 rallies happen by getting the licenses to march and assemble. But the massive scale of the mobilizations was made possible via social media: people have organised their own initiatives, mainly through Facebook, Telegram groups, and the online forum lihkg.
Already on 31 March, an initial protest had taken place. A second demonstration was held on 28 April, attracting more than 100,000 protesters. Thereafter the movement gathered momentum, peaking during three different rallies on 9 and 12 and 21 June 2019, when millions of people entered into the street. On Monday 1 July, as Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of its 1997 handover, the annual pro-democracy march still claimed a record turnout of half a million. [2]
The Hong Kong protests were not only aimed at the extradition law but, behind this, also at the growing attempts of the Chinese Stalinist regime to gain a more rigorous control over this former British colony. In order to understand these attempts of the Chinese state we must return to certain aspects of the past and the present of China. For China is passing through a more dangerous phase, given the developing economic crisis in China and elsewhere and the sharpening of the imperialist tensions.
The aggravation of China’s internal contradictions
Just as any other state in decadence of capitalism the Chinese state is weighed down by growing contradictions. China is a typical example of state capitalism that "takes on its most complete form where capitalism is subjected to the most brutal contradictions, and where the classical bourgeoisie is at its weakest." (International Review no. 34) Such a rigid political system is incompatible with any legal democratic opposition.
The regime in China cannot tolerate such oppositional forces without profoundly endangering itself. The Hong Kong movements of the last month have confronted the Beijing government one more time with the spectre of democracy.
In 1997 Hong Kong became an administrative region of China. Under the “one country, two systems” framework, the Chinese government guaranteed Hong Kong the right to retain its own social, legal and political systems for 50 years, until 2047.
But the existence of a semi-independent territory, in which anyone who is opposed to Beijing can find sanctuary, is like a tumor on the body of the Chinese state. Here the policy of “one country, two systems” shows its limits, being in fundamental contradiction with one-party rule. The “dual” system is prey to steady erosion, but the Chinese state cannot risk a second Tiananmen.
Centrifugal tendencies in China
In the period of decomposition, as the result of a stalemate in the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the tendency towards each for himself increases dramatically and centrifugal forces tear apart nation states. The most obvious example was of course the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union. But China is not spared from this centrifugal dynamic either. The resistance against the control of Beijing and the call for autonomy in the periphery continues and even seems to have become stronger in the recent years: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Macao, etc.
After the fall of the Quing Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, China fell apart into smaller political and territorial units. For a few decades, the country was fragmented and ruled over by competing warlords. When the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, it more or less re-established national unity. And if there is one thing the Stalinist Party cannot tolerate, then it is the call for autonomy by peripheral regions.
Before Xi Jinping took office in 2012 all 56 ethnic groups located in China had an equal status and could practice their own cultures and customs. But since then the “us against them” dichotomy, defined by antagonism and pointing at scapegoats, has gained strength in China. Even Taiwan has been not been spared. In January 2019 the Chinese President openly threatened Taiwan with annexation if this country did not yield and unite with the People’s Republic.
The deterioration of Chinese economy
China has also great problems on the economic level. Its actual growth is officially at 6.4 percent. But with a growing population and internal mobility of tens of millions who move from the countryside to the cities every year looking for a job, this figure is more a sign of a stagnant, even worsening economy.
Trump's trade war is also having a serious effect on the Chinese economy. In February 2019, China's exports showed the strongest decline in three years. Exports fell by 20.7 percent compared to the previous year, despite the government's huge stimulus measures. In 2018, a dramatic year for stock exchanges, the biggest losers could be found in China. The Shanghai Stock Exchange fell by 24.9 percent and the Dow Jones China by 24.7 percent.
In 2013 China launched a geo-strategic project of its own which, it hopes, will counter the worst effect of the crisis: the “New Silk Road”. But now China is even starting to have problems with its allies that joined this project in recent years. Several of these countries (Malaysia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, etc.) are indebted at levels that are no longer sustainable.
The increased repression in all regions of the country.
Given the fact that the China state, by its very nature, is unable to tolerate democratic opposition it has to resort to repression in the face of any discontent. And with the growth of the centrifugal forces and the threat of social unrest, this repression over society has only increased. What we are witnessing is China at this moment is a kind of organised terror with the main aim to create a climate of fear. [3]
Beijing has increasingly deployed mass surveillance systems to tighten control over society. It collects, on a massive scale, biometrics including DNA and voice samples for automated surveillance purposes; developed a nationwide reward and punishment system known as the “social credit system”; and developed and applied “big data” policing programs aimed at preventing dissident voices.
The Chinese government has applied sweeping repression in different regions, in particular Xinjiang, home of the Muslim Uighur population. Since 2016, Chinese authorities have stepped up mass detention centers and prisons in this region. Outside these detention facilities the residents of Xinjiang are subjected to extraordinary restrictions on personal life: if they want to travel from one town or another, they have to apply for permission and to go through several checkpoints.
Even Hong Kong does not lag behind in this respect and applies similar measures in curtailing civil and political freedom. The state repression of the past four years had led to 50 trials, in which several hundred political dissidents and activists have been targeted for arrests and selected prosecution with various allegations, while over one hundred of them have been sent to jail.
Beijing’s tightening control on Hong Kong
Since 1997 China's ruling Party has gradually been exerting more influence over Hong Kong. In the past twenty years it has regularly changed the rules in a sense that responds to the need of the Chinese ruling class to strengthen its grip on Hong Kong politics. Every decision it takes and every step it makes is aimed at gaining a better control over this city.
The first large-scale protest against the growing influence of the Stalinist Party took place in 2003. The implementation of Basic Law Article 23 made it possible to convict people for treason, separatist activities, subversion of state power, and theft of state secrets. The second large-scale protest was in 2014, the so-called “Umbrella Revolution”, against the unilateral decision by the Chinese regime to screen candidates for the leadership of Hong Kong. [4]
In 2017 Chinese imperialism upped the ante further. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the handover, the Chinese Foreign Ministry declared that the Sino-British Agreement, which guarantees independence of Hong Kong on political, juridical and economic matters until 2047, has become “a historical document, [which] no longer has any practical significance”.
The introduction of the new legislation (the amendment to the existing extradition bill), in February of this year, provoked a great concerns and anxiety among the citizens of Hong Kong about the increased risk to be sent to mainland China, where courts are under a rigorous control of the Stalinist state apparatus.
To understand why the protest took on such huge proportions we must keep in mind that nearly half of the population of Hong Kong consists of the second or the third generation who fled China. The moment the Maoist Party came into power, in 1949, millions of Chinese took flight. As many as 100,000 people fled to Hong Kong each month. By the mid-1950s, Hong Kong had increased its population from 500,000 to a staggering 2.2 million.
Therefore the proposal by the Hong Kong government, which puts inhabitants of Hong Kong at risk of deportation to China to stand trial in a despotic court system, really touched the nerve of millions of Hong Kong citizens. They know that, under the rule of the Stalinist Party, people certainly cannot expect due process, and will generally face false convictions. Like the Soviet Union in the 1930’s, China is well-known for its show trials against political opponents. [5]
Censorship and black-out of information
The traditional media are rigorously censored by the Chinese state. Above all since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China has launched an unprecedented crackdown on online freedom, submerging the internet in propaganda and punishing journalists who post messages that are detrimental to the system.
As the mass protests in Hong Kong might resonate across the border and trigger a chain reaction into the mainland of China, the Beijing regime ordered the Chinese censors to wipe out posts and photos from social media sites. Media outlets have been largely silenced, and as a result not many people in China know what has been happening in Hong Kong.
The mystification of democratic rights
No matter how massive they were and no matter how many workers participated in them, the street protests were not a manifestation of working class struggle. In Hong Kong the proletariat was not engaged in a struggle as an autonomous class. On the contrary: the workers of Hong Kong were completely overwhelmed by and drowned in a mass of citizens.
Many protesters were working class youngsters. But during the massive protests a large part of them fought for bourgeois demands and democratic rights. Even if we might salute the courage and the determination of the participants, the mass protests in Hong Kong are a great danger for the proletariat. Completely situated on the bourgeois terrain they cannot but reinforce the illusions in democracy. And the fact that the movement has gained a momentary victory – the amendment being suspended – only increased the illusions among the protesters in Hong Kong and its supporters around the world.
Leftist political organisations only reinforce these tendencies and illusions by encouraging the fight for democratic rights and freedom of speech. In the case of the protests in Hong Kong
Even if leftists connect the struggle for democratic rights with the struggle of the proletariat for “breaking down the power of the capitalists” (whatever that means), for the proletariat the struggle for democracy remains a trap, only binding it still more to its capitalist exploiters. The real antagonism within capitalist society is not between the dictatorship and democracy, but between the exploiting ruling class and the exploited working class. The latter has nothing to gain by the participation in the movement for bourgeois democratic rights, no matter how massive it is.
The storming and ransacking of the parliament
We reject any slogan put forward by the capitalist left calling for self-determination, for a democratic worker-led government, etc.
The same goes for the intrusion into the Legco (Legislative Council) on Monday night 1 July. After having forced entry, hundreds of protesters swarmed into the parliament building, tearing down portraits of legislative leaders and spray-painting pro-democracy slogans on the walls of the main chamber.
We do not support such pseudo-radical actions. On the contrary: not a single object smashed in a parliament is sufficient to smash the illusions in the parliamentary system. By ransacking, by looting places, by burning buildings of the state we do not break down illusions in parliamentarism. Actions motivated by democratic ideology only serve the interests of the bourgeois state.
This was shown by the fact that the events were immediately used to put the entire protest movement in a bad light. Chinese state media broadcasted no footage of the massive “peaceful” protest, but it did of the “serious illegal actions”, by “Hong Kong separatists” in which “blind arrogance and rage” dominated.
The smashing of illusions in parliament and democracy can only come through the autonomous action of the working class, in defence of its own class demands. The only way to fight against the false system of parliamentary representation is to hold proletarian mass assemblies, animated by serious discussion about the methods and aims of the struggle.
The hypocrisy of the Western democracies
The western states have expressed their support for the people of Hong Kong in their defence of democratic rights and freedom of expression.
On Monday 10 June US State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, declared that “the United States shares the concern of many in Hong Kong that (…) the proposed amendments could undermine Hong Kong’s (…) human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic values”. On Monday 1 July the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that “it is imperative that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and the rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people are fully respected.”
But neither the United States nor the United Kingdom are any less hypocritical than China, and are far from being innocent regarding human rights violation as the following three examples clearly show.
(1) In China the western companies rely on the repression by the Chinese state to submit the Chinese workers to a system of extreme exploitation.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers must travel thousands of miles to seek job opportunities, often sleeping at the workplace in basic accommodation and only visiting their family once a year and that for a wage that is less than one-tenth of the average monthly wage in America. “In colluding with the government, employers squeeze the maximum labour within the shortest time possible from the workers.” (The Post Multi-Fibre Arrangement era and the rise of China, Au Loong-Yu)
Another factor is the policy of disciplining and repressing of the workers by means of the so-called “household registration system”. This system “acts as a kind of social apartheid, which systemically discriminates against migrant workers, barring them from enjoying public provisions in the cities. Outside the factories and dormitories, they simply cannot survive in the cities. It is an effective way to force them to accept starvation wages, appalling working conditions, and forced overtime.” (Idem)
(2) On their own national territory the western states detain refugees in the most horrible circumstances themselves.
Britain’s network of immigration removal centres are a real humiliation for the 25,000 migrants who pass through each year: there is no rehabilitation, no criminal sentence, inadequate healthcare, very often no time limit on the loss of liberty and overcrowded cells. Many of those incarcerated say that the conditions are far worse than actual prison, as they are physically and verbally abused by staff members, and this includes sexual and racist violence.
In the United States the Homeland Security inspector has found “dangerous overcrowding” and unsanitary conditions at a detention centre in Texas, where hundreds more migrants were being housed than the center was designed to hold. The inspector said that the cells “smelled of what might have been unwashed bodies/body odour, urine, untreated diarrhea, and/or soiled clothing/diapers”, (“Crammed into cells and forced to drink from the toilet – this is how the US treats migrants”, The Guardian, 3 July 2019)
(3) Just like the Chinese government the western ‘democracies’ also use super-intelligent technology to spy on civilians.
In the United States the CIA, via sophisticated hacking tools and software, uses everyday devices - from the phone in your pocket to the television set in your bedroom - to gather information on civilians. “Internal CIA documents (…) indicated the spy agency had gained access to Android and Apple smartphones, Samsung Smart TVs and Internet-enabled cars using a variety of tools.” (“CIA Uses Smart Devices to Spy on Citizens, WikiLeaks Reveals”, Marissa Lang, San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2017)
“At least 100 aircraft are being used by US law enforcement to spy on citizens. These aircraft are equipped with advanced, very high-resolution imaging and video technology — specifically Sting Ray, the secretive bulk cellular phone-tracking technology, and likely infrared or other night-vision hardware. The FBI has placed its eyes across the skies of the nation to mass surveil the public and spy on protesters.” (“Mass Surveillance and ‘Smart Totalitarianism’”; Chris Spannos, ROAR Magazine, February 18, 2017)
The trap of the Western support for democratic rights
The Western democracies are completely indifferent regarding human rights and the well-being of the people around the world. The same goes for the people of Hong Kong, which once was the most successful colony of Britain in the world. But when China became the main focus and more lucrative for the United Kingdom, Hong Kong was disposed of, in full knowledge that it would come under the yoke of a Stalinist regime.
Trump's administration and other western governments are content to work and conduct lucrative trade with a multitude of odious dictatorships around the world, including China. At the same time they are ready to utilise the defence of democratic rights and autonomy by the Hong Kong people as useful propaganda in their trade war against the same Chinese regime.
The protesters in Hong Kong, by waving American and British flags, show that the struggle against the Stalinist dictatorship on the bourgeois terrain of the democratic freedom, only leads them to embrace democratic dictatorship. The mobilisation of Hong Kong citizens is being used, by the United States and Great Britain in particular, for their sordid imperialist interests in the geopolitical confrontation against China.
Dennis
------------------------------
Notes
[1] Currently, Hong Kong is only obliged to extradite persons suspected of a crime on a case-by-case basis to 20 countries, under two main laws – the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance (FOO) and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance – which expressly exclude “any other parts of the People’s Republic of China”. In February 2019 the Hong Kong government proposed to pass an amendment to the law for transfers of persons suspected of a crime not only for Taiwan and Macau, but also for mainland China.
[2] In the weeks thereafter the mobilisation decreased: Sunday 7 July, protesters came into the street in a mobilization of 250,000 and again on 14 July in demonstration of 100,000 people. But they have become more violent, notably after the intervention of triad gangsters against the demonstrators and increased police use of tear gas and systematic beatings.
[3] In China, anyone seen as a threat to the CCP can be “disappeared”. Some are held in secret prisons, while some are placed in detention centers under false names. Family, lawyers, and even China's state prosecutors are denied access.
[4] See the article “Hong Kong's ‘Umbrella Revolution’: soaked by democratic ideology”; ICCOnline, October 2014
[5] Many critics of Beijing rule, after being arrested, appear on CCTV, confessing to vague almost non-crimes, criticising themselves, or discrediting others. All this is symbolised by the 11-year prison sentence served on the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo for advocating democracy. He was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
ad-climate_leaflet_9-19t.pdf [1896] | 209.16 KB |
One of the more popular banners on climate change protests reads: “System Change, not Climate Change”.
There is no question that the present system is dragging humanity towards an environmental catastrophe. The material evidence piles up every day: increasingly dangerous heatwaves, unprecedented wildfires in the Amazon, melting glaciers, floods, extinction of whole species – with the extinction of the human species as the ultimate result. And even if global warming were not happening, the soil, the air, the rivers and seas would continue to be poisoned and depleted of life.
No wonder that so many people, and above so many young people who face a menacing future, are deeply concerned about this situation and want to do something about it.
The wave of protests organised by Youth for Climate, Extinction Rebellion, the Green parties and the parties of the left are presented as a way forward. But those who are currently following their lead should ask themselves: why are these protests being so widely supported by those who manage and defend the present system? Why is Greta invited to speak to parliaments, governments, the United Nations?
Of course the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro or Farage constantly vilify Greta and the “eco-warriors”. They claim that climate change is a hoax and that measures to curb pollution are a threat to economic growth, above all in sectors like automobiles and fossil fuels. They are the unabashed defenders of capitalist profit. But what about Merkel, Macron, Corbyn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others who have heaped praise on the climate protests: are they any less part of the present system?
Many of those taking part in the present protests would agree that the roots of ecological destruction lie in the system and that this is the capitalist system. But the organisations behind the protests, and the politicians who trumpet their hypocritical support for them, defend policies that hide the real nature of capitalism
Consider one of the main programmes the more radical among these politicians put forward: the so-called “New Green Deal”. It offers us a package of measures to be taken by the existing states, demanding massive capital investment to develop “non-polluting” industries that are supposed to be able to turn a decent profit. In other words: it’s framed entirely within the confines of the capitalist system. Like the New Deal of the 1930s, its aim is to save capitalism in its hour of need, not replace it.
What is the capitalist system?
Capitalism doesn’t disappear if it’s managed by state bureaucrats instead of private bosses, or if it paints itself green.
Capital is a world-wide relation between classes, based on the exploitation of wage labour and production for sale in order to realise profit. The constant search for outlets for its commodities calls forth ruthless competition between nation states for domination of the world market. And this competition demands that every national capital must expand or die. A capitalism that no longer seeks to penetrate the last corner of the planet and grow without limit cannot exist. By the same token, capitalism is utterly incapable of cooperating on a global scale to respond to the ecological crisis, as the abject failure of all the various climate summits and protocols has already proved.
The hunt for profit, which has nothing to do with human need, is at the root of the despoliation of nature and this has been true since capitalism began. But capitalism has a history, and for the last hundred years it has ceased to be a factor for progress and has been plunged into a profound historic crisis. It is a civilisation in decay, as its economic base, forced to grow without limit, generates crises of overproduction that tend to become permanent. And as the world wars and “Cold War” of the 20th century have demonstrated, this process of decline can only accelerate capital’s drive towards destruction. Even before the global massacre of nature became obvious, capitalism was already threatening to obliterate humanity through its incessant imperialist confrontations and wars, which are continuing today across a whole swathe of the planet from North Africa and the Middle East to Pakistan and India. Such conflicts can only be sharpened by the ecological crisis as nation states compete for dwindling resources, while the race to produce more and more nightmarish weapons – and above all, to use them - can only further pollute the planet. This unholy combination of capitalist devastation is already making parts of the planet uninhabitable and forcing millions to become refugees.
The necessity and possibility of communism
This system cannot overcome the economic crisis, the ecological crisis, or the drive towards war.
It is therefore a deception to demand that the governments of the world “get their act together” and do something to save the planet - a demand put forward by all the groups organising the current marches and protests. The only hope for humanity lies in the destruction of the present system and the creation of a new form of society. We call this communism - a world-wide human community without nation states, without the exploitation of labour, without markets and money, where all production is planned on a global scale and with the sole motive of satisfying human need. It goes without saying that this society has nothing in common with the state-run form of capitalism we see in countries like China, North Korea or Cuba, or previously the Soviet Union.
Authentic communism is the only basis for establishing a new relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. And it’s not a utopia. It’s possible because capitalism has laid down its material foundations: the development of science and technology, which can be freed from their distortions under this system, and the global interdependence of all productive activity, which can be freed from capitalist competition and national antagonisms.
But above all it’s possible because capitalism is based on the formation of a class with nothing to lose but its chains, a class which has an interest both in resisting exploitation and overthrowing it: the international working class, the proletariat of all countries. This is a class which includes not only those who are exploited at work but also those studying to find a place in the labour market and those whom capital throws out of work and on to the scrap-heap.
Citizens’ protests or workers’ struggle?
And it is here in particular that the ideology behind the climate marches serves to prevent us from grasping the means to fight against this system. It tells us, for example, that the world is in a mess because the “older generation” got used to consuming too much. But talking about generations “in general” obscures the fact that, yesterday and today, the problem lies with the division of society into two main classes, one, the capitalist class or bourgeoisie, which has all the power, and one far larger class which is exploited and deprived of all power of decision, even in the most “democratic” of countries. It’s the impersonal mechanisms of capital that have got us into the current mess, not the personal behaviour of individuals or the greed of a previous generation.
The same goes for all the talk about the “people” or the “citizens” as the force that can save the world. These are meaningless categories which cover up antagonistic class interests. The way out of a system which cannot exist without the exploitation of one class by another can only take place through the revival of the class struggle, which starts with workers defending their most basic interests against the attacks on living and working conditions inflicted by all governments and all bosses in response to the economic crisis – attacks which are also more and more being justified in the name of protecting the environment. This is the only basis for the working class developing a sense of its own existence against all the lies which tell us that it’s already an extinct species. And it’s the only basis for the class struggle fusing the economic and political dimensions - drawing the link between economic crisis, war, and ecological disaster, and recognising that only a world-wide revolution can overcome them.
In the lead-up to the First World War, hundreds of thousands marched in pacifist demonstrations. They were encouraged by the “democratic” ruling classes because they spread the illusion that you could have a peaceful capitalism. Today the illusion is being spread far and wide that you can have a green capitalism. And again: pacifism, with its appeal to all good men and true, hid the fact that only the class struggle can really oppose war – as it proved in 1917-18, when the outbreak of the Russian and German revolutions obliged the rulers of the world to bring the war to a rapid close. Pacifism has never stopped wars, and the current ecological campaigns, by peddling false solutions to the climate disaster, must be understood as an obstacle to its real solution.
International Communist Current
27 August 2019
A PDF version, which can be downloaded and distributed is now attached
This series has denounced the least visible part (the hidden face) of the organisations of the left and extreme-left of capital (Socialists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, official anarchism, the 'new' left of Syriza, France Insoumise, and Podemos). In the first article of the series we saw how these organisations negate a working class that they pretend to defend, in the second we unravelled their method and way of thinking. In this third article we want to analyse their functioning, the internal regimes of these parties and how their functioning is the very negation of all communist principles and constitutes an obstacle to any movement towards these principles.
The forces of Stalinism, Trotskyism, etc., have carried out a total falsification of proletarian positions in terms of their organisation and behaviour. For them, centralisation means submission to an all-powerful bureaucracy, and discipline is blind submission to a control commission. The majority position is the result of a power struggle. And debate, in the spirit of manipulation, is a weapon to overcome the position of rival gangs. And so we could continue ad nauseam.
It's possible that a proletarian militant inside a genuinely communist organisation could have a tendency to see its organisational positions and behaviour through the lenses of the grim times that they spent in one or other leftist organisation.
When we talk to this hypothetical militant of the need for discipline, they remember the nightmare that they lived through when they were a member of an organisation of the bourgeois left.
In those organisations, 'discipline' means defending absurd things because 'the party demands it'. One day they have to say that a rival part was 'bourgeois' and the following week, according to political changes in the alliances of the leadership, this part is now the most proletarian in the world.
If the policy of the central committee is wrong it is solely the fault of the militants who have 'made an error' and 'have not correctly applied what the central committee had decided'. As Trotsky said: "Each resolution of the Executive Committee of the Communist International recording new defeats declared on one hand that everything had been planned and that, on the other hand, it's the fault of those who interpreted it because they hadn't understood the line given to them from above"[1].
Following these traumatic experiences, the militant who has been through these parties feels a visceral rejection of discipline, not understanding that proletarian discipline is something radically different and opposed to the discipline of the bourgeoisie.
In a proletarian organisation, 'discipline' means respecting all decisions and that everyone is engaged in reaching them. On the one hand it's being responsible and, on the other, it's the practical expression of the primacy of the collective over the individual - which doesn't, however, mean though that the individual and the collective confront one another but rather express different aspects of the same unity. Consequently, discipline in a revolutionary organisation is voluntary and conscious. This discipline is not blind but based upon a conviction and a perspective.
In a bourgeois organisation, on the contrary, discipline means submission to an all-powerful leadership and the renunciation of all responsibility by leaving it in the hands of what this leadership does or says. In a bourgeois organisation discipline is based on the opposition between the 'collective' and the individual. The 'collective' here is the interests of the national capital and its state that these organisations defend in their particular field, an interest which doesn't at all coincide with those of its members. That's why its discipline is imposed either by fear of public reprobation which could lead to expulsion; or, if it is voluntarily assumed, it is the fruit of a feeling of guilt or of a categorical imperative which provokes more or less periodic conflicts with the authentic interests of each individual.
The incomprehension of the radical difference which exists between proletarian and bourgeois discipline often leads some militants, who have been through the left or leftism and find themselves in a proletarian organisation, to fall into a vicious circle. Once they followed the orders of their superiors as sheep; now, in a proletarian organisation, they reject all discipline and only admit to one order: that dictated to by their own individuality. From the discipline of the barracks they oppose the discipline that everyone can do what they want, that's to say the anarchic discipline of individualism. It's to go round in circles, trapped between the ferocious and violent discipline of the parties of the bourgeoisie and individualist discipline (the discipline to "do what I want") characteristic of the petty-bourgeoisie and anarchism.
Centralisation is another concept which produces a reaction among militants who have been affected by the poison of the influence of the left.
They associate centralisation with:
- all-powerful tops to whom one must submit without complaint;
- a crushing pyramid of a bureaucracy and its control apparatus;
- a total renunciation of all personal initiative and thought, replaced by a blind obedience and tail-ending towards the leadership;
- decisions are not taken through discussion with the participation of all, but through the orders and manoeuvres of the leadership.
In fact, bourgeois centralisation is based on these concepts. That is due to the fact that within the bourgeoisie, unity only exists when faced with imperialist war or the proletariat; as for the rest there is an incessant conflict of interests between its different fractions.
To put some order into such a mess, the authority of a 'central organ' must be imposed by will or force. Bourgeois centralisation is thus necessarily bureaucratic and top down.
This general bureaucratisation of all the bourgeois parties and their institutions is even more indispensable in the 'workers'’ parties or the left who present themselves as defenders of the workers.
The bourgeoisie can submit to this iron discipline of the political apparatus because it enjoys a total and dictatorial power in its own enterprises. However, in an organisation of the left or extreme-left, there's a carefully hidden antagonism between what is claimed officially and what really happens. In order to resolve this contradiction, it needs a bureaucracy and a vertical centralisation.
In order to understand the mechanisms of bourgeois centralisation practiced in the parties of the left of capital, we can look at Stalinism which was a real trailblazer. In his book, The Third International after Lenin, Trotsky analyses the methods of bourgeois centralisation practiced in the Communist parties.
He recalls how, in order to impose bourgeois policies, Stalinism "adopted a secret society with its illegal Central Committee (the septemvirat) with its circulars, secret agents and codes, etc. The party apparatus created within itself a closed and out of control order which had exceptional resources at its disposal not only for this apparatus but also of the state which transformed a party of the masses into an instrument charged with camouflaging all the manoeuvres and intrigues." (idem).
So as to wipe out the revolutionary attempts of the proletariat in China and to serve the interests of the Russian state's imperialist appetites in the years 1924 - 28, the Chinese Communist Party was organised from top to bottom, an illustration of which is given by the witness of the local committee of Kiangsu making the following reference: "(The Central Committee) launched accusations and said that the Provincial Committee was no good; which in its turn , accused the base organisations and said that the Regional Committee was bad. The latter began to make accusations and said that it was the comrades working on the spot who were at fault. And the comrades defended themselves saying that the masses were not revolutionary enough" (idem).
Bureaucratic centralisation imposes a careerist mentality on party members, where they submit to those above, and distrust and manipulate 'those below them'. It is a clear characteristic of all the parties of capitalism, of the left and the right, which follow the model that Trotsky saw in the Stalinist Communist parties and denounced in the 1920's: "it is formed of entire teams of young academics through manoeuvres which, though Bolshevik flexibility, understood the elasticity of their own backbone" (idem).
The consequences of these methods are that "the rising layers have been impregnated at the same time with a certain bourgeois spirit, a narrow egotism and small-minded calculations. One can see that they have the firm will to carve out a place for themselves without concerning themselves about others, a blind and spontaneous careerism. To get to this point, they all have to prove a capacity for unscrupulous adaption, a shameful and sycophantic attitude towards the powerful. It's what we see in every gesture, on every face in this respect. This was indicated in all the acts and speeches, generally full of crude revolutionary phraseology" [2].
It is necessary to reclaim - by analysing them in a critical manner - all the concepts of organisation that the workers' movement has used before the enormous catastrophe which saw the first steps of the Socialist parties towards the capitalist state and later the transformation of the Communist parties into the Stalinist forces for capital.
The proletarian position on questions of organisation, even if they have the same name, have nothing to do with their falsified version. The proletarian movement has no need to invent new concepts because these concepts belong to it. In fact those who have changed their terminology are those on the left and extreme-left of capital, these are the 'innovators' who adopt the moral and organisational positions of the bourgeoisie. We are going to look again at some of these proletarian concepts and how they are in total opposition to Stalinism, leftism and, in general, to any bourgeois organisation.
Centralisation is the expression of the natural unity which exists within the proletariat and, consequently, among revolutionaries. Thus, in a proletarian organisation, centralisation is the most coherent form of functioning and is the result of voluntary and conscious action. Whereas centralisation in a leftist organisation is imposed by a bureaucracy and manoeuvring, in a proletarian political organisation, where different interests do not exist, unity is expressed by centralisation; it is thus conscious and coherent.
In a leftist organisation on the other hand, as in any bourgeois organisation, there exist different interests linked to individuals and factions that in order to conciliate these different interests, and this requires the bureaucratic imposition of a faction or a leader, or a type of 'democratic coordinator' between the different leaders or factions. In all cases power struggles, manoeuvres, betrayals, manipulation, and obedience are necessary in order to 'grease' the functioning of the organisation because otherwise it falls apart and breaks up. On the other hand, in a proletarian organisation "Centralism is not an optional or abstract principle for the structure of the organisation. It is the concretisation of its unitary character. It expresses the fact that it is one and the same organisation which takes positions and acts within the class. In the various relations between the parts of the organisation and the whole, it's always the whole which takes precedence"[3].
Within leftism, this "one and the same organisation which takes positions and acts within the class" is either a farce or a monolithic and bureaucratic imposition of a 'central committee'. In a proletarian organisation it's the very condition of its existence. It is a matter of laying before the proletariat, after a collective discussion and according to its historic experience, everything that takes its struggle forward and not to fool it into fighting for interests which are not its own. For this reason, it is necessary to make a common effort of the whole organisation in order to elaborate its positions.
Within leftism, faced with the decisions of the 'leadership' that are sometimes judged as absurd, the militants at the base look after and act themselves by deciding in local structures or affinity groups the positions that they think are correct. In some cases this is a healthy proletarian reaction faced with the official policy. However, this localist measure of each for themselves is counter-productive and negative in a proletarian organisation and within such an organisation "the conception according to which this or that part of the organisation can adopt, in front of the organisation or of the working class, the positions or attitudes which it thinks correct instead of those of the organisation which it thinks incorrect. This is because:
The approach of contributing from any part of the organisation (whether a local section or an international commission) in order to reach a correct position, with the effort of all, corresponds to the unity of interests which exists in a revolutionary organisation between all its members. On the other hand, in an organisation of the left, there's no unity between the 'base' and the 'leadership'. The latter's aim is to defend the general interests of the organisation, which is that of the national capital, whereas the 'base' is torn between three forces, all of which go in different directions: the interests of the proletariat, the responsibility for the capitalist interests of the organisation or, more prosaically, that of making a career in the different bureaucratic levels of the party. It's the outcome of an opposition and separation between the militants and the central organs.
The members of revolutionary organisation today have a great deal to learn about all of this. They are tormented by suspicions that the central organs will end up by 'betraying', they often hold the prejudiced position that the central organs are going to eliminate all dissidence through bureaucratic means. A mental mechanism spreads which states that 'the central organs can make mistakes'. That's perfectly true. Any central organ of a proletarian organisation can make a mistake. But there should be no fatality over making errors and if errors are in fact made, the organisation has the means to correct them.
We can illustrate this with an historic example: in May 1917, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party made an error in advocating critical support to the Provisional Government that came out of the February revolution. Lenin, returning to Russia in April, presented the famous April Theses in order to start up a debate in which the whole organisation was engaged to correct the error and redress the orientation of the party[4].
What this episode shows is the gap that exists between the preconceived idea that 'the central organs can be mistaken' and the proletarian vision of combating opportunism wherever it manifests itself (among the militants or within the central organ). All proletarian organisations are prey to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and that affects every militant as much as the central organs. The struggle against this pressure is the task of the whole organisation.
Proletarian political organisations provide the means of debate to correct its errors. We will see in another article of this series the role of tendencies and fractions. What we want to underline here is that if the majority of the organisation, and above all its central organs, tend to be mistaken, minority comrades have the means to fight this drift, as Lenin did in 1917, which led to him demanding an extraordinary party conference. In particular, "a minority of the organisation can call for an extraordinary Congress when it becomes a significant minority (for example two-fifths). As a general rule it's up to the Congress to settle essential questions, and the existence of a strong minority demanding that a Congress be held is an indication that there are important problems in the organisation"[5].
There are the sickening spectacles of congresses of organisations of the bourgeoisie. It's a spectacle with hostesses and an open bar. The leadership comes to show off and make speeches to the applause orchestrated by the warm-up team or to make their TV appearances. The speeches provoke the most absolute disinterest, the one and only aim of the congress is to be told who's going to take on which key posts of the organisation and who's going to be sacked. The great majority of these meetings are not given over to discussion, clarification and the defence of positions, but to attribute quotas of power to the different 'families' of the party.
A proletarian organisation must function in a manner diametrically opposed to this. The point of departure of the centralisation of a proletarian organisation is its international congress. The congress brings together and is the expression of the organisation as a whole, which, in a sovereign manner, decides the orientations and analyses which must guide it. The resolutions adopted by the congress define the mandate of the work of the central organs. It cannot act arbitrarily according to the designs or whims of the members, but must take its point of departure of their activity from the resolutions of the congress.
The Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 led to the well-known split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. One of the reasons for the split and the strong controversy between the two parties of the organisation was that the latter had not respected the decisions of the congress. Lenin, in his book One step forward, two steps back fought this disloyal attitude which was itself a bourgeois attitude. If one isn't in agreement with decisions of a congress, the correct attitude is to present divergences clearly and push for patient debate in order to reach clarification.
"The highest moment in the unity of the organisation is its International Congress. It is at the International Congress that the programme of the ICC is defined, enriched, or rectified; that its ways of organising and functioning are established, made more precise or modified; that its overall orientations and analyses are adopted; that a balance sheet of its past activities is made and perspectives for future work drawn up. This is why preparation for a Congress must be taken up by the whole organisation with the greatest care and energy. This is why the orientations and decisions of a Congress must serve as a constant point of reference for the whole life of the organisation in the ensuing period." In a proletarian congress there are not circles from which conspiracies are hatched against rivals, but discussion in order to understand and take positions in the most conscious way possible.
In bourgeois organisations the corridors are the heart of the congress with gossip, conspiracies against rivals, manoeuvres and intrigues fomented. The corridors are the place where the congress is really decided. As Ciliga said: "The sessions were tedious, the public meetings were pure verbiage. Everything was decided in the corridors".
In a proletarian organisation 'the corridors' have to be forbidden as centres of decision and made moments of rest where fraternal links between militants can be established. The heart of the congress must be situated solely and exclusively in its official sessions. There the delegates have to very carefully evaluate the documents submitted to the congress by demanding clarifications and formulating amendments, critiques and propositions. The future of the organisation is at stake because the resolutions of the congress are not a dead letter or mere rhetoric, but consciously taken agreements that must serve as a guide and orientation to the organisation and serve the fundamentals of its activities.
The orientations and decisions of the congress have to engage the whole of the organisation. That doesn't mean that everything becomes infallible. Regular international discussions can lead to a conclusion where there are errors to correct or that the evolution of the international situation undergoes changes that it's necessary to recognise. That can even lead to the convocation of an extraordinary congress. In the meantime, that work has to be undertaken rigorously and seriously with debate on the widest and deepest international basis. That has got nothing to do with what continually goes on in leftist organisations where the losers in a congress get their revenge by proposing new positions which are used to settle their accounts with their victors.
In a proletarian organisation the congress gives the orientations which define the mandate of a central organ which represents the unity and continuity of the organisation between congresses and following them. In a bourgeois party, the central organ is an arm of power because it has to submit the organisation to the needs of the state and the national capital. The central organ is an elite separated from the rest of the organisation and has to control it, supervise it and impose its decisions on it. In a proletarian organisation, the central organ is not separated from the organisation as a whole but it is its active and unitary expression. The central organ is not an all-powerful privileged summit of organisation but a means of expressing and developing the whole.
"Contrary to certain conceptions, notably so-called 'Leninist' ones, the central organ is an instrument of the organisation, not the other way round. It's not the summit of a pyramid as in the hierarchical and military view of revolutionary organisation. The organisation is not formed by a central organ plus militants, but is a tight, unified network in which all its component parts overlap and work together. The central organ should rather be seen as the nucleus of the cell which co-ordinates the metabolism of an organic entity" (“Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation”, Point 5).
The structure of leftist organisation is hierarchical. It goes from the national leadership to the regional organisations, themselves divided into 'fronts' (workers, professionals, intellectuals, etc.), and, at the bottom of all this, the cells. This form of organisation is inherited from Stalinism which in 1924 imposed the famous "Bolshevisation" under the pretext of "going to the working class".
This demagogy masks the elimination of the structures of workers' organisations based on local sections where all the militants of a town come together in order to provide themselves with global tasks and a global vision. Opposed to this, a "Bolshevisation" structure divides the militants holding them in a milieu bounded by factory or enterprise, according to the job or the social sector... Their tasks are purely immediate, corporatist and they remain stuck in a hole where only the immediate, particular and local problems are treated. The horizon of militants is closed down and instead a historic, international and theoretical vision is reduced to the immediate, the corporatist, localist and the purely pragmatic. It is a major impoverishment and allows the leadership to manipulate things at its convenience and, therefore, submit to the interests of the national capital while masking this with a popular and workerist demagogy.
The results of this famous "Bolshevisation", in reality the atomisation of militants inside ghettos of the workplace, was described very well by Ciliga: "The people I met there - permanent collaborators of the Comintern - seemed to incarnate the narrowness of the institution itself and the greyness of the building which accommodated it. They had neither range nor depth of vision and showed no independent thought. I waited for giants and I met dwarfs. I hoped to learn from real masters and I met lackeys. It was enough to go to a few party meetings to see that the discussion of ideas only played a completely secondary role in this struggle. The principal role was played by threats, intimidation and terror".
In order to strengthen this isolation and theoretical ignorance of militants even more, the 'central committee' designates a whole network of 'political commissars' submitting strictly to its discipline and responsible to act as a conveyer belt transmitting the orders of the leadership.
The structure that a revolutionary organisation must provide itself with is radically different to this. The main task of the local sections is to study and pronounce on the questions of the organisation as a whole, as well as analysing the historic situation and the study of general theoretical themes considered necessary. Naturally, that doesn't exclude, but gives sense and body to local activities and intervention, the press and discussions with comrades or interested groups. However, the sections must hold "regular meetings of local sections and put on the agenda the principle questions debated in the whole organisation: this cannot be stifled in any way" (idem). At the same time, the "widest circulation possible of different contributions within the organisation through the intended instruments for this effect" is necessary. The international discussion bulletins are the means to channel this debate and for discussion to spread throughout all the sections.
C. Mir, 16 January, 2018.
[1] The Third International after Lenin. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=the+communist+interna... [1897]
[2]. Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma
[3] "Report on the Structure and Functioning of Revolutionary Organisations" (January 82) point 3. https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR033_functioning.htm [1898]
[4] For an analysis on how the Bolshevik Party fell into this opportunist error and how through the means of debate it succeeded in righting it, see "The April Theses of 1917: signpost to the proletarian revolution", 1997, https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/199704/2088/april-t... [1811]. Also read the chapters pointing to this period in Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution.
[5] "Report on the Structure and Functioning of Revolutionary Organisations", Point 6.
The series we are publishing on the radical differences (class differences)[1] between on one hand the left and extreme left of capital and, on the other, the small organisations which claim the heritage of the Communist Left, has so far had three parts: an erroneous vision of the working class; a method and mode of thought at the service of capitalism, and a way of functioning that is against communist principles[2]. This fourth part is given over to the moral question in order to demonstrate the abyss that separates the morality of the parties which pretend to defend the exploited and the proletarian morality that any real communist organisation has to practice.
The proletariat has a morality. Arising from this, its organisations must have one that is consistent with its historic combat and the communist perspective that it carries. Whereas amorality, the absence of scruples, pragmatism and the most abject utilitarianism is rife in bourgeois organisations, within a proletarian organisation a coherence between programme, functioning and morality must necessarily exist.
What sort of morality prevails in a bourgeois party? Quite simply "anything goes": manoeuvres, coups, stabs in the back, intrigues, lies and the worst hypocrisy. Stalinism gives us a striking example with its demands upon its militants to commit the most disgusting acts in the name of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, the ‘defence of socialism’, etc. Just like Stalinism, the Trotskyist groups extol the same moral pragmatism and a blind and unscrupulous support for the theoretical errors made by Trotsky in his book Their morals and ours which otherwise contains valid reflections and elements.
For their part, the ‘Socialist’ parties are presented as the champions of positive feelings: ‘solidarity’, ‘inclusion’, the ‘historic memory’, ‘political correctness’ and ‘good sense’.
All this verbiage is radically contradicted by their actions within government where they pitilessly attack the working class, repress strikes with a ferocity that has nothing to learn from the right, and take measures such as those against immigrants for example which show a pure racism[3]. As to their internal functioning, they show a pattern of the most refined intrigues, subtle changes of alliances, and wars of clans. The Socialist parties are experts in the worst tactics of infiltration, of destruction from within, creators of Trojan Horses etc. Similarly, their proverbial know-how concerning the management of ‘dossiers’ which affects both their ‘friends’ of the high-command as well as their enemies who they try to tie-up with false alliances or evict from places of power.
What moral baggage has been imposed on militants who have been in bourgeois parties in general and more specifically the left and extreme left?
1. Blind obedience to the leaders.
2. Pragmatism and abject utilitarianism.
3. The absence of scruples in the name of the ‘cause’.
4. Unconditional submission to the imperatives of the national capital.
5. Accept the carrying out of actions which deny the most basic morality.
6. Specialisation in manoeuvres and disguised intrigues through ‘brilliant tactics’[4].
All this is justified with a hypocrisy which belongs to a bourgeoisie which defends the worst barbarity and the most outrageous wrongs in the name of the ‘highest morality’: solidarity, honesty, justice... It's the famous double morality: the politicians and the leaders have their morality which consists of enriching themselves through all sorts of sordid trafficking, getting rid of rivals (party comrades included) and maintaining themselves in power at any cost without hesitating to commit the most reprehensible actions. At the same time, they defend ‘another morality’ for their subordinates, for the members, for the shock troops of the party who, as we said earlier, must practice rectitude, sacrifice, obedience, etc.
In order to destroy the proletarian instinct of morality in militants, they strongly insist on the fact that all morality is ‘bourgeois or religious’ and that, from this, the militant can only rely on ‘political considerations’ to orient their conduct and behaviour. This argument is based on the fact that: "It's clear that in all societies divided into classes, the dominant morality has always been the morality of the dominant class; and this to such a point that morality and state, but also morality and religion, have almost become synonymous in popular opinion. The moral sentiments of society as a whole have always been used by the exploiting class, by the state and by religion in order to sanctify and perpetuate the status quo so as to submit the exploited classes to their oppression. The 'moralism' thanks to which the dominant classes have always used to break the resistance of the labouring classes through the installation of a guilty conscience, is one of the great scourges of humanity. It is also one of the most subtle weapons of the dominant classes in order to ensure their domination over the whole of society"[5].
Moralism engenders in us a feeling of guilt. They make us feel guilty about eating, fighting for our needs, wanting to feel good. This, according to moralism, expresses an exclusive and egotistic sentiment. How can one dare to eat when people are starving in the world? How can one drink and bathe in water while every day the environment degrades still more? How can you sleep on a comfortable mattress when immigrants sleep on a hard floor?
The morality of the bourgeoisie is rather that of the decadent bourgeoisie of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries which consists of making workers think that the minimal means of subsistence available to them (somewhere to live, food, clothing) or the conveniences that they have (electrical goods, TV and internet, paid holidays) are insolent luxuries obtained from the backs of the poor of the world, a ‘privilege’ in a word, obscuring that these are the very means for the pursuit of their exploitation.
Moralism and its advocates of the left and extreme left want us to feel guilt for all the woes in the world caused by capitalism, making a social problem a problem of individuals. Thus, the scourge of unemployment is individually caused by the 212 million unemployed individuals in the world.
In general guilt destroys conviction and combativity. This society propagates the feeling of guilt as a way of life and makes accusations against others a means of individualist struggle, of some against the others, making some feel culpable at a given moment then looking to make others responsible at another time. It's not contradictory to feel guilty at one moment and to make accusations against others the next; that makes up part of an inhuman and individualist morality which always circles around someone's ‘fault’. The fight against this, whether it comes from capitalist propaganda and its party specialists or whether it springs from relations between militants as a form of individualism, is a central combat of proletarian morality.
The fight against bourgeois moralism should not lead us to reject morality. We have to make a distinction between moralism and morality: "the perversion of the morality of the proletariat in the hands of Stalinism is no reason to abandon the concept of proletarian morality, in the same way that the proletariat must not reject the concept of communism under the pretext that it has been recuperated and changed by the counter-revolution in the USSR. Marxism has demonstrated that the moral history of human society is not only the history of the morality of the dominant class. Exploited classes have ethical values which are their own and these same values have had a revolutionary role in the history of humanity. Morality has nothing to do with the notion of exploitation, the state or religion; the future belongs to a morality which goes beyond exploitation, the state and religion".
"The conception of morality in the workers' movement, although, let us say, it was never the centre of attention, of debates or theoretical preoccupations, has nothing to do with the version given to us by leftism. Morality is not an ‘idealist’ or scholastic question which only interests the imitators/continuators of the philosophies of the Byzantine Empire who debated about the sex of angels while the Ottomans attacked the defences of Constantinople. Morality, as any social product of human beings, is by definition one of the main characteristics of the social relations with which we have provided ourselves.
"A reality that could be summed up as meaning, collectively calibrated, of whether the form and orientation that we give to the relations we have with each other is adequate or not... Should it be foreign to the proletariat, a class which is both the fruit of determined social relations but which is equally the bearer of other types of relations, an otherwise much higher form of organising our social existence? If the question hasn't really been raised in the past it is because the workers' movement counted on a long and rich tradition of organisational life in which the majority of its militants observed certain rules for debate, addressed each other as comrades, lived with each other and were ready to give assistance as well as confidence and solidarity when that was necessary; in other words, they obeyed the very nature of the proletarian class: the class of solidarity, confidence, carrying the real creative capacities of humanity and a real human culture"[6].
In reality, the individual bourgeois wants a morality for the exploited majority (the morality of slaves as Nietzsche said) and ‘another morality’, much more ‘supple’ and free from any scruples, for the dominant class. For capital, all means (including murder) are fine if they allow an increase in profits or the advance of power. As Marx said, capital was "born in muck and blood" and all means were used in its expansion: massacres, slavery, sordid alliances with the feudal classes, state assassinations, conspiracies... Don't forget that one of the first ideologues of the bourgeoisie was Machiavelli and the word Machiavellianism is used to define moral degeneracy and the scandalous absence of scruples[7].
Double morality is the habit which is best fitted to the ideology and methods of capital. It is the mirror of the ferocious competition of each for themselves which reigns in the relations of capitalist production: "In all the business of speculation everyone knows that one day the collapse will come but everyone hopes that it sweeps away their neighbours after he himself has collected the rain of gold and safely put it away. ‘Après moi le deluge!’, such is the slogan of every capitalist and all capitalist nations"[8].
The proletariat firmly rejects double morality. In its struggle its means must be in line with it aims; you can't fight for communism by using lies, rumours, manoeuvres, duplicity, feelings of guilt, the thirst for notoriety, etc. Analogous attitudes must be energetically fought and rejected as being radically incompatible with communist principles. With these ‘moral shortcuts’ one doesn't move forward a millimetre on the difficult road to communism; the contrary is true and one finds oneself tied hands and feet from a conduct that belongs to the capitalist system; it's to allow oneself to be contaminated by the laws of its functioning and becoming detached from the revolutionary perspective.
For the ICC, proletarian morality has a central role: "One finds in our statutes (adopted in 1982) the living concretisation of our vision on this question. We have always insisted on the fact that the statutes of the ICC are not a list of rules defining what is or isn't allowed, but an orientation for our attitude and our conduct, including a whole coherence of moral values (notably regarding relationships between militants and towards the organisation). That's why we ask from everyone who wants to become members of our organisation a profound agreement with these values. Our statutes are an integral part of our platform."
But developing an organisational functioning and relations between comrades based upon the moral criteria of the proletariat is not an easy task; it needs an assiduous fight. Today the proletariat is suffering from a serious problem of identity and confidence in itself and this, in the general historic context of what we call the decomposition of capitalism[9], increases the difficulties of the living and daily practice of a proletarian morality not only within the working class as a whole but also within its revolutionary organisations. What present society exudes from all its pores in a widespread and deadly way is the absence of scruples, dishonesty, scepticism, cynicism... an endless attack on proletarian morality.
Contrary to the idea that Stalinism has given of communists as individual fanatics capable of anything in order to impose ‘communism’, they have always shown a solid moral attitude[10] and with that they have expressed the importance of the question of morality for the workers' movement[11].
A prejudice exists against marxism which makes it difficult to understand its solid anchorage in moral criteria. Faced with Utopian Socialism, marxism defended the necessity to situate communist positions not in moral positions but in a scientific analysis of the situation of capitalism, the balance of forces between the classes, the historic perspective, etc. However, one mustn't deduce from that that Marxism must be solely based upon scientific principles while rejecting moral ones: "Marxism has never denied the necessity or importance of the contribution of non-theoretical factors in the ascension of the human species. On the contrary it has always understood their indispensable character and even their relative independence. That is why it has been capable of examining their connections in history and recognising their complementary nature".
Marxism is not a cold ideology (as the Greek author, Kostas Papaioannon made out in the 1960s) seeing militants as pawns of the ‘Central Committee’ manipulated at will in a game of chess against the dominant class. In their relations between themselves and towards the organisation, as towards the proletariat, militants carry themselves with the strictest moral rectitude.
This last point is vital for understanding that, in our epoch, social decomposition makes morality within the revolutionary struggle all the more important. "Today, faced with 'each for themselves', the tendency to the disintegration of social tissue and the corrosion of all moral values, it will be impossible for revolutionary militants - and more generally a new generation of militants - to overthrow capitalism without clarifying the question of morals and ethics. Not only the conscious development of workers' struggles but also a specific theoretical struggle towards a re-appropriation of the work of the marxist movement on these questions, has become a question of life or death for human society. This struggle is indispensable not only for proletarian resistance to the manifestations of the decomposition of capitalism and its ambient amorality, but also to re-conquer the confidence of the proletariat in the future of humanity through its own historic project".
The difficulty that revolutionary generations meet today is that, on one side, a proletarian morality based on solidarity, confidence, loyalty, conscious cooperation and the search for truth, is more than ever necessary, but however, the historic conditions of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism as well as the difficulties of the working class make this appear more utopian, more impractical and more senseless.
As our text on ethics said: "the barbarity and inhumanity of decadent capitalism are without precedent in the history of the human species. It's true that it's not easy after the massacres of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and faced with genocides and permanent and generalised destruction, to maintain confidence in the possibility of moral progress (...) Popular opinion confirms the judgement of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) according to which man is by nature a wolf for man. According to this vision, man is fundamentally destructive, a predator, egotistic, irredeemably irrational and his social behaviour is below that of most of the animal species".
There is however another element which adds a supplementary difficulty to the development of morality: the gap between the natural sciences and technology and the still more accentuated lateness of social sciences as Pannekoek observed in his book Anthropogenesis: a study in the origins of man: "Natural sciences are considered as the field in which human thought, in a continuous series of triumphs, has developed with the greatest vigour, the conceptional forms of logic... On the contrary, at the other end of the scale there remains human actions and relations in which action and thought are principally determined by passion and impulses, by arbitrariness and unpredictability, by tradition and belief... The contrast which appears here, with perfection on one side and imperfection on the other, signifies that man controls the forces of Nature but doesn't control the forces of will and passions that are inherent in him. Where he stands still, maybe sometimes going backwards is in the manifest lack of control over his own ‘nature’. Evidentially this is the reason why society is so late behind science. Potentially man possesses domination over Nature. But he still doesn't have domination over his own nature".
This situation of ignorance and incomprehension of these profound aspects of the human condition make it very difficult to confront this phenomenon that social and ideological decomposition constantly makes worse: "the development of nihilism, suicides among youth, despair (such as that expressed by the ‘no future’ of urban riots in Britain), hatred and xenophobia which animates ‘skinheads’ and ‘hooligans’, ... the tsunami of drugs which is becoming a mass phenomenon and powerfully involved in the corruption of states and financial organisations, spares no part of the world and particularly hits the young, who express the flight into chimeras and more and more, madness and suicide... the profusion of sects, the re-emergence of the religious spirit, including in some advanced countries, the rejection of rational, constructive and coherent thought, including in certain ‘scientific’ areas ... ‘each for themselves’, marginalisation, atomisation of individuals, the destruction of family relations, the exclusion of the old, the smothering of affection and its replacement by pornography"[12].
Whereas all bourgeois parties (whether of right or left) have the objective of managing the present so as to conserve capitalism, the revolutionary organisation is at a point between the present and the communist future of the proletariat. For this it cultivates the moral qualities that have already been mentioned and which will be the pillars of a future world communist society. These qualities are constantly threatened by the weight of the dominant ideology and capitalist decomposition. To defend them requires a permanent effort, a tireless critical spirit and vigilance alongside a constant theoretical elaboration.
For revolutionary organisations, this culture has a place as much inside the organisation (internal functioning) as to the outside (intervention). It's not a matter of isolating the organisation from the world and enclosing oneself in small self-managed communities (which is the reformist error of anarchism) but within itself exists a permanent struggle for the development of these principles. As Lessing the seventeenth century German poet said: "There is something that I love more than truth: the struggle for truth". In a revolutionary organisation, principles are as important as the struggle for them.
The struggle for communism can't be reduced to a simple question of propaganda: explaining what a future society is; showing the proletariat's historic role in overcoming the contradictions of capitalism, etc. That would be a unilateral and truncated concept. Contrary to the modes of production that preceded it, communism cannot emerge from outside the proletariat, but only with the full consciousness and the massive subjective engagement of the proletariat. In the revolutionary organisation, the struggle to live in a coherent manner with communist principles is still more decisive. The struggle for communism is impossible without permanent vigilance and a response against behaviours of envy, jealousy, lies, intrigues, manipulation, theft, violence towards others.
In one of his polemical excesses, Bordiga affirmed that one could arrive at communism even from the basis of a monarchy.
Through this he wanted to demonstrate that the important thing was to get to communism’ whereas ‘the way of getting there’ mattered little, any method would do. We categorically reject such a way of thinking: in order to get to communism it's necessary to know how to reach it, the means must be symbiotic with the communist end. Against the pragmatism of Stalinism and Trotskyism, who blindly follow "the ends justify the means" maxim, the proletariat and its revolutionary organisations must maintain a clear coherence between ends and means, between practice and theory, between action and principles.
The dominant morality oscillates between two alternatives which appear to be opposed but which gravitate around the conflict between the individual and society, which not only doesn't permit a resolution of the question but rather aggravates it.
On one side we have exacerbated individualism in which the individual does ‘what's good for them’, at the expense of others. On the other hand we have the submission of the individual to the ‘interests of society’ (a formula behind which is hidden the totalitarian domination of the state), which, fundamentally, is presented under two forms: that of a collection of anonymous and impersonal individuals (the form preferred by the Stalinists and Trotskyists) and that of the Kantian moral imperative which leads to individual renunciation and sacrifice for others (Christian morality is also found in this tendency).
In reality, these two moral poles are not opposed. On the contrary they are complementary since they reflect two aspects of the dynamics of capitalism. On one side, the utilitarianism of Bentham is an idealist vision of the ferocious competition which is the motor force of capitalism. Here, each individual struggles for their own well-being without any consideration for others and this is supposed to be for ‘the good of all’, that's to say the ‘good’ of the good functioning of the capitalist system (against feudalism), not respecting privileges or acquired positions other than submitting to the functioning of a cut-throat society of competition.
A second component of the utilitarian and amoral pole is the deformation of the theory of Darwin which is turned into ‘Social Darwinism’. According to this vision natural selection is the result of a ferocious and pitiless war in which the ‘fittest’ triumph and the weak’ are eliminated, thus allowing ‘the amelioration of the human species’. We can't develop here a defence of Darwin's materialist concept of evolution[13] but what is clear is that this moral vision of ‘Social Darwinism’ constitutes an idealisation dressed up in pseudo-scientific clothes, giving the stamp of approval to the very existence of capitalism which is effectively the war of each against all, a reality which is exacerbated by the decomposition of the system.
Faced with this barbaric moral impudence, Kant and other theoreticians glimpsed the result of the chaos and destruction that capitalism carried within it. From this basis it advocated another moral pole that, in all appearances, was opposed to it: the famous moral imperative. The latter constituted a type of ‘restraint of unchained egoism’ in order not to destroy social cohesion. It is a ‘critical’ acceptance of the barbarity of competition while trying to put limits and rules on it so as to avoid its destructive excesses. Capitalism leads to the destruction of humanity because within its DNA it carries the annihilation of the social character of humanity acquired throughout the many millennia of its existence. The Kantian moral imperative, which wants to put a brake on this tendency, is nothing more than an idealist version of the role of a ‘regulator’ and guarantor of the minimal social cohesion that the state assumes, a role which is accentuated under decadent capitalism through the chaos and self-destruction that its contradictions let loose. Kantian moralism is the other side of utilitarianism. The tendency which developed within Social Democracy from the end of the nineteenth century under the slogan ‘return to Kant’ wasn't content to attack and demolish marxist materialism, it also attacked a proletarian morality which has nothing to do with the moral imperative.
Stalinism and Trotskyist groups have propagated the idea that communist militancy is the blind sacrifice of the individual to the moral imperative incarnated by the superior interests of the ‘Party’ or of the ‘Socialist fatherland’.
The rejection of this barbaric morality which lead to blind submission and the self-destruction of militants have, in numerous cases, led to the other extreme of bourgeois morality: the excesses of the cult of individualism which is characteristic of the petty-bourgeoisie, one of the most exacerbated expressions of which is anarchism.
The proletariat carries within it the solution to the conflict between individual and society. As the Communist Manifesto said, under communism, "in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, comes an association where the free development of each one is the condition for the free development of all". Under capitalism, associated labour at the world scale of the proletariat has the perspective of going beyond it: if labour in common goes much further than the sum of individual labour, the contribution of each one is unique and indispensable for the result of labour in common.
Revolutionary organisations are under constant attack through the individual/society conflict under the form of individualism. Already, in numerous texts, we have looked at the problem that we have briefly raised here[14]. This individualism which makes out it is ‘free’, ‘rebellious’ and ‘critical’ is, in reality, a prisoner of all the destructive impulses incubated by capitalism (competition, egoism, manipulation, culpability, rivalry and the spirit of revenge) and exercises a heavy weight of the life of revolutionary organisation. Its ‘revolt’ goes no further than the blind and stupid polarisation ‘against all authority’, which leads it to be a direct factor of disorganisation and tension between comrades. Finally, its ‘criticism’ is based upon distrust and rejection of all coherent thought, replacing it with speculation, prejudices and the most extravagant interpretations.
This individualism is diametrically opposed to solidarity, which is not only one of the vertical pillars of the proletariat but also of the functioning of revolutionary organisations. We have amply treated this issue in our text of orientation on confidence and solidarity in the proletarian struggle[15].
C. Mir, March 1st, 2018
[1] For a more global analysis of these differences see our article in Spanish: “What are the differences between the Communist Left and the IV International?”
Also see in French “Revolutionary Principles and Revolutionary Practice” and in English “The Communist Left and the Continuity of Marxism” https://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left [1200]. Also, in English, “The International Conferences of the Communist Left (1976-1980). Lessons of an experience for the proletarian milieu” (International Review no. 122, 3rd quarter 2005).
[2] See our preceding articles in this series: I, II and III. https://en.internationalism.org/content/16603/hidden-legacy-left-capital-part-one-false-vision-working-class [1841] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16654/hidden-legacy-left-capital-ii-method-and-way-thinking-service-capitalism [1899] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16715/hidden-legacy-left-capital-iii-functioning-which-negates-communist-principles [1900]
[3] The German Social Democratic Party (SDP) gives a perfect example of this behaviour which it said had nothing to do with – a pure lie. It was the SPD which repressed the revolutionary attempts of the proletariat in Germany in 1918-1923, causing a hundred thousand deaths and it also ordered the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (1919). More recent was the actions of the Social Democratic government of Schröder in 2010, which brutally attacked the living conditions of the workers, implementing for example the junk contracts of 400 euros a month.
[4] Trotsky himself defended an ambiguous position on these manoeuvres.
On the one hand he recognised that "for the dominant classes, propertied, exploitative, educated, their experience of the world is so great, their class instinct so exercised, their means of espionage so diverse, that in trying to fool them, by making out one is something one is not, one is drawn into a trap not by enemies but by friends". At the same time however, he says, "the auxiliary subordinate value of these manoeuvres must be strictly used as means in relation to the fundamental methods of the revolutionary struggle" (The Third International after Lenin).
This theorisation of the manoeuvre in general, without clarifying the fact that it can only be used against the class enemy but never against the working class, nor its revolutionary organisations, has helped Trotskyist organisations justify all sorts of manoeuvres against the working class and against its own militants.
[5] “Marxism and Ethics”, International Review 27 and 28 https://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/marxism-and-ethics [1413]; https://en.internationalism.org/ir/128/marxism-and-ethics-pt2 [1901] (unless mentioned otherwise, quotes come from this text).
[6] “Marxism and Ethics”
[7] “Machiavellianism, the consciousness and unity of the bourgeoisie”, International Review no. 31, fourth quarter, 1982.
[8] Marx, Capital, Volume 1, part 3, chapter 10.
[9] “Decomposition, the final phase of decadent capitalism”, International Review no. 107, fourth quarter 2001.
[10] This doesn't mean that there haven't been differences in the conception of morality, some more utilitarian as in the case of Lenin and others more coherent as in the case of Rosa Luxemburg. It's a question that should be deepened.
[11] We can give two examples here: in 1839-42 probably the most important mobilisations in the history of the proletariat in Britain and their principal motive was indignation and the horror aroused in sectors of the proletariat of the terrible exploitation that their class, men, women and children were suffering, particularly in the textile industry. The second is the spontaneous strike that broke out in Holland in 1942 against the deportation of Jews by the Nazis.
[12] “Decomposition, the ultimate phase of decadent capitalism”, International Review no. 107, fourth quarter 2001.
[13] For example, see the text of Anton Pannekoek “Marxism and Darwinism” (parts one and two published in International Review no. 137 and 138.
[14] “Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation”, International Review no. 33, (January 1982).
150 years ago, in the early 1860s, the workers’ movement internationally was still in its infancy, and its different components had not yet acquired much experience in setting up and defending political organisations. Following the wave of repression after the struggles of 1848 many members of the Communist League had to go into exile or were taken to court, as at the trial against the communists in Cologne, 1852.
In Germany, in the early 1860s, there was no independent political organisation of the working class. In many towns there were Arbeiterbildungsvereine (Workers’ Educational Clubs), but not yet any proletarian political organisation with a clear political demarcation from the bourgeoisie. The debate about whether the working class could still support certain factions of the bourgeoisie in their fight for national unification, or whether the class antagonism with the bourgeoisie should be at the centre of the struggle, was in full swing. In this context, where the bourgeoisie had not yet managed to throw off the chains of aristocracy and the Junkers, where German capital had not yet been able to unify as a national capital, attempts were made to forge the first political party of the working class in Germany.
At the same time the working class in Germany was going to be faced with one of the most difficult political challenges, that of confronting the activities of political adventurers. Although there is not one single profile of political adventurers, one common trait between them is that they use political organisations not to strengthen the struggle of the working class but instead to put these political organisations at their service; they draw on the organisations of the working class to foster their own ambitions. However, the biggest challenge is to unmask adventurers, because they do not act in the open and do not display their own ambitions in public. On the contrary, they tend to have a great skill in mobilising a large number of supporters behind them, which makes the task of unmasking such “highly esteemed” figures much harder.
As we will show, the real nature of the adventurer Lassalle was never fully unmasked during his lifetime. And while the real face of the adventurer Schweitzer was exposed for the first time at a party conference in Spring 1869 in Wuppertal, the effort to unmask him was not fully successful. It was only a few years later that the working class managed, through the efforts of the General Council of the First International, to expose the activities of yet another adventurer, Mikhail Bakunin, at the Hague Congress. The cases of Lassalle, Schweitzer and Bakunin show that the working class and its political organisations have been confronted from the very beginning with the activities of political adventurers.
In this article we will deal with the cases of Lassalle and Schweitzer. In previous articles we have already given a detailed account of the struggle against Bakunin’s adventurism[1].
The Formation of the ADAV
In 1862 in Leipzig the proposal for the preparation of a general workers' congress was made by workers of an association called "Vorwärts". In January 1863 the Leipzig initiators contacted Ferdinand Lassalle. [2]
In several lectures Lassalle had spoken critically against the bourgeoisie in its quarrel with the Junkers; at the same time he had stressed the importance of the working class for historical progress. Lassalle, however, distanced himself from the communist views outlined a good dozen years earlier in the Communist Manifesto.
The proposal that Lassalle should write the program of the "General German Workers' Association" (ADAV), which was finally founded in Leipzig on May 23, 1863, was addressed to a man who had been eager for years to play a leading role in political life in Germany.
The fact that the leadership was handed over to a person who - apart from a brief activity during the 1848 struggles - had never participated in a proletarian organisation, who could not represent continuity with the Communist League; a man who had previously been denied admission to the Communist League and was now to act as a de facto "saviour" from "outside," immediately claiming a presidential role - all this reflected the immature state of the labour movement at the time.
At the age of 20, Lassalle had met Sophie Gräfin von Hatzfeldt, who was twice as old as he was. In order to "free herself" from the forced marriage with her husband, Lassalle took on her defence as a lawyer. He not only succeeded in winning the Countess's case, but also made an extraordinary fortune, as the Countess financed him from then on and became his political ally.[3] At the same time, as a member of the nobility, the Countess maintained intensive relations with various parts of the ruling class. In 1856 and 1857 he lived in her house in Düsseldorf; and in 1858 he moved together with her to Berlin. [4]
The self-disclosure of an adventurer: "An informer's report about himself"
Spurred on by the success of the Hatzfeldt trial and driven by his ambitions to make a career, he began complaining about the "provincial narrowness" in his place of residence, Düsseldorf, in the mid-1850s. In May 1855, he asked the Berlin Police President for the necessary permission to resettle from Düsseldorf to Berlin. [5] In the same month, he wrote an "informer's report about himself", which was to be placed into the hands of the Berlin Police President Hinkeldey (it is not clear whether it was really placed into his hands or was meant to have been). Gustav Mayer reports on "the vicious, cunning, sophisticated, vily, villainous slyness that was employed here" to convince and impress the police president of his importance. Lassalle praised himself as so highly esteemed by the Düsseldorf workers, "who seem to regard Lassalle as their boss and to see an injustice against them and his relationship to them if he leaves the Rhine Province; they did not break with him, but as the conversation shows, threatened very energetically to break with him." Referring to the question of the whereabouts of the former editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (including Marx) after the repression after 1848, he praised his insider knowledge of Marx's place of residence in his "Spitzelbericht" (report of a snitch): "I faked assuming that they had emigrated to America, but Lassalle instructed me that they lived in London and he was apparently well informed about their living conditions”. In order to further increase the interest of the head of the police, he boasted, "So it follows with complete certainty that Lassalle must be in continuous, uninterrupted correspondence with these people in London, at least with Marx”. Knowing well how interested the police were in being informed about the actual mail channels of correspondence between Marx and his fellow combatants, he wrote: "I have […] already mentioned that Lassalle must be corresponding with London, at least with Marx. I must add that, it appears to be likely – as I concluded from a statement - he seems to receive these letters with a fake sender’s name."
To make the bait for the police president more palatable by an additional aspect, Lassalle wrote: "The main reason that drives him to that move is the monotony of life in Düsseldorf that has become unbearable to him. In addition, there is a certain tendency towards enjoyment and especially female distractions, which, despite his great capacity for work, is no less strongly expressed in his temperament, a tendency which he cannot satisfy in Düsseldorf but to which he hopes to feed much more richly in Berlin. He repeated his motive for his intended move to Berlin. (…) if it were not for the influence of the Countess on the one hand, and on the other hand for the already described great inclination towards pleasure and sensual diversion and the unbearable monotony of his Düsseldorf life which are the decisive factor for him...." He described himself as "highly ambitious and vain in character."
To impress the police (and the political forces behind them), Lassalle boasted: "Since I consider Lassalle to be one of the most intellectually outstanding and rarely energetically gifted representatives of democracy, I am of the opinion that above all this highly dangerous man cannot be observed enough...." Lassalle added another element of attraction to the police: the author of the letter, i.e. the informer, had the prospect of being able to work as Lassalle's secretary. "I already have his benevolence to no small degree. I have acquired the same, partly through a fine use of his vanity..." [...] A short time in the position of his secretary and I would have made myself not only the confidant of his most secret thoughts, but completely indispensable to him." Ready to drive into the arms of the police those who were ready to overthrow the regime (Lassalle and his friends), Lassalle ended his spy report with this: "I would have no difficulty, legitimized by my position with Lassalle and his friendship, in becoming known to all the other more or less outstanding members of democracy and in investigating their affairs from the ground up; in a word, I would thus deliver him and his associates into the hands of the authorities in such a way that it would depend only on their own discretion to destroy these incorrigible partisans of overthrow whenever they find it suitable.” [6]
This spy report about himself, which was only found in his inheritance after his death, sheds much light on his activities as an adventurer in the ranks of the German labour movement.
The true motives of the adventurer
We have here a first trait of political adventurers. Contrary to sincere fighters who selflessly join a revolutionary organisation in order to help the working class to fulfil its historical role, adventurers join revolutionary organisations to fulfil their own “historical mission”. They want to place the movement at their service and constantly look for recognition with this purpose. Lassalle's spy report about himself is nothing but a "publicity show" for his purportedly outstanding abilities. Therefore, proletarian organisations serve them only as a springboard for their career, either within a proletarian organisation or within the ranks of the rulers themselves. Convinced that their abilities are greater than have been recognised so far, they seek recognition from both the workers’ movement and the rulers.
Open or covert claims for leadership...
When the ADAV was founded in May 1863, Lassalle managed to get himself crowned president for five years, with almost dictatorial power over the local sections. Lassalle insisted to the ADAV that he only wanted to participate if he was directly invited to take the leading role. That is, instead of joining a collective struggle he immediately claimed leadership. We have here another distinctive trait, which is often found in adventurers. Not only do they aspire to take a leadership role in an organisation, they often make direct claims to special authority - and even if they do not receive it from an authority, they themselves aspire to a policy of arbitrary and independent action. As if an emperor had been crowned, he declared: "I am thus able to meet the demands of the position you offer me, and therefore generally declare myself ready to meet the demand you make of me and to take over the leadership of the workers' movement". [7] The local branches of the association had no rights whatsoever: they only carried out the orders of the president.
This was a step backwards from the Communist League, which was a centralised organisation, had established a central authority and district authorities that guaranteed a much more collective functioning, and where the local communities had decision-making powers. In this respect, Lassalle succeeded in turning back the wheel of history with the "leadership role" tailored to him.
In the service of the working class or of personal interests?
Bebel wrote in his autobiography: "Lassalle was not satisfied with the applause of the masses, he attached great importance to having men of prestige and influence from the bourgeois camp on his side, and he went to great lengths to win them" (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 85). [8]
While on the one hand the power apparatus in Prussia and other parts of Germany had sent out its agents to monitor the aspiring labour movement and to look for possible "cooperative" forces to lure to Bismarck's side, at the same time Lassalle, as the spy report unequivocally reveals, had himself stretched out his feelers.
Secret cooperation with the rulers
Two weeks before the ADAV was founded on 23 May 1863, Lassalle began an exchange of letters with Bismarck. Bismarck, who wanted to unite Germany "by blood and iron", invited Lassalle to a conversation. In a series of four talks, Lassalle not only tried to give Bismarck advice, but also made concrete suggestions for a joint approach.
Lassalle told Bismarck, who was the king's right hand, that the working class "instinctively feels inclined to dictatorship. (Gustav Mayer, Bismarck und Lassalle p. 60), The workers would recognize the monarchy as a "natural carrier of social dictatorship," if the monarchy were to transform itself from a "royalty of the privileged classes into a social and revolutionary people's royalty”. From Lassalle's point of view, the Prussian monarchy was capable of becoming a social royalty – this was the subject of the first conversation with Bismarck. In another conversation, universal suffrage and campaigns against factions of the bourgeoisie hostile to Bismarck, were discussed. Because the Düsseldorf police had taken action against Lassalle's writings at the time of the third discussion on 23 October 1863, Bismarck offered Lassalle to place his works under his protection. For this purpose, Bismarck wanted to issue a circular to the public prosecutors prohibiting the confiscation of Lassalle's works. Lassalle replied to Bismarck that he was against his offer. He thought that repressive measures against him would strengthen his credibility, while if his writings were spared from repression, his credibility would diminish. During this third discussion, the possibility and necessity of an electoral bloc between conservatives and the ADAV was also discussed. On January 12, 1864, Lassalle offered in the next meeting a direct political cooperation in the reform of the electoral law, for which Lassalle wanted to formulate a draft. Lassalle himself told Bismarck that he feared the revolution, this "gloomy, sinister way". And to avoid this, he proposed to Bismarck that he - in order not to be confronted with a revolutionary onslaught - should introduce universal suffrage immediately. Since, from Lassalle's point of view, the German bourgeoisie was incapable of revolution, the workers’ party had to give the impetus, and Bismarck was to urge the king to carry out this turnaround. Finally, Lassalle offered Prussia support in the war against Denmark (including the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein) if Bismarck changed the electoral law.
When Wilhelm Liebknecht warned Lassalle against Bismarck, Lassalle told him, "Pah, I eat cherries with Herr von Bismarck, but he gets the stones" (cf. Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 75). After Bebel had questioned Bismarck in the Reichstag at the time of the Anti-Socialist Law in September 1878 about his contact with Lassalle, Bismarck replied to him in parliament: "But Lassalle had attracted him extraordinarily, he had been one of the most witty and kind people with whom he had ever been in contact, he had also not been a Republican: the idea to which he aspired had been the German empire. In this they had had points of contact/agreement. Lassalle had been highly ambitious" https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/aus-meinem-leben-erster-teil-4234/5 [1903], Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 76 ").
Lassalle later confessed to Helene von Dönniges, as Bebel found out from a conversation with her, that both Bismarck and Lassalle thought they were too clever to trick each other. [9]
Lassalle wrote of his encounters with leaders of the Italian national movement after his trip to Italy and declared almost megalomaniacally that he had just "prevented Prussia's intervention through his 'booklet on the Italian war' and had in fact guided 'the history of the last three years'" (see below). In this sense, an adventurer is not the same as a police agent or a snitch, who sell their information. Adventurers do not have to be corrupt to serve a regime. For them the desire for fame and recognition, i.e. psychological factors, are somewhat stronger than mere material compensations.
Duplicity...
After Lassalle had been elected president of the ADAV in May 1863, he often presented the programmatic orientation of the ADAV completely differently, depending on who he was dealing with. This duplicity is another characteristic of adventurers - not to play "with open cards" and not to enter the ring openly. While Marx and Engels, for example, wrote many polemics, Lassalle shunned debate himself and appeared in different clothing to different audiences.
...and opportunistic recruitment methods for recruiting members
Lassalle had no real faith in the (yet to be developed) force of the working class, but wanted to win more personalities from the camp of the ruling class for the ADAV, since in his opinion they were called to take the shackles off the working class. Thus Lassalle tried to win over Johann Karl Rodbertus, a representative of so-called state socialism. Rodbertus argued that "friends of the social question", i.e. the conservatives and the bourgeoisie, could also join the association. Lassalle wrote to Rodbertus: "The more good bourgeois members join the association, the better" (F. Lassalle Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, 6th volume, Berlin 1925, p. 358).
And because he was not so much interested in the liberation of the working class as in the promotion of the general democratic movement, he also pleaded for the inclusion of liberals and conservatives in the ADAV. Thus he directed himself against the development of an independent political workers party. At the same time, anyone who wanted should be able to become a member and join immediately – and as a result, the ADAV was flooded with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois people. Here, too, it was a step backwards from the Communist League, whose membership was based on the defence of organisational principles enshrined in its statutes.
Lassalle's programmatic orientation: state socialism ....
Lassalle argued in favour of "the state to supply you [the workers] with capital through credit operations, so that you can then enter into free, equal competition with capital". Lassalle did not even think about the destruction of the Prussian state, but hoped for the socialist intervention of the Prussian state! He aroused the confidence that with the help of the existing state it could grow peacefully into socialism.[10]
... and opposing economic struggles in the name of the "iron law of wages”
According to Lassalle, the workers in capitalist society cannot receive a higher wage than that which exceeds the minimum necessary to maintain their physical forces. On this basis, he resisted the unfolding of workers' struggles for demands, dismissed strikes and rejected trade union federations. In short, the ADAV was to be a sect.
Instead, the workers should be raised to the status of entrepreneurs. The state should lend money, build and finance consumer cooperatives.
Lassalle’s Relationship with Marx and Engels
Although Lassalle claimed to know the Communist Manifesto inside out, he was never a marxist. And although he had known Marx and later Engels since 1848, and corresponded with them again and again, and Marx even spent a few days in his Berlin apartment in 1862, Marx and Engels clashed quite quickly with Lassalle. The reason: profound political divergences (e.g. on the question of the support for Prussia, the demand for the introduction of the right to vote and many more) as well as his behaviour. Marx wrote in a letter to Engels on July 30, 1862, after Lassalle had visited him and his family in London: "The stay in Zurich (with Rüstow, Herwegh etc.) and the later trip to Italy, then his ‘Herr Julian Schmidt’ etc. turned his head completely.
He is now not only the greatest scholar, deepest thinker, most brilliant researcher, etc., but also Don Juan and revolutionary Cardinal Richelieu. (...) As a great secret he told me and my wife that he advised Garibaldi not to make Rome the target of the attack, but that he should go to Naples, declare himself to become a dictator (without Viktor Emanuel being wounded), call the People's Army to campaign against Austria. (…) As the lever of action: Lassalle’s political influence or his pen in Berlin. And Rüstow at the head of a corps of German guerrillas including Garibaldi. Bonaparte, however, was paralyzed by this Lassallean coup d'éclat. He was now also with Mazzini, and ‘he too’ approved and ‘admired’ his plan. He introduced himself to these people as a ‘representative of the German revolutionary working class’ and imputed to them (literally!) the knowledge that he (Itzig) ‘prevented Prussia's intervention’ through his pamphlet on the Italian war, and in fact ‘guided the history of the last three years’. L[assalle] was very angry with me and my wife that we made fun of his plans, teased him as an ‘enlightened Bonapartist’, etc. He screamed, raved, jumped and finally convinced himself thoroughly that I was too ‘abstract’ to understand politics. "[11]
These statements by Marx about the character, the self-portrayal, the megalomania and his entire behaviour show how outraged Marx was about Lassalle. When Marx and Engels shared their assessments about his behaviour , they knew nothing about his contacts and the alliance with Bismarck. Marx’s wife Jenny wrote about Lassalle after his visit to their home in 1861. She also made fun of Lassalle's way of presenting himself: “He was almost overwhelmed by the burden of fame he earned as a scholar, thinker, poet and politician. The fresh laurel crown still rested on the Olympic forehead and the ambrosial curly head or rather the rigid stiff chevelure des nègres. He had just victoriously finished the Italian campaign - a new political coup was hatched by the great men of action. Strong battles took place in his soul. He had not yet entered some fields of science. There was still Egyptology, which had not been so much developed. Should I astonish the world as an Egyptologist, or should I show my universality as a man of action, as a politician, as a fighter, as a soldier” (Jenny Marx, Kurze Umrisse eines bewegten Lebens, 1865).
What Marx thought about Lassalle's programmatic positions and his appearance is also made clear by a letter he sent to Engels on April 9, 1863: "On the other hand, the day before yesterday he sent me his ‘Open Letter of Reply’ to the Central Workers' Committee for the Leipzig Workers' Congress. He behaved – boasting by throwing the phrases around he had copied from our writings - entirely as a future workers’ dictator." (MEW, vol. 30, p. 340) And Marx had recognized in a letter to Engels on January 28, 1863 that the famous "Workers' Programme" was only a bad vulgarisation of the Communist Manifesto.
After Marx and Engels learned about the negotiations between Lassalle and Bismarck, Marx wrote to Engels: "By the way, since we now know that Itzig [Lassalle] (a fact which was by no means known to us in this way) wanted to ‘offer’ the Workers' Party to Bismarck in order to make himself known as the ‘Richelieu of the Proletariat’...I will now also not show any restraint in indicating clearly in the preface to my book that he is merely a parrot and a plagiarist” (Marx to Engels in Manchester [London] Jan. 30, 1865). In this preface to the first edition of Das Kapital, Marx considered it necessary to point out the method of Lassalle in "borrowing" ideas from Marx's writings, without citing the source... (Capital, MEW, Vol. 23, p. 11). [12]
Manipulation and defamation of the positions of Marx and Engels
Already at that time they considered the speeches and writings of Lassalle as "very disgusting and royalist". (Marx to Engels, Nov. 24, 1864, MEW 31, p. 30)
Marx wrote to Kugelmann:
"Dear friend, I received your very interesting letter yesterday and will now reply to the individual points. Let me start by briefly explaining my relationship with Lassalle. During his agitation, our relationship was suspended: 1. because of his tendency to praise his own reputation and his sloppiness, while at the same time he was the most shameless plagiarist of my texts, etc. 2. because I condemned his political tactics; 3. because I had explained to him already in detail before the opening of his agitation here in London and had proved that an immediate socialist intervention by the Prussian state was nonsense."[13]
(...) "As soon as he convinced himself in London (end of 1862) that he could not play his game with me, he decided against me and the old party in order to pose as a ‘workers’ dictator’". Engels on June 11, 1863 (three days before the founding of the ADAV) "The guy is now working purely in the service of Bismarck...". (MEW vol. 30, p. 354).
The attempt by Lassalle to isolate Marx and Engels from the labour movement in Germany
Lassalle actually hampered the spreading of Marx and Engels' positions among the workers in Germany and attempted to isolate them from the working class there. Instead, he presented himself as the real "enlightener” and in addition tried to delay and hinder the publication and distribution of texts by Marx and Engels, among other things in order to spread his own positions instead which were often deviating from Marx and Engels, or diametrically opposed to them. Or Lassalle published texts that were often nothing but a plagiarism of the articles by Marx and Engels, without, however, citing the sources. Marx wrote an article specifically for this purpose called "Plagiarism" [14]
Lassalle presented himself as the "true expert" about conditions in Germany, while Marx and Engels lived abroad and did not have the necessary insights.
Lassalle against the struggle of Marx and Engels to defend the organisation
In correspondence with Marx, Lassalle defended the agent of Bonaparte, Karl Vogt. He advised Marx not to take public action against Vogt, not to "stir up" the matter, because this would be badly received by the German "audience". Marx had spent a whole year in 1860 writing an answer to Karl Vogt's book Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung in which he defiled the political activities of Marx and his comrades. "I will write a brochure as soon as I have his smear text (that of Karl Vogt). But at the same time explain in the preface that I will not give a shit about the judgement of your German audience. (Marx to Lassalle, January 30, 1860, MEW 30, p. 438).
When Marx’s work Herr Vogt had been published, Lassalle did nothing to promote its dissemination in Germany. The bourgeois press was anxious to silence Marx's writing, and for his part the president of the ADAV sabotaged Marx’s struggle to defend himself.
Resistance in the ranks of the ADAV against Lassalle's positions and practices
At the end of 1863, beginning of 1864, resistance had developed against Lassalle's positions, especially against his positions in favour of the monarchy in Prussia. On April 11, 1864 he openly called for the support of the monarchy. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had moved to Berlin in July 1862 after his exile in London, was one of the first to clash strongly with Lassalle. Marx warned Liebknecht against public appearances together with Lassalle and advised him not to enter into any close relations with Lassalle. Liebknecht replied: "In the Lassallean Arbeiterverein [ADAV] something is fermenting. If Lassalle does not give up the 'dictatorial attitude' and the flirting with the reaction, there will be a scandal." In the same letter Liebknecht said, "(...) He plays such an intricate game that soon he will no longer be able to find a way out”.
Together with other forces such as Julius Vahlteich, the secretary of the ADAV, they tried to free the ADAV from the clutches of the dictatorial president. When Lassalle noticed this resistance and felt that he would soon have to answer to the organisation and thus face exposure, he was looking for a way to leave the labour movement. His last letters make this search for a "way out" clear. But Lassalle's sudden death put an unexpected end to his activities.
On 31 August 1864 he was seriously injured in a duel over a woman and died three days later of his fatal injuries. [15] Before his death Lassalle had written a will as president of the ADAV in which he chose Bernhard Becker to be his successor as president. The latter, with the help of Countess Hatzfeldt, then set everything in motion to take over this presidential post and soon began to spread the most infamous insults about "the Marx Party".
In order to preserve the sectarian existence of the ADAV, Becker's successor fought against the affiliation to the First International, which had in the meantime been founded in London on 28 September 1864, almost a month after Lassalle's death.
We cannot go into detail here about the significance of the formation of the First International. However, while its foundation was an enormous step forward for the whole workers’ movement, the forces around Lassalle neither contributed towards the participation of the workers in Germany in its formation nor did they situate their work in the perspectives of the First International.
The material situation of Lassalle
Lassalle had secured a financial income through the Countess through the then 'ground-breaking' winning of the trial as a lawyer... and at the same time he had become dependent on the Countess. So while he didn't have to earn his income as a lawyer, he had a very specific privileged status. Such truly financially parasitic positions made him appear in his eyes as "independent" towards the representatives of the ruling class with whom he interacted. Lassalle had never personally experienced what wage dependency or material hardship meant.
Engels’ “obituary” of Lassalle
“He was currently a very insecure friend for us, in the future a quite secure enemy ".... (Engels to Marx, 4 September 1864, MEW vol. 30, p. 429)
In their "obituary" of Lassalle, Marx and Engels wrote: "The brave Lassalle gradually turns out to be an ordinary villain. We have never proceeded from judging people by what they imagined, but by what they were, and I don't see why we should make an exception for Itzig [Lassalle]. Subjectively his vanity may have presented the matter to him as a plausible strategy, objectively it was, a betrayal of the whole labour movement to the Prussians. But the stupid fellow does not seem to have demanded anything in return from Bismarck , nothing specific, let alone any guarantees. He seems to have merely relied on the fact that he had to cheat Bismarck, just as he could not fail to shoot Racowitza. Typical for Baron Itzig [Lassalle]. By the way, the time will not be long when it will not only be desirable, but necessary, to publish this whole thing. This can only be of use to us and if the matter with the ADAV and the newspaper in Germany continues, then soon his whole legacy will have to be thrown out. Meanwhile the proletariat in Germany will soon see what Bismarck is worth”. (https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band31.pdf; [1904] MEW vol. 31, p. 45)
Lassalle had been an adventurer, whose true role in his lifetime was recognised only by very few and then only piecemeal. As shown above, even Marx, Engels, Bebel and Liebknecht, who had got to know him better, did not have a complete picture of him.
Misjudgements of the adventurer by Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring
At the same time the case of Lassalle shows that during that period there were grave differences amongst revolutionaries concerning the assessment of such people. Because decades later even such important political minds as Rosa Luxemburg or Franz Mehring were to make rather blatant misjudgements of Lassalle.
For example, in 1913, 50 years after the founding of the ADAV, Rosa Luxemburg wrote a misleading and trivial praise of Lassalle: "Lassalle made mistakes in his fighting tactics, certainly. However, it is only a cheap pleasure for petty hooligans of historical research to find mistakes in a great life's work. For the assessment of a personality such as his, it is much more important to recognise the actual cause, the particular source from which his mistakes as well as his merits arose. Lassalle often sinned by his tendency to play at ‘diplomacy’, to cheat with ideas, as he did in his negotiations with Bismarck about the imposition of universal suffrage, and in his plans for productive associations founded on state credit. In his political struggles with bourgeois society as well as in his struggles with the Prussian judiciary, he liked to descend to the level of his opponent, granting him concessions to his point of view, seeing himself as a daring acrobat: as Johann Philipp Becker wrote, he often ventured a leap to the outermost edge of the abyss, which distinguishes a revolutionary tactic from a pact with reaction.
But the cause that led him to these daring leaps was not the inner insecurity, the inner doubt about the strength and feasibility of the revolutionary cause that he represented, but, conversely, an excess of self-assured belief in the indomitable power of that cause. Lassalle sometimes put a foot on the opponent's ground in the struggle, while not wanting to abandon any of his revolutionary aims, but in the delusion of a powerful personality. He believed that he was able to wrest so much for his revolutionary aims on his own ground that the ground itself should have collapsed under the feet of the opponent. If Lassalle, for example, grafted his idea of productive associations based on state credit onto an idealistic, ahistorical fiction of the state, the great danger of this fiction lay in the fact that in reality he was merely idealising the pathetic Prussian state. But what Lassalle, on the basis of his fiction, wanted to demand and impose on this state in terms of the tasks and duties of the working class, that would not only have shaken the miserable barrack of a Prussian state, but the bourgeois state as such.“[16]
Let’s consider Luxemburg's view that Lassalle was a "bold, daring acrobat” who “often ventured a leap to the outermost edge of the abyss which distinguishes a revolutionary tactic from the pact with reaction" In reality experience shows the opposite; it shows that the correct political statements which a political adventurer can make at some point cannot change his character and overall contribution. No less misleading was the assessment of Franz Mehring, probably the most famous party historian and for a long time someone who stood alongside Rosa Luxemburg. From his point of view Lassalle was a revolutionary and as such "quite equal" to Marx (Mehring, Geschichte seiner Lebens, p. 318). According to Mehring, Lassalle was someone "whom the history of German social democracy will always mention in the same breath with him [Marx] and Engels". (Mehring p. 320). Lassalle's agitational writings have “given a new life to hundreds of thousands of German workers” (ibid. p. 314). According to Mehring, Marx “never completely overcame his prejudices” against Lassalle. Mehring regretted that Marx “judged the dead Lassalle even more bitterly and unjustly than the living”. (ibid. p. 319, 320)
Due to historical circumstances, Lassalle was never fully unmasked during his lifetime. As mentioned above, Marx and Engels broke with him over programmatic questions and his behaviour around 1861/62, but they had not been aware of the nature of his links with Bismarck. His sudden death increased the difficulties of grasping and exposing the full scope of his personality.
Schweitzer – a second adventurer
After Lassalle's death in 1864, Jean Baptist von Schweitzer was elected president of the ADAV in 1867 at the age of 34 years.
To get a picture of Schweitzer's character, we quote August Bebel in detail here.
“J.B. von Schweitzer is one of the leading personalities who, after Lassalle's death, successively took over the leadership of the association he founded. With Schweitzer the association received a leader who possessed to a high degree a number of qualities which were of great value for his position. He had the necessary theoretical background, a broad political view and a cool mind. As a journalist and agitator, he had the ability to make the most difficult questions and issues clear to the simplest worker; he knew how to fascinate and whip up the masses like few others. In the course of his journalistic work, he published a series of popularising science papers in his journal, The Social Democrat, which are among the best that socialist literature possesses. (...) He quickly grasped a given situation and understood how to exploit it. Finally, he was also an able and calculating speaker, who made an impression on the masses and his opponents.
But in addition to these good, in part brilliant qualities, Schweitzer possessed a number of vices which made him dangerous as the leader of a workers' party which was in the early stages of its development. For him, the movement which he joined after several wanderings was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. He entered the movement as soon as he saw that no future was blossoming within the bourgeoisie, that for him, who had become a declassé early through his way of life, the only hope was to play the role in the labour movement to which his ambition and, so to speak, his abilities predestined him. He also did not want to be merely the leader of the movement, but its ruler, and sought to exploit it for his selfish purposes. Educated in a Jesuit-led institute in Aschaffenburg for a number of years, later devoting himself to the study of jurisprudence, he acquired the intellectual tools in Jesuit casuistry and legal rabble-rousing that were by nature cunning and devious He was a politician who unscrupulously sought to achieve his purposes, satisfying his ambition at all costs, and also satisfying his needs to be a ‘bon viveur’, which was not possible without adequate material means, something he did not possess“ (August Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, Part 2, p. 223).
Schweitzer’s morals
After Schweitzer had been elected chairman of the Frankfurter Arbeiterbildungsverein (Workers‘ Educational Club) even before the founding of the ADAV in November 1861, he had not only become known locally as chairman of the Schützenverein (shooting club) and the Turnclub, (gymnastics club) but had also built up his first relationships with the local nobility. In the summer of 1862 he was accused of embezzling funds from the Schützenverein and of a paedophile contact with a 12 year old boy in a park. He was sentenced to two weeks in prison for the offence committed against the boy and for "arousing public anger".
Even though the boy was never found and although Schweitzer denied the whole affair the reproach of child abuse was from then on constantly hanging over him. He never denied the embezzlement of the money of the Schützenverein.
Nevertheless Lassalle protected him and accepted him into the ADAV and made him a board member.
Bebel later wrote about the behaviour of Schweitzer and his promotion by Lassalle: "He quickly understood that there was an opportunity here for a position for his future that corresponded to his ambition, which was cut off from him for all time in the bourgeois world because of the events described above [child abuse and embezzlement of money - ICC]. In these circles he was regarded as a person to be shown the door. (Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 232)
Contacts with the ruling class…
Following in Lassalle's footsteps, Schweitzer soon made an effort to establish contacts with ruling circles, in particular Bismarck and his entourage, by means of the Privy Councillor Hermann Wagener. [17]
Like Lassalle, Schweitzer also offered political support to Bismarck. How conscious Hatzfeldt was of Schweitzer's efforts, is shown by a statement by Bebel in his autobiography: "The Countess Hatzfeldt, according to whom Schweitzer‘s policy in support for Bismarck's had not gone far enough, tried to justify this policy towards the end of 1864 in a letter to Mrs. Herwegh, in which she wrote: ‘There is a formal abyss between the following two things: to sell oneself to an adversary, to work for him, whether in a hidden or uncovered way, or to grasp the moment like a great politician, to profit from the mistakes of the adversary, to let one enemy be wiped out by the other, to urge him on a downward trajectory and to take advantage of the favourable situation – no matter who may have brought it about. Those who merely have honest convictions, those who always base themselves only on an ideal vision of things to come, who remain floating in the air, may be considered privately as quite good people, but they are completely incapable of being useful for something, for actions which really affect events, in short, they can only be part of a great mass following the leader who knows better". (Bebel, ibid. p. 251)
Here you can see the point of view often found in adventurers: the masses are stupid and must be controlled, they need a clever head that can act effectively on the opponent. The adventurer is the "chosen one, the one who has been called". And a part of this behaviour is to speak with two tongues. As Bebel wrote: "The way in which Schweitzer knew how to flatter the masses, although inwardly he despised them - I have never seen a thing of this scope." [18]
...Paired with opportunist offers
Because Schweitzer said that "His Majesty our most revered king is the friend of the workers" and that the main enemy for the ADAV lies in the "liberal bourgeois party", he argued that "the social democratic party's struggle must first and foremost be directed against them. But if you defend this view, gentlemen, then you will say to yourself: Why shouldn't Lassalle have turned to Bismarck? (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 233, 247). [...] Bebel continues: “Schweitzer knew that the view he preached was fundamentally a reactionary one, a betrayal of the interests of the workers, but he propagandised it because he believed that it would promote his ascent (...)
It was self-evident that Bismarck and the feudalists gladly accepted such help from the far left and possibly supported the advocate of such a view" (Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 233). (...) “The attempts to make the General German Workers' Association palatable for Bismarck's grand Prussian politics, were thus undertaken very early and then permanently. It will be up to me to prove that Schweitzer consciously served Bismarck's endeavours” (Bebel, p. 227). Efforts to fulfil personal ambitions through direct or indirect contacts with the rulers were therefore often accompanied by programmatic weaknesses and deceptions, as could be seen in the question of electoral law (or see, for example, Schweitzer's article "The Ministry of Bismarck and the Government of the Central and Small States"). Engels later wrote: "At that time, an attempt was made to bring the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein - at the time the only organised association of social democratic workers in Germany - under the wing of the Bismarck Ministry by giving the workers the prospect that the government would grant them universal suffrage. The ‘universal, equal, direct right to vote’ had been preached by Lassalle as the only and infallible means for the conquest of political power by the working class." www.mlwerke.de/me/me16/me16_326.htm [1905]
At that time Engels wrote two important programmatic texts, "The Prussian Military Question and the German Labour Party" as well as an answer to J.B. Schweitzer "Über P.-J. Proudhon”. As Engels commented, “this article had Proudhon as its topic, but actually it should also be seen as an answer to Lassalleanism itself” (MEW 15, P. 25).
At the same time Schweitzer reacted to the criticism of his position on Prussia. Because Marx and Engels lived in England and not in Germany, they could not have any "expert knowledge" at all. Only if one has a "local/national" view can one judge correctly "As far as the practical questions of momentary tactics are concerned, however, I ask you to consider that, in order to judge these things, one must stand in the center of the movement". In the Social Democrat of December 15, 1864, an article "Our Programme" defended this national standpoint: "We do not want a powerless and torn fatherland, powerless to the outside and full of arbitrariness within - we want the whole mighty Germany, the one free people's state” (Bebel, ibid., p. 232). Such a strong national vision was put forward at a time when the First International was emphasising the importance of internationalism to the whole working class worldwide.
On December 15, 1865 Schweitzer published an article in Social Democrat praising the "merits" of Lassalle, as if there had been no workers' movement before him. In response, Marx sent the above-mentioned article on Proudhon in order to "almost covertly" encourage critical reflection on Lassalle's role. In addition to Lassalle's glorification, the Social Democrat under Schweitzer wanted to further expand Bismarck's support. As a result, Marx and Engels renounced their collaboration in the Social Democrat on February 23, 1865, after which Schweitzer again falsified the positions of Marx and Engels. [19]
The personality cult around Lassalle
The opposition within the ADAV began to polemicize against the “dictatorial organisational provisions in the Association Statutes, so as Lassalle's very own work the organisation had to be surrounded with a kind of glory. The Lassalle cult was from now on systematically promoted and everyone who dared to hold different views was branded as a kind of desecrator of the most sacred” (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 246). Bebel went on to say that "And Schweitzer supported these idiotic views, which eventually became a kind of religious belief. (...) In the course of the years it came to pass that the topic ‘Christ and Lassalle’ was placed on the agenda of numerous popular assemblies” (ibid., p. 246). [20]
"Obscure" funding sources
Like Lassalle, Schweitzer did not rely solely on dubious sources of finance. He never explained where the large funds for the production and distribution of the Social Democrat came from, after the suspicion arose that he was receiving funds from government sources. The mere suspicion that he was dependent on government funds, that he thus could not only be blackmailed but even directly corrupted, should not have been left unanswered by Schweitzer. Instead he left this accusation hanging in the air. [21]
And he did nothing when it became known that a police informer named Preuß was active in the organisation and was in contact with his police superior, with whom Schweitzer himself maintained contacts.
Not only spared by the police
It might be argued: aren't prison sentences or repressive actions against adventurers proof of their "innocence"?
In November 1865 Schweitzer had gone to prison and was to have served a year there for insulting His Majesty and defaming official orders, with deprivation of his rights of honour.
"It has been asserted that the various prison sentences are evidence against the accusation that Schweitzer was Bismarck's agent. This view is quite wrong. The relations a government has with its political agents do not bind them to the prosecutors and judges. A temporary conviction of a political agent for oppositional acts is also very suitable to eliminate distrust of the person concerned and to strengthen confidence in him. It is well known that at the same time as Lassalle and Bismarck had their hours of political conversations as "friendly neighbours", the Berlin courts did not shy away from sentencing him to a series of harsh prison sentences, even though it was widely known at the time how Bismarck and Lassalle stood in relation to each other” (Bebel, ibid., p. 253).
While the Berlin police terrorised suspects during their early in the morning raids, among other things through house searches, "Schweitzer [...] never had to complain about such or similar measures. He went to prison and left the same as if he had been to a hotel" (Bebel, p. 297). In fact, Schweitzer was repeatedly released from prison or could almost enter and leave prison and continue his activities - in contrast to other members of the ADAV who languished there.
In fact the close ally of Lassalle Countess Hatzfeldt even denounced Liebknecht to the police when he was staying illegally in Berlin in 1865, after which he was expelled from the city. [22]
Growing resistance to Schweitzer in the ADAV
In the spring of 1869, resistance formed within the ADAV against Schweitzer's dictatorial powers.
At first against his wasteful lifestyle: “Schweitzer was one of those characters who always spend at least twice as much money as they earn, whose slogan is: my needs do not have to depend on my revenue, but the revenues have to depend on my needs, which requires that they then unscrupulously take the money where they find it. In 1862 Schweitzer had taken 2,600 Taler from the Schützenfestkasse, but later, when he was president of the Allgemeine Deutscher Arbeiterverein and as such had the money at his disposal, he embezzled pennies collected by poorly paid workers in order to satisfy his desires. These were not large sums, but this was not due to Schweitzer, but to the meagre contents of the cash register. He was accused of this mismanagement and it was also proven at various general meetings of the ADAV, and Bracke, who for many years was the treasurer of the association and had to pay out the money on Schweitzer's orders, publicly accused him of these infamous activities without Schweitzer daring to utter a word in his defence. But anyone who is capable of such a thing could not have been incapable of selling himself politically, which could be the only halfway lucrative business for him. No one can prove how much was paid, for such transactions are not concluded on the open market” (Bebel, ibid. p. 270). When the local section of Erfurt wanted to have Schweitzer's cash management checked, Schweitzer threatened to dissolve the association... and three weeks later the police actually appeared as a punitive expedition and dissolved the association (Bebel, ibid., p. 274). And following consultations in a small circle of Chosen Men, he had a new club founded. Its statutes were rigged in Schweitzer’s favour: “The new statutes contained downright outrageous provisions. Thus the president was to be elected six weeks before the ordinary general assembly in a ballot by the members of the association, i.e. before the general assembly had spoken and examined its management" (cf. Bebel, ibid., p. 276).
Denigrations of Marx and Engels
“Schweitzer further declared against Marx and Engels that they had withdrawn from the Social Democrat as soon as they realised that they could not play the leading role in the party. In contrast to them, Lassalle was not the man of infertile abstraction, but a politician in the strict sense of the word, not a literary doctrinaire, but a man of practical action.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Schweitzer later flattered the man of ‘infertile abstraction’ the ‘literary doctrinaire’, Karl Marx, and sought to win him over“. (Bebel, ibid., p. 240).
During the General Assembly of the ADAV in Wuppertal Barmen-Elberfeld at the end of March 1869, at which Schweitzer was to be called to account, Bebel reported to Marx:
“Liebknecht and I sit here in Elberfeld in a small circle of like-minded people to prepare the campaign plan for tomorrow's battle. Here we have heard about such an abundance of Schweitzer's mean, vile acts, that our hair stands on end. It also turns out to be evident that Schweitzer only proposes to accept the programme of the International for the purpose of leading a coup against us and to knock down a good part of opposition elements or rather to draw them over to himself”. (Bebel, ibid., p. 281). Bebel added that "Schweitzer is using all means of perfidy and intrigue against us". Bebel and Liebknecht wanted to expose Schweitzer in this plenary meeting. [23] Bebel reported: "The next afternoon we entered the crowded hall, greeted by the angry looks of the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. Liebknecht spoke first, about an hour and a half, I followed and spoke for a much shorter time. Our accusations contained what I had so far put forward against Schweitzer. Several times there were violent interruptions, namely when I called Schweitzer a government agent. I must withdraw the accusation! I refused to do so. I thought I had the right to speak my mind freely, they, the listeners, did not have to believe me.(...)
Schweitzer, who sat on the podium behind us during our speeches, did not answer a word. So we left the hall, with some delegates walking in front of and behind us to protect us from the assaults of the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. But flattering words like ‘villain, traitor, toe-rag, you should have your bones smashed’ etc., were heard in the crowd as we walked through its ranks. One of those present also tried to bring me down from the podium by pushing me into the hollow of my knee. In front of the door our friends welcomed us to escort us to our hotel as our guardians”.
Schweitzer demanded a vote of confidence from the delegates. After a heated debate he was confirmed as the president – though with a much-reduced number of votes.
“Even though Schweitzer was re-elected at the General Assembly, his powers were severely restricted. Schweitzer swiped the minutes of the General Assembly and made them disappear. (…) Nothing that compromised him was permitted to be made known to the members of the association and become public." (Bebel, p. 285).
For a short time the two wings into which the ADAV had split had proclaimed their reunification under Schweitzer. But the opposition wing around Bracke concluded that "Mr. von Schweitzer uses the association only to satisfy his ambition and to degrade it to a tool of anti-working class reactionary politics” (Bebel, ibid, p. 290). The opposition then called for the holding of a congress of all the social democratic workers in Germany (held in Eisenach). They resigned from the ADAV and declared: "It will become clear whether corruption, meanness, bribery, or honesty and purity of intentions will win out.
Our slogan is: Down with sectarianism! Down with the cult of personality! Down with the Jesuits who acknowledge our principle in words, betray it in actions! Long live Social Democracy, long live the International Workers' Association!
The fact that in this declaration, and later repeatedly, we used the honesty of our intentions against the dishonest Schweitzers in the field, subsequently brought the nickname ‘The Honest’ to the newly founded party of the opponents” (Bebel, p. 293).
“Schweitzer's counter-offensive was not long in coming. The Social Democrat now observed the tactic of constantly proclaiming that our fraction consisted not of workers but of literary figures, schoolmasters and other bourgeois". Above all, the opposition was to be discredited by abuse, attempts at ridicule and slander. "Behind our Congress, it was said in this article, stood the whole liberal bourgeoisie in all its shades. Of course, under a regiment of literary men, schoolmasters, merchants, etc., there could be no question of a tight, uniform organisation. Each of these people must have the opportunity to make themselves quite important. The entire bourgeois press was at our command, he continued. He would see to it that a corresponding number of delegates came to the Eisenach Congress, but not literary men and bourgeois, but real workers” (Bebel, p. 295). Finally, Tölcke, who in 1865 had been elected president of the ADAV, accused Bebel in the Social Democrat of 28 July 1869 of obtaining 600 Taler a month from the ex-King of Hanover - a real slander!
At the founding congress of the Eisenachers held in August, the members feared a violent intrusion by the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. Approximately 100 people from the "Schweitzer" circle of supporters then appeared at the Eisenach Congress, but were rejected because of non-existent mandates.
With the foundation of the Eisenach Party in1869, which had risen through opposition to the ADAV, the first party was founded: the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland (SDAP -Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany)
In a letter to Schweitzer Marx wrote about the indispensable step of moving from a sect to a real class movement. Lassalle had not only refused to contribute to making this step but had acted as an obstacle, which the movement had to go beyond. “Moreover from the outset, like everyone who declares that he has a panacea for the sufferings of the masses in his pocket, he gave his agitation a religious and sectarian character. Every sect is in fact religious. Further, just because he was the founder of a sect, he denied all natural connection with the earlier movement both in Germany and outside. He fell into the same mistake as Proudhon, and instead of looking among the genuine elements of the class movement for the real basis of his agitation, he tried to prescribe their course to these elements according to a certain dogmatic recipe.
Most of what I am now saying after the event I foretold to Lassalle in 1862, when he came to London and invited me to place myself with him at the head of the new movement.
You yourself have experienced in your own person the opposition between the movement of a sect and the movement of a class. The sect sees the justification for its existence and its ‘point of honour’ not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from it. Therefore when at Hamburg you proposed the congress for the formation of trade unions you were only able to defeat the opposition of the sect by threatening to resign from the office of president. In addition, you were obliged to double yourself and to announce that in one case you were acting as the head of the sect and in the other as the organ of the class movement.
The dissolution of the General Association of German Workers gave you the historic opportunity to accomplish a great step forward and to declare, to prove if necessary, that a new stage of development had now been reached, and that moment was ripe for the sectarian movement to merge into the class movement and make an end of all dependence. Where the true content of the sect was concerned it would, as with all previous working-class sects, be carried on into the general movement as an element which enriched it. Instead of this you actually demanded of the class movement that it should subordinate itself to the movement of a particular sect.
Those who are not your friends have concluded from this that whatever happens you want to preserve ‘your own’ workers' movement" [24]
In July 1871 the Braunschweig party section published an appeal:
“But vis a vis Mr. von Schweitzer, who in the most spiteful and reprehensible way tries to set up workers against workers, social democrats against social democrats, we are obliged to stand up for the workers’ real cause with all our energy. Therefore we call upon the party comrades in Barmen-Elberfeld, (...) to take the necessary steps in this direction without delay; the party is guilty and obliged to clean the general movement of a man who, under the guise of a radical attitude, has so far done everything in the interest of the Prussian state government to harm this movement. The party will support the comrades in Barmen-Elberfeld. Now forward vigorously!” (Bebel, Mein Leben, p. 330).
In spring 1871 Schweitzer was expelled from the ADAV. [25]
As with the case of Lassalle, Schweitzer was never fully unmasked during his life (he died of pneumonia in 1875). He was expelled from the ADAV, but without the lessons having been drawn sufficiently.
It was only in the fight against the activities of Bakunin that the First International and its General Council developed the capacity to expose the activities of an adventurer in an efficient manner.
The struggle against adventurers is not possible without assimilating the experience of the revolutionary movement
The role of the two adventurers, both lawyers, who for years were able to do their dirty work in the ADAV - while in the eyes of many were considered to be acting in the interests of the working class - shows how difficult it is to identify and expose an adventurer.
Exposing and uncovering their behaviour, careers, interactions, reactions and true motives is one of the greatest challenges for a revolutionary organisation. As the past has shown, the fact that these individuals have gained the trust of many members of the organisation by trickery, and may enjoy a high reputation in the working class as a whole, is a major obstacle, but it must not undermine the ability to recognise and understand the very nature of such individuals. The unmasking of such adventurers usually encounters the horror of those who feel closest to them and who are incapable or unwilling to recognise reality out of long-term allegiance, "loyalty" and/or emotional affinity. Since such persons can be "highly esteemed" figures, from whom "no one expects anything like this", it is all the more important to come to terms with the painful historical experience of the revolutionary movement. Engels wrote shortly before the end of his life in 1891 that he "would no longer allow Lassalle's false fame to be maintained and preached anew at Marx's expense”. (Engels with August Bebel, May 1/2, 1891, MEW 38, p. 93)
So he summed up the hesitations and doubts weighing on the party, and showed why it was important to uncover Lassalle mercilessly:
“You mention that Bebel has written to you saying that Marx’s treatment of Lassalle has caused bad blood amongst the old Lassalleans. That may be. Those people don’t, of course, know the true story and nobody seems to have done anything to enlighten them on the subject. If they don’t know that Lassalle’s reputation as a great man is solely attributable to the fact that for years Marx allowed him to flaunt as his own the fruits of Marx’s research and, what’s more, to distort them because of his inadequate grounding in political economy, that is no fault of mine. But I am Marx’s literary executor and as such I also have my obligations.
For the past 26 years Lassalle has been part of history. If, while the Exceptional Law was in force, he has been exempt from historical criticism, it is now high time that such criticism came into its own and that light be thrown on Lassalle’s position in regard to Marx. The legend which veils the true image of Lassalle and deifies him cannot, after all, become an article of faith for the party. However highly one may rate Lassalle’s services on behalf of the movement, his historical role inside it remains an equivocal one. Everywhere Lassalle the socialist goes hand in hand with Lassalle the demagogue. In Lassalle the agitator and organiser, the Lassalle who conducted the Hatzfeldt lawsuit is everywhere apparent: the same cynicism in the choice of methods, the same predilection for consorting with corrupt and shady people who may be used simply as tools and then be discarded. Up till 1862 a specifically Prussian vulgar democrat in practice with marked Bonapartist tendencies (I have just been looking through his letters to Marx), he made a sudden volte-face for purely personal reasons and began to engage in agitation. And before 2 years had gone by he was demanding that the workers side with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie and had begun intriguing with his kindred spirit Bismarck in a manner that could only have led to the actual betrayal of the movement had he not, luckily for him, been shot in the nick of time. In his propagandist writings the correct arguments he borrowed from Marx are so interwoven with his own invariably false ones that it is virtually impossible to separate the two. Such workers as have been offended by Marx’s judgment know nothing of Lassalle save for his 2 years of agitation and, furthermore, see the latter only through rose-tinted spectacles. But historical criticism cannot forever remain standing hat in hand before such prejudices. It was my duty to settle accounts once and for all between Marx and Lassalle. That has been done. With this I can content myself for the time being. Besides, I have other things to do. And the publication of Marx’s ruthless judgment of Lassalle will undoubtedly prove effective on its own and put heart into others. But if I were forced to do so, there'd be no alternative: I should have to dispose of the Lassallean legend once and for all” (Engels to Kautsky, 23 February 1891, MEW 38, p. 40).
The unmasking of the activities of Bakunin through the General Council of the First International showed that this struggle was only possible because of the political awareness and determination to unmask such adventurers. And this could only be done by establishing a specific report like that of the General Council to The Hague Congress. [26] When Bebel and Liebknecht denounced Schweitzer in 1869 at the Wuppertal Party conference, they did so without having presented a proper report, without offering a full picture, a fact which certainly contributed to the unmasking being ‘half-baked’, and it did not prevent Schweitzer from being re-elected – in spite of growing resistance.
The struggle against adventurers, which as the experience of Marx and Engels in their struggle against Lassalle and Schweitzer showed, is a tremendous challenge, was taken to a higher, much more efficient level through the General Council of the First International at The Hague Congress. By drawing the lessons of the weaknesses and difficulties of the struggle against Lassalle and Schweitzer the General Council forged the weapons to face up to Bakunin. It is up to revolutionary organisations today to re-appropriate the lessons of this struggle.
Dino, July 2019
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3753/communist-organisation-struggle-marxism-against-political-adventurism [1906]
[2]Ferdinand Lassalle was born in 1825 in Breslau, the son of a wealthy Jewish silk merchant. Already in his adolecscence he distinguished himself by his strong independent activities and his ambitions. As a student he aspired to an appointment as a university professor.
[3] Because of his special relations with Countess Hatzfeld, the Communist League refused to accept him into its ranks.
[4]One of his biographers, Schirokauer, mentioned his lavish lifestyle as a young man and his high level of consumption of expensive wines and champagnes. In the Berlin residence, where he and the countess lived, it was reported that hash and opium consumption was also a common practice. For more details see: Arno Schirokauer: Lassalle. Die Macht der Illusion, die Illusion der Macht. Paul List Verlag, Leipzig 1928.
[5] Due to the Law on Associations of 1854, political workers' associations and also connections between authorised associations were forbidden.
[6]Gustav Mayer, Lassalles' snitch report about himself. Re-published in the Grünberg Archives, vol. 10, p. 399 ff., see also Gustav Mayer, Bismarck und Lassalle, Ihr Briefwechsel und ihre Gespräche, Berlin, 1928 as well as Johann Baptist von Schweitzer und die Sozialdemokratie, Jena, 1909
[7] A.K. Worobjowa, Aus der Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland und des Kampfes von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels gegen Lassalle und das Lassalleanertum 1862-1864, Berlin 1961, p. 249
[8] Later Bebel interrogated Bismarck in public about his links with Lassalle. “In reference to the relations with Lassalle which I reproached him with, he said that it was not he, but Lassalle, who had had the desire to talk to him, and he had not made it difficult for him to fulfil this desire. He had not regretted that either. Negotiations between them had not previously taken place, so what could Lassalle, as a poor devil, have offered him?” (From Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, My Life, My Entry into the Labour Movement and Public Life, Chapter 5, p. 76)
[9]Helene von Rakowicza (Helene von Dönniges), the former lover of Lassalle, for whom he was involved in the duel that cost him his life, says in her book Von anderen und mir, Berlin 1909, that she presented the question to Lassalle in a conversation at night :“Is it true now? Have you anything to do with Bismarck's secret? To which he replied: ‘As far as Bismarck is concerned and what he wanted from me and I from him? - it should be sufficient for you to know that it did not come about, could not come about. We were both too clever - we saw our mutual cunning and could only have ended up laughing in each other’s faces (politically speaking). We are too well educated for that - so there were no more than visits and witty conversations’."
[10] See also Engels “The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party”, (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/02/27.htm [1907])
Engels; "On the Dissolution of the Lassallean Workers' Association." (https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1868/disso... [1908])
[12]"Itzig [Lassalle] sends me, inevitably, his defence speech (he has been sentenced to 4 months) in court. Macte puer virtute! First of all, this boastful man had the pamphlet which you have, the speech about "the working class", reprinted in Switzerland under the pompous title: ‘Workers’ Programme’. You know that the thing is nothing but bad vulgarisation of the Manifesto and other things so often preached by us that they have, so to speak, already become commonplaces. (The lad, for example, speaks of ‘positions’ when speaking of the working class.) Well. In his speech before the Berlin court he did not have any shame to say: ‘I further assert that this pamphlet is not only a scientific work like many others, which summarises already known results, but that it is even in many respects a scientific achievement, a development of new scientific thoughts... In various and difficult fields of science I have unearthed extensive works, spared no effort or sleepless nights to extend the boundaries of science itself, and I can perhaps say with Horace: militavi non sine gloria [I fought not without glory]. But I myself explain to you: Never, not in my most extensive works, have I written a line that would be more strictly scientific than this production from its first page to its last ... So, take a look at the contents of this brochure. Its content is nothing more than a philosophy of history compressed into 44 pages ... It is a development of the objective rational thought process which has been at the basis of European history for longer than a millennium, an unfolding of the inner soul etc.’. Is this indecency not incredible? The guy obviously thinks he is the man to take our inventory. This is grotesque and ridiculous! Salut. Your K.M" (MEW 30, 28.1.1863, p. 322)
[13] Marx to Kugelmann, 23 February 1865, MEW 31, p. 451, https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band31.pdf [1910]
[14] MEW 16, p. 221.
[15]Lassalle fell in love with a young woman named Helene von Dönniges during a stay at a health resort. He wanted to marry her, but her parents were opposed. In order to successfully sue her father, the Bavarian diplomat Wilhelm von Dönniges, for sequestration of his daughter, he tried on 16 or 17 August 1864 to pull the Bavarian King Ludwig II over to his side. (...) Thereupon Lassalle decided to travel to Switzerland and to challenge Wilhelm von Dönniges to a duel. As a member of the Breslauer Burschenschaft (fraternity), Lassalle demanded satisfaction from Helene's father, a member of the Corps Rhenania Bonn. The 50-year-old father instructed his desired fiancé, the Romanian boyar Janko von Racowitza (Iancu Racoviţă), a member of the Corps Neoborussia-Berlin, to take on the duel.
The duel took place on the morning of 28 August 1864 in the Geneva suburb of Carouge. Lassalle's assistant was Wilhelm Rüstow. At 7:30 a.m., the opponents faced each other with pistols. Racowitza was the first to fire and hit Lassalle in the abdomen. Three days later, on 31 August 1864, Ferdinand Lassalle died at the age of 39 in Carouge. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Lassalle. [1911]
One may trivialise all this as the typical macho behavior of men with aristocratic or, as in the case of Lassalle, bourgeois backgrounds. His cultivation of intense rivalries in his early youth - at the age of 12 he had for the first time challenged in writing a rival to a duel over a 14-year-old girl - can perhaps be dismissed as adolescent zeal, but for a 39-year-old adult who pretended to the workers that he was pursuing revolutionary goals to try to to eliminate a "competitor" through a duel, at the same time putting his own life at risk, was a gross perversion of the goals of the working class.
[16]Rosa Luxemburg: “Lassalle and the Revolution” [Festschrift, March 1904, Berlin, p. 7/8. Collected Works Vol. 1/2, 1970, p. 417-421]
[17] His helper in these matters was the Privy Senior Government Councillor Hermann Wagener. There was also the police agent Preuß, who was handled by Wagener. The latter was the one who denounced Liebknecht's presence in Berlin, in autumn 1866, for infringing a police order, whereupon he was sentenced to three months in prison. See A.K. Worobjowa, Aus der Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland und des Kampfes von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels gegen Lassalle und das Lassalleanertum 1862-1864, Berlin 1961
[19]See MEW vol. 16, p. 79, "I had written to Schweitzer about 10 days ago that he had to make a front against Bismarck, and also that the impression of coquetry of the Workers' Party with Bismarck would have to be abandoned etc. In response he was even more willing to flirt with Pißmarck”. See the correspondence of Marx and Engels, February. 3, 1865 and of February 18, 1865.
[20]“The first two test issues of the paper already contained many doubtful points. I remonstrated. And among other things I expressed my indignation that from a private letter, which I wrote on the news of Lassalle's death to Countess Hatzfeldt, a few words of comfort had been extracted, published without my signature and shamelessly misused to propagate servile praise of Lassalle” https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band16.pdf [1913] , MEW 16, p. 87, 23
[21]In later reports by party members it became much clearer how much he had embezzeled party funds. (Bebel, Mein Leben, p. 320, 337).
[22]A.K. Worobjowa, op cit,
[23]Actually, the practice and tradition of the labour movement required that if a member or members of the organisation have a suspicion of anti-organisational behaviour or even express doubt about the credentials of another member, a specially appointed organ of the organisation must intervene in order to carry out investigations with appropriate discretion and method. Such a body did not exist in the ADAV, and the situation was further complicated by the fact that the person under suspicion was the president of the organisation.
[24] Marx to Schweitzer, 13 October 1868, MEW, Vol. 32, p. 569,
[25] Bebel reported that Schweitzer’s supporters at the time of the Franco-Prussian war were suspected of having attacked Liebknecht’s apartment… Bebel, Mein Leben, p. 332.
[26] See our articles in International Reviews 84,85 and 87
The current climate change protests are being encouraged and praised by a whole segment of the ruling class, from the Merkel to Corbyn. That alone should make us reflect on whether these protests are really part of the solution to capitalism’s devastation of nature. In this forum we will look at the relationship between humanity and nature from a communist starting point, and argue that the class struggle alone can halt the slide into barbarism. Join us for the discussion!
2pm, Saturday 19 October, May Day Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH (Nearest tube: St Pauls)
This article is part of the series The hidden legacy of the left of capital in which we are proposing how to come to grips with something that is difficult for numerous groups and militants of the Communist Left: it's not only a question of breaking with all the political positions of the parties of capital (populist, fascist, right, left, extreme-left) but it is also necessary to break with their organisational methods, their morality and their way of thinking. This rupture is absolutely necessary but it is difficult because we live daily with the ideological enemies of the liberation of humanity: bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat. In this fifth article of the series, we are looking at the vital question of debate[1].
Debate is the source of life for the proletariat, a class which isn't an unconscious force struggling blindly and motivated by the determinism of objective conditions. It is on the contrary a conscious class whose combat is guided by an understanding of the necessities and possibilities on the road to communism. This comprehension doesn't arise from absolute truths formulated once and for all in the Manifesto of the Communist Party or in the privileged spirit of brilliant leaders but it is a product "of the intellectual development of the working class (which must come from) common action and discussion. Events and the ups and downs of the struggle against capital, defeats more so than its successes, can only make the combatants feel the insufficiencies of all their panaceas and lead them to a fundamental understanding of the real conditions of workers' emancipation"[2].
Revolutionary proletarians stand upon the gigantic debates of the masses. The autonomous and self-organised action of the working class is based on debate in which hundreds of thousands of workers, youth, women, retired, actively participate. The Russian revolution of 1917 was based on a permanent debate of thousands of discussions in localities, the streets, tramways... The days of 1917 have left us with two images that well illustrate the importance of debate for the working class: the blocked tramway because its occupants, driver included, decided to stop and discuss a topic; or a window to the street from which a speaker launches a speech gathering a crowd of hundreds of people coming together to listen and speak.
May 68 was also a permanent debate of the masses. There is a flagrant contrast between discussions of workers in the strikes of May during which there was talk of how to destroy the state, how to create a new society, of union sabotage, etc., and that of a student "assembly" in Germany in 1967, controlled by "radical" Maoists during which it took three hours to decide how to organise a demonstration. "We talk to each other and we listen to each other" was one of the most popular slogans of May 68.
The movement of 2006 and 2011 (struggle against the CPE in France and the Indignados movement in Spain[3]) were founded on the living debate of thousands of workers, youths, etc., and on unrestricted discussion. In occupied places "flying libraries" were organised, recalling an action that appeared with great force during the Russian revolution of 1917, as John Reed underlined in Ten Days Which Shook the World: "All of Russia learnt to read, and they read (political economy, history) because people desired knowledge. In all towns, big or small, on the front, each political fraction had its journal (sometimes it even had several). Pamphlets were distributed in their hundreds of thousands by thousands of organisations and were spread into the army, the villages, the factories and the streets. The thirst for learning which had been repressed for so long took on a real delirious form with the revolution. From the first six month from the Smolny Institute alone trains and trucks loaded with literature saturated the country. An insatiable Russia absorbed all printed matter as the warm sand absorbs sea water. And this wasn't from fairy stories, falsified history, diluted religion and corrupt and cheap novels but social, economic and philosophical theories, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol and Gorky"[4].
If debate is the vital nerve of the working class it is even more so for its revolutionary organisations: “Contrary to the Bordigist standpoint, the organisation of revolutionaries cannot be 'monolithic'. The existence of disagreements within it is an expression of the fact that it is a living organ which does not have fully formed answers which can be immediately applied to the problems arising in the class. Marxism is neither a dogma nor a catechism. It is the theoretical instrument of a class which through its experience and with a view towards its historic future, advances gradually, through ups and downs, towards a self-awareness which is the indispensable precondition for emancipating itself. As in all human thought, the process whereby proletarian consciousness develops is not a linear or mechanical process but a contradictory and critical one: it necessarily presupposes discussion and the confrontation of arguments. In fact, the famous 'monolithism' or 'invariance' of the Bordigists is a decoy (as can be seen in the positions taken up by the Bordigist organisations and their various sections); either the organisation is completely sclerotic and is no longer affected by the life of the class, or it's not monolithic and its positions are not invariant."[5].
However, militants who have been in bourgeois political parties have themselves experienced that this "debate" is a farce and an evident source of suffering. In all bourgeois parties, whatever their colours, the debate takes the form of a "battle with cudgels", the famous painting by Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The electoral debates are just rubbish, full of insults, accusations, dirty laundry, traps and underhand coups. These are spectacles of denigration and the settling of accounts conceived as boxing-matches where reality and truth count for nothing. The sole stake is to see who wins and who loses, who can con and lie the best, who can manipulate feelings with the most cynicism[6].
In bourgeois parties, "free expression" is pure humbug. Things can be said up to a point but not beyond calling into question the dominance of the "leadership". When this threshold is overstepped a campaign of lies is organised against those who have dared to think for themselves and this when they are not directly marched out of the party. These practices have taken place in all the parties where the tormenters and their victims both use it. Rosa Diez, a leader of the Basque PSOE, has thus been the target of a virulent campaign of accusations by informers from within her party "comrades". She wouldn't align with the orientation, in force at that time, for collaboration with Basque nationalism and they made her life impossible up to her quitting the party. She then founded the UYPD (which attempted to hold a centrist position, then taken up by Ciudadanos) and, when rivals and opponents appeared in her own boutique they dealt out the same fate, even reaching new depths of sadism and cynicism that would have made Stalin shudder.
In general debate is avoided in bourgeois parties, whatever their complexity. Stalin forbade debate, profiting from a serious error of the Bolshevik Party in 1921: the prohibition of fractions, a measure put forward by Lenin as a false response to Kronstadt[7]. Trotskyism equally blocks debate within itself and practices the same type of exclusion and repression. The attempt to expel the Left Opposition happened inside a Stalinist prison (!)[8] as witnessed in the book of Anton Ciliga [9], quoted in previous articles in this series: "To the ideological struggle in the Trotskyist ‘Collective’, was added an organisational conflict which, for some months, relegated ideological questions to a second level. These conflicts characterise the psychology and habits of the Russian Opposition. Both right and the centre give to the ‘Bolshevik militants’ the following ultimatum: either they dissolve themselves and stop their publication or they will be expelled from the Trotskyist organisation.
"In effect the majority thought that there was no need to have a sub-group within the Trotskyist fraction. This principle of the ‘monolithic fraction’ was basically the same as that which inspired Stalin for the whole of the party".
In the congresses of such organisations, no-one listens to the presentations which consist of boring displays where one thing and its opposite are affirmed at the same time. Sectoral conferences are organised, seminars and many other events which are nothing but public relations operations.
"Debate" in these organisations arises when it's a question of turfing out the clique in power and replacing it with it with a new one. This can be for various reasons: factional interests, deviations regarding the defence of the national interest, bad election results... From here the "debate" breaks out which turns out to be a struggle for power. On some occasions "debate" consists of when a faction invents a convoluted and contradictory "theses" and is violently opposed to that of rivals, resorting to ferocious criticisms through words, incendiary adjectives ("opportunist", "abandonment of Marxism", etc.) and other sophisticated pretexts. The "debate" becomes just a succession of insults, threats, airing dirty washing in public, accusations... punctuated now and again by diplomatic acts of approval in order to "show" the wish for unity and that one appreciates one's rival who are "comrades" after all[10]. There finally comes a moment when equilibrium between the contending forces is established making the "debate" a sum of "opinions" that everyone defends as their property, which results in no clarification but rather a chaotic sum of ideas or "conciliatory" texts where opposed ideas sit one with the other[11].
Thus we can conclude that "debate" in bourgeois organisations (whatever their place on the political chess-board which ranges from the extreme-right to the extreme-left) is a farce and a means of launching personal incendiary attacks, which can cause serious psychological consequences for the victims and which shows the striking cruelty and a complete absence of moral scruples of the persecutors. Finally, it's a game in which sometimes the persecutors become victims and vice-versa. The terrible treatment that they have suffered can be inflicted on many others once they have obtained power.
Proletarian debate is fundamentally different. Debate within proletarian organisations responds to radically different principles than those we have just seen in bourgeois parties.
The class consciousness of the proletariat (i.e., the self-developed knowledge of the ends and means of its historic struggle) alone gives birth to an unlimited and unhindered debate: "Consciousness cannot develop without fraternal, public and international debate" as we affirmed in our text: The culture of debate, a weapon of the class struggle[12]. Communist organisations, which express the most advanced and permanent effort for the development of consciousness in the class, need debate as a vital arm: "... among the first demands (that these) minorities express is the necessity for debate, not as a luxury but as an imperative need, the necessity to take others seriously and listen to what they say; it is also necessary that the process is not brutal but an arm of discussion, nor should it be an appeal to morality or to the authority of theoreticians", as the text continues.
In a proletarian political organisation, debate must be the opposite of the repugnant methods that we've denounced above. It's a matter of finding common ground of a shared truth where there are no winners or losers and where the only triumph is that of common clarity. Discussion is based on arguments, hypotheses, analysis, doubts... Errors are part of the route which leads to operational conclusions. Accusations, insults, the personalisation of comrades or organisational structures must be categorically forbidden because it's not a question of who says it, but what is being said.
Disagreements are necessary moments in coming to a position. Not because there's a "democratic right" but a duty to express them when one isn't convinced by a position or when one senses it is insufficient or confused. In the course of a debate positions are confronted and sometimes there are minority positions which, with time, become that of the majority. Such was the case with Lenin with his April Theses which, when he presented it on arrival in Russian in 1917, was a minority position within a Bolshevik Party that was dominated by opportunist deviations imposed by the Central Committee. Through an intense discussion, widely participated in by all the militants, the party became convinced of the validity of Lenin's positions and adopted them[13].
The different positions expressed within a revolutionary organisation are not fixed postures which are the property of those who defend them. In a revolutionary organisation, "divergences do not express the defence of personal material interests or particular pressure groups, but they are the translation of a living and dynamic process of the clarification of problems which are posed to the class and as such are destined to be re-absorbed with a deepening of the discussion and in the light of experience" ("Report on the Structure and Functioning of the Revolutionary Organisation", quoted above).
In proletarian organisations there can be no "enlightened minds" that must be followed without question. It is clear that there can be comrades with greater capacities or who possess a greater mastery in certain domains. There are certainly militants whose devotion, conviction and enthusiasm contains a certain moral authority. However, none of all that confers on them a particular privileged status which makes this or that militant a "brilliant leader", a specialist expert on this or that question or a "great theoretician". "There's no supreme saviour, no god, no Caesar, no tribune, producers save yourselves and let's decree common salvation", are words from the battle hymn of the Second International.
More precisely, as noted in the text on Structure and Functioning, “Within the organisation there are no 'noble' tasks and no 'secondary' or 'less noble' tasks. Both the work of theoretical elaboration and the realisation of practical tasks, both the work in central organs and the specific work of local sections, are equally important for the organisation and should not be put in a hierarchical order (it's capitalism which establishes such hierarchies)”.
In a communist organisation it is necessary to fight against any tendency to follow blindly, an error consisting of aligning oneself, without thinking, to the position of a "clear militant" or to a central organ. In a communist organisation, every militant must maintain a critical spirit, not to take anything as read but analyse what the subject is including that coming from the "leadership", the central organs or the "most advanced militants". This is the opposite of the state of things which exists in bourgeois parties and most particularly in their representatives on the left. In these latter organisations blind following and the most extreme respect for the leaders are the norm; and in fact these tendencies already existed in the Trotskyist Opposition: "The letters of Trotsky and Rakovsky, which dealt with the question of the agenda, were smuggled into the prison and gave rise to numerous comments. The hierarchical and submissive spirit in front of the leaders of the Russian Opposition never ceases to amaze. One phrase or a speech from Trotsky was a hallmark. Further, as much as the Trotskyists of the right and left gave these phrases a true meaning, everyone interpreted them in their own way. The complete submission to Lenin and Stalin which reigned in the party was equally present in the Opposition but in relation to Lenin and Trotsky: all the rest was the work of the Devil" (Anton Ciliga, Op. Cit., Page 273).
A very dangerous idea exists which it is necessary to formally reject: there are "expert" militants who, once they have spoken "have said everything", one "couldn't say it better" and others limit themselves to taking notes and keeping quiet.
This vision radically repudiates a proletarian debate which is a dynamic process during the course of which many efforts are made, including some erroneous, in order to confront problems. The superficial vision, rooted in the mercantile logic of only seeing the "product" or the final result without distinguishing it from everything that led to its elaboration, of only focusing on the abstract and timeless value of exchange, leads one to think that everything comes from "brilliant" leaders. Marx did not share this point of view. In a letter addressed to Wilhem Blos in 1877, he wrote: "Neither of us (Marx and Engels) cares a straw for popularity. Let me cite one proof of this: such was my aversion to the personality cult that at the time of the International, when plagued by numerous moves — originating from various countries — to accord me public honour, I never allowed one of these to enter the domain of publicity, nor did I ever reply to them, save with an occasional snub. When Engels and I first joined the secret communist society, we did so only on condition that anything conducive to a superstitious belief in authority be eliminated from the Rules"[14].
During the course of a debate, hypotheses and opposed positions are formulated. Some approximations are made, some errors committed and there are some clearer interventions; but the global result doesn't come from the "most far-seeing militant", rather a dynamic and living synthesis of all of the positions integrated into the discussion. The finally adopted position is not that of those were "right", and it does not imply any antagonism to those who were "wrong"; it is a new and superior position which collectively helps to clarify things.
Evidently, debate isn't easy within a proletarian organisation. It doesn't evolve in a world apart but it must bear all weight of the dominant ideology and the conception of debate that it carries with it. It is inevitable that "forms of debate" which belong to bourgeois society and which assails us every day through the spectacles of its parties, its television and its rubbish programmes, social networks, electoral campaigns, etc., have infiltrated into the life of proletarian organisations. A constant struggle has to be undertaken against this destructive infiltration. As our text on the culture of debate cited previously shows:
“Since the spontaneous tendency within capitalism is not the clarification of ideas but violence, manipulation and the winning of majorities (best exemplified in the electoral circus of bourgeois democracy), the infiltration of this influence within proletarian organisations always contains the germs of crisis and degeneration. The history of the Bolshevik Party illustrates this perfectly. As long as the party was the spearhead of the revolution, the most lively, often controversial debate was one of its main characteristics. As opposed to this, the banning of real fractions (after the Kronstadt massacre of 1921) was a paramount sign and active factor of its degeneration”.
This text pointed to the poisonous heritage which Stalinism left in the ranks of the workers and which weigh on communists, a good number of whom began their political life in Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskyist organisations and think that the " These militants were brought up politically to believe that exchange of arguments is equivalent to ‘bourgeois liberalism’, that a ‘good communist’ is someone who shuts his mouth and switches off his mind and emotions. The comrades who today are determined to shake off the effects of this moribund product of the counter-revolution increasingly understand that this requires the rejection not only of its positions but also its mentality.”
In fact, we must fight the mentality which falsifies debate and which festers from every pore of the bourgeois world and particularly vulgar Stalinism and all its appendices, notably those who feign a greater "openness" such as the Trotskyists. It is necessary to be clear and decisive in the defence of a position but that doesn't mean arrogance and brutality. A discussion can be combative but that doesn't mean quarrelsome and aggressive. We can call a spade a spade but one can't deduce from that that one should be insulting and cynical. It is not necessary to look for conciliation and compromise but that shouldn't be confused with sectarianism and a refusal to listen to the arguments of others. Once and for all, we must open up a route out of the milieu of confusion and distortion that Stalinism and its avatars maintain.
Although the bureaucratic collectivism of the bourgeois parties, with their monolithism and brutal constraints, constitute an obstacle to debate, it's necessary to protect oneself against what appears as its opposition whereas, in reality, it is its complement. We refer here to the individualist vision of debate.
This consists of everyone having "their own opinion" and this "opinion" is private property. Consequently, to criticise the position of a comrade becomes an attack: their "private property" has been violated because it belongs to them. To criticise this or that position of this or that comrade would be the equivalent of stealing from them or taking their food.
This vision is seriously false. Knowledge doesn't give rise to "personal reasonableness" or to the "intimate conviction" of each individual. What we think is part of a historical and social effort linked to labour and the development of the productive forces. What each person says is only "original" if it is involved in a critical manner in a collective effort of thought. The thought of the proletariat is the product of its historic struggle at the world level, a struggle which doesn't limit itself to its economic combats but which, as Engels said, contains three interconnected dimensions: economic, political and ideological struggle.
Every proletarian political organisation is linked in the critical historical continuity of a long chain going from the Communist League (1848) up to the small existing organisations of the Communist Left. In this historic line, positions, ideas, appreciations and the contributions of each militant are involved. While each militant aim to extend knowledge still further, they don't consider this an individual effort but one with the objective of taking as far as possible the clarification of positions and orientations for the whole of the organisation of the proletariat.
The idea that "everyone has their opinion" is a serious obstacle to debate and is complementary to the bureaucratic monolithism of bourgeois parties. In a debate, where everyone has their opinion, the result can either be a conflict between victors and vanquished or it can be a sum of different, useless, contradictory opinions. Individualism is an obstacle to clarity and, as in a monolithic party, the question of "here's my opinion, take it or leave it", means that there is no debate when each person puts forward their "own opinion".
Proletarian debate has a historic nature; it welcomes the best of scientific and cultural discussion which has existed in the history of humanity: “Fundamentally, the culture of debate is an expression of the eminently social nature of mankind. In particular, it is an emanation of the specifically human use of language. The use of language as a means of exchange of information is something which humanity shares with many animals. What distinguishes mankind from the rest of nature at this level is the capacity to cultivate and exchange argumentation (linked to the development of logic and science), and to get to know each other (the cultivation of empathy, linked among other things to the development of art)”.
The culture of debate has its roots in primitive communism but made some vital advances in Ancient Greece: "Engels for instance refers to the role of the general assemblies of the Greeks of the Homeric phase, of the early Germanic tribes or of the Iroquois of North America, specifically praising the culture of debate of the latter”.
“Debate arose in response to practical necessity. In Greece, it develops through the comparison of different sources of knowledge. Different ways of thinking, modes of investigation and their results, production methods, customs and traditions are compared with each other. They are found to contradict, to confirm or to complete each other. They enter into struggle with each other or support one another, or both. Absolute truths are rendered relative by comparison”.
Our text on the Structure and Functioning of the Organisation sums up the fundamental principles of proletarian debate:
The proletariat is an international class and for that its debate must have an international and centralised nature. If debate is not an addition of individual opinions, it can no more be the sum of a range of local opinions. The strength of the proletariat is its unity and consciousness which aims to express itself at the world level.
International debate, integrating the contributions and experiences of the proletariat of all countries is what gives clarity and a global vision which makes the proletarian struggle stronger.
C. Mir, 11 July 2018
[1] Parts one to four of the series are published on our internet site.
https://en.internationalism.org/content/16719/hidden-legacy-left-capital-iv-their-morality-and-ours [1914]
[2] Preface to the German edition of 1890 of the Communist Manifesto, Engels.
[3] See https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students [1439] and our international leaflet distributed in 2011 "From indignation to hope".
[4] Ten days that shook the world, chapter one, John Reed
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR033_functioning.htm [1898] International Review no. 33 (January 1982).
[6] See our article in Spanish "Electoral debate is the opposite of a real debate". https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/200802/2185/debates-electorales-lo-contrario-de-un-verdadero-debate [1915]
[7] In the garrison of Kronstadt, close to Saint Petersburg, sailors and workers rose up. Soviet power brutally repressed this movement which signified a very important step towards the degeneration of the proletarian bastion of Russia (see https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR003_kron.htm [1916]). In a false conclusion from these events, the Bolshevik Party, now in full opportunist degeneration, decided at its Tenth Congress to temporarily forbid fractions within the party.
[8] An "isolation" prison in Verkhneuralsk on the Ural River.
[9] The Russian Enigma
[10] In the war of succession in the Spanish conservative Popular Party (PP), the six candidates proclaimed daily that they were "friends".
[11] A recent example of this was the celebration of the last party congress of the ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Left Republic of Catalonia, an independentist party) during which the leadership imposed a "conciliatory" line with central Spanish government. However it allowed its rank-and-file to "radicalise" its intervention with a hotchpotch of "independent" and "disobedient" amendments which referred to both "autonomy" within Spain and independence from it.
[12] See https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/fred/4818/culture-debate-weap... [1917], International Review no. 131, fourth quarter, 2007.
[13] See "Lenin's April Thesis, signpost to the proletarian revolution" in International Review no. 89
This summer, the images of the Amazon in flames have made their way around the world. This lush forest, a unique treasure of biodiversity and veritable “green lung of the planet”, has been consumed by more than 40,000 fires. The magnitude of the catastrophe is such that the course of the Amazon River itself has been disrupted. Scientists worry that the reduction of its flow risks causing oceanic imbalances. [1]
Faced with this disaster, the leaders of all countries have reacted by crawling over each other to multiply the declarations to… fight better from now on. The last G7, the scene of confrontation between the Brazilian and French states, would be a comical example of this if it weren’t so tragic. The planet may well be burning, but each capitalist nation sees this as nothing but an opportunity to hit its rivals in the global economic arena, a clear metaphor for a rotting system.
The destruction of the Amazon by flames is not an unfortunate natural disaster, nor is it the fruit of abnormally irresponsible local policies. It is symbolic of what capitalism has in store for all the planet, all species, and for humanity.
The number of fires is increasing all over the globe
Throughout 2018 alone, 12 million hectares of forest disappeared from the surface of the earth, including 3.6 million hectares of tropical rainforest. The traditional system of burning forest to obtain land for the growing of produce and the self-sustaining of rural communities has given way to the ravages of deforestation and fires on an industrial scale.
Across South America, trees are burned to facilitate the penetration of mining and logging, to create new pastures for the growing of livestock at low cost, and to mass-produce soy and palm oil. This policy of massive destruction is conducted in all countries, whichever party is in power.
In Brazil, before the populist Bolsonaro came in, the same policy of savage destruction was practiced under the successive governments of Lula, Dilma Roussef and Temer. In Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia, it’s the same disaster. The “revolutionary” Evo Morales, an emblematic figure of all radical leftist movements in the world, has loosened environmental protections and given authorisation to the companies to further destroy the forest. Since the start of the year, 400 000 hectares of trees have thus disappeared from Bolivia’s Chiquitania region (20 000 fires).
In Venezuela, under the reign of the “socialist of the 21st century” Nicolas Maduro, “the mining arc” has also caused destruction of vast magnitude: this vast region has suffered uncontrolled exploitation to favour the extraction of gold and other metals, which permit the civil and military leaders of Chavismo to conserve a certain level of income whilst in power. Since the time of Chavez, the “mining arc” has in effect been placed under the control of a military camarilla.
In Colombia, the “Marxist” guerilla outfit of the Army of National Liberation (ELN) is also active in the exploitation of mineral resources. With the blessing of the Chavez-Maduro duo, these mafias, who occupy elevated positions in their government, exploit (throughout an area far larger than in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru) gold, diamond and coltan mines. [2] These activities destroy the vegetation and animals, as well as causing elevated pollution in the rivers.
In Mexico, the president Andrés Manuel Lòpez (AMLO) has also launched grand public works which are going to eat still further into the woodlands: the “Mayan train” and the Dos Bocas refinery. “The president affirmed that not a single tree will be felled to construct the “Mayan train”, which seems unlikely given the Yucatàn peninsula is almost entirely covered by very dense tropical vegetation, not to mention the forests of Chiapas. The scientists warn of a threat to biodiversity, and notably to the large population of Jaguars in the Yucatàn.” [3]
The same findings can be established in Africa and Asia. In Angola, governed by the MPLA, 130, 000 fires have already taken place this year. In 2015, in Indonesia, the tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra have been struck by gigantic fires, primarily caused by the generalisation of palm plantations (to obtain oil for the purpose of manufacturing biofuel).
Even in Alaska and the Arctic Zone, the earth is being fried. In Siberia, in one year, 1.3 million hectares have burned and cities like Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk have suffered clouds of toxic smoke which have sent thousands to the emergency department.
In Europe, the French state, through its president, has given a lesson to the world. At the recent G7 summit at Biarritz, Macron has threatened to put an end to the EU-Mercosur [4] agreements and has denounced, to the sound of loud trumpets, the carelessness of the Brazilian president, incapable of stopping the fire. But these grand, soaring words are based on unlimited hypocrisy and cynicism. Let us recall that France is one of the major actors in environmental pollution (notably through its massive usage of pesticides) and is also destroying ecosystems through its intensive agriculture. It is also an Amazonian country, owner of the only European tropical forest: French Guiana, which is the second-largest region of France. If for the moment its criminal project of facilitating the implementation of mining operations by the multinationals in what is known as the “Mountain of Gold” seems to have been abandoned by the government due to “the incompatibility of the current project with environmental protection requirements”, the fact that it now plans “a complete evaluation” does not signify its total and definitive abandonment. Besides, “the recent announcements have no legal value until a request made by the mining company has been dismissed by the state”. [5]
It remains the case that such a project was designed knowing that it would result in enormous quantities of toxic waste (arsenic, cyanide, etc.). If today Macron and his government express their desire to drop the project in order to appear responsible and concerned about the environment, let’s recall that in August of 2015, the minister of the economy Macron was ready to “do everything to see that a project of this scale could see the light of day.”
Capitalism is leading humanity towards the abyss
These forest fires, that have nothing natural about them, are a real threat to life. Besides the damage they directly cause, they also aggravate global warming. Today, the smoke from fires is responsible for 25% of the global gas emissions which cause the “greenhouse effect”. [6] The agro-food industry today pollutes more than the oil companies! It’s a vicious circle: global warming exacerbates fires, which facilitate deforestation, which in turn allows the spreading of fires, which release more carbon, which accelerate global warming, in an infernal spiral.
Air pollution (such as we have mentioned in Siberia or the one which has obscured the sky of São Paulo, 15 hours after the fires) is one of the main causes of premature death. A recent study from the UN estimates that 8.8 million people die each year as a result of this pollution. This rate is comparatively higher in the most “developed” countries.
Capitalism kills. It is destroying the planet and killing human beings. That’s the brutal truth! The bourgeoisie wants to make the working class believe that a greener, more just capitalism is possible; where the Amazon will not be treated as a business but as an “environmental reserve”, where everywhere nature and its forests will be more responsibly cultivated. Lies! Capitalism is based on the exploitation by a small minority of the immense majority, on the division of humanity into classes, the transformation of nature and humanity into commodities. Capitalism is a system driven by the pursuit of profit and accumulation. Nothing more! Its only other motivation is to mask its savage exploitation in a hypocritical veil, in this case one fashioned out of democratic ideology. Capitalism divides humanity into nations ready to compete to the death (to the point of war).
The entire planet must cease to be imprisoned by the dictatorship of this system; nature must be freed from its condition as a commodity. But this is not possible without establishing a new order across the world: communism, rising from the international revolution of the working class.
Valerio, 30th of August 2019
From November 2018 to June 2019, the media was filled with news about the social movement of the "gilets jaunes". It was "unprecedented dissent" according to the experts, an expression of a new social model of struggle. For some it was supposed to be better adapted to the evolution of society. Faced with the crisis in the traditional "representative" parties and the trade unions, faced with the excesses of globalisation and liberalism, the "people" were supposed to have found the means to express themselves and make their voices heard, to pressurise the major national political orientations, to say no to injustice, no to precarious jobs and no to the growth of poverty. In brief, the original and particular form of this movement made its mark on the future. The unions called for a future convergence of struggles between the world of work and that of this new social contestation, promising a new "Popular Front". Some organisations of the left and extreme left even saluted the creativity of the demonstrating Yellow Vests. Was this a new, more efficient form of workers' struggle? In reality the "gilets jaunes" are in no way the expression of a workers' struggle. It is an inter-classist movement, an obstacle to the class struggle. The workers are drowned when they are mixed up with the population in general; outside all considerations of social class, they are diluted into the so-called "people". The "gilets jaunes" distil the poisonous ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie which is strongly impregnated with nationalism and xenophobia and bloated with dreams of liberty... entrepreneurial liberty. This movement submits to an institutional framework feeding the worst democratic illusions as if a more "just" and "human" capitalism could be possible in order to ameliorate the institutions of the Republic. In reality everything points to this movement weakening the capacity of the working class to struggle in a unified and organised way.
At Perigueux , Dordogne on January 27 2018, around 250 people marched, demanding the withdrawal of a new speed-limit of 80 km/h. Some wore yellow vests with slogans on the back against the cost of living, the increase of the CSG (social tax) and taxes linked to motoring (tolls, fuel...). They also blocked traffic on roundabouts. This action called "Anger", launched on social media January 12 by a bricklayer, Leandro Antonio Nogueira, immediately received the support of Jean Lassalle (presidential candidate under the banner of "Resistons") and those close to Marine Le Pen. If a fight over a speed-limit rapidly veered to the larger question of taxes, it's because the 80 km/h was seen as a pretext to mount up fines and thus nick more money from the pockets of motorists. According to the paper Liberation, "this question of the 80 km/h was much more than a road safety measure (...) it was the point of departure of a fiscal revolt". Thus, here appears to be the birth of the "gilets jaunes" movement. As Nogueira affirmed: "I wouldn't want to say that it's the party of Anger (some early elements of this movement took part under the banner of "colère", anger and rage). But if you look at the "gilets jaunes" they are often old members of "colère". In some areas, such as Dordogne or Correze, all the "gilets jaunes" are old members of the Anger movement."
On March 29 2018, the name "gilets jaunes" appeared for the first time in the media at the time of a demonstration on the Paris-Rennes TGV railway line.
The same day a self-employed entrepreneur, Priscilla Ludosky, launched an on-line petition demanding the lowering of fuel prices at the pump. The response was meteoric. She later became one of the official representatives of the movement.
On October 10 2018, a lorry-driver Eric Drouet called, again through Facebook, for a demonstration for November 17: "A national blockade against the increase in fuel prices". His message was relayed through all the social networks. According to the government, on November 17 287,710 people spread out to 2034 different points, paralysing crossroads, trunk roads, roundabouts, motorways, toll booths and supermarket car parks. The "gilets jaunes" movement was definitely underway. A new, great day of action was programmed for November 24, called "Act II: all of France to Paris". The objective was to blockade the most prestigious areas and the power of the capital: the Champs-Élysées, the Concorde, the Senate and, above all, the Élysées Palace: "It's time to deal a knockout blow and get to Paris by all means possible (car-sharing, train, bus, etc.), Paris because it's here we find the government! We wait for everyone, lorries, buses, taxis, tractors, etc. Everyone!" proclaimed Eric Drouet. The same evening an appeal was launched, again through Facebook, for a third demonstration, a day of action proposed for Saturday December I: "Act III, Macron resign!", putting forward two demands: "an increase in purchasing power and the cancellation of fuel taxes".
How do you explain the success of these different appeals through the internet? Before everything, the breadth of this movement comes from the immense anger gnawing at the entrails of society. Generalised hikes in taxes of all kinds, growing unemployment, the systematic implementation of precarious jobs including in the public sector, inflation hitting basic necessities, unaffordable rents... the reasons for the anger are numerous. That said, we should measure the real breadth of the mobilisation of workers within the movement which, at its highest, brought together some hundreds of thousands at most. The big battalions of the workers were never really involved, neither at the roundabouts, nor on the Champs-Elysees, beyond a Platonic sympathy. What appeared clearly on the contrary, was that this movement was launched on the initiative of the representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie and their aspirations. It's not by accident that, among the eight spokespeople of the "gilets jaunes", designated on November 26, there is an overwhelming majority of small bosses and entrepreneurs. It's not by chance that the leader Eric Drouet called on, in the first instance, "lorries, buses, taxis, tractors", areas dominated by the self-employed. The "gilets jaunes" formed an inter-classist movement: here all classes and the exploited and intermediate layers of society are mixed up and thus are expressing the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie.
The list of the 42 claims of the "gilets jaunes", published November 29 2018, reveals its inter-classist nature and the dominant weight of petty-bourgeois ideology. Here we find, all mixed together, both workers' demands around wages and pensions for example, but also nationalist, localist and small-business requests regarding the economy of enterprises and taxes and even xenophobic and nauseous positions on immigration. And here's some extracts from the unusual mixture on this list:
- "Zero SDF: URGENT.
- SMIC at 1300 euros, minimum.
- Favour small businesses in villages and town centres.
- The likes of Google, Amazon, Carrefour and MacDonald's should pay a lot and small businesses (artisans, TPE, PME) pay a little.
- Social security system for all (including artisans and entrepreneurs).
- Retirement system must remain solid and thus socialised (no retirement points).
- End the tax increases on fuel.
- No retirement pension to pay under 1200 euros.
- Protect French industry: ban relocations. Protect our industry; protect our way of doing things and our employees.
- Those seeking the rights of asylum go back to their country of origin.
- A real political integration is implemented: living in France means becoming French (language courses, French history courses and courses in French civic education with certification at the end).
- Consequent means given to the police, gendarmerie and the army".
Yes, with the movement of the "gilets jaunes" thousands of workers, unemployed and retired have expressed a cry of legitimate anger faced with poverty. But this diffuse anger was very easily monopolised and manipulated from its early days by the small business people who initiated the demonstrations and their principal slogans so as to pressurise the government and obtain some satisfaction for their cause: the lowering of taxes which are choking their businesses. All the rest, their demands for support for the French economy, tightening of immigrant controls, etc., constitutes the background scenery of the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie[1].
The principle method of action at the origin of the "gilets jaunes" movement consisted of virtual links on social networks, the daily occupation of roundabouts and the setting-up of road-blocks. In a few weeks these links became living links, islands of resistance with camps and barbeques. Here we find agricultural workers, artisans, unhappy small bosses and above all precarious workers in dire straits. The dominant feeling is wanting "to be visible" and show togetherness. The wearing of the yellow vest thus serves as a rallying point for those "just trying to live". The "gilets jaunes" attract motorists who, for the most part, support them by waving and beeping their horns. Every point of the blockade is festooned by the tricolore, La Marseillaise regularly sung. But the sterility of this method of struggle very quickly appears in the eyes of many and from this, at the end of November, came the decision to occupy the symbolic areas of the large French towns each Saturday, especially the Champs Élysées in Paris. What mainly feeds the immense anger of the "gilet jaunes" is being “taken for granted", ignored by the government, wanting to be heard and recognised by "those on high", which explains the urge to go to the Champs Élysées, "the most beautiful avenue in the world", in order to make themselves "seen and heard".
The days around the end of November and beginning of December 2018 were thus marked by an extremely violent confrontation with the forces of state repression.
Saturday December 1, in Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire), a confrontation with the police degenerated after some demonstrators were gassed; the prefecture was set on fire. But it's above all in Paris that the confrontations are the most spectacular. L'Arc de Triomphe was overrun and vandalised, cars were set on fire and some shops pillaged: images which went around the world. The ruling authorities seemed overwhelmed at first, incapable of maintaining order within the capital. The great majority of the bourgeois political parties exploited the situation in order to try to weaken the position of President Macron; they criticised him for his incompetence over security because of his arrogance or indifference to the suffering of the "people". There is a real danger that he will find himself isolated on the political chessboard, with his international image and stature of a chief of state degraded. On top of that, his party, La Republique en Marche, is not yet sufficiently planted inside the state Moloch and it bases a great part of its stability on its leader: the "auspicious and Juperterian" Macron. His team in charge responded on two levels, carrot and stick or, more exactly, a little carrot and a very big stick. Saturday December 8, 264 people were injured, including serious injuries (loss of an eye and a hand), notably due to the use of "flash-balls" or grenades exploding solid rubber pellets, only used by the French in Europe. This was a very concrete change of strategy from the Minister of the Interior, who had previously ordered his police to make contact with the demonstrators. On December 10 2018, President Macron gave a televised address in which he announced several measures to prove he was "listening" to "the suffering of the French people". That said, the demonstrators were in reality conscious that their living conditions would continue to get worse despite the ten billion euros waved in front of them. The anger did not abate and the movement continued. December 15, 69,000 members of the forces of order were deployed around France - a ratio of one cop to one demonstrator - 8,000 in Paris; 179 people were arrested and 144 placed under guard. The images on the French and world's media were very different from those on December 1. This time the Champs Elysees was occupied by tanks and cordons of "robo-cops". The state, with Macron at its head, unleashed a real demonstration of force and showed what a few burnt cars and broken windows of the previous weeks mean to capitalism: an insect bite on the skin of an elephant. Order reigned in Paris.
Little by little, one demand came to supplant all the others: the Citizens' Initiative Referendum (RIC), a device for "direct democracy". With the RIC, citizens can collect a number of signatures fixed by the law enabling them to petition for a referendum without the need for action by parliament or the President of the Republic. The "gilets jaunes" wanted four procedures: vote for a proposition of law; abrogate a law or treaty already voted for by parliament; modify the Constitution (constitutional referendum) and revocation of political mandates.
From January 2019, the three letters, RIC, progressively appeared on almost all the backs of the yellow vests. But these hopes for a more democratic capitalism are just illusions and above all a real poison for the working class.
We wrote in 1978: "For the bourgeois ideologues, the state is the emanation of popular sovereignty. Democracy is the supreme form of the state, the achievement and perfection of its being. Marxism, however, sees it very differently; revealing the division of social classes, it demonstrates that there can be no community of interests between exploiters and exploited. Consequently the state, far from managing a so-called common good, is nothing but a trick in the hands of the exploited class. That remains true even if democracy extends its hypocritical veil over class relationships and conjures up the idea of ‘free and equal’ citizens. Behind the formal ideas of freedom and equality comes the shadow of the big stick which the oppressor class uses to subjugate the oppressed class (...) Proletarian struggles that get underway thus find in their way the democratic and parliamentary mirage aiming to mislead, weaken and push aside the dangers that they bear for the bourgeois state, stopping or breaking up their struggles and its élan and, without the use of force, pushing them away from their aims. Because if ‘the military and political apparatus of the bourgeois state organises direct action against the revolutionary proletariat, democracy represents a way for its indirect defence by spreading the illusion amongst the masses, the illusion that they can realise their freedom through a peaceful process’ (Theses of the Italian Left, 1920). Through this means of indirect defence, no state of the dominant class can, in the longer-term, avoid heating up social antagonisms".
Democracy is the most sophisticated and efficient political organisation of bourgeois class domination over society and particularly over the class that it exploits, the proletariat. This or that detail of democratic functioning, such as the RIC, only takes place within this framework. Moreover this type of referendum already exists in about 40 countries including Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Uruguay and even Germany and the United States, all of them parts of the planet where capitalist exploitation, the economic and political domination of the bourgeoisie, exists as much as in France. Democracy is the sharpest weapon of capitalism and with the RIC and the movement of the "gilets jaunes" it allows the ruling class to sharpen it up a bit more. That's why Macron and his government jumped at the opportunity by launching on January 15 2019, a "Great National Debate". For three months (January -March) a particularly rancid debate occupied the news and all opinions: participating in the "Great Debate" or organising discussions between the "gilets jaunes". In reality, these discussions, whether orchestrated by the government or by the "gilets jaunes" (in municipal rooms loaned out... in town halls), are the two faces of the same coin: opposed in appearance they form a whole. Wherever they take place and whoever initiates them, these great and small debates are based on the hope of a "real democracy", where the democratic institutions listen more attentively to the spokesmen and women of the "people". But, to repeat, this democratic system is only a mystification masking the fact that all governments are the managers of their respective national capitals, instruments of a minority class that exploits the majority class: the proletariat.
A part of the "gilets jaunes" was aware of the vacuity of these talks; they wanted to impose their demands by force. The day after the end of the "Great National Debate", Saturday March 16, the anger exploded. Hundreds of Black Bloc members and "gilets jaunes" rioted, trying first of all, unsuccessfully, to launch an assault on the Arc de Triomphe similar to that on December 1, then to ransack the Champs Élysées and neighbouring streets, breaking windows and burning kiosks in order to attack "the symbols of capitalism". The images of the fancy restaurant, Les Fouquet's, ablaze went around the world. According to Le Monde: "more and more demonstrators concluded that wrecking things was the only means to make themselves heard and make the government give in". This revolt of despair was thus increasingly infested with the nihilism of the Black Blocs who extolled the idea: "France is a window and I'm a paving stone". A tag appeared on more and more walls: "The people applaud the wreckers". The "people" could well applaud but these acts of destruction did nothing at all to undermine the fundamentals of the system. Worse, they allowed the bourgeoisie and its government to legitimise the strengthening of its juridical and police apparatus through an "anti-wreckers" law passed by parliament. If the government and its Ministry of the Interior had wanted to protect "the most beautiful avenue in the world", it could have easily deployed its coach loads of cops, its CRS cordons and even the armoured cars of its gendarmerie in order to block access, as at the time of their demonstration of force on December 15 2018. You would have to be particularly naive to imagine that the government had been completely by-passed by an unexpected situation. Moreover, according to the confession of the Secretary General of the UNSA-Police, the forces of order were "ready to intervene" but did not get "the authority to do so". If Macron and his government clique allowed things to get out of hand on March 16, it was first of all to oblige the other electoral competitor parties and "public opinion" to tighten their ranks around the defence of the Republican state "threatened by chaos" and the acts of destruction of the "wreckers" disguised as "gilet jaunes" or in black costumes: the anti-wreckers’ law was uncontested.
Then Macron declared that: "no-one can tolerate the Republic being attacked in the name of the right to demonstrate". A "national union" had to be set up against vandalism with "the greatest firmness"; all the "people of France" had to accept the measures of strengthening the police against those who demonstrated "illegally", who threatened "to put the Republic in danger".
Thus on March 20, Benjamin Griveaux, government spokesman, calmly announced the implementation of the Sentinelle plan, i.e., the intervention of the army. As a direct consequence of this increased state repression and aggressive government declarations, March 23 in Nice, Genevieve Legay, a "gilet jaune" militant of Attac aged 74, was seriously injured in a charge by the forces of order. She became the symbol of victims of the incessant police violence; images on social media of eyes coming out and hands torn off abounded.
Anti-police hatred welled-up inside the guts of some of the most radical "gilets jaunes" and on April 20, during the demonstration called "Ultimatum", some demonstrators shouted at the police: "Kill yourselves!"
What lessons can we draw from the demonstrations of March and April? The government has continued to use police violence in order to keep the heat on. The aim is to keep up the anger within the "gilets jaunes" movement and use it as a means to mystify the proletariat:
- occupying the whole media space and all social preoccupations, which meant that a large number of small isolated strikes which were going on throughout France were ignored;
- concentrating reflection on how to make the French Republic more democratic (are you with Macron's Great Debate, or with the RIC of the "gilets jaunes"?);
- playing up the vandalism of a minority of "gilets jaunes" and the Black Blocs so as to present all struggle as non-democratic and a "criminal act" of blind violence and thus legitimise the strengthening arsenal of the repressive state in order to deal with it;
- and, finally, presenting the workers' struggle as old-fashioned and tacky compared to the new contestation of the "French people" waving tricolores and singing the Marseillaise.
The "gilets jaunes" movement didn't just develop outside the union structures; it largely positioned itself against them. The breadth of this inter-classist movement can be explained by the difficulty of the working class to express its combativity due to the union manoeuvres sabotaging its struggles (as we saw recently with the long, drawn-out go-slow at SNCF). The discontent with the unions that exists within the working class has been recuperated by those who launched this movement. What many of the supporters of the "gilets jaunes" wanted to happen was that the methods of workers' struggles (strikes, general and sovereign assemblies, massive demonstrations, strike committees...) came to nothing. So now it’s necessary to trust in small bosses (protesting against taxes and their general increase) in order to find "other methods of struggle" against the high cost of living and to ameliorate the democratic institutions and their representatives, bringing together "all the people of France".
That said, the unions have profited from the movement in order to try to limit their discredit. Certainly not by defending the methods of struggle of the working class, since they spend their time trying to undermine and break up any possibility of autonomous workers' assemblies. No, they did so by taking up the idea of the "peoples' revolt". This was the sense of the successive calls for "convergence" between the movement of the "gilets jaunes" and the unions' mobilisations. Thus, there was the multiplication of all sorts of coloured body vests for each sector or corporation. For pre-school nursery workers, the "gilets rose"; for the CGT, the "gilets rouges"; for the independent public transport workers, the "gilets oranges"; for the teachers, the more original "red pens"! Not only have the unions accentuated the divisions in an already very fragmented struggle broken up into sectors, a practice that they have systematically used for a century now, but more, the already atomised workers have been called upon to further dilute themselves into the "people", wearing coloured body vests and disappearing as a class. The unions, with the CGT at the head, thus organised large, multi-coloured carnivals for February and the first of May. In Paris, these demonstrations gave rise to a real cacophony where the Marseillaise was echoed by the Internationale and the French national flag flew alongside the red and black flags of the Trotskyists (from the NPA and LO) and the anarchists (of the CNT).
On May 1, the presence at the head of the procession of thousands of "gilets jaunes" and hundreds from the Black Bloc with the blessing of the unions sanctified this atomisation of the workers, their dilution into this inter-classist concoction.
This movement of the "gilets jaunes" is, at best, only the most visible and spectacular manifestation of the enormous anger which eats away inside the population and particularly in all the exploited classes faced with the cost of living and the austerity measures of the Macron government. It's nothing other, at best, than a sign announcing future combats of the proletarian class. Numerous workers are facing poverty, incessant economic attacks, precarious jobs... But in joining up with the "gilets jaunes", these workers are now being misled and they are being towed along behind a movement that can only lead to an impasse. And it's this impasse which today allows the Macron government to re-double its arrogance and continue its preparation for new attacks.
The working class is going through a very difficult period. From 1989, with the campaigns around the collapse of Stalinism presented as the so-called failure of communism, the proletariat has not been able to rediscover its class identity and recognise itself as a class and as a revolutionary subject. Incapable of outlining the contours of a society without exploitation, the exploited class today lacks confidence in its own strength, leaving it very vulnerable and feeling impotent on the field of struggle. The working class is not conscious of its existence as an antagonist of the bourgeois class and distinct from intermediate social layers (notably the petty-bourgeoisie). It has lost its memory of its own past and is not at all up to drawing on its immense historic experience; it's even somewhat ashamed of the latter since the bourgeoisie endlessly assimilates the word worker to an extinct species and the word communism to the hell of Stalinism.
However, despite these important difficulties, the proletariat is not beaten. Taking account of the general discontent and the attacks coming down the line, the great masses of the proletariat are quite capable of coming out of this lethargy in the period to come. Certainly, the proletariat has momentarily lost its class identity and is cut off from its history and experience. But it is still here and very much alive. It remains the gravedigger of capitalism. Deep within itself, reflection on the absence of any perspective for capitalist society continues, notably among its most conscious and combative elements. Pushed by the aggravation of the economic crisis, at first without being conscious of its own strength, without thinking of its possible unity and self-organisation, the proletariat will necessarily be constrained to engage in the combat for the defence of its conditions of existence. Remember what Marx said: "It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.” (The Holy Family). The insurrectional days of June 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871, the struggles of the 1890's in Belgium, the revolutionary combats in Russia in 1905 and 1917 in eastern Europe, the German revolution of 1918 -1919, the eruption of a new movement in May 68 in France and in the rest of the world after a long period of counter-revolution, the mass strikes in Poland 1980, etc., have nothing in common with the populist, inter-classist, falsely radical, "do or die" movement of the "gilets jaunes". As the proletariat develops its struggle, it will be the massive and sovereign general assemblies, open to all workers, which will be at the heart of the movement, links where the proletariat can organise the struggle together and reflect on the unifying slogans for the future. There will be no place for nationalism, on the contrary: the mass strike of the future will have international solidarity at its heart, because "the proletariat has no country". The workers must refuse to sing "their" national anthems and wave their national flags such as the tricolore, the flag of Versailles under which 30,000 workers were murdered at the time of the Paris Commune of 1871!
In order to prepare for this future all those conscious of the necessity for the proletarian struggle must try to regroup, discuss, draw lessons from the latest social movements, reflect anew on the history of the workers' movement and not give into apparently radical siren voices of citizens' mobilisations, the populist and inter-classist voices of the petty-bourgeoisie!
“The autonomy of the proletariat in the face of all the other classes in society is the first precondition for the extension of its struggle towards the revolution. All alliances with other classes or strata and especially those with factions of the bourgeoisie can only lead to the disarming of the class in the face of its class enemy, because these alliances make the working class abandon the only terrain on which it can temper its strength: its own class terrain”. (Platform of the ICC).
The future still belongs to the class struggle!
Révolution Internationale, August 14 2019
[1] It's this inter-classist nature of the "gilets jaunes" movement which explains why Marine Le Pen saluted it from the beginning as a "legitimate movement" of the "French people": why Nicolas Dupont-Aigan, President of Debout La France, has supported the movement: "We must blockade all of France (...) the French population must say to the government : That is enough!": why Laurent Wauquiez, then President of Les Republicains qualified the "gilet jaunes" as "dignified, determined people who justly ask for the difficulties of working people in France to be heard"; why the deputy, Jean Lassalle, at the head of Resistons, has been one of the figures of the movement and wore his yellow jacket at the National Assembly and in the street. This "welcoming approach" contrasts sharply with the fact that any real proletarian movement is always subject to rejection and lies from the dominant class.
Ninety years ago, the stock market crash of 1929, which announced the economic crisis of 1930, confirmed what the First World War had meant: that capitalism had definitively passed into its period of decadence. In a few months, tens upon tens of millions of people fell into total destitution. Of course, during this period, the bourgeoisie learnt to attenuate the violence of the crisis but, despite the lessons drawn from it, this crisis has never really been surmounted. This confirms that, in the period opened up by the First World War, the contradictions of capitalism could only lead to a degradation of the living conditions of the great majority of humanity.
Without any ambiguity, the crisis of 1929 corresponded to the diagnostic made by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party regarding the economic crises already hitting capitalism in the XIXth century: "A social epidemic breaks out which in any other epoch would seem absurd: the epidemic of overproduction". Such a diagnostic is much more valid when one takes into account that the crisis of 1929 didn't just happen with the stock market collapse of October 24 and 29, 1929, but that before these dates the situation continued to get worse in more and more sectors of the economy and in more and more countries.
Thus, in the United States, production in the automotive and construction sectors had fallen since March 1929, a fall which was generalised to the whole of the economy in the summer of that year. Moreover, economic activity in general was falling in the European countries which themselves had suffered a stock-market crash prior to that of the United States: in these conditions, upward speculation on the New York stock-market could only come up against the decrease in profits and end up in a crash.
The reason for this fall in economic activity in the central countries of capitalism was, on the one hand, the world overproduction of agricultural products since the middle of the 1920's, which meant a lowering of returns from agriculture; and, on the other hand, the persistent weakness of wages which had increased much less than production in all of the industrialised countries. Such a dynamic totally verified the cause of overproduction that Marx identified: "The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit". [1]
Of course, the stock-market crash severely cut the reserves of finance capital and prompted the bankruptcy of such great financial institutions as the Bank of the United States, further aggravating overproduction since it became more difficult to finance the accumulation of capital. Then a drastic fall in investment added to a massive overproduction of productive assets, a general tendency which had already existed for several years. This dynamic provoked a rapid acceleration in the fall of industrial production. Similarly, because of the realities of international and commercial relations, the aggravation of the crisis became global. We should note that it was in the two most developed countries, the USA and Germany, that the fall of economic activity was fastest and deepest.
However, during the first months which followed the crash, the bourgeoisie and the majority of its economists, blinded by the idea of an eternal capitalist system thought, along with US President Hoover, that "everything will be sorted in sixty days" and that as in the crises of the XIXth century, an economic recovery would spontaneously appear. The violence of the crisis caused profound disarray in the dominant class but, since it was first of all a question of maintaining a minimum of profit, the reaction of businesses had been massive cuts in jobs and reductions of wages. All the major countries, despite some hesitations, tried to hold onto their financial credibility by maintaining balanced budgets and reducing public spending. The United States led a policy of reducing the monetary mass, and massive increases in direct and indirect taxes were voted on in June 1932; in Germany, Chancellor Brüning (nicknamed the "Chancellor of Hunger") increased taxes, lowered the wages of state workers by 10% and unemployment pay in 1930 ; then, in in June 1931, even harder measures were taken against the unemployed. In France, from 1933, different governments cut public spending, retirement pay and wages of state workers, and in 1935 these same wages were further cut by 15% and then by 10%.
The other orientation adopted by nation states to protect their national economy was protectionism: all countries followed in the footsteps of the United States whose Congress had voted for the Smoot-Hartley law before the crash of October 1929, which increased customs tariffs by 50%. In fact the 1930's saw a real commercial and monetary war developing between the major powers. In particular, the floating of the Pound Sterling and its more than 30% devaluation decided in September 1931, as well as the devaluation of the dollar by 40% in 1933, showed that each of the big powers, in the image of Great Britain and its Commonwealth which decreed "imperial preference" for their foreign trade, were falling back back into their zones of influence.
The implementation of such policies reveals that the bourgeoisie had not understood that it hadn't the means to halt the overproduction which was relentlessly being pushed along by capitalism's contradictions. The ruling class hadn't yet understood that this was a different period from the one before the First World War, a period when capitalism was in its ascendant phase; in this period crises had led to new phases of growth because the world market was still open and thus permitted the most modern and dynamic national capitals to find new markets. allowing them to overcome the cyclical problems of overproduction. But, as Rosa Luxemburg showed, the First World War was the concrete manifestation that the world market was globally carved-up between the major powers and that there weren't enough new markets to conquer. This implied that capitalism's crisis would lead either to its destruction by the working class or to a new world war. Consequently, the policy of national states in the three or four years following the 1929 crash, guided by the experience of the preceding century, not only could not reduce the impact of overproduction but, on the contrary, aggravated it.
In fact, as the economist Charles P. Kindleberger said, these years saw "a slide towards the abyss". Between autumn 1929 and the first quarter of 1933, the GNP of the United States and Germany was cut in half and the average level of world prices fell by 25%. Such a downturn in economic activity provoked a fall in profits which explains why in the 1932, net investment in the USA was close to zero. In other words, many businesses did not replace their old machinery. As Keynes said, beyond a certain level of falling prices and thus losses, businesses could no longer repay their debts and banks could only collapse - and that's what happened. Large banks went bankrupt in every country. May 13 1931, the KreditAnstaldt[2] ceased payments: in July of the same year, the great German bank Danabank was also on the edge of bankruptcy and, as the panic spread, every German bank closed for three days; in the United States, at the beginning of 1932, the number of defaulting banks were such that newly-elected President Roosevelt was obliged to shut down the whole banking system and more than a thousand banks never re-opened.
The consequences for the working class were terrible: unemployment shot up in every country; by the end of 1932 unemployment was at least 25% in the United States (in this country there was no help for the unemployed) and 30% in Germany[3]. A great number of workers worked part-time in total destitution; unemployment pay was reduced in Germany and Britain; queues of careworn people, some in rags, waited in lengthening lines outside soup kitchens while tonnes of production that couldn't be sold was destroyed. In Brazil, they were even burning unsold stocks of coffee to run locomotives! Finally, increases in taxes sunk a pauperised working class even lower.
The collapse of the world economy obliged the bourgeoisie and certain of its experts to call into question their old liberal and non-state intervention precepts, raised concerns about balanced budgets and led to an examination of this crisis of overproduction, which the bourgeoisie artfully re-baptised, after the theory of Keynes, "insufficiency of demand".
In order to remove the real threat of the collapse of capitalism, nation states had first of all to take the productive apparatus in hand, sometimes directly as was the case in France for rail transport or in Britain for London transport and air transport. But above all this grip of the state was expressed through the control of enterprises and businesses by regulation, adopting management structures that conformed to the interests of the national capital: this was the content of President Roosevelt's famous "New Deal" in the United States or the De Man plan in Belgium. The US administration imposed the "Banking Act", creating a banking insurance organisation that the banks had to adhere to if they wanted to receive funds from the Central Bank (FED). Another law set up supports for agricultural prices and proposed indemnities to the growers if they reduced their cultivated areas. In industry the "NIRA" law (National Industrial Recovery Act, 1933) required industrial branches to organise fixed quotas of production and sale prices (in Germany it was the corporations who were made responsible); as well as this, it accorded the right of the unions to sign collective agreements, allowing them a greater hold on the working class. Such state legislation which was similarly found in other countries such as France under the Popular Front, did not increase the value of wages since prices grew faster. To reduce overproduction, these laws aimed not only to reduce production but also to re-launch demand through budget deficits. Thus NIRA organised a great public works project including the sanitation of the Appalachian Valley, the construction of the Triborough Bridge in New York or the great water works of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The same will existed in Germany from 1932, with the construction of motorways, the building of canals and sanitation projects over certain geographical zones. These moves towards state control, aimed at artificially increasing demand while strengthening control over the working class, were also adopted by the British bourgeoisie when it reintroduced unemployment benefits, implemented retirement benefits and stimulated building works.
The development of the state's grip over capital, implemented in quite a chaotic manner in the 1930',s would go on to have a great future. It was even theorised in what would be called "Keynesianism". Control over the whole of capital by the state by using a range of means (from nationalisation to support for businesses by public bodies) went on to become more and more systematic. More and more massive indebtment of the whole economy under the impetus of the state, as well as the practice of public deficits, had the aim of attenuating the effects of overproduction. Similarly, the implementation after World War II of the "welfare state", extending what had been done in Western Europe in the 1930's, constituted a regulation of demand while also being an instrument of ideological control over the working class. Just like the 1930's the deployment of all these means allowed the state to stagger the effects of overproduction. But in no case can the bourgeoisie really resolve this crisis and overcome the problem of overproduction.
Today, the crisis of the capitalist system continues to deepen, even if it is at a much slower rate than the 1930's. It confirms that state capitalism is unable to put an end to overproduction because this latter is inherent to capitalism. In fact, the response of capital to the crisis is itself an expression of the senility of the capitalist mode of production which doesn't cease to deteriorate. State capitalism, the policy of all states, only allows a managed limitation of the effects of the permanent crisis and it does this at the cost of sharper and more destructive contradictions in the future.
Vitaz, October 8 2019
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
climate_supplement.pdf [1922] | 898.81 KB |
In October 2019 Extinction Rebellion (XR) held a 2-week autumn "International rebellion", planned for 60 cities worldwide. In the UK this involved demonstrations, the occupation of road junctions, climbing on trains, erecting a structure in Oxford Circus, getting arrested, and generally staging stunts that would give publicity to the dire state of the world’s ecology. On the 'theoretical side' the booklet Common Sense for the 21st Century / Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse (quotes from this unless otherwise indicated) by Roger Hallam, one of XR's leaders, provides the basis for XR's activity, and their activity is very much in line with the booklet.
The responses to XR's activity have been mixed. In the press you can see agreement that they are drawing attention to important matters, but disapproval of what they do for publicity. There are also the celebrities and leftists who give XR uncritical support. Typically, the SWP praise "people braving arrests and media attacks with brilliant displays of creativity and resistance". "XR has faced a host of attacks this week—from the media, the police and right wing politicians. Despite this, rebels are building a movement which has managed to face down repeated pressure from the state—and are having fun while doing it. They are raising demands for a radical transformation of society, and creating a space to fight for that." The more radical Trotskyists of wsws.org are still broadly complimentary "XR is seeking to raise public awareness of global warming, while demanding policy changes from the world’s governments … Workers must vigorously oppose the mass arrests of protesters whose only crime is to seek a way out of the terrible environmental calamity threatening humanity."
Meanwhile there are the traditional conservative reactions to protests, characterising XR events as a nuisance, as the actions of 'hippies' and 'crusties'. Alongside this there are the 'contrarians' of Spiked who are against "Extinction Rebellion’s war on the working class. These eco-poshos are full of loathing for the aspirational poor." When an XR protester was dragged from the top of a tube train and attacked by commuters Spiked declared that "Today’s clashes on the Tube between the commuting working classes and the time-rich, bourgeois fearmongers of the XR cult is a wonderful illustration of the elitist nature of eco-politics and of rising public fury with the eco-agenda."
For a serious critique of XR it is necessary to use the tools of marxism, understanding social phenomena in the context of capitalist society, in the clash of interests between the ruling capitalist class and the working class - a class that is exploited, but has the capacity to overthrow capitalism. Hallam's work is not just a theoretical basis for different means of protest: it shows which side XR is on in the struggle between classes.
Is XR against reformism?
Common Sense opposes 'reformists' "They offer gradualist solutions which they claim will work. It is time to admit that this is false, and it is a lie. They therefore divert popular opinion and the public’s attention and energy away from the task at hand: radical collective action against the political regime which is planning our collective suicide". And yet XR's whole policy is reformist. All other social questions have to be put on hold until capitalism commits itself to addressing the 'climate emergency'. This is echoed in the Guardian newspaper's assertion of "the climate emergency as the defining issue of our times." XR's central concern is the environment, and the possibility of the capitalist state being able, through measures like taxes and tariffs and the decommissioning of harmful technology, to prevent eco-genocide. In theory and practice they want to divert attention towards ecology as a separate issue and away from capitalism as a global system that gives rise to imperialist war as well as ecological depredation.
XR's approach to the repressive apparatus of the state is particularly illuminating. Common Sense says "A proactive approach to the police is an effective way of enabling mass civil disobedience in the present context. This means meeting police as soon as they arrive on the scene and saying two things clearly: ‘this is a nonviolent peaceful action’ and ‘we respect that you have to do your job here’. We have repeated evidence that this calms down police officers thus opening the way to subsequent civil interactions. The Extinction Rebellion actions have consistently treated the police in a polite way when we are arrested and at the police stations". XR prides itself on being reasonable and cooperative "Often a face-to-face meeting with police is effective as they are able to understand that the people they are dealing with are reasonable and communicative." XR sees no problem in the police managing XR events "It is better for the police to manage an orderly and low-cost episode which is compatible with our interest in having a large number of people take part in a highly symbolic and dramatic act" From the standpoint of the ruling class, XR are not seen as a threat to those in power, just an occasional nuisance for traffic.
Certainly, the leadership of XR do not see the police as a threat; on the contrary, they are seen as instrumental in assisting in XR's impact by making multiple arrests. As other critics have said "XR leaders are more than respectful to the police. They actively assist them in making arrests and the courts in securing conviction" (https://libcom.org/article/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-1 [1924]). This article by the Out of the Woods[1] collective also reports that "Hallam claims that the Metropolitan Police ‘are probably one of the most civilized forces in the world'". Against XR's view, the historical experience of the exploited and oppressed has been that the police, along with the courts, prisons, security services and army, are integral parts of the capitalist state's apparatus of repression. They only exist to defend the institutions of the ruling class, in the interests of the exploiting bourgeoisie. Anything that threatens capitalist order will be met by the force of the state, in particularly by the police.
Rebellion and 'revolution'
XR claim to be advocates of some sort of 'revolution', but think that "a dogmatic pursuit of discredited revolutionary models can be socially ruinous." Hallam is so confident that XR planning is the key that, without it, "we are left with directionless and spontaneous uprisings … which research shows usually lead to authoritarian outcomes and civil war". Common Sense asks why "revolutionary episodes have failed miserably over the past 30 years", saying that the answer lies in "the most fundamental question of politics – ‘who decides?'". It's not obvious what these recent 'revolutionary episodes' have been. We might ask ourselves what ‘revolutionary episodes’ have taken place in the past 30 years? Hallam refers to Egypt and Ukraine, and the 'Gilets Jaunes' in France. In reality, none of these movements were revolutionary: the Ukrainian Maidan Square events of 2014 were entirely engulfed in nationalism, the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ is an inter-classist movement dominated by populism. The events in Egypt in 2011 were different because there was a definite influence of the class struggle, but it was nowhere near posing the question of overthrowing the capitalist system. Thus Hallam performs a familiar trick here: debasing the concept of revolution to mean any kind of social unrest or political coup, and obscuring what revolution means and how it can come about. For marxists, the only revolutionary force in capitalist society is the working class, and a proletarian revolution is the only process that can overturn the capitalist state. Common Sense has a very different view of the world.
For a start, there are a number of different elements that make up the XR conception of 'rebellion'. Hallam presents the case as though it's the result of serious scientific study "The historical record shows that successful civil resistance ‘episodes’ last between three to six months" or "The most effective act of mass civil disobedience is to have a significant number of people (at least 5,000-10,000 initially) occupy public spaces in a capital city from several days to several weeks." All this goes along with an understanding that "1% of the general population will lead the disruption". One of XR's 10 basic principles focuses on "mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change". This would seem to be a classic example of elitism. In answer to the questions 'who decides?’, the answer is: a small minority, mobilised by XR, who will somehow compel the state to negotiate: "When the authorities lose the ability to stop mass mobilisation the regime is forced to negotiate".
Capitalist society has driven humanity into a deadly impasse and there is no way out of it except through a massive and radical mobilisation of the exploited class and the most gigantic change in consciousness in human history. To count on only a small minority to carry this out makes a mockery of the enormous challenge facing the working class and humanity
XR is quite comfortable with the institutions of bourgeois rule. Hallam and some other XR activists stood in the 2019 Euro elections. Of course, they claimed not to be a political party, but were happy to stand alongside all the rest of the bourgeois politicians selling their ideological wares, propaganda about the climate fitting in alongside nationalism, populism, racism, Stalinism and all the other campaigns for changes within capitalism. At different moments Common Sense does propose various different bodies that might be involved in 'social change'. For example, there is the idea of a "National Citizens’ Assembly selected by sortition to work out the programme of measures to deal with the crisis. Sortition involves selecting the members of the assembly randomly from the whole population and uses quota sampling to ensure that it is representative of the demographic composition of the country." This is something that the Conservative government favours. Letters were sent out to 30,000 households across the UK inviting people to join a citizens' assembly on climate change. "The invitees to Climate Assembly UK have been selected at random from across the UK. From those who respond, 110 people will be chosen as a representative sample of the population" (Guardian 2/11/19). This is not a basis for 'social change', since it fits perfectly well into the other institutions of bourgeois democracy. Such non-threatening assemblies are in marked contrast to the various assemblies or councils created by the working class in its attempts to defend its interests, and which, ultimately, have the capacity to overthrow capitalism.
In order to take responsible decisions we do not need delegates picked in a random manner from the population at large. Proletarians fighting this system need delegates who have clear ideas, a conviction and an orientation on how to tackle the roots of the mechanisms of capitalist destruction We cannot place our fate in the hands of a lottery selection of delegates: we must be able to trust that those who are elected really represent and defend our interests. Furthermore since such delegates can only operate as expressions of a class in movement, genuine workers’ councils can create a ‘rapport de force’ which can push back the ruling class and prepare the ground for its overthrow.
Among other propositions from Hallam are People's Assemblies that will discuss ecological questions. As opposed to working class self-organisation and discussion within an associated class, wi in Hallam’s assemblies "Experts from around the world can help train facilitators and produce agendas." Here we have bodies driven by 'experts' to train 'facilitators' and fix agendas, with no intention to threaten the existing order of things
Although XR sees itself as a movement of the ‘people’ in general, it does recognise the need to recruit more parts of the working class to its campaigns. . There is a concern for "building a mass movement and so move the environmental movement out of the middle-class bubble that has defined it for decades". In this, XR note that "working-class people are almost totally absent from UK environmental movements". But the problem with XR is not its lack of diversity. The problem is that genuine anxieties about climate change are being channelled into a species of reformism with a few added spectacular actions.
While XR claims that it wants to change society, in reality its whole project remains within the boundaries of this system. It does not want to overturn the apparatus of capitalist democracy. "Parliament would remain, but in an advisory role to this assembly of ordinary people, randomly selected from all around the country who will deliberate on the central question of our contemporary national life – how do we avoid extinction?" It also sees a role for local councils and NGOS like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Fundamentally, XR's shopping list of eco-demands is seen as possible within one country and within the present social system. Despite the 'corruption' of the political system, the 'political class' can be made to negotiate, to dismantle all that is harmful to the environment.
Different interests, different values
In Common Sense there is much advice on how to approach the media, how to speak, what to say, how to avoid jargon. Implicitly, throughout the booklet a sense of values emerges. It says that "Words like honour, duty, tradition, nation, and legacy should be used at every opportunity." We can read about using "Martin Luther King’s speeches as a prime example of how to reclaim the framings of national pride" Since its foundation in April 2018 XR has spread from the UK to other countries, like the US, Australia, Germany and other parts of Europe. While it has an international presence, its outlook is tied to the nation-state, the framework for capitalism, and sees no problems with 'national pride’. On the contrary, it seems to be fully in favour of reviving such values as national pride, which is integral to all forms of bourgeois ideology.
Although it might seem to have a ‘radical’ approach to protest, XR is actually quite cautious about economic action. "Direct action, as a way of creating political change, has been subject to a simplistic analysis that sees winning and losing in narrow material terms. There is a strong argument for this approach as confrontation, strikes, blockades, pickets, stoppages, economic threat and disruption can certainly bring opponents to the table – as shown by the long-term success of many labour strikes around the world." Without dwelling on the "long term success of many labour strikes" (no evidence is presented) Hallam is concerned that "raising the economic costs for an opponent is highly polarising". He thinks that the battle for 'hearts and minds' is more important than an economic struggle. For the working class, the 'economic struggle' is part of the defence of its class interests. In the battle of ideas there is an opposition between XR's protests on the climate emergency bringing the bourgeois state to see sense, and the central idea of marxism: the revolutionary capacity of the working class to overthrow capitalism, which can only come about as a result of the defence of its material interests.
Apparently, one of the inspirations for the work of Hallam/XR is Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. The latter author is a strategic planner with the US Department of State and has worked with the European/NATO policy office of the U.S. Department of Defense, and at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Ideas from such a source are not likely to challenge the capitalist state or other institutions of bourgeois rule.
Recuperating real concerns
There is certainly a very widespread concern with the state of the planet, a desire to react against the future capitalism has in store, but XR provide an ideology and a schedule of protests to recuperate such concerns and militant energies and channel them into support for the capitalist system that is at the root of environmental decline. As with the propaganda from all the green parties over the last 40 years, or the more recent campaign around Greta Thunberg, it is a dangerous illusion to claim that capitalism can address the state of the environment.
All the evidence shows that, far from conceding, capitalism is showing more and more signs of being capable of taking all humanity down with it. The interests of the working class are antagonistic to capital and cannot be satisfied within this society. The state of planet Earth can only be improved through the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. This is not to be accomplished by a minority, no matter how determined. It requires a consciousness of more than the state of the environment. Time is not on the side of the working class, but the actions of campaigns like those of XR actively prolong the life of the capitalist system.
A common answer by the radical ecologists to those who insist that the only world revolution can overcome the problems posed by capitalism is: we don’t have time for that. But since the ideology of XR and similar ‘radicals’ is acting as a way of channelling concerns about the environment into bourgeois dead-ends, it is nothing less than a brake on the development of class consciousness and thus the potential for an authentic revolution.
Barrow, November 2019
[1] A libertarian collective that has a blog on libcom about environmental issues. They have recently produced part two of their critique of XR, focusing on the hierarchical reality behind its claim of being a “holocracy” without leaders. https://libcom.org/article/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-2 [1925]
Fifty years after the workers' uprising in the city of Córdoba, it is still necessary to reflect on its meaning, because throughout those same fifty years the left apparatus of capital has been presenting distorted versions of its origins and the political responses it generated, preventing the working class from recovering the experiences left by those days of struggle. The fact that the workers took to the streets expressed their rejection of the Argentine bourgeoisie that ruled through a military dictatorship, but this has been used to claim that they were in search of a democratic life for the country. Other versions, defended by bourgeois tendencies such as Peronism, disfigure the workers' protest, presenting it as something that "sensitised" them and made them change their attitude towards the proletariat, leading them to incorporate "class based" slogans into their programme. And there are not a few accounts that try to erase the spontaneous and combative actions that the workers carried out, surpassing union control, to transform it into an expression of radical unionism and even of the terrorist and guerrilla activities of the seventies.
The Cordobazo, as well as the French May 1968[1] [1927], represented the end of the period of more than 40 years of counter-revolution which was instituted after the wave of 1917 to 1923. In order to explain this process we will pause a little to look at the historical development that frames these workers’ mobilisations of half a century ago.
Unlike the revolutionary response of the working class to World War I – where the bourgeoisie was forced to stop this carnage - in World War II the proletariat found itself unable to oppose the bellicose actions of capital. It had not only been physically crushed by Stalinism and fascism, but it had also been trapped in the bourgeois ideology of antifascism and the defense of democracy.
It is necessary to explain that the period 1917-23, centred on the Russian and German revolutions, marked the high point of a great revolutionary wave, though it could still be perceived in 1927 with the workers’ insurrections of Shanghai and Canton in China. However, the series of defeats suffered by the working class in this period opened the doors to World War II and to the opening of a terrible and profound counter-revolutionary period, which lasted until 1968.
The domination of the counter-revolution prevented the working class from responding in a massive and organised way to the blows of the 1929 crisis; on the contrary, it resulted in the further demoralisation of the proletariat. Then the confusion and distrust in their forces became deeper with the preparation of war on the part of the imperialist powers, because the preparations not only implied the militarisation of the economy, but also the launching of ideological campaigns, in which they presented the capitalist state as a "benefactor" and the homeland (and its defense) as a great ideal. That's how they got the proletariat to line up under the flags of the bourgeoisie and threw it into a fierce butchery.
At the end of the war there was a relative growth of the world economy and the period of the so-called "cold war" between the imperialisms of Russia and the United States was opened up. This gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to continue and deepen its campaign, this time adding to its discourse the affirmation that capitalism could grant benefits to all through the policies of "social welfare", once again invoking the joys of "national unity". Under these circumstances, sociologists and intellectuals of left and right proclaimed the "assimilation of the workers into the consumer society", which meant that capitalism had found the formula to perpetuate itself and to politically annul the working class.
But the economic crisis, that the theorists of the bourgeoisie claimed had been banished, reappeared towards the end of the sixties, so that the bourgeoisie needed to increase the rates of exploitation and attack the living conditions of workers. That is why the various economic problems that were appearing all over the planet showed that capitalism cannot escape the crisis, and that, as it spreads and deepens, it can serve as a stimulus to the struggle of the working class, to the recovery of its class identity and of confidence in its own forces. The May 1968 mass strikes in France marked the end of the period of counter-revolution and the beginning of a new wave of workers' mobilisations.
Among the most relevant workers' expressions that make up this wave was the Italian Hot Autumn in 1969[2] [1928], but also in that same year the struggles of the workers in Israel, and without a doubt the uprising in Córdoba, Argentina. These combative expressions continued in Poland in 1970, in Spain, Egypt and Great Britain in 1972...
Then, in the mid-seventies, the mobilisations continued to reappear until the end of the eighties. Among the most militant workers' struggles of that period were the mass strike in Poland (1980)[3] [1929] and the miners' strike in Great Britain (1984-85)[4] [1930].
All these movements showed that the combativity of the working class had been reborn; the creation of general assemblies and strike committees appeared in many places, renewing the experience of the soviets... But while the workers' consciousness and combativity recovered, the bourgeoisie maintained its attack against the proletariat, undermining and sabotaging through its left apparatus and the unions (both the official organisations and the "independents"). The strikes referred to in Poland and Great Britain are illustrative of how the bourgeoisie confronts the proletariat. It undoubtedly requires the strength of its apparatus of repression, but above all the sabotage of the struggle through its parties and unions: in Great Britain, the National Union of Mineworkers intervened actively to prolong and isolate the strike; in Poland, to take control of the struggle away from the workers' assemblies and committees, the formation of the Solidarność union was promoted.
In this way, the Cordobazo cannot be seen as an isolated expression that responded only to "Argentine affairs", it was part of an international response by the proletariat. It was a struggle that managed to develop a great combativity in spite of the presence of the unions and the ferocious repression of the State.
Thus, the reappearance of the economic crisis at the end of the sixties not only broke through the mystification of the perpetual growth of capitalism, but also by pushing the proletarians of the world into combat, it put an end to the period of counter-revolution.
Argentina's process of industrialisation was notable for taking on a more active rhythm than that followed by the other Latin American countries. It took place during the last decades of the 19th century, which is why the working class also extended its presence in society. The development of capital accumulation required new labor power and this was largely supplied by migrant workers from Europe. This allowed the bourgeoisie to have a trained work force, but also, this working mass, by integrating itself into the life of the exploited class in Argentina, transmitted its political experience, helping in some aspects the orientation and development of workers' militancy[5] [1931].
In the 20th century this dynamic of capital was maintained and even accelerated at certain "junctures", such as the First and Second World Wars. During these periods, industry expanded throughout Argentina, with some cities becoming industrial centers with high concentrations of workers[6] [1932].
But this dynamic process of accumulation also met with obstacles. If we go back to 1929, when the economic crisis broke out and spread throughout the world, we find that Argentina's economy was also affected and dominated by the crisis, but its effects and consequences were magnified by the lack of political unity within the ruling class. That is why some sectors of the bourgeoisie supported successive military coups to enforce a level of unity and social control that would allow them to resist in those critical moments. Thus, through a coup d'état, a military government was imposed under the leadership of José Uriburu in September 1930. This new government took on the task of carrying out fierce repression against the workers' response to the degradation of their living conditions. For the new government it was not enough to apply measures that would further degrade wages and to give free passage to direct fiscal and credit resources for the protection of capital; it had to impose its power through persecution and repression. But to contain the resulting workers' response, the strengthening of the union structure was necessary.
Thus, in the framework of the development of the capitalist crisis of 1929 and the advance of counter-revolution throughout the world, the Argentine bourgeoisie sought to strengthen its trade union political apparatus by creating a great central machinery in order to ensure control of the workers. This project was completed on 27 September 1930 with the formation of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT). Precisely the tasks of this machine were:
- to campaign within the working class for the military government in order to give it credibility,
- to control proletarian discontent in the face of the austerity measures imposed by the state.
For this reason, from its origin and in its daily action, the CGT would be shown up as a bourgeois structure opposed to the workers. In order to convince the workers that it was on their side, they could use very radical language, but they also stood alongside the bourgeoisie in order to faithfully carry out their work of sabotage against the proletariat.
It was the dynamic of industrialization that made the presence of the CGT of greater importance for capital; it is no accident that it was in the mid-1940s, under Perón's government - which had the task of overseeing the new phase of industrialisation made possible by growing exports - when the CGT was strengthened and became the backbone of the government's policies and the main disseminator of Peronist ideology[7] [1933]. In short, the presence of a growing working class obliged the bourgeois state to strengthen its union arm.
In 1966, as a product again of an internal fracture of the bourgeoisie, but above all responding to the "national security doctrine" promoted by the USA as part of the Cold War, the military forces once again carried out a coup d'état. Taking advantage of the discredit of the parties, the deputies and other figures of power, the military presented itself as an alternative, as the defender of "national values" and security. For this reason they baptised this project the "Argentine revolution," achieving in a short time the unification of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.
The CGT openly expressed its support[8] [1934] for the military government of Onganía, reaffirming that its interests are on the side of the bourgeoisie and that its task is to subjugate the workers. The cohesion that the bourgeoisie tried to ensure with the so-called "Argentine revolution" became fragile as the economic crisis advanced. Under these circumstances, the state intensified its "anti-recession" policies, which implied increasing attacks on workers, thus making the services of the CGT more necessary.
The shameless defense of the military government by the union ensured that was it not very credible in front of the workers. That is why the bourgeoisie itself pushed for the creation of an "alternative" union structure; that is how the CGT of the Argentines (CGT-A) was formed in 1968. Thus, while the official CGT (led by Augusto Vandor), with a moderate discourse tried to subdue the general discontent, the CGT-A (headed by Raimundo Ongaro), took over and trapped the proletarian sectors that were tending to go outside the official trade union domination.
The political documents of the CGT-A contained statements written in "radical" language, which allowed them to disguise their actions oriented to the defense of capital; for example, it presented the interests of the working class as being united with those of the bourgeoisie, justifying their call for the defense of national capital: "The crushing of the working class is accompanied by the liquidation of national industry, the surrender of all resources, submission to international financial organisations (...)The basic sectors of the economy belong to the Nation. Foreign trade, banks, oil, electricity, iron and steel and refrigerators must be nationalized”. (Message to the workers and the people. Programme of May 1, 1968).
It is not at all strange that the "caudillo" Perón recognised, from exile, the political importance of the CGT-A and pushed it to confront Vandor's CGT. And it is not only because Vandor disputed Perón's leadership of "justicialism", postulating the creation of a "Peronism without Perón", but also because his radical phrases created a better camouflage to involve the workers in the defense of capitalism.
In the formation of this "combative" CGT (as the CGT-A also called itself), figures from the radicalised "intelligenstia" of petty bourgeois origin and even Catholic priests of the "Movement of Priests for the Third World" collaborated; and without a doubt a great number of workers also took part for very honest reasons, which in no way changed its bourgeois nature. The trade unions are indispensable weapons for the bourgeoisie precisely because it is through them that the ruling class can penetrate the ranks of the workers.
The rise of the military government of Onganía was a political response of the bourgeoisie to the rupture of its unity in the face of the economic crisis. It concentrated its attention on improving the mechanisms for the exploitation and subjugation of the workers, leading to a greater degradation of their lives, to a strict police surveillance of social life and a fierce repression against worker (and student) demonstrations, leaving on each occasion a number of detainees, wounded and murdered.
But the terror applied by the state failed to frighten and paralyse the workers; on the contrary, it fed their courage and fighting spirit.
This atmosphere of struggle also encouraged the Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyist and Peronist parties to enrich their ranks with students and young workers. However, despite the repressive practice of the state, trade union action and action by left-wing parties, some sectors of the Argentine proletariat were able to promote discussion and reflection on the meaning of the economic measures, the policies applied by the government, but also on the possibility and necessity of revolution[9] [1935].
By the end of the 1960s, Argentina had some highly industrialised cities (such as Buenos Aires, Rosario and Córdoba), in which large masses of workers were concentrated, often engaging in very militant actions. It was precisely this workers' combativity that began to come to the fore in 1966, showing a response to the attacks of the bourgeoisie and its state.
For example, in the provinces of Corrientes and Rosario, the student mobilisations that protested against the increase in prices in the university canteen ended in both cases in police attacks, leaving a number of murdered and wounded students. These events generated consternation among the workers, but at the same time they acted as triggers of courage and expressions of solidarity.
In Cordoba in May 1969, workers' discontent grew in response to violent economic measures and repressive acts: at the beginning of May transport workers went on strike for better wages. In the automobile factories, since 1968, workers had been dismissed and labor intensity increased, but in 1969 the bosses announced that, for workers in the machine and automobile sectors, the "English Saturday" would be eliminated, which implied the extension of the Saturday workday (4 overtime hours without additional pay). This measure had its complement in the direct reduction of wages (due to the effect of the "zonal removals").
In the rest of the companies, the freezing of wages was maintained (as it had been since 1967). On May 14, the metalworkers were attacked by the police when they held an assembly, so a violent street fight was unleashed, and this would detonate an increase of workers' courage and combativity. The unions did not hide their concern about the combativity that was threatening to spill out of their control, which is why the two CGTs sought to work together.
In an attempt to prevent rising discontent among the workers from breaking out of union control, the CGT-A in combination with Vandor's CGT, called for a 24-hour national work stoppage for May 30. The Cordovan trade unions[10] [1936], for their part, in a kind of competition with the bureaucratic structures of the CGT and even of the CGT-A (with which most of the trade unions in Cordoba were associated), proposed to begin the strike on May 29 at 11 a.m. and end it 37 hours later: in this way they sought to gain prestige among the workers and at the same time show the leadership of the two union centers their local domination and strength, in order to gain a greater presence within the union structure as a whole.
The call for mobilisation was controlled by the union. The arrest of the Peronist Raimundo Ongaro two days before the strike fed the discontent that the unions could take advantage of.
Thus the union structure covered different flanks to ensure control of workers' combativity. It combined the "radicality" of the CGT-A with the "measured and legalistic" attitude of the CGT, but also involved the unions that were not integrated into any of the CGTs and therefore outside the call (as was the case with Fiat).
While some unions tried to prevent the workers from participating in the strike, most of the unions of the various industries would promote the mobilisation, trying to make sure that they would remain as mere parades, occupying the streets but in a dispersed way, maintaining (under the supervision of the unions) the union division that responds to the division of labor in capitalist production. However, on this occasion, they did not succeed in stopping the expression of proletarian discontent on its own class terrain.
The proposal that emerged from the union meetings was that, from the morning of May 29, the different contingents of workers and students would leave from the doors of the different factories to advance, forming dispersed contingents, until they arrived at the CGT premises (located at Vélez Sarsfield Avenue).
The first aspect that stands out is the massive response of the workers; not only the workers of the big industrial plants mobilised, but also those of the small workshops spontaneously joined in and even many workers of the Fiat factory, where the union opposed the strike, join the demonstration. The students also stopped their activities and became massively integrated in support of the workers, so that practically the entire city came to a standstill.
Since the early hours of May 29, the police had surrounded Velez Sarsfield Avenue to prevent the arrival of groups of workers, and in various streets and neighborhoods near the factory zones, the government placed squads of the gendarmerie and the cavalry, which began their task of intimidation very early, trying to prevent the advance of the columns of workers. But it was in the streets of the center of the city where the strongest combats took place.
When the police saw the demonstration approaching the rallying point, they attacked first with tear gas bombs, then launched the mounted police squads... with these advances they managed to disperse some groups of demonstrators, but soon they regrouped and responded to the aggression with a lot of courage. Sticks and stones were used by demonstrators against the repressive bodies. The massiveness of the demonstration managed to repel the aggression, but the police, when unable to impose their order, resorted to fire power, so that they no longer used only their "dissuasive armament". Now their rifles and pistols fired on the masses, injuring several workers and murdering Máximo Mena[11] [1937], a young worker from IKA-Renault.
The death of this comrade, instead of causing fear, encouraged solidarity and ignited courage. The workers spontaneously built barricades and held assemblies in the streets and around the barricades, in which workers participated without distinction of the factory in which they worked, also integrating students and the inhabitants of the neighborhoods, achieving a high level of unity and solidarity. The testimony of a worker who participated in those battles: "The reaction of the people was remarkable, they went out to help us daily (to light the bonfires that help to diminish the effect of tear gas), the women, the old women, they gave us matches, bottles for us to defend ourselves, sticks..."[12]. [1938]
The union structure, no matter how hard it tried to stop the fighting, failed to do so and watched with horror as the demonstration they hoped would be controlled by them turned into a massive workers' rebellion.
Some union leaders, such as Agustín Tosco of Luz y Fuerza, who was impotent in the face of the working force that was rising autonomously, declared to journalists of the magazine "Siete Días": "The people went out for their own sake, now nobody directs them" and his bitterness showed when he said, "It all got out of hand"[13] [1939]. The union structure of the UOM (led by the "moderate" Peronist Atilio López), also realised that the workers had freed themselves from their control, so they “separated” themselves and fled, trying to achieve the pardon of the state and save their skins...
After a few hours of fierce combat in the streets of Cordoba, the exploited forced the withdrawal of a large part of the repressive forces, who took refuge in their barracks. Others maintained their action in some neighborhoods farther from the center, but without being able to cross the barricades, so in an act of desperation and revenge, the police attacked the population even when it was not involved in the demonstration, but simply had the bad luck to cross their path.
In the neighborhood of Clínicas, groups made up mainly of students were placed on the roofs of houses from which they fired deterrent shots to impede the advance of the police. Late that night the workers cut the city lights, creating a gloom to hinder the movement of the police and army that had arrived in the city in the afternoon and was preparing an assault.
It was not until the early morning of May 30 that the military squads began the slow advance through the city, given that they still found many barricades being defended. But in the end the soldiers were able to take the city militarily, imposing a curfew and the massive detention of workers and students, whom they judged almost immediately in rapidly formed military tribunals
The fighting days of May 1969 sparked a wave of struggles in Argentina until the mid-1970s, providing lessons that workers must reappropriate today. Unlike the bourgeoisie, who as Marx said in their struggle against the old system, “storm more swiftly from success to success” the workers “constantly criticise themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts"[14] [1940] And they do so because they are part of a social class that has no economic base in this system: its strength comes from its consciousness and organization, and this can only be strengthened by evaluating its own practice, recovering the lessons of all its combats and in particular of its defeats. In that sense, when we remember the Cordobazo it is not to make an exaggerated or blind apology, a tearful and moving speech or a formal description of an ephemeral event. We remember it after 50 years because the Argentine proletariat showed the strength that can be created when it manages to break the ties of trade unions and of the parties of the left and right of capital that keep it subjugated. This is a great lesson that the proletariat of the world must re-learn, but at the same time this requires a critical balance-sheet that shows the weaknesses of the movement, for example:
- The workers' rebellion of May 29 showed itself as a spontaneous and conscious response to the attacks of capital; it was an incipient but important expression of resistance against capitalism, as long as it managed to awaken combativity, encourage solidarity and self-confidence. However, the mobilisation did not advance any further. One of the aspects that prevented the workers from raising their consciousness to more developed levels was the ideological burden that for years had been inoculated by the trade union apparatus, the left of capital and in particular Peronism, which in Argentina has acted and continues to act in defense of capital and against the proletariat.
Specifically, the "anti-imperialist"[15] [1941] ideology has been used to batter the consciousness of the proletariat[16] [1942]. "Anti-imperialism" is actually the disguise of a nationalist discourse used by both right and left sectors of capital to confuse and divert the discontent of the exploited towards the defense of national capitalism. The same point is reached when the slogan of struggle against monopoly capital is raised, and even more confusion is created when the exploited are peddled the illusion of possible "alternative" policies, such as protectionism or nationalisation. These old traps have no other objective than to prevent the workers from directing their struggle against the foundations of capitalism.
This burden of confusion appeared during the May 29 rebellion when groups of workers and students tried to show their discontent by burning not only government offices, but also businesses and offices of foreign monopolies (Xerox, Citroën...).
Nationalism is one of the heaviest ideological burdens carried by the proletariat, which is why it is not surprising that these expressions appear even at times of rising combativity, and this is so because the bourgeoisie does not let a day pass in which it fails to feed this campaign. In 1973, invoking nationalism, the Argentine workers were dragged to the polls (and since then the bourgeoisie have repeated the trap countless times) and in 1982 they were submerged in the poisonous atmosphere of patriotism in support of the Falklands War.
- Another aspect that hindered the development of workers' consciousness was the strengthening of the union structure by the state. When the military tribunals blamed the rebellion on the union leaders, Agustín Tosco, Atilio López and Elpidio Torres, they turned them into martyrs, giving prestige to them and to the unions. For this reason, it was not long before the bourgeoisie took advantage of the prestige it gave to Atilio López and Tosco[17] [1943], to drive the workers to the polls and to the defense of democracy through their participation in the Justicialist Liberation Front (FREJULI). This meant that the advances in militancy made in the Cordobazo did not have continuity and the lessons were not adequately put together. By snatching control of the struggle from the unions, it was shown that the struggle could be carried on without them, opening the way for building their own organisations (councils, committees...), real expressions of the autonomy of the proletariat.
A few years earlier, when the workers began to recognise the anti-working class character of the official CGT, the bourgeoisie offered them another union, the CGT-A, so that combativity was again recuperated by the union, blocking an understanding that the unions are structures integrated into the state. This same problem was repeated in the "Viborazo" of March 1971, in which the Sitrac-Sitram unions used their "metamorphosis", going from conservative to ultra-radical unions, in order to widen the source of confusion and sterilise workers' combativity.
It is in this framework that the bourgeois press and the apparatus of the left of capital, when they speak of the Cordobazo, highlight the confrontations in the streets, trying to reduce this day to anecdotal events, in order to cover up the fact that these were events where the workers showed their ability to take control of the struggle, going beyond the unions, and from which lessons could be drawn in in order to prepare the next battles.
On this basis, the bourgeoisie also tries to falsify the real terrain of struggle of the proletariat, `presenting as "radical" or "effective" methods of struggle such as looting or pillage, as happened during the protests against the "corralito" of 2001-2002[18] [1944], or the roadblocks or the "piqueteros" in 2004[19] [1945]. In the pages of our publication we have denounced such methods precisely because they are contrary to true self-organisation and true unity. With the prospect of developing new and brutal attacks in the immediate future, and the expected emergence of new workers' struggles, the proletariat must recover the lessons of its experiences of struggle in Argentina and around the world.
Tatlin, July-2019
1] [1946] See “50 years ago, May 1968” where a list of articles on this proletarian experience can be found. https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201804/15127/fifty-years-ago-may-68 [1947]
2] [1948] See “The 1969 Italian "Hot Autumn" An episode in the historic resurgence of the class struggle”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/hot-autumn-1969 [1949] and https://en.internationalism.org/ir/143/hot-autumn-italy-1969-part02 [1950]
3] [1951] See “One Year of Workers' Struggles in Poland”, https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-poland [1884]
4] [1952] See the Resolution on the relationship of forces between the classes [1953] of our 23rd Congress.
5] [1954] The presence of migrant workers in Argentina was decisive in the formation of anarcho-syndical groups such as the FORA and they participated very actively in struggles such as in the "tragic week" (1919) or in the strikes of "rebel Patagonia" (1920-21). See our the article dedicated to the FORA https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201802/14921/anarcho-syndicalism-argentinafora1 [1955] 6] [1956] This was the case of the province of Cordoba, which from the middle of the 20th century became one of the cities with the greatest concentration of industries and services.
7] [1957] Peronist ideology is actually a façade on which various sectors of the bourgeoisie group together, presenting themselves as a movement, but without achieving real unity. The Peronist movement has always sought to integrate workers like cannon fodder, so they intervene in its ranks through unions, parties and religious organisations. Peronism has been very useful to the bourgeoisie because it is presented as a confused and flexible ideological expression that moves from the right to the "left", maintaining in all cases a nationalist discourse and to which religious and supposedly "socialist" arguments can be added, bringing together a diverse range of groupings that we could (using their own terms) summarise as follows:
- orthodox Peronists", represented mainly by the Justicialist Party and the CGT trade union,
- "revolutionary Peronists", formed by the various guerrilla tendencies
- neighborhood activists who talk about "mass work” under the Peronist banner,
- “Neo-peronism", as practiced by the most recent governments (Menen, the Kirchner marriage) ...
8] [1958] Perón, who ran "Peronism" from his exile in Spain, came up with the phrase: "desensillar hasta que aclare" - seek the right moment to collaborate with the military government.
9] [1959] Some workers expressed their political position with the slogan: "neither coup nor election, revolution", showing their repudiation of the coup government, but also, and more specifically, of the electoral promises of leftism and Peronism, thus posing their demand for revolution as the only way out of capitalism. The truth is that the Argentine working class as a whole achieved a high level of combativity in the strikes and mobilisations from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, but it did not achieve the complete clarity that would allow it to confront the dominant bourgeois environment imposed by Peronism and leftism.
10] [1960] The main unions of the industries present in Córdoba were: Sindicato de Luz y Fuerza, Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor (SMATA), Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM), Unión Tranviarios Automotor (UTA), Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor (SMATA), Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM).
11] [1961] The worker Mena was not the only one murdered: according to testimonies of participants in that day of struggle, they were nearly 60. Other journalistic data indicate that 20 were killed, but as in all the rebellions it is difficult to know with exactitude the number of dead and wounded. What is most certain is that the number of detainees was more than 2,000.
12] [1962] Testimony collected by Juan Carlos Cena in "El Cordobazo una rebelión popular", Editorial La Rosa Blindada, 2003.
13] [1963] Cited in the pamphlet, "Mayo del 69, la llama que no ardió", Argentina, May-1989, from the group "Emancipación Obrera". See "International proposal to the partisans of the world proletarian revolution” https://en.internationalism.org/content/3161/international-correspondence-workers-emancipation-revolutionary-class-militant [1964] In 2016 we published the testimony of a former militant of EO, which had dissolved some time before, on the experience of this group “An experience from which lessons can be drawn: the group Emancipation Obrera in Argentina” "Una experiencia de la que sacar lecciones: el grupo Emancipación Obrera en Argentina [1965]".
[14] [1966] Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, chapter 1
15] [1967] It usually associates imperialist policies with the USA alone, when imperialist policies are carried out by all capitalist states to a greater or lesser degree.
16] [1968] In the interview made by the magazine "Análisis-Confirmado" (9-February 1973) the trade union leader Tosco defined his political profile as follows: "I am for the anti-imperialist struggle towards socialism. Socialism is still a little far from Argentina, but it is close to the liberating struggle. Antimonopoly, anti-imperialist..." This declaration allows us to glimpse the tone of the ideological discourse disseminated by radical trade unionism.
17] [1969] As a result of the military takeover of Córdoba, Agustín Tosco, Elpidio Torres, Atilio López and Jorge Canelles were imprisoned and sentenced to eight years in prison; however, they were released after seven months. Of all of them, it will be Tosco who will gain the most prestige as he was persecuted and forced to live in hiding, which influences his death, because it prevented him from being adequately served. So we do not intend to make an individual judgment of Agustín Tosco, but it is necessary to expose that his action, being tied to the union structure, becomes part of a machine integrated in the state apparatus in charge of preventing the development of the workers' conscience.
18] [1970] See: “Argentina: Only the proletariat fighting on its own class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_argentina.html [1971]
19] [1972] See “Argentina: the mystification of the 'piquetero' movement” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_piqueteros.html [1973]
ICC Introduction
We are publishing a contribution from a sympathizer in the US which aims at exposing the empty but dangerous ideology about ‘the elite’ which is being used more and more by different factions of the capitalist class today
Recently, there has been a worrying trend towards the usage of the term ‘the elite’ amongst some popular bourgeois political representatives. Their usage of this term is completely unsurprising, and is a greater reflection of how the capitalist apparatus is attempting to deal with the failures of its mode of production. This recurring phenomenon is something which isn’t new. It is a deeply concerning demonstration of the capabilities of the ruling class to employ abstractions in order to divide the working class on the basis of false consciousness and mystification.
Who are the elite?
The elite has no actual body, it is a myth which is constructed constantly in order to justify the existence of the present state of things. The meaning of ‘the elite’ differs from mouthpiece to mouthpiece, depending on the general intent. For the new emerging social-democrats of the United States, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the phrase is utilized in order to signify the “one percent”. These modernizers posit that the elite, which is already a mystification in its own right, is essentially a statistic. They posit that this conflict between the whole of society is contained not within a class conflict, but rather a conflict between an abstract “one percent” verses the rest of society, or the “ninety-nine percent”.
Any amount of digging shows that this nonsense doesn’t hold up. Does it make any sense that there is a struggle between a group which makes x amount of money and another group which makes y amount of money? According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average income of the top one percent nationwide is $1.15 million[1]. Does this mean that someone who makes $1.14 million dollars has the same interests in fighting this “one percent” as the people who are making $90,000 a month?
Across the sea, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted, “The political elite and establishment have let people down across our country.” Again, the question rings more painfully here, who are the elite? We are merely left with statistics, with the vague terminology of ‘the establishment’, and so on. Nothing concrete, as per usual. But this term is not merely limited to the clique of social democrats, it has been used most recently by prominent hardline conservatives globally.
The likes of Trump, as well as his base, have identified a new elite. This elite refers specifically to what they perceive as the coastal/liberal elite which looks down upon the mid-westerners and southerners. For the anti-EU politicians in Britain and France, the elite are the leadership of the European Union “who dictate their laws and destroy their countries”.
To boil this down, the elite is simultaneously the one percent, the establishment, the coastal liberals, and whatever else the members of the ruling class decide to say. If there was to be an immediate and obvious conclusion here, it would be that there is indeed no “elite”. To the ruling class, the elite is everybody and nobody at the same time, whoever is useful at moment to blame and individualize the problems that capitalism produces.
Throw Aside All Illusions...
The massive political tide which is now growing against this abstract political elite can never be a movement which is capable of doing away with capitalism. The elite exist solely in the minds of the mouthpieces of the ruling class, a verbal tool which is picked up and thrown about when the advancing decomposition of capital becomes far too obvious to ignore. Often enough, those who find themselves attacking the elite are often members of the ruling class itself.
If this term is so concretely unusable, a new question arises: what is the actual enemy of humanity, if not ‘the elite’? The material reality in the world is that of class, and the group relation to the means to produce. There is the working class, which must sell its labor power to a capitalist in order to survive, stripping them of all possibility to self-actualize and grow. On the other hand, there is the bourgeoisie, who exploit the workers’ labor in order to gain surplus value. This is the secret of the ruling class’ survival: exploitation, genocide, destruction, and bloodshed. For the sake of its survival, the bourgeoisie does everything it can to maintain the status quo. The result for the workers is pain, war, poverty, massacres, and famine which will continue until the day that society is in the hands of the working class. This conflict is the primary social division of capitalist society, not an abstract struggle between the “common man” and the “one-percent” or “coastal elite”.
If we are to seriously take up the issue of dealing with the symptoms of capitalism, we should consider the treatment that the doctor prescribed: global proletarian revolution. Capitalism is fundamentally unable to provide humanity with sustainable growth, let alone allowing it to develop towards abundance and self-actualization.
V
1. https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/#epi-toc-3 [1974]
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
climate_supplement.pdf [1975] | 898.81 KB |
Media campaigns on climate change often pit the urgent necessity to stop releasing greenhouse gases against the particular needs of workers or even “the uneducated”. We have the Yellow Vests in France originally protesting against a carbon tax that would make the cost of petrol prohibitive when there is no adequate public transport, or the slogan “Trump digs coal” as he pretended to defend the coal industry and the workers who rely on it. The campaign for a Green New Deal (or sometimes a Green Industrial Revolution) claims to solve the problems of climate change, unemployment and inequality all at the same time. For example: “The Sunrise Movement’s Green New Deal would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other sectors within 10 years. It would also aim for 100% renewable energy and includes a job guarantee program ‘to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one’. It would seek to ‘mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth’”.[1]
The need to address the destructive effect of capitalism on nature, and particularly the danger of greenhouse gases driving climate change, is undeniable. So too is the increase in the inequality intrinsic to capitalism, and the fact that economists are already pointing out the way increases in debt and the trade war between the USA and China are signs of a new recession. It makes the Green New Deal sound like a no-brainer.
If it sounds too good to be true…
Those who warn against con-men often say that if a deal sounds too good to be true it probably is. So let’s take a hard look at the Green New Deal – from the point of view of its reference to the state capitalist measures of Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s; from the point of view of the inability of the capitalist nation state to address a global problem; considering the implications of the policy for the environment; and most importantly the way the policy hides the real nature of capitalism and acts to undermine the development of the working class’ consciousness and struggle.
The Green New Deal takes its inspiration from a state capitalist policy in the 1930s, to restart economic growth in response to the depression[2]. The New Deal itself looked back to the state direction of the economy in the previous Great War in 1917-18, and as well as paying for much needed infrastructure the Public Works Administration “built numerous warships, including two aircraft carriers; the money came from the PWA agency. PWA also built warplanes, while the WPA built military bases and airfields”[3]. In this it was not unlike the policies in Germany at the time, when many of the autobahns were built as part of the process of gearing up for the coming war.
Climate change is a global problem, one that cannot be addressed nation by nation, yet the Green New Deal wants to do just that: “A green new deal for the UK…”, “Scotland is uniquely placed, given its abundance of renewable resources …”[4], “Aiming to virtually eliminate US greenhouse gas pollution…”[5]. This is nonsense: even the accounting of greenhouse gas production on a national scale is fraudulent, for instance 40% of UK consumption of commodities whose production gives off greenhouse gases, being imported, are not counted in the national figures. Capitalism pollutes world-wide, and this spreads to the furthest reaches of the oceans and the most desolate parts of the Arctic.
Facile ideas of new growth based on green energy may promise to sustain economic growth, based on state spending, but they are not founded on any real global consideration of the effects of the environmental destruction and greenhouse gases they will cause. Moving to renewables requires large quantities of rare earth metals, the mining of which is causing huge pollution in China where 70% are extracted. Production of lithium in the Atacama desert in Chile has already destroyed salt water lakes relied on by flamingos and robbed the freshwater aquifer, destroying the farming in the region. Meanwhile 2 firms, Albemarle and SQM, blame each other for flouting the rules. Cobalt is now to be mined from the ocean floor, without understanding what this will do to the ecology of a part of the world we know precious little about – and since it is necessary for renewable energy this is supposedly to ‘save the planet’. If we need to buy new electric cars, this will no doubt sustain the car industry, but who has accounted the greenhouse gas emissions from such production?
To understand how capitalist civilisation can be so profligate with the very world on which we all depend it is necessary to understand the nature of capitalism itself.
Distorting the truth about capitalism
The Green New Deal promises to overcome capitalism’s destruction of the environment, particularly climate change, through the bourgeois state, but this is not possible. Capitalism is not a government policy whose various laws can be chosen or altered at will by a parliament, but the result of the long historical development of the mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production. An important step in this was the separation of the producers from their means of production, for instance when peasants were driven off the land in favour of sheep for the more lucrative woollen industry.
This created a system of generalised commodity production, production for the market. In place of peasants who could produce almost all they needed from the land, there were wage workers who needed to buy everything. The capitalists they work for – whether an individual businessman, company, multinational or state-owned industry – are in competition to sell at a profit. The Green New Deal can do nothing to change the way capitalism works.
Capital has a real Midas touch: everything it produces must be sold at a profit if the business is to survive, everything accounted in the bottom line, regardless of what is produced. But for capital the resources of the natural world are a free gift, as Marx showed. “Natural elements which go into production as agents without costing anything, whatever role they might play in production, do not go in as components of capital, but rather as a free natural power of capital; in fact a free natural productive power of labour, but one which on the basis of the capitalist mode of production represents itself as a productive power of capital, like every other productive power.”[6] In capitalism what costs nothing has no (exchange) value, can be used and despoiled at will. In this framework a priceless rainforest is worthless. A farmer who cuts down trees of the rainforest because he wants to plant oil palm, soya, or another crop, is forced to do so, because he can make most money with this, or even because it is the only way he can make enough to live. Within capitalism the question of an economic activity serves the needs of nature and humanity cannot be posed, only whether it is profitable.
In the 19th Century, when capital was expanding across the globe, it was already polluting and destroying nature. The pollution from mining and industry is well known, as is the history of raw sewage flowing out of large cities. The effect on the soil is less well known. “In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in productivity and the mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying waste and debilitating labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the background of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.”[7] What Marx showed for the 19th Century has only worsened. By the end of that century Kautsky could write “Supplementary fertilisers… allow the reduction in the soil fertility to be avoided, but the necessity of using them in larger and larger amounts simply adds a further burden to agriculture – one not unavoidably imposed by nature but a direct result of current social organisation. By overcoming the antithesis between town and country… the materials removed from the soil would be able to flow back in full.”[8] Since then agriculture, like industry, has expanded enormously, its yields and productivity have grown on a huge scale, and the fertilisers necessary to maintain this have become a real menace to the soil and waterways.
However polluting, murderous and exploitative capitalism was while it was expanding across the globe, the period since the First World War has seen a spiral of destruction of nature, and of human life. World War 1 was followed by World War 2 and local wars backed by bigger imperialist powers have multiplied ever since. And capitalists and states were forced into sharper economic and military competition destruction of the environment has only reached new levels. Capitalist business, whether private or state run, has increased its pollution and robbery of the earth’s resources to unprecedented levels. To which we must add the pollution and destruction carried out by the military and in wars (see ‘Ecological disaster: the poison of militarism’ on our website[9]).
The danger posed to the environment, to the climate, in a word, to nature, cannot be overcome without overthrowing capitalism. The Green New Deal will be no more successful than the emissions trading scheme which tried to limit greenhouse gas emissions by market mechanisms. Worse, by providing a false ‘solution’ it can only spread illusions in the working class, thus prolonging the life of this system and increasing the danger that it sinks into irretrievable barbarism.
Alex
[2] See ‘90 years after the 1929 crash: decadent capitalism can never escape the crisis of overproduction’, https://en.internationalism.org/content/16760/90-years-after-1929-crash-... [1977]
[4] https://neweconomics.org [1979]
[6] Marx, Capital vol 3, Penguin books, p879
[7] Marx, Capital vol 1, Penguin books, p638
[8] Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, vol 2, quoted in John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology, p239
For several weeks now, we've seen the emergence of numerous social movements in several countries on different continents: Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador, Bolivia, Haiti, Guinea, Algeria... Although these mobilisations have their peculiarities, they all express a reaction of protest and anger faced with the effects of the economic crisis which has shown a further descent these last months. We will treat these international mobilisations in a more global manner on our website soon. In the meantime, we are publishing below an article written by our comrades in Latin America on the subject of the present movement taking place in Chile. Some analyses drawn up in this article are applicable to other current mobilisations. All these movements, by their inter-classist and popular nature, as well as the democratic illusions in which they are imprisoned, lead to a fatal dead-end and constitute a trap for the world proletariat. Consequently, this raises the great responsibility incumbent on the proletariat of the central countries of capitalism, the most experienced when it comes to the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, and the only force capable of showing the way towards the autonomous struggle of the world working class.
What’s happening in Chile flows from the international economic crisis which is manifested in this country through budget deficits that has been dragging down the Chilean state for several years. Organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) show a progressive reduction of growth during the last three or four years. Despite its efforts to diversify its economy, Chile is essentially dependent on copper, the price of which, as a manifestation of the crisis, has fallen heavily. The measures taken to increase metro fares was an attempt to respond to the situation of deficit by the Chilean state. At the global level, we are seeing the first stages in an important economic upheaval and, as in other episodes of the capitalist crisis, the weakest countries are the first to be hit: Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, Ecuador and now Chile. The idea that Chile was supposed to be an "exception" in Latin America through its economy or the so-called "well-being" of its working class is exposed as a lie. President Pinera has had to swallow his triumphalist proclamations that "Chile was an oasis of peace and prosperity in Latin America". The truth behind this smokescreen is: average wages of 368 euros a month, generalised precarious working, the disproportionate cost of food and services, shortages in education, health and pensions which condemn retired workers to poverty. This is the reality which shows the growing degradation of living conditions of the working class and the whole of the population.
The Pinera government underestimated the level of social agitation. An apparently anodyne attack, the increase in Metro fares in Santiago, unleashed a general anger. The response however was not posed on the grounds of the working class but in a context that was unfavourable and dangerous for it: a popular revolt and expressions of minority violence, the action of the lumpenproletariat, which could be utilised by the state. Profiting from the weakness in the social response, the government launched a brutal repression which, according to official figures, left 19 dead. A state of emergency was decreed for more than a week and the maintenance of order was left to the army. The return of the torturers took us right back to the worst times of Pinochet, demonstrating that democracy and dictatorship are two faces of the same capitalist state. The eruption of the lumpenproletariat with its vandalism, pillage, arson and the irrational and minority violence typical of capitalist decomposition [1] has been used by the state to justify its repression, sowing fear among the population and intimidating the proletariat, diverting its attempts to struggle onto the terrain of a nihilist violence that leads nowhere[2].
The Chilean bourgeoisie understood however that brutal repression wasn't sufficient to calm the discontent. The Pinera government made a mea culpa for this reason. The usually arrogant President adopted a "humble" pose, declaring that he "understood" the "message of the people" and he would "provisionally" withdraw the measures and open the door to a "social accord". That can be translated into: attacks will be imposed by "negotiation" around a "table of dialogue" where the opposition parties, the unions and employers all together "represent the Nation". Why then this change of attitude? It's because repression is not efficient if it isn't accompanied by the democratic deception which includes the trap of national unity and the dissolution of the proletariat into an amorphous mass of the "people". The economic attack required by the crisis necessitates repression but above it necessitates a political offensive. The proletariat, although going through a situation of great weakness in Chile and the rest of the world, remains a historic threat to the maintenance of capitalist exploitation. The proletariat of Chile, one of the most concentrated in Latin America, has a certain political experience. For example it was involved in the mass strike at Iquique[3] in 1907 and suffered terribly under the Allende fraud (1970-73) which paved the way for the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Pinochet (1973-1990). The political offensive of the bourgeoisie opened up with the union mobilisations calling for a "general strike" more than a week after the protests. What cynicism! When the government hiked the price of Metro tickets, the unions called for nothing. When the government deployed the army in the streets they kept their mouths shut. When the army and carabinieri muscled in they didn't lift a finger. And now, they call for "mobilisation". When the workers have to fight, the unions paralyse them. When the workers go into battle, the unions stand in their way. And when the workers haven't the strength, the unions call for "the struggle". The unions always act against the workers, as much as when they oppose spontaneous strikes as when they call for a fight when the workers are weak, confused and divided. The unions demobilise the workers' actions and then mobilise only when they aim for a stronger demobilisation still. The groups of the left, Trotskyist, Stalinist or Maoist, complete the trap by proposing their "unlimited general strike", a parody of workers' self-organisation where instead of assemblies and elected and revocable strike committees, they want to set up a "coordination" composed of unions and leftist groups. Their political alternative is to get rid of Pinera. Why? In order to replace him with the Socialist Party's Michelle Bachelet who, during the course of her two mandates (2006-10, 2014-18) did the same or worse than him. They ask for the setting-up of a "constituent assembly". Behind the facade of their radicalism and their speeches "in the name of the working class", the leftists defend capitalism because they trap the workers on the terrain of the defence of democracy and with the constricting method of trade union "struggles".
The second phase of the offensive has been the entry onto the scene of the opposition parties (the New Majority, the Stalinist party and the Democratic Front) which appealed for "negotiation" and "consensus" and saluted the crumbs given by Pinera as a victory. In liaison with the government and the army[4], the Chilean bourgeoisie has provided itself with a framework for delivering a new ideological blow to the consciousness of the proletariat, in order to dissolve any tendency within the latter towards acting as an autonomous class and to attach it to the chariot of the nation, to the ideologies of the enemy class, the ideology of democracy in particular. Important demonstrations were organised for the week-end 25 - 27 October with the following axes:
- National unity: thus, at the time of the demonstration of Santiago where a million people were assembled, the slogan was "Chile wakes up". That's to say it's not a matter of a class confrontation but a so-called struggle of the "entire nation" against a minority of corrupt and thieving individuals. During Allende's time the slogan was: "The people united will never be beaten". What we have to remember is that behind this once-fashionable slogan lies the truth that "the proletariat diluted into the people and the nation will always be beaten".
- the demand for a "new constitution": There's a claim for a "constituent assembly"; it is a dangerous trap. In Spain 1931, the "new constitution" affirmed that Spain was a "Workers' Republic". It was a Republic that assassinated fifteen hundred people in the repression of workers' strikes between 1931 and 1933. In 1936, Stalin proclaimed that the USSR had "the most democratic constitution in the world", at the same time as he initiated the Moscow show trials where he liquidated the last of the Bolsheviks and intensified the most ferocious terror. The Weimar Republic repressed the attempt at proletarian revolution (1918-1923) and paved the way for the legal growth of Hitler and the Nazi terror in 1933.
- This orientation aims to dissolve the proletariat into an indistinct and malleable mass of the "people" where all social classes "come together" in the body of the nation. On the Italian Square of Santiago, a large banner proclaimed "For the dignity of the people, protest in the street without fear". The fashionable slogan infesting the Chilean media talks about a "transversal movement". This phrase signifies that there is no class struggle but a "movement which cuts across everyone" in which even the children of the wealthy residents are included. President Pinera sent a tweet saying: "The massive joyful and peaceful march of today, where Chileans demanded a fairer and more equitable Chile opens a grand vista for the future and gives us hope. We have heard the message; we have all changed. With the help of God we will make the development of this Chile better for all". This response is packed with obvious cynicism but it also gives us the measure of the political manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie. Even the boss of the Santiago Metro proudly displayed photos of his daughter taking part in the protests!
We denounce this democratic manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie. Democracy is the most perverse and twisted form of capitalist domination. The worst massacres have been perpetrated in the name of democracy. Looking at Chile alone, we can see that at the time of the mass strike of 1907, 200 workers were killed during a massacre at the school of Santa Maria. The "champion of democracy", Salvador Allende, brutally repressed the miners' struggle against increases in productivity and the lowering of wages. "In May-June 1972, the miners were again mobilised: 20,000 went on strike in the mines of El Teniente and Chuquicamata. Miners at El Teniente demanded a 40% wage increase. Allende put the provinces of O'Higgins and Santiago under military rule saying the paralysis of El Teniente ‘seriously threatened the economy’. The ‘Marxist’ leaders of the Popular Union expelled workers and replaced them with scabs. Five hundred carabiniere attacked the workers with tear gas and water cannons. Four thousand miners protested in Santiago on June 11 and were violently attacked by the police. The government treated the workers as ‘agents of fascism’. The CP organised some processions in Santiago against the miners, calling on the government to show ‘firmness’[5]. All the factions of the bourgeoisie, particularly those on the left, closed ranks in order to defend state capitalist "democracy". In November 1970, Fidel Castro came to Chile to support the anti-working class measures taken by Allende and reprimanded the miners, calling them agitators and "demagogues". At the Chuquicamata mine, he stated that "one hundred tonnes less each day meant a loss of $36 million dollars a year"[6]. Allende sent the army to repress the workers, but worse still, during a meeting in front of the Moneda Palace in June 1972, he applauded Pinochet as "a faithful soldier to the Constitution". The re-establishment of democracy in 1990 has brought no amelioration to living and working conditions in Chile. The different presidents (from Alwyn to Bachinet, including Lagos and the first mandate of Pinera) have preserved and strengthened the political economy promoted by the Chicago School which imposed the dictatorship of Pinochet. They haven't at all improved a retirement system which condemns the retired to get a pension lower than the minimum wage and who have to continue to work in order to survive, with jobs here and there until they are 75 years old. This is a system which refuses any future pension to numerous youngsters condemned to precarious employment. Chile today is one of the most unequal countries in the world and the inequality is aggravated by democracy: "When we got democracy back, the military government which had also been bad on the economy, left a poverty rate of 4.7%. Today our GNP has more than doubled and we are several times richer than before. But the percentage of poor has risen to 35%"[7]. The left acted as the favoured voice of the bourgeoisie, calling upon us to support democracy and consider dictatorship as the supreme evil: as if dictatorship had the monopoly on repression and the spoliation of the proletariat, its slogan being: "No to dictatorship, yes to parliamentary democracy". All this propaganda caused a great deal of damage to the working class because it made it think that it was "free", that it could "choose", that with the vote came "power" and, above all, it atomises and individualises the workers, wiping out feelings of solidarity and unity by pushing them into the mire of "look after number one", "the survival of the fittest" and of "get out of my way so I can take your place".
The workers and their most conscious minorities must reject the trap laid by the bourgeoisie and methodically prepare the ground for the emergence of real workers' struggles. This perspective is still very far away and won't unfold through a sum of events in each country but from an international dynamic in which the role of the great concentrations of experienced workers in Western Europe will be fundamental[8]. The working class of Chile and the entire world must reappropriate the real methods of workers' struggle which have appeared in numerous significant combats throughout history (May 68 in France, Poland 1980, the anti-CPE movement in France in 2006, the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011). These are methods of struggle and organisation which are radically opposed to those of the unions:
- The mass strike which is unleashed by the workers themselves through their own decisions and outside of legal and union strictures.
- General assemblies open to all workers, active and unemployed, retired, students, future workers, immigrants and native workers, ALL TOGETHER.
- The direct extension of struggles through massive delegations.
- The coordination and unification of struggles of struggle assured by elected and revocable delegates.
Some clear conclusions are established:
- Faced with such brutal attacks as those in Chile or Ecuador, the response is not popular revolt, pillage or minority violence but autonomous class struggle.
- The struggle must be controlled by the workers themselves against union sabotage.
- The workers must unite against repression and defend themselves through solidarity and a firm and combative response. Prolonging the fight and reaching a class unity is the best defence possible.
- As we saw earlier with Ecuador and then with events in Chile, the national flag has been waved throughout. It is the flag of exploitation, repression and war. It is the flag of capital.
- Capitalism's descent into the world crisis will cause yet more suffering and misery and that will be accompanied by new imperialist wars and the destruction of the environment.
- The problem is global and there is no national solution. The only global solution is one that comes from the international struggle of the workers.
We know that this perspective of combat is going to be costly. Numerous struggles, numerous defeats, numerous painful lessons will be necessary. However, we have the lessons of three centuries of experience, which, elaborated by marxist theory, provides us with the theoretical, organisational and political means to contribute to this combat. The international communist organisation is the organism which defends this historic continuity of the proletariat. Its programmatic, organisational, political and moral principles are the critical synthesis of this global experience of three centuries of class struggle. Build the organisation, defend it, strengthen it: this is the best contribution to the fight of the proletariat. Today, this is mainly aimed against the current of campaigns for national unity around the defence of democracy, but tomorrow it will be a key part of the renaissance of the international struggle of the proletariat.
ICC, November 1 2019.
[1] See “Theses on decomposition”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [410]
[2] The proletariat will need the recourse to class violence but this has nothing to do with and is opposed to the terror of the bourgeoisie, the terrorism of the petty-bourgeoisie and the random violence of the lumpenproletariat. See "Terror, terrorism and class violence" in International Review no. 14 https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html [1462] and the resolution on this subject in no. 15. https://en.internationalism.org/content/2649/resolution-terrorism-terror-and-class-violence [1872]
[3] On our Spanish internet site "The workers' movement in Chile at the beginning of the 20th century. https://es.internationalism.org/content/4395/el-movimiento-obrero-en-chile-principios-del-siglo-xx [1982]
[4] The National Defence boss, the military man Iturraga Del Campo, contradicted his head of state who had declared that it was "at war", saying "I'm a happy man; the truth is that I am at war with no-one".
[5] See "Thirty years after the fall of Allende: dictatorship and democracy are two faces of capitalist barbarity" https://en.internationalism.org/ir/115_allende.htm [1983]
[6] Idem.
[7] See in Spanish: "Chile: es la desigualdad, estupido" on the internet site, clarin.com.
[8] See on our website the Resolution on the International situation from the ICC's 23rd Congress https://en.internationalism.org/content/16704/resolution-international-s... [1984]
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
climate_supplement.pdf [1985] | 898.81 KB |
Capitalist civilisation – this world system based on wage labour and production for profit – is dying. Like ancient Roman slavery or feudal serfdom, it is doomed to disappear. But unlike previous systems, it threatens to take the whole of humanity with it.
For over a hundred years the symptoms of its decline have become more and more evident. Two world wars of unprecedented levels of destruction, followed by decades of proxy conflicts between two imperialist blocs (USA and USSR), conflicts which always contained the menace of a third and final world war. Since the eastern bloc collapsed in 1989, we have not seen peace but increasingly chaotic local and regional wars, like the ones currently ravaging the Middle East. We have been through global economic convulsions, like those in the 1930s, the 70s, or 2008, which have plunged millions into unemployment and poverty and which accelerate the drive towards open warfare. And when capitalism has succeeded in restoring accumulation – whether in the wake of massive destruction, as after 1945, or by doping itself with debt – we now understand that the very growth and expansion of capital adds a new menace to the planet through the destruction of nature itself.
Rosa Luxemburg in 1916, responding to the horrors of the first world war, pointed to the choice facing humanity: “either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat” (The Junius Pamphlet).
Unlike the slave system, which eventually made way for feudalism, or feudalism in turn, which allowed capitalism to grow inside it, this present system in its death throes will not automatically give rise to new social relations. A new society can only be built through the “conscious active struggle of the international proletariat” – through the coming together of all the world’s exploited, recognising themselves as a single class with the same interests in every part of the world.
This is an immense task, made more difficult by the loss of a sense of class identity over the past few decades, so that even many of those who feel that there is something profoundly wrong with the present system find it hard to accept that the working class exists at all, let alone that it has the unique capacity to change the world.
And yet proletarian revolution remains the only hope for the planet because it signifies the end of all systems where humanity is dominated by blind economic forces, the first society where all production is consciously planned to meet the needs of humanity in its interaction with nature. It is based on the possibility and the necessity for human beings to take social life into their own hands.
It is for this reason that we must oppose the slogans and methods of those organising the current climate protests, calling on us to exercise our democratic rights to demonstrate or vote with the aim of putting pressure on governments and political parties to react to the ecological crisis. This is a deception because the role of all these governments and parties – whether of the right or the left – is to manage and defend the very system which is at the root of the multiple dangers facing the planet.
The choices we are offered by the politicians of all stripes are false choices. A Brexit Britain or a Britain that remains in the EU will not shield the working class from the storms brewing in the world economy. A USA run according to Trump’s “America First” vandalism, or the more traditional “multilateral” policies of other factions, will still be an imperialist power compelled to defend its status against all the other imperialist powers. Governments that deny climate change or governments that chatter about investing in a “New Green Deal” will still be obliged to maintain a profitable national economy and thus carry out incessant attacks on working class living conditions. They will still be caught up in the same drive to accumulate which is turning the Earth into a desert.
But, we are told, at least we can vote for a different team, and in countries where even this “right” is denied, we can demand that it is granted to us.
In fact, the illusion that we can have some control over the juggernaut of capitalism by casting our votes every few years is integral to the whole fraud of capitalist democracy. The vote, the polling booth, not only keeps us trapped in the false choices on offer, but is itself an expression of our powerlessness, reducing us to the atomised individual “citizens” of this or that state.
The class struggle of the proletariat has shown a real alternative to this institutionalised impotence. In 1917-19, the working class rebelled against the slaughter of war and formed workers’ councils in Russia, Germany, Hungary and other countries, councils of elected and recallable delegates from workplace and other assemblies that for the first time contained the potential for a conscious control of political and social life. This massive international uprising brought the war to an end as the rulers of the warring camps needed to unite their forces to crush the menace of revolution.
Humanity has paid a heavy cost for this defeat: all the barbarism of the last hundred years has its roots in the failure of the first attempt to overthrow world capital. It will pay an even heavier cost if the working class does not recover its forces and make a second assault on the heavens.
This may seem a distant prospect but as long as capitalism exists there will be class struggle. And because capitalism in its agony has no choice but to increase the exploitation and repression of its wage slaves, the potential remains for the resistance of the latter to move from the defensive to the offensive, from the economic to the directly political, from instinctive revolt to the organised overthrow of capitalism. ICC, 16.11.19
During election campaigns political parties often turn to questions of immigration, with false alternatives posed over “freedom of movement”, with arguments over the deportation of “illegal” immigrants, but also a warm welcome given to skilled workers who will benefit the economy. The article that appears here, first published on our website in French, is a reminder that the Windrush scandal is not a matter of historical interest but shows the long-held approach of the bourgeoisie: for the exploitation of labour power, the attempt to intimidate sectors of workers, the sirring up of xenophobia, and also the thin humanitarian veneer.
***
After 1945, gravely weakened by the war, Britain had to get on with its reconstruction. Its biggest colonies (India and what became Pakistan) became independent and it was no longer possible to mobilise free labour power and cannon fodder from them as it had done during the war. So it turned to its colonies across the Atlantic, the British West Indies, where there were high rates of unemployment, in order to import the labour force needed for reconstruction.
For capital, migrants are just another commodity
Thus “from 1946, the Royal Commission on Population proposed to bring a ‘replacement population’ in order to renew the British population in the medium term”[1]. Thus the 1948 British Nationality Act granted the status of “citizen of the United Kingdom and its colonies” to anyone born on British territory or in one of its colonies. The aim was to quickly and easily get hold of cheap labour power. A few months later, the Empire Windrush set off from the Caribbean with a fresh supply of labour, ready to be exploited by the national capital. Up until 1971[2], nearly 600,000 workers, attracted from the colonies by the promise of employment, prosperity and housing, emigrated to Britain. This was the Windrush Generation.
From the beginning the previously unemployed arrivals were crowded together in air-raid shelters, paid for at their own expense. A large number of them were employed by the state (post, hospitals, transport) for very low wages.
The case of the Windrush Generation came to the surface in 2010, when Teresa May became the Home Secretary with the aim of hardening the country’s policy on immigration. In 2012 she declared that she proposed to install a “particularly hostile climate for illegal immigrants”. As soon as she became Minister she organised the destruction of the landing cards[3] which proved that the workers of the Windrush Generation had arrived in the UK before 1971. The aim was to start a hunt for immigrants who had become “illegal”. Home Office employees, when answering requests for confirmation of arrival dates in the UK, were told to respond that there was no available documentation.
Many of these immigrants, and their descendants, thus found themselves unable to prove that their presence in the UK was “legitimate”. Threatened with deportation, they immediately lost their jobs, access to healthcare and housing, and were then sent to detention centres awaiting deportation to the countries they (or their parents) had been born in.
The scandal broke out in November 2017, by which time May had become Prime Minister, and put a momentary halt to the deportations. Teresa May and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary (who ended up being the scapegoat and was pushed out) offered their excuses in April 2018 and promised financial compensation and naturalisation for the whole Windrush Generation.
However, the bourgeoisie continues to deport workers to this day. Despite the promises made by May and the whole British bourgeoisie, 30 workers were still deported to Jamaica last February, because they had a criminal record, even though their appeal for regularisation was still under review.
Both the xenophobic and humanitarian campaigns are nationalist
In fact, the state has taken advantage of all these events to carry out nationalist campaigns against the working class, from two different angles of attack.
Initially, numerous xenophobic campaigns came to light, linked to the very aggressive campaign waged by May against the Caribbean workers and their descendants. She was hoping that a number of “undesirable” immigrants would voluntarily leave British territory and that the “hostile environment” would deter others from trying to enter it. Her “hostile environment” was installed thanks to the new law on immigration: in order to work, rent accommodation, or have access to social and health benefits, you had to show your papers. Landlords were from now on obliged to verify the migration status of their tenants, or face severe fines or even 5 years in prison. Doctors were also incited to denounce patients who were not in a “regular” situation. The Home Secretary also made use of NHS data to track down “immigration offenders”, and thus “prevent people with no right to benefits and services from making use of them at the cost of British tax payers”, a government spokesperson explained. This atmosphere of terror, a consequence of May’s shameful campaign, was pushed to its most hysterical level by the official campaign of the Tory government in 2013, aimed at sharpening suspicion and division within the working class. The project involved sending publicity vans around the country with a slogan that was nothing short of an appeal to ratting on your neighbour: “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest”. For six weeks in mid-2013, a number of these vans toured around London and the surrounding area bearing this message. However, the campaign was far from a success and the government soon had to drop it.
In the face of the indignation provoked by this disgusting policy, the British bourgeoisie was forced to change its tune and give a different slant to the debate on immigration. May herself launched a more “humane” (and thus more pernicious) nationalist campaign. Having kicked out a number of Windrush workers, the May government then set up a hypocritical “Windrush day” which would be “an annual occasion for remembering the hard work and sacrifice of the Windrush Generation”. Windrush Day, which saw a number of official celebrations, also raised a special fund of £500,000 to pay compensation to these workers “who had crossed the ocean to build a future for themselves, their communities and above all for Britain, the country which will always be theirs”. And these are the same workers who still face the threat of deportation.
This scandal is the new face of the nationalist campaign which has enabled the bourgeoisie to drive the working class onto a totally rotten terrain, insinuating that there are two types of migrants: those who are useful (for capital) and those who take unfair advantage of the “generosity” of the nation.
The bourgeoisie has thus instrumentalised the outrage provoked by the Windrush scandal, hiding the fact that the same treatment is being doled out to millions of migrants around the world. While the British government was more or less legalising the situation of workers who have “helped build our country”, it lets Asians die in refrigerator vans or others die at sea, because they are forced to take more and more risks faced with the physical and administrative walls erected by May and company. In a hypocritically humanist guise, the bourgeoisie once again seeks to divide the working class.
Whether its discourse is openly xenophobic or supposedly more humane, the national frontiers of the bourgeoise remain. The British government might establish its day of commemoration, but the bodies will continue to pile up on the beaches or at the barbed wire fences. Only the working class, by fighting for communism, is able to get rid of these murderous borders by putting an end to capitalism.
Olive 1/11/19
[1] “Royaume-Uni : il y a 70 ans, les débuts de la génération Windrush”, RFI (30 April 2018).
[2] After 1971, since Britain no longer needed this type of work force, the migration laws changed: only Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK would have to right to permanently live on British soil
[3] None of the workers of the Windrush Generation had official papers testifying to their nationality, except the landing cards which were held by the Home Office.
In his 1957 novel "On the beach", made into a film a couple of years later, Nevil Shute imagined Australia as the last place on Earth where humans survived after a nuclear war had destroyed the northern hemisphere. It was a brief respite as the deadly radioactivity blew towards the south and the story describes how the various characters approached the demise of the planet as well as their own impending doom. Today, rather than being the last knockings of civilisation described by Shute, the continent of Australia is a harbinger and a microcosm - a particularly significant microcosm being as large as the whole of Europe or the United States - of the Earth being turned into a desert through the rapacious and unquenchable thirst of capitalism for profit. Everything about man-made climate change, global warming and capitalism's absolute inability to even begin to deal with this mortal threat to humanity, as well as the phoney solutions proposed by the likes of the Greens, is here in "Oz" today.
We could go into lots of detailed figures about graphs, increasing temperatures, scales, the scope and breadth of the fires currently raging across Australia; details about the numbers of homes lost, deaths and illnesses caused but it's sufficient here to say that they are at record levels and rising every day across increasing parts of the continent, where in some places air pollution levels are higher than those of Beijing or Delhi. And, in the New South Wales capital, they are 11 times higher than normal. In populous Sydney fire alarms are going off, ferries and other transportation systems are grounded and schools closed. People with severe respiratory illnesses are clogging up hospitals and doctor's surgeries and no-one is warned that the Beijing-style face masks that are making an appearance are worse than useless. Even inside their homes people are reporting smoke finding its way in and they are rightly scared for their immediate and longer-term health. Conditions are becoming more and more hazardous for fire-fighters, 85% of whom are volunteers (after the latest round of full-time fire jobs cut), and with little break in activity they are falling into fatigue, smoke-poisoning and danger of death from accidents.
Of course there have always been bush fires in Australia but the scope, duration and intensity of these latest developments take them to a new, dangerous level. Like "there's always been bush fires", there's always been climatic changes and fluctuations in the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event which affects Australian and larger weather patterns, in this case heating up the south-east while dumping record levels of rainfall on Africa. But like other weather patterns globally (El Nino, e.g.) they are being bent out of shape and intensified to "unprecedented" levels according to experts; and this is caused by the increase in global warming brought about by the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.
And, as bad as they are, it's not only bush fires and water shortages that are expressions of the long-term and short-term dangers to the population of Australia and beyond; de-forestation is creating more and more dustbowls. Australia is right up there with all the complicit Brazilian (and other) regimes in the scale and ruthlessness of the exploitation of the land. Vast areas, as far as the eye can see, have been uprooted of every form of vegetation - the iconic koala bears were already being wiped out long before these fires. The massive flatlands created for intensive agriculture demand vast volumes of water and tonnes of fertilizer. They are denuded of all organic growth, leaving little moisture in the ground which further reduces the cloud formations above them. As these plains dry out in the heat what's left is barren dirt decomposing into dust, taken on the wind and laced with pesticides - an additional concern for neighbouring communities. Like Bolsanoro's Brazil, illegal land-clearances and deforestation have been tolerated, even encouraged by the various Australian authorities. All this for the sake of capitalism and its ineluctable drive for greater profits; and given the warnings of experts on future climatic developments, and that nothing is going to change about capitalism's need for profit, it makes you wonder just how long vast swathes of Australia can remain habitable for future generations.
The Coalition Government of "man of the people", Prime Minister Scott Morrison, unlike his predecessor Tony Abbot, has accepted that "global warming" exists but it's "under control"[1] (like it is in Australia at the moment!). His and his government's position is essentially no different from Abbot who said that global warming "was probably doing good", that it was "greening the planet and increasing plant yields making life safer and more pleasant" and there wasn't much chance of stopping it anyway. Morrison won the election on the basis of not being afraid of coal, saying that he wouldn't put climate change before jobs; that it did exist "along with many other factors" but was a "side issue" in relation to the bush fires and "nothing to worry about" more generally. The government and its energy sector have no coherent climate change policies and here they are no different from the vast majority of the major powers. They are currently using carbon credits linked to creative accounting in order to say that they are doing something towards the Australian government's promised emissions reduction. The Federal Government deflects the problem onto the local authorities, state and territorial, "devolving" the question and thus avoiding and undermining any form of responsibility or coherent approach. This "devolution" tactic is an old trick of the democratic state that also facilitates divide and rule. Meanwhile the New South Wales parliament is trying to push through legislation that will weaken any climatic considerations in the production of coal; Australia has very lucrative coal exports totalling £36 billion per annum according to some reports. Seven new open cast mines have been started in Queensland. Fundamentally, like all governments of all hues, the response of the Australian government has been to deny, deflect and obscure the question of climate change while carrying on apace with the despoliation of the territory in the name of the national interest of making profits.
The response of the Greens is to make more noise about climate change, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty they belong squarely in the same sack as the government and its politicians. The "Green movement" is very much like the pacifist movement; in fact in Australia, as in all the other major democracies, the two movements, their structures and personnel, are interchangeable and do interchange at certain points of history. The main similarity in the two movements is that they exist to publicise and plead for what capitalism cannot provide - a system without profit, competition and war. They are not just diversions from the necessity for the proletariat to take on capitalism root and branch; they are important props for the perpetuation of the system and are thus partly responsible for the accumulating effects of its decomposition. For the Greens the struggle of labour against capital is to be avoided in order for their "reforms" to succeed, reforms which have no chance of succeeding as long as capitalism exists.
For the Greens generally the situation "requires government attention" and "intervention" in the "banking" industry[2]. State intervention is also required for "new jobs from carbon neutral energy sources", and parliament (the Greens like the pacifists are very strong on parliament and democracy) should "save the people": that is the same parliament which, in reality, represents the interests of capital against "the people" in general and the working class in particular. For the Greens, the working class should support its enemy, make sacrifices for it and forego its struggle for power.
For some Greens in Australia, and elsewhere no doubt, the fires have been welcomed as "a final wake-up call"(in a long-line of "final wake-up calls"). The idea of these activists is that given the increasing damage from fires and floods, insurance companies will refuse to underwrite these and other critical risks associated with global warming and, consequently, the banks will no longer lend to fossil fuel companies, investing instead in "green outcomes". The fundamental problem with this approach is that it is based on the assumption that capitalism is essentially a system that is "open to reason" and will take a logical approach and do what's best for the world. The weight of evidence that we have from the beginning of last century is that this is not the case, as illustrated by two world wars and numerous irrational and illogical wars since as capitalism sinks into further decay. No matter how "radical" these Greens appear to be, their whole purpose is an attempt to reform the system through banking, insurance companies and "green exploitation". But the main function of the Green ideology, like its pacifist twin, is to confuse and demobilise the working class, to turn it away from its struggle against capital and back into the "national interest".
What really exposes the Green movement (and causes a great deal of infighting within the groups) is capitalism's development of militarism and war. When the Greens are not directly pacifist how do they approach the question of imperialist war? The likely approach, given the Greens support for the national interest of capitalism, is that of the influential Greens in Germany who supported their state's "war on terror" in Afghanistan and its overseas military "expeditions". The Greens in general are going to leave the military/repressive apparatus of the state not only intact but expanding, aggressive and running on fossil fuel.
The Australian bush fires and all the political shenanigans around them are just one more example of capitalism's drive to destruction on a global level. Aside from the frenetic and ultimately complicit response of the Green movement in the descending spiral of decay of this system in the last hundred years or more, there's also the hope, more like a pious dream, that something will turn up to halt this slide, some magic that will reverse the destructive effects of capitalism on the planet and its populations. It isn't going to happen. Capitalism doesn't act for the good of humanity but for the accumulation of capital and military conquest; reason doesn't come into it:
"Capital is a world-wide relation between classes, based on the exploitation of wage labour and production for sale in order to realise profit. The constant search for outlets for its commodities calls forth ruthless competition between nation states for domination of the world market. And this competition demands that every national capital must expand or die. A capitalism that no longer seeks to penetrate the last corner of the planet and grow without limit cannot exist. By the same token, capitalism is utterly incapable of cooperating on a global scale to respond to the ecological crisis, as the abject failure of all the various climate summits and protocols have already proved"[3].
On the "other side" of capital stands labour and this latter has already stormed the heavens once and will be required to do so again as the only force able to provide a fighting alternative to the grim future that capitalism has in store for us.
Baboon. 28.12.2019
[1] All quotes from The Guardian, Australia.
[2] We've seen what "intervention in the banking industry" means following the nationalisation of all the major banks after the "crash" of 2008. For the working class it has meant years of back-breaking austerity in order to pay for it.
[3] "Only the international class struggle can end capitalism's drive towards destruction". ICC leaflet: https://en.internationalism.org/content/16724/only-international-class-s... [1989]
According to Emmanuel Macron and his ministers, the December 5 strike is "a mobilisation against the end of special regimes", against "equality and social justice". It couldn't be clearer: railworkers and other sectors of workers that have a "special regime" are irresponsibly egotistic and use it to maintain their so-called "privileges". LIES! The government is trying to put us one against the other in order to divide us and render us unable to fight effectively.
Everywhere, in factories and offices, in every corporation, in every sector, private and public, the bourgeoisie imposes similar conditions of unsustainable workloads. Everywhere workers’ numbers are cut, a process which further increases the workload. Everywhere workers, unemployed, pensioners and youth are threatened by impoverishment. And everywhere, new "reforms" are announcing a harder future still. The attacks from the Macron government are extremely violent. Their objective is to make the French economy as competitive as possible on the international arena, in a period where competition between nations is becoming fiercer and fiercer. In order to increase productivity, the French bourgeoisie, its president, its government and its bosses are about to accelerate the pace of work, cut workers’ numbers, increase flexibility, dismantle the public sector, reduce dole money and pensions, drastically cut teaching budgets, cut social workers (school “reform”, reduction in housing benefit...). They take more and more from the workers in the name of "necessary" profitability or a "duty" to competitiveness, of "unavoidable" balanced budgets, while at the same time the incomes of the capitalists are grossly inflated.
Not a day passes that doesn't see strikes breaking out. In these last weeks, railworkers, hospital workers and students in precarious circumstances have raised their heads; but they are not alone. For months innumerable walk-outs have taken place. In chronological order, strikes in September have included: emergency workers, firefighters, Deliveroo drivers, Transavia pilots, bus drivers of Metz and Caen, post workers in the Alpes Mantimes and Pyrenees Orientales, Metro and bus workers, public finance, nurses, pilots, public sector, teachers of San Quentin, electricity supply workers, bus drivers in Orleans and Lorient, public sector workers again, laboratory workers, etc., etc. Some of these movements have been going on since the Spring! The phenomenon increased in October and November, hitting for example distribution networks. Yes, the strikes are numerous; yes, social anger is great; yes, it's a full-on attack! But all these struggles remain isolated the one from the others, closed in, separated by particular and corporatist demands. But, faced with a bourgeoisie organised behind its state and its government this division is destructive. In order to resist, in order to build-up a balance of force faced with the attacks that are hitting every sector, the workers must fight together in unity and solidarity.
Is December 5th finally the beginning of this unity? That's what the unions say: an unlimited, national strike across all sectors.
Throughout September, the unions have broken up the movement of social contestation into multiple days of corporatist actions (RATP, public finances, National Education, Justice Ministry, EDF, firefighters). At the beginning of October, they finally promised a great day of mobilisation uniting all sectors... for the month of December. And what have they done for two months? Divided us up as they always do! They have kept workers fighting in isolation, all those on strike confined in their own box, with its own, specific slogan, whereas we are all suffering from the same attacks, the same degradation of our living and working conditions.
A caricature of this sabotage by the unions is the call by the collectives of emergency and hospital workers (entirely directed by the union centres) not to join the December 5th strike in the name of the "specificity" of health service demands, to be replaced by a union day of action on November 30; the same strategy of isolation used for the inter-union committee for the interns which has launched an unlimited strike from... December 10! However, at the general assembly of hospital workers which took place November 14 in Paris, after a day of action of the sector regrouping 10,000 demonstrators, a bitter conflict took place between the participants of the GA and the unions on the question of unity. A number of hospital workers put forward the necessity to undertake one and the same combat, beyond sectors, while the unions defended the idea that "we are a collective that is supposed to talk about hospitals", defending tooth and nail "a specific date for hospitals". On France info one could hear nurses coming out of the GA saying: "We were not able to finish because we were divided. The unions have completely disorganised this meeting", and "There is too much disagreement. December 5th is the date for the general strike and we are involved. Outside our problems at the hospital, there are also the pensioners and we will be retiring in the future. I don't see the problem of a demonstration on December 5". But the unions decided otherwise. The unions in the hospital sector, on strike for nine months now and affected by an immense anger faced with more and more untenable working conditions, call for the sector to continue fighting on their own, isolated and impotent in its struggle. And it's the same for the railworkers.
The unions pride themselves on this radicalism by brandishing the threat of rolling strikes; but these strikes remain corporatist, isolated from each other and are thus condemned to failure because they result in the exhaustion of the most combative sectors. Such is the fate that they would like to reserve, notably for the most determined workers of SNCF(railways) after December 5 and the hospital workers after the 10th: they want them to end up fighting on their own during the holidays at the end of the year. We shouldn't be naive: why have they postponed these great demonstrations to the 5th and 10th of December? It's clear that they are betting on a "Christmas truce" in order to bury the movement in case it continues after these days of action.
Under the banner of "all together", the unions are in actual fact organising a real dispersion. During these days of "union unity", the workers don't struggle together. At best they find themselves one behind the others tramping the streets, sliced up by sectors and corporations, separated from each other by banners, balloons and the choice of music according to if it's railworkers, teachers, nursery nurses, secretaries, tax workers, a Renault worker, a Peugeot worker, a worker at Conforama, student, pensioner, unemployed... Everyone in their own box.
The spontaneous strike by railworkers at the end of October showed us in part the way to go forward. At Chatillon, following the announcement of the reorganisation of work involving, amongst other things, the loss of twelve day's holiday, the workers at the centre immediately walked out, declared a strike and didn't wait for union instructions.
The reorganisation plan was withdrawn twenty-four hours later. A few days earlier, following a train collision in Champagne-Ardenne which showed how dangerous it is to have just one worker (the driver) on the train, the workers on the line, again spontaneously, refused to keep the trains running in these conditions. The dispute spread rapidly in the following days along the railways of the I'lle-de-France. It isn't by chance that here it's the railworkers indicating the first steps to take the struggle in hand. It's the consequence of both experience and of the historic combativity of this sector of the working class in France, but it's also based on a process of reflection which has been brewing up for a year over the bitter defeat of the long movement of 2018... by the unions. With their famous "go-slows" they kept the workers locked-up in an isolated struggle until the exhaustion of their forces.
But, today, the striking railworkers haven't understood how to spread the movement beyond their place of work. They remain enclosed within the SNCF. There hasn't been any autonomous general assembly deciding to send massive delegations, all the assembled workers even, to the closest centres of work (a hospital, a factory, an office...) in order to draw them into the struggle so as to geographically spread the movement. It's vital to put forward the view that all workers have the same interests, that it's the same struggle, that we need unity and solidarity; that it's beyond sectors and corporations that the working class finds its strength. Those are difficult steps to take. A necessary unity in the struggle implies recognition of ourselves no longer as railworkers, nurses, bank workers, teachers or IT, but as exploited workers.
Remember, in Spring 2006, the government had to withdraw its "Contrat Première Embauche" faced with the development of solidarity between generations of workers. The students, facing more uncertainty with the CPE law, organised massive general assemblies in the universities open to workers, the unemployed and the retired, putting forward a slogan which expressed the unity of the movement: the struggle against precarious conditions and unemployment. These GA's were the lungs of the movement, debates were undertaken and decisions made. The result? Every weekend the demonstrators regrouped more and more sectors. Workers and retired workers joined up with the students under the slogan "Young bacon, old croutons, all part of the same salad". Faced with the extension and the tendency towards unification of the movement generated by the students, the French bourgeoisie and the government had no other choice but to withdraw the proposed CPE law. That's why today, Macron and his ministers have launched a nauseous campaign around the "Grandfather clause" (new measures not aiming to hit the whole of the class but only the new generation arriving at the workplace). What they want is an enforced division between the generations of workers. In 1968, when the economic crisis returned again and with it the return of unemployment and the impoverishment of the workers, the proletariat in France was united in its struggle. Following immense demonstrations on May 13 against the police repression suffered by the students, walk-outs and general assemblies spread through factories and places of work, ending up with nine million strikers, the largest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. Very often this dynamic of extension and unity developed outside of the union framework and numerous workers tore up their union cards after the "Grenelle Accords" of May 27 between the unions and the bosses which buried the movement.
Today, workers, the unemployed, the retired and students lack the confidence in themselves, in their collective strength, to dare to take their own struggle in hand. But there's no other way. All the "actions" proposed by the unions lead to division, defeat and demoralisation. Only the coming together within open, massive and autonomous general assemblies, really deciding how to conduct the movement, can constitute the basis for a united struggle, carried along by solidarity between all sectors, all generations. GA's which allow nurses, emergency workers, the unemployed, those who can't go on strike, to participate in the movement. GA's which put forward demands which concern everyone: the struggle against precarious conditions, against cutting jobs, against productivity increases, against pauperisation... GA's in which we feel united and confident in our collective strength.
Capitalism, in France as everywhere else in the world, continues to plunge humanity into a more and more dreadful misery. Only the working class represents a force which can put a stop to these attacks. The most combative and determined workers must regroup, discuss, re-appropriate the lessons of the past in order to prepare for the autonomous struggle of the whole class. Only the proletariat will be able, in time, to open the doors of the future for the generations to come faced with a system of decadent capitalism which carries only more misery, exploitation and barbarity and which bears war and massacres like the clouds bear the storm. It's a system which is about to destroy the environment in which humanity lives, threatening the survival of the species.
Only the massive and united struggle of all sectors of the exploited class can halt and push back the present attacks of the bourgeoisie.
Only the development of this struggle can open the way to the historic combat of the working class for the abolition of exploitation and capitalism.
International Communist Current
(December 1, 2019)
Slave market in Libya
Libya continues to make regular appearances in the media since 2011, the year of the liquidation of its now-defunct "guide" Colonel Gaddafi by the forces of Nato (France, UK and USA): "This poor Libya, that the Franco-British war of 2011 has transformed into a paradise for the terrorists of Isis and al-Qaida… The trafficking of arms, drugs and migrants proliferates throughout and rarely comes into conflict with the jihadists. This isn't surprising given that they are fellow businessmen"[1]. It was in the name of "the protection of civilians", after the passing of the "Arab Spring" in Libya (brutally repressed by the ex-dictator), that the western powers declared war on the Libyan leader. Having bombed the population and killed Gaddafi, they left the country in the hands of multiple bloody militias who are still fighting over the moribund Libyan state.
"The fighting rumbles on at the ports of Tripoli, from the regional ‘Godfathers’ feeding the flames to the belligerents stoking up hatred with their propaganda. Since April 4, when the troops of Marshall Haftar attacked Tripoli, the flames of war have been re-ignited in Libya. Eight years after the anti-Gaddafi insurrection (supported by Nato air-strikes) and five years after the civil war of 2014, the giant of North Africa is once again falling into chaos, instability and the risk of extremism (...). It's back to square one".[2]
Today, among the dozen or so militias on the ground, the two most important factions aiming for the status of middle-men with the big powers and the UN are: the "Government of National Accord" (GNA) led by Faise Sarraj, designated by the UN and supported by Turkey and Qatar and the government of the eastern coastal Cyrenaica region, the "Libyan National Army" (ANL) led by Khalifa Haftar who is supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to which can be added (on the quiet), France, Russia and the United States; whereas the government of ex-colonial power Italy supports one or the other faction dependent on the control that they have on the ground, as it did in October when it renewed a contemptible agreement for the formation of Libyan coastguards to hunt down migrants.
Britain, which has done as much as anyone in bringing chaos and destruction to this territory, has been sidelined somewhat and doesn't seem to favour the involvement of Saudi and UAE here at all. Rather it backs Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood. Britain has maintained its links with the Manchester based, al-Qaida-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that travels back and forth under British protection not only to Libya but also to Afghanistan and Syria. It was an element of this jihadi group who is on trial for carrying out the Ariane Grande concert bombing in Manchester, 2017. Along with "aid", the British government, in the form of then Foreign Secretary (and, at the time of writing, Prime Minister) Boris Johnson, committed itself to "fighting terrorism" in Libya in 2017.
In reality, “every man for himself” and hypocrisy dominate the situation and the barbaric spectacle reveals the lying and abject attitude of the major powers that are playing a double game, like the British, and the French government caught red-handed when it shamelessly lied about the missiles provided by its secret services to Marshall Haftar while affirming that "France is in Libya to fight terrorism".
As for the two Libyan war chiefs, their objectives are also villainous: "Thus, standing face to face, the two camps will never dare to admit the truth of their confrontation. The emphatic recourse to rhetorical justification, using terms like ‘revolution’ or ‘anti-terrorism’ cannot cover up the stark character of a rivalry around the appropriation of resources which takes on a very particular sense in this old oil Eldorado which is Libya. Despite some setbacks caused by post-2011 chaos, Libyan oil continues to generate revenues of $70 million (62.5 million euros) per day. Also, control over the lucrative distribution networks sharpens these antagonisms still more"[3]. This is another aspect of the conflict which none of the leaders of the capitalist world talk about in their official speeches! This race to loot oil, opened up by the chaos of 2011, puts a great number of gangsters small and large, local and international, on Libyan soil.
Worse still, for the major capitalist vultures, Libya represents another unmentionable interest: the existence, on their initiative, of the monstrous "camps of welcome" for frustrated migrants or those on stopover waiting for an imaginary boat to take them to Europe.
Further to the bloody chaos provoked by the major imperialist powers, Libya has become a real "market" and cemetery for migrants for which the EU is responsible. Images of a slave market in Libya were broadcast by CNN on November 14 2017, showing human beings auctioned off and sold like beasts. The migrants, whose numbers vary between 700,000 and one million, fall into the traps of the criminal networks and traffickers, with whom the European and African states are accomplices. "What's happening in Libya, a country without leadership and run by armed militias, is a tragedy to which the European Union closes its eyes. African leaders, having opted for hypocrisy, follow the Europeans like sheep. The report by CNN won't change much of the situation on the ground in Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi or Tobruk. In a country devastated by civil war, exploding inflation, a ruined economy where the massive execution of prisoners is practiced, almost everyone works either in the business of contraband and collaboration with the smugglers, or in the fight against contraband and smugglers. The report shows a case of servitude linked to the settlement of debt, but a great number of migrants sold at auction in Libya are detained in the framework of trafficking linked to the payment of ransoms. With the closure of the Libyan route leading to Italy, Sub-Saharan migrants often find themselves cornered with no means to pay the price demanded to return to their homes. The smugglers then sell them to the highest bidder - a militia for example. The buyers then contact their families to demand a ransom which goes from 2000 to 3000 dinars (1200 to 1800 euros) per person”[4]. According to a report published by UNICEF: "The detention centres run by the militias are nothing other than forced work camps, prisons where everyone is robbed under armed force. For the millions of women and children, life in prison consists of rape and violence, sexual exploitation, hunger and endless abuse".
All this illustrates the breadth of the capitalist barbarity that directly implicates the major imperialist powers which, through their policies, are throwing the migrants into the arms of slave-traders from another era. The EU effectively demands that failing and totally corrupt neighbouring states (Niger, Nigeria, etc.,) enact anti-migrant policies through subsidies to build walls and erect death-camps. The EU also takes part in Mafia-type activities and trade between bandits by providing funds and material to the coastguards who are responsible for intercepting migrant vessels and take them to the monstrous detention camps. Today the migrants are still in the same situation of misery, in the middle of the dangers which led them by the million to cross the Mediterranean, as this story shows: "On the beach of Aghir on the island of Djerba, north of Tunisia, there were more bodies than bathers at the beginning of the month. On Monday July 1, a boat sank after leaving the Libyan town of Zuwara, 120 km west of Tripoli with 86 people on board. Three were pulled out alive but the sea took the rest of them. ‘I can't do this any longer. It's just too much’, Chemseddine Marzog, a fisherman who for years has provided a last resting place for the bodies that the sea has thrown up, stated through his anger. ‘I have buried close to 400 bodies and dozens more will arrive in the days to come. It is impossible, it is inhuman and we can't manage alone’, said the desperate guardian of the migrant's cemetery at the town of Zarzis in Tunisia close to the Libyan border”[5].
For some time now the "western democracies" have shut their eyes and turned up their noses faced with this cruel barbarity while continuing their plans for the "security" (i.e., closure) of their borders against "illegal immigrants" while loudly declaring their "universal humanism" and continuing to push forward policies which define their infamous politics[6].
Amina, November 2019
[1] La Canard Enchaîné (April 24, 2019).
[2] Le Monde, (May 12-13, 2019).
[3] Le Monde, (May 3, 2019).
[4] Courrier international, (December 7-13, 2017).
[5] Le Monde, July 10, 2019.
[6] On this matter, we can add that the countries of the EU are not at all alone in their barbaric policies towards migrants. They can also count on their "great friend" and client Saudi Arabia. In fact, Riyadh attacks, imprisons and expels "undesirable" migrants that it finds on its territory. According to The Guardian: "10,00 Ethiopians are expelled each month from Saudi Arabia since 2017, the date which the authorities of this country intensified their merciless campaign to send back migrants who don't have papers. About 300,000 people have been sent back since March this year alone, according to the latest figures from the International Organisation for Migrants (IOM) and special flights of deportation are arriving every week at Addis Ababa international airport (...) Some hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have been deported since the preceding wave of chaotic repression undertaken in 2013-2014". These practices of the bloody Saudi regime towards those fleeing misery and death are a sinister illustration of the fact that all states are participating with the same cynicism in order to assure the perpetration of this dehumanised system.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/1/261/icconline
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/Wallace.jpg
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/1/creationism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/04/darwin-and-the-descent-of-man
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/02/darwin-workers
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/02/attenborough-darwin
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/11/darwinism
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/137/pannekoek-darwinism-01
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/contribution-discussion
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/alfred-russel-wallace
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/evolution
[13] https://www.epoca-project.eu/index.php/
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/climate-change
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/scientific-congress-climate-change-2009
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/greece
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-and-workers-struggles-greece
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/gpr
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/mir-hossein-mousavi
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/iranian-elections-and-protests
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/green-movement-iran
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/11/lotta1
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/01/lotta2
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3131/party-and-its-relationship-class
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/040_ibrp_bluff_01.html
[27] mailto:[email protected]
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/italy
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/lotta-comunista
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/cervetto
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/lotta2
[32] http://www.it.internationalist.org
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/charles-darwin
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/science-vs-creationism
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/2010TekelTurkey.jpg
[36] https://www.cnnturk.com/2009/turkiye/12/05/erdogana.tekel.iscilerinden.protesto/554272.0/
[37] https://www.evrensel.net/haber.php?haber_id=63999
[38] https://www.kizilbayrak.net/sinif-hareketi/haber/arsiv/2009/12/30/select/roeportaj/artikel/136/direnisteki-tek.html
[39] https://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2009/tekel-iscisinden-seker-iscisine-mektup
[40] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/turkey
[41] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/erdogan
[42] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/kumlu
[43] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[44] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/tekel
[45] https://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101613901-pres-de-50-000-morts-en-haiti-selon-la-croix-rouge
[46] https://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2010/01/s%C3%A9isme-en-ha%C3%AFti-les-causes.html
[47] https://www.bme.gouv.ht/alea%20sismique/Al%E9a%20et%20risque%20sismique%20en%20Ha%EFti%20VF.pdf
[48] https://www.presseurop.eu/fr/content/article/169931-bien-plus-quune-catastrophe-naturelle
[49] https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
[50] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/south-and-central-america
[51] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/james-cameron
[52] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/film-review
[53] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/avatar
[54] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/jerry-grevin
[55] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/soldierstale_0.jpg
[56] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war
[57] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/poem
[58] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/lindsey-oil-refinery-strike
[59] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/pogroms
[60] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/jose-perran
[61] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/obituary
[62] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/01/tekel-turkey
[63] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/3/peru-turkey
[64] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/111_OT_ConfSol_pt1
[65] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/peru
[66] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/ecuador
[67] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/international-solidarity
[68] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/public-meetings
[69] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[70] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/internationalism
[71] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[72] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/suicide
[73] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/condition-working-class
[74] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/vietnam-war
[75] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/core
[76] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/life-icc
[77] mailto:[email protected]
[78] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nucleo-proletario
[79] https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/vigo/2010/02/02/0003_8267541.htm#
[80] https://www.europapress.es/galicia/noticia-parados-naval-manifiestan-vigo-continuaran-movilizandose-arregle-problema-contratacion-20100203140943.html
[81] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain
[82] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/unemployment-and-class-struggle
[83] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/vigo
[84] mailto:[email protected]
[85] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/australasia
[86] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internationalist-worker
[87] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/africa
[88] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/imperialist-rivalries
[89] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/massacres-nigeria
[90] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/against-austerity-class-struggle-britian.pdf
[91] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/against-austerity-class-struggle-international.pdf
[92] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[93] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/BA%20leaflet.pdf
[94] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/british-airways-dispute
[95] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/apr/steel-struggles
[96] https://es.internationalism.org/ismo/2000s/2010s/2010/58_E
[97] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/venezuela
[98] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/hugo-chavez
[99] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/guayana
[100] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/asia
[101] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/61/india
[102] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/socialist-workers-party
[103] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato
[104] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo
[105] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
[106] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Ellis
[107] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/22/malawian-gay-couple-jailed-14-years
[108] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/oppression-gay-people
[109] https://labornotes.org/2010/07/do-spreading-auto-strikes-mean-hope-workers%E2%80%99-movement-china
[110] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_poland80.htm
[111] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[112] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/honda
[113] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/english-defence-league
[114] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/anti-fascism
[115] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/racism
[116] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/02/ST2010070205622.html?sid=ST2010070205622
[117] https://en.internationalism.org/content/internationalism-no-155-july-october-2010
[118] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/unemployment
[119] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/hosts-see-red-as-world-cup-bill-soars-ndash-but-fifa-is-163-1-7bn-in-black-1994958.html
[120] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters
[121] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/south-africa
[122] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/world-cup-2010
[123] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/57/israel
[124] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[125] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza-blockade
[126] http://www.revleft.com
[127] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/ireland
[128] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/james-connolly
[129] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nationalism
[130] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-consciousness
[131] https://www.theguardian.com/business/bp
[132] http://www.counterpunch.org/watts08122009.html
[133] http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/boerse/magazin/94491/index.html
[134] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/965/nigeria
[135] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/oil-disaster
[136] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/intervention
[137] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/commune
[138] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/national-liberation
[139] http://www.repubblica.itspeciale/2009/firma-lappello-di-saviano/index.html
[140] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tq2My1(Gel&feature=related)
[141] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/saviano
[142] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/mafia
[143] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-reports
[144] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/german-revolution-1918-21
[145] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/bordigism
[146] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/council-communism
[147] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/third-international
[148] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/gorter
[149] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/amadeo-bordiga
[150] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/anton-pannekoek
[151] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/fritz-wollfheim
[152] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/pietro-nenni
[153] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/paul-levi
[154] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/cpgb-and-leftism
[155] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/movement-against-pension-reform-france
[156] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/angela-merkel
[157] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/mesut-ozil
[158] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/bjorn-soder
[159] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/philip-hollobone
[160] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/islamophobia
[161] https://www.lautre.net/
[162] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1228/general-assemblies
[163] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/01/haiti-earthquake
[164] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/532/haiti
[165] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331892/Tuition-fee-militants-picket-school-gates.html#ixzz16OoPiMUH
[166] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/school-students-protest
[167] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/daily-mail
[168] https://frenchruvr.ru/2010/10/08/24883382.html
[169] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/hungary
[170] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/environmental-disasters
[171] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/pollution-danube
[172] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-struggles
[173] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/korea
[174] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/state-repression
[175] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11427323
[176] https://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/
[177] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/24/student-school-pupils-protests-walkout
[178] https://libcom.org/article/november-30th-day-action-against-cuts-and-fees?page=3
[179] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11962905
[180] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2010/12/young-protesters-police
[181] https://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/
[182] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/unions-students-strike-fight-cuts
[183] https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679
[184] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/02/free-gaza-youth-manifesto-palestinian
[185] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/gaza-youths-manifesto-change
[186] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza
[187] mailto:[email protected]
[188] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1123/tunisia
[189] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/algeria
[190] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/media-campaigns
[191] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[192] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[193] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/ivory-coast
[194] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/laurent-gbagbo
[195] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/alassane-ouattara
[196] https://libcom.org/
[197] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/egypt
[198] https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/324965.html
[199] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2006-north-korea-nuclear-bomb
[200] https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/318725.html
[201] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F025_4hRLlU
[202] https://libcom.org/forums/organise/korean-militants-facing-prison-08012011
[203] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[204] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/oh-se-cheol
[205] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/repression-korea
[206] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/05/rereading-howard-brenton-robert-tressell
[207] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/ragged-trousered-philanthropist
[208] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/robert-tressell
[209] https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/labour-unions-boost-egyptian-protests-1.760011
[210] http://www.pmpress.org
[211] https://en.internationalism.org/content/2130/egypt-germs-mass-strike
[212] https://arabawy.org/
[213] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_science
[214] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_University
[215] https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article20203
[216] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/56/middle-east-and-caucasus
[217] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1144/bahrain
[218] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/829/libya
[219] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/mubarak
[220] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/revolt-egypt-and-tunisia
[221] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[222] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/cia
[223] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/drugs
[224] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/leftist-illusions
[225] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wisconsin-leaflet-final.pdf
[226] https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/the-politics-of-education-upended-049706
[227] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17wisconsin.html
[228] https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_de45ba12-3935-11e0-9b64-001cc4c002e0.html
[229] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-02-14/wisconsin-war-declared-on-state-sector-workers
[230] https://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/116470423.html/
[231] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/wisconsin
[232] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/4259/catastrophe-japan
[233] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/japan
[234] https://en.internationalism.org/node/4172
[235] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/145/what-is-happening-in-the-middle-east
[236] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/imphum_0.jpg
[237] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/revolt-libya
[238] https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2010/12/KATZ/19944
[239] https:// https://www.europe1.fr/France/En-France-les-incidents-nucleaires-en-hausse-455587
[240] https:// https://www.lemonde.fr/depeches/2011/03/15/ukushima-eclaire-le-risque-d-un-seisme-majeur-sous-un-nouvel-angle_3244_108_44577531.html
[241] https:// https://blog.mondediplo.net/2011-03-12-Au-Japon-le-seisme-declenche-l-alerte-nucleaire
[242] https:// https://fr.internationalism.org/forum/312/tibo/4593/seisme-au-japon
[243] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/earthquake-japan-2011
[244] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nuclear-power
[245] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/book-review
[246] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/false-struggles
[247] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/revolution
[248] https://libcom.org/forums/news/hijacked-anarchists-27032011
[249] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/discussion
[250] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/black-bloc
[251] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Laguë_method
[252] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/eddie-izzard
[253] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/electoral-reform
[254] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/yes-av-campaign
[255] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/unions-against-working-class
[256] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/uttar-pradesh-road-workers-strike
[257] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chauvet-cave3.jpg
[258] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/werner-herzog
[259] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/344/bristol
[260] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/bristol-riot-1980
[261] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2009/137/pannekoek-darwinism-02
[262] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/the-legacy-of-freud
[263] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/871/science
[264] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/chris-knight
[265] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/indignos
[266] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/15m
[267] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/6.spain_2.jpg
[268] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/19-june-demonstrations
[269] https://en.internationalism.org/file/5292
[270] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/philippines
[271] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/yeojin-kim
[272] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/strike-hanjin-heavy-industries
[273] https://real-democracy.gr/
[274] https://real-democracy.gr/en/node/159
[275] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/tptg
[276] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/kras-iwa
[277] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-libya
[278] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/1981-riots
[279] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/social-revolts
[280] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/riots
[281] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/post-war-period-france
[282] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/1976/machiavellianism
[283] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/de-gaulle
[284] https://www.972mag.com/the-essence-of-the-tent-protest-2128-72011/
[285] https://libcom.org/discussion/israelpalestine-social-protests?page=2
[286] http://www.leninology.co.uk/2011/08/few-observations-on-israels-protests.html
[287] https://www.jpost.com/National-News/African-migrants-meet-with-housing-activists
[288] https://mondoweiss.net/2011/08/will-israels-tent-protesters-awaken-to-the-tents-that-came-before-theirs
[289] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i6JKSGEs8Y&feature=player_embedded#at=31
[290] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/syria
[291] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorism
[292] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/decomposition
[293] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorist-attack-norway
[294] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/347uk-riots
[295] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-08-09/riots-in-britain-the-fruit-of-forty-years-of-capitalist-crisis
[296] https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-respond-london-riots-solidarity-federation?page=1
[297] https://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-those-who-condemn_10.html
[298] https://libcom.org/article/deptford-hackney-tottenham-respond
[299] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/uk-riots
[300] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/west-bengal
[301] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mexico_drug_war3_30954s.jpg
[302] https://es.internationalism.org/revolucion-mundial/201106/3140/narcotrafico-y-descomposicion-del-capitalismo
[303] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[304] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/mexican-drug-wars
[305] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/hurricane-irene
[306] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/25j-madrid-10.jpg
[307] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/workers-assemblies
[308] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/indignados
[309] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/_45983792_007534196-1.jpg
[310] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3546/yemen-somalia-iran-drive-war-accelerates
[311] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/famine
[312] https://world.internationalism.org
[313] http://dailybail.com/home/bill-mahers-live-broadcast-interrupted-by-911-truthers-video.html
[314] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/108_machiavel.htm
[315] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/130_911_commission.htm
[316] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/136_911_4_years_on.htm
[317] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/911
[318] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1238/turkeys-5-point-strategy
[319] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1239/mavi-marmara-incident
[320] https://es.internationalism.org/
[321] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4576/workers-against-socialist-guayana-plan%20
[322] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/05/guayana
[323] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4575/bolivarian-socialism-leftist-version-wild-capitalism
[324] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/bourgeois-maneuvers-0
[325] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1232/science
[326] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1233/nuetrinos
[327] mailto:[email protected]
[328] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4568/occupy-wall-street-protests-capitalist-system-itself-enemy
[329] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4569/occupy-london-weight-illusions
[330] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1230/occupy-movement
[331] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1234/occupy-oakland
[332] https://en.internationalism.org/podcast/201109/4546/discussion-chris-knight-part-1
[333] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1235/anarchism
[334] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1236/anarchist-bookfair
[335] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/nov_30.pdf
[336] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/trade-unions
[337] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/november-30-strike
[338] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201111/4578/oakland-occupy-movement-seeks-links-working-class
[339] mailto:[email protected]
[340] mailto:[email protected]
[341] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/history-workers-movement
[342] https://kentcommunistgroup.blogspot.com/
[343] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201111/4593/indignados-spain-greece-and-israel
[344] mailto:[email protected]
[345] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/british-communist-left
[346] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/undefined
[347] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/conspiracy.jpg
[348] http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/26/newsid_4396000/4396893.stm
[349] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1231/occupy-london
[350] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1251/conspiracy-theories
[351] https://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/Zu_den_Auswirkungen_der_Reaktorkatastrophe_von_Fukushima_auf_den_Pazifik_und_die_Nahrungsketten.pdf
[352] https://news.ippnw.de/index.php?id=72
[353] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1255/manchester-anarchist-bookfair
[354] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/kurdistan
[355] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/china.jpg
[356] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/port_saidjpg_2.jpg
[357] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1256/football-violence
[358] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201112/4629/occupy-movement-response-capitalism-s-attacks-hampered-illusions-dem
[359] http://www.nycga.net/2012/03/15/proposal-to-end-spokes-and-the-ga
[360] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1268/occupy-seattle
[361] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/justice-for-trayvon-martin.jpg
[362] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1850/trayvon-martin
[363] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1851/george-zimmerman
[364] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1270/trayvon-martin-shooting
[365] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1849/george-zimmerman-trial
[366] http://www.birov.net
[367] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/balkans
[368] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/electricians.jpg
[369] https://libcom.org/article/attack-electricians-contracts-wobbles-balfour-beatty-folds
[370] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201110/4522/electricians-actions-hold-promise-class-unity
[371] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201111/4566/electricians-solidarity-across-industries-key
[372] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201112/4611/sparks-don-t-let-unions-block-struggle
[373] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201201/4654/illusions-unions-will-lead-defeat
[374] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/electricians-strikes
[375] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4703/mass-poverty-greece-it-s-what-awaits-us-all
[376] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4701/workers-take-control-kilkis-hospital-greece
[377] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1257/occupation-athens-law-school
[378] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kilkis.jpg
[379] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4699/order-liberate-ourselves-debt-we-must-destroy-economy
[380] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1258/workers-occupation-general-hospital-kilkis
[381] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/we-are-all-greeks1-300x148.jpg
[382] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1266/marxism
[383] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/rajpura-punjab2.jpg
[384] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/union-manouevres
[385] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/28_march.leaflet.pdf
[386] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[387] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1269/teachers-strike
[388] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/2011_movements_lft2.pdf
[389] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ciudadanos_indignados_organizadores_alian_barcelona_justicia_social.jpg
[390] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201203/4744/economic-crisis-not-never-ending-story
[391] http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132_2102373,00.html
[392] https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ch1.htm
[393] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/306/brazil-nulceus
[394] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/philippines-turkey
[395] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1277/occupy-movement-zurich
[396] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17261265
[397] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/260/iran
[398] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1244/nuclear-weapons
[399] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,822232,00.html
[400] http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/usarmee128.html
[401] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216015/More-British-soldiers-prison-serving-Afghanistan-shock-study-finds.html#ixzz1qEGoRWsa
[402] https://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/mind_zone_new_film_tracks_therapists
[403] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1276/mohamed-merah
[404] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1278/robert-bales
[405] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/massacres
[406] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement-indignants-spain-greece-and-israel-indignation-preparation.
[407] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201111/4593/movement-indignants-spain-greece-and-israel-indignation-preparation
[408] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3585/who-can-change-world-part-1-proletariat-revolutionary-class
[409] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3416/who-can-change-world-part-2-proletariat-still-revolutionary-class
[410] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition
[411] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/obsoleto.jpg
[412] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4766/statement-social-movements-2011
[413] mailto:[email protected]
[414] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/days-discussion
[415] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chinese_workes_on_strike.jpg
[416] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1287/oil-workers-strike-kazakhstan
[417] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1288/killing
[418] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/sarko.jpg
[419] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/attacks-workers
[420] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1289/french-presidential-election
[421] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/calb2312mali_coup_d___tat_jpg.jpg
[422] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1290/mali
[423] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/greekelections7.jpeg
[424] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mau_mau_round_up.jpg
[425] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200512/1558/short-history-british-torture
[426] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1294/british-empire
[427] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1293/michael-gove
[428] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/protestosab7847.jpeg
[429] http://www.pco.org.br/conoticias/ler_materia.php?mat=34993
[430] https://es.internationalism.org/revolucion-mundial/201111/3241/la-inseguridad-social-un-motivo-mas-para-luchar-contra-el-capitalismo
[431] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm
[432] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/brazil
[433] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/police-agents-state
[434] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1295/police-strikes
[435] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/shiningpath_tv.jpg
[436] https://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions
[437] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/rafaelcorrea_1392296c.jpg
[438] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1296/rafael-correa
[439] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1297/diamond-jubilee
[440] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1298/monarchy
[441] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1299/republicanism
[442] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/eurofall.jpg
[443] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1305/eu
[444] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/march/heine
[445] http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/marxism_and_art.html
[446] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel%27s_Castle
[447] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
[448] https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/decadence/ch3
[449] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm
[450] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1284/art-and-decadence
[451] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/gay_rights.jpg
[452] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/icc_logo.jpg
[453] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1300/world-revolution
[454] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/missiles_on_roof.jpg
[455] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/nationalism-sport
[456] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1301/olympic-games
[457] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/41zos3gybxl._aa160_.jpg
[458] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/347/ni-murdoch-scandal
[459] http://www.relativeautonomy.com
[460] https://www.medialens.org/
[461] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1302/stephen-harper
[462] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1303/david-edwards
[463] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1304/david-cromwell
[464] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Orientalist_studies_in_Islam
[465] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1309/islam
[466] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/quebec_students.jpg
[467] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/11/lyon-repression
[468] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/151/winnipeg-general-strike
[469] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1310/quebec
[470] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1311/il-jae-lee
[471] http://www.29mayisbirligi.com
[472] https://imza.la/
[473] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1312/turkish-airlines-strike
[474] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201205/4927/obamacare-political-chaos-bourgeoisie-austerity-working-class
[475] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/immigration
[476] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/health-care
[477] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cathedral.of_.the_.future.jpg
[478] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1313/undefined
[479] http://www.sosfemmes.com/violences/violences_chiffres.htm
[480] http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-women
[481] https://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm
[482] https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm
[483] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/kollontai
[484] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/rosa-luxemburg
[485] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1314/sylvia-pankhurst
[486] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/dada.lhooq_.lg_.jpg
[487] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201206/4977/notes-toward-history-art-ascendant-and-decadent-capitalism
[488] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/japan_protest.jpg
[489] https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/japon-un-seisme-mondial/article/201111/fukushima-occuper-tokyo-des-manifestations-de-ma
[490] https://www.slate.fr/story/37717/japon-antinucleaire
[491] https://www.ouest-france.fr/actu/actuDet_-Japon-manifestations-anti-nucleaires-monstres_3637-2097031_actu.Htm?xtor=RSS-4&utm_source=RSS_MVI_ouest-france
[492] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/112_japan.html
[493] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/114_japan.htm
[494] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1315/protests-japan
[495] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/brics.jpg
[496] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1316/brics
[497] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/austerity_in_spain.pdf
[498] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/firemen-participate-protest-government.jpg
[499] mailto:[email protected]
[500] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/marx-and-bible.jpg
[501] https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/MeetLive.htm
[502] https://libcom.org/forums/news/public-meeting-historical-need-communism-05062012
[503] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1317/international-communist-party
[504] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1318/public-meeting
[505] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chaos-in-syria.jpg
[506] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking
[507] https://libcom.org/article/syria-imperialism-and-left-1
[508] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/antep_workers_on_strike.jpg
[509] http://www.medya73.com/iscilerden-insanca-yasmak-istiyoruz-grevi-haberi-1017780.html
[510] http://www.agos.com.tr/gaziantepte-4-bin-tekstil-iscisi-grevde-2304.html
[511] http://www.soldefter.com/2012/08/20/antep-iscilerinin-grevi-sona-erdi-bir-adim-one
[512] https://libcom.org/article/unions-against-revolution-g-munis
[513] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/wildcat-strikes
[514] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1323/antep-textile-workers-strike
[515] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/turkish_airline_strike.jpg
[516] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/persecution_of_gypsies.jpg
[517] http://www.ldh-france.org
[518] http://www.lepoint.fr
[519] https://www.rfi.fr/fr/europe/20100826-europe-expulsions-roms-sont-monnaie-courante
[520] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1324/gypsies
[521] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/time_and_motion.jpg
[522] https://libcom.org/history/stopwatch-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-industrial-workers-world
[523] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1325/taylorism
[524] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/striking_chicago_teachers.pdf
[525] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chicago.jpg
[526] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1326/chicago
[527] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/libya.jpg
[528] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/no_to_austerity_-_portugal.jpg
[529] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1347647482-jamat-e-islami-protest-against-anti-islamic-movie-released-in-us_1447060.jpg
[530] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1327/innocence-muslims
[531] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/capitalism_has_no_future-leaflet.pdf
[532] mailto:[email protected]
[533] https://en.internationalism.org/contact
[534] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1328/tuc
[535] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8
[536] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/116_election.htm
[537] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201207/5061/recent-supreme-court-rulings-obamacare-and-arizona-anti-immigration-law-moment
[538] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/barack-obama
[539] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1263/mitt-romney
[540] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1262/us-elections-2012
[541] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/17/1185/us-presidential-elections-2012
[542] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1342/hurricane-sandy
[543] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201209/5162/solidarity-chicago-teachers
[544] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/obama
[545] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza-bombardment-israel
[546] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/32/decomposition
[547] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1358/sandy-hook-massacre
[548] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/128/historic-course
[549] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-future-of-war-is-looking-bleak-8344462.html
[550] https://fr.internationalism.org/ri438/resolution_sur_la_situation_en_france_du_20_e_congres_de_ri.html
[551] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm
[552] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/leftfootforward_analysis_of_benefits.jpg
[553] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/victorian_slum_housing.jpg
[554] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm
[555] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/index.htm
[556] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1361/housing
[557] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mali-bmp.jpg
[558] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa
[559] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_wind
[560] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/worsening_conditions_in_greek_hospitals.jpg
[561] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1359/crisis-greece
[562] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1876_football.jpg
[563] https://chrhc.revues.org/1592#tocto2nl
[564] https://books.google.fr/books
[565] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/1405/sport-capitalism
[566] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1406/socialism
[567] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1407/marxism
[568] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1411/party
[569] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1420/capitalism
[570] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1433/class
[571] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1447/bourgeoisie
[572] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1451/man
[573] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1452/labour
[574] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1479/france
[575] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1488/workers
[576] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1489/time
[577] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1625/olympic-games
[578] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1626/trade-union
[579] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1627/ancient-olympic-games
[580] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1628/sport
[581] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1629/sporting
[582] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1630/games
[583] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1631/football
[584] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1632/clubs
[585] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1633/spirit
[586] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1634/hachette-carre-histoire
[587] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1635/societe-et-culture
[588] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1636/example
[589] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1637/capitalist-industrymodern-sport
[590] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1638/capitalist-society
[591] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1639/sporting-activity
[592] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1640/club
[593] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1641/long-time-sport
[594] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1642/sporting-union
[595] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1643/sporting-activities
[596] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1644/sporting-federations
[597] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1645/popular-games
[598] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1646/discipline
[599] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1647/labour-power
[600] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1648/autonomous-class
[601] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1649/physical-activity
[602] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1650/ascendant-capitalist-societya
[603] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1651/ambient-nationalism
[604] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1652/ancient-greeks
[605] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1653/international-sporting-grouping
[606] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1654/way
[607] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1655/jules-ferry
[608] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1656/competition
[609] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1657/j-m-brohm
[610] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1658/military-force
[611] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1659/p-dietschy-sport
[612] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1660/practices
[613] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1661/socialist-sporting-union
[614] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1662/origines-du-sport
[615] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1663/factory
[616] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1664/usps-sporting-union
[617] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1665/socialist-athletic-sporting
[618] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1666/international-gymnastic-federation
[619] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1667/english-jockey-club
[620] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/263/culture
[621] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/jo_welcome.jpg
[622] http://www.un.org/fr/preventgenocide/rwanda/pascal/img_4.shtml
[623] http://www.amnestyinternational.be/doc/s-informer/notre-magazine-le-fil/liberties-archives/les-anciens-numeros/385-Numero-de-Juin-Juillet-Aout/Dossier,235/Les-stades-un
[624] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1678/stadium
[625] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1679/amahoro-stadium
[626] http://www.memorialdelashoah.org
[627] http://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2012/08/30/blanchiment-d-argent-l-autre-mercato_1751790_3242.html
[628] http://www.rue89.com
[629] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1409/world-war-i
[630] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1423/world
[631] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1429/marx
[632] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1482/war
[633] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1668/nationalism
[634] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1669/cold-war
[635] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1670/international-olympic-committee
[636] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1671/summer-olympic-games
[637] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1672/united-states
[638] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1673/china
[639] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1674/moscow
[640] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1675/nancy
[641] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1676/south-africa
[642] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1677/ioc
[643] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/daily_express_on_scroungers.jpg
[644] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201301/6242/greece-curing-economy-kills-sick
[645] https://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=21708&utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Health131212
[646] https://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=20505
[647] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201211/5287/workers-groups-experience-1980s
[648] https://libcom.org/history/picket-bulletin-wapping-printers-strike-1986-1987
[649] https://libcom.org/forums/history/anarchistscommunists-wapping-dispute-28042006
[650] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1680/strike-action
[651] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1681/picket
[652] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1682/strike
[653] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1683/unions
[654] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/bangladesh
[655] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1421/karl-marx
[656] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1422/bangladesh
[657] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1424/capital
[658] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1425/class-people
[659] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1426/conditions
[660] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1419/working-conditions
[661] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1561/india
[662] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1616/rape
[663] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1617/sexual-assault
[664] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1618/delhi
[665] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1619/central-government
[666] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1620/singapore
[667] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1621/congress
[668] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1622/women
[669] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1623/girl
[670] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1624/incidents
[671] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1615/oppression-women
[672] https://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/news-events/news/files/olive%20oil%20final%20071410%20.pdf
[673] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1478/paris
[674] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1547/egypt
[675] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1559/europe
[676] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1742/uk
[677] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1744/food
[678] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1752/olive-oil
[679] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1753/adulterant
[680] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1754/meat
[681] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1755/melamine
[682] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1756/horse-meat
[683] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1757/toxic-oil-syndrome
[684] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1758/industrial-revolution
[685] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1759/us-food-and-drug-administration
[686] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1760/minamata
[687] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1761/us
[688] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1762/phenylbutazone
[689] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1763/spain
[690] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1764/fukushima
[691] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1765/japan
[692] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1766/new-south-wales
[693] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1767/turkey
[694] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1768/australia
[695] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1769/nigeria
[696] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1770/greece
[697] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1771/ruling-class
[698] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/food-crisis
[699] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1724/catholic-church
[700] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1725/roman-catholic-church
[701] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1726/silvio-berlusconi
[702] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1727/bullying
[703] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1728/liberal-democrats
[704] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1729/pope-john-paul-ii
[705] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1730/swp
[706] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1731/cardinal-o-brien
[707] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1732/lord-rennard
[708] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1733/gerry-healy
[709] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1734/bbc
[710] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1735/sexual-abuse
[711] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1736/leading-figure
[712] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1723/sexual-abuse
[713] https://www.imeche.org/news/archives/13-01-10/New_report_as_much_as_2_billion_tonnes_of_all_food_produced_ends_up_as_waste.aspx
[714] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1446/social-class
[715] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1458/production
[716] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1464/human
[717] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1472/working-class
[718] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1737/poverty
[719] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1738/malnutrition
[720] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1739/plague
[721] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1740/supply-chain
[722] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1741/ime
[723] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1743/usa
[724] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1745/waste
[725] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1746/food-waste
[726] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1747/production-chain
[727] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1748/resources
[728] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1749/inefficient-storage-areas
[729] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1750/global-food-waste
[730] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1751/short-term-profit
[731] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1481/state
[732] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1490/great-depression
[733] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1491/unemployment
[734] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1492/gordon-brown
[735] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1493/macroeconomics
[736] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1494/business-cycle
[737] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1495/left-wing-politics
[738] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1496/economics
[739] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1497/seamus-milne
[740] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1498/depression
[741] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1499/britain
[742] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1500/labour-party
[743] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1501/milne
[744] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1502/real-wages
[745] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1503/economic-disaster
[746] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1504/public-investment
[747] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1505/living-standards
[748] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1506/aaa-credit-rating
[749] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1507/capitalist-social-relations
[750] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1508/involuntary-part-time-working
[751] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1509/open-financial-crash
[752] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1510/official-unemployment-figures
[753] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1511/public-investment-programme
[754] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1512/real-human-community
[755] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1513/official-political-spectrum
[756] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1514/policies
[757] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1515/labour-misrule
[758] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1516/labour-s-chances
[759] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1517/wage-labour
[760] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1518/out-and-out-depression
[761] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1519/economic-crisis
[762] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1520/austerity-programme
[763] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1521/sluggish-growth
[764] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1522/economic-policies
[765] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1523/economic-depression
[766] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1524/capitalist-class
[767] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1525/triple-dip-recession
[768] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1526/capitalist-phase
[769] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1527/economic-solutions
[770] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1528/credit-agency
[771] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1529/human-cost
[772] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1530/economic-growth
[773] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1531/ed-miliband
[774] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1532/human-civilisation
[775] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1533/economic-reform
[776] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1534/debt-burden
[777] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1535/poor-performance
[778] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1536/government
[779] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1537/gigantic-tumour
[780] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1538/government-s-response
[781] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1539/bankruptcy
[782] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1540/utter-worthlessness
[783] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1541/regular-commentators
[784] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1542/central-justification
[785] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1543/tory-libdem-medicine
[786] https://www.angelfire.com/un/tob-art/art-html/18c-ar10.html
[787] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm
[788] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1922/slavery
[789] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/1921/class-struggle-americas-beginnings
[790] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1772/slavery
[791] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1773/slavery-united-states
[792] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1774/north-america
[793] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1775/england
[794] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1776/slaves
[795] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1777/america
[796] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1778/black-slaves
[797] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1554/international-trade
[798] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1555/united-kingdom
[799] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1556/european-union
[800] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1557/british-empire
[801] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1558/william-pitt-younger
[802] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1563/trade
[803] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1569/david-cameron
[804] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201202/4690/drama-port-said-egypt-police-provocation-aimed-entire-population
[805] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/388/egypt
[806] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1450/proletariat
[807] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1546/middle-class
[808] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1548/tunisia
[809] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1549/repression
[810] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1550/demonstrations
[811] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1551/demonstrators
[812] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1552/anger
[813] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1553/strikes
[814] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1545/arab-spring
[815] https://libcom.org/tags/communication-workers-group
[816] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/344/brit-anarchy
[817] https://www.libcom.org/tags/communication-workers-group
[818] http://www.libcom.org/library/death-rank-filism
[819] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1438/article
[820] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1605/class-struggle
[821] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1684/cwg
[822] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1685/communication-workers-group
[823] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1686/group
[824] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1687/struggle
[825] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1688/wr
[826] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1689/union
[827] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1690/action-group
[828] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1691/groups
[829] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1692/struggle-groups
[830] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1693/icc
[831] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1694/health-workers
[832] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1695/communication-workers
[833] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1696/dam
[834] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1697/struggle-group
[835] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1698/struggles
[836] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1699/postal-worker
[837] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1700/members
[838] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1701/london
[839] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1702/direct-action-movement
[840] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1703/meeting
[841] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1704/post-office
[842] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1705/rank
[843] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1706/letter
[844] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1707/sector
[845] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1708/discussion
[846] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1709/file
[847] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1710/trade-unions
[848] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1711/workers-action-group
[849] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1712/postal-workers
[850] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1713/issue
[851] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1714/position
[852] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1715/health-workers-action
[853] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1716/articles
[854] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1717/meetings
[855] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1718/file-union-group
[856] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1719/workplace
[857] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1720/car-workers
[858] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1721/london-postal-worker
[859] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1722/number
[860] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1427/communism
[861] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1466/communist-society
[862] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1469/private-property
[863] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1470/engels
[864] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1564/marriage
[865] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1565/same-sex-marriage
[866] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1566/heterosexism
[867] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1567/catholics
[868] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1568/tory-party
[869] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1570/french-government
[870] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1571/gay-marriage
[871] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1572/family
[872] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1573/communist-manifesto
[873] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1574/sexual-freedom
[874] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1575/human-beings
[875] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1576/free-development
[876] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1577/various-homophobic-organisations
[877] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1578/class-societies
[878] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1579/present-gay-marriage
[879] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1580/decompositionthe-repulsive-demonstrations
[880] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1582/scandalously-radical-idea
[881] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1583/greater-sexual-freedom
[882] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1584/gay-peopleel-generico
[883] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1585/completely-developed-form
[884] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1586/thorough-historical-critique
[885] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1587/homophobic-bosses
[886] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1588/gay-marriage
[887] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1589/gay-priests
[888] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1590/homosexual-marriage
[889] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1591/sexual-discrimination
[890] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1592/monkish-garb
[891] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1593/anglican-church
[892] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1594/massive-crucifixes
[893] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1595/media-debates
[894] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1596/inhuman-normality
[895] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1597/fundamentalist-catholics
[896] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1598/bourgeois-family
[897] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1599/women-bishops
[898] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1600/homophobic-demonstrations
[899] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1601/main-troops
[900] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1602/forthcoming-adoption
[901] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1603/deep-divisions
[902] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1604/present-family
[903] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1606/capitalist-production
[904] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1607/mobilisations
[905] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1608/reactionary-nature
[906] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1609/magic-wand
[907] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1610/collective-delirium
[908] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1611/work-engels
[909] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1612/ordinary-courtesan
[910] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1613/human-rights
[911] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1614/financial-advantages
[912] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/2012/5305/november/international-review-special-issue-imperialism-far-east-past-
[913] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/89/dragons
[914] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/armourinboston.jpg
[915] https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/19/us/marathon-suspects-uncle/index.html
[916] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm
[917] https://www.parjustlisted.com/archives/10675
[918] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/19/relatives-marathon-bombing-suspects-worried-that-older-brother-was-corrupting-sweet-younger-sibling/UCYHkiP9nfsjAtMjJPWJJL/story.html
[919] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1796/tamerlan-tsarneaev
[920] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1797/dzhokhar-tsarneaev
[921] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1798/adam-lanza
[922] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1799/james-holmes
[923] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1800/jared-lee-loughner
[924] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1795/boston-bombing
[925] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201211/5284/why-it-so-difficult-struggle-and-how-can-we-overcome-these-difficulties
[926] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/5293/why-it-so-difficult-struggle-and-how-can-we-overcome-these-difficulties
[927] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/spratley_isles.jpg
[928] https://en.internationalism.org/internasyonalismo/201204/4852/spratly-conflict-workers-philippines-and-china-unite
[929] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201208/5087/demonstrations-japan-indignation-spreading
[930] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1834/senkaku
[931] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1835/diaoyu
[932] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/pkk.jpg
[933] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.fekar.ch/
[934] https://www.solidariteit.nl/extra/2012/een_blik_in_de_toekomst.html
[935] https://www.vrijebond.nl/internationale-anarchistische-bijeenkomst-st-imier-2012-enkele-verslagen/
[936] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.lenziran.com/2011/08/pkk-leader-murat-karayilan-exclusive-interview-with-bbc-persian-tv/
[937] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10707935
[938] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=dtk-declares-democratic-sovereignty-2011-07-15
[939] http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=79FFF831021BD567AFCFC2161AAFE553?newsId=269867
[940] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.urmiyenews.com/2011/01/blog-post_03.html
[941] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://nos.nl/artikel/447331-pkk-rekruteert-ook-in-nederland.html
[942] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DlgMkrtDV9Kg
[943] http://www.fekar.ch/index.php/en/english/88-abdullah-ocalans-three-phases-road-map
[944] http://www.pkkonline.com/en/index.php?sys=article&artID=60
[945] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://ejbron.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/koerden-starten-groot-offensief-in-syrie-en-turkije/
[946] https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/vrijheid-verdeelt-syrische-koerden~bf288791/
[947] https://blogs.mediapart.fr/maxime-azadi/blog/190712/syrie-les-kurdes-ont-pris-le-controle-d-une-ville
[948] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline
[949] https://vejin.wordpress.com/mehmet-cahit-sener-2/
[950] https://www.onergurcan.org/Mete%20Dural%20Kitapligi/METE/aponun%20ayetleri.htm
[951] https://www.awazaciya.com/kitap/toplumsalcinsiyetciliginozgurlestirilmesi/index.htm
[952] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/22/national-question
[953] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/135/internationalism
[954] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1793/kurdish-nationalism
[955] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/5239/maturation-consciousness-lets-discuss
[956] https://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-mahalla-soviet.html
[957] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1786/mahalla
[958] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1787/poland
[959] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1788/al-mahalla-al-kubra
[960] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1789/wisconsin
[961] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1790/consciousness
[962] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1791/subterranean-maturation
[963] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1792/class-consciousness
[964] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/german-and-dutch-left
[965] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/italian-left
[966] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1794/margaret-thatcher
[967] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/icc.gif
[968] http://www.libcom.org
[969] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21316768
[970] https://www.libcom.org/aufheben
[971] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/168_polemic_with_aufheben
[972] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201206/4981/decadence-capitalism-part-xiii-rejection-and-regressions
[973] https://www.tapaidiatisgalarias.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OPEN_LETTER.pdf
[974] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2011/07/notes-on-popular-assemblies-greece
[975] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/greece
[976] https://www.libcom.org/library/response-tptg
[977] https://www.tapaidiatisgalarias.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OPEN_LETTER_2.pdf
[978] https://libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/why-article-has-been-removed-07102011
[979] http://www.red-marx.com/aufhebengate-t1076.html
[980] https://libcom.org/forums/general/aufhebens-crowd-controlling-cop-consultant-strange-case-dr-who-mr-bowdler-1610201
[981] https://libcom.org/forums/general/aufhebens-crowd-controlling-cop-consultant-strange-case-dr-who-mr-bowdler-1610201?page=2
[982] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200412/678/revolutionary-organisations-struggle-against-provocation-and-slander
[983] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/jury_of_honour_01
[984] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chavez_jesus.jpg
[985] https://es.internationalism.org/node/3417
[986] https://vprimero.blogspot.com/2011/05/826-de-la-poblacion-ocupada-tiene-un.html
[987] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1801/death-chavez
[988] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/wr360-cyprus-banking-protests.jpg
[989] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1808/division-cyprus
[990] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1807/makarios
[991] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1806/euro-crisis
[992] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1821/woolwich-terror-attack
[993] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/wr360-bangladeshgarmentworkers.jpg
[994] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201302/6431/workers-burn-death-bangladesh
[995] https://libcom.org/news/house-cards-savar-building-collapse-26042013
[996] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1809/bangladesh-factory-disaster
[997] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1810/rana-plaza
[998] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1811/waco-fertiliser-explosion
[999] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/brazildemo.jpg
[1000] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1823/geraldo-alckmin
[1001] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1824/dilma-roussef
[1002] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1825/sepp-blatter
[1003] https://www.tuhaftemaslar.com/sut/
[1004] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1831/mehmet-ayvalitas
[1005] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1832/ethem-sarisuluk
[1006] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1833/abdullah-comert
[1007] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1826/taksim-square
[1008] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1827/chapullers-movement
[1009] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1828/gezi-park
[1010] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1829/istanbul
[1011] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1830/ankara
[1012] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/113_pianist.html
[1013] https://www.radiofrance.fr/emission-la-fabrique-de-l-histoire-histoire-des-grands-proces-24-2013-05-07
[1014] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fwQv5h7Lq8
[1015] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1839/eichmann-trial
[1016] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1841/hannah-arendt-and-banality-evil
[1017] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/360/fascism
[1018] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1836/hannah-arendt
[1019] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1837/heinrich-bluecher
[1020] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1838/adolf-eichmann
[1021] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201102/4201/methods-infiltration-democratic-state
[1022] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/7391/come-day-discussion
[1023] https://disillusionedmarxist.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/icc-meeting-on-why-is-it-so-hard-to-struggle-against-capitalism/
[1024] https://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/index.htm
[1025] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm
[1026] https://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm
[1027] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1854/day-discussion
[1028] https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/16/egypt-worst-economic-crisis-1930s
[1029] https://www.libcom.org/forums/news/we-can-smell-tear-gas-rio-taksim-tahrir-29062013
[1030] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/labour-party
[1031] https://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS036&txtstr=private%20sector
[1032] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1853/nelson-mandela
[1033] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/157/wikileaks
[1034] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1855/edward-snowden
[1035] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1852/nsa
[1036] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/359/democracy
[1037] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/200412/1019/floundering-american-imperialist-hegemony
[1038] https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2009/06/04/blood-and-treasure
[1039] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm
[1040] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
[1041] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm
[1042] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/268/pre-capitalist-societies
[1043] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201307/8946/egypt-highlights-alternative-socialism-or-barbarism
[1044] https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/79967/Business/Economy/Egypts-Mahalla-textile-workers-onstrike-again.aspx
[1045] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_islam.html
[1046] https://www.theoryandpractice.org.uk
[1047] https://revolutionarytotalitarians.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/john-crumps-critique-of-the-spgb/
[1048] https://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/polemic%20john%20crump.shtml
[1049] http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/ascendancedecadence-capitalism
[1050] http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/icc-way-and-our-way
[1051] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/197504/188/problems-period-transition-april-1975
[1052] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/spgb
[1053] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1862/adam-buick
[1054] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1863/john-crump
[1055] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/luddites.jpg
[1056] https://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/frankenstein/preface.htm
[1057] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1861/mary-shelley-frankenstein
[1058] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/poverty
[1059] http://gondolkodo.mypressonline.com
[1060] mailto:[email protected]
[1061] https://www.facebook.com/gondolkodo.antikvarium
[1062] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/12/hungary-public-meeting
[1063] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/correspondance-other-groups
[1064] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201309/9114/syria-vote-impasse-british-imperialism
[1065] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/265_terror1920.htm
[1066] https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/sep/01/winston-churchill-shocking-use-chemical-weapons
[1067] https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p501b_Weber.html
[1068] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/recovery_ha_ha.jpg
[1069] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cartoon_surveillance.jpg
[1070] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201401/9418/spying-game-part-2
[1071] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/252_slander.htm
[1072] https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1926/repression/
[1073] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/brazil_2013.jpg
[1074] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/146/editorial-protests-in-spain
[1075] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8281/brazil-police-repression-provokes-anger-youth
[1076] https://passapalavra.info/2013/06/79588/
[1077] http://www.sul21.com.br/jornal/2013/06/bloco-de-luta-pelo-transporte-100-publico-divulga-nota-com-reivindicacoes-em-porto-alegre
[1078] https://passapalavra.info/2013/06/79539/
[1079] https://passapalavra.info/2013/06/79419/
[1080] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/strikes-brazil
[1081] https://www.theworkfoundation.com
[1082] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/westgate.jpg
[1083] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/falsification.png
[1084] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/equal_sacrifics.jpg
[1085] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/usgovernmentshutdown550x355.jpg
[1086] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-08/shutdown-costs-at-1-6-billion-with-160-million-each-day.html
[1087] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201108/4459/us-debt-ceiling-crisis-political-wrangling-while-global-economy-burns
[1088] https://en.internationalism.org/content/4927/obamacare-political-chaos-bourgeoisie-austerity-working-class
[1089] https://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/tea_party_radicalism_is_misunderstood_meet_the_newest_right/
[1090] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/tea-party
[1091] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/us-debt-crisis
[1092] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/obese-junk.jpg
[1093] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201401/9415/junk-food-famine-system-poisons-and-starves-part-2
[1094] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/germany
[1095] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200807/2535/oil-tanker-drivers-strike-solidarity-fuels-struggle
[1096] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1870/grangemouth
[1097] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1813/golden-dawn
[1098] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1871/lampuseda
[1099] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/02/daily-mail-ralph-miliband-marxists-patriots
[1100] https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1970/xx/staterev.htm
[1101] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1872/ralph-milliband
[1102] http://www.gov.uk
[1103] https://www.gov.uk/industrial-action-strikes/your-employment-rights-during-industrial-action
[1104] https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/cpestatements.htm
[1105] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1874/aravindan-balakrishnan
[1106] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1873/slavery
[1107] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201307/8954/day-discussion-impressions-participant
[1108] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm#p144
[1109] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/discussion_day_morning_session.mp3
[1110] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nicaragua_pensioners.jpg
[1111] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kiel_mutiny.jpg
[1112] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2532930/MICHAEL-GOVE-Why-does-Left-insist-belittling-true-British-heroes.html
[1113] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/04/first-world-war-michael-gove-left-bashing-history
[1114] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/blackadder-michael-gove-historians-first-world-war
[1115] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/08/first-world-war-imperial-bloodbath-warning-noble-cause
[1116] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-i
[1117] https://www.labornotes.org/2013/11/walmart-workers-plan-raucous-black-friday
[1118] https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/05/food-chain-workers-double-team-wendy%E2%80%99s?language=en
[1119] https://www.labornotes.org/2013/06/fast-food-strikes-whats-cooking?language=en
[1120] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fast-food-workers-striking-seattle/
[1121] https://www.workingwa.org/about
[1122] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1875/wal-mart
[1123] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1876/fast-food-workers
[1124] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1877/burger-king
[1125] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1878/mcdonalds
[1126] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/06/cabinet-split-george-osborne-welfare-cuts
[1127] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/george-osborne-talks-tough-acts-labour-chancellor
[1128] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/06/george-osborne-engineering-role-state
[1129] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/coke_and_sugar.jpg
[1130] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201311/9238/junk-food-famine-part-1-system-poisons-and-starves
[1131] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_world_food_price_crisis
[1132] https://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/reports/Global_Food_Report.pdf?sfvrsn=0
[1133] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/grunwick-008.jpg
[1134] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/violence_in_car.jpg
[1135] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/274_france_rwanda.htm
[1136] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201309/9118/spying-game-part-1
[1137] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/133_ukraine.htm
[1138] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/126_authoritarian_democracy
[1139] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1951/russia
[1140] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1952/ukraine
[1141] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20120413a.htm
[1142] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/madrid.jpg
[1143] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201304/3714/para-defendernos-contra-los-despidos-y-los-recortes-hay-que-superar-los-metod
[1144] http://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticas/node/26904
[1145] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201311/3953/lo-que-esta-en-juego-con-el-cierre-de-canal-9
[1146] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/regulators_fired_upon.jpg
[1147] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201304/7537/boston-bombing-terrorism-serves-state
[1148] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201307/8973/nsa-spying-scandal-democratic-state-shows-its-teeth
[1149] https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/fed/federa10.htm
[1150] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States
[1151] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1925/american-revolution
[1152] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1926/fort-wilson-riot
[1153] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1927/shays-rebellion
[1154] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1923/samuel-adams
[1155] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1924/thomas-paine
[1156] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/310/rail-interventions
[1157] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200412/315/only-one-other-world-possible-communism
[1158] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1964/attac
[1159] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/yue_yuen_strike.jpg
[1160] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1486399/yue-yuen-strikers-vow-continue-until-benefit-contribution-deficit-paid
[1161] https://news.sky.com/story/1247152/strike-trips-up-largest-sport-shoe-factory
[1162] https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/solution-sight-china-shoe-factory-strike-23418882
[1163] https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/07/china-labour-walmart-idUSL3N0MY05M20140407
[1164] https://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/public-outcry-grows-over-shenzhen-labour-activist%E2%80%99s-five-month-detention
[1165] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/student-protests-venezuela;
[1166] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/apr/students-may-2007
[1167] https://www.warchild.org.uk/what-we-do/democratic-republic-of-congo
[1168] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201401/9413/mali-central-african-republic-behind-democratic-alibi-imperialist-war
[1169] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/144/pakistan
[1170] https://www.theguardian.com/comment/story/0,3604,376455,00.html
[1171] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200904/2850/scargill-s-memoirs-1984-85-strike-hiding-num-s-role-sabotaging-struggle
[1172] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/icconline/october/miners
[1173] https://www.google.co.uk/#q=we+caused+a+lot+of+havoc
[1174] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/miners-strike-1984
[1175] https://proletariatuniversel.blogspot.fr/
[1176] https://en.internationalism.org/262_infraction.htm
[1177] https://en.internationalism.org/267_snitches.htm
[1178] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2006_ficci
[1179] https://tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=655
[1180] https://tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=2058
[1181] https://tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=7197
[1182] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internal-fraction-icc
[1183] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/michelle-nigeria-twitter.jpg
[1184] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1977/kidnapping-schoolgirls
[1185] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1978/boko-haram
[1186] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/turquie.jpg
[1187] https://www.france24.com/fr/20140514-turquie-explosion-mine-charbon-morts-prisonniers-accident-erdogan
[1188] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1979/soma-mine-disaster
[1189] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[1190] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1981/european-elections-2014
[1191] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/miners-russia-rally-donetsk
[1192] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201403/9565/internationalist-declaration-russia
[1193] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/isis.jpg
[1194] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3204
[1195] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/vorvarts.jpg
[1196] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1914_patriot_demos.jpg
[1197] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/bombing_gaza.jpg
[1198] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ferguson.jpg
[1199] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/jamal/10234/ferguson-riots-fire-masters-house-lit
[1200] https://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left
[1201] https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jun/19/jeanine-pirro/foxs-pirro-
[1202] https://guardianlv.com/2014/06/isis-trained-by-us-government/
[1203] https://warisacrime.org/node/22644
[1204] https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/991/bordiga-and-the-fate-of-bordigism/
[1205] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/197701/9333/ambiguities-internationalist-communist-party-over-partisans-italy-19
[1206] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/john_ball_at_the_head_of_the_peasants_revolt.jpg
[1207] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/john-ball
[1208] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_362.pdf
[1209] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/gamonal.jpg
[1210] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201310/9197/indignation-heart-proletarian-dynamic
[1211] https://diariodevurgos.com/dvwps/
[1212] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201310/9219/20th-icc-congress-resolution-international-situation
[1213] https://www.elconfidencial.com/alma-corazon-vida/2014-01-19/de-los-ere-al-gamonal-los-nuevos-conflictos-y-el-cabreo-de-la-gente-comun_68995/
[1214] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201312/3961/la-fuerza-de-la-lucha-es-la-solidaridad-de-clase
[1215] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ukraine_bombardments.jpg
[1216] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201406/9958/ukraine-slides-towards-military-barbarism
[1217] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/guerre-de-classe/9820/ukraine-battlefield-imperialist-powers
[1218] https://www.autistici.org/tridnivalka/neither-ukrainian-nor-russian/
[1219] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWi0Daf228M
[1220] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2004/ebola-outbreak
[1221] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/hongkong.jpg
[1222] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2009/hong-kong-democracy-protests
[1223] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2010/mong-kok
[1224] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/12/reunion-publique-hongrie
[1225] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/china-march-1927
[1226] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/231_ira.htm
[1227] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ukraine-war.jpg
[1228] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/59/iraq
[1229] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2011/kobane-siege
[1230] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cnt_rojava_demo.jpg
[1231] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/120_cgt.html
[1232] https://en.internationalism.org/series/271
[1233] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/2008/132/spain_1934;
[1234] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/spain_cnt_1936;
[1235] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201409/10367/war-spain-exposes-anarchism-s-fatal-flaws
[1236] https://libcom.org/news/about-declaration-awu-confrontation-ukraine-23062014;
[1237] https://libcom.org/news/when-patriotic-anarchists-tell-verity-02072014;
[1238] https://libcom.org/forums/news/ukrainian-crisis-left-necessary-clarification-28092014
[1239] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201304/7373/internationalism-only-response-kurdish-issue
[1240] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis
[1241] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-10-30/in-rojava-people%E2%80%99s-war-is-not-class-war
[1242] https://www.libcom.org/forums/news/isis-17062014
[1243] https://libcom.org/blog/bloodbath-syria-class-war-or-ethnic-war-03112014
[1244] https://www.libcom.org/news/anarchist-federation-statement-rojava-december-2014-02122014
[1245] https://en.internationalism.org/first-world-war-i
[1246] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/presentation_spd_betrayal_1914.mp3
[1247] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/left_racism.jpg
[1248] https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/3448
[1249] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/220px-willie_gallacher_1.jpg
[1250] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kirchoff.jpg
[1251] https://www.libcom.org/forums/history/us-bordigists-19092014
[1252] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/197707/2552/texts-mexican-left-1937-38;
[1253] https://en.internationalism.org/node/2739
[1254] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/131/religion
[1255] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[1256] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2016/cabu
[1257] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2017/wolinski
[1258] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2018/charb
[1259] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2019/tignous
[1260] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2015/paris-killings
[1261] https://en.internationalism.org/file/5293
[1262] https://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/28e.htm
[1263] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/2014/christmas-truce
[1264] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/mise_en_garde_du_docteur_bourrinet_au_cci_1992.pdf
[1265] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/paiement_la_gauche_communiste_germano-hollandaise.jpg
[1266] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/paiement_courant_bordiguiste.jpg
[1267] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/the_bordigist_current_vente.jpg
[1268] http://www.left-dis.nl/f/
[1269] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/lettre_de_societe_des_gens_de_lettres_a_des_militants_du_cci_noms_effaces.jpg
[1270] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/notice_bio_de_marc_chirik.pdf
[1271] http://www.elaph.com
[1272] http://www.metransparent.com
[1273] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201411/9150/editions-smolny-participent-a-recuperation-democratique-rosa-l
[1274] https://en.internationalism.org/series/1998
[1275] http://left-dis.nl/f/livre.htm
[1276] http://www.left-dis.nl/f/puntofinal91.pdf
[1277] https://www.leftcommunism.org/spip.php?article368
[1278] https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/letter-korsch.htm
[1279] https://en.internationalism.org/content/9742/communique-our-readers-icc-under-attack-new-agency-bourgeois-state
[1280] https://fr.internationalism.org/node/715
[1281] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2021/philippe-bourrinet
[1282] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/protest_against_massacres_of_students_in_mexico.jpg
[1283] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201409/10330/news-our-death-greatly-exaggerated
[1284] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_functioning
[1285] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/growing_militarism.jpg
[1286] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/pankhurst_against_the_war.jpg
[1287] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/60/collapse_eastern_bloc
[1288] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions
[1289] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/syriza.jpg
[1290] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2037/alexis-tsipras
[1291] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2038/syriza
[1292] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2039/golden-dawn
[1293] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2040/podemos
[1294] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2036/greek-elections
[1295] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/russia-ukraine.jpg
[1296] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Pristina_airport
[1297] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/russia-georgia
[1298] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-04-16/response-to-a-vile-slander
[1299] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/16/2041/icc-statements
[1300] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/battaglia-comunista
[1301] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1945_purges_of_collaborators.jpg
[1302] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/migrants_at_sea.jpg
[1303] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/official_postage_stamp_luxemburg_and_liebknecht.jpg
[1304] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201409/9133/jean-jaures-et-mouvement-ouvrier
[1305] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/201409/9138/falsification-lhistoire-programmes-scolaires
[1306] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/d110chrtst.jpg
[1307] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201403/9573/1914-labour-and-unions-mobilise-workers-war
[1308] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/301_hwmb-01
[1309] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/304/chartism-1848
[1310] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/305/hwmb-03
[1311] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/sept/belfast-1907
[1312] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201102/4209/mass-strikes-britain-great-labour-unrest-1910-1914
[1313] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201412/11628/first-shop-stewards-movement-proletarian-response-trade-unionist-obstacle
[1314] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/267_rev_against_war_01.html
[1315] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/271_rev_against_war_04.html
[1316] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/345/brit-anarchy
[1317] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/hiroshima.jpg
[1318] https://uk.businessinsider.com/china-developed-multiple-warhead-missiles-2015-5?r=US&IR=T
[1319] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/2049/hiroshima
[1320] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/22/poor-families-hit-unfairly-welfare-cuts-institute-economic-affairs
[1321] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/greecebailoutprotestsjune292015.jpg
[1322] https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41be9e38-e521-11e4-bb4b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3epzhkdtH
[1323] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2f7f42e8-e2b2-11e4-aa1d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3epzhkdtH
[1324] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2868911/Best-paid-UK-jobs-2014-Compare-pay-national-average.html
[1325] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/tsipras_and_merkel.jpg
[1326] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamo%C5%9B%C4%87
[1327] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_zimmerwald.html
[1328] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3154
[1329] https://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/once_again_abu_dhar1.php#sthash.9xmYwI2A.dpuf
[1330] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/erdogan.jpg
[1331] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/tough-dilemma-southern-syria
[1332] https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/7/2/kurds-lead-campaign-to-displace-arabs-in-tal-abyad
[1333] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201412/11625/anarchism-and-imperialist-war-nationalism-or-internationalism
[1334] https://libcom.org/forums/middle-east/turkey-news-27072015
[1335] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/leaders.jpg
[1336] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/max_raphael.jpg
[1337] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201603/13879/max-raphael-and-marxist-perspective-art-part-2
[1338] https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Demands_of_Art.html?id=VjQ-AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y[5]
[1339] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1856/max-raphael
[1340] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/razor_wire_fence.jpg
[1341] http://www.dandurand.uqam.ca/evenements/evenements-passes/440-fences-and-walls-in-international-relations.htm;
[1342] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/06/the-migrant-crisis-could-cost-billions-but-border.aspx
[1343] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/tianjin_in_flames.jpg
[1344] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/movistar.jpg
[1345] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201409/10310/lessons-spanish-assemblies
[1346] https://en.internationalism.org
[1347] https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9cdc551a-521f-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html#axzz3nMJiyKp5
[1348] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-34362565
[1349] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/european-union
[1350] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/zimmerwald2.gif
[1351] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201508/13349/icc-public-meeting-world-wars-capitalism-s-decline-and-internationalist-respo
[1352] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201508/13354/zimmerwald-and-centrist-currents-political-organisations-proletari
[1353] https://libcom.org/article/my-experience-icc-devrim-valerian
[1354] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201509/13409/bunkerisation-world-capitalism
[1355] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201601/13766/migrants-and-refugees-victims-capitalist-decline-part-2-depth-counter-revolut
[1356] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/icc-position-decadence-bourgeoisie-developing-nations-01062015
[1357] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/link/13200/issues-decadence-theory;
[1358] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/pierre/13423/how-does-century-decadence-explain
[1359] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/118_decadence_i.html
[1360] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
[1361] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm.
[1362] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/134/what-method-to-understand-decadence
[1363] https://en.internationalism.org/ri/054_decadence_part04.html
[1364] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/china/part-1
[1365] https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-gdp-growth-is-slowest-in-24-years-1421719453
[1366] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/15/decadence-capitalism
[1367] https://en.internationalism.org/node/2659
[1368] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201409/10368/nature-and-function-proletarian-party
[1369] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/28/revolutionary-organisation
[1370] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2062/tampa-communist-league
[1371] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students
[1372] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3336
[1373] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2063/terror-attacks-paris
[1374] https://palebluejadal.tumblr.com/post/114780772253/on-our-departure-from-the-international-communist
[1375] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/121_ibrp
[1376] https://palebluejadal.tumblr.com/post/124829023413/on-functioning-and-communication
[1377] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201212/5390/formation-partito-comunista-internazionalista
[1378] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201211/5366/italian-fraction-and-french-communist-left
[1379] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/culture-of-debate
[1380] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4739/reading-notes-science-and-marxism
[1381] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/marxism-and-ethics]
[1382] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2064/pale-blue-jadal
[1383] https://en.internationalism.org/video/201510/13455/world-war-ii-alibi-democratic-terror
[1384] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13443/icc-public-meeting-1915-1945-development-internationalist-opposition-imperial
[1385] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/307/hands-off-sylvia
[1386] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Pankhurst-politics-political-activism/dp/1857283457
[1387] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barbara-Winslow/e/B001HPC2MQ
[1388] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Pankhurst-Life-Radical-Politics/dp/0745315186
[1389] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Davis/e/B001KH89PK
[1390] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Pankhurst-Loves-Romantic-Rebel/dp/1854109057
[1391] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Pankhurst-Suffragette-Shirley-Harrison/dp/1780950187
[1392] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvia-Pankhurst-Suffragette-Socialist-Revolutionary/dp/0745333222
[1393] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-military-allegedly-helping-saudi-arabia-target-locations-in-yemen-a6801616.html
[1394] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/morris_sinks.jpg
[1395] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/12/beware-great-2016-financial-crisis-warns-city-pessimist
[1396] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/floods_in_york.jpg
[1397] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-flooding-how-a-yorkshire-flood-blackspot-worked-with-nature-to-stay-dry-a6794286.html
[1398] https://www.adb.org/publications/global-increase-climate-related-disasters
[1399] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud
[1400] https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/british-columbias-carbon-tax-and-leakage-into-the-u-s/
[1401] https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/03/12/BCs-Carbon-Tax-Shift/
[1402] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/069_natlib_03.html
[1403] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/118_mideast_iii.html
[1404] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nazi_round_up.jpg
[1405] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13477/migrants-and-refugees-victims-capitalist-decline
[1406] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201606/13972/migrants-and-refugees-victims-capitalist-decline-part-3-cold-war
[1407] https://www.stopwar.org.uk/
[1408] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/karl_liebknecht_speaks_at_the_potsdamer_platz_photo.jpg
[1409] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201601/13764/british-bombs-will-increase-chaos-middle-east
[1410] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201601/13763/middle-east-historical-obsolescence-nation-state
[1411] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/133/germany_1919
[1412] https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1944/anthropogenesis.htm
[1413] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/marxism-and-ethics
[1414] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/flint_water.jpg
[1415] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/james-connolly.jpg
[1416] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/2065/easter-rising
[1417] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201509/13379/max-raphael-and-marxist-perspective-art-part-1#_ftn5
[1418] https://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pub_lewisthesisfull.pdf
[1419] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Vico
[1420] https://es.internationalism.org/ccionline/201406/4033/podemos-un-poder-del-estado-capitalista
[1421] https://es.internationalism.org/booktree/539
[1422] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200001/9646/1921-proletariat-and-transitional-state
[1423] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/false_choices.jpg
[1424] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3131
[1425] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm
[1426] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13786/report-role-icc-fraction
[1427] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/110/party-and-fraction
[1428] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/brussels_bombs.jpg
[1429] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nhsprotest.jpg
[1430] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13787/report-class-struggle
[1431] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mann_livingstone.jpg
[1432] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200504/1204/churchill-counter-revolutionary-intelligence-british-bourgeoisie
[1433] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nuit_debout.articleimage.jpg
[1434] https://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/04/03/nuit-debout-le-camp-des-possibles_1443749
[1435] https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/04/13/debout-ranimons-l-imaginaire-citoyen_1445937
[1436] https://www.convergence-des-luttes.org/communiques-de-presse/communique-31-mars-2016/
[1437] https://www.nuitdebout.fr/#header
[1438] https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/03/LORDON/54925
[1439] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students
[1440] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201605/9374/merci-patron-denaturation-ce-qu-lutte-classe
[1441] http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/02/24/qui-est-francois-ruffin-le-realisateur-de-merci-patron_1435301
[1442] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/abattoirs.jpg
[1443] https://fr.internationalism.org/
[1444] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/harrowing-undercover-footage-butchers-abattoir-5124981
[1445] https://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/slaughter/ALL///
[1446] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/iran_saudi_gloves.jpg
[1447] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/post_war_refugees.jpg
[1448] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201701/14230/migrants-and-refugees-victims-capitalist-decline-part-4-collapse-berlin-wall-
[1449] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3865
[1450] http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/historyteaching/Source/Projects/DocumentsTwentyCentury/Population_fr.pdf
[1451] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/duterte-poll.jpg
[1452] https://fil.internationalism.org/internasyonalismo/201509/8638/boykot-eleksyon1-marxistang-paninindigan-sa-panahon-ng-dekadenteng-kap
[1453] https://www.rappler.com/nation/elections/132850-duterte-8-point-economic-agenda/
[1454] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/racist_demo.jpg
[1455] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/casseurs.jpg
[1456] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cgt_blockade.jpg
[1457] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13953/what-real-nature-nuit-debout-movement
[1458] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201607/14011/growing-difficulties-bourgeoisie-and-working-class
[1459] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/16/2047/readers-contributions
[1460] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nice-terror-640x360.jpg
[1461] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201511/13672/paris-down-terrorism-down-war-down-capitalism
[1462] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html
[1463] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201511/13672/paris-down-terrorism-down-war-down-capitalism#sdfootnote11sym
[1464] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/french_police_burkini.jpg
[1465] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/21_world_turkey_2016-07-16_573.jpg
[1466] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8371/turkey-cure-state-terror-isnt-democracy
[1467] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/woman-and-child-in-kobani-syria.jpg.size_.custom.crop_.1086x720.jpg
[1468] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/03/russia-media-coverage-syria-war-selective-defensive-kremlin
[1469] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/yemen-famine-feared-as-starving-children-fight-for-lives-in-hospital
[1470] https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_syrian_civilians_loc/?slideshow
[1471] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14086/question-populism
[1472] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13931/labour-left-and-jewish-problem
[1473] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/che_corbyn.jpg
[1474] https://libcom.org/article/deliveroo-drivers-wildcat-strike
[1475] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/link/14012/40-years-after-foundation-icc
[1476] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/14013/icc-fraction-ir-156
[1477] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/033/concept-of-brilliant-leader
[1478] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/anton_pannekoek_in_the_1920s.jpg
[1479] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13503/communist-league-tampa-and-question-party;
[1480] https://communistleaguetampa.org/2016/01/11/debate-on-the-world-party-a-response-to-the-icc/
[1481] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201604/13893/once-again-party-and-its-relation-class
[1482] https://communistleaguetampa.org/?s=communist+electoral+strategy&submit=Search.
[1483] https://libcom.org/forums/organise/communist-electoral-strategy-22082016
[1484] https://workersoffensivegroup.wordpress.com/points-of-unity/;
[1485] https://workersoffensivegroup.wordpress.com/category/official-statements/
[1486] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/199701/1619/revolutionary-perspective-obscured-parliamentary-illusions
[1487] https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/tactics/index.htm
[1488] https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm
[1489] https://red-party.com/
[1490] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/20/parliamentary-sham
[1491] https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/2842
[1492] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Charles_Darwin
[1493] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm#S5
[1494] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/
[1495] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/immigration
[1496] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/33/alienation
[1497] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/douche_and_turd.jpg
[1498] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/201004/3736/tea-party-capitalist-ideology-decomposition
[1499] https://lbo-news.com/
[1500] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/09/jeb-bush-jokes-of-trump-clinton-conspiracy-theory-heres-a-look-at-the-evidence/
[1501] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/hilary-clinton
[1502] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2075/donald-trump
[1503] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/2081/us-presidential-elections-2016
[1504] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201401/9404/capitalist-astro-turfing-finds-its-way-unions
[1505] https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/unions.htm
[1506] https://www.leftcom.org/en/about-us
[1507] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/1997-06-01/communist-work-and-the-trades-unions-today
[1508] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13467/once-more-decadence-some-questions-deniers
[1509] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/mhou/14054/trade-union-question
[1510] https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/doc02.htm
[1511] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/19/union-question
[1512] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/trumpenstein-color.jpg
[1513] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14087/brexit-trump-setbacks-ruling-class-nothing-good-proletariat
[1514] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14149/trump-v-clinton-nothing-bad-choices-bourgeoisie-and-proletariat
[1515] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/9/13573904/voter-turnout-2016-donald-trump
[1516] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/101_bilan.htm
[1517] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2082/bernie-sanders
[1518] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201604/13907/podemos-new-clothes-service-capitalist-emperor
[1519] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/60/difficulties_for_the_proletariat
[1520] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2011/special-report-15M-spain/real-democracy-now
[1521] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200301/1893/orientation-text-2001-confidence-and-solidarity-proletarian-struggle
[1522] https://www.telesurtv.net/english/multimedia/The-Global-Rise-of-Xenophobia-20161216-0023.html
[1523] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/307/iraq-1991
[1524] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201509/13390/migrants-and-refugees-cruelty-and-hypocrisy-ruling-class
[1525] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201603/13871/german-policy-and-refugee-problem-playing-fire
[1526] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1917-russian-revolution
[1527] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/14/proletarian-revolution
[1528] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/dan_blake_image.jpg
[1529] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/201506/9226/a-propos-du-film-loi-du-marche-denonciation-sans-reelle-alternative
[1530] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14137/questions-comrade-link-and-some-replies#_ftn1
[1531] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13785/40-years-after-foundation-icc
[1532] https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR029_function.htm
[1533] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/22/third-left-communist-conference
[1534] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[1535] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/trumpenstein.jpg
[1536] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201702/14255/trump-election-and-crumbling-capitalist-world-order
[1537] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/macron_le_pen.jpg
[1538] https://medium.com/@jakefuentes/the-immigration-ban-is-a-headfake-and-were-falling-for-it-b8910e78f0c5#.bpytcit5j
[1539] https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left.html
[1540] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/30/myth-lone-wolf-terrorist
[1541] https://libcom.org/forums/general/statement-london-terror-attack-british-fighters-ypg-28032017
[1542] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201608/14056/terrorist-attacks-france-germany-america-capitalism-carries-terror-within-its
[1543] https://www.leftcom.org/en
[1544] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/14270/icc-public-forum-london-15-april-trump-election-and-crumbling-capitalist-world-order
[1545] https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/3160
[1546] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/1982/31/critique-of-the-weak-link-theory
[1547] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/trump_us_saudi_arabia_99657-dea71.jpg
[1548] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-north-korea-aircraft-carrier-sailing-opposite-direction-warning-a7689961.html
[1549] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/12029546/Saudi-Arabia-destabilising-Arab-world-German-intelligence-warns.html
[1550] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201606/13973/iran-and-saudi-arabia-twin-peaks-capitalism-s-decomposition
[1551] https://libcom.org/library/we-supporters-rojava-should-be-worried-about-its-partnership-united-states
[1552] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201703/9528/elections-et-democratie-l-avenir-l-humanite-ne-passe-pas-urnes
[1553] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-says-labour-would-deliver-fair-immigration-policy-but-refuses-to-get-into-a-numbers-a7747166.html
[1554] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14333/hard-times-bring-increased-illusions-labour-party
[1555] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/grenfell_demo.jpg
[1556] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/817651/london-fire-grenfell-tower-block-cladding-latest-updates-european-union-regulations
[1557] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201301/6246/capitalism-produces-housing-crisis
[1558] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201609/14092/1950s-and-60s-damen-bordiga-and-passion-communism
[1559] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/momentum_pic.jpg
[1560] https://libcom.org/library/decadence-aufheben-2
[1561] https://libcom.org/aufheben/decadence
[1562] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/reason/ch01-5.htm
[1563] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htmhis
[1564] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch02.htm/
[1565] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2
[1566] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
[1567] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/139/decadence
[1568] https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm
[1569] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm
[1570] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/104/why-no-revolution-02
[1571] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/macron_victory.jpg
[1572] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/_96345151_terrorpolice.jpg
[1573] https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/jenkins/2006/xx/terrorism.html#n6
[1574] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/democracy.gif
[1575] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201702/14253/brexit-british-capitalism-struggles-limit-damage
[1576] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14138/corbyn-mobilising-discontent-behind-capitalist-programme
[1577] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14329/presidential-election-france-it-s-always-bourgeoisie-wins-elections
[1578] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/daesh.jpg
[1579] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201511/13672/paris-down-terrorism-down-war-down-capitalism.
[1580] https://search.socialhistory.org/Record/128409
[1581] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch03.htm
[1582] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3122
[1583] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/anti-fascism_pic.jpg
[1584] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2017-08-28/setup-in-charlottesville
[1585] https://libcom.org/article/setup-charlottesville
[1586] https://libcom.org/article/6-reasons-why-chomsky-wrong-about-antifa
[1587] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201701/9515/communique-solidarite-face-a-violence-haineuse-des-racialistes
[1588] https://de.internationalism.org/iksonline/201611/2693/solidaritaetsbrief-die-genossinnen-von-soziale-befreiung-und-sozialer-widersta
[1589] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/duterte-drug-war-killings.jpg
[1590] https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2017/08/12/Duterte-war-on-drugs-cant-control-drug-problem.html
[1591] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201109/4493/drug-trafficking-and-decomposition-capitalism
[1592] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201403/9534/history-trade-unionism-philippines
[1593] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational
[1594] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/north-korea-war-usa-846462.jpg
[1595] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn1
[1596] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn2
[1597] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#Kim_Il-sung
[1598] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#Kim_Jong-il
[1599] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#Kim_Jong-un
[1600] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn3
[1601] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn4
[1602] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn5
[1603] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftn6
[1604] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14385/statement-war-tensions-around-north-korea-international-communist-perspective
[1605] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref1
[1606] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref2
[1607] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref3
[1608] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kim_Jong-il%27s_titles
[1609] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref4
[1610] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref5
[1611] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14384/threat-war-between-north-korea-and-us-it-capitalism-which-irrational#_ftnref6
[1612] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/07/north-korea-recipe-for-success-economic-liberalisation-public-executions
[1613] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html
[1614] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/nuclear_trump.jpg
[1615] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch06.htm
[1616] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/burmamyanmar
[1617] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/a_country_that_works_for_everyone.jpg
[1618] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/oh_jc.jpg
[1619] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/16/stella-rimington-should-stop-fuelling-paranoid-fantasies-about-jeremy-corbyn
[1620] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/dennis-skinner-labour-conference_uk_59c8f70fe4b0cdc773329fc8
[1621] https://es.internationalism.org/revista-internacional/201611/4182/que-le-pasa-al-psoe
[1622] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/201708/4224/referendum-catalan-la-alternativa-es-nacion-o-lucha-de-clase-del-prole
[1623] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch01.htm
[1624] https://es.internationalism.org/cci/200602/539/espana-1936-franco-y-la-republica-masacran-al-proletariado
[1625] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200602/572/el-plan-ibarretxe-aviva-la-sobrepuja-entre-fracciones-del-aparato-polit
[1626] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/201706/4214/primarias-y-congreso-del-psoe-el-engano-democratico-de-las-bases-decid
[1627] https://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2017/09/17/59bd6033e5fdea562a8b4643.html
[1628] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3252
[1629] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201611/14185/spain-indignados-movement-five-years
[1630] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/12/uk-butterflies-worst-hit-in-2016-with-70-of-species-in-decline-study-finds
[1631] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/21/internationalisme-1952
[1632] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers?CMP=share_btn_link
[1633] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/19/global-pollution-kills-millions-threatens-survival-human-societies
[1634] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201305/7636/chavez-legacy-defense-capital-and-deception-impoverished-masses
[1635] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201206/3417/incremento-de-la-violencia-delictiva-en-venezuela-expresion-del-drama-de-la-d
[1636] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kurz.jpg
[1637] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/45/austria
[1638] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201710/14401/day-discussion-russian-revolution
[1639] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/14414/day-discussion-russian-revolution
[1640] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201302/6412/socialism-and-workers-movement-ottoman-empire
[1641] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1896/07/polish-question.htm
[1642] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170425-turkish-ambitions-set-to-grow-in-the-wake-of-referendum/
[1643] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-kurdish-national-question/21608?print=1
[1644] https://merip.org/mer/mer153/political-uses-islam-turkey
[1645] https://www.thesis.bilkent.edu.tr/0006102.pdf
[1646] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3588
[1647] https://www.worldpress.org/Europe/3892.cfm
[1648] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/mark/14433/working-class-identity
[1649] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/26/revolutionary-wave-1917-1923
[1650] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/kurdistan.jpg
[1651] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_involvement_in_the_Syrian_civil_war#Cross%E2%80%93border_military_interventions
[1652] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13836/its-official-russia-and-syria-have-linked-their-air-defense-networks
[1653] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13941/russian-armor-rolls-into-kurdish-town-as-us-and-turkish-backed-forces-skirmish
[1654] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14538/erdogans-new-turkey-prime-illustration-capitalisms-senility
[1655] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/117_mideast.html
[1656] https://theworld.org/stories/kurds-turkey-atone-their-role-armenian-genocide
[1657] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2006/groupe-communiste-internationaliste
[1658] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/293_wpiran.html
[1659] http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA533492
[1660] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201704/14285/election-donald-trump-and-degradation-capitalist-political-apparatus
[1661] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14390/anti-fascism-still-formula-confusion
[1662] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/06/06/the-real-reason-working-class-whites-continue-to-support-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.977e12996de5#comments
[1663] https://fareedzakaria.com/2017/08/04/the-democrats-should-rethink-their-immigration-absolutism/
[1664] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/10/19/dnc-reshuffle-has-some-worrying-about-a-purge/?utm_term=.8c2425ed095b
[1665] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/160/debt-ceiling
[1666] https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-democrats-taxes/index.html
[1667] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/yemen_war.jpg
[1668] https://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/19900.aspx
[1669] https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/07/houthi-leader-yemeni-forces-will-take-part-in-any-future-conflict-with-israel.php
[1670] https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/18/how-the-war-on-terror-failed-yemen/
[1671] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-mohammed-bin-salman-wants-out-yemen-war-leaked-emails-reveal-135340790
[1672] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/iran_protests_barricade.jpg
[1673] https://libcom.org/news/iran-bread-jobs-freedom-05012018
[1674] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/paradise_paper_pic.jpg
[1675] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/bust_of_spicurus.jpg
[1676] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201802/14822/reflections-split-anarchist-federation
[1677] https://libcom.org/forums/anarchist-federation/whats-going-afed-27122017?page=7
[1678] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/26/woman-punched-in-brawl-between-transgender-activists-and-radical-feminists
[1679] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/jk1921/14834/reflections-split-anarchist-federation
[1680] https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary.html
[1681] https://en.internationalism.org/series/1292
[1682] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201802/14928/recent-attacks-icc-libcom
[1683] https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/class-struggle-anarchist-statement-on_1.html
[1684] mailto:[email protected]
[1685] https://leicesteraf.blogspot.co.uk/
[1686] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/26/transgender-anarchist-book-fair-transphobia-row
[1687] http://anarchistbookfair.org.uk/
[1688] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201305/7746/aufhebengate
[1689] https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael-schmidt-fascist-25092015
[1690] https://libcom.org/article/cnt-and-iwa-part-2-crisis-iwa-seen-cnt
[1691] https://libcom.org/article/anarchist-federation-statement-rojava-december-2014
[1692] https://libcom.org/forums/anarchist-federation/whats-going-afed-27122017
[1693] https://libcom.org/article/working-class-movement-dead
[1694] https://libcom.org/forums/anarchist-federation/whats-going-afed-27122017?page=6#comment-601355
[1695] https://libcom.org/article/migration-and-national-social-democracy-britain
[1696] http://afed.org.uk/afed-trans-action-faction-statement-in-response-to-events-at-london-anarchist-bookfair-2017/
[1697] https://libcom.org/forums/anarchist-federation/whats-going-afed-27122017#comment-600829
[1698] http://www.workersoffensive.org/single-post/2017/10/13/The-Dead-End-of-Racial-Identity-Politics
[1699] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/jdreadn.jpg
[1700] https://libcom.org/forums/history/suffragism-or-communism-11022018#new
[1701] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201512/13704/sylvia-pankhurst-feminism-left-communism
[1702] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-left-influenced
[1703] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/rr_history_book_cover_illustration.jpg
[1704] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/306/1917-Kornilov
[1705] https://greatmomentsinleftism.blogspot.be/2013/11/the-many-flavors-of-leftist-part-1.html
[1706] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299269/stalin-by-stephen-kotkin/9780143127864/
[1707] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lessons/
[1708] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm
[1709] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/turkish_invasion.jpg
[1710] https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2018/01/26/to-the-international-struggle-against-capitalist-division-war/
[1711] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201709/14385/statement-war-
[1712] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-afrin/kurdish-run-afrin-region-calls-on-syrian-state-to-defend-border-against-turkey-idUSKBN1FE2QA
[1713] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14574/kurdish-nationalism-another-pawn-imperialist-conflicts
[1714] https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/17/the-trillion-wars/uPVfSuDutnTZl5fIQ7YllK/story.html
[1715] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/libyan_slave_trade.jpg
[1716] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201803/15049/leaflet-group-yeryuzu-postasi-turkish-military-assault-afrin-international-st
[1717] https://www.tf1info.fr/international/en-irak-mossoul-et-en-syrie-raqqa-les-obus-au-phosphore-de-la-coalition-internationale-etats-unis-france-dans-le-viseur-daech-etat-islamique-2055444.html
[1718] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/uk-russia.jpg
[1719] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/mar/26/russian-spy-assassins-the-salisbury-attack-review
[1720] https://off-guardian.org/2018/03/22/45682/
[1721] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxRiG8vRRBk
[1722] https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/46260/The+Troublemaker%3A++The+Russians+are+coming+and+have+bought+the+Tories
[1723] https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/46290/Reject+the+Tories+warmongering+over+Russia
[1724] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/stephen_hawking.jpg
[1725] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/sncf_leaders.jpg
[1726] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/wv_teachers.jpg
[1727] https://libcom.org/forums/news/revolt-france-24032018
[1728] https://libcom.org/article/lecturers-and-support-staff-rebel-union-pushes-poor-pension-offer
[1729] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_West_Virginia,_2016
[1730] https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-teachers-strike-activist-interview
[1731] https://libcom.org/library/no-promises-insurgent-teachers-strike-west-virginia
[1732] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-wildcat-strike-militancy-peia
[1733] https://www.google.com/search?q=Cathy+Kunkel+Anatomy+of+a+victory%27&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
[1734] https://anticapital0.wordpress.com/not-all-strikes-are-created-equal/
[1735] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2018-03-11/west-virginia-school-employees-strike-sold-out
[1736] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm
[1737] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/04/02/teachers-are-walking-out-in-multiple-states-blame-gop-economics/?utm_term=.701a08a12b15
[1738] http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-cold-schools-20180103-story.html
[1739] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/158/editorial
[1740] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mai68_cgt_police.jpg
[1741] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201804/15124/france-rail-rolling-strikes-and-go-slows-union-manoeuvres-are-aimed-dividing
[1742] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ad_pic.jpg
[1743] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/mideast_powderkeg.png
[1744] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump
[1745] https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/1493610/statement-by-secretary-james-n-mattis-on-syria/
[1746] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/donald-trump-syria-address-full-text
[1747] https://www.theguardian.com/profile/simontisdall
[1748] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14640/yemen-pivotal-war-fight-influence-middle-east
[1749] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/09/europe-trump-wreck-iran-nuclear-deal-cancel-visit-sanctions
[1750] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201711/14435/22nd-icc-congress-resolution-international-class-struggle
[1751] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/marx_and_the_workers.jpg
[1752] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1885hist.htm
[1753] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/neanderthal_hand_print.jpg
[1754] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201308/9015/finally-first-all
[1755] https://scroll.in/article/869841/when-did-we-first-become-human-neanderthal-cave-art-discovered-in-spain-may-hold-the-answer
[1756] https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/how-white-helmets-became-international-heroes-while-pushing-us-military
[1757] https://www.google.com/search?q=the+guardian+white+helmets+and+silenced+comments&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab
[1758] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html
[1759] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/26/robi-m26.html
[1760] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/25/crippling-russian-attack-britains-infrastructure-could-kill/.
[1761] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9197844/Torture-casts-a-ghastly-shadow-over-our-countrys-reputation.html
[1762] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/04/lansley-criticises-ministry-defence-serious-failure-libyan-military-training
[1763] https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/28/seymour-hersh-hillary-approved-sending-libya-sarin-syrian-rebels.html
[1764] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201805/15143/world-bourgeoisie-against-october-revolution
[1765] https://www.pcint.org/03_LP/523/523_populisme.htm
[1766] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/077_rejection01.html
[1767] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/078_rejection02.html
[1768] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/117_decompo.html
[1769] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/jordan_protest002.jpg
[1770] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/01/videos-show-gunfire-amid-iran-protests-over-water-scarcity.html
[1771] https://www.merip.org/mer/mer264/emergence-new-labor-movement-jordan
[1772] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/meeting_of_the_first_international.jpg
[1773] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/di_maio_salvini.jpg
[1774] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/180717113740-01-iraq-protests-0715-exlarge-169.jpg
[1775] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/silk_road_map.png
[1776] https://www.diploweb.com/Le-chantier-tres-geopolitique-des-Routes-de-la-soie.html
[1777] https://www.capital.fr/economie-politique/nouvelles-routes-de-la-soie-les-projets-de-pekin-1264479
[1778] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Security_Act
[1779] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2154053/mahathirs-date-beijing-shows-china-cant-be-ignored-malaysia
[1780] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union
[1781] https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/csto.htm
[1782] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization
[1783] https://www.aalep.eu/sino-russian-relations-2018
[1784] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201807/16486/report-imperialist-tensions-june-2018
[1785] https://classe-internationale.com/2017/12/11/les-nouvelles-routes-de-la-soie-comment-la-chine-faconne-t-elle-la-mondialisation-de-demain
[1786] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_North%E2%80%93South_Transport_Corridor
[1787] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/international_womens_day_1917-1.jpg
[1788] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/armedsoldierssailorsan008.jpg
[1789] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/patriotic_amlo.jpg
[1790] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/internationalist-voice/16499/street-protests-amid-barbarity-capitalism-jordan-iraq-iran
[1791] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201801/9649/manifestations-iran-force-et-limites-du-mouvement
[1792] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/a08f5.jpg
[1793] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/remembrance-sunday-banner.jpg
[1794] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-died-during-the-Russian-Civil-War
[1795] https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/51018/170627_A%20Revolution%20Betrayed%20Final%20version.pdf?sequence=1
[1796] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm
[1797] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_functioning:
[1798] https://en.internationalism.org/go_deeper
[1799] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/index.htm
[1800] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/leftism
[1801] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/2008-collapse.jpg
[1802] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/gilets2.png
[1803] https://en.internationalism.org/platform
[1804] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/commune_lycee.jpg
[1805] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/9801/face-a-misere-et-a-degradation-nos-conditions-vie-comment-lutter-faire-reculer
[1806] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16600/france-yellow-vest-protests-about-fuel-and-taxes-general
[1807] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/liebknecht_addresses_workers_rally_in_december_1918.jpg
[1808] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201712/14536/icc-day-discussion-russian-revolution
[1809] https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2018-11-23/the-significance-of-the-german-revolution
[1810] https://en.internationalism.org/series/2042
[1811] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/199704/2088/april-theses-1917-signpost-proletarian-revolution
[1812] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/israel_palestine.jpg
[1813] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/protesters_in_front_of_police.jpg
[1814] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201710/14408/crisis-venezuela-proletariat-suffers-misery-chaos-and-repression-capitalism
[1815] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201303/3694/un-proyecto-de-defensa-del-capital-un-gran-engano-para-las-masas-empobrecidas
[1816] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/russian-experience
[1817] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200510/246/5-preguntas-sobre-el-comunismo
[1818] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3568/international-situation-behind-humanitarian-operations-great-powers-
[1819] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2010//331/
[1820] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoamerica-solo-el-proletariado-puede-parar-la-barbarie-del
[1821] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/climate_demo.jpg
[1822] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/bolsonaro_us_flag.jpg
[1823] https://theconversation.com/brazils-biggest-problem-isnt-corruption-its-murder-78014
[1824] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil
[1825] https://www.cartacapital.com.br/mundo/entenda-porque-a-crise-politica-e-economica-nao-se-limita-ao-brasil/
[1826] https://www.jota.info/paywall?redirect_to=//www.jota.info/opiniao-e-analise/artigos/a-lava-jato-aos-olhos-dos-americanos-20072017
[1827] https://www.diariodocentrodomundo.com.br/fbi-atua-na-lava-jato-desde-o-seu-comeco-e-se-gaba-da-operacao-pelo-mundo-por-marcos-de-vasconce
[1828] https://fr.news.yahoo.com/br%C3%A9sil-bolsonaro-etats-unis-relation-transform%C3%A9e-183240140.html
[1829] https://theintercept.com/2019/01/22/bolsonaros-milicias/
[1830] https://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/politica/2019-01-17/caso-queiroz.html
[1831] https://fr.news.yahoo.com/gouvernement-bolsonaro-prend-fonctions-132030385.html
[1832] https://pt.internationalism.org/ICCOnline/2007/Brasil_luta_controladores_aereos
[1833] https://pt.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/controladores-aereos
[1834] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/school_climate_leaflet_this_one.pdf
[1835] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/demo_pic_0.jpg
[1836] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/copenhagen
[1837] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201809/16578/capitalism-and-climate-change-more-evidence-growing-disaster
[1838] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/317/eco-disaster
[1839] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/63_pollution
[1840] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/lenin_mummy_other_side_small.jpg
[1841] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16603/hidden-legacy-left-capital-part-one-false-vision-working-class
[1842] https://marxismo.school/files/2017/09/Ciliga.pdf
[1843] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/037_natqn_02.html
[1844] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201502/12081/1914-how-2nd-international-failed
[1845] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/t_shirt.png
[1846] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/8/rashida-tlaib-says-they-forgot-what-country-they-r/
[1847] https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/10/ilhan-omar-israel-aipac-money-1163631
[1848] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnRC6gFrUao
[1849] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/02/top-democrat-demands-another-apology-rep-omar-accusing-her-vile-anti-semitic-slur/?utm_term=.8f3fef564ee7
[1850] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/09/trump-says-democrats-are-anti-jewish-numbers-dont-bear-that-out/?utm_term=.9c953dd34c73
[1851] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201805/15151/difficulties-bourgeoisie-s-political-apparatus
[1852] https://newrepublic.com/article/144547/redoing-electoral-math-argued-demographics-favored-democrats-wrong
[1853] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/the-next-populist-revolution-will-be-latino/565730/
[1854] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/jussie-smollett-story-shows-rise-victimhood-culture/583099/
[1855] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rep-james-clyburn-says-ilhan-omars-experience-is-more-personal-than-that-of-holocaust-survivors-children/2019/03/07/fcda705c-410c-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.7b7dec27c35f
[1856] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/433970-democrats-upset-over-omar-seeking-primary-challenger
[1857] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/new_scientist.jpg
[1858] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm
[1859] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/morris-iron-works-cor-e1482270055733-575x352.jpg
[1860] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201303/6529/notes-early-class-struggle-america-part-i
[1861] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201402/9461/birth-american-democracy-tyranny-tyranny
[1862] https://www.britannica.com/place/New-England
[1863] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm
[1864] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/aptopix_france_notre_dame_fire_87705-jpg-8a639-2560x1759.jpeg
[1865] https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2019/04/19/incendie-de-notre-dame-de-paris-quelle-politique-patrimoniale-la-france-va-t-elle-mener-pour-eviter-que-ne-se-repetent-ces-tragedies_5452289_3232.html
[1866] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/culture/patrimoine/incendie-de-notre-dame-de-paris/notre-dame-c-et-l-incendie-de-trop-pourquoi-les-historiens-de-l-art-et-specialistes-du-patrimoine-sont-en-colere_3400595.html
[1867] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1908/09/tolstoy.htm
[1868] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/algeria_protests.jpg
[1869] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/art_of_chernobyl.jpg
[1870] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16634/report-national-situation-january-2019
[1871] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/21-sri-lanka-attacks-st-sebastian-church.w700.h467_1.jpg
[1872] https://en.internationalism.org/content/2649/resolution-terrorism-terror-and-class-violence
[1873] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/mountain_top_removal.jpg
[1874] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47165522
[1875] https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/12/10/coal-mine-next-door/how-us-governments-deregulation-mountaintop-removal-threatens#
[1876] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/08/red-plenty-francis-spufford
[1877] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-25/dare-to-declare-capitalism-dead-before-it-takes-us-all-down-with-it/
[1878] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model
[1879] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/mexican_strikes.jpg
[1880] https://marxismo.mx/rebelion-obrera-en-matamoros-tamaulipas
[1881] http://www.laizquierdadiario.mx/Matamoros-donde-late-fuerte-la-lucha-proletaria
[1882] https://nuevocurso.org/dos-mexicos-dos-alternativas-universales-tlahueli
[1883] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/023/mass-strikes-in-poland-1980
[1884] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-poland
[1885] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/iranian_workers.jpg
[1886] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16670/polemic-international-communist-current-working-class-or-masses
[1887] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16622/lessons-strikes-labour-struggles-and-internationalist-tasks
[1888] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16599/internationalist-voice-and-protests-middle-east
[1889] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201410/10506/hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution-soaked-democratic-ideology
[1890] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/food-bank-press.jpg
[1891] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/oil_tanker_in_flames.jpg
[1892] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/union_troops_0.jpg
[1893] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16657/notes-early-class-struggle-america-part-3-birth-us-workers-movement-and-difficult
[1894] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/spanish_civil_war_refugees_welcomed_by_democatic_france.jpg
[1895] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/hong_kong_protest_democracy.jpg
[1896] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/ad-climate_leaflet_9-19t.pdf
[1897] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=the+communist+international+after+lenin
[1898] https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR033_functioning.htm
[1899] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16654/hidden-legacy-left-capital-ii-method-and-way-thinking-service-capitalism
[1900] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16715/hidden-legacy-left-capital-iii-functioning-which-negates-communist-principles
[1901] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/128/marxism-and-ethics-pt2
[1902] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/ferdinand-lassalle-3.jpg
[1903] https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/aus-meinem-leben-erster-teil-4234/5
[1904] https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band31.pdf;
[1905] http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me16/me16_326.htm
[1906] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3753/communist-organisation-struggle-marxism-against-political-adventurism
[1907] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/02/27.htm
[1908] https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1868/dissolution-lassaleans.htm
[1909] https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band30.pdf
[1910] https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band31.pdf
[1911] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Lassalle.
[1912] https://www.gutzitiert.de/aus_meinem_leben-august_bebel-kapitel_23.html
[1913] https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band16.pdf
[1914] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16719/hidden-legacy-left-capital-iv-their-morality-and-ours
[1915] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/200802/2185/debates-electorales-lo-contrario-de-un-verdadero-debate
[1916] https://en.internationalism.org/specialtexts/IR003_kron.htm
[1917] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/fred/4818/culture-debate-weapon-class-struggle
[1918] https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_11_10.htm
[1919] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/amazon_fires_seen_from_space_1.jpg
[1920] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/yellow_vests.jpg
[1921] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/1929_crisis.jpg
[1922] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/climate_supplement_5.pdf
[1923] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/handing_yourself_over_to_the_police.jpg
[1924] https://libcom.org/article/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-1
[1925] https://libcom.org/article/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-2
[1926] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/argentina_1969.jpg
[1927] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn1
[1928] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn2
[1929] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn3
[1930] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn4
[1931] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn5
[1932] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn6
[1933] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn7
[1934] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn8
[1935] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn9
[1936] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn10
[1937] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn11
[1938] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn12
[1939] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn13
[1940] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn14
[1941] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn15
[1942] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn16
[1943] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn17
[1944] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn18
[1945] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftn19
[1946] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref1
[1947] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201804/15127/fifty-years-ago-may-68
[1948] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref2
[1949] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/hot-autumn-1969
[1950] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/143/hot-autumn-italy-1969-part02
[1951] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref3
[1952] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref4
[1953] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4444/resolucion-sobre-la-relacion-de-fuerzas-entre-las-clases-2019
[1954] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref5
[1955] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201802/14921/anarcho-syndicalism-argentinafora1
[1956] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref6
[1957] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref7
[1958] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref8
[1959] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref9
[1960] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref10
[1961] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref11
[1962] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref12
[1963] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref13
[1964] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3161/international-correspondence-workers-emancipation-revolutionary-class-militant
[1965] https://es.internationalism.org/node/3413
[1966] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref14
[1967] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref15
[1968] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref16
[1969] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref17
[1970] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref18
[1971] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_argentina.html
[1972] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4462/el-cordobazo-argentino-mayo-1969-eslabon-de-una-cadena-de-movilizaciones-obreras-por-el#_ftnref19
[1973] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_piqueteros.html
[1974] https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/#epi-toc-3
[1975] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/climate_supplement_6.pdf
[1976] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/29/green-new-deal-plans-proposal-ocasio-cortez-sunrise-movement
[1977] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16760/90-years-after-1929-crash-decadent-capitalism-can-never-escape-crisis-overproduction#_ftnref2
[1978] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
[1979] https://neweconomics.org
[1980] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16734/ecological-disaster-poison-militarism
[1981] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/chile_protests.jpg
[1982] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4395/el-movimiento-obrero-en-chile-principios-del-siglo-xx
[1983] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/115_allende.htm
[1984] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16704/resolution-international-situation-2019-imperialist-conflicts-life-bourgeoisie
[1985] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/climate_supplement_4.pdf
[1986] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/area_of_amazon_rainforest_destroyed_by_fires.jpg
[1987] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/windrush_workers_meet_raf_officials_as_they_arrive_in_the_uk.jpg
[1988] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/australia_image.jpg
[1989] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16724/only-international-class-struggle-can-end-capitalisms-drive-towards-destruction
[1990] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/en_greve.jpg
[1991] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/slave_market_in_libya.jpg